The Athletic Football Show: A show about the NFL - Amazon's NFL debut, the Buck-Aikman booth moves to ESPN, and the league's broadcast landscape in 2022 with Bryan Curtis

Episode Date: September 21, 2022

There was a ton of change to the NFL's broadcasting landscape this offseason. From Joe Buck and Troy Aikman jumping to ESPN, to Amazon entering the fray, to Mike Tirico taking Al Michaels' vacated spot on Sunday Night Football, fans get a different look across the league when they turn on their TVs. The Ringer's Bryan Curtis joins Robert Mays to dive into the early returns, and what's to come in the future, on this episode of The Athletic Football Show. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This is the Athletic Football Show. Welcome to the Athletic Football Show. Today's Wednesday, September 21st. I'm Robert Mays. Joining me today, one of my old colleagues from the ringer, Brian Curtis. Brian, how you doing, man? I'm doing great. It's great to see you through a Zoom camera.

I am very happy to have you here. I'm a little bit jealous. You guys do such a good job on the press box of setting up the show and the little production elements that you have. I think we can do a better job with the intros on this podcast. and I've just never thought about it for more than 30 seconds. Maybe it's something I should put a little more effort into. I find if you think about it for two minutes,

gives it that nice high polish. You did a great. It's great. It's one of my favorite podcasts. I listen to it all the time. If you guys are not listening to the press box, Brian does an incredible job of breaking down the sports media space. And that's why he's here today,

because we are going to talk about the NFL media landscape. We were going to do this before the season. I think I was on my training camp trip when I reached out to you about this. But it made more sense to me to kind of wait into, like, week one, week two after we had seen what the broadcaster like, after we saw what the Amazon product would look like. We saw what the dude perfect broadcast would look like. And then we could actually talk about what this is a couple weeks into the year. And it's been kind of this fascinating bit of movement at pretty much every single major network on pretty much every single major broadcast. And now we have a sense of what that landscape actually looks like.

Absolutely. And it's funny because a lot of these people were somewhere else last year. But even hearing and seeing them in a new home, they sound a little different in an interesting way. So there's a lot to talk about. Let's start with the Amazon broadcast just because I think that's the biggest bit of newness that's out there. What were your first impressions when you were watching on Thursday? Biggest compliment I can give Amazon is that it worked. The game came over the streaming service.

I mean, having talked to the guys from Fox in 94, who's, set up Fox NFL. That was the biggest fear that you're going to push a button on D-Day and that the thing is going to work. Because as we saw this Sunday in very different form, if it doesn't work, if people can't watch the game, people get really mad and you look really, really amateur hour. So the big thing was, we could all watch football on Thursday night, number one. Yeah, and we could.

My stream was a little bit laggy. That might be my internet. But just something you don't really have to deal with when you're watching it on cable. I still have cable. I have not cut the court. I watch all my games through cable. I have NFL Sunday ticket streaming, which we'll absolutely get into a little bit later. I already regret not really lighting into them on the Sunday night recap pod that we did.

I just got too distracted by the games that were going on. So I've just been stewing in my own fury for the past 48 hours. So I'm ready when we get there. But we'll table that for right now. I thought it looked incredible. The broadcast was crisp. I don't know if they're using a different sort of camera. or the way that they're shooting it compared to some of the other broadcast,

but I thought it looked as good or better as any other football broadcast that I've seen. The feel of it felt like a big broadcast. I just think that some of the pregame aspects to it, not the pregame shows, which I do want to get into, but just the way they were handling just some of the montages and everything else, it felt like a big football broadcast. And I think that if you're Amazon, that's what you wanted to feel like. This is your big moment.

You have somehow convinced the NFL to put this prime time amazing matchup on a Thursday, night in week two because you want the spotlight here. And I thought that overall they did a pretty good job just from the visual elements of it and the way that it was presented with that spotlight. Absolutely right. And I'll tell you the reason why is Freddie Goodellie is the producer. And Freddie Goodellie was the producer of Sunday night football for its entire run up until this year on NBC. So when I say Amazon looked a lot like Sunday night football, that's also a huge compliment. Because that is one of the best looking broadcast.

And as you point out, it had that big, it has that big time feel. This is the game. This is a game. Everybody's watching. This is something we need to pay attention to. And it worked. It worked on Amazon just like it worked on NBC. I rewatch some of it today.

And they could do a little bit better with this. When you click on the rewatch broadcast, it's a five-hour video because it includes all of the pregame stuff. And it actually was nice because I wanted to watch the pregame show. I wanted to watch how they presented it. I thought it was interesting. They kind of had the a little bit more casual presentation with Carissa Thompson and Ryan Fitzpatrick and Tony Gonzalez and Richard Sherman outside. Ryan Fitzpatrick is wearing this loud short sleeve polo shirt that's essentially yelling at you.

