The Bill Simmons Podcast - NFL Problems, JFK Conspiracies, ESPN, and Announcer Rules (Ep. 285)

Episode Date: November 10, 2017

HBO and The Ringer's Bill Simmons is joined by The Ringer's Bryan Curtis and David Shoemaker to discuss the glaring problems with 'Thursday Night Football' (7:00), the rise of breaking investigative Hollywood stories (28:00), the JFK conspiracy world (34:00), the much-maligned ESPN layoffs (48:00), and announcer shelf lives (1:04:00). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Today's episode of the Bill Simmons Podcast on the Ringer Podcast Network brought to you by SeatGeek, our presenting sponsor. Great NBA season. Hey, check out, if your favorite team's playing at home, you get $20 off your first SeatGeek purchase on NBA tickets. All you have to do is use promo code BSNBA. I'm guessing you don't have to do this for Mavericks tickets, Brian. I was going to say, David, how much do you want to,

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Right now, to check it out, hurry. The offer ends soon. And we're brought to you by the Ringer now to check it out. Hurry. The offer ends soon. And we're brought to you by the Ringer Podcast Network's newest podcast, One Shining Podcast. Amazing. Titus and Tate. Those adorable millennial kids who love college basketball and a whole bunch of other stuff.

Not just a college basketball pod, but mostly a college basketball pod. Yeah. But they're going to talk about young guys' too uh we wanted to spin them off titus needs a carrot dangling in front of him at all times and that's really the reasoning behind it but awesome logo uh premiered yesterday in like the top six and itunes incredible yeah itunes does reward the new subscribers but still you want to you want to get in that top 10 when you launch. So that was impressive. I'm really proud of these young kids from the streets of Indiana and North Carolina.

One Shining Podcast. Subscribe now. And don't forget TheRinger.com. That's where you can find pieces from me and Brian and David Shoemaker, who's here as well. Yeah. I wrote an old school NFL mailbag that actually was starting like 97 miles an hour in this one. It hit a lot of my favorites. Brian wrote about

Harvey and how he changed entertainment writing. You wrote about entertainment SVU? Yeah, exactly. And Shoemaker wrote about the Ric Flair documentary, which we're going to talk about at the tail end of this podcast. Coming up, Brian Curtis, David Shoemaker. But but first Pearl Jam All right, fellas.

Shoemaker, you working? You still have stuff to do? I feel like I ripped you away from your actual job. You know this, man. No, there's no more art requests in for a day. So we're going to talk about a bunch of stuff. It's basically sports reporters, but we didn't want to call it that because Jason Gay couldn't do it today. Yeah.

You guys saw us at the Press Box on Channel 33, which is kind of becoming frequent. It is every week. It's kind of becoming once a week, talking about stuff. Proud of both of you. Surprisingly, there's been lots to talk about. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's the year of stuff to talk about. I want to talk about Thursday Night Football first.

Guys got hurt yesterday. I did not see the game. I had to go to a dinner party. I was like, what am I going to miss? I missed the end of the Seahawks season, basically. Richard Sherman blew out his Achilles. He's on the bench saying goodbye to people. Where does this go?

Where does Thursday Night Football go, Brian? Do we have it four years from now? First of all, I didn't watch it either. And I just consume Thursday Night Football now by reading angry color rush tweets. Smart. That's my into it. Probably my best way to digest it you know it's it's really tough right because it's the money thing is the only hang-up right fans don't seem to like it players don't seem to like it uh owners like the money gamblers don't like it sal even sal and i don't gamble on thursday night football we'll get around anything we don't gamble on it no Football. We'll gamble on anything. We don't gamble on it. No. I feel a little bit listening to the Seahawks.

The Seahawks needed no reason to be outspoken, right? One of the most outspoken teams ever. Yeah. But I feel this is a little bit post-Kaepernick, where if you don't like something in NFL now, you just say it. Yeah. You don't hold back at all. You're just like, this is criminal.

This is bullshit. We don't want to do this anymore. It kind of fits in with the millennial generation, though. Just people speaking up. I don't like this. I want this to of fits in with the millennial generation though just people speaking up but i feel like i don't like this i want this to change but in this case they're right they shouldn't like thursday football i mean there's there's definitely like a greg popovich vibe to some of this too where he's just like i'm gonna rest my players right if you give us back-to-backs we're just like i i just disagree right um and obviously the nfl the nfl players or coaches are put in a much tougher position because there's 16 games. I mean, you can't just

sit people out, but I bet that they would if they had the opportunity. I don't know what the answer is. I know I was in the car yesterday and it was fourth and nine for the Cardinals and they were behind and the announcers go, this is the right move right here. And I'm thinking like, Drew Stanton's the quarterback.

Fourth and nine is never the right move. It just sounded so awful. I'm glad I missed it. I was just going to say, Schefter tweeted out the quarterback. Fourth and nine is never the right move. It just sounded so awful. I'm glad I missed it. I was just going to say, Schefter tweeted out, like, the Thursday night injury list from this year. Yeah. And it's just terrible. Yeah. It's terrible.

And it's like there's already a huge injury list anyway in the NFL. Yeah. Everybody says that playing a football game is basically like being in a car crash. Yep. So you're having two car crashes in five days. Like even soccer is careful about this, about scheduling games when they have the Champions League. They're always worried about having the game and then the Champions League game on a Wednesday

and these guys playing, just running around, like barely having the same physical contact. For some reason, the thing that shocked me the most was Richard Sherman just walking around telling his teammates that he ruptured his Achilles. Like where are we in this world that Richard Sherman's just like, yeah, I blew up my Achilles. Like, no big deal. I'm just going to hug my teammates.

Yeah. I mean, that's like. I think he's probably in shock, right? Yeah, I guess so. But to be that aware. I mean, I know these athletes are aware of their bodies, but like, that's a life changing injury. He said it immediately right after it happened. Yeah.

He knew immediately. It was really funny. Even afterwards, he was talking just like, oh, you know, I knew it. I planned it. You know, I usually don't cut like that and boom but they said his achilles was bothering the whole year that he was just waiting probably shouldn't have played he said that he was just waiting for it to go all year long i mean that's just insane what a train wreck and he's not the only one i mean the seahawks are screwed now i mean it's just there's there's it's it's nuts the thing i don't understand about thursday night football is it's so solvable by going to the 18 week season

and having the two bye weeks yeah there's an easy way to fix this all they have to do is add a week and construct the thursday night so that you always have 10 days between like the sunday and the thursday i mean thanksgiving's crazier because they've been doing Thanksgiving forever, which emboldened them to think they could do Thursday night football. But sometimes you'll have the Lions playing at four o'clock on a Sunday and then they're playing at 1230 on a Thursday. That's probably the most insane of all this stuff.

The Cowboys used to love it because they felt they got the little mini bye week. Like late in the season, it was nice, right? You got all geared up for Thursday. You played the late slot on Thursday and then you got the little bye week, you know like late in the season it was nice right you got all geared up for thursday you beat so you played the late slot on thursday and then you got the little bye week but it was once a year well it's also definitely uh definitely an advantage for the team that's home yeah especially in thanksgiving yeah that you always get the road team who's they play on a sunday then they have to fly somewhere. It's Thanksgiving, their family's mad at them.

It just sounds awful. You just have an angry phone call with your wife the whole time you're away. She's like, what's going on? So you think four years from now this is done? Well, what are we going to do with the $500 million? What are we going to do with that? See, but that's the thing. You can have the $500 million if you add the extra bye week.

And then you're getting a whole extra week of football anyway. Okay, let's do that then. Because I don't care about it. And I love that whenever it's talked about, it's like, well, the players are going to have to give up the money. It's never the owners are going to have to give up the money and just pay the players more money. That's just never within. The owners give up. Yeah, right.

That's never considered. But yeah, if we do 18, sure. As long as we play 16 games. Do you think that the... I don't know what the... I almost want to say the Harvey Weinstein stuff, but that kind of belittles how awful all this stuff is. Yeah, word choice has been very difficult

over the past several weeks. Whatever this wave, I guess, this horrible wave that's happening in these past few weeks, when is it going to trickle into sports I would have figured that NFL owners were like the runaway favorites for to be involved in some of this stuff like these aggressively drunk on power guys who are just used to bossing people around it just has not come into sports yet but it feels like it's going to at some point right absolutely absolutely I feel like it will we're weird you know it's funny people were talking about, right? Absolutely. I feel like it will, we're weird.

You know, it's funny. People were talking about tweeting. Someone was tweeting about this morning, like, why are we just talking about actresses, you know, and actors? And why are we not talking about all these other industries in America? We're going where the money is. Of course, you know, that's natural, but sports is also where the money is. Yeah.

And yeah. I mean, I feel if anything, maybe, God, I mean, just think of the payouts that could be found, the deals made behind the thing. The other thing, here's the difference between if this happened in sports and if it happened in Hollywood. In Hollywood, you lose your career. Yeah.

