The Bill Simmons Podcast - Embiid’s Window, Plus the Sports Repodders 2021 Review With Bryan Curtis and Jason Gay

Episode Date: December 22, 2021

The Ringer’s Bill Simmons shares his thoughts on the 76ers’ win over the Celtics, Joel Embiid’s dominance, and the looming urgency for a Ben Simmons trade (1:50). Then Bill talks with The Ringer’s Bryan Curtis and The Wall Street Journal’s Jason Gay for a 2021 edition of the Sports Repodders! They discuss the Formula 1 renaissance (16:28), Eli and Peyton Manning’s MNF alternate broadcast a.k.a. the Manning-cast (31:50), traditional studio sports shows (45:56), The Athletic and rumors of an acquisition by The New York Times, the rise of the sports streamers, and more (1:06:15). Host: Bill Simmons Guests: Bryan Curtis and Jason Gay Producer: Kyle Crichton Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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We're also brought to you by the Ringer Podcast Network, where I have a new episode of the Rewatchables coming on Wednesday night. I'm just going to tell you what it is right now. Father of the Bride, 30th anniversary, me and Amanda Dobbins breaking down what might be the greatest dad-daughter movie of all time and what probably is the greatest wedding movie of all time. You can hear all of it. It'll be up on Wednesday night. Check it out. Speaking of things that are up on Wednesday, FanDuel Sportsbook and I, we've been messing around with some boosts and some same game parlay stuff. We're going to do a same game parlay for one of the NBA games on Wednesday. Now, who knows by Wednesday who's even going to be playing stuff like that. So we're going to

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We'll see. We've hit five underdog parlays this year. We'll see if we can make it six. I went to the Sixers-Seltic game last night before we get to the Sports Reporters with Jason Gay, Brad Curtis. I went to the Celtics-Celtics game last night before we get to the Sports Reporters with Jason Gay, Brad Curtis. I went to the Celtics-Sixers game last night and the Celtics lost as they usually do

when they're playing a good team. They'll put together the makings of a good game. They'll fall apart in two different small sections and then you'll leave the game going, wait a second, how did we not win that game? Classic example yesterday, they're up 97-90 and all of a sudden they're losing. And Joel Embiid was on the other end on Philadelphia. I'll tell you, man, I need

to start going to more NBA games. I really feel out of the loop. It's been almost two years. I think this was the second regular season game or the third regular season game I've been to since the season got cut short March 2021. Been to a couple of playoff games. But you pick up so much more in person. And this one, we were lucky because we were able to sit in the first row right next to the Celtic bench. So it was picking up a bunch of stuff. And the other thing, when you're that close, you really get a sense of the size, strength, speed, all that stuff of the best guys.

And Embiid is one of those guys that, I think there's five or six guys in the league that just have to be seen in person at this point. Embiid is one of them. I was lucky enough to see him work out when he was, right before he got hurt for the NBA draft, I think in 2014, I wrote about it. I came away from the workout and I was like, that guy has to be the number one pick.

With the size that he has, the athleticism that he has, how can you not take that guy first? He has to go first. Well, he got hurt, hurt his knee, ended up falling to third, Philly gets him. And watching him evolve over the last eight years into the guy he is now where he's, he's much bigger than he was when he was in college. And it's kind of alarming to see, um, not alarming, but it's kind of stunning to see some of the, um, old footage of him when he's at Kansas, how skinny he was compared to what he looks like now. Now he is like this just specimen, you know, and he still moves pretty well. I know he's had some of these stuff, but, um, he moves at the pace that is good for him. I wouldn't, you never see him sprinting. He's pretty careful about how he moves the floor. And if he's sprinting, he's getting an alley-oop

out of it or, or fast break dunk, whatever. But for the most part, he's moving at the right pace for him. Physically, he's overpowering. He can spin on either leg and he's just such a bitch to defend. It is unbelievable. It was so awesome to watch a guy in person. He finished with like 40. I don't even think it was like an incredible and beat game until the last couple of minutes when he just took over and he scored every single time down the stretch and filling up winning. And there's this incredible moment coming out of a timeout. I and Philly ended up winning. And there's this incredible moment coming out of a timeout. I think Philly goes up four.

There's like 11 seconds left. Boston calls timeout. Coming out of the timeout, Embiid comes off the bench, starts walking over to Emi Adoka, the Celtics coach, who they know each other because Adoka was at Philly for at least a year.

And he walks over to Adoka. He's like, hey, hey. And Adoka thinks he's like, hey, hey. And Udoka thinks he's going to say something profound. And he's like, I'm a motherfucking monster. And then he nodded at Udoka just to make sure he heard him. Then he walked off. And I loved it.

I just love Embiid. I don't know how long he's going to stay healthy at the level he's at now. We've learned with big guys, you just never know. You take it year by year. You take it year by year with the aging, with the health, and you watch somebody that's running like that. The bigger the body is, the more that can go wrong. It's like anything else.

There's just a lot of ways. You just look at the weight and the stress that playing at that size and that weight, you just always worry about it. Yao Ming was around. Now, Yao Ming, it wasn't nearly as athletic as Embiid was. He was seven foot six. He was playing year round for China. There are all these reasons, but all of a sudden Yao Ming was gone. All of a sudden Ralph Sampson was gone. You look up one day, he's in the 86 finals. Two years later, he's on Sacramento. Over and over again, we've seen with the tall guys, don't take them for granted.

You never know. And with Embiid, watching that guy in person when he's playing like he's playing now is really special. It really is. He is a true, awesome, unstoppable center. Now, last night, the Celtics were missing a bunch of people that play Ennis Freedom., awesome, unstoppable center. Now, last night, the Celtics were missing a bunch of people

that play Enes Freedom. My apologies, Enes. Enes Freedom had to play him big, big minutes. And he does a weirdly decent job against Embiid, considering I think everybody considers Enes a liability.

But when Embiid really wants to, holy mackerel, man, he can get to the rim if he wants. If you seal him off, he can spin toward the baseline, shoot that little jumper. He can go into the paint

and pound you in and do a little jump hook. He's got a lot of options, and I don't think, I'm watching TV every night. I'm watching the league, and seeing it in person really gave me this historical appreciation of how many big guys in the history of the league

had the arsenal of moves that he has. You know, you start with Hakeem. Shaq, I think, was pretty underrated for how many moves he had compared to, I think, what people tended to think his offense was a little more primitive. Ewing, especially as his knees started to get shot in his Knicks years, had his three or four staple moves that were really, really good. And then you go to the Robert Parrish.

He had his one little spin move on the baseline and then his little pull-up turnaround that he had. Everybody's got something. And Bede has added this kind of off-balance 20-footer that he's had the whole time, but now it's kind of basically unstoppable. And it's gotten to the point where you have to play at least a little off him because if you don't,

he can kind of bully right by you and get into the paint. But if you play a little bit off him, he can do this weird one-legged off-balance thing that he has. And if it's going in, you're kind of done. There's no way to stop it, especially if Philly was spacing at the railway. They put him and Curry, Seth Curry, on one side. They spread the rest of the side with shooters. If you go and you double and bead, well, he's going to be able to pass it to somebody. His passing is good. It's sloppy too. It's kind of a combo of he can make a great assist

and then the next time he'll throw it right to the other team. So I'm not saying he's not like Bill Walton, but he knows where to put the ball from time to time. Sometimes he can be a little lazy, but the scoring, and you really see the difference with him versus somebody like Tatum. Granted, Tatum isn't the guy that he's going to be down the road. I still feel like there's a whole level up for him to go. I still don't think he's that fun to play with. There's a lot of one-on-one stuff that a lot of times he seems, we have a category in the rewatchables for the guy who seems like they're just over there in their own movie. We call it the Judd Nelson word because if you watch New Jack City, Judd Nelson's just in his own movie. I don't know what movie he's in, but it's not New Jack City. And sometimes Tatum feels like that when you watch

the Celtics. Everybody's kind of trying to play together and Tatum's just kind of off doing his own thing sometimes. And I think he's hard to play with. And there's been a lot of debate this year about the Jalen and Tatum, how long before we start wondering, can these, I'm still not there yet. But I do think Tatum's difficult to play with. But when you see a game like last night,

you really see the difference between the top seven or eight guys in the league and everybody else. Because Tatum, I think he might be number 14 on somebody's list. He might be number 22 on somebody else's list. But he's on that second level. And Embiid is on the first level, especially healthy Embiid. But there's a handful of guys right now that when it gets to the level that Embiid was at yesterday,

you just kind of shrug your shoulders and you don't know what to do. He's there. There's no question. I think Giannis can be there from time to time. Jokic, absolutely. Luka when he's in shape. Steph when he's feeling it.

And KD, obviously, who's the best scoring forward of all time. So you have those five. You have Embiid. You have LeBron on some nights, especially when his three-pointer's going in. That's really the list right now. I don't think James Harden's at that level anymore because I don't think he can get to the rim and just get space as easy as he used to be. Whether that comes

back over the course of the season, I guess we'll see. Davis, Anthony Davis, I mean, now he's hurt, but this is just one of those seasons that I really wish I could go back in time and change my NBA 75 vote. Donovan Mitchell will have moments, but I don't think consistently. I would think he's closer to the Tatum camp than the Embiid camp. And just on down the line, Zach Levine will have moments every once in a while. Zion, if we ever see him healthy again, he's somebody that is a handful. But ultimately, it's really those guys. It's really Giannis, it's Jokic, it's Doncic, it's Curry, it's Durant, and it's Embiid. And watching that game last night really, really, really cemented to me that they have to figure out a Simmons trade. They, at some point, are going to have to pull the trigger on something because when you have a guy like that and he's healthy and he's a center, you just never know where your window is. They can't just have Simmons on the sideline for a year. I think the league knows it. We're less than two

months now until the trade deadline. There's some urgency. At the same time, you have a bunch of teams that are super unhappy with their own rosters. And now there's a combination of there's urgency on Philly's side because of Embiid's window, but there's also urgency with some other teams that, hey, maybe there's this asset that is in distress that we can go grab. And at some point, they're going to figure out

what that model is. But the thing Philly really needs is a real point guard. And I think Curry as a creator and, and he check guy and somebody who plays well with them beat in their offense. Awesome. Awesome piece. Harris is a nice piece. Um, Thibel who was, was, uh, really fun to watch in person yesterday. He's didn't, he wasn't, the refs The refs just weren't buying it from him yesterday. But Thibel in general, Thibel, Thibel, sorry, pronunciation dyslexia.