This is the casual presentation of the pregame show, which I totally understand. And then inside there was Michael Smith and Andrew Whitworth and Taylor Rooks. And they were kind of bouncing back and forth between them. And I enjoyed some of the observations. I enjoyed the feel of those conversations. you never know how that's going to go. And I think that the actual pregame show, when they were all inside at the desk and Ryan Fitzpatrick had put a jacket on as if to

symbolize that it was time to get serious. I think some of the interplay with that is going to get better over time. But again, it felt like a real broadcast. And I think that they put a lot of thoughtfulness into the personalities they chose for those roles. Even before they went inside, Ryan Fitzpatrick made a crack at Tony Gonzalez. He was like, yeah, I heard that they said Travis Kelsey is the best titan in chief's history. And Tony Gonzalez is very buttoned up. He's been on network TV for a while, and that interplay between those guys makes sense.

So I'm interested by it. It's something where I don't know if I'll tune in two hours beforehand on Amazon to watch the pregame show. I don't know how many people actually will, but I think they did a decent job with it. Yeah, I think so, too. If I have an edit for them, I would say I want more Richard Sherman and more Ryan Fitzpatrick. Yes. I think when they talk football, it doesn't sound like generic pregame show chatter, which you and I have heard for our entire lives. And you just sort of tune out because you realize, oh, wait, they're not making really incisive points.

They're just like, hey, they should get the ball to Travis Kelsey. It's like, oh, thanks. I appreciate the insight on that one. When those guys talk, it just sounded different. There was a moment where they were talking about Kansas City's new wide receivers. And Richard Sherman's like, these guys wouldn't scare me over the top. There's nobody on the field right now. As a cornerback, I'd be worried about getting behind me.

And, you know, and I think, like, that kind of stuff pops out because it's different. I love the sweet spot of when a guy is just out of the league. So he knows all the players in the league. He knows all the coaches in the league. He knows how the contours of the league work, all the schemes. And it's fresh enough, but now they're out of it. So now they can actually talk about it with some honesty. And I don't think it's a coincidence that the three guys they have on that show that are former players outside of Gonzalez,

who you need one guy with a gold jacket in there. Like it's part of the recipe. Like it just feels like they need that. But the three other guys retired last year. They were playing in the NFL last season. And I think that that has to be an intentional choice to kind of get that freshness from that group of players of your Amazon. Absolutely. And in fairness to Richard Sherman, he never seemed to have a problem with honesty even when he was playing in the league.

He's the exception. So I want to, I'm curious, I'm sure you've had conversations with people about this, either beforehand or since the broadcast aired. What are the practical benefits that Amazon is looking to get out of this? Is it a subscriber bump? Did they get one? Like, what are the early returns on Amazon side from the business aspect of this as part of the entire equation? Subscriber bump is certainly number one. I think just in terms of like dollars we can add right now after spending so much money in the NFL,

we're going to get the single most, the single best form of live entertainment in America right now in terms of something people have to watch when it's on? You know, the big change in our lifetime is that football went from, being something that is on TV to TV. Like, that's it, right? The sitcoms kind of went away. The dramas went away. News went away. But pro football is the thing.

There's that crazy stat last year, like 85 of the top 100-rated shows were sporting events, and almost all of those were pro-football games. So Amazon wants that to go along with Lord of the Rings. But I think the other thing is like this is the beginning, the true beginning of Amazon sports. Amazon having a sports division, just like the old networks did, right?

We start with the NFL. This is not the most enticing NFL package. We should say this is one the networks had and pretty much all rejected. But this gets you into the NFL. And it begins to start this idea that sports is going to be over here on over the air television. And it's slowly moving over here to streaming. It's a huge, huge, just symbolic step if nothing else in that direction. I'm wondering what the financial considerations are for normal people.

Like for me, I have Amazon Prime. I'm 35 years old. I've grown up in an Amazon. era. I've grown up in a streaming era. I remember a day when Netflix set DVDs to your house, but that was for a couple years while I was finishing up college. For the most part, I have grown up and lived in a streaming era for most of my adult life. So the idea of having Amazon Prime, I just click it on and turn on the game. But if you are a person who maybe doesn't have Amazon Prime or has never interacted with Prime Video, it's $1499 a month or $149 for the year, I believe. And to watch

four NFL games a month, if you're a huge NFL fan, that doesn't seem like a huge financial commitment overall. Maybe I'm overstating that. Maybe I'm living in a crazy bubble, but it's, how much money do you pay to see a movie, right, for a two-hour experience? So having four of those a month, I think most people are probably willing to click that button because they want their football. I mean, you think of like, if you were going to sports bar to watch an out-of-market NFL game, how much would you pay for that night at the bar, 30, 40 bucks? No, I think it's a great deal. I think the bigger thing is just the barrier of technology.

And I know this because I had a relative, huge football fan, Dallas Cowboys season ticket holder. So this is somebody who is all in. And I was like, I could almost set an alert for the first text message I'm going to get from this relative, who may or may not be my uncle, who's going to say, wait, how do you get the game? Wait, do I have this? And I had to be like, no, you don't have this. And I'm not, we don't live in the same city. so I can't come set it up for you right now. So you may have to go down to the sports bar to watch this.

