The Bill Simmons Podcast - Romo’s Big Contract, First Take’s Rise, Biden’s Comeback, and the Coronavirus With Bryan Curtis and Jason Gay | The Bill Simmons Podcast

Episode Date: March 6, 2020

The Sports Repodders returns as HBO and The Ringer’s Bill Simmons is joined by Bryan Curtis and WSJ’s Jason Gay to discuss rumors of Al Michaels to ESPN, TV rights deals, Tony Romo’s big CBS contract, the next great sports broadcaster, the newfound legitimacy of ‘First Take,’ ESPN’s decision to cancel ‘High Noon,’ Coronavirus (COVID-19) and its impact on sports, the 2020 election, and more! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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use the offer code BS to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain. A couple ringer things to tell you about. Our website's really good. You should check that out. David Chang, our buddy, 100 podcasts for him. Wow. Unbelievable.

I saw that actually. I remember teaching him how to do an intro, which took about four hours. We, we, we are very happy to have him. And coincidentally, I am on season two of ugly delicious on Netflix.

It's me and our friend, David show and Chang. We ate steak together at a place you might not expect. So go, when it goes live tonight, you can go and search for the steak episode and hilarity will ensue. One more program note, the rewatchables is going back to Monday nights because we wrapped up Book of Basketball for season one and we are coming back on Monday night and we'll be on Mondays for

at least the next couple months. That's all happening. Coming up, the Sports for Potters first. Our friends from Pro Gym. All right, we're taping this at 1.30 on Thursday afternoon Pacific time. The sports reporters are back. Brian Curtis is here in studio. Jason Gay from the Wall Street Journal is in Brooklyn wearing a hazmat suit. And we're going to talk about a whole bunch of media topics relating to sports mostly. I want to start here. Brian Curtis, you love trades.

I do. When there's media trades, that really gets your attention. When ESPN and NBC are revisiting an old media trade that already happened, that gets your attention. Then Al Michaels, the greatest football voice of all time, might be in play. What kind of draft picks can NBC get, you think? I didn't realize I was being moved to the Woj beat. Sports media was kind of this little quiet little corner.

Yeah. And this is like the NBA trade deadline. Yeah. And this is, as you point out, so the story today in the Europe Post is that Al Michaels might be traded from NBC to ESPN. Yes. And he was already traded back around 2005 from ESPN to NBC. For some draft picks in Oswald the Lucky Rabbit and I think some draft compensation down the road. Some obscure Disney characters to be named later. Yeah. This is an incredible story. Yeah. Jason Gay, what were your immediate thoughts? And then I'll give you mine.

Well, I mean, it seems to me, isn't this sort of part of this big mating dance that is happening amongst the networks now? Like every one of these networks that currently has NFL rights feels it needs to puff out its feathers and preen and like dance around like some bird of paradise. I mean, CBS with the Tony Romo deal. What is it? 10 years, $180 million.

Yeah. All that is, is that's showing love. That is showing fealty to the NFL. It's a way of showing we are very serious about this. And my favorite part of it is I really hope they get the NFL. It's a way of showing we are very serious about this. And my favorite part of it is I really hope they get

the NFL deal at CPS because it'd be very weird to give Tony Romo $18 million a year to do the Big 3 and the PGA Championship.

So, this seems to be what this is is a courtship. I heard that there's like an extra year maybe even two extra years

that if they lose football and they don't get it he's still getting paid. So, it's like an extra year, maybe even two extra years that if they lose football and they don't get it, he's still getting paid. Sure. So it's like a five year guarantee, but they might not have them for three years. So I, I will give my Al Michaels theory in a second on why this is happening.

We learned this over and over again, where these networks think they have to do these things to win the league over. These, well, we did this. Well, we have the best. If they want to give us a Super Bowl, we got to improve our announcing team or we might not be able to convince them. Brian, isn't this always about,

hey, what was the highest dollar figure? Is there any other reason that the NFL would do anything other than they offered us more than these people? One million percent or one billion percent. So why are these people all falling over themselves trying to improve their announcing teams? So the way it was explained to me by people who were, let us say, observing the Tony Romo deal closely was, okay, all four networks, so that's ESPN, ABC, NBC, Fox, and CBS are coming to the NFL and trying to give them a bunch of money in the next couple months. And they want at least a Super Bowl every three or four years as part of that. Right.

And you're not going to get a Super Bowl because you have Al Michaels or Tony Romo, but you want to have all your ducks in a row when you walk into that room. You don't want to have the NFL going, now who's going to announce the games again? You know? Is it that booger guy? Yeah. Is he back? Yeah. And I don't know how much the NFL actually cares about announcing.

I'm going to say zero. I think it's a little above zero, but it's close to zero. Yeah. As long as it's just not terrible. As long as it doesn't insult the NFL, right? Well, our only test case of knowing that somebody cared was David Stern with ABC when they moved the rights to ABC. And Brad Nessler did the first season

when it was the Spurs-Nets finals. And by all accounts, Stern was like, what the fuck is this broadcast? These guys are terrible. Can you get me some real announcers? And that led to the Doc Rivers-Al Michaels combo. Yeah, I would say, though, that maybe Sean McDonough and John Gruden bagging on the refs on Monday Night Football,

which they kind of did a lot, I think that got the league's attention. So maybe that's part of it. Maybe it's not a name thing, Jason. It's more of a we're giving you this really expertly crafted race car. We want to make sure the driver doesn't hit any of the walls. Sure. And there's also the internal politics of it, right? It's like signaling to your company that you are deeply serious about staying in the NFL business. I mean,

Brian's right. There's not a ton of evidence that individual announcers matter to the NFL or even move the needle. You have your favorite announcers, but the truth is what moves the needle with ratings is the matchup, period. You know, you saw that with the way that they upgraded Thursday Night Football when it moved over to Fox. And conversely, you saw it, what happened when they left Crumbs for Monday Night Football.

And to me, what makes the Michaels, Payton, Manning thing, and it's crazy to talk about this, but what makes it intriguing is that it really clearly signals that Disney wants to upgrade. They've been having these leftovers for a while now, and whether it's moving games to ABC, which has been talked about, or more playoff games, perhaps Super Bowl or something else, they want to move up a notch here. You don't get Al Michaels and Peyton Manning to call Jets Bengals.

You just don't. And with Romo, ESPN can say what they want now, but they were all in on trying to get Tony Romo. Absolutely. And it's like, no. I think their problem is you can only get to a certain number

before the other stars you have are like, hey, what about me? You just did this for me. Now he's getting that. And there's a tipping point, I think. Whereas with CBS, there's no tipping point. Who at CBS is going to be mad that Tony Romo got that? Is Dan Fouts going to call? Hey, where's my bump? Well, I was thinking the guy, the lead in Blue Bloods. I don't even know what CBS shows exist. Is Young Sheldon a CBS show? Let me text my dad and see what current CBS shows are happening right now. Wait, wait, Brian, isn't it true that the Tony Romo money is effectively the SEC? I mean, there's a fan base that might have reason to be like, huh, well, I guess that's why the SEC

football is not going to be on CBS anymore. We're packaging the NFL at a much higher level. Or it was because they lost the SEC that they were like, well, I don't think they wanted to lose the SEC ever. I think ESPN very shrewdly stepped out. That was one of the better rights deals moves they made. Because on Saturday, what matters? The SEC.