And whether you lose it for five years like mel gibson did or whether you just lose it and it never comes back you're losing it for a while at least in sports you don't you can't lose your team once you have your team you have it they can't force you to get rid of it like they want to get rid of donald sterling for forever and then they finally had their little window three years ago. But that window was the, I mean, is that that much different than news breaking about, like, you know, is that sort of like sexual abuse? No.

The window would exist. But I think he could have kept the team if he really fought for it. I think that could have been. Yeah. He could have been in lawsuits for seven years trying to keep it, right? He just basically, him and his family decided, you know what?

Donald's getting up in age. I'm going to cash out. They cashed out. There's a lot of money. There's a lot of money. They weren't like shoving him out. They were nudging him, but it was ultimately his choice to get shoved out.

Sure. I just think it's really hard to get rid of an owner. And if we see this happen with an owner, I'm going to be fascinated to see how that plays out. You know, Mark Cuban is one of my favorite human beings and I'm not attributing any like imaginary malice to him. But he's a good example of somebody who would just, he's young, he's vital, he's rich. He sees the value. He would see the value of holding onto his team. If someone like him were caught up in this, yeah, they he'd fight. He'd fight for 20 years to hang onto the team. I think any of these guys would.

I just feel, even if it's not specifically this kind of stuff we're talking about, just anything we learn about the owners is always more shocking than what you could have imagined. Like Bob McNair. We have one shot of Bob McNair in an owners meeting. He calls players inmates. Right. I mean, like, oh, okay.

That was one quote.'m just just imagine what like he talks like that on his cell phone that's a meeting with a ton of people who can all go to the press and share exactly what you say i'm just like that wow okay inmates it's it's been a lot of confirming what we always thought these people might be saying behind closed doors seems to be what's happened not just in sports but in all these different industries and politics. And it really started with the Trump-Billy Bush stuff last year. It was like, yeah, this conversation is what I kind of would have expected him to say if he didn't know he was miked. Yeah.

Yeah. And it's weird because Trump, half of it's on the record. And I also feel with Jerry Jones, half of it's on the record and i also feel with jerry jones half of it is on the record you know the stuff like i can't believe jerry said that isn't like some overheard v stiviano thing right it's just what jerry said to the reporters when they were gathering around all the stuff he said about zeke i was standing next to him at training camp when he said there's no he said she said in the zeke elliott Like, no accusation of domestic violence. Well, we know there is.

Right. And you are either lying or willfully misleading or we're into some weird territory with you where we just can't believe anything that comes out of your mouth and stuff. He said this week, Zeke, I'm against domestic violence. Absolutely. Come on. I'm the guy who hired Greg Hardy.

You gotta be kidding me. That's the on-the-record stuff. Yeah. Jones seems the most kind of off the reservation of all these owners. He's all over the place. He says one thing, he contradicts himself a week later. He's kind of, he'd make a good president, actually. But he's just all over the place.

Dallas is getting into the, do we need, and I'm using a direct quote from George Dunham, one of those portrayed hosts there last week, do we need to take the keys? Yeah. From Jerry. Are we in the Aldeva zone? Like, are we in just the- But if we are in the Aldeva zone, this will still go on for another eight years before somebody takes the keys. It'll have to be one of his sons, right?

Yeah. I mean, I guess the salient question is whether or not somebody's already taken the keys. If Stephen Jones is already doing everything except for this stuff in public. I think this week proved it. What you see with some of the powerful men we've already talked about is that the most, I mean, the best way to take the keys away is to not let them know you've taken the keys away. Right. I mean, that's the only way to keep it going.

So, you know, maybe we'll know when that happens and maybe we won't. Your car's in the garage. They've just taken out the spark plugs or whatever, so you can go sit in it a couple times a day. That's kind of what the Celtics did with Red Auerbach very carefully in the late 80s, early 90s. They were hiring people, but it's still, hey, Red, we still care. And then they let him make the Joe Forte pick as late as 2001.

They had three first-rounders. Red really liked Joe Forte, and they were like, all right, this is Red's guy. And then that was a disaster. We missed Tony Parker, and after that, they took the keys. Craig, it was 12 years. Yeah, Tate is texting Forte right now. Forte's available.

It will be tough with Jerry because his speaking style is so loopy and disconnected that he... Jerry talks like that already. Jerry's talked like that his whole career, his whole life, you know? Well, we never thought him and Goodell would be at odds like this. This has been, you know, the most tumultuous behind the scenes NFL season probably ever. The most things going on.

But we, the owners were always aligned with the commissioner. Yeah. And now this has changed and now you have multiple reports this week about goodell is trying to you know keep his job getting extension and jones is forming this cabal to take him down and uh it's it's basically everything i've ever dreamed of i'm so happy it's, wow, we're really assessing Roger Goodell's job performance. He's been an absolute train wreck the entire time he's been the commissioner. But the NFL has a magical way of having there be no winners in these situations.

Right? I mean, it's like watching Goodell and Ezekiel Elliott square off. It's like, there is no good guy in this situation. It's the same thing. It's like, now we're rooting for Goodell to keep his job because he seemingly was sort of on the player side in the situation, it's the same thing. It's like, now we're like what we're rooting for Goodell to keep his job because he was like, he seemingly was sort of on the player side and the kneeling debate and the last thing.

I mean, it's like, no, but I know, but like him versus Jerry is not a, it's not a fight with a, with like a moral Victor. That's what scares me.

Is it? What we're doing is we're getting somebody who's kind of like Goodell, but isn't like more acquiescent to Jerry. That could be worse. It's basically a Bud Selig. I'm sure Jerry probably wants to throw his hat in the ring. That was Ryan's conspiracy theory from a month ago. He was like, is this possibly what Jerry's doing?

It's happened. We saw it in baseball. Bud Selig ran baseball. He was an owner. I don't think Jerry would want to waste his time. No, he wouldn't. He'd make him make money. I mean, he just like, it'd be a waste of his time. He didn't want to be a politician anyway. He just wants to be Jerry.

I want to know who the Goodell fans are. Yeah. Like Goodell and Bettman are the two, not just commissioners, but sports figures who it's like, who's their base? Who's like Bettman's my dude, man, when he canceled the nhl season in 05 that saved this league have they polled goodell kid is there like an 11 percent is there like a holdout like there's you know like trump is never going to get below 30 whatever yeah well goodell just never get below like eight percent are they like eight percent of people that are just happy totally satisfied no because there's no base there His constituency is whichever chunk of the owners

that he's decided to align himself with that day. And that's how it should be. I mean, that's his job. The only people that were really with him was when he cracked down on the Patriots. And he weirdly got people for like 10 minutes. He was like, oh, yeah, get out, yeah! But that kind of ended once people realized that he was completely incompetent with that.

I don't know. He would almost be better off pulling a Trump and going all in on, these players are going to stand for the flag. That would be the first time he could get fans from the corner of the universe that believes players should stand for the flag. He could be more like Roger Goodell, in other words. He can go full Roger Goodell. even don't even need to use the trump blank like that's roger goodell anyway right or or just like you know make a chart like a

ross perot style chart of how the revenues increase since he took over and just put that on easel and just be like i'll be in my i'll be at home by my pool if you want to call me and offer me a new contract like that's it i'm walking until then but i don't even know if he can take credit for that he they just had more bidders for the nfl no of course not but like that's his argument five networks bidding and the price went up like i think you and i and all three of us could have probably figured out how to play five networks against each other yeah and it might have been the last great contract right i mean there might not be a tv deal that's that amazing where everybody gets played at the same time i by the way i started to see the analogies creeping in about roger goodell and his

dad charlie who went down you know to nixon and his cronies because he was opposed to vietnam war you know senator from new york like there's no analogy to be drawn here like there's there's zero whatever if if and when roger goodell down, it will not be a moment of conscience like opposing the Vietnam War. Let's just throw that out. I mean, he keeps that little poster on his wall and stuff. Come on. Well, Kevin Clark wrote on The Ringer today about this is the first time it feels like football might actually lose stuff.

That we're heading toward this world where there's a Kaepernick lawsuit coming. I wrote today that I thought Mike McDermott from Rounders, after a 72-hour poker bench, being completely unprepared, could still win the cap collusion lawsuit. It's a layup. Just have to show video of all the crappy quarterbacks that have played this year. But that's going to be a big deal, especially if they start asking for emails and texts and things like that. If this is a $200 million lawsuit that he's like, you guys have taken my livelihood.

So they have that. They have the concussions things, which have not changed. They have the player safety thing. They have the CBA coming up. The ratings. They have Jim Miller reported that ESPN is potentially not going to be in the mix for the contract in 2021, which I'm not sure that matters yet because you've got Amazon and these people looming. But it's just tumultuous times.

Put it this way. If I owned one of the 32 teams, I would sell right now. This would be my moment to sell. I would look at the landscape and I'd go, I'm out. If you don't like the Arizona Cardinals, I'm out. You get a stadium, you get my team, I'll and I'd go, I'm out. If you don't like the Arizona Cardinals, I'm out. You get a stadium, you get my team, I'll take $3 billion, I'm out. This is when you get the $3 billion.