And like, that's not a small amount of the population. Because football is watched by everybody, right? Football is not, you know, the cool, a show on HBO Max. Football is all of America, all of the American public. So there's going to be people that are like, wait, what? Streaming what? How do I do that? And that's going to be part of Amazon's things.

right is to bring those people across the divide. I'm sure that a lot of my relatives are able to stream it because the reason I know that my relatives have streaming capabilities is that they're always telling me about the shows that they're watching on Paramount Plus. The amount of times that my mom has tried to get me to watch Yellowstone or has told me about the sheer amount of occasions on which my mother has told me that they watched Palmer on Apple Plus and I need to watch Palmer, the Justin Timberlake movie. brings it up at every single, every single time we meet or I see her. She has mentioned

me that I have to watch this movie every single time. So I wasn't worried about my relatives because I hear about their streaming tastes pretty much every time I interact with them. If my mom, it's usually the British country house mystery or maybe the HGTV streaming thing that I set up for. Those are the wrecks I get. So obviously we had the alternate alternate streams as well. The dude perfect one, it was very funny. Chrisa Thompson on the pregame show, introducing them as an idea to the audience, explicitly said they've got more than 100 million followers across all social channels, pretty much explaining to everyone who had no idea what was going on. This is why this is happening because 100 million people on the internet are paying attention

to these guys, which I absolutely loved. But the NGS stream, again, trying to step outside of the way that I see things versus the way the general population sees them. I love to. it. If you guys aren't aware of it, they have a second stream on Amazon where there's stats on the side, but to me it wasn't about the stats. It was about the alternate angles they were showing during the broadcast. So you get the live broadcast audio from Herb Street and Michaels, but they're showing you at all 22 angle or behind the quarterback angle. And the way that I watch games is I have it on my TV and then I had my computer next to me. So I had the normal broadcast and then the NGS broadcast on my computer 10 seconds behind. So I could watch every play twice with multiple angles. And for sickos, that is a really cool thing to be able to do. I thought of sickos like you when I was watching that. Because usually I have to watch a game twice, right? Yes. Watch it on television.

And then the next day, you're going to go watch all 22 film and try to pull some things out of that. I was like, oh, wow, this is all being compressed into one thing. And by the way, kind of like what Kirk Herb Street and those guys do in the boot because they're watching the game. And then they're sitting there on their other monitor going, you know, rewind, rewind, rewind, rewind. find the angle I want so I can explain a play, it sort of turns us all into color analysts in an interesting way. Yeah. The fact that you could watch it twice in real time from different angles, I think,

really changes the game for somebody like me. I don't know if a normal human being who interacts with football in a humane level is going to care about that, but I know that I certainly did. What about Dude Perfect? How did that change the game for you? You know what? I'm sure that there is a robust audience for the Dude Perfect alternate stream, and they're probably all under the age of 20.

And I understand it as a gambit, right? If you're trying to get to a younger audience and you want to bring it to those people and you want to get them to sign up, there's no denying that those people have a built-in audience. I don't know how much it's going to resonate with them, but I get the thought behind it. I watched it for two minutes and somebody was being lowered into a dunk tank because of a bet they had made about what was going to happen on a drive. And they went into the dunk tank. and all the other dude perfects were like, he went into the dug tank.

Is it dude perfect? Dude perfect or is it dudes perfect? Dude's perfect. Like attorneys general? Whenever I interact with my fiancee's 24 year old brother, it's always interesting. Like that step down from being a true millennial to being in Gen Z definitively.

He'll watch videos on TikTok or whatever. And some of the comedy videos are just noise. Like I just like, we've gotten to a place where the visceral aspect of some of the things that people that age are interacting with, I truly can't comprehend it. So whenever there's that black box, it's not like, oh, the kids are so weird. Like, I don't care about the kids are thinking about. It's that there's absolutely a barrier for me to understand why they're engaging with it the way that they are. It's a mortality moment. I always look for those now that you and I are kind of in the middle

age zones. Like, okay, I don't feel old. And then I see something like that. This isn't for me. And I'll never understand this. So that kind of makes me feel old. Speaking of old, Al Michaels and Kirk Herb Street and what that looked like in round one, I understand wanting to bring Kirk Herb Street into that booth if you're looking at all of your options. Because we can talk about this a little bit later when we consider the plan at large for some of these networks. But Kirk Herbster has done this before. There is legitimacy to him, his name, the way that he approaches the job.

I thought the pairing was odd, though, because you have Al Michaels who really leaves a lot of space for the color guy. There isn't a lot of prodding. Like, Al's done this for so long. And I think he sets it up and just kind of leaves it there. There isn't a lot of questions. There isn't a lot of like, well, tell me more about this. And I think that Kirk in his first time doing an NFL game, in my opinion, struggled to fill that space with stuff that really added to the broadcaster me. And I think that can eventually get better, but it was a weird pairing to hear for the first time.

I was struck by how different he sounds that he did on Saturday night football on ESPN. If you ever watch that with Chris Fowler, they're just in like full storytelling mode all the time. Yeah. Because it's college football. And he knows it. Yeah. He knows it. Well, he knows it.