But him in person, wow. And that's somebody that I think if you're in a round two or a round three, you want that guy somewhere for 35 minutes. You want him on the court. He guarded Tatum last night. We've seen him guard Steph Curry. I mean, he's one of the few guys in the league

who can guard basically everybody from six feet to six nine. And he gave Tatum, he was in Tatum's head the whole night. Tatum really had a lot of problems with Tybalt. But what they really need is a point guard who can shoot. Can they turn Simmons into that? Can they turn Simmons into, like, we talked, KSE and I talked on Sunday about DeJounte Murray, whether,

and I don't think the Spurs would trade him at this point, but I think that they would have maybe before the season. Now I think he's going to make the all-star team. I think he's getting a lot of buzz now as this year's super-duper underrated guy. And I'd rather have him than Simmons. After Simmons, we just basically watched him bow out of basketball for a long time.

What does that mean for him competitively? It's a stay away. Could they get De'Aaron Fox for him? Yeah, maybe. But I think they have to look to upgrade the point guard position with the other pieces they have and figure it out. But there is a window with this stuff

and you never know, right? Brooklyn, that season has been a lot rockier than I think we ever thought. Milwaukee's coming off the title and usually when you've played a bunch of games over the course of eight months and the four playoff rounds and then the next season, who knows,

can somebody get hurt at the wrong time? Uh, there's a drop off after that. And unless you want to count Chicago, which I want to see more, I want to see what they do with the trade deadline. But with Philly, like I don't want to play them in a playoff series.

If Embiid is going to look like he did last time, I just don't. So, um, we'll see what kind of team they put together. But what a cool story though, man, that the Embiid thing, when you think like it goes from holy shit, where did this guy come from to his one Kansas season to shouldn't he be the number one pick? Oh, he should clearly be the

number one pick. Oh wait, he's hurt. Oh, we're not going to see him at all. Oh, he only played 26 games as a rookie. Um, Oh, is this guy ever going to stay on a court? So the point he's at now where it's so clear that he's really worth on his game, you know, and I think that's ultimately what separates these guys. That's what separates the guys that you leave the arena. Like my daughter did last night who had never seen a beat play in person. And it was just like, I can't believe how good that guy was.

It's the extra work. It's stuff like adding that little off-balance one-legged thing and how competitive he is, which is why I want to tell that Udoka story at the top. That's who he is. He's really competitive

and he has the same quality that Giannis has and I think Jokic has and Curry and Durant and Doncic, where it's not just like these incredible skills, but it's also, there's some motherfucker in him. There really is and you need it. So we'll see. Will this be the year?

It would all depend on that Ben Simmons trade, but seeing him in person last night was really special. Wanted to mention that. We're going to get to the sports reporters with Jason Gay and Brian Curtis. First time we've done it this year, but first, our friends from Pearl Jam. All right.

The sports reporters. We haven't convened in a while. We were overdue. Brian Curtis from The Ringers here. Jason Gay from The Wall Street Journal is here. We're going to do a 2021 sports media year in review. The big stories. A lot of stuff happened this year as we were trying to figure out topics and stuff. Now, Brian's doing this on the press box.

This is old hat for him with some of these topics. But let's start. I want to start here. Jason Gay, the F1 renaissance that we had this year with young people, with people like even at the ringer, like Rosillo and Kevin Clark, just in general, this was in the zeitgeist all of a sudden, this sport that had just not been in the zeitgeist. I guess my question is, can Netflix turn any sport into a thing? What can Netflix not do? Well, it seems abundantly clear that the doc series is what you're referring to help build an audience here in the US.

And it definitely feels like it's here to stay. It doesn't feel like it's some latest affectation or something with sports writers. It definitely feels like there's a fan base that's budding. Let's not forget, this is a massive sport in the rest of the world. It's lagged behind for a good long time in the United States, but to a great, you know, most of the world, these are significant races, significant players, and then you had in this final event, kind of this, you know, amazing moment,

which was controversial. And of course, you know, disputed a great deal. But I think for anybody who watched it, they're not going to forget it. And so all the DNA is there to build something. And it reminds me a little bit of Premier League and the way that worked and built the United States. But this feels faster because of the Netflix thing.

What do you think, Brad? You remember when soccer was really blowing up in America the first time and the crusty old sports writers were just taking a shit on it? You know, like it's not American. I don't I don't accept this. I would like to bring that bit back for F1. And I would like to be the crusty old sports writer. I really would. Because it is so funny to look at Twitter on a weekend morning

and everybody's doing it. Everybody's talking about F1. And they're not just talking about it. They're doing the expert thing. I've got some thoughts on the track at Saudi Arabia, if you guys want to know. You do? You know enough at this point.

It's it's I just find it really, really funny to watch a sport sort of bloom like that. I don't have anything against it, but I do wonder, do people really like F1? Or do they just want to participate in Twitter on a weekend mornings like they do with soccer or in 2021? Are those even different things? So it's like an opportunity, social media opportunity cost, you're saying? Yes. Or opportunities just to be involved in something that's not football on a Sunday. It's a new thing.

Everything's a social media opportunity now, right? Getting your COVID injection is a social media opportunity now, right? Getting your COVID injection is a social media opportunity. Look here, got my booster. I'm vaxxed. Let's go right to Brian's charbroiled, cynical heart and ask, it also feels like every journalist

now has to have a sports side hustle, right? You can't just have your main deal. You got to have a side deal. Now, people who read the Wall Street Journal know that they're going to get an awful lot, much too much bike racing out of me because that's just something I care about. Brian, I don't know what it is with you. Bill, I'm not sure what it is for you. JFK assassination plots, but everybody has a side thing. Yeah, I think I have a lot. I probably have too a side thing. Yeah, I think I have a lot.

I probably have too many side things. For Brian, it's used bookstores is really his passion. It's my sport. That's my fourth sport. If Netflix ever did a used bookstore documentary series, Brian would be tweeting about it constantly. But it does feel like F1 is getting propelled by US sports media who are

definitively covering other things. Alright, so I'm thinking I'm slightly older than you guys. In the 70s and early 80s, the Indy 500 and that whole thing was like the dominant kind of car thing that was going on. Even to the point where it was on the cover

of Sports Illustrated and stuff like that. And I knew who a lot of the guys were and everybody watched the Indy 500. Then at somewhere in the 90s into the 2000s, it seemed like NASCAR kind of grabbed it. And NASCAR felt a little more relevant. And I think part of it was in the Indy 500, at some point, the cars were just going so fast. It just looked like fast cars going in a circle. And it just wasn't that interesting. So NASCAR had this moment and everyone was telling us NASCAR was having a moment. And we had multiple networks go all in on NASCAR having a moment. And it never really totally happened, I think, in the way people thought. And now it's shifted to F1. The Netflix thing I think helps. I also think from the little I know, and I admittedly don't know anything about F1, but it seems like the fact that the tracks are different are a big part of this, right? It's not just the drivers. It's not just like the fact that there's a season and you're building to something, but each race feels different and they're a little more fun to watch than maybe just the Indy 500 model

of just a circle. Now, I'm sure I said five things that will make somebody mad who really cares about this stuff there, but do you see the legacy thing though about how it was one era, one era, and now we're in this new era and it does feel like it's at least here to stay for a couple years. I don't know if people are going to get bored of it, but I feel like there's some real legs in there. What do you guys think? I mean, I would say that there are a couple of modern components to this. Of course, there's a Netflix thing.

And look, they're borrowing a formula that, like, with UFC, you had with American Idol, you had with countless reality shows where you sort of build up this idea around the personalities and especially around the conflict. So you have that. But the other element, of course, is that this is an extremely accessible sport. It used to be this incredibly exotic thing that, you know, happened in faraway places.

You mentioned a few of them and the idea that ABC was going to send, you know, Howard Cosell to all of them. That just wasn't going to happen. So you now have the ability to be in all these places when they actually are happening and so in the same way that you had for european soccer you have now availability which builds fandom too yeah the real mark was it went from overseas faraway locations to austin you know now now if it's in austin it is main and i say this is ut grad it is it is officially mainstream culture we're absolutely all in. It's funny that in some of these sports we have, there's overcoverage, right? Basketball, I think, is number one with this. Basketball's the most overcovered American sport now, where we know so much about all of these players.

And the moment somebody's unhappy, they're in 100 trade rumors. I'd like to think I'm one of the dozens of people that probably participated in how it's over covered because anytime something happens, we're there. The ringer is there. I'm there. One of our other podcasts is there. I think the F1 experience has felt a little more old school where people are kind of discovering stuff as it happens. And it's not daily, everyday stuff. And the documentary series, whatever you call it, has really helped people kind of teach them the characters. It reminds me a little of when Hard Knocks premiered like 20 years ago.

And we went under the hood with football in a way that we just hadn't before. And it's like, you got to spend all this time with Brian Billick and the quarterback and Ray Lewis and all these different people. And it was like, oh, I have a new appreciation for this stuff. Is it possible, Brian, that we've just kind of dissected our main sports so much that we kind of need new blood i think it's more that sports fans have way more bandwidth than we ever think they can and this has surprised me my whole life you know when we went from the sports page era to like the espn.com era that you're talking about and all of a sudden it was like just way more stuff online every day and i thought you know what people aren't going to be able to process it they're used to like you know 16 pages of newspaper every day and i thought you know what people aren't going to be able to process it they're used to like you know 16 pages of newspaper every day and guess what they just they just wolfed it all down we're like okay i'm ready for more i'm ready and i'm ready for woj to come along and give me the trades of players i barely have never i've never seen play and i've barely heard

of woj has another covid scratch yeah i know my tweet notifications going off again luke baba mute is now not going to be at tonight's game yeah exactly and and you know all these i love Yeah, I know. can just put more stuff in their brain. And I think they want more stuff. And I think what's weird is we got so much stuff on television now. We got so much to read about online. And then you say, oh, here's F1. And they go, I'm in. I have time for this. I have room for this.