And it won't be $3 billion in 10 years. Or it's uncertain. You could be in 9 different lawsuits in 10 years. And what is football in 10 years? How excited are you about owner discovery? Remember when we found out Brady's email 10 years. How excited are you about owner discovery? That's it.

Remember when we found a Brady's email? It was so amazing. Imagine Jerry Jones' text and email. Yeah. If discovery, unless we have a sea of broken cell phones and compromised mainframes, I feel like you could win almost any lawsuit against a 70 something rich white dude because no matter what the discovery there is going to be insane like the stuff you could find in his email and text messages is just going to be off the charts any of those guys if they broke into my dad's cell phone who turned 70 in a couple weeks it would just be a lot of him misspelling

words and saying i can't open the link you sent me. And then complaining about Bill Belichick. Please call. Yeah. And raving about Kyrie Irving. Hey, how's it going over there? I think the owner's ones will be a little more interesting. Can I tell you, by the way, as a Patriots fan, Cowboy fan, speaking to Patriots fan here, and David is at least half a Cowboys fan,

how miserable it is to be in the anti-gidel team not because i don't believe that he should have power to punish players i don't at all but your fan base just turns completely nuts yeah i mean like relatives of mine the things they've said about the accuser the things they've talked the way they talk that got dark it it's very dark and it's pretty awful i hate it i mean i honestly just i can't i cannot they're members family members i can't talk to about this issue i'm just like we're just not gonna we're not gonna be able to talk about it's gonna be quite a thanksgiving for cowboys fans between politics and zeke and jerry and roger last year when trump

won i am from the state of texas after won, it took the Cowboys beating the Steelers, scoring three touchdowns in the last two minutes for me to open up the phone lines again. That was the coming together. I don't know what this year's is going to be. Maybe this is where this is finally leading to our Texas seceding and starting its own country. Let's go.

You still have your old idea, David. Can we get in? I mean, it's just tough. We're in a world where like the, you know, you talk about your relatives, and that's true. That's part of fandom that we can't get away from. But there's also just, like, the online trolls or the voices that would be easy to ignore in a previous era. I mean, you call me half a Cowboys fan. Well, people may know the other half is Carolina Panthers. That's where all my family is.

But, like, when Cam had that had that you know press conference moment with the reporter jordan rodrigue i mean like half of panthers twitter was just running her down for two days you know i mean just just a mess man it seems like it's never been easier for groups to mobilize for better and worse you know it makes you wonder like you just even look back eight years ago feels like it was 45 years ago. It really does. It's amazing. Eight years ago, you wouldn't even know 90% of this stuff

unless a friend of yours stumbled across it on a website and forwarded it to you. There was no other way to see it, unless one of the blogs wrote about it. But you would have to go find it. Now you just scroll your Twitter feed or nuzzle or wherever and you're going to see everything Shoemaker and I were talking about this yesterday we were

so we spent the last couple months at 5 Eastern we got like crazy mind-blowing political news that you would have never believed in your life and now the last month it's been replaced by Hollywood news yeah Predator alleged Predator news and it's like you know Louis yesterday and, you know, just there's this moment

like, oh my, everybody's like Twitter going, oh my God. Yeah. Well, especially the Louie stuff you knew was coming for a couple of hours before it came. Yeah. People are just kind of waiting for it. It was like a, like a Netflix show coming out. The Louie Hollywood reporter or New York Times piece that we all were like, what's this?

What's going to be in this? Yeah. When they canceled the premiere, that was the big tip off. Yeah. That was the red flag. That was like the, yeah. It was like the trailer before the movie. It's like, we just have to sit by our computers until this thing happens. You wrote about this. Do you think, is there a re-entry plan for any of these people? It feels like Weinstein, I would say no.

No way. But the thing is like pretty much anybody could just play the addiction card. And that seems to be the one thing that's at least somewhat forgiving. But I don't know what Weinstein and Spacey can do. I was talking to Kim Masters yesterday, who's great. She's a barracuda. I've been reading her since I was in college. I'm such a huge fan of hers. First of all all there's a

couple things here one is we're making up all these rules on the fly yeah there's no rules for this stuff like who gets let back in who doesn't what you report what you don't like they're all these hollywood reporters in this terra incognita yeah the second part is it's a continuum of behavior right there is harvey weinstein is alleged to do x and she gave an example she gave me last night is like if somebody makes a really weird phone call that's kind of icky and threatening and that gets reported is that person out for ever is that person out for five years nobody knows nobody knows the answer to that well people nobody ever thought mel gibson was coming back sure when that the days after that whole crazy rant and all that stuff.

He was in purgatory. It was done. It was over. It was never happening again. And now he's in Big Daddy 2. He's sort of back. Yeah, he's playing dad parts. He's in comedies.

He's directed movies again. He did, yeah, a couple small things. I still don't know how he even, did he, I guess he apologized, but how did he even repair those relationships? I mean, I think what, so it's so hard to talk about. I think, I think that, you know, the public at large expects some sort of show of contrition, whatever that would be. And, but there, I mean,

there's obviously going to be some people that never get over it. You know, the people that were still, I mean, I'm not even going to name any examples because I feel like I'm just going to like inflame this conversation even more. But but yeah, I mean, and there's a Brian earlier was talking about the concept of expectations, which I think is, you know, I mean, if if I think it would be a different situation if The New York Times reported that like Harvey Weinstein had done the things that Louis CK did you know because they're different people with different sets of rumors surrounding them and expectations surrounding them so it's really hard to imagine how somebody comes comes back in their traditional sense I think that there's a separate conversation about does the traditional sense even matter because Louis could release the next season of you know FX's Louis on his website and he would make a ton of money. You know, I mean, people, it's not like you're going to not watch it.

You're going to, at least for the thrill, for the, you know, what the hell factor, you're going to go watch it. So I don't, I mean, he's a very interesting case as far as the comeback goes. What happens to the art is the great unknown with all this stuff. You know, like,

what happens to all the Louis comedy comedy specials and this fx show that was probably one of the best shows of this decade is it just is it just vaporized what happens to house of cards do what happens if more stuff about the madman creator comes out so we just now those shows go go into their own sort of artistic purgatory and they don't exist anymore either yeah we saw it with Cosby a little bit, right? We saw it with Cosby a lot. I don't,

the Cosby show is gone. Remember when you turned on like basic cable and Cosby was on like every night. By the way, the Cosby show would have had a whole other run with this streaming era that it did not have. Good point. Like if friends would not be on Netflix, if one of the six friend stars had been accused of all the monstrosities that Cosby did, it would just be gone.

It would have been vaporized. So I think all this stuff disappears, which is a very strange thing to think about. Well, I mean, yeah, obviously there's going to be some, it's impossible to foresee. I think Louis, again, Louis stuff's in a tough place because it's so personal. And it's so, I mean, it's, you's you know you can it's easy to draw the line um and then you know with someone like cosby or you know it's a much it's you know the the offense is such that like yeah you gotta you gotta just sort of like black that out for a while you know wine scenes for a while like 100 years yeah exactly i mean you just can't you i mean it's it's off the table wine scenes are really interesting case because he was such a power

broker but we're not going to punish any of his films. And here's the scary part. Somebody I was talking to this week said, we're in the low-hanging fruit portion of this. All these people we've talked about, pretty much. They would have been high draft picks. They would have been very high draft picks. What happens when we get the holy shit guys? Yeah.

And that will happen. I just don't think there's any way you know with all the rumors out there and all that stuff that there's not going to be people they're just like oh my god well what you wrote about today i thought you know we've seen pivot to video this year now we're saying pivot to breaking reporting in entertainment which is just not really ever no we've had it it's never really gone in the direction of this is now kind of a business model, for lack of a better word. Because it is.

These people are galvanized behind this, not just because they want to break news and raise the prestige of their site and credibility, all that stuff. But also, if you look at the most read stories on any of those websites, it's the most read story. Totally. Yeah. And this has become, for lack of a better word, a little bit of a business.

Sure. I mean, it was a tiny genre of entertainment reporting, right? Yeah. This kind of story. Like a Charlie Sheen or you had some Madden scandals. Could happen every once in a while. Yeah, kind of things. Trials.

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to find the most qualified job candidates with immediate results right now. My listeners can post jobs on ZipRecruiter for free. Go to ZipRecruiter.com slash BS. That is ZipRecruiter.com slash BS. Is this the weirdest year since you've been alive? Yeah, undoubtedly. I used to get mad.

Is it weird to us because these this has hit basically all the things we care about or is it legitimately the weirdest year since we've been alive i used to get so mad at those tweets it would be damn you 2016 yeah you claim the rock star i loved you know i was like come on man it's every year is like this but maybe 2017 actually deserves those tweets yeah 2016 just had a lot of death and surprise. And 2017, or 2016, I mean, 2017 has just been dark. Yeah. We're not done.