But like he's going for, he's talking to fans who like, even if you're a huge college football fan, how many players can you name on Alabama and Georgia's teams is here? Five, seven? maybe, right, as opposed to an NFL game where you're into fantasy and gambling and you just know the roster so much better because they're the same year to year. So I think to me that's where he's going to have to figure something out. It's like, okay, I'm talking to an audience that knows this really, really well. And I don't have to be like, this guy's from Georgia and he transferred here and he went here and he played two years. Like, no, no, no, we kind of know a lot of that stuff. So it's almost just like a different skill, even though you're just like.

changing from college or pro. It's also, I think that there's probably a section of the audience that knows these teams and knows the general feel and depth of NFL rosters as well or better than he does. I don't think that's a stretch. And that's not an indictment of Kirk Herb Street. One person only has so much bandwidth. I mean, the idea, Troy Aikman did multiple games a year for a long time. And I think even on that schedule, it's wild to have to do that.

the pregame production meetings and how much research you're having to do to do those multiple broadcasts. But when you're doing it for two completely different sports and you're having to know these teams, how many power five teams are there in college football? Don't have the number in front of me. A few dozen, right? I mean, like, as many as there are NFL teams. And so you're doubling the amount of teams that you need institutional knowledge of.

And I think that's just really, really difficult, especially when you're working with a play-by-play guy who's going to give you a ton of space that you have to work in during that broadcast. Just imagine if I came to you and said, so three days before your NFL podcast, you have to do a college podcast. There's no way. I mean, it would be absolutely possible. Hey, Georgia won. It has to be like an X's and O's college podcast that gets into the weeds of college football.

That'd be so hard. And I think the bandwidth question is absolutely legitimate. And I think for somebody like Joe Buck, where he's doing the World Series and football games at the same time, it's different as a play-by-play guy. It's still wildly impressive, but it's different in terms of what you have to know and how you have to talk about it in the space that you have to fill. So I'll be curious to see how it looks moving forward, how it feels moving forward, but those are my initial impressions of it.

And I say like the one thing Amazon bought and paid for and was absolutely worth it was when you talk about big time, feel that game is hearing Al Michaels go Arrowhead Stadium. I mean, boom. This feels like a huge game. Like, I'm in. I know that voice. It's nighttime. I know exactly what this is supposed to be, which is a big time game.

And that brings me to the next conversation I wanted to have because I want to talk about what the past year has looked like with all of the announcer movement. You wrote about this back in March and just how the money has gotten absolutely crazy. And that was before the Tom Brady thing that happened at Fox. This was months before. And we're already having that sort of conversation. So I just want to take a small step back and look at this in kind of a wide-ranging way. and ask you why. Like, what do you think, and I don't think it's unjust,

I'm not saying it's not justified, and I'm not saying it's totally unreasonable, but what is a network like ESPN thinking when they're throwing that kind of money at somebody like Troy Aikman? What is Amazon thinking when they're throwing that kind of money to poach L. Michaels?

Why do you need these guys in this day and age to really hold down an NFL broadcast? So I think there's a couple of different and interesting answers there. if you're ESPN, you've tried to get the Monday Night Football booth right with internal hires for years and years and years. And you never did it. So you're going to have to go to another network, coach both of their announcers, and that's going to cost you a lot of money. If you're Amazon, you want big names, legitimacy for all the reasons you and I have just been talking about.

But the bigger picture here is two things, I think, Robert. One is Amazon joining the bidding. We know that whenever you bring another bidder in, the price for everything goes up. This is the Fox story back in 1994. Fox comes in all of a sudden, John Madden's making more money than any player in the NFL was making. Still my favorite broadcasting statistic of all time. More than any player to call games for Fox, which is incredible.

The second thing is what we're talking about with television. Television changed. In the old days, like the highest paid guy at the network was Jerry Seinfeld for his comedy sitcom that comes on once a week or the social. stars of ER or whoever, that doesn't exist anymore in the same way. Those shows are not in the top 10, top 20, top 30, top 40 of television anymore. It's sports. Now, we know that Joe Buck is not necessarily going to bring people to a Monday night game in the same way that Jerry Seinfeld brings people to a sitcom, but they're the biggest stars of the network now. So if you think about it in

those terms, well, what did they pay Jerry Seinfeld in those days? Like a million, two million an episode. Now you're paying a broadcaster a million dollars a game to call a season of NFL game. So does that make any sense, you know, in dollars and cents terms? Probably not. But if you're paying so much for rights and if TV is so dependent on pro football for its very existence, then I could see paying an announcer that much money. When I was thinking about it this summer, part of me was like, this seems wild. Like, this seems unnecessary. Like, are we really come in to see Joe Buck and Troy Eagman on Monday night football, but then you turn it on. And the exact same moment that you had with Al Michaels, not as stark, but is a similar moment

to the one that I had when I turned on the Broncos Seahawks game two weeks ago. When you hear those two guys calling a game, it feels like an NFL game. And I don't know what sort of price tag you can put on that and whether the return on investment is there. But I think turning it on and having it feel like a familiar experience for people, but also an event for people is a really difficult needle to thread. And I think that by getting these guys, you can do that. I also think the feeling that these guys got this.

That's exactly right. There's somebody that's their hand on the wheel. Yes. There's not going to be a moment where it's like, oh, you're doing something awkward and it makes me feel awkward on the other side of the TV. It's like, no, no, they got it. They got it handled. I mean, what price do you put on that?

It's peace of mind. I think that in reality, I think, is what executives at these networks were paying for is that if we bring in these guys in, we know exactly what we're getting. It's not about ceiling. It's about floor. It's about understanding what the broadcast is going to look and feel like every single week and we're not going to have to worry about it. I'm not going to have to be laying there at midnight staring at the ceiling if I'm

Jimmy Patero about what the Monday Night Football broadcast is going to look like. And that's a really hard thing to put a price on. Isn't it funny how everybody's flipped on Troy Aikman? We took a poll. Who's your favorite NFL color analyst in 2017 with Chris Collinsworth and Tony where's Tony where's Troy Aitman finishing that poll and yet now it's like hmm is Troy number one I mean it's fascinating to me how that is just completely changed I don't think Troy Akeman adds a ton to the broadcast like I'm not tuning in like man look at the insights

that I'm getting from Troy Aikman I still think that Romo's become kind of his own thing I enjoy Olson on the broadcast probably more than I enjoy Troy Aikman but I still think it's it's not about me. It's about having that feel of like I'm putting on these comfortable PJ pants and a sweatshirt and I'm settling into my couch and I am allowed to feel a sense of zen and calm about what this is. This can just wash over me because I don't have to think about it. And I think that there is value in that. And I think that is what Buck and Aikman give you. Yeah. And that's 20 years of call in the NFC game of the week on Fox. That's what it gets you. I will say for Troy, his one superpower is he lays people out.

Like I don't think any other number one guy lays people out right now. Would you make it $18 million a year? You could say whatever the fuck you want. Right? Is that wrong? Remember the NFC championship game last year? He's like, oh, wow. This is coming down to Jimmy Garoppolo making a play.

You know? Oh, you know? And we're like, yes, thank you. Somebody said it because we do not believe Jimmy Garapolo is going to make a play and win this game. He's openly trashing the Bucks Eagles game. year in the middle of the broadcast acting like he's he is so pissed off to even be there but he's gotten to a place where when you're one of these guys that has a seat at that table you have a lot of power you called it the announcer empowerment era like Troy Aikman doing that stuff is James

Harden getting fat in Houston like that's essentially what it is you can do whatever the hell you want because there's only a certain number of your guys but you know we like that sitting home because there's a lot of time I watch a football game, and I think of the announcer, you're being too nice. Just say the thing. Or you're breaking down a play for me. And I just want you to be like, just tell me the truth. You watch that opener, remember at the end with Rams and Bills? Chris Collinsworth, the fourth quarter was like, by the way, the Rams stung tonight. Like, this was awful. And you have to say that sometimes. That comes with confidence in time, right? Like, if you've done it for a really long time, I think you

know what you can get away with. You know what you can't. And I think you feel that from both of those guys. Speaking of Collinsworth, just initial thoughts on the Toriko Collinsworth booth, I was surprised just how natural it felt and how comfortable it felt for me. I don't know if that's a common experience, but I didn't notice it very much. And I actually thought Tariko was doing a pretty interesting job, which we can get into. But what were your initial thoughts when you were watching it back? I saw Toriko at a press event the day before that game out here in LA. And he said, I don't feel a new car smell to this booth. Meaning, even though this is the first time they're paired together for a whole season, he's done a ton of Money Night Football

Games. Chris Collinsworth's obviously done a ton of sunny eye football games, and there's just a certain sense of, we got this. Same quality you're talking about with Joe and Troy. I'm not going to feel uncomfortable watching this game. If they have to get any better or anything, I think it's just the timing and the fill that you're talking about with Al. Chris has spent his whole time at NBC, listening to Al call a play a particular way, waiting that one and said, boom, boom, and then coming in with the analysis. So I think they'll try to sort of get better at that. I thought Mike sort of talked a lot in week when the first game.

Do you notice that? Like the bills were lining up for a field goal in the second quarter, and he's telling us which hash mark was the kickers preferred hash mark. I'm like, I think this is a last second note. I don't think this is a second quarter note. But it felt to me like he was really. You know, he had a lot for week one. And I think that that is, it's such an interesting contrast between him and Michael's, because

we talk about Michaels just gives you all of that space. And I think that where Michael, Michaels is superpower in all of this is presence, right? Like, that's what it is. It's gravitas. It's all of the history. When you hear the voice, he just has that to him. And I think what Tariko brings to the job that's very different is there seems to be like a genuine curiosity in the way that he approaches his job as a play-by-play guy.

I think he is asking real questions about the. the game about the teams, about strategy. You feel that come through in some of the observations that he's making. And he's prodding Collinsworth with questions. Like, he's trying to drive the broadcast forward in a way that somebody that does this like Michaels is not. And it's different. I don't think it's necessarily worse or better, but I do think it's going to take some getting used to because it's a lot of space taken up where Michaels is vacating that space. Yeah, he's much more of a participant. I totally agree. And by the way, there was never a better example than the playoffs last year when he was with Drew Brieze.

And he, along with the rest of us at home, realized Drew Brise had nothing to say. It's like, oh, I got to do the analysis too. I've never been more impressed with Mike Dorico during a game because he's like, I kind of have to do both jobs for a while. And he was up to it. Absolutely. So we talk about how these guys are going for legitimacy and feeling like you have two hands on the wheel and it's a familiar experience that you're getting.

But the Manning cast is not that. The Manning cast is something new. and it feels like it's more participatory or kind of coming in the back door. So now that we're in year two, how do you think the industry overall looks at the Manning cast experience after the way the first season went? It's a really interesting question because I think ESPN last year had a Monday night boot that turned out to be short-lived and they were hunting for stars. And they're like, we want Peyton Manning and you can bring Eli Manning too.

This is awesome. We don't have star power, major star power in the Monday Night Boots, so let's do it on this alternate broadcast. And it solved their short-term Monday Night problem. Well, now, as you point out, they got two of the biggest stars in the business in the booth. And the Manning cast in that looks a little bit different because you're like, wait a second, I want to watch Joe and Troy. I'm kind of also interested in what these guys want to talk about. So, yeah, and now it feels like it's almost cannibalizing the main audience a little bit more, because you're just really, somebody like me, there were times last year was like, I'm going to watch

a Manningcast for the whole game. Even if they're like interviewing The Rock, I won't, because they're going to be talking more football, football in the way I want to hear. They're going to be more entertaining. They're funnier than the guys in the booth. This year, I'm going to be torn a little bit. So I think the question with all of these alternate streams is, are you adding anything to the experience?

You know, are you going for the dude perfect audience? Are you going, are you finding an audience? I mean, to me, this is almost like an embarrassment of riches where you just have like two really good things that are on exactly at the same time. And like I said, it forces you to make a choice. I didn't even think about turning the Manning cast on for the first Monday night game because I was watching a football game that Troy Eichmann and Joe Buck were calling. And that has nothing to say about the quality of the Manning cast. It just was so far out of my mind. I just didn't even consider it.

It's not that I didn't want to watch it. It's that I forgot to watch it. And I think that says a lot about why ESPN would make that sort of move with Buck and Aikman. And talking about that with cannibalizing it and are you adding anything, this is something that I think it just existentially. We have to think about in football media and sports media in general when you're trying to think about content around games. Is there space for talking over live broadcasts?

Is that the time that your audience wants to hang out with you? Or is it something where you let that breathe and then you have a lot of that. a conversation about it afterwards. I think that there's a push in the poll because there are times when I'm doing this and I want to be a part of the broadcast that's happening. I want to experience it in the same way that everyone else is. I think it's a really interesting tug of war going on with how we approach these live events and whether we want them to be this big communal experience that we all talk about or you want your own little niche version of it. Yeah, like what if you move the Man and Cash to the post game? So the game ends and those guys are talking about what just happened.

and they have a bunch of clips to show you, play breakdowns to show you a couple of special guests pop by. You know, is that interesting for ESPN? Is that interesting for people like you and me? Maybe, especially because it doesn't sound like generic post-game highlight show. It sounds like, oh, these guys are going to get deep into what just happened in an interesting way. But yeah, it's such a good question. I mean, I think it's almost weird to talk about this with the Mannings because the Mannings are sort of one-on-one in this sense. They're huge stars and the answer to, you know,

the Mannings want to do something with us. The answer is like, yes, we will do something with the Mannings and figure it and worry about it later. But with the other alternate streams, I think it's definitely a good question. All right. Some other stuff I wanted to hit. The quiet quitting that's happening from DirecTV

on this Sunday ticket situation. I, after what happened in week one, which is wouldn't load for me, I was like, okay, you know, this happens, even though it shouldn't happen. Like, they knew the NFL's, season was starting for, I don't know, how long have we known this is the start date? This is your, you had one job.

This is the epitome of you had one job. This is all you do, DirecTV. It's the only thing bringing people to your service. And then it happens again nationwide, where it just goes out for people trying to use the streaming service. What is happening here? Is this just a case of DirecTV understanding that they don't really have to care about this anymore because the rights go somewhere else a year from now? Is this an example of incompetence?

Like, where are we at with Sunday ticket as a product? Is this like when you went to the Sears store the year before Sears closed for good and it was still open? Oh, Kmart in the end, man. Yeah, you did not want to be in there. That was a dark, dark time. Yeah, it wasn't quite as clean as you remembered maybe when during the heyday. I think that's part of it. I got to say, I was giggling to myself when that whole Twitter meltdown was happening because I have direct TV cable.

Like I have. You lucky bastard. Dude. And usually that's like saying I have a butter churn and I'm making my own butter here at the house. But it was one moment where I was like, there's a butter shortage. You're the king. Yeah, exactly. I said they're like, hmm, change the channel with my remote.

Watch the next game. Like, this is fantastic. I just, I felt so happy. I felt so happy I'm paying a ridiculous amount of month just to just to get that and not have the streaming issue. Where do we think it goes? The next 36 months of NFL Sunday ticket. it look like to you? That's a great question. I think it's going to be one of the major streaming services we could pick whether it's Amazon or Apple or Disney or what it is, you know. And then with a

big workaround, by the way, for sports bars. Because there's one thing we learn with the Amazon experience, sports bars, including stuff like Buffalo Wild Wings, they're not wired for streaming. So you have to have a direct TV style workaround so that they can show all the games. And that's a lot of people watching football on a Sunday afternoon and a big, big demand. So that will be an option too, I think, so that everybody in the sports bar isn't melting down. It's just the people on Twitter. All right. A couple more odds and ends before we get out of here. I want to look forward to what this landscape is going to look like over the next year or so with some of the moves that have happened and some of the moves that could happen. What do you think the outlook for Brady is

next year? Obviously, now with Aikman gone, he steps right into that space. We'll see what happens with Olson. But now that we've got some time to let the Brady thing marinate, where are you with it? The thing I heard a lot this summer from people in TV was, are we sure Tom Brady is ever going to call games for Fox? I mean, what did we learn this offseason about what Tom Brady wants out of life? He wants to own an NFL franchise or be part of the ownership group of the franchise, wants to not play for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. Is there a scenario where he's like, you know what? This is a great press release for me and Fox.

This is great leverage for whatever it is I want to do because I've got $300 plus million sitting here from Fox. Are we sure he's going to get into a broadcast booth? Now, I can't assure you, Fox wants Tom Brady to come call games. Like that absolutely want that to happen. The other theory I heard, which you'll love, of this. Tom Brady comes into Fox. He calls games. He calls a Super Bowl two seasons from now. But he uses that period to audit the NFL. Oh, we're going to Miami this week. Let me

kick the tires around here, you know, kind of look around, check out the ownership suite, talk to people, and sets up his next thing, whatever it is. Minority stake in a team that could later become a majority stake, Michael Jordan style ownership of a franchise. I thought that was a pretty theory too. Yeah, the amount of Brady conspiracy theories they're going to roll out over the next couple years

this happens is going to be absolutely amazing. I have just so many questions about it. We talked about it when initially happened, I think, but is he going to be good at this? I think that's the biggest question that I have.

There's no way to answer that. Tom Brady, the image, not rehabilitation, but the image pivot that Tom Brady has experienced over the last few years, I think is driven so much by what has

social media presence looks like. And unless he's going to have 10 writers with him in the Fox NFL booth, I'm not sure we're going to see the same quick wit from Tom Brady in the booth that we see from his social media. So that's a big question that I have. I mean, all of this is just going to be a total unknown until it ends up happening. Does Tom Brady want a job? It seems like his wife is pretty upset about the idea of him having a job.

And that's something that he'll have to navigate over the next couple years. I asked Collinsworth about this. And he's like, broadcasting is a lot of work. work. And a lot of these guys, I go, this will be my vacation. It's not your vacation. You're gone a lot. You have to work hard. I do think there's a high floor for him, if only because he's going to work really hard at it. If he gets into broadcasting, he's not going to want to go, you know what? I want people to say that I'm worse than Troy Aikman or worse than Peyton Manning at this. Tom Brady does not seem wired to allow that. The other thing, obviously, it didn't happen.

Is there a looming Sean McVeigh type in this entire equation? Like, who's the next one of those? Is there always going to be that guy kind of hanging out there as more of these companies start thinking about getting into this world? Like, what does that announcer-free agency market look like over the next couple years? I don't believe somebody walks into an announcing booth at the height of their profession when I see it. it will probably happen if $20 million is being dangled out there like it was for Sean McVeigh, then maybe we'll see it. You just remember, like, Tony Romo went to CBS after he'd been benched and lost his job

to Dak Prescott. Yeah. Tony Romo was not the starting quarterback of the Dallas Cowboys. And I think if he had been, I don't think there's any way he goes to CBS that year, even if there's an opening. So we'll get to play games with this. people's agents will get to put out worth it. You know, maybe I would like to leave my very good NFL coaching job.

There are guys like Mike Tomlin who the networks have been trying to hire forever and would be all over if he decides he wants to stop coaching the Steelers. But I really think you would have to be a coach to be like, you know what? I'm done. And here's the other thing, Robert. I get suspicious of coaches because you know what they want to do when they start announcing? They want to get their next job. John Madden's the only person who ever really retired for good and was like, nope, uh-uh, don't want it.

All these other, look at Sean Payton. Does Sean Payton get to lay somebody out on Fox on the pregame show or the halftime show? If he has to, like, wind up coaching that quarterback next year, I just don't, I don't think coaches many times, not all the time, but I think they're not great announcers because I think, again, they're looking for employment in a way that an ex-quarterback not. Yeah, I think that's a really good point. And I'm with you on the guys walking away at the top. It just seems like there's too much of a poll. And for somebody that's McVeigh's age, it wasn't surprised at me that he ultimately walked back to it. Is there anything else? Any other football media storylines or ideas or what's next that's been kind of clanging around in your head here over

the last couple months? I think it's, you know, I think we may have, and I say this, well, this will be a freezing cold taking like 10 seconds. But I sort of think we've hit a nice moment where everything in the TV realm is settled a little bit. You know, ESPN's going to have a Super Bowl in a couple of years. That'll be cool to see. You know, we're going to have Greg Olson in a Super Bowl booth this year, which you and I probably would not have predicted a couple of years ago. I don't know if that would have been on the bingo card anywhere.

But I kind of think it's, I kind of think it's settled a little bit. And I think it's fun for me because what I always like about this is you can sit down with these guys and enjoy them over a course of years. announcers change. They're like players. they get better. Sometimes they get worse. They're different game to game. They have good games and bad games. And for somebody like me who's sitting there watching television at home on my direct TV cable system, I enjoy the familiarity we talked about. I enjoy visiting with those people in my imaginary way every week and just hanging out with them. And I almost like when there's stability, because then I feel you get a sense of who these people are and what they think about the game. That's why Tragman's making $18 million a year For you to feel that exact feeling

And as a Cowboys fan of the 90s I mean, let's face it, I was feeling that anyway No matter what Trigman movie doing with his life at this point I was going to ask you, how are you feeling about the Cowboys right now Before we get out of here I took my son to his first ever NFL game Unfortunately, it was Cowboys bucks And the Cowboys scored three points

At least he watched the 60-yard-long screen for the entire game I was joking that that's the most screen time, quote-unquote, he's ever had in his entire life. Like three and a half hours. Like, wow. Hey, dad, I'm watching TV. This is awesome. I was like, that's great because this game sucks. This is terrible.

And then we got in the car, you know, we were having those bonding moments and we turned on the postgame show. Like, oh, yeah, Jerry just said that dad broke his thumb. He's out for weeks. I'm like, oh, my God. What a moment. How old is he? He's nine. How does a nine-year-old interact with the NFL differently than,

a nine-year-old would have interacted with the NFL 25 years ago when I was nine or 35 years ago. In our house, probably fairly similar. You know, I don't think he's like reading sports pages like I was in the 80s. But he's, you know, pretty similarly. I've been kind of the non-pushy sports fan dad. I sort of demand he becomes a Cowboys fan because he doesn't get off that easy. You know, like, this is, we're not, you got to be in on this one, baby. We're not, you don't get to be the roof.

for the Rams. I'm going the other way on this. For me, it's like the student loan question. Like, just because other people had to suffer, it doesn't mean that the next generation has to suffer. So I think I'm going to let my kid, if that kid were to ever exist, go whatever direction he or she wants. There's no way.

You're not, you're not, you're going to let him off the hook, no bears fan them. I say that now. This hypothetical child. I don't think my ever, my dad ever made me be a Bears fan because my dad wasn't from Chicago. My dad didn't grow up with the bears. He adopted the Bears when he moved here because he was a military brat. He never lived in one place long enough to have a team when he was growing up. He was a Raiders fan in the 70s because he lived in Panama and Myrtle Beach, South Carolina and all these different places.

I don't think there was ever a conversation when I was a kid of this is the football team you like. But every Sunday at noon, at like 11 o'clock, my grandparents would come over with a huge spread of like Italian cold cuts. and we would make sandwiches and we would sit down and then the Bears game would start. And I would hear Pat Somerall and John Madden and that had Lambeau Field with Brett Fav and the Bears play it against the Packers. And that's just what we did. And so I watched the Bears every Sunday and I fell in love with the Bears. But I don't think it was this demand that it was passed down to me.

I think it just kind of happened because it was around. And I have to assume my child will feel the exact same way. But I was going to say, that's kind of a passive demand. Oh, we all get around with the whole family and watch the bears every week. By the way, root for whatever team you want, young Robert. Well, the problem is if the kid comes along when I've got my current setup, like there's Red Zone on. Like, that kid might just love Justin Jefferson touchdown.

So there's a bunch of different things happening. So that's actually what I worry about more, that we're just like post sports or post-team fandom. I think we are post-fandom a little bit with people of a certain generation. Maybe I'm reading a little bit too much into that, but that's kind of what it feels like. I think that's the hardest part. It's like the idea that it feels a little unnatural for me to be like, hey, let's sit down and watch an NFL game on a Sunday afternoon. Because I always ask him, my son, I'm like, are your friends?

You talk to your friends about this? Are you going to go back and tell them I went to a Cowboys game and that's going to mean something to them? And I think the answer is yes, but it means something different than it did when we were kids. and it probably means something less than it did when we were kids. It's funny. So that's the other thing you and are going to have to work on. Well, after we talk about sports media, we solve the generational divide. So time well spent.

Brian Curtis, always get to chat with you, my friend. Tell people where they can read and hear all the wonderful work that you're doing. The ringer.com for articles. And the press box is our podcast twice a week. David Shoemaker, your old colleague, my current colleague and old friend, do that every Monday together. And then on Wednesday, Thursday, I usually do a big long-form interview with one of these announcer types that we're talking about today. Same with Sean Payton.

You can't be burying these guys because now you've got to talk to them. Yeah, I think I'm off the Christmas card list for Sean. All right, guys. Really, really appreciate you listening. Appreciate you spending the time with us. We're going to be back tomorrow with one of our new NFL writers at the athletic, Caitlin Keller. She's going to stop by. We're going to chat about the week in NFL news.

really excited to get Caitlin on the show. I hope you guys, I think you guys are going to enjoy it. In the meantime, please rate and review the podcast on your podcast platform of choice. Please subscribe to the podcast and to our YouTube channel. Doing a lot of video this year. If you have not noticed, the Monday Hangover with me and Deante is on YouTube every single Monday. Our Sunday recap show is on YouTube.

Nate's film breakdowns, wind the clock. We have a new extended version on YouTube this week. We heard your guys' cries about it being too short. So this is a little red meat for all of you. So please go check that out. We'll be back tomorrow with Kalin. In the meantime, appreciate you guys listening. We'll talk to you soon.

This was the Athletic Football Show.