I'm interested. Let's go. It's also exotic enough that it makes you seem cool. Like, right. Isn't there a component of that too? Like, you know, years ago, it was saying you were with the Smiths

or with the Cure. You know, after that, it was, you were with the Smiths or with the Cure. After that, it was your favorite EPL team or maybe it wasn't an EPL team. And now declaring yourself as an F1 fan in the United States is cycling fan. You've been waiting for the Tour de France to have a moment. Are we just a Netflix documentary, an awesome Netflix documentary about the Tour de France away from people like Kevin Clark and Nora Princiati caring about the Tour de France? Is that all we need? Is it just that? Yes. If we can get Kevin and Nora on board, that that all we need is it just that yes if we can get

kevin and nora on board that's all it will take to just push us to the top step of the podium look we'll take what we can get in the sport of cycling we're right down there with uh bowling and whatever else there is i mean we are not a major sport in the united states although we are as f1 is something that's quite a bit bigger in other parts of the world. I mean, look, things like this have been done. I mean, there have been cycling movies. You know this, of course, American Flyers, Breaking Away, two classics. Bangers. We didn't get over the hump with those,

although I would say Breaking Away had a great effect in terms of inspiring people. But I would say more likely, you know, Netflix would be looking in the direction of something with an even bigger global reach. Cricket is a big thought as to what that could be as a series because you're talking about a massive sport

in a massive part of the world. Actually, I've got to say, I would probably watch cricket. I still don't totally understand the rules of cricket, but I remember, who that piece like 10, 12 years ago about the world's greatest cricket guy, right? Thompson,

right. Thompson. And it was a guy I'd never heard of. And I remember that piece did amazingly well at ESPN.com. Like it was like the most read piece of the year and everybody was kind of like, Oh, what's this mean?

And in general, like if there was the right documentary about that weirdly, I think darts would work. I'd pay to go behind the scenes, I think there's probably like eight to 10 of the greatest darts people ever. And people are in there. If you've ever seen some of the stuff they've had where it's like, you know, you have arenas full of people watching the World Series of Darts, whatever it is. I think chess is another one. Now, the chess, I think chess is another one now the chess i think is

every other year but if there was the right kind of docu-series for whatever the chess whatever that what are the world champions of chess whatever it is and we had the build-up and all the people and the characters and the strategy i would like that what what else do you have you've you've already you've already had the Netflix series with Queen's Gambit, which was a massive hit. That was the fictional. I'm not privy to your business particulars, but is it something that you would consider

for the rigor? Are we not that far away from an F1 podcast or a cricket podcast on the Over Here Podcast Network? I don't know. Brian's raising his hand for the folks at home. Brian is raising his hand I'm in how long is the season

is it it never stops I don't know I honestly don't know how to separate the Netflix part and the Sunday morning part from is there actual interest in this Brian any sports you wish bill Billiards? What about

the whole billiards world? Would you like to go into that for a year? When I was in London a couple years ago, I went and watched darts and it was amazing. And what's amazing about it is a dart board is like as big as a trash can lid. And you cannot see the dart board at the back of this big stadium. So they have to put the dartboard on a huge screen and yet it was absolutely full of people getting absolutely wasted and having and seeing these songs and the the the dark guys the arrow men is that what they're called were coming out to these 80s rock hits to like tina turner and all this kind of stuff you know and it was an unbelievable atmosphere so i to me i think that's's already on BBC American. I think that should absolutely be a bigger thing in America.

One other thing that it has that I think works with Americans specifically is watching people who are the absolute best at some sort of something that us normal human beings wouldn't be able to do. You watch somebody drive some of the tracks that they have at the speeds they're at, and you're just like, I wouldn't be able to do that. And that's kind of fun to watch. Whereas if they did this about horse racing, if Netflix had done the horse racing version of this, I don't know if that works. I don't know if I could identify with jockeys. You almost end up feeling bad for jockeys when you watch some of the stuff about them. It doesn't seem like the most awesome life and the horses and you don't know who's on the level and who's not. Like, I wouldn't enjoy that as much. But watching people who are the absolute best in the world at driving a car, there's something to it. Anything else, Jason, or can we move on? I mean, I definitely agree that the technology is a component of it,

too. The fact that you can't drive an F1 car, of course, but there is just so much componentry and gadgetry going on. And the teams genuinely have strong feelings for each other. It has all these kind of bonafides that you need for people to pay attention. And again, it wouldn't have meant anything if you had this lift off from the series and then people turn the channel to actually watch it and nothing happens. But instead,

you have this incredibly epic season and you have this great final weekend. And so I think that's the recipe for success. Who's the Federer of F1? Oh, it's Lewis, for sure. Okay. Who's the Djokovic

I'm gonna give Clark that one yeah I was gonna say we need to check Twitter and figure out some of the answers

to some of these questions alright so yeah we don't want to make people mad alright we're gonna take a break come back

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with this where the Pats were playing on a Monday night against the Bills. The Manicast was going on. It never even occurred to me to watch the Manicast. It was my team. I wanted to watch the normal way without conversations distracting me. And in general, it felt like more of a gimmick as the season went along. It was cool at the beginning, at least for me. And then I think it would have these moments, but ultimately I hate to say this about myself, but the traditional, even the, I don't even really like the greasy Riddick, uh, Levy crew that much. It's fine. It's like a C plus B minus, but it was just easier to follow the game with those guys. And ultimately I just want to watch football and I want to know what's

happening and who did what. And I don't want to be sidetracked by the things. I think it's good that the Manicast exists. I think it was smart. It probably is going to do way better on ESPN2 than anything else they had. But I think I've altered my position a little bit on, is this going to change sports media and how we do broadcast? What do you think after a whole season of it, Brian Curtis? I put the brakes certainly on, will it change everything about sports television? And I don't think I ever quite thought that just because the talent of those guys is so different. I totally disagree with you, though. I've actually liked it more and I get disappointed when they're not on.

And to me, it's actually the surprise has been it's really easy to follow the game on the Manning cast. And the reason is that Peyton Manning is a play-by-play guy and an analyst and joking around with Eli and interviewing people at the same time. Like I find if you go back to both telecasts, often Peyton and Eli are setting the stakes of a particular play of a third down or big fourth down in the fourth quarter, as well as, or better than the guys on the other broadcast. And that's what's so shocking to me because we're used to this as kind of like a conversation and we're, we're, we're having fun and we're doing X's and O's. But Peyton is sitting there and he's kind of doing play by play and he's kind of doing it well, a lot better than I expected. And I've watched the regular telecast and there have been fourth quarters where they really screwed up game winning drives and have not been good and have been off topic or messing up and stuff like that. So to me, I'm I, I really, really like it. And I could imagine this

one, not all of sports television, but I could definitely imagine this being the main Monday night telecast and not having the regular one. Would you have guests though? Because I like it when it's just Peyton and Eli. I don't care about the guests. I think they do the guests because it's a good way to drum up publicity for whatever. But I like when they're just watching the game and commenting on it as two brothers who really know football. I like the one where it's like it was in the fourth quarter. Was that week one where they had Russell Wilson and they were like locked in on the game and he was talking football to them about what was happening in front of them. Like I thought that was really cool. I could have given up on some of like Brett Favre was an all-time bottom five guest on any

sports show. That's been the case for 30 years. Yeah. I draw the line when it's like, oh, here's Kevin Hart. It's like, I'm positive. I would just rather watch the football game than hear the Manning brothers talk to Kevin Hart for 50 minutes. But so Jason, you're the tiebreaker. What do you got? Well, I'm just glad to hear Brian hasn't curbed his enthusiasm because I remember very well a Tuesday in Las Vegas at the beginning of the season, I had gone to the Raiders Ravens opening night, Monday night football game. And I had not participated in the Manning cast debut audience because I was at the game. But in my phone that morning was an emergency podcast from Brian Curtis talking about this as if it were the man walking across the moon.

And I think it is sort of a very significant moment for television sports in the respect that what was the last time we talked about an in-game production idea? I mean, this has really been a couple of generations now of basically the same format like individual personalities come out and they shine people get excited about a Tony Romo or a Keeb Tlaib but you know by and large it's very recognizable from the thing that you were seeing 40 years ago and here was something that was a real news spin I do agree that it's sharper when the two of them are talking together and it isn't reliant on the pre-production bits because that's the thing that really kind of lags it, I think, when they go like, oh, here's some footage of when you were at Manning Camp

or here's a joke that I remember from something, something. But it is a, I think, Bill, when you describe how you are as an audience member for it, I think ESPN will happily take that. The idea that you're going to be an ESPN consumer for a marquee game that you're very interested in and then a casual fan of a product on ESPN2, that's heaven for them. And I know what you're saying, that the hype around it and the media excitement over it doesn't necessarily match what the mass audience is for it. But there's a lot of TV like that.

Lots of it. The hype was deserved. It was a really cool wrinkle to a format that has basically been stale for 40 years or not really innovated on. And I'm still pro the mating thing. I don't want to make it seem like I'm not. I just personally chose not to watch it, but I'm glad it exists, if that makes sense. And I think it's going to pave the way for a lot of different versions of it, most of which will be bad. I think the key part of this is what Brian laid out. Peyton is so good at it that that's what makes this special. And to think that you can replicate that with other people,

I think is really unrealistic. They're going to try to do it with basketball. It's not going to work. Brian, do you think that this is going to be, as Bill said, it'll be imitated for sure. But do you think it'll also be the way that talent who otherwise would have no interest in the typical model of getting on the road

for 16 games a year or 17 games a year and traveling around and doing all that could now have their own sort of bespoke brand that you could kind of spin off of the main product. And that way you could, I don't know, theoretically get a Tom Brady to do, you know,

a season of Tom Brady football down the road or something like that. I think that is actually the key point to all this and kind of the hidden point when ESPN announced this, the, to me, the most interesting thing was that Peyton Manning was producing this. So we were changing the whole way TV hires guys. They weren't hiring an ex athlete and saying,

Hey, you're going to go to our production meetings and you're going to do this. And you're going to learn to talk like this. The athlete was saying, Oh, ESPN, I see you as a place to hang my shingle and produce my content. And by the way,

we don't have to wait for Tom Brady because he just did it on ESPN with the man in the arena thing. Great. You know, all these athletes are treating. Thank you, Bill. All these athletes are treating ESPN, the networks now, not as their employer, but as their co-producer. Like, I'm going to do my thing. And if you want to have my thing on your airways is what Jordan did with the last dance. Like we can do it. We're part, we're not, I don't work for you. We're partners. And I, and I think that's actually a really interesting thing that's happened with sports television. Well, and in general, I think that's been the mindset with a lot of this stuff is I'm

not a work for hire. If I'm going to participate in this and create IP for you, I want to also be involved in the upside of it. And the Mannings now can take this show on the road if they want. There's been rumors about if Amazon ever gets into football, even beyond what's been rumored, could the Mannings just go to Amazon? And would Amazon overpay for the Mannings? And how does that work? And I think the way they did it allows themselves to give flexibility. I will say, I think this would work the most and be the most important. This, that just the whole secondary screen thing, which by the way, has been around before

the Mannings, to be fair, let's all stop saying the Mannings invented this. Baseball, I think can be incredibly important for this. And we've seen it. We've seen ESPN dabble in this with college football, where they have the crew that roots for one team and the crew that roots for the other team and the fan things. I think baseball broadcasts are pretty bad. And I say this as a team, as I root for a team that's been in a lot of different playoff situations over the last few years. And I think Joe Buck is, is a very good play by play guy.