I remember six weeks. I used to wake up and look at my iPhone and think, oh, I wonder if a trade happened today. Or I hope nobody from Grantland or The Ringer or wherever I was working emailed me. And now I look at my iPhone first, like I hope something didn't happen. It's a weird way to wake up. I used to have, yeah, I mean,

my greatest anxiety was waking up and seeing my phone full of messages because The Ultimate Warrior died or like a professional wrestler died in my sleep. But yeah, now it's like almost every day you wake up to like 20 messages about just some catastrophe in the world. So one thing that has put a hop in my step for lack of a better word is the,

the JFK files, which has, which they re they released a bunch, but then they held off a bunch. And it seemed like the one thing Trump was going to get right all year, and then he couldn't even get that right. I was going to say, this is arguably Trump's... This would have been his finest moment.

Like his unifying moment. Like I didn't stop the release of the JFK files. Right. But then it stopped. But then a bunch yesterday came out and uh you know i'm jfk conspiracy stuff is one of my all-time internet deep dives it really is why we created the internet is this the last blast of jfk conspiracy talk this this release would this be it no we had the 50th anniversary obviously moments like the stone movie you various people dying, all that stuff.

But is this really the blast, do you think? I think this will be. So some stuff came out yesterday that I thought was fascinating. But basically, it seems like the CIA really did kill JFK. What? It really does. It's really starting to seem that way. It's starting to seem like.

Do you have a link? It seems like Lee Harvey Oswald was just undeniably, he had all kinds of CIA connections and almost definitely worked with them. All right. The Dallas mayor seems like he had real CIA connections. Yes. He might have even worked for the CIA. That was a big thing from yesterday.

The parade route was supposedly secret, and nobody knew the parade route except for a couple of people. And yet if the Dallas mayor had CIA connections and he knew the parade route and you could put people in the right spots. The big thing that came out yesterday that I, I don't know whether it came out yesterday and I never saw it, but I'm pretty sure it did, was the autopsy photos. Some stuff I hadn't seen. And it really does seem like it's just unescapable that he got shot from the front. It's unescapable at this point. He got shot from at least one of those shots. And I think the kill shot came from either the front or the front right.

There's no way it could have come from where Oswald was. It's just impossible. And it's like, anytime you've ever seen a movie, ever, when a guy gets shot in the head. Sorry, this is a graphic, everybody. Guy gets shot in the head. The stuff doesn't come out the front. It comes out the back. Sure.

That's every time. Think of any movie you've ever seen where anybody gets shot in the head, comes flying out of the back of the head. That's what happened to JFK. Yeah. He jerked to the left and the whole back of his head basically exploded and all his brains came out of the back of his head. Again, I apologize for being gross. But that's what happened.

And he had basically an exit wound in his neck, which I think was the Oswald shot. Yeah. He had an entry wound in his chest, and then he had an exit wound in the back of his head, and it's clear that there were at least two people shooting at him. Plus, you talk about the John Conley shot. At least four bullets hit that car from two different directions.

I'm convinced. I was going to ask if Bill James has chimed in today. Have you been? I think Bill James is afraid to chime lately. I think he's gotten into some, he's had a weird year. Twitter's not a great medium for Bill James. But yeah, it does seem like the CIA stuff is kind of overwhelming. I don't know if you guys ever watched a video.

There's somebody did a video. I'm going to say in the late seventies of people think the shots came from the grassy knoll but actually there's this whole other spot on the right side of the grassy knoll where there was a sewage drop i vaguely remember visiting that people thought either somebody stood in that but it's like a really clear shot and the angle would have been like the perfect shot at for that last one. And then a lot of people ran up to that spot after. I'm convinced the CAA killed them. You've walked around there, right?

Wow. I've walked around there. My wife and I have been talking about going, what anniversary do you think is good to visit DJ Plaza? What's that, wedding anniversary? Or JFK anniversary? I was going to say wedding anniversary. Have you guys ever done a deep dive on the doctored Zabruder film?

No. Oh, it's 100% doctored. 100%. They gave them the raw copies, and it just basically disappeared for a while, and then came back, and it was doctored in a way that they didn't realize 50 years from now we'd have better technology. Timelapse doctored it, or the CIA? It's unclear.

But even the person who examined it and then they interviewed him like 14 years later and this is in some of the redacted stuff that came out yesterday where uh he's basically like yeah the people seem to all agree that the car stopped or came very close to stopping yeah and the zapruder film isn't a film it's just a series of pictures right so it's very easy to just remove the frames and people and the guy who inspected it who was interviewed 14 years later was like yeah there there's definitely frames missing i don't know what happened to the frames i i don't i spent a lot of time on conspiracy theory uh corners of the internet so i don't want to sound like I'm being dismissive, but what would have been the, what,

what is the government or the CIA's interest in faking a film or faking and like the exit entrance wounds during the autopsy, rather than just like destroying all of the evidence? Like, why would they, like, what, what does it help them to have this, like certain to be like this fake evidence that will be just found out. I think they thought they could get away with it. But what if they, I mean, they them to have this, like, certain, like, this fake evidence that will be just found out? I think they thought they could get away with it. But what if they, I mean, they could definitely have gotten away with, we burned everything. Like, everything was in a car crash and disappeared.

You mean like what Roger Goodell did with the Spaghet tips? Yeah, I mean, it's like. He burned seven years of tips and just gone. Yeah, if all the evidence is gone, then, like, what we know is that JFK is dead. You know what I mean? It seems like they're just, like, leaving leaving a like a crumb trail out there the caa i think jfk wanted to get rid of the caa rain them in i think they got involved with the cubans i really believe it i i am 100% in i think there was two at least two shooters you couldn't talk me into three

and i did the caa was like we're taking this guy out well i've heard you talk about this before on various pods but were you on about this before on various pods, but were you on this corner before or this new trove has pushed you onto this corner? Not as firmly as I am now. And I also think it's just much easier to get away with stuff back then. Yeah. Oh, for sure. Well, I mean, you know, the one thing that these releases, these, you know,

these government releases have done is make the CIA look like a a lot very suspicious you know conjecture aside all the cia memos i mean it's the cia any memo that you see is going to make you think that they're i mean they are up to stuff that's what they didn't need any help looking suspicious but of course the best yeah exactly but the best you know the best theory that's hardly even a conspiracy theory at this point is that you know when they say that they can't, there's certain documents are not releasing because there's, you know, certain people are still alive. Everybody immediately goes to George Bush senior, right? If he was involved with the CIA. He was there. He was the head of the CIA. And he's the probably the most, like one of the world's most famous, like, you know, hanging on well past his due date, you know. He wasn't the head of the CIA.

Not at the time of the war. No, but he was one of them. But the theory is that he was an asset. Not Hoover, Richard Holmes. Hoover, the FBI. At some point, the stink test just has to matter. And so many things are fishy about this. This is why people have been obsessed with it for 50 plus years.

But how about the fact that all these different witnesses and people who are involved, their new stuff, about this this is why people have been obsessed with it for you know 50 plus years but like how about the fact that all these different witnesses and people who are involved their new stuff all these it's like 30 people mysteriously died within five years of things that make no sense like jack ruby just miraculously got cancer and was dead and he you know all these different crazy things the fact that there was a a Chicago plot that got aborted. The fact that somebody called a London newspaper 25 minutes before. This was in one of the documents. That was weird.

25 minutes before and was like, something's going to happen in Dallas? They didn't say Dallas. Or Texas. They said there's going to be some big news. Call the American Embassy. Yeah. Wasn't it Texas? I don't think so. It was pretty bland.

Big news in America? Yes. Big news in Americaica was it called the america i didn't think so but i i you've you've obviously looked brian you're a more skeptical guy than me so what are you skeptical i've been i've been in i was you know i had a i had a youthful period of jfk conspiracy we grew up about 30 miles down the road. The Lee Harvey Oswald went to schools in Fort Worth, so that was kind of exciting. But yeah, I read the Case Closed book and I

mostly was out at that point. That was it? What was that guy, Gerald Posner? He ruined it for you? He ruined it for me. Maybe he worked for the CIA. I did love in the new trope all the castro conspiracy i mean they're not a conspiracy castro assassination plots like oh yeah the poison diving suit that was weird and it was the guy who

tom hanks played in bridge of spies that they wanted to give the poison diving suit to castro well that's the other thing is we were trying to kill castro and vice versa and that's like another thing that came out in all these documents. But here's my question. Answer me this one, Brian, Mr. Skeptical, Mr. Jared Posner Corner. I'm not sure I can answer, but go ahead.

Why, if all this stuff wasn't bad for America and bad for the CIA and bad for all these people, why did they put all the files under embargo for 50 years? was obviously a huge problem i mean you saw so one of the things that came out was hoover said you know as soon as ruby kills oswald hoover says this is going to be bad because everybody's going to think that oswald didn't kill him right this is going to be a plot is this like hoover anticipated jfk conspiracy mania. Correctly.

But in the files that were released last month, Hoover is basically obsessed with proving that it was only one shooter. They basically, everything they did in the late sixties was geared toward them proving that Oswald was the only shooter and that all this stuff was a coincidence that went around. But CIA was chasing Soviet and Cuban plots, right? I mean, immediately because of Oswald's residence in Soviet Union and then the Mexico City thing, which has been a big rabbit hole of this new drops. His whole strange visit to Mexico City where he's speaking bad Russian and bad Spanish, apparently, at the same time.

The CIA was immediately like, is this a is this a sofia plot well and then the russians and some of the files that came out the russians were convinced that the cia killed kennedy i mean that was one of the files the russians were like so that the russians obviously have a million spies in america at that time everyone's spying on everybody this happens and the russian intelligence that was sent back to russia was the cia killed kennedy i'm that's a problem so here's my corner i don't believe there was a conspiracy to kill john f kennedy but i love the conspiracy world of john f kennedy like i love jfk you're glad it exists yeah can i tell you a quick story please went down to new

orleans with my wife. Really nice couples trip. My wife was pregnant, very, very pregnant. And I said, hey, Christine, I think David Ferry's grave is close to where we are. You went to David Ferry's grave? So we drove like 30 minutes out of the way. We found the cemetery. You can find any cemetery, right?

And my wife just happened to be dressed in black that day. So we pull up and there's a little mortuary thing next. Because we don't know where the grave is, the big cemetery. And I said, can you just run in there and ask? So she walks into the mortuary, pregnant and wearing black. And people just descend on her like, oh my gosh, can we help you? I'm so sorry for your loss. And she's like, yeah, I'm looking for the grave of David Ferry.

And they're like, OK, OK. Like thinking she's like this grieving widow. And then the bride comes up to her like, did he die in 1965? Jesus. But we found it. It was on my Twitter profile for a while. So let's say that it comes out that Trump and the Russians, that this was so much worse than anybody thought. Well, let's do this.

And they're like, Trump's going to be impeached. We're going to take all the files and intelligence we have for everything we found, and we're not going to release them until 2068. What would people's reaction be to that? That's horrifying. Yeah. We're going to wait 50 years to release all the information we have because it's that damaging. We're going to wait. We're going to just put it over here.

2068, that's when you're going to find out what happened. That's what they did with the JFK assassination. It was amazing. It's insane. And half the stuff is just stuff that's embarrassing, right? It's like tapes of Martin Luther King, like surveillance of Martin Luther King, which is extremely embarrassing that that's embarrassing right it's like tapes of martin luther king that they you know like surveillance of martin luther king which is extremely embarrassing that that happened in american history but it has nothing to do with this well i think the stuff that the last wave of stuff that hasn't come out is going to be about i don't know if it'll be about

the assassination as much as the cover-up of it and about all the things they did with the Zapruder pictures, with the autopsy photos, throwing away witness testimony of this, that, or I think anything that helped the case that there wasn't just one shooter, I think they trashed or got rid of or discounted. Yeah, yeah. I mean, that's always, time and time again, history has proven that's a terrible way to go about things, right?

The cover-up is always worse than the crime, unless in this case the crime is a president was assassinated. Maybe not worse than the crime in this case. But if the answer was just that, you know, there was a lone shooter in the book depository, but they still went wacky trying to make sure the evidence only pointed towards that and nothing else so that conspiracy theories didn't start up,

like that cover-up is basically the origin story of all the conspiracy theories brian do you feel like dallas is kind of this is they don't feel responsible anymore right this is a big shadow over dallas for a couple of decades i think after jr ewing and troy igman and dirt nov Nowitzki were moved on. I think that's... You'd have to be, what, 60 to even remember this happening? Exactly. But there's a good

middle-aged core, especially that grew up around there, that remembers it happening and is way into all these stories. I'm old enough to remember when Reagan got shot. I was home from school. I was alone. And the NCAA championship was that night. I think it was the Isaiah Thomas year when he won the title. Yeah.

He came home there. The president's been shot. He got whisked into a car. We don't know if he's going to live or not. And these other people got shot. Shouldn't have played the game that night. Shouldn't have played the game. Carolina lost.

Yeah. Oh, yeah. It was in their head. I thought Tate was going to make a moral argument. No. Tate's so blindant That's his last title But it is Can you believe they played the game?

Kind of amazing He was in intensive care Pulling bullets out of him That's pretty insane That would have not gone over well in 2017 The outrage community The outrage community might have stepped up What year did that happen? 1981?

Also the don't play the game takes Would have been online in 10 seconds The Outrage Community was shot? Yeah, the Outrage Community might have stepped up. What year did that happen? 1981 or something? 1981. Also, the Don't Play the Game takes would have been online in 10 seconds. Yeah. But in 1981, what do you do? You just have like three newscasters sitting in a room talking about the fact that it happened? I mean, there's like barely any. Huh? Yes.

Yeah, okay. And suspect, you know, bio and, you know, Hinkley stuff. Yeah. Also, James Brady was shot, right? Like, there's other stuff to talk about. Hey, we got to talk about Wish.com. Nice. Do you guys like buying stuff online?

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I've done this. It's super easy. Find things that you didn't even know you needed. Enter my code SIMMONS for 20% off your purchase. Remember, if you can wish it, you can own it. Well, we knew ESPN playoffs were coming. They tried to pretend last spring that there wasn't any more coming this year. I think somebody even had a quote, this is it.

It wasn't going to be it. So it's close to the process told me, cause I think we were expecting him in October. And usually it's the end of October is the budget cycle. And a source told me that because the Jamel Hill stuff was going on and the narrative was already these, you know, in a lot of places,

DSP and these people don't have our back meaning management. Yeah. Um, that it was like, why don't we just do this next month? Why't we just do this in november uh because we already have enough turmoil here well i was telling you that that's what happened to grantland a couple years ago the end of 2000 october 2015 is when they have to decide on the budget and that's when you put in promotions and all kinds of different things and that's when you need to know how much money each department has,

all that stuff. So, yeah. So they delayed it somehow for a month. So it looks like there's going to be about a hundred layoffs, mostly, um, talent and sports center this time around,

which I'm not surprised to hear that, but still a bummer, a real bummer. I mean, it's just, and probably some website stuff too, because I think the website has clearly geared toward, you know,

just make sure you have one or two big pieces to lead with. And then the rest is videos. And yeah, I remember when there was a way, way too much to read on ESPN.com. Yeah. It's flipped like 10 years ago. We couldn't keep up with everything.

It's really hard to find stuff now. Like Zach Lowe, you can, he doesn't even have an archive i went to read like his latest zach lopez and you click on it it's just like his twitter you would have to like almost google zach lopez's to go find that's really weird i don't know i don't get it they they almost like it seems like they're willingly trying to not have people engage with specific writers other than a couple this has got to be like one of the most sustained demoralizing periods in that network's history the last i mean how how long do we want to backdate it to april when the first you know the last big layoff was you know between that jamelle liberal espn whatever nonsense um the nfl i mean

everything with the nfl nfl van talk um i mean the barstool one episode show whoo i mean what a period of just like the part i don't get is on the one hand you're saying you're cutting back and these are different economic times our subs are going backward all this stuff but on the other hand you're actually spending money like on wednesday they the countdown show went to boston i was on that show it's expensive you got to set up a set you got to send travel all the talents got first class like it's not not cheap to go on the road like the finals i think when we went on the finals and uh or the last two rounds it was like over a million bucks it was probably more than that so even if you go to boston that's i don't know 50

grand 60 grand but like you're doing that you're spending money on debt you're bringing new people in but then you're also gutting SportsCenter at the same time. Really, it's not layoffs. It's about they're restructuring what they're spending money on. It's not layoffs. Yeah, it's resource allocation. I mean, they're building the giant studio in downtown Manhattan. I was going to say, talk about expensive.

Yes. And putting a lot of stuff in New York. That's another thing that's going to be expensive. But that's my point. These aren't layoffs. These are resource reallocations. And they're basically saying like our business has changed we don't need these people anymore we'd rather spend their money on these people which is a different thing than layoffs they would probably make the case yeah i mean they would probably make the case that these you know

these are separate silos and that these decisions are made separately um but yeah i mean that that's certainly the way it looks and i don't think there's any way to really talk around that. What is ESPN five years from now, Brian? Do they have football? I, it's so hard for me to believe that they would unplug even with the Miller thing. And Miller's Miller's so sourced up that I assume that is not written. Yeah. He got tipped off on that one. It's probably not written out of his head. So it's Jim Miller for the Hollywood reporter wrote about, uh,

what if ESPN unplugs from Monday night, but then gives the NFL a couple hundred million to get highlights and stuff. For the all-you-can-eat buffet. I mean, we talked about they would never unplug because they just need the highlights to just feed everything, right? And what he's essentially doing is proposing a way that you just would be able to do that. But what do you want ESPN for if you don't have NFL games? What are we getting down to now? We've got the NBA.

That's must-watch. A lot of regular season baseball. What's the must-watch? We already know the studio shows aren't must-watch anymore. Well, that's the part I don't understand. The regular season baseball is what I would have jumped off of. I would have kept football, college, and basketball. College football, college basketball, football, and basketball.

College football is huge, right? Yeah. That's unmissable. For a lot of people, that's huge. That's their entire Saturday. Mm-hmm. And it's great because you can plug it off. You have games on all your networks.

You stuff late at night, right? You have big primetime games. But what if you... It would be really scary to me to unplug from the NFL because then we're just getting to, like, this a cable you know it's just a cable i would argue that the monday night thing do you think the monday night package matters like it did 15 years ago no i mean just not at all it's always the worst games of the week uh it's it's weird it's weird to me i guess from a conceptual level that they'd be laying people off if we're going

to put it all you know all these the spending in one one pile that you know they've just announced all these changes to what's their new platform going to be espn plus the new like streaming thing and disney's obviously launching their new streaming play it seems like there is you there you can make the argument that there is increased revenue potential around the corner but you're laying everybody off now what's you they kind of start with a clean slate i mean that part's a little bit weird but the problem for espn is when you get into the streaming world, you're not competing with just other streaming platforms. You're competing with Sunday Ticket. You're competing with the NBA app, with MLB.

I mean, those things already exist out there for big fans. So it's hard to imagine what the channel is going to look like. were talking about um before they re-signed the big deal for nba rights i remember hearing some of the higher-ups like the higher higher-ups talk about we should get the we're going to try to get the league pass yeah and own that and i don't know whether they didn't offer enough or whatever but that actually would have been really smart because they could have built their whole espn business or the what's that espn app going to be called i think espn plus but i don't that's a shitty name yeah well i mean this is the problem espn bronze wasn't something every single i mean every single you know tv channel network whatever that's transitioning to this space is making the same

mistake that like you know magazines did when they were building websites 15 years ago. It shouldn't be ESPN anything. It's ESPN. This is the future of your channel, right? Don't like give it a funny, different name to try to make it seem more vital. Or I mean, you know, it's a bizarre decision to do it that way. I guess they're so worried about the cable fees. There's that, by the way, here's the other thing with sports, right? So we've just, you know, I've seen our whole lives networks from the big networks we're out we can't we can't afford it anymore this is just these fees have gotten crazy nbc i think was the most recent to just go all out pre-sunday night football right yeah just down to the olympics basically and that's when they did the nba and they lost nfl yeah and they did the xfl and a lot of cheapo stuff right and then they

have some arena and stuff like that and then all of a sudden you look around, look around at your schedule, look, right. I have anything on you. Oh, we're back in baby. You know, and, and they're like Sunday night football, renew those Olympics deals at huge money. You know, let's, let's, let's crawl back into this thing. And I just think you can have a moment where you pull out, but you always come back. Everybody comes back eventually. It does seem like sports matters, this fractured world we live in now with content. You look at the TV, now that Thrones is done, nobody's really watching the same show. Stranger Things might be the closest.

I wouldn't say it's even close to that Thrones level, but everybody's just splintered all over the place. And then you had the NBA show up and it's like, you know, Houston's playing Cleveland last night. People know that game's happening. There's a real market, I think, in an era where you can have every, you have access to everything at the same time. The real market is to be a good curator.

And ESPN could do that. You know, a lot of websites do that by directing you towards certain tv shows to watch like the ringer.com or movies or whatever we we pick our we make our choices sort of by what we cover yeah and espn that's sort of been their role the highlights that they show are the games that matter but you know i mean i don't i don't i can't even wrap my head around what that would be in 10 years is that do they have do they just like selectively get the rights to the games you need to be watching right at that moment and show you that is it like a red zone channel for all the sports in the world? I don't know. I don't know, but it's

going to be something different. It seems like if they don't have the league pass of any of these leagues, it's really tough to pull off this idea unless, you know, you would have to really develop some digital talent. They don't have the mechanism to do that. Probably the closest they had was actually what we had with Grantland with some of the stuff we were trying with podcasts and videos where we were just trying stuff and seeing what worked. They don't really have the mechanism to do that now.

So if you're going to digital, you have to be a little more creative and proactive. Think of all the shit we're trying at The Ringer these days like they don't really have the mechanism to do that right now that's what was so weird about the van talk thing because i was like the whole thing was like we need cool guys who kind of work in that digital space right yeah weirdly we're going to put them on tv but we need the that's the idea but like don't you have people that could do that if given the right tools and if you don't you hire the right people yeah but that's the thing is they hired you know a lot of the people they have are old school traditional

people who are anchors and sideline reporters and um or reporters turned into talking heads and things like that it's it's uh they have not tried to find that young kind of talent people like tate the host of One Shining Podcast. Oh, my God. I'm a reporter. I was a reporter turned podcaster. That's right. There you were.

What were you reporting? Beat reporting back in college. Look at that. See, Tate was reporting. Insel Caroline. On the beat every day. Tate had a column with The Globe for a while, didn't he? Before we turned him into a podcast guy.

Oh, my gosh. Also, just the whole Barstool thing was fascinating to me because it was like we need to be cool again right we've seen spasms of this happen at espu you bill nods sagely um what is going to be cool what's what is what is cool on espn and what will be cool like what can they point to at this moment, 2017? It's worth pointing out since you mentioned barstool that they announced today that they acquired a, like an Appalachian, like,

like low rent boxing league called rough and ready, I think, which is just sort of a gag, but it's just dudes punching each other in like headgear and boxing, boxing gloves. That sounds like their aesthetic. Yeah. It's,

sorry, rough and rowdy. Then the, and it's not, and it's the letter sounds like they're aesthetic yeah it's oh sorry rough and rowdy then the and it's not and it's the letter n and uh but it's and it's like it's such a gag but like you look at it and halfway through the teaser trailer you're like oh yeah this makes more sense on a twitter video than anything espn has rights to yeah other than like dunks yeah yeah i don't know what that i don't know what that motto is going forward i still think they're gonna be fine the sports center thing was coming all decade yeah and and it's coming drips and it's coming drips and drabs and even even this year they tried to recreate it again with sports center am it's morning sports center it's like all right it's it's i don't know what this

is and i watched all the highlights last night but good luck i had somebody tell me it's, I don't know what this is. And I'd watched all the highlights last night, but good luck. I had somebody tell me, it's like, you know, everybody says, we just want highlights just like the old ESPN. It's like, and somebody there was like, look at the ratings when we just do highlights. Just look at what happens when there's no political, quote unquote political content, when there's no people arguing on. So just look at what happens when we do highlights.

Nobody cares. Nobody wants to watch the highlights. I watched the highlights last night when I got home from dinner. I went and watched all the basketball highlights. But like the SportsCenter AM thing. We're not doing politics on here. We're not doing this. Just like, yeah, no.

Okay, whatever. Well, what are you doing? Yeah, that's what I mean. What's the hook? So you're doing highlights that I watched eight hours ago. I just don't get it. I don't get it either. I would rather watch people eat breakfast.

Wow. Just have chefs. You think we could have that? Just people eating, dipping French toast. Well, I think we said we talked about this on the press box at some point, but it's almost like you're talking about the digital space that ESPN is reluctant to move into for whatever. Not just being on digital, but hiring these talents and all this kind of stuff. It's like,

if I had to reimagine what morning sports center would be, it would be like a YouTube reaction video. It would be somebody eating their breakfast, watching the highlights and you get their reaction to it. I mean, that's what the, that's what people go like watch on YouTube right now. Well, what's funny is they had a big reorg in this guy, Norby, who was there when I was there, who got phased out during the last few years i was there and you know as sports center kind of cratered

a little bit at this decade he was one of the people in charge of it one of the people running the meetings and how do we fix sports center and it was always like you're having meetings about how to fix sports center but everyone in this room is you know partially responsible for why we have to fix sports center but now he's in charge of all their studio production again they'd circle back they'd even go outside the company to try to find somebody and if if that's your mentality you're you're in trouble and there were people i talked to within who were closer to the spn who said we think norby right now is our best hope right you know because there are think there are options that are worse it's like the rams brought back jeff fisher what yeah it's um i see you know it's a funny one i was talking

to to michael and jamel like the first thing they says why don't we not call the show sports on her right why don't we just take sports center out of the title minimize it sports center pays the bills because we're worried that sports center right now is you know less of a live thing than it is a big nostalgia problem that you put on our heads yeah when we talk about you know and all it does is make people mad that it's not dan and keith 1996 and you know i've heard this argument though you're talking about a whole generation of people now who never even saw dan and keith well hey did you ever even see dan and keith through a sports center yeah how old were you like three i was like five yeah five six yeah it's not like you're thinking back nostalgically

you're probably like sitting in a diaper it's even more powerful when you want you know that stew scott yes it's like it's like carson though right you know it's like people just like the glory days of the tonight show and there were you know three when it nostalgia is so much more powerful when you weren't even there to watch it it's i mean you're like an like a saturday night live aficionado right but but like if people most of the time when you hear people talking about the glory days of snl they're thinking of like you know highlight packages on youtube of like wild and crazy guys sketches they don't know they weren't there watching all the bad sketches too it It's, I mean, nostalgia is about, I mean, it resonates because you have these fond memories, but modern nostalgia is just,

is a memory for a thing that you were never present for. Maybe that's what they should do with sports centers. Make everybody dress up like they did in like 1988. Just get Olbermann back, put him in a false mustache and just have him in like a bad suit. They did that one. Didn't they do that decades, like a 50s sports era, 60s sports era? Didn't they just make all the old graphics, bring all that stuff?

