The Big Business of Peak NFL

This week NFL season kicked off amid the zombie news cycle the league just can't shake. Colin Kaepernick is back as the new face of Nike, after his collusion case against the NFL was allowed to go forward last week. Mark Leibovich, New York Times Magazine Chief National Correspondent, and author, who documented Washington's insiders in This Town, traded one swamp for another and spent the last four years documenting the big business of peak football in his new book Big Game: The NFL in Dangerous Times. He went looking for an escape from his day job covering politics, but it still found him in stadiums and at owner retreats. Leibovich explained why owning an NFL team is an entrance into "the most exclusive boys' club in America." So much so, even the White House is a consolation prize.

Silicon Valley executives made another pilgrimage to Capitol Hill this week. Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey and a third chair left empty for Google faced questions from the Senate Intelligence Committee, before Dorsey faced questions about anti-conservative bias from the House Energy and Commerce Committee. David Kirkpatrick, Founder and CEO of Techonomy Media, and author of The Facebook Effect, joined to discuss if he thought the questions from lawmakers have improved after multiple rounds of hearings and whether all this was actually breaking through to the companies' user bases.