But when you think about how bad the ESPN broadcast has been really over the last 10 years, how much they've struggled with it. And if they could take the same kind of innovation they've done with football, make baseball's fucking boring. You're sitting there for three and a half hours, like to have, to think that we're doing it with the same local broadcast where it's like,

and there's Jason Gay. He's batting 238. You might remember his father, Bob was a Cardinals third baseman for five years. Oh yeah. Lou, he was some good hitter. Yeah. He really, I remember he could drive a fastball. Want to know to gay? Yeah, I remember. And it's just like, who is this conversation for? What are we doing? Why is this this whole alternate language of how we announce a baseball game

that doesn't have anything in common with anything else in the world? So anyway, end of rant. I feel like we could make baseball a little better. First of all, 238 gets me to about 15 million a year, I think at this point in baseball, if I'm getting enough home runs. But so what you're describing,

let's walk this through. Instead of having kind of a neutral, quote unquote, national broadcast, you'd have a split feed where you just take the team from, you know, say the Braves are playing the Red Sox, you take the Braves, home announcers, and the Red Sox, you put the ESPN umbrella over them for the night through some sort of agreement, and you can just flick to whichever one you want? Yeah, let's say you have a Dodgers game. Maybe you just have two celebrities doing the game. Maybe the celebrities change. Maybe it's like a hang where it's almost like a podcast cross of the game. There's all different ways you could go. That would be more interesting than watching A-Rod and whoever announcing a baseball game, I think is my point. At least let's try some of them before we just get stuck with that for another year.

I mean, we have this effectively with the NBA and maybe like baseball already with the ability to sort of alternate between the broadcast. So when you're watching the Celtics, will you watch strictly the Boston feed or will you flip over sometimes to the opposition broadcast to just see what they're saying? It's funny.

I always watch the opposing broadcast because I'm really interested to see what they say about the Celtics. And it's, it's like having some, it's like having somebody come into your house and just start commenting on different things. And you're like, Oh yeah,

I never noticed that about the chandelier and things, you know, things like that. But I think, I think there should just, I, I think we should be heading to a world, especially now where you can do stuff remotely, where there should be, I don't know, four to six feeds for some of these games. Like the BCS, you can't have enough feeds on that. You could do deals with multiple podcast companies, whatever. What do you think, Brian?

Well, I think you're right. But I think the goal is to find the Peyton Manning of these things, right? We think it's probably Phil Mickelson with golf who was on the Manning cast and was really good at it and kind of took it over for a quarter and was kind of asking them questions. He kind of, oh, Peyton, you get out of the driver's seat. I got this. He'd obviously be fantastic for golf if he were interested in doing it. And in a Phil broadcast that didn't have the Jim Nance CBS running Brooks and flowering plants and had just a little more edge would be fantastic.

But it's hard to find those guys. But that would be the nirvana for any of these sports. By the way, yesterday was a great example of when you needed the banning cast. Two terrible games for different reasons. Bears Raiders was close, but was horrific. And then the Vikings-Bears game was just grim. Like really kind of like almost sad. And that's where you really needed like,

I could have used Kevin Hart in the second half of that game talking to the bannings about nothing. But I was thinking, I was just thinking about those games last night. Watching them was like, this is the kind of game that the NFL tries to hide on a Sunday schedule. Like just kind of like put it behind a couple of curtains and hope no one sees it. And putting it in prime time really just reveals it for what it is. Well,

Brian, I've known you for a while now. How many years have we known each other? 10 years. 10 years at least. 10 years at least. And even before, we'd probably talked even before then, but we've been working together 10 years. One of our favorite things in media

is the overreaction to a trend that's seemingly working when you have a bunch of, maybe not the most inspired thinkers thinking that something is working and quadrupling down on it in the worst possible ways. We're going to see some really bad versions of the Manning cast. And I just can't wait. My fingers are crossed. How about you? Absolutely. And just think of how many bad ideas ESPN had before the Manning cast. I'm not talking about Money Now Football. I'm talking about everything. A lot of

that didn't work. Absolutely. The people that run sports television networks will try and fail to duplicate this and it will be really, really bad in some cases. I cannot wait. Anything else on the Manning cast, Jason? Did we cover everything?

I think we got it. Okay. All right. Let's take one more break and then I have some studio show stuff for you. It's hard not to think about 2021 without thinking about the Maria Taylor, Rachel Nichols, ESPN, NBA countdown.

What an absolute debacle that was. And really one of the rare sports media stories that didn't have a lot of winners everywhere, except for, I guess, Malika Andrews, just because she didn't get hit by any of the shrapnel. But a bigger issue popped up, and I've been thinking about it because I was thinking

about it last week. There was this clip that passed around on social media from the CBS NFL show. And it was Phil Sims talking about analytics. And it's, it's one of the dumbest 59 seconds you're ever going to spend. You must've seen it, Brian, where he's basically, he's poo-pooing on analytics while also admitting he doesn't understand them at all. And it's just like, it's a complete train wreck. And it led to a couple of days of people going, oh my God, how is this guy still on TV? And I got to thinking like, that's the first time anybody's really thought about the CBS pregame slash halftime show all year.

And I guess my question is, do studio shows matter at all anymore? Because I feel like they once really mattered when we were kids. And I remember the NFL Today with Brent Musburger across Phyllis George was like a really important show. Jane Kennedy stepped in and she was the most beautiful woman in the world. And he just was like, oh my God, this is one of the most important shows of my life. And then the years pass. My working theory, I'm workshopping this one for you guys. Are podcasts ruining studio shows? Do we have so much sports conversation every day that's really high level and focused and

you can get whatever you want and you can get team specific, you can get league specific, your personality specific, that by the time we get to a studio show, everything's kind of been said and it just feels like they're doing karaoke of all the topics we've already heard. What do you think, Brian? I think you're right. And I think what's happened is interesting because sports writing and sports media broadly has gone down two tracks. The stuff online and on podcasts

has gotten smarter and smarter and more and more complex. And the stuff on TV is slightly more complex for the most part than it was when you and I were watching in like 1989. You know, and whenever I talk to TV executives, the thing they're most scared of is not being dumb. It's actually being too smart. And it's for somebody in the audience, that one person who doesn't know much about football, who doesn't watch a ton of football to watch something go. I don't understand that.

I don't understand what that man is talking about. So you've got podcasting, which is trying to be like, I don't know, like the level of sophistication of succession or something like that. And then you've got sports TV, which is trying to be Alf or trying to be, you know, growing pains, right? It's just trying to go right down the middle. And it's not a problem that it's going down the middle. The problem is the other stuff has gotten so, so interesting and sophisticated that it makes it look really, really basic and really simple by comparison. Jason? I just don't think it's necessary for them to be incredibly relevant. I mean, you sort of asked the important existential question at the top, which is what purpose do they serve? And I think for most part, with very few exceptions like the TNT studio show, they exist

at the pleasure of the leagues that put the leagues on these networks and the networks pay a great deal of money to do it. And that's part of the deal. And I think that they, you know, occupy space, they probably achieve a higher rating than if you, you know, we're running cartoons up until, you know, one o'clock on Sunday, it's a better bit of programming for you, but it's not essential for them to be provocative or even great because what it really is supposed to be is some sort of appetizer, some sort of preparation for the big event, which is the game itself. So I don't think that the networks are terribly invested in the idea of creating these, you know, everyone's talking about controversial foot on the third rail kind of programming

because their main interest is preserving the relationship with the league and keeping that going. Well, you talk about the concept of a pregame show. What is it? What are we getting out of it? And that's been something that I think a lot of people have been trying to figure out forever. But in the old days, a pregame show really mattered because you were learning information that you might not have known. Then Twitter ruins that piece. You were diving into topics that maybe people haven't dove into yet. Well, now any podcast is going to hit the topic before you get to it. is it's a lot of hyperbole now in the pregame show, even more than usual, because you almost feel like, well, when it comes to me, I've got to say something. So on a podcast, I might talk with Zach Lowe for an hour about, do Jason Tatum and Jalen Brown make sense together?

This is a real topic with Celtic fans right now. Do these two guys, does it make sense to have these guys for the next 10 years? Are they redundant? Is this a winning formula? Would it make sense to trade one of them? Which one would you trade? Would you keep it? Would you watch it longer? It's a conversation that has a shitload of nuance. It would take 45 minutes to unpack if Zach and I, or me and KFC, whoever, we did it properly. I wouldn't want to do it in five minutes. On a pregame show.

That's like 30 seconds. And you, you're basically coming in hot and you're going guys, I don't think Jason Tatum and Jalen Brown can play together. And it's like, Whoa. Oh my God. It's like, Nope.

I just don't think they work. I think you got to trade one of them. And then it goes to the next guy. I disagree. It's, it's taken too long. All right. We don't have enough time yet. You got to give these guys more of a time. Then it goes to the next guy. Well, I guess it depends on what you get. And we kind of know it's like pregame karaoke, but it's not a conversation anyone wants to have. And as I watch these pregame shows whether it's football or basketball like so often I don't know who the conversations are for

so I guess that's my starter for you I would just say that I get what you're saying for the heavy NBA consumer but as enterprises they're really apples to oranges it's a totally different endeavor like a pregame show you're just trying to get from the first state

farm ad to the next state farm ad to the next state farm ad okay and when i'm when i'm listening to the podcast to the press box or the bill simmons show or any other podcasts and i do it mostly making school lunches doing dishes no offense and that's it's ambient entertainment it's a different thing you're not just trying to get my attention to go on to the next advertising package that comes with it, of course, but it's just a different flow to it. And I don't think that it's fair or reasonable to ask that these shows have that kind of depth because there's nothing in television that does. There's no television news that has the literal equivalent of any sort of podcast or print equivalent? Yeah, I don't know the answer, but I do think, you know,

as, as first take has gotten more and more powerful and I think has shaped, not just how everybody else tries to do these shows, but also honestly how some of the people behave on the shows. Now, I think people really have been, you not going to name names, but there's people that are really amped up their personalities because first take is the standard. So they feel like they have to do their show. And it's like, it's a little louder. It's a little more hyperbole. But if you watch first take, especially this NFL season, which feels like it's been going on since 2015, it's just every week is like the Chiefs are dead. No, the Chiefs are alive. And Sal and I are guilty of it too on Sunday nights. It's this rollercoaster ride.