Announcer Shelf Life's, want to talk about quickly? One of the great Bill theories of all time. Have you written this? I did a little bit about it today. I just thought the Romo thing was really illuminating. Yeah. He's really good. He's fresh, but he also just played.

Sure. He knows what he can bring things in from i played these guys last year and they did this like it's he's we're doing that cowboys game and uh last week that he's doing and he knows the offense because he ran the offense 11 months ago or 13 months ago, whatever. And he's played with Dez Bryant. He's like, oh, I used to love when Dez went across the middle like that. He would wait and he would turn back. And it's like, yeah, this is awesome. You didn't retire 28 years ago and you're still telling me what happened.

So what's your shelf life? What's the number? I think you have to be like a Collinsworth to last like six years after you've played. So it's like a, I think it's six years. Okay. I think after six years, you have to be somebody that's studying tape, constantly talking to people and really working hard because at that point you're more of a fan with expert knowledge than an expert. And that's also maybe the case for the, for the three man booth. If you you're if you're like setting these like god rules about how we do it maybe consworth gets to stay after six years but they but they rotate in a tony romo to sit next to him who's more familiar with the details of what they're playing right now right it's just that there's a laziness now i notice it whenever

um you know you really notice it the most when somebody's doing the game for your own team oh yeah like i know the celtics more than i know just about anything i've watched every You know, you really notice it the most when somebody is doing the game for your own team. Oh, yeah. Like, I know the Celtics more than I know just about anything. I've watched every Celtic game. There's nothing you can tell me about the Celtics that I don't know. And they're doing the game on Wednesday night, and they're like, ah, the Celtics miss out Horford. But they're not explaining why they miss out Horford. It's not just that he's good and he's 14 points a game. It's like the whole offense runs through the movement that he gives them.

And the little pick and pops with Kyrie and his ability to pass from the high post and his ability to stretch the floor. Like you're not explaining. How many announcers could say that? How many announcers would even be able to say that? But it's not hard. Mark Jackson coached four years ago. Like explain to me why Al Horford's important. Don't just say they miss him.

Wow. There's just the laziness. Mark Jackson's an extreme miss him. Wow. There's just a laziness. Mark Jackson's an extreme example. His schtick is sort of laziness. Well, it's too bad because I think as a smart basketball guy, I think it's not that hard to stay at that level. And especially, I have a real problem with people who coached and want to coach again announcing because I think they hold back.

Danny Ange was like the litmus test for this because when he was announcing, he just destroyed Antoine Walker and then became the Celtics GM and then had to trade Antoine Walker. Antoine Walker was like, fuck this guy. And I think all these guys, this is what you watch Gruden now,

and Gruden's not going to say anything about anybody. He's not going to criticize any coach or any quarterback. He's never coming back. It's been so long. Yeah, that's just- I still think he might come back, though. That might be Gruden's personality. I think Mark Jackson is actually the reverse...

Is weirdly a reverse example because he's... After the last two or three coaching cycles where he's clearly never going to get a job again outside of like the G League or something. I think he works. I think he gets a job again. I disagree. I think he's just given up. I don't think he cares to impress anybody anymore.

He's a nice guy. I think someone will talk themselves into him. No, somebody will talk... It'll happen. He was a... I could see him being the Bucs coach. Maybe. Maybe.

I think if you're a Mark Jackson fan, there were so many perfect landing spots for him that have come and gone. The great exception, of course, is Madden, right? He didn't want to go back. That job almost killed me. I'm going to be an announcer. I'm all in. And he was great.

And he was great way beyond six years. But I think Romo is this generation's Madden. And I actually think Romo will do the work. I think as he gets further generation's Madden. I actually think Romo will do the work. I think as he gets further and further out of the game, I think he's just a football fan and he loves it. He's curious. I think you have to be curious as an announcer. I'm not hearing with most of these guys. I'm not hearing a curiosity. I just don't think Troy Aikman's a curious guy. I think he shows up. He knows who the quarterbacks are for each team and generally what they do.

And he just says enough to get by and he doesn't want to actually say anything. Collinsworth is curious. Collinsworth is super curious. He wants to understand what's going on. And loves it in the moment. He's like, oh my God, look at this. Kirk Herbstreit, college football. Kirk Herbstreit's another one.

Joel Klatt in college football. Those guys are really curious. Like, I want to understand what these teams are doing. Like, I want to know the state of the art stuff. So I was saying, I thought Paul Pierce pierce who i think who i thought was going to be really good on the studio and i think it might be the wrong format for him because he's he's kind of too hot takey yeah he's throw shit out and then chauncey billups is now put in the position of being like the disapproving school teacher of come on paul you can't say that which

you can't do that because eventually you're going to undermine the credibility. But I think if he was in games and he did the work and he's being entertaining and he's sitting right on the court getting into it, you know, C-Web's like 80% there, but there's a 20% that's missing and I can't figure out what's missing with him.

And that just may be him, right? So I think these are... Well, I'm just saying this as a player too. There's a combination of color guys, right? It's what they are, what they bring to the table, that natural,

but then there's a production element. And sometimes the production element can fix the 20%. And I think it's sometimes it's just the guy, like that's what he is. Wait, let me, let me just ask, ask this slight,

slight sidebar here. What were, we were just talking about how ESPN is, you know, part of their failure is not being able to find, like explore the new digital space. Yeah. Why are we talking about these guys

as traditional color guys or play-by-play guys? Wouldn't you rather just hear, have like an audio feed of the Area 21 set with KG and Bonzi Wells and Paul Pierce talking shit? But that's where this stuff should be going. They should be using that ESPN Plus and it should be like, we're gonna, there's a Celtic Laker game tonight.

Here are our regular announcers. And then on ESPN Plus, you can get Paul Pierce. Yeah. And he's over here. And he's going to do the game with Kevin Garnett and Ray Allen. And a bottle of Belvedere vodka. Just go. It's a great point.

I always thought the play-by-play guy and the newscaster have been pretty similar figures in our culture. The newscaster's gone way down. And the play-by-play guy and the newscaster have been pretty similar figures in you know our culture yeah the newscaster's gone like way down and the play-by-play guy is still this huge guy who makes tons of money and it's like you know jim nance joe buck those al michaels right those guys are on a giant pedestal i do if you've ever watched college football national championship there's a lot of round tabley stuff round table gets a little old after a while if you have like nine guys in the room, it's interesting for a series. There should never be more than three. But even then, you want somebody who's locked in on,

play just happened, I can explain to you exactly what happened. Producer's in my ear. He's showing me a replay. Guy's calling, I'm looking at the replay already. I'm going to get my Telestrator pin out and we're going to go. There is something lost when you don't have that. Why wouldn't we have more announcer choices though oh I totally 2000 it's just it's just more commentary tracks 2018 coming up this is something I wished uh I think the WWE network could do this

yeah and we should talk about them because they they've been the smartest with seeing a lot of where this stuff's going and you and I wrote wrote, when was that, Grantland, 2014? That's a long time ago, yeah. About the potential of that website or the app with all the old matches and where's this going. But there should be five different announcer teams on that wrestling thing. You and Rosenberg should be one of the five announcing crews. Job accepted.

Yeah, no, I mean, they, yeah, certainly when they launched the network and they used a lot of the infrastructure from MLB's over the top channel. But yeah, when they launched it, it was a, I mean, it was a big deal. It was a big step forward. I think they were, there was talk

that Disney was looking to buying them for a while. And I think a lot of that interest was solely based on the existence of the WWE network. Because now we see Disney wanted to build one of their own and they could have had that. But yeah, there's still a lot of just like easy opportunities, like the multiple announcers thing that, I mean. Just try shit.

Just try stuff out. Yeah, why not have Jim Ross back for every pay-per-view and like let people just like pay him via Patreon and see how much money he makes. Why not put the same game on ESPN1 and ESPN2 and just do what they do in that one college football? They just do that every Friday night on NBA. And by the way, don't we need to enforce Simmons' term limits

on wrestling announcers? Remember the Kings? The King had six great years, and then there were like 20 more. You know, right? Jesse Ventura. I mean, they probably have five or six great years in them. I agree. years and then there were like you know 20 more well the i mean you know right jesse vinter i mean like yeah they have they have sick they probably have five or six great years in them i the brain the brain except i agree but that's not as that's not exactly the same argument because it's not like being immediately removed from a wrestling career gives you more insight to what's

going on in the ring it's just a matter of complacency after after five or six years you're just not fun but i think that's what billy's bill's talking about right like by the way the your term the thing i like about terminal limits is because we forget guys were good remember how everybody forgot sims was good yeah sims had a great run sims in the booth i was like yeah tip mccarver's another one he probably had more than six great years but he like he had a good run you know locally and even nationally and then by the end he was just people were tired of him and mad at him and all the stuff the best thing that's happened is smoltz and romo have been so good that i think it's going to push people to to be better yeah just like these are two guys that enhance the game and not only enhance the game but they've invigorated their play-by-play guys buck was never better than

he was in that last postseason i thought he he was fantastic. And Jim Nance, who I had completely given up on as a play-by-play guy, Romo's kind of pulled it out. It's almost like watching somebody with a second wife or something. It's like, oh, you're in great shape. You've lost some weight. You seem so happy.

Just think of what he was doing with Sims at the end. And he was like, his brain shut off. Was checked out. By the way, this is my only drawback of your theory. I just looked it up. The 60-year-old Pat Summerall should have retired in 1968. out by the way this is my only drawback of your theory i just looked it up the 60 year old pat summerall should have retired in 1968 i don't think that's a problem we can't compare him the normal human being so yeah like 1968 he started in 62 with cbs yeah i mean i think the play-by-play

guys are getting smarter too or at least the role that they're playing is getting smarter joe buck joy i mean i've always loved buck and acheman because they because they sound right like if i'm not if that if my primary attention isn't on listening to the play-by-play i'd i would i would choose them as my announced team overall because it just feels like a football game what's your dream wwe team oh all time all time yeah all time um i mean it's really hard to go against i i think that peak jr and peak paul hayman were only good i mean only we're only together at their peak for i mean obviously they're only together at all for a very brief window in wwf but the but i think that there's a kind of perfect announced team there um but also, you know, Gorilla and Bobby were, I mean,

Bobby Heenan were just so great. I saw that Gorilla and Jesse. Gorilla and Jesse were really good. I actually thought Jesse, before he started to become a little subparity, he had like about 18 great months with Gorilla. Jesse was also a real racist. So I was talking to my girlfriend about this the other day. Jesse, not even sure as even elected as a novelty

could never get elected mayor of any state right now because it would just be an endless reel of him search tito santana yeah everything he said during the match he only referred him as chico santana i mean he referred to the 1980s were not kind for wrestling uh that's wrestling in general you could you could put together a low light reel of bob Heenan too. How about the entire macho man storyline? Uh-oh. He's having problems with Miss Elizabeth again. Don't hit her. That was like the vibe of that character.

Oh yeah, 100%. Uh-oh, somebody save her. Yeah. I'm going to say that's not going to fly now in 2017. Yeah, that would not have been. When he goes backstage after he and Hogan had the, when the mega powers had their breakup. He's berating her. Yeah, Hogan carried Elizabeth backstage. And one of the overlooked moments of that is like he shoves Miss Elizabeth off camera when they're in the locker room.

Oh, yeah. And there is no prep for this that doesn't, I mean, that makes it any better. He just, it looks like he shoves her and she flies like 30 feet through the air across the screen. It's insane. I was scared for her the entire 1980s. Yeah. You should have been. It's insane. I was scared for her the entire 1980s. Yeah. You should have been. That's the 1980s wrestling.

I mean, the Junkyard Dog, I think, has not aged well. Let's just be honest. Yeah. That character is not. Like dancing in the ring after the. Just a guy coming out with a dog collar. There's a lot of issues with that one. There's some baggage, yeah.

The Ric Flair doc, what was your final grade? Ooh, I resisted giving it a letter grade i mean i thought it was good i thought that they just i mean it's like i feel the way like i feel after a you know wrestlemania card i'm really excited for it's just like it was it was too much and they set their sights too high and they but for what they you know for what they were kind of tasked with it was it was really good and fun i'm sure i'll re rewatch it 20 times. I thought it had 30 pretty excellent minutes. Yeah. And then I thought the last part dragged because I think there's just no there there to flare.

Yeah. He was a great character. I loved him as a wrestler. But as a person, he doesn't have any regrets. He doesn't really have any deep thoughts about any of this. He's just kind of like, you know, I turned to this guy and had a great time and drank a ton and horn dogged around. And that's my life. I made too much space.

I mean, we've talked about this on the Masked Man show on PressBox yesterday. I mean, they just but they just had too much to cover. They literally started his adoption as a baby and went through more or less the present day. And the interesting things like to me, the interesting things like the plane crash all the way through till his moment of like great, they kind of said the moment of self doubt. He was clearly like massively depressed before he made his WWE comeback and joined evolution. Like those are cool things. I'd like to see more of that.

Set it, let alone, I would love to see an hour on Ric Flair versus dusty roads done, but you know, done in a really good way. Um, there was just so much stuff. There's so much stuff left on the table, but that's what you haven't seen yet. But I know what the construct was. Yeah. I think, I don't know. If I had been involved in trying to help shape it, I think you tell the story of Ric Flair through the history of like those types of guys in wrestling and those, those blonde, you know,

going back to gorgeous George and like he was the legacy of that. And it was this, those guys are kind of gone now. But for whatever reason, that was the trope that carried wrestling for 40 years. And then he became the best at it. And made it 80s, right? With the private plane. Yeah, he made it more the flamboyant to the ninth degree version of it. But on top of that was also like the best guy to have,

did it go into that? How he was just like the best guy to have a match with the best guy. It's selling a little bit. Yeah. Those are really the two most interesting things about Rick Flair. I don't, I never really cared about what his life was like. Yeah.

I mean, I think him, yeah, I think him, I think I said, did I say this on the podcast yesterday? Just like, to me,

the angle is just like the best wrestler in the, I mean, of this generation. Cause it didn't matter that the angle is just like the best wrestler in the, I mean, of this generation, because it didn't matter that he was ever in WWE sort of, you know what I mean? He was just sort of wrestling in anonymity to half the country. And he was the best wrestler in the world by any estimation. Was it an hour and a half?

Yeah. I was at one 17 commercials thing. We watch also, by the way, just a certain sameness creeping into all sports documentaries but also particularly 30 for 30 violins wrestler in an empty arena with smoke coming up and i'm just like i just feel i've seen this vocabulary of documentary so much as a wrestling fan it was nice to see a shift from the wwe vocabulary of uh i mean like

they they have a hundred of great documentaries on the network that are, that I've watched and enjoyed them all, but it's all, it's all just like more of a lo-fi version of that. The, the, the, the film studio is not as good instead of like the violin strains. It's like old West piano music behind everything. Like it's a, yeah, this is, this was nice for a change. I think as a wrestling fan, just its existence is like a wonder. It feels like a wonderful victory.

The doc it's been 20 years since the Montreal screw job. And there's been docs made about that, but not at the highest level that you could. That could be like the Montreal screw job could be incredible. Barry Blossom is working on something else. I don't know what it is, but he's back in wrestling. Really? Yeah. Clippers fan.

All right, fellas. Brian, what are you working on next? I don't know what it is, but he's back in wrestling. Really? Yeah. Clippers fan. Alright, fellas. Brian, what are you working on next? I don't know. I'm going to go meet with Sean Fennison and see what he wants next. What are you working on, Shoemaker? Well, I mean, what am I working on writing next? It'll probably be something to do with the Survivor Series, which is right around the corner and is

absolutely nuts. WWE's just throwing everything at the wall right now that's the troy achman of pay-per-views it's it peaked 12 years ago they're trying stuff to their to their great credit they they they're trying stuff they're they're they're trying like they're they're at the they're at the you know we're not saving anything for wrestlemania phase right now we're just doing everything makers the mvp of's the MVP of the Andre the Giant Doc. I know. He's been, he's like literally the MVP. He's modest.

He's the glue guy. He's modest, but when he tells me about, you know, just stuff he's doing, I get that sense. I'm worried. He would never say that. I'm worried it's going to change him. It's not going to change him. He's a human being. The fame of the Andre the Giant Doc is going to change him.

Who knows what the final cut of this documentary is going to look like, but the last one, there was a thing, there was a point where I started a sentence and, and Jerry the King Lawler finished the sentence. And that was just like, I'm done. Like that's it. I can retire. That's great. That is amazing. That is amazing. It's pretty good. It's a good one. All right. Thanks fellas. Simply safe. They protect your home and family with an HD security camera,

motion, glass break, entry sensors. They have everything. Order online in minutes get it that week set it up in under an hour no tools no hard wiring you'll be protected 24 7 for just $14.99 a month right now they have a special pre-holiday sale for all my listeners visit simply safe bs.com right now to check it out simply safe with two eyes hurry this offers and soon don't forget about seat geek bs nba is the offer code if you want $20 off the first time you buy NBA tickets. Don't forget about their podcast, The Press Box, on Channel 33. And also Tate's new podcast, One Shining Podcast.

Tate wasn't really, he was kind of checked out during this one, I felt like. You're working on other stuff. You're on eBay buying North Carolina stuff. What do you mean? I felt like you were engaged. There's a lot going on in my life. You're preparing. There's a lot going on. I felt like you were engaged. There's a lot going on in my life. You're preparing. There's a lot going on.

His girlfriend's living here now. There's a lot going on. Still editing podcasts. People don't think I do that. I edit podcasts all the time. My name is my name! So yeah, One Shining Podcast. Check that out.

And my column on TheRinger.com. Old school mailbag. Talked about a whole bunch of fun stuff um there it goes coming back next week we have cousin sal on monday tanahasi coats on wednesday he was in studio and he was uh fantastic so very looking forward to running that one and another one on friday that's it. Enjoy the weekend.