SEC game of the week. No, I think Bill's right. And you're right. Tony Romo to ESPN would have been one of the great talent office headaches of all time. Yeah. I mean, Stephen A just signed

very explicitly to be the highest paid talent at ESPN. Yeah. And what happens when Romo got 150% of what he made? And he's signed it like a day ago. Uh-huh. And what about Kirk Herbstreet,

who's, you know, a big college, you know, maybe I'm not the full Romo, but aren't I like a third of a Romo? What about Dave Jacoby? Just got promoted at 4 p.m. Now you got to take care of him. You got to take care of him. They just got so many announcers

that it would have been an absolute headache for Jimmy Pataro. I do think... I battle both ways on this. I don't think it matters to the NFL who the announcers are 99%. I think there is that 1% where if they had somebody

who's shitting on the league or shitting on the refs that they're going to care. Other than that, I don't think Roger Goodell cared one iota that Joe Tessitore and Booger weren't very good last year. But I do think if it's the right announcer,

it really does enhance the game. I enjoyed Joe Buck last year. I'm not a huge Aikman guy, but when Joe Buck announces a football game, I feel better about watching the game. I really enjoyed Nance and Romo. And then it would go to Monday night and it was like, this sucks. I wish I had better announcers. So it is one of those things. You almost notice it more when you don't have it. I think there's a feeling of control, isn't it? With a great announcer, I'm in good hands. You feel it right now with the NBA announcers because

they have Mark Jones and Hubie Brown on a Saturday night on ABC. And for whatever reason, we just don't have enough play-by-play and analyst people. Meanwhile, every year somebody is retiring. Why isn't Dwayne Wade on the Saturday night ABC game? What's he doing? So I was going to bring this up. How is the pool this small of available people that you want? I mean, Al Michaels was a giant star in television when I

was a kid. Yeah. I'm not young. He did the, do you believe in miracles? Yes. Game. And wasn't in his twenties. Bill and I were young. Yeah. Al Michaels was a giant star in network television. And now we're 40 years later. And in ESPN says says this is the only possible answer? Jason, how many play-by-play guys are there right now that you go, oh, cool, this guy is announcing for me? You know, there's a handful, and I put Michaels in that group. I would disagree slightly. Maybe at the top of the group, candidly. I would disagree slightly with something Brian said

about the dollars being the ultimate thing, because I do feel like we have all these rights packages are coming up. There's a collective bargaining agreement negotiation happening with the NFL, which is all interwoven with all this stuff. But I do feel like NFL ownership, these are older people. Legacy brands still mean something to them. And it were, I don't know, Amazon to come with an offer which was vastly superior to any of the sort of traditional networks, I think they would think long and hard about taking the top, top dollar. I really do. I think that they still are traditionalists in that regard. And so when you tell a bunch of 75-year-old owners that Al Michaels is coming in, they don't look at it and saying like, oh, residual like vapors of old Al Michaels legacy.

No, they're like, oh, Al Michaels. Great. Huge star. And I think that's explains the salary part of this too, which is that the way to look at this is like not media. It's like getting movie stars. It's like, you know, somebody to put above the line. Yeah, that's true.

Except you watch the movie because the movie star. And at least partly. I think Jason's point is exactly right about the streaming companies, but I would say it's because of this. They want their shows on network television because everybody can watch it. I don't know if it's part of it. Yeah. And part of it's that attachment to network TV. Hey, it's the NFL and CBS.

That feels old school. But it's also when we're having a conversation about how the NBA may be in obscurity because they're on cable, right? Imagine if the game was on Amazon. There's a whole generation of people that would be like, what? How do I get that again? And I think like if you're – look, the whole – the TV networks right now, this is an existential problem for them. We either have the NFL or we don't exist. That is the thing. So they are going to be absolutely be existential problem for them. We either have the NFL or we don't exist. That is the thing.

So they are going to absolutely be able to squeeze them for so much money. And if there's a 17th week and then there's two extra playoff games a year, even more money. Well, and the other thing is, I just think it matters way more to the networks than the streaming. Now, you could have an Amazon just do the Mike Bloomberg and be like, Hey, I'm just spending 500 million this month. And I don't really care about the consequences. But when you look at the ratings, which I know nobody loves ratings more than Brian Curtis, he's just obsessed with the next day, the 14 day, all that stuff is just the overnights. You love it. But you just look at, all right, what were the top 50 rated broadcasts

this year and it's all football and it's because it's a live sport you need to watch it in the moment for 900 million

different reasons and then they could promote all this shit during the game they have no other way to do that except unless it's like I don't know

the we don't even really have shows that have the apparatus anymore. I guess Dancing with the Stars and whether Who Wants to Be a Millionaire, the comeback of that word, some Masked Singer. Even that isn't reliable. It's just like an old school round two NFC playoff game, Packers, Cowboys. You're just reaching the most people with that.

And I think the other effect that has is on the announcers. When you and I were kids, the faces of the network on CBS were, You're just reaching the most people with that. And I think the other effect that has is on the announcers. When you and I were kids, the faces of the network on CBS were Dan Rather, the guys on 60 Minutes, Mike Wallace, and then Pat Summerall and John Madden. Nobody cares about network news anymore. And Musburger, I would throw in. Okay, so throw in Brent. Nobody cares about network news anymore. So who are the faces of CBS? Jim Nance and Tony Romo. Yeah. That's it. So they even have a bigger and young Sheldon, right? They have,

you know, young Sheldon, if that's in fact on CBS, medium Sheldon now, I think medium, medium age Sheldon, but that makes them worth more, right? In, if not in dollars than in some sort of value, right? Cause of the face of the network. I still, it's yet to be explained to me why Amazon or whoever would blow anyone else out of the water for like the game of the week type of thing, like what Fox has and what the Monday Night Football or whatever. Why wouldn't they or why would they?

Why would they? It would seem like the higher upside would be the season ticket or the league pass in NBA season ticket for football. The ability to have a lot of content all at once and navigate on some platform because as we've discussed a million times, that's how people under 25, that's how they watch stuff.

Like South Park, a couple months ago, sold their entire library to HBO Max for like $500 million. It's an amazing deal and an amazing tribute to those guys that eight, nine years ago, they get the library. They're basically like deciding whether they want to do more shows. And Comedy Central's like, what can we offer you? You know, we don't have a ton of money.

And those guys were like, give us the library. And Comedy Central's like, yeah, cool, take it. And then eight years later, it's a bidding war for this library and it's on there. My point is my son doesn't watch South Park on Comedy Central. He watched it on Hulu. And now it's going to HBO Max. He's going to watch it on HBO Max

and it's all these episodes in a row. And that's how he's going to consume it. He's not going to the network. Football is the last thing that people are actually really had to go to the networks for. I think if it was Monday Night Football on Amazon, I think that'd be weird. Football is the last thing that people actually really had to go to the networks for. I think if it was Monday Night Football on Amazon, I think that would be weird. I think they would lose people like my dad.

I don't think my dad would go to Amazon and watch football. I don't. I think it is as tactile as giving a remote to a 78-year-old owner and asking him to find Quibi versus finding, you know, ABC. And that makes sense, obviously, you know, doing it the same old, same old way. But the other part of it, I think, for a streaming service is that it just doesn't have the kind of like halo impact that it has on a network television channel. I mean, like, you know, Amazon, you're not going to stop using Amazon because they lost Monday Night Football. You know. That's not going to make you more likely to use Netflix. Maybe it'll make me slightly more to use Netflix, but it doesn't have the same, it doesn't land the same hit. But I do think that eventually all this stuff

becomes available. And if we've learned the value of sports is that it's a rationed entity and these contracts very seldom come up and the people who have them know how valuable they are and often preemptively bid. So I think anybody who's in digital video business has to look seriously at it when it comes up. The other thing with the ratings and the numbers, it's just a fact. Some people don't have some of this cable stuff, especially in poor neighborhoods or cities or whatever. And there are people

that still have the rabbit TV and things like that. And I do think the NFL owners specifically, they love the narrative. Like, hey, did you see the top 50 games? See, we had 47 of them. See, we had 48. The biggest audiences.