And then you come on those shows in the morning. It's like Dak Prescott is not the MVP. Not only is that, I'm not sure he's a top 10 quarterback in the league anymore. And then two weeks later, it's like Dak Prescott's one of the best quarterbacks in the league. And it's just kind of what we're doing now. And it just feels like, as what Jason said, Brian,

it does feel like apples and oranges now, but I just like the nuance more. And I don't know where TV fits in as we head toward 2022. I also think the pregame shows are just overproduced. There's this masturbatory kind of thing where it's like, okay, Phil's going to talk for 30 seconds. And then of thing where it's like okay phil's gonna talk for 30 seconds and then nate and it's gonna go to nate and he's gonna say something completely different for 30 seconds and then bill cowher whatever and then and then back to jb and he's

gonna wrap it all up and it's like i'm watching and i'm like i can't follow anything that is happening here remember this we got into this with the nba thing on espn last year you're not having a human con even if to me it was was a hot take conversation. I would take that over this stage thing where everybody makes a point for 20 seconds and passes the rock around. And then JB throws it to the state farm ad because I can't actually follow that. I watch that. I go, I have no idea about what was just said here. The five people is brutal and I can't believe they still do it in this day and age. I honestly can't. I can't believe they would put five people. The CBS thing, which I've watched pieces of, I actually think Boomer's good. I think Boomer's a good

announcer. I think he's good when he does color on games. I think he's excellent. When he talks on a pregame show, I actually care what he thinks. But there's five people on the show, so we're getting boomer for 20 seconds, so we can go back to Phil Sims talking about how he doesn't

understand analytics. We're talking about two different things here, because I think you're talking about, on one hand, the sort of benign pregame showization, the fact that these pregame shows are just rote and uninteresting. Then the other thing you're talking about is the sort of way the day in sports now works, where I agree

with you. There is such an emphasis on being the provocateur and actually has kind of a rhythm to the day. It almost feels like you have people come on in the morning on these networks and they kind of shoot those flares up into the air and just kind of see if anyone sees the flare and reacts to the flare. And if they react to the flare, then it's sort of off to the races. I mean, you have a whole day of reaction to the flare, right? It's like somebody says somebody is the worst this, and then you have a full day of programming based upon that provocation. And you just see it repeated. It's kind of sad sometimes because every once in a while you see the flair kind of go up and then limply come down.

But I think Brian... Well, they have to go, whoa, right after the flair. Whoa! Right. But Brian has written, you know, or talked about this elegantly, which is that what has effectively happened here, not to bite the hand that feeds me, is that this is just a replacement of the arc of the columnist. That the newspaper columnist used to serve this function in the sports media economy of, did you read that this morning? believe he said that about Yogi Berra or whomever it was at the time that the agenda was set by the morning newspaper columnist and everybody on talk radio and beyond reacted to that. Now it's sort of just TV self-cannibalizing. You know, Jason, I don't know if you know this, Brian, Jason writes the last general sports column in America. What? It's just him. He's, he is the last one. It's just where he's reacting to stuff. No, we got a few others.

I really admire that you actually, you still make them really readable and enjoyable and it's this art that's just gone. But I think a good example of what Jason's talking about, I just remember when I was writing comms, when I was even dating back to college, but especially in the late 90s or early two thousands, sometimes the most fun ones were like, I don't totally believe this, but I'm going to fucking argue the shit out of it. And you know, that's like the, like my political science background was like, it's like history crossed with opinion. And it's like, all right, here's my case. Now I'm going to argue it. And those are my favorite ones to write. Like I would

write pieces about, here's why Tom Brady is more of a winner than Peyton Manning is, which is an absurd thing that would be trolled down. But back then it's like, all right, I 68% believe this. I'm going to sell the shit out of it and make my case. I'm not going to have the self-conscious three paragraphs of,

to be sure, now here are the counter, to be sure, blah, blah, blah. And well, given that Manning also, and it's just like, no, that doesn't help my argument. My argument is this. And to Jason's point, now pregame shows have become the 2001 version of a sports column where it's like, I guarantee the CBS pregame show on Friday, they'll have the meeting and it'll be like, all right, who wants to do the Baltimore should keep Tyler Huntley and trade the Mar take. And everyone looks around and Kara's like, all right,

I'll do it. And then it goes to cow and it's like, uh, and, and Bill, you think Baltimore, maybe they should have a different plan for 2022. You're right.

JB. I think maybe you trade Lamar Jackson. You get a ton of draft. You could build around Huntley. Whoa! Oh! Let's cut to Phil Simms. And then it's three minutes,

and that's the segment. None of them believe it, but that's what we did 20 years ago. But this is why pregame shows, I think, have become absurd. I feel like every one of these shows now is doing this where it's like, how can we get a 90-second clip on social

media with the right kind of headline? Stephen A thinks Dak is never going to make it in Dallas? I don't know. How did we get here, Brian? First of all, I love us podcasters patting ourselves on the back because we're not just ginning up content to get between state farm ads. We're ginning up content to get between sleep number ads, damn it.

That company that sends you meals to make at home, that's what we do here at those lousy pregame shows. I honestly think, I'll just go back to what i said a second ago just let you should let people talk and you should let people talk naturally like it should be like human speech and maybe it gets hot takey maybe it's dumb but at least the people have a chance to just talk and don't try to turn it into something where you go, boom, boom, boom, boom, here we go. Boom, boom, take, just give it, take a breath, make one point, discuss the one point. We can read the rest on Twitter and then send us back to the game.

Well, this is why the TNT show continues to win year after year, even though it's a little surlier than usual this year. The generation gap, I think, has become more profound than ever on that show. They really... Barkley just genuinely has disdain for some of the guys playing now.

He really is like, Anthony Davis, you're never going to make it. I don't understand. There's a residual anger with him now that's surprising. Yeah. I mean, they have the magic touch, which is that they have the gravitas, they have the Hall of Fame, they have the magic touch which is that they have the gravitas they have the hall of fame they have the rings and you know it is not the kind of thing where uh you're sitting there

wondering about the credentials of the people making the criticisms and also like they do have that kind of amusing sadler and waldorf quality i don't take what they say as some sort of like strident over big criticism i take it with a grain of salt because they're more likely to say the opposite in a week and a half. Well, I was worried that once that show got old, which happens to everybody. I remember Madden and Summerall seemed like this unstoppable force. And then eventually Summerall started screwing up. Madden started seeing Madden karaoke. And then it's kind of over.

It'll happen with the TNT show. I do think Draymond Green has a chance to be great at this. Yeah. When he can get on there. Yeah. I feel like we have a succession plan, Logan Roy style, for the day when Barkley decides. And Barkley, first he was claiming he was going to be done when he was 50. Now he's saying he's going to be done when Barkley decided. And Barkley, first he was claiming

he was going to be done when he was 50. Now he's saying he's going to be done when he's 60. Now Draymond's going to keep playing for a while. There might be a window between when Barkley leaves, but Draymond's not ready to take over yet. That's going to be awkward. And you feel it when Barkley's not on that show. When he's not on the show, I'm just not interested.

And maybe that's just me, but there's going to be an overlap. That won't be great. But Draymond eventually, I think will be the guy. I've seen enough. My scouts have come in with their verdict. He is a generational talent.

What's weird is football, I guess Manning was the generational talent, but he's doing the Manning cast, but that's the guy, Manning and Romo, I guess were our two guys. Romo feels a little karaoke-ish this year. I'm a little worried about where that's going. Yeah. Can we talk about that for a second?

Because I feel there's been a Romo turn. Let's do it. He came in and my friend Richard Deitch said he's the best color analyst in football ever. You know, better than Madden. He was just, he was killing it. And I'm watching this and it reminds me as a Cowboy fan of Tony Romo, the quarterback, which is when he's improvising, when he's improvising, he can be brilliant, right? When it's in the moment, oh, I'm going to spin in the pocket.

I'm going to draw this and I'm going to tell you how this play happened. Oh, Jim. Oh, Jim. I'm going to spin in the pocket. I'm going to draw this and I'm going to tell you how this play happened. Ooh, Jim. Ooh, Jim. I'm going to tell you this. But the thing is, he doesn't seem like he has prepared the way other broadcasters have. Just like he didn't seem like he was like Brady and Manning and those guys in terms of what he was doing before games started when he was a quarterback. Yeah. Tony, the broadcaster, seemed like brilliant, amazing.

And then also you watch games and the Super Bowl last year was not good. He had nothing in the second half when that game was over. It was just like, you don't have anything, man. You don't have anything to say, and that's what's the difference between John Madden,

somebody who's the best of all time, Chris Collinsworth. Those guys know they have to entertain when games are bad, and I do not think Tony Romo can do that. Brian, are you saying this as a media critic or as a Cowboys fan? Both, I think. A haunted version of both. Yeah, the Cowboys stuff definitely bled into that one. I'll tell you, the best team I've heard all year, and I don't think it's close. Is Burkhart and Greg Olson.

Ooh. I think hands down, not even close. I think they've been the best this year. And to the point where they got assigned to Pat's Colts game on Saturday. And I was psyched. I was like, this is awesome.

I can't wait to hear them announce this game. Olson's going to tell me some things about my team that I haven't heard on another broadcast and they were really good he was all over at the whole game on the mistakes and the penalties and some of the stuff they were doing Hunter Henry like he he was just on it and I think they're the best right now I think Romo can get the title back but I'm with Brian I think he's got to work a little harder on not just being like, oh, huge play, Jim! The karaoke piece is starting to seep in a tiny bit. You've got to be really careful with that because once that happens, there's no going back. There just isn't. And we've seen it with a lot of different media people. Tony has this

oh, Jim! He's seen a car on the highway with a mattress that's about to fly off. I also really enjoyed Gus Johnson and Aqib Tlaib. They were doing a Detroit, Arizona on Sunday, and it was just the perfect match of announcers and a bat shit crazy game that made no sense whatsoever. I really liked that. So yeah, last point on studio shows. It's interesting to me that

the Maria Rachel thing was by far the most interesting studio thing that's happened in a while. And I think it's just because people don't really care what happens on these studio shows as much anymore unless it's something with Barkley and those guys. And that's really it.

