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Never tell Ryan Kalil or Blake Griffin to stay in their lanes.
Since moving on from their playing days in the NFL and NBA to running the production company Mortal Media, they’re about to add a few more jobs to their resumes:
co-owners of a Mexican-league football team and co-stars of a new unscripted series that follows the team. “We Are Osos” began Aug. 3 on YouTube.
Kalil, who played for the Carolina Panthers, credits their retirements as pro athletes with a renewed focus they’re bringing to their second acts as TV producers. “Us being able to now be done with our respective sports careers, we’ve been able to kind of sit down and build more structure and road map out” the future of Mortal, he said on the latest episode of Variety‘s “Strictly Business” podcast.
In January 2025, Griffin and Kalil announced they were joining a group of other former NFL vets including Christian McCaffrey and George Kittle in taking control of the Monterrey Osos, a football team in Mexico’s Liga de Fútbol Americano Profesional (LFA). The “Osos” series documents not only their new adventures in ownership but the lives of the players on and off the field.
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“It doesn’t feel like you’re watching football in a different country with a different culture,” said Griffin, who currently has yet another job as an on-air analyst with Prime Video’s NBA coverage after playing pro basketball for 14 years.
As if they weren’t busy enough running Mortal Media, which also produced scripted series including Apple TV’s “Hello Tomorrow” and the Hulu reboot of “White Men Can’t Jump,” the “Osos” production marked their foray into self-distribution.
“We have a ton of stuff that we’ve set up at major studios and networks and streamers, but this one it’s been kind of a beast, but it’s been really fun,” said Kalil. “We do feel like this going to be the future moving forward.”
Kalil and Griffin previously appeared on “Strictly Business” in 2023.
“Strictly Business” is Variety’s weekly podcast featuring conversations with industry leaders about the business of media and entertainment. (Please click here to subscribe to our free newsletter.) New episodes debut every Wednesday and can be downloaded at Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music, Spotify, Google Play, SoundCloud and more.