See that? Super Bowl's still the biggest. They still care about that. That to them is a selling point of how well football is doing and the perception that football is not dying and it's not in trouble and it's actually still as dominant as it's ever been.

And they need kind of that ratings to point to and go, look at that. See, once again. Absolutely. And it's, and by the way, why wouldn't you want as many people as humanly possible watching your games? And it is funny to sit here in 2020 and we're talking about CBS Sports. We're talking about Brent Musburger's CBS Sports. It's the same thing, but it is still alive in that sense and way more alive than the rest of the network. Or somebody like Al Michaels, who literally came of age under Rune Arledge when it was a completely different era of wild spending and king of the world mentality in sports media, and that he can straddle that era with this kind of,

I don't want to say seat of the pants, but much more nimble, budget-conscious world is kind of amazing. And audiences are getting older. People are living longer. I don't know if you guys know this. Right now, we're trying to elect a president. I don't know if you guys have followed this at all. I saw something about that, yeah. The three candidates are 73, 77, and 78.

This is why football will remain on network TV. We have an aging country. I'd like to include myself in TV. We have an aging country. Yeah. I'd like to include myself in that. I turned 50 last September. Here's my Al Michaels theory. You ready, Jason? Yeah.

This is what I think this is really about. Where did he start his career? Well, CBS, but he flourished at ABC Sports. Where did it start? ABC Sports. 1975, 76 with Howard? A little later. A little later,

but yes. When did he do Monday Night Baseball? 76? 78? I want to say it's later than that. 79?

Yeah. All right, so 40 years ago? Then he has the Olympics. Then he just hits his wide world of sports. He hits all the check marks. So if he's got

one last contract left, they hired Mike Tirico a few years ago, who's kind of like, hey, when Al Michaels retires, this is going to be your job. That's always weird. Be like, hey, Kyle, three years from now,

I've hired your replacement. Ouch. He's going to go sit over there in that next office. And every time you walk by, it's going to be awkward. And right now, we just kind of have him stashed

in the halftime show. But eventually, he'll take your job. And I think at some point, you look at that and you go, you know what? The symmetry of me finishing my career on Monday Night Football, where I became super-duper famous, and this is how it should end. I understand the nostalgia factor. You don't like this theory? I thought you would like this theory more. But don't we remember what Al Michaels thinks of ESPN

when he was ungraciously almost shoved out the door in 2005 or whenever that was? That was like three ESPN administrations and one scandal ago. True, but that ESPN administration looked at their talent and producers and said, well, we have this team of Mike Patrick, Joe Theismann, and

Paul McGuire, and we think that team is about as good as Al Michaels and John Madden. Oh my God. One of the craziest decisions. You know who didn't feel that way? Me. Yeah, me neither. That was one of my least favorite announcing teams ever. Freddie Godelli and Drew Eskopp, we think you're just as good as the other guys. It was one of my least favorite announcing teams ever. Freddie Godelli and Drew Eskopp,

we think you're just as good as the other guys. It was one of the most insane things ever. And it's in Al's book, right? I'm not breaking any confidence here. Al was pissed. Yeah, he should have been. And hurt. And so for him to forgive,

and I understand these are different executives and everything's changed and all that stuff, but wow, Al back to ESPN would be incredible. Well, you also have, he's got Alex Wallo is one of his closest friends. Iger is a good friend of his. Sure. And ultimately, you know, Iger's on his way out at some point too. And I'm sure the symmetry of this, what do you think of this whole theory, Jason?

Well, do you buy that this is somehow going to be a package deal? You mentioned Freddie Godelli. I mean, like, he's kind of the, you know, the hidden hand of all this. Like, does he move? They didn't hire a producer yet, right? They haven't. Yeah. It's not a done deal. This is something that's been theorized and that I think the other

part of the theory is that you've got to get them both. It's Kawhi and Paul George. Like, you've got to get one to get the other. They have to give us seven first-round picks and J.J. Alexander and a whole bunch of other stuff right now. Yeah, I mean, but the other shoe of that, I don't know if that's

the proper metaphor, but like you're not bringing these guys in to have them do crappy Monday Night Football games. So what are they, what do they have in store in addition to that? Or is Monday night football going to continue to be on ESPN? Will it move to ABC? I mean, there's no question even bad Monday night football on ABC is an upgrade from whatever is on Monday nights on ABC.

No offense to whatever is on Monday nights on ABC. But I would just assume when you're just getting that kind of talent grab that you have a bigger plan. I don't know. But even then, you're going to do a couple years of crappy Monday Night Football

on ABC. So is Al going to give up the number one show in television, Sunday Night Football? That's what I wonder, yeah. And go into this, you know,

it's not obscurity, but it's a lesser perch. That would seem weird. What if it was Monday Night Football on ABC, though? But the games aren't going to change for a while. You could argue that games will get better because they'll be on a network TV versus... The NFL, when

they make the schedule, will just, eh, we'll kick it up a little bit. Yeah, maybe. I just think, I think I made this case when talking to Ben Thompson a couple weeks ago on this podcast. I think more live sports should be on network. If I'm ABC, you look at what they have on ABC on Wednesday nights,

it's like the Goldbergs and all those shows and like put NBA on Wednesday night, it'll get the same rating. So I'm all for that too and that makes a ton of sense, except you want to squeeze every dollar out of this cable model while you still have it. So you can't take the biggest things off ESPN and put them on ABC.

Right. Or your already shrinking cable model is going to shrink a lot faster. All right, so where's SEC football going to go? That's a good question. That's probably ABC, right? Yeah, but you got, again, that's like a lot. You could do multiple games

and you could do different places. Yeah, I was talking about like their biggest game of the week. If it's like Alabama-Auburn, they're showing that at ABC. But if you're Jimmy Pataro, right, you're like, yeah, we want to play as one larger Disney corporation. I think that's probably happening more now than it did with Skipper, right? There's more coordination between the two. But at the same time, you're like,

we got to keep this business going as long as we can because we're not ready for ESPN Plus to be the world, right? We're not ready for ABC to be the world. We got to keep this business intact. It reminds me of the newspaper business. You know, you still like a dollar to be made from people who are loyalists to a means of media communication. And I think that you're right, that you can't just say like flip a switch and say, okay, we're going digital only. These things still do have value. The mistake, the book, I think, is when you start to throw things all over the channel, which is the insanity that baseball does when I'm trying to find games and they're on, I don't know, the TBS, TNT,

and any number of places where a postseason baseball game will be. Even March Madness, I find that kind of ridiculous. The baseball playoff thing is unbelievable. I feel like I'm a relatively smart guy and I literally cannot find a Red Sox game at 8 o'clock at night.

And I'm just like, which one of my nine choices of channels is this game on? Whereas the NBA, you kind of just, you have the habit. It's either going to be on ESPN or TNT,

maybe NBA TV, but it's one of three places. It's like that year of the NHL, the Stanley Cup Finals were on Versus. Remember that? We're like, do I get that? Is that somewhere on the dial? I remember getting really mad one year when I was on the road traveling for playoffs. I was in a hotel room that had like 60 channels and Versus wasn't one of them.

And I was like, new rule. If your league is showing its finals on a channel I don't get on 60 channels on a hotel TV, you did a bad job. You just did a bad job. But at least they figured that out, that that at least has to go on NBC now. So let's take a quick break. We have a lot more to talk about. Hey, today's business challenges are bigger and more complex than ever. For every company, progress just can't wait. Thankfully, helping to accelerate progress is in Google Cloud's DNA. Google Cloud lives for the opportunity to help customers think through all the different ways to overcome obstacles, to make breakthroughs, to use technology, to create outcomes that

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There's no limit to what you can solve together. Learn how. Visit g.co slash cloud slash solving. Google Cloud, what are you solving for? I want to circle back on Romo for one second. Sure. Do you find it funny, Brian Curtis, when people get mad Romo makes money like that? Like NFL player, current NFL players? Just like there's a buzz and it's like, oh my, that's crazy. Blah, blah, blah. It's like, what do

we care what CBS gives Tony Romo? Why would anybody care? I have never been offended by that. No. And I also think it just means that CBS is going to give a ton of money to the NFL. Yeah, they're all means that CBS is going to give a ton of money to the NFL. Yeah, they're all in. Which is going to benefit everybody.

Well, because as we mentioned earlier, they lost SEC. And now if you lose football, NFL football, now what are you doing? You're showing golf and March Madness. Do I think it's a crazy figure for Sportscaster for all the reasons we've outlined? Sure. But, you know, it's television, right? I don't... It only takes two people. Just look at any eBay auction. Two people are going at it with five minutes to go. That's it. It's going to go up. Right. Timing is everything. I think part of what made it such a ripple was that you could actually kind of look at it like, remember those old Friends salaries when Friends was at its, you know, earnings peak and it was like a million dollars an episode or whatever it was? Like, you know, Romo's making effectively a million bucks a game, which pops out at you. I think the most interesting reactions have been from players. You saw like Odell Beckham and a number of NFL

players who are like, huh, that's interesting. I would like to know more about this because the presumption has been, certainly in the last half generation, that the stars are so well compensated that they're probably going to be less likely to walk into a booth because they don't need it as much anymore. But, you know, it's awfully hard to turn your back on 15 million bucks. My favorite fact ever, and I've repeated this, is when John Madden signed his huge deal, which used to be the highest per season back in 1993, he was paid more than every player in the NFL. Yeah. Wow. Every player. That was worth it. He was paid more than every quarterback. That'd be like Romo signing with CBS for $40

million a year right now. I know you want to talk about the CBA for the next couple hours, but one thing you will not see is CBS saying to Tony Romo okay we're going to do that 17th game

so here's $250,000 which is my favorite part of that it's capped it's capped at $250,000 I thought it was I thought it made a ton of sense for them because the other thing is you look at it

what's plan B alright he leaves so now we're promoting nate burleson i like nate burleson but jim nance and nate burleson i don't know are they gonna be good together or you go and you get phil rivers i i just want to go on the record and i have before i've talked about this on a podcast previously so i'm repeating myself but i think phil rivers is gonna be really good you're all in on this. Yeah. I study, if you're really going to, like, who's going to be good in a game? What are the qualities you need?

You're going to learn all of it from the post-game interviews and how candid they are, whether they're making fun of the reporters, whether they're quick on their feet. You can see all of it. That was why the Barkley was the no-brainer selection of all time, that he was going to be good at being on TV because he was the best interviewer in the league for 15 years. I think Phil Rivers has a chance to be really, really good. My question for him is why would he stop playing? I know he had an off year last year, but I certainly feels like he could play five more years. Yeah. At least two more years. Yeah. I mean, I'm just saying like he's, I think 35 and pretty much every quarterback

plays until 40 now unless they get hurt but if it was Al Michaels and Phil Rivers I think that would be a pretty good outcome too the one I don't really get is Drew Brees I don't see him being I see him playing it too safe and being a little flat what do you think of him Jason?

Drew Brees as an announcer? yeah it's like your number one announcer right he's awfully polite and says the right things usually, and I can't imagine that he would be some sort of like, you know, Barkley-esque type of truth teller. I don't see it. No, I don't see it either. I mean, the other part of that, though, is like,

are we certain Peyton Manning is going to be great in the booth? Are we just 100%? I mean, there's this presumption that he's going to be fantastic. Are we sure? I don I mean, there's this presumption that he's going to be fantastic. Are we sure? I don't know we're sure. He does have this celebrity that very few NFL guys have. Huge.

The moment he's on television, you're like, oh, that guy, Peyton Manning. You're hanging on every word. You're just more interested in him. Here's why it's not going to happen, I don't think.

I just don't think he would take less money than Tony Romo. No way. I just don't. Why? He was a much Tony Romo. No way. I just don't. He was a much better quarterback. He's going to be like, okay, hey, can I get two-thirds of what Tony Romo got? He's going to be like, fuck that.

Pay me $1 more than Tony Romo and I'll do it. And forget the playing career, that's the price now. I saw the price. It's $17 million. So if you want me to come in and save your show, it's $17 million. $17 million and one penny. Didn't CBS, and we should, you know, a lot of this reporting is Andrew Marshawn of The Post who's been breaking all these stories.

But I think that CBS went to Manning amid the Romo conversation and said, hey, well, how's 12 to 15 or some figure around their sound as a hedge against Romo going to ESPN? And then Manning, you know, now evolving into this ESPN discussion. He's sort of this X factor. It's like the Brady conversation in the NFL with playing. It's like wherever Manning lands is going to kind of set the whole track of who goes where. This is like the old theory of announcers, but Tony Romo had everything to prove in the announcement.

Yeah. Everything he didn't do as a player, he could do as an announcer. Phillip Rivers will almost certainly, unless something crazy happens in the next couple of years, have the same thing. He's got this, here's what I can do. Chris Collinsworth, right? Here's what I can do. The other thing with Peyton Manning is Peyton Manning did it.

Yeah. And it's going to take a lot to really make him lock in and say, I want to be the best announcer I can be. Well, by all accounts, he does everything full speed. He's all in if he's doing it. Even the stuff he's done for ESPN Plus has been definitely not a mail-in by him. No. But year after year, you know.

It's tough, but here's the thing. It's the greatest part-time job of the world. What Romo pulled off, getting private jet on top of everything else, where you're flying in on a Saturday morning and you're flying out on a Sunday night, you're working one and a half days and you're done.

And you're back home by Sunday night at, I don't know, nine o'clock. And you're back home by Sunday night at, I don't know, 9 o'clock. And you're making an incredible amount of money. If you're Peyton Manning and you can make $15 million doing that, it's like just, Monday night football is even better. You're leaving on a Sunday, stay Sunday night. You could leave right after the game on Monday night, get home whenever. I don't know.

That's a lot of money. It is. But everybody keeps trying. Yeah. You know, Fox tried for Thursday night. We forget that. Do you think ESPN should just challenge his manhood? And be like, we keep trying to hire Peyton Manning.

Obviously, he's scared. Something. See, he just, maybe he just knows he maybe won't be as good as Romo. They should float that out or float a Brady rumor Brady Brady would never have a chance as somebody who's listened to a lot of his Westwood One

interviews with Jim Gray over the years Brady would be tough alright what's audible to first take as All right, what's audible to... First take, as a TV show that used to be derided and was the number one thing people would point to

as, oh, this is the worst of sports talk, all that stuff, to in 2020, Newsbreaker? Really extremely relevant show. Probably the sports show that breaks the most news. And if you go through the championship belt of breaking news, you go to the 70s, Wild World of Sports,

the most things happen there. That's where Russell would go. Bill Russell would go. That's where Ali and Frazier would go. And just shit happened on Wild World of Sports. And then that kind of shifted to NFL today with Brent and those guys. And that became kind of a signature thing and all the way through to, you know,

most recently now, what is it? What's the championship belt holder? I can't believe I'm saying this, but I think it's first take it's once every two to three weeks, all of a sudden it's trending for three hours because somebody went on there and shit happened. Am I wrong? I never would have put it in the same sense as one world of sports. But yeah, I think you might be right. And I think that's part of the way Stephen A has

vaulted over all those people who are inclined to hate Stephen A. Yeah. Which is, I wrote a piece for The Ringer called Strange New Respect for Stephen A. Smith. Because we all kind of, I think, collectively do have that now. But part of it was that he still had kind of a guy who knows stuff part of him, right? He wasn't just opinion guy. He had a stake in the league or he had a hand in the league like players were paying attention to him magic when he had his bizarre resignation

from the lakers i'm gonna go talk to steven a that's the next thing i think that's a big part of his part of his draw right is that it's not just a guy who's bloviating but a guy who kind of knows stuff and it's kind of plugged in at some level. And he's bought into the whole, or not bought into it, but he's bought the, I think, trust of people in this respect that he calls it like it is. And he doesn't, quote unquote, play the favorites.

And it's like, this is, I'm just going to go. Now, he does have a lot of- I was going to say, we just mentioned Magic Johnson. But the thing is, he does have favorites. And he does have the Magic Johnson. And he does do as much favor trading as probably a lot of... I was going to say, we just mentioned Magic Johnson. But the thing is, he does have favorites. He does have the Magic Johnson. He does do as much favor trading as probably a lot of other people. He played Magic over Baxter Holmes, his co-worker.

It was bad. The sense from the public, though, is that he calls it like it is. I think the NBA players, when he calls them out, they take it really seriously. If he says, like, Kevin Durant, he was a coward for not going to the Knicks. Like if he said that on our show,

KD would go at him on Twitter immediately because he'd feel like I have to defend myself. Stephen A came at me. It's the only person in sports media that has that, whatever that is, Jason. I mean, I don't know if I would go as far to call like first take a news breaking show, but you know, it's, I think it's more more like it's like sports like Festivus, right?

Where like high profile people like Spike Lee can go on and, you know, air their grievances and then watch it ripple through social media for the rest of the afternoon. You know, it's sort of like the central nervous system of sports media right now. Right. And then you have Stephen A. What's ironic about this is it's sort of Stephen A. sharing the stage a little bit. It's not just Stephen A. going off about a topic. It's him giving a platform to somebody who's aggrieved to go on and talk. And when people go on Stephen A., they kind of feel like they have to match the agitated energy. And I think, like, if you watch the Spike Lee thing, he was doing it with a little bit of a glimmer in his eye because, you know, he had to know what he was doing it with a little bit of a glimmer in his eye because you know he had to know

what he was doing was really going to stick in the next crop and I personally enjoyed all that very very much and it felt like must see TV

even though I didn't watch it on TV you know I watched it on any number of clips on social media but if you're Spike and 10 years ago

you go on you go on Mike and the Dog. Yeah. And that's how you do that. Correct. In 2020, you go on First Take and you call up whoever and you're like, I want to come on and talk about this. And First Take says, great. It also ties

into where we are in social media in 2020 where he's on. The clip's immediately on Twitter and wherever else. blog posts are being crafted immediately people are responding they've changed the trending thing on twitter spike lee's trending you're like why is spike lee trending and then it's like and then boom and it's an eight and then all the other espn shows are like earlier today on espn on first take spike lee said this boom run the clip here's my take on first take.

It just goes. My brain has been rotted over the last several weeks by watching way too much cable news. So this may be the wrong comp, but I think what sports TV has tried to replicate, weirdly enough, is Morning Joe. For sports, they tried it with Get Up, and Get Up is better now, but it's still not a show

where news happens. I don't think you think of it quite that way still. It's more entertaining. But the thing about Morning Joe is like, oh, somebody's going to come on here and endorse Joe Biden on this show. Somebody's going to drop out of the race or win a big primary and they'll be on our air tomorrow. This is where things happen, right? And sports has groped around for that for the last couple of years. And I don't know that we would have thought first take would turn into that show. I would have said the odds were 100 to 1 eight years ago. Yeah, right.

Like, hey, someday this will be the show. There's no chance. But again, it's become more of a salon. I think when it was like two guys yelling back and forth at each other, it was a very different kind of organism. And now what you have, and there was like the Steven Stout. That was Get Up. Was that Get Up or was it First Take? Steven Stout was First Take. First Take. So, you know, these people come on and they're, and you got to kind of give credit to the producers

too, because they're just kind of letting it rip, which, you know, in television, a lot of segments are very, very, very, very produced. And, you know, you kind of know exactly what everyone's going to say at any given time. And that's clearly the case when steve stout is on the air um and i like that but i don't think that it's the kind of thing where people are just going to be you know imitating it because again steven a is kind of sweet generous it's also a great time slot you know i'm on west coast time i wake up in the morning make coffee going through emails put it on. One of the things I really like about that show is the celebrity interviews. So full disclosure, I wanted Affleck to come on the podcast

to talk about The Way Back. He probably still has PTSD from our HBO interview we did together. Speaking of newsmaking. He did not take up the offer. He went on First Take, and I just happened to be watching. And it was kind of riveting because he comes on and he talks about the way back, why he did it. And Stephen A is like, tell us about your performance.

And they were asking movie questions. I'm like, this is great. And then Stephen A is, and then Affleck's basically like, wait, I want to talk about Tom Brady. Cause you see these celebrities go on and they're more excited to be on than Stephen A and Max are to have them because they're like, oh, here's my seven minutes. I get to talk sports with Stephen A. And so he goes right at Max about all Max's Tom Brady stuff. And now they're in like the sports bar thing. I'm like, this is working, guys. I'm watching every minute of this.

I'm enjoying this. So I don't know how they flipped the script, but they did it. And I can't believe I'm praising first take. Yeah, here we are, right? Jason, I think Jason passed out. I mean, listen, I think that like, you know, Stephen A's brilliance is sort of being a man

for his moment, right? You know, it's like he has this disposition, which he has had forever. But it is now just so perfectly situated for the moment that we live in now where it's outrage and even performative outrage that moves the needle. And I think that's part of also the performativeness is what sort of, I don't know, makes Stephen A more likable. You know, I think I don't want to live in a world where like Stephen A is like genuinely pissed off about things five times a day. Like I want to have a little bit of theater to it. And I'm just curious, Brian, do you think that people when they go on the show, like in the same way, like everyone kind of sits up straight in their chair when they're like on Sunday morning television, that people feel they have to match the energy? You know, you can't go on first take and be boring.

You can't go on first take and just be like down the middle. You kind of have to match the energy. You can't go on first take and be boring. You can't go on first take and just be down the middle. You kind of have to have a take. Yeah, having seen Michael Irvin appear on that show several times, which is really the high point of first take for me. Oh my God. Michael Irvin versus Stephen A. Jesus.

With nothing to be left on the field. It's like superheroes battling on top of a building. Jason hit on something really important. The idea that Stephen A is in on his own joke is in on it just enough never going to admit it but we kind of sense that he knows what's going on here

you know that that helps I think that sports debate show be a little more palatable that you can deal with it every day and not just get turned off by it and then alright so High Noon gets cancelled what two weeks ago and predictable

reaction in certain circles and social media and and one of the common refrains was oh great you had all the carnival barkers get rewarded and here's a show that tried to do smart sports talk and and it got and they get rid of that one. And I'm thinking like, is this a straw man argument? Like what ESPN shows are doing like sports porn basically or sports outrage porn or sports? Like I actually feel like the network,

I don't mean to sound like an ESPN defender, but I think they've moved away from that a lot. They've moved more toward, you know, games and highlights. And then I certainly don't think PTI is like people screaming at each other. Around the Horn's probably the closest, but that's a show that's been in on its own joke

for a long time. Levitard Show is just weird. You're going down the list, it's like, who are these people pointing to saying, well, why do you have carnival barkers on? And then this smart... So really they're talking about first take. And I don't feel like first take is like that.

Again, not to sound like a total first take defender, but I think there's more going on than the rep that it had when Bayless was on years and years ago, where it was just two guys trying to provoke each other and say crazy things, basically. It's evolved way past that. I think that's a knee-jerk take that's just been around for a really long time. And the fact that people were saying it when Jamel and Michael were on the air and all these other people at ESPN whom they liked were on the air. And I agree with you. I

think that's become a much smaller part of the ESPN universe in the last decade. Yeah. It's basically just first take. Get up is nothing like that. And to me, it's more about the grammar of TV shows that work, right? There's a certain grammar because Mike and Tony work on PTI. Nobody says they're bad sports talk, right? We think, oh, that's funny. It's tongue in cheek. They kind of get it, right? They're doing a parody of a debate show a little bit, but it's just the grammar of here's the issue. We discuss. Next issue. We keep it light.

We keep it quick. The next issue. And to me, that's just what works on television. Well, and they also have a real healthy respect for each other and genuine chemistry and make fun of each other and the feeling of that show and the reason it works and the reason it's so hard for people to go into and do it with them is it's two buddies talking about the issues of the day and busting each other's balls. And that was something I never felt like High Noon was able to achieve.

It was High Noon, if you're going to say, all right, what was the number one reason the show didn't work for, you know, whatever rating they wanted to get, the number one thing was just the time slot, where you have this really smart show targeted for people that probably aren't watching sports TV at that time of the day.

That's an issue. But then the other thing is, it felt to me a lot of times like they were just trading these monologues versus what PTI has, where Wilbon will say something crazy. And then Tony's not like, it's my turn to speak now. I'm just going to say my point. Tony will listen to him and go, wait a second, Wilbon, you, what are you talking? And then they'll throw the script away and they'll

go for two, three minutes off some tangent that wasn't even on the teleprompter. That's why that show works. And I never felt like High Noon, I think the more they did the show, they probably would have gotten there, but they never found that rhythm of, you have these two people that we like individually. How do we make this a team where they really need each other?

I feel like when I watch PTI, anytime Wilbon or Coronizer is in there, I'm disappointed. It's the fundamental, I'm like, oh shit. And by the way, I include when I'm hosting it. I could be on the thing,iser's and I'm disappointed. It's the fundamental. I'm like, oh shit. And by the way, I include when I'm hosting it. I could be on the thing. I'm disappointed I'm here. I'm not the best possible option.

It's a really hard thing to get to. Anyway, I just want to mention that. You're comparing it against the standard with PGI, of course. And the other thing is, I like to think of High Noon as a huge success. I myself was on a sports television show which lasted about six months. So by that, by comparison, High Noon is like bonanza.

Mine lasted 17 weeks. Yeah. Two years just feels like an epic run. But, I mean, I think the challenge for all these shows, and I always wonder when there are these postmortems, when a show gets canceled in any genre, it's like, who exactly is the audience at the given hour? Like who are watching these shows? Are people who are, you know, saying it's the end of the world or saying that it's some sort of like statement about where the culture is right now? Are they, in fact, the audience of the show? And I think there's quite a difference. By the way, there's a second piece to that is, should that show be on television?

Because if, and I had the same thing with my show, which the flaw with my show is that I can do all of the stuff I wanted to do. I want to have a smart conversation show about sports and other stuff. It's easier to do that on a podcast. The ceiling is higher. I have

more time. I can go in more directions. I'm not trapped to certain time restraints or I don't have to tape things a day and a half in advance. Podcasts are better. And I think that's the thing with High Noon. I think if they had made that as really gotten behind it as a five-day-a-week signature podcast that also ran on ESPN Plus or whatever and really pushed the podcast part of it, I would have been interested to see what happened because it was a really smart show. Bill, let me ask you this.

Yeah. You like to talk about ultimate sliding door moments on your show. Had your HBO show worked, had it been a hit or even a modest hit, that it would have been on the air for not just a season, but season after season, still on the air today. Do you think that you would have doubled down in the same way that you had with podcasts?

And would you have been in the position that you were in to be able to make the moves at the company that you made? No. I think at that point you have to double down on, all right, what do I have left? Let's make all this stuff work really well. I think the issue for me is the once a week parachute in sports show cannot work. And I found that out the hard way. I think the only way that show could have worked, and if I had to do it over, if I was in a time machine and I was like, how could I get this to work? It would have been once a month. You get big guests, you tape in advance, you tape the, whatever the first part is, make it topical. Everything else is banked and it's cut. And you do an hour long interview with somebody and then you cut it a little like how they do the shop, I guess, where they tape that in advance. They tape for three, four hours. They get the best 20 minutes possible. But that's also a show that doesn't get ratings. It's the stuff that actually gets ratings, if you're going to do people talking about each other about sports,

is reacting right to the moment. And that's why first take, it's coming on and shit's happening. It's like, oh, Magic Johnson just quit the Lakers. He's on right now. That's always going to win over, you know, parachuting in. I just feel, especially like with the HBO thing, when me talking about sports versus sports being on television, I'm going against baseball playoff games.

Why would somebody watch my show? You know, and we try to create a show that would last for like two weeks. You could watch it anytime, but it's like, all right, well, that's pretty limited upside. I think the one thing Bill Maher's show has been able to achieve is, and I think it's been brilliant how it's done. It is like Friday nights. Yep. This is the one show, the politics cycle has the Sunday morning stuff, right? Where it's like those two, three hours, meet the press, the ABC show.

Here's where all the big people are going to come. I was watching on Sunday. Every relevant person was on one of those shows at some point. And then Mar and Friday night, kind of recapping the week and previewing the weekend with an obviously major liberal agenda. I think for sports, I don't know what the version of that would be. And we've certainly seen 20,000 people try. Yep. And nobody's done it.

I knew this, by the way, in 2015. I said, fuck it. But, you know, you live and you learn. But you didn't really answer my question, which is that had the show worked, had the show, you know, it seems that when the show ended, you kind of reevaluated

and you did this whole thing differently. You really doubled down on podcasting. And what I'm asking is, had the show worked, would The Ringer not be what it is currently? It depends on what the show ended up being. If it was monthly, I think we could have done everything we're doing now. I also had restrictions. When I was doing the TV show, I can only do one podcast a week. So naturally with the show ending, I was able to move to three, which really helped the podcast. But I think if it was a monthly show with interviews and I could have kept a semblance of all the other stuff I was doing,

I think it would have panned out. And I actually think the show would have been probably good for all this other stuff. Bill has octopus arms. So I think it probably would have. Can I say one thing on Pablo and Bomani just generally? You know what the hardest thing to do, whether it's a TV show or podcast, is translate a real relationship you have with somebody into a show. Yeah.

It is really hard. You have it with Shoemaker. But even at the ringer here, I think of like the gold standard to me is like you and Sal, you and House, and Russillo, which I know is newer, and Chris and Andy. Yeah. And all the rest of us, we have a great time, but we're all working toward that. And it's not that we're less, you know, we're not real friends with the person, but it translating friendship into show is really fucking hard. But the thing that we found, if, if show works, you know, for us, it's mostly podcasts or almost entirely podcasts, TV shows, same thing. If the hosts have the connection, it almost doesn't matter what the,

what the show is. The host is always going to trump any awesome idea you have for a show we i could create the greatest idea for you and some random person and if you didn't click together it's just not going to work i agree but it's still but there's still there's still a hill you have to climb there yeah and just how do we take familiarity because i think paul and bonnie are really genuinely friends. And we genuinely had these big conversations way before high noon. But it was just the problem of how do we turn this into a thing people want to watch?

And maybe you're right. Maybe it was a podcast. It was a podcast. It would have been more natural in that setting where they could just go. I also think they could have been more creative in a podcast because now you have some topic. You go for an hour and 40 minutes and

just you're flying versus like all right we're gonna take a break coming up we're gonna talk about the lakers and i don't know if that's what i want from those two guys i coming up coronavirus and sports right which is actually what we're gonna do you last thought jason uh well i was curious to ask you like you know the other part of relationships is you sort of guest-proof a show, right? You don't make it reliant on getting the big-ticket guest. But I'm also curious to ask you, like, when you get, like, a big name, nail-lister with a big product, like, how much does that move the needle, if at all? And I imagine there are, you know, regulars that you have, like, you know, of course, this will be one of the most highly listened-to pods. I mean, this is like the super bowl for me but i mean is it is it you know guest agnostic the ratings

honestly it's it's it's the reactive stuff that probably does a little bit better sure the guest stuff um there was one celebrity pod i did in the last year that I thought was going to do great, and it was probably the worst listened to one over the last year. And I was like, oh, because I should have just talked about the NBA for 20 minutes at the top of this. I can't wait until after the show when you tell us which one that was. I'm happy to tell you after. We'll take a break, and we'll come back and talk about the virus. Hey, turn your dream into a reality with

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off your first purchase of a website or domain, squarespace.com slash BS, offer code BS. Wow, how about that tease? That was great. So Italy had soccer games with nobody in the stands. The coronavirus, COVID-19, which is what we're supposed to call it. We've no idea if this is getting worse and worse. Talked about it a little bit on Tuesday with Stephen Dubner.

Do either of you think there's a world in which there are empty NBA arenas two months from now for playoff games? By the way, it was an overworked Twitter joke after the Italy thing to say, hey, the Chargers actually figured this out last season. That was a thing. That's good. It's hard to imagine

getting to that point. We did have that one Orioles game, right, when there was violence in Baltimore that was played in an empty...

Empty baseball game. Boy, that would be really, really weird. Somehow, I can't imagine it, but every day with this and with the way this is being handled, who knows, right?

We are weirdly in terra incognita here, I think. I think South by Southwest will be the first real test case for how many people actually went to this thing versus were supposed to go. We know what South by is like year after year. It's absolutely jam-packed with people.

This year, remember, did you go to the Super Bowl in Dallas? I did not. So did you go, Jason? I did, yep. Weirdest sporting event I've ever been to because they had hail and snow and most people couldn't land. And it ended up being the parties that everybody went to Weirdest sporting event I've ever been to because they had hail and snow and most people couldn't land. And it ended up being the parties that everybody went to.

There was nobody there. And it was, I think, the most drunk I've ever been in my life on the Saturday night beforehand because I was hanging out with a group of people. And they just had all this booze they had to give away. And every five minutes, somebody's bringing us a fresh drink and double fisting and shots. And I think I had bronchitis for like three and a half weeks. We're all huddled under heat lamps, but there was just nobody there.

It was the weirdest weekend I've ever spent anywhere where it's the Superbowl. And it's like the highways are empty. The parties are empty. The hotels are half empty and I don't know. I've never seen anything threaten the sports and pop culture calendar like this.

And by the way, this is like the dumbest part of this whole thing. Like there's so many more serious things to talk about, but just seeing just this random thing start to upend things that we're just used to where it's like- Sure. South by Southwest early March, March Madness, mid-March, NBA playoffs, Masters mid-April, Kentucky Derby May 2nd, usually a big fight, basketball playoffs heating up, NHL playoffs. Now we're going to the finals in June.

And this is the first time I can remember not knowing how this is going to play out. And it's just, I think it's been an absolutely surreal last couple weeks. Well, and a twist on it, of course, is that, you know, typically in tragedy, sports has been this, you know, sanctuary. It's been this release for people to turn to when terrible things have been happening in the world. And this is an opposite type of situation where the events themselves might be part of the problem. And obviously, you know, the reason to suspect that we might start seeing things here is that it's happened in every place where they've had significant outbreaks. I mean, as you said, empty stadiums in Italy, multiple cancellations

in China, empty stadiums in Japan. And now this whole question about not just significant events like March Madness and the Masters and so on and so forth, but a major looming decision with regard to the Tokyo Olympics in July. That's the big one, right? That's the one I think. For instance, the NBA, the American team of NBA players is supposed to go train in Shanghai and then go to Tokyo. They go to Shanghai first, they train there, get acclimated to the time zone difference, and then fly to Japan.

Obviously, I would say the odds of that happening in just that form is probably 25 to 1. Whether they train here and just fly over and just play if they do it, who's going to be the first, but it's just weird. This is what we do for a living. We're supposed to think about this stuff all the time. And this is the first time I can remember just everything being on the board. We might not have an Olympics. We might not have the Euros. We might have the NBA finals being played in empty buildings. How much of this do you think is real? And how much of this is the panic, like what I talked about a little bit with Stephen Dubner on Tuesday, that this panic culture that we have now where stuff can just get inflamed so fast on social media and people default to the worst case scenarios of all time. In this case, the worst case scenarios are actually like realistic, scary scenarios.

I think the scary part is the answer is we don't know, right? Yeah. It's somewhere between don't panic and panic, and we don't quite understand yet. So then we get into this weird zone where we're like, I don't know, you know? And I know we've probably all been dealing with this with just travel and friends and family and all that stuff. And you're just like, we're in the I don't know zone right now. Yeah, and a key thing here also is that ultimately this is not going to be the call of leagues and teams and things like this. This is going to be, you know, governments and health organizations coming forward and saying, please don't do this. You know, let's like just not have these like mass scale events.

Seeing in Paris, I think, has banned anything over 5,000 people. Switzerland, it's like 1,000. And it's not going to be some sort of thing where leagues preemptively, maybe, but I think that is likely going to be at the recommendation of the government. And as Brian said, none of us are in the position to make any kind of declarations about whether it'll happen. I feel like this is one of these topics where we could do this 72 hours from now and have a very different conversation. Because I think once things start to happen, it'll happen quickly.

Yeah, like my dad, I was talking to him this morning, and he was saying how he's going to Utah Celtics game tomorrow night. And he's like, do you think I should go? And I was like, yeah. And he's like, well, I was thinking about it. You know, what if some dude's sitting behind me and he has a cough I'm gonna be thinking about that guy's cough

and I won't have a good time and I could just stay home and watch it and I'm like dad I don't know you know it's your call I don't know what to tell you that's the thing and on our very small and privileged scale right it's all these little decisions we were taking the kids to Disneyland last weekend.

My wife and I are looking at each other like, is this the time to go on Millennium Falcon smuggler's run? You know? And we did. And everything's fine, I think. But it's just strange. We had three people that were supposed to go to the Sloan Conference in Boston this weekend. We'd canceled it. It's like not worth it. We'd rather be safe than sorry. Why not? We don't know if this is going to get worse over the next few days. It's very, very, very uneasy times in a

whole bunch of different ways. On top of it, you have the election and all this stuff that's going on there. The most tumultuous, I would say week-long stretch I can ever remember in a Democratic anything dating back to the first one I remember barely is 80. I don't think I was paying attention in 76. And you have the incredible Joe Biden comeback. Like, just incredible. Like, talk about back from the dead. So you have all that going on, too. And it's just, this has been a really strange year so far. And it just feels like it's going to get weirder. Yeah.

And more frightening. I mean, I thought we were headed to a long, hot summer before any of the pandemic stuff. I mean, I thought that the combination of this big election that is going to be highly pitched, you know, it already had been proven to be divisive within the Democratic Party. Then you have the whole general, then you have the conventions,

then you have the Olympics. And, you know, it's just good. It felt like it was going to be exhausting. And now you add this other thing. And I hope very much, obviously, that we have some sort of breakthrough here or, you know, a climate change that, you know, allows the virus to die down. But it just feels like we're not even capable of processing it all at once. I mean, Brian, you do, you know, in the press box, you're talking immediately after,

you know, these primaries and you can't do all of it at once. It's just too big. It's just, you don't see anyone talking about Biden and Bernie within the context of coronavirus, because it just seems glib to actually contextualize it that way. It's just so seismic. It's too much. Are we doing any election takes on this podcast? I'm ready to do that. I want to hear your election. I want to take a break and then I want to to do that. I want to hear your election text. I want to take a break, and then I want to talk about that. Let's take a break to talk about some of the stuff on the Ringer Podcast Network, which you can find all over the place.

But I would recommend the Spotify app. It's just a wonderful place, Kyle. It really is. Legit, I'd say. You know what's great? The Spotify app. You know what's fun about the Spotify app? 15-second fast-forward or go-behinds.

You can change the speed. I like 1.2 speed for your podcast. A little pep. Sounds like everyone's had a lot of coffee. Some of the podcasts we've done this week. I don't know if you know this, but we love Survivor here at The Ringer. We were doing Survivor recaps on Ringer Dish.

Ryan Rosillo has been on fire lately. James Borrego, Hornets head coach. Yeah. He's having NBA head coaches on the Rosillo has been on fire lately. James Borrego, Hornets head coach. Yeah. He's having NBA head coaches on the Rosillo pod. Chang did his 100th podcast. We did a new rewatchables. I was not on, but we did Oceans 12. The Masked Man is trying to figure out

what the hell is going on in wrestling. Bachelor Party had a really good episode recently. Juliette Lipman and Amelia Wiedemeyer, they did basically conspiracies about The Bachelor for now. I was riveted. It was really good. Ringer NBA show, we got that. Ringer MLB show came back.

House of Carbs, Against All Odds, The Press Box. Fairway, Roland, Ringer NFL show just keeps going and going. I didn't even mention The Big Picture and a couple other ones. Check out the Ringer Podcast Network. Go to Spotify. Search for a podcast you like from the Ringer. Just press follow. And then when you go to the Spotify app, check it out. They all

pop up. The latest episodes, listen to them at whatever speed you want. It's a really good app. And it's also available on Teslas. If you're one of those people that drives a Tesla and cares about the environment. And Mustangs, I will say. Yeah, it's in a bunch of places. So check all that out. The Ringer Podcast If you're one of those people that drives a Tesla and cares about the environment. And Mustangs, I will say. And Mustang.

Don't say Mustang. Yeah, it's in a bunch of places. Yeah. So check all that out. The Ringer Podcast Network on Spotify and wherever else you get your podcasts. Joe Biden on Saturday night. He wins South Carolina. I happen to be home because my son's home and my son has a broken foot.

And I'm watching and Joe takes the stage. And it's always a little scary when Joe's speaking in public lately. Hasn't really gone that smoothly. Joe rallies for one of the best 20-minute speeches any politician has given in last like 25 years. And it was like watching the Kirk Gibson home run. He's speaking coherent sentences. He's playing off the crowd. He's hushing his voice at certain points. He's talking about this country is too divided. It's too angry. We need somebody that can heal this. We need to move forward. We need to have dignity and does all this stuff. And it was the first time in a while. And look, I've made a million

Biden jokes where I was actually inspired by a politician for five minutes. And then it goes away and you change channels. But I was like, yeah, he's right. The country is divided. This sucks. We need somebody who can heal this. By the way, it's probably not going to be Joe Biden, but he tapped into something with his words that I haven't really seen in a while and it made me remember why we're sifting through all this crap every day

so I was sitting in the office like 48 hours after that speech and I said if Bill wrote about politics and saw that Joe Biden speech he would be making deer antler spray and German platelet transfer jokes. And then Mallory Rubin walked by and she goes, oh, actually Bill just made that joke in the hallway. Yeah, because Joe House was saying how he wants to send Biden HGH instead of campaign money to

see if he can, he might've cheated. He might've crossed the line. He might've taken some steroids. The physical, I don't know if I've seen a physical transformation like that. And it kind of continued under his victory speech on Tuesday night, too. It wasn't quite as measured. Yeah, there was some more stammering. It was a little more yelly and screamy than that. But it still had a lot of Biden. He switched Sly Fox, Uncle Joe for angry Biden.

You know, for forceful Biden. Fighting for you, Biden. I didn't, I was not a fan of I'm the only one on the stage who dot, dot, dot Biden. I'm the only one dot, dot, dot. Right. I like the, our country's divided. I want, I'm Uncle Joe. I want to help heal this.

It did, it did sound like, it felt like he found his voice. What'd you think, Jason? Did you watch it on Saturday? You didn't like Biden? Like, I'm the only one up here who has a print subscription to TV Guide? I'm the only one up here who doesn't have cable. I mean, look, I mean, you know,

reporters, we're all convinced, people are convinced that we have our biases, but I think ultimately, and it's been said many times, they root for the story. And, you know, Biden's an incredibly attractive story in the respect that he was truly, truly left for dead after Iowa and New Hampshire. And to win and to win in this sort of like, not just, you know, the narrow escape, but a wildly thumping, decisive route in South Carolina. Really impressive. When on Tuesday, it excites the media because it turns everything on its head. And I think we live in a time where, you know, saying you don't know and saying there are, you know, shades of gray or it's complicated

is not something that registers terribly well and gets much attention on social media. So like people tend to be much more declarative and they say like, the world doesn't want this or they don't want that and that's that. And there was an awful lot of that in the weeks leading up to these primaries. And I think for it to be spun upside down, just, you know, it was a naturally entertaining story. And I do feel like with regard to like Joe as the candidate, it seems abundantly clear that people at least a significant portion of the Biden vote is he will do. You know, I don't know if they're motivated for Joe as, you know, the pure, you know, iteration of what they're looking for in a presidential candidate as much much as they are just like, this is the person we need right now.

Best chance to beat Trump. Yeah. To what Jason said, two stories the media loves to write. Not just the political media, but all of us. Comeback story. Sure. We were waiting for the Biden comeback story. Could have been anybody, but Biden was kind of the biggest comeback story on the table.

But did you really think you were even going to get it, Brian? I didn't think you were. I did not. I thought he was honestly like closer to senile than getting the Democratic nomination. Those Iowa numbers, you looked at them and you went, oh, you kind of felt bad. I did not predict it. Story number two in Shumakin, or I love to joke about this, the old guys still got it. That's one of our favorites. What was the Irishman love? If not, the old guys still got it. Kind of way too much old guys still got it for my taste, by the way, the Irishman. But this, we love that story. Oh, you know, he had one more race left in him. He had one more great film, one more, one more great game on the hardwood, right? That he left it all

out there. I would say there was a third piece, which was people being surprised that the quote unquote establishment could still have the juice to rally together. I think one of the reasons everybody was so freaked out the last four years is you have our political system on both sides in just complete chaos. And you have these debates that are turning into like Jeff Ross roast, right? Like Warren's up there trying to convince us she's the best choice to be president. And she's just attacking everyone else on the stage. And it was like disarming to watch, especially because I think, I thought she was a good candidate and I thought she had some good ideas. And it's almost like, boy, this is going to be a stretch, this comparison. You know who never wins The Bachelor?

Uh-oh. The one who is telling The Bachelor how terrible the other contestants are. That's never the one who gets picked. It's always the one who's just like, I'm actually easy to hang out with. I'm not a lot of drama. I'm just a nice person. And Biden weirdly fit into that whole bachelor thing on that Saturday night speech. He became the bachelor contestant. He was

like, I don't care about the other contestants. I'm here to talk about me. I'm just here to heal the bachelor. This is about our relationship. This is about us and our connection. I'm here for the right reasons. I loved Warren dishing it