We'll find out if there's an F1 studio show down the road that can have that kind of impact. All right, we're going to take a break and then we're going to talk about The Athletic. All right, so we've avoided talking about The Athletic on the Sports Reporters. And I think in general, people are hesitant to kind of question

at least some of the information that we have out there just because there's a lot of jobs. And in some cases, we know some of the people that work for them, and I think everybody's rooting for them to do well. There's been a lot of different reports about how they're trying to get sold. The last couple of days, multiple reports, the New York Times and The Athletic, they're in exclusive negotiations, stuff like that. This has been in real time watching how they've tried to present what this is as a media entity. It's been pretty fascinating. A lot of it has been about,

first it was we're going to destroy newspapers. Then it was like, we have the ability to raise money in the venture community as like an asset. And they did multiple rounds and they've raised a shitload of money. They've raised, depending on the reports, between 140 and 150 million. The information did a big piece about them that said they burned through nearly 100 million in cash in 2019, 2020 combined. People started to get worried. Well, what does that mean? Are they going to have to raise cash again?

This is a lot of inside baseball stuff. I guess my question is, has this worked? Because it seems like they're going to get sold. And if they get sold, you could say that it did work, right? On the other hand, I feel like they missed a lot of opportunities and they've had to play catch up with a lot of mistakes that they've made over the last five years where they had a really good idea on paper and over and over again, it seemed like they went down the wrong path, but it still seems like it's going to end up in an okay place. And if they can

sell it to the New York Times, then it ended up in the right place. What do you think when you think about the last five years of The Athletic, Brian, just watching it from afar? It's a big topic and I think you have to split it into two things. One is the economic piece. What's going to happen to them? Are they going to survive? Are they going to get sold to the New York Times? And the other is the editorial piece. Just what have they done? And I think it's easy to conflate those two things because of the declaration at the beginning that we're killing newspapers and we're going to wait out until the newspapers bleed out. And that was got everybody to look at those two dudes and go, I, we don't like these guys. Yeah. We don't like these guys. Meanwhile, you have this legion of people,

mostly newspaper people, some other people just being like writing cowboy stories, you know, who are not trying to knife newspapers in the stomach and leave them bleeding in the street. They're just like, here's a good cowboy story. Here's a feature. Here's 20 thoughts on the game. So it's to me, it's almost two different questions. I agree with you. If they get sold to the New York Times, if they get a decent price for it, the New York Times is probably the best place they could possibly be, you know, in terms of a media company that cares about words and cares about preserving them. I'm not sure everybody's going to make it if that happens, but that's a good result. And I think the editorial thing, it's really hard to get my mind around because there are so

many people at The Athletic. The Athletic is not page two, right? It's, you know, a legion of people. And I read the Dallas people mostly. I go out and read other people, but I've really liked them because I thought Dallas, which has one newspaper like almost every other city, needed competition. The people there do different stuff. A lot of them are really different. So I have really enjoyed reading it day to day. Jason? Yeah. I mean, to echo what you guys said at the top, I would just say as a rule, I am going to stand on behalf of any company or organization still interested in publishing the printed word digitally or otherwise. And I think the athletic has more than proven itself that it

can deliver and scoops, whether it's the NBA, National Women's Soccer League, stuff with the Astros and cheating, that was a scoop of a lifetime. You know, I think the worry is on the business side that they went for scale, you know, the model of flooding the zone and growing the geography at all costs before the business necessarily catches up. And, you know, that's a tricky business we've seen in other things. You know, if you're doing ride sharing or selling houses and, you know, almost surely if you're investing in reporters and the print of word.

So I wanted to work, you know, and I wanted to work for everyone. But I just don't know at what size an enterprise works best. And, you know, I'm curious to ask you because you have a little bit of experience with this. And you guys stayed pretty lean and mean. You might think of yourselves as like a big company, but you you were what a hundred you know at the time of the sale around that i mean it does appear that you know stuff whether it's ringer or defector or even substack you know small is the safe approach here that over expansion is that what leads you into trouble? Yeah, it's,

I didn't like when they were talking about destroying newspapers. I thought that was really tacky and it, it, I was rooting for the people that work for it while at the same time thinking like those guys sound like dicks. Um, I think some of the stuff with, you know, it goes back to like five, six years ago, right? Where when people are trying to sell companies,

they would just point to whatever their revenue number was. And it didn't matter if they lost money or not. It was like, well, we're making this amount of money, which is good. And kind of, are we losing this amount of money?

Well, that's over here. And you saw some things get bought. And eventually people were like, no, it's actually a bad sign. If you're losing money, are you of money? Well, that's over here. And you saw some things get bought. And eventually people were like, no, it's actually a bad sign if you're losing money. Are you making money? Are you doing okay? And that, as we headed to the end of the 2010s, people really started looking at it more carefully. So it's an old business model of you can't just have the revenue. You have to prove you're a sustainable business. The stuff that worries me with them, I think they've spent close to like 200 million in

the last like four plus years, right? They've tried a bunch of different things that they moved away from. Like initially they mobilized around baseball and hockey, right? And we were watching it going, that's weird. Like why wouldn't they mobilize around basketball and football? Then they corrected that over the next year. They started to do podcasts really late. And then when they did it, they put them behind a paywall, which is like, you have no chance with that. They did that weird thing where they tried to raise money and they're going to do high-end video with people like Armin Katayan. And we're like, we're spending money. We're at this whole video expansion. Then they abandoned that pretty quickly. They did a lot of local podcasts. They tried to buy out soccer in

England. And the whole time they're talking about their subs. And then we got this, we're at a million subs. But yet we were all getting like on Instagram and Facebook and all these different things, like $1 a month for a year and things like that. I thought it was gonna be harder for them to sell, but obviously they've been able to prove whatever their audience is,

this is an audience, they pay this, we can make this amount of revenue. And you look at the New York Times and they're going, they've been pretty adamant that they want to get to 10 million subs, I think by the end of 2022. So they're basically buying all these subs. But the fact that they've been giving away these crazy subscription deals. I don't know, just watching from afar, that seemed kind of weird. What did you think just watching that, Brian? Well, I think the thing was it kept getting lower and lower until it's almost we're paying you to subscribe to The Athletic. It kept getting this lower and lower. And I was looking at my notes before he came on, and I found this one that they sent out or maybe tweeted that had a picture of

Robert Ori. Do you remember this? And Robert Ori said, I love the athletic because it gives the player side of the story. It was like a testimonial. It was almost like very players to beauty from an ex player. And I was like, what am I even reading here? You know, a Robert Ori wants me to subscribe to the athletic. Okay. I just, yes. And that to me, me i understand because they're trying to get to a number right they're trying as you say they're trying to hit a number so they go to new york times go to the place say look at this number of subscribers that did make it feel to me very weird the whole time the price getting lower and lower that whole thing of come on in come on in trust me trust me it's like early on in the athletic do you remember the comments did you ever hear about this

at all these sports rides right me go do you read the comments in the athletic because they were a lot of the comments were like this is a great sports media product right yeah i'm so happy i subscribed to this sports media product people like you got to investigate the comments they're not real so there was a certain air about it but again i think it was very different than what was actually being printed in the athletic, in the stuff the guys were writing. But strange. Yeah, I think they seem publicly trying to present these two things. Once their subs were growing, but they never put any context behind the subs.

Are your subs growing because you're giving people 50 to 80% discounts on the subs? Or are they actually growing? Are those people renewing? And I think they have ways to track the renewal stats, but if the people are renewing, then their revenue should be way higher. So that part was weird. The other thing was they were leaking stories about, hey, we might be merging with so-and-so or these people are circling us. And it kind of peaked a couple months ago when something got leaked and they were talking about these suitors that were trying to buy them, one of which was FanDuel. And FanDuel on their earnings call, the COO

literally says on the earnings call, by the way, there's this report about us trying to buy the athletic. It's just not true. We're not trying to buy them. So I was like, all right, are they scrambling now? And then there was a lot of rumors about do they have eight months left of money and allambling now? And then there was a lot of rumors about, do they have eight months left of money and all that stuff? When you're raising the amount of money that they raised and you're also losing money, at some point, where's the money coming from? But it seems like they saw that. And I guess now we're headed toward this New York Times buying them peace. And my question to you, Jason, the New York Times, I wouldn't say they were unbelievably committed to the sports section over the last 10 years. And they had one.

They spent some money on it. But now they're going to be all in on covering all the teams and all these different sports. How does that play out? Well, you're not going to get me to say a disparaging thing about my colleagues over on West 43rd Street, but I would say that they're going to be different. I think that there's going to be a completely different

enterprise than the New York Times. I don't think it's going to be a merger where you're going to all of a sudden see the athletic inside the New York Times. I think that the truth of the matter is that this is you know we don't know the particulars here this sale might be a real thing it might be a complete apparition but there's i you know it remains to be seen what form the athletic would take with the times as a buyer or anybody as a new buyer it's hard so you don't you don't think it would

be in the website you don't't think they would actually incorporate it and it would be all part of the same thing? I don't see how that makes sense otherwise. I think it's actually the inverse. They would use the athletic. If the athletic is what it is, the athletic becomes a vessel to bring people into the New York Times, not the

opposite. I don't think it's a value add for a New York Times subscriber. It's a way for the New York Times, like not the opposite. So I don't think it's like a value add for a New York Times subscriber. It's a way for the New York Times to grab. Now, I am really out of my element here. This is much more a Curtis topic, but I think that that's the way that it would work. The New York Times looks at The Athletic as a way for it to build in parts of the country,

in markets that it doesn't feel that it has capitalized upon enough and to grow audience there for the main mothership uh not like oh here's this thing for new york times you will get it i am sure probably with some version of a new york times subscription but i think it's going to work the other way what do you think brad well i think it's interesting because you're right the new york Times is the sports section has never been. It's been arguably the smallest part of the paper. I had one writer, one tell me, say, we're like the comics at the New York Times.

You could probably argue the comics in the glory days of newspapers were a bigger deal than the sports section is at the New York Times. But in a way, I think that would make a possible buyout actually more feasible because if they're buying politico for instance which was just for sale they would be duplicating a lot of things they already do but who at the new york times sports section really duplicates anything at the athletic tyler keppner on baseball ken belson on the nfl something like that but you could see tyler keppner and jason stark existing in the same media entity i don't think that would be a big deal. The Athletic does lots of investigations. Katie Strang has done a bunch of really fantastic ones in 2021. I could totally see a ProPublica-style thing of the New York Times and The Athletic present

this big investigation of baseball or behind-the-scenes stuff on the various stories we've seen. I could totally see that happening. But I think Jason's right. I think it's, to use a word I hate to use. I think it's a separate product rather than something that becomes the New York times, the sports section. I think it's a product.

They use that like crosswords, you know, they have as a thing cooking, they have as a thing. And that becomes in this, again, if it happens, it's still hard for me to believe this is really going to happen.

But talking to people this week inside the athletic, they expect it to happen. So there we are, and I think that's probably the scenario if it does. You said that with real Jay Glazer flair. Talking to people inside the athletic. Oh my god. I'm

watching too many pregame shows. Yeah, I wish you were standing in front of a green screen. I gotta stick up for a second for just newspapers. And I hear what you're saying that like the sports section in a paper like the New York Times or even the Wall Street Journal is a smaller fragment compared to the overall news product. But I just want to underline and you both know this because you're both very good to newspapers. But, you know, when you're reading about or you're hearing people talking on television about a controversial topic, about a major news story, about something that is shaking the leagues, I guarantee you that nine times out of 10, that story was broken by a good old fashioned newspaper. And they serve an incredibly vital function in the sports media economy.

I agree with that. I think the Times has just decided a couple of years ago, we're not going to do news of the day sports. We're going to do a different kind of sports. It should be largely driven by features. It's not going to be like, here, LeBron did something last night. Here's the thing about LeBron. Yeah. Which is what the athletic is. We don't do that. Which is what or two pages. It's substantially more digitally, but we don't have beat coverage. I mean, rather like, you know, on the road beat coverage of individual teams. I mean, we're a national newspaper, an international newspaper, and it doesn't make any sort of economic or audience

sense for us to do it that way. I think that what you're describing is also an evolution of what a digital audience is today. I mean, we all grew up in an era where newspapers printed pages and pages of agate, you know, like, you know, just like miles of stats where you'd sit down there. Remember the Boston Globe Sunday where you could read all the Houston Astro statistics over breakfast.

I mean, these sections have changed in response to what is available elsewhere immediately. I think both of you are wrong. I don't think the New York Times is a local newspaper anymore. I think there's something else. I don't think of them as a New York paper. I was in Boston and you go to Boston and they have like, here are our schoolastic, our preseason

high school basketball team for division two. And there's a whole long article about it. Like the New York times isn't doing something like that anymore, which makes me wonder like, all right, if you buy the athletic, you're trying to become, you know, way more national than local. Could that lead to them potentially like you buy a couple other newspapers other than the ones they already own. And you're basically becoming this kind of giant national news, like huge national, but also worldwide newspaper. I don't know what the ambition would be, but I think that's what they're thinking, right? To them, subs are subs. They don't care where the subs come from. It's

not like, oh, we need to build our New York base. They're thinking like America and global and people overseas and the more the merrier. What am I missing, Brian? No, I agree with all that. I think it's just interesting given the way they've approached sports, given their commitment to sports versus business, politics, literally any other subject, international coverage in the Iraq war, anything else in the newspaper that they would choose to go in on this. But again, like I said, I think it works in a way because it doesn't duplicate the thing that they already do that those other subjects wouldn't. Is it possible the Times just has too much money right now? They're kind of the last 80s newspaper. I mean, we can throw the journal in there. We can throw

the Washington Post in the end of the podium. know there was a time when all three of us were live where newspapers almost had too much money and they were just like let's open a bureau let's let's do some and great for us right as newspaper readers but the times is almost the last paper that really can toss money around like that uh Speaking of tossing money around, Amazon, who, it's just a lot of stories about how they're going to get involved in football and then they actually have been involved

in at least Thursday Night Football, but now they're going to get really involved in football next year. And it seems like, is next year Thursday Night Football, right Brian? That's right. They're going to do the Fred Godelli circa it seems like, is next year Thursday Night Football, right Brian? That's right. They're going to do the Fred Godelli circa 2006,

just let's get the best of everything, we'll overpay for everything, we don't care, money is no object, basically what Dick Barsal did, which was smart. Are people ready to watch live sports on Amazon in this way, in your opinion? Well, if they have exclusive football, which they will next year, yes. I mean, to me, the answer is if you want to turn your digital company into a sports network, having exclusive football games, NFL games, the way to go. So, yeah. And if it has Uncle Al doing play-by-play, which I think it probably will, and a big-time color guy and some kind of production sharing thing with NBC, then absolutely, absolutely they will. What do you think, Jason?

I think it's somewhere in between that. And it's also going to be an incredible vessel for every television agent in the business to drive up prices and contracts and things like that, because it's presumed that they have a bottomless reservoir of capital. And so anybody that has a contract up, whether it's with a league or to do play-by-play or whatever it is, they're going to have a very valuable function there too. I don't know what to make of it. I think for some reason it's hard for me in my head.

I still like, and I'm old, but I still like having a cable channel and being able to flick between different things, right? Whether it's DirecTV for the football Sundays or even on a Monday night, pressing the last button between the NBA TV game and Monday Night Football, whatever it is. Now I have to go to Amazon. Now I'm in Apple TV. I'm on Apple TV or Roku, whatever I have. I'm on Amazon. They have to kind of figure out how to make that easy

as a viewer for me to channel surf versus me just being trapped with the game. Because I think that's a big piece of this. Do I want to be trapped with Vikings Bears last night for three hours? I don't. I just don't. I totally

agree with that and I also think it resembles a little bit of the conversation people have about newspapers and the digital environment. They're like, well, how do you organize it and how do you get people to read stuff that they're not inclined to read and like well what if you made it printed out you handed it to them and every morning they could go through a whole bunch of stories like what you're describing bill basically is cable television right you know a product that we all presumed was you know inferior to what the streaming product would be but had

it's it's real conveniences and i'm with you you. You have to sort of log out of a platform, whether it's Amazon Fire to go to... All these kinds of things. It is kind of labor-intensive. And then I look down on the couch and my son is watching 500 Mr. Beast videos back-to-back. So I don't know where the whole thing is going. Yeah, I guess if you think about the DirecTV app

for Sunday Ticket, which is technically how this would work for Amazon, it's pretty easy to skim around in those games and you can watch like the arizona detroit game and then you can flick to the left and watch so so maybe that's how it would go i think the technology would have to be really good it does seem like it's heading this way and and you know i don't know what this means long-term. Like, what if Netflix just says, fuck it, and they get in too down the road? Like, what happens? We've talked about all this stuff before,

but it does feel like this is something. Like, this is a moment. Brian wrote that great piece about when Fox stole football in 1994 and everything it meant to them. Is there any way for Amazon to even have a moment like that, Brian? Because people are already going to Amazon Prime. Yeah.

I mean, well, this felt like the last football contract negotiation for the networks. Like this felt like the last deep breath that network television was going to take and say, we still run the world because we've still got, what, the football 95 of the football on our on our air and to your point by the way about the ease of this don't it's not just cable television that that that football is on it's free television that football is on whenever the stuff with the nba and we talk about the networks i'm always like the nfl puts most of their stuff out on television that my mom who doesn't have cable can get on sunday she can basically not get anything else but she can get the cowboys and she can get the big nfl games of

the week and i think i think that's this is a huge part of it and i kind of thought well will somebody step to the plate this time will netflix or amazon come and just say we're going to give you billions of dollars to take that away from you. But they didn't. So it's the network's game for the time being. I'm going to make the point out of any point I've made on this entire podcast, the point Jason's going to enjoy the most. So I'm sure you've dealt with your parents and had their relation to the streaming networks and the passwords and how complicated everything is. This is like 60% of the conversation I have with my dad and my mom

who are, by the way, divorced and don't even live in the same house. But everything is about, I can't get on HBO Max. What's your password again? Do you know why Amazon isn't working? I want to watch this show. Is it on Netflix? If you know why Amazon isn't working? I want to watch this show. Is it on Netflix? If you go 60 and above, I feel very comfortable saying this without blowback. It just seems every year you get added after 60, you become more confused by streaming. My mom,

she gets so upset. I've had to go over or my wife has had to go over, I would say 10 times over the last two years because she doesn't understand why she can't get this, why they got putting football on Amazon is going to cause some real problems for an entire demographic of people who are just like, where do I get this? Where do I find it? And we have not made the streaming thing that seamless for really a lot of people who watch TV. And that's just the fact. i agree 100 and as evidence i'll submit i wrote the world nine millionth i love the beatles documentary column the other day and i was impressed by how many readers wrote saying i can't get this because i don't have disney plus or i don't even have a cable box or i don't know how to stream.

Are they going to show this for free at some point like the Lawrence Welk show? I mean, it was an amazing reminder of there is still a significant population of people who don't believe in paying for television and they're missing out on conversations. And I don't think it's necessarily fair when, as Brian says, if it's something like football, it can be a real market advantage for them to be free over the top like that. My mom was like, two weeks ago, she's like, all right, I'm going to watch that Get Back. I'm going to watch the Beatles, Doc.

I heard you talk about it on your podcast and two other people. I'm going to watch it. Do I have Disney Plus? And I'm like, I don't know. This is your TV. Go on your Apple TV. And she's like, I do have it. Do I have Disney Plus? And I'm like, I don't know. This is your TV. Go on your Apple TV. And she's like, I do have it, but I don't know my... So now I'm sending her the password. She still can't get in. And needless to say, she never watched the Beatles doc. It's not going to be like 10 million people, but it will be some people who are just like, Amazon, how do I get there?

Where do I find it? Is it there? Do I click on it? It stopped. Yep. And that's going to happen. And you still have good old fashioned carriage disputes. I'm a DirecTV stream subscriber.

We don't have the NFL network. Do not have my Peter Schrager in the morning on DirecTV stream. I hope that can be rectified. Brian, just for the record, I can't wait for probably less than 10 years when I become one of these people with whatever the next iteration, when we have like snap your fingers,

the screen just comes up on your wall and I'm calling my daughter and I'm just like, hey, my goggles aren't working again. Yes. I will note, just Bill, for your own personal situation, that when a Patriots game next year is on Amazon, it will be on local TV, free TV in Boston, in addition to being on

Amazon, just to set you up for any conversation you might want. That will help with my dad. Yeah, you're right. That's good. Having having the local things i think that is a bonus well we'll see all right uh last thing on our list was oh i i'm gonna i'm giving uh jake paul the innovator of the year award for 2021 the only person who could make pay-per-views that my son, like 10 minutes before they're about to be on, like, dad, we got to get this. I don't know how he did it,

but he somehow become WWE, there's UFC, and then there's Jake Paul. And those are like the three entities now that can just go direct to the consumer and get pay-per-view shit going. How did he do this? Why do we care? I'm just opening that up for the floor.

I mean, I would just say that he's choosing the best possible business to do it in boxing, which is historically this reservoir of stunts and bad ideas. And like, you know, it's a sport of free agents. It's promoter driven.

There's all kinds of bad characters. It's a single purchase sport where there's an incredible value on being a name brand. And that puts all this premium on, you know, famous people and big fights. And I think what's happening with both of the Pauls is that they've sort of hacked the sport. You know, they've just kind of said, well, we'll catch up with the boxing part, but we're name brands right now. And we know there's enough people out there who care about what we do or hate us so much, which is an important part of this, too. They hate us so much that they'll watch what we do, hoping we'll, you know, get ground to a pulp that it's working. So I think what they've really done you know like and it doesn't matter if the fights turn out to be terrible or people are arguing about the quality

of them it's like that's like half of boxing people are having that argument about so you know they have basically figured out a way to hack a sport and i i think that like a lot of things like the the establishment people were laughing at it but now they're probably all looking to coattail it somehow brian i um i'm just glad we have stunts back in sports because it felt like we had a maybe 10 20 year period where we didn't have enough stunts but when when i was a kid i love stuntsts. I love fake sports. I love stunt sports. I just remember going up to a very bad but fast Dallas Cowboys wide receiver named Alexander Wright at an autograph signing. He was signing my autograph, and I go, hey, do you think you can beat Daryl Green in the NFL's fastest man competition? I literally asked him that because I cared that there was some stupid offseason thing where he would run faster than Daryl Green. What did you think?

Yeah, he gave me a nod and said, I can do it. Then he lost to Daryl Green, I'm pretty sure. He got cut from the Cowboys a few years later. But I loved that as a kid because it made sports just really elemental and fun. So I think just having more stunts. The match, by the way, the golf thing has been pretty entertaining. Not every one of them, but they've been pretty good. We need more stunts. The match, by the way, the golf thing has been pretty entertaining. Not every one of them, but they've been pretty good. We need more stunts. Yeah. I mean, Bill, do you think it's taken the, you think it's, you know, you're, I'm sure a connoisseur of celebrity boxing over the years.

Do you think it's taken the sad out of celebrity boxing? Because that was kind of a sad genre for a very long time. Yeah. I think I have two columns in my archives somewhere from page two about how sad that era was. Yeah. At least these guys are taking it seriously. You know, I mean, I respect both of them because they're not just doing it to do it. Like they're actually really training and trying to be good at it. But to piggyback what Brian said, like, this is what I grew up with. I grew up with Wide World of Sports and Battle Network stars and people jumping off 120-foot ladders and doing those crazy cliff dives they used to have that sometimes you'll see online

and the superstars and watching, I don't know, Pele racing Bob Greasy or whatever was going on. And it was just, it really worked. And there was a lot of people watching. We didn't have a lot of channels back then. So you could have like 15 million people

watching the superstars and seeing if the Pittsburgh Steelers could beat the Dallas Cowboys in a tug of war or whatever it was. So I agree with Brian. I'm glad it's back. I think the next evolution of it

is clearly people of different sizes fighting each other. I agree with Brian. I'm glad it's back. I think the next evolution of it is clearly people of different sizes fighting each other. Like Jake Paul fighting Floyd Mayweather where he's got 80 pounds on him or whatever. That kind of stuff where there's a size difference.

Yeah, but more of those. More of those where it's like the little guy is more skilled, but the bigger guy has size. I think all that stuff. All I know is my son never knows what's going on, but somehow knew with the Jake Paul thing. I guess the last thing. I'm just going to ask Brian,

do you believe there's any slippery slope hazard here, Brian? What is the proper role for news orgs in covering this kind of stuff? Because ESPN just full on covers it now. You know, I wrote about one of the fights, a little bit of the cultural moment, not to put too much of a high hat on it. But I mean, people are now really covering it. What's the right role? Yeah, I thought you were gonna say slippery slope for boxing. I was like, Oh, I don't. Oh, no, that's slow. Yeah. The descent has been achieved yeah we've already green to our deaths i i you know i follow the lead of a sports writer named

bill simmons from the early days of espn.com i think people are watching it you should probably cover it and that's because that's what people want to read yeah yeah yeah um well the the verb of the year 2021 gambling uh the gambling thing went nuts this year and you know obviously we have a deal with fanduel but there's there's deals all over the place and we are entering this new world of people who know nothing about gambling now giving their picks or boosts. Or you're seeing these pregame shows and people awkwardly trying to shoehorn in some sort of, well, there's so-and-so minus three.

Yesterday, we saw it with Bears-Vikings where they're openly talking about, oh, the Bears not getting a kick and extra point there is going to really affect people who had that. And in general, it's just gambling, gambling, gambling. When does it swing too far, Brian? Yeah, I feel like this era of sports writing, the two basic units of content are an NBA trade involving players that I've never heard of, or I'm not sure what team they play for, and somebody telling me to always trust their picks in the NFL and that's the things I hear constantly all the time and I don't know that anybody

actually knows about any anything about gambling but it's just kind of the the fun of being the guy of being trying to be Jimmy the Greek from the world to go back to your CBS thing but I do find if I had to get to Jason's point about how sports columnists have changed. I think one of the biggest things, you know, the habit of my lifetime is the sports column has got replaced by the information guy.

And I think in the world, which is run by gambling information guy is actually even more powerful than he was before, because what do we want? We want injuries. We want trades. We want coaching change. We want COVID the, you trades. We want coaching change. We want COVID,

the COVID list. That's the stuff that powers these things. And if there's a prediction for 2022, and this is the easiest prediction ever, one of those huge insider guys is going to go work for a gambling company. We're five minutes away from that happening. The money's too big. The information matches up exactly with what they're trying to feed us through gambling. And that's going to happen in five minutes. I don't know which one it's going to be, but somebody, one of those big information guys is going to go work for a gambling company.

We'll see how it goes. What do you got, Jason? I'm probably the last. No, I'm just probably the last reporter left in the world, not sponsored by DraftKings at MGM or Caesars Palace. But I will say that I agree with Brian that that is going to be the next frontier. We may all end up working for casinos. But I do feel like... Pretty big like Joe Louis, like greedy people. That would be the fantasy. But I do wonder a little bit just about, you know, similar to the conversation we were having a moment ago about the athletic, the difference between an actual constituency of people who crave this information and a real business impetus to flood the zone. What you see right now when you watch television sports, you see an enormous amount of fighting over territory among the sports books, and especially where people are now legally gambling. And I don't know, you watch this and you say, geez, is everybody in America betting $500 on this game? Or are these a bunch of companies with enormous amounts of capital

who are pumping it in a do or die effort to kill each other? And that's what's driving this business. And it's going to sort of settle at a certain point. I will add that. I mean, Bill, I don't know what you want to say, but you know, you probably have some feel for what audiences crave and what is the line in terms of how to talk about betting in a context of a general sports audience? I don't know what it is. I'm a bad person to ask. I've been here the whole time. I'm just glad everyone swung around to me. I've been here since the 1990s waiting for this world to exist. And I'm so happy we're here. I do think it's weird when we get people who literally don't understand

even basics of gambling that are on TV or in a podcast pretending that they do. I think I'm sure that will shake out over the course of the next couple of years. But for the most part, like, look, it makes it more fun. I think it's certainly driven interest. Football is the most popular it's probably ever been in my lifetime. Honestly, I feel like football is, is an absolute comment right now. And I think the gambling is a part of it. I think gambling and fantasy, it's just, everyone is so locked in week after week and it doesn't end. And you think like the fantasy playoffs were this week on top of all the bets

that whoever had and especially as it gets legal in more and more States. So yeah. All right. That was that was the last topic. that whoever had, especially as it gets legal in more and more states. Yeah. All right. That was the last topic. I guess we'll save the Wojification of NBA media for next time. Sorry to Wojification and his family. Jason has a parting shot for us. Oh, yeah. It wouldn't be a Sports for Potters without a proper parting shot. So let's go from here. All right. Gentlemen, a shocking, disturbing event happened in sports the other day, and I need to call public attention to it.

It's more shocking and disturbing than pigs flying. It's more shocking and disturbing than Bill Simmons doing an entire podcast devoted to NHL hockey rumors. What is this shocking, disturbing event? Well, Bill Belichick apologized to the media. It's true. It actually happened. Monday morning, New England's forever taciturn hoodie Kenobi apologized to the press for being short with them following the Patriots' loss to Indianapolis on Saturday. I never thought I'd live to see the day. And as much as I appreciate any polite, humane gesture in these acrimonious times, I have to admit something, gentlemen.

It has me worried. I'm worried. Does a Belichick apology portend the end of days? Are we inches from the apocalypse? What Dr. Peter Venkman once described to an ambivalent New York City mayor as human sacrifice, dogs and cats living together, mass hysteria. Nobody could say for sure, but I do know this. Life has changed a lot these past couple of years. We wear masks to the supermarket. We conduct basic interaction via technology.

We live in an increasingly contactless world, deprived of warmth and basic human enjoyment. I'm getting used to it. But I'm not quite ready for a world in which Bill Belichick tells the fourth estate, I'm sorry. Well said. That was a good one. I'm with you. I was shocked by that.

Brian? Yeah. Does anybody imitate anything as well as Jason imitates the tone of the sports reporters circa 1988? I really, just for the people listening, just go on YouTube and watch the sports reporters from the late 80s, early 90s. We weren't chuckling because I didn't want to interrupt your Zoom video because you're on Zoom. But yeah, that's what they were like. I mean, it's unbelievable. This is audience one for Jeremy Schaap.

If Jeremy Schaap approves, I'd be honored. All right. You can read Jason Gay in the Wall Street Journal. You can read Brian Curtis on The Ringer, and you can listen to his podcast, The Press Box. That's it for 2021. I think we hit just about everything. Good to see you guys. Thanks for coming on, as always.

Thanks, Bill. All right. That's it for the podcast. It was produced by Kyle Creighton back on Thursday on this feed, and then new rewatch was coming Wednesday night, Father of the side I don't have feelings within On the wayside, never on the side I don't have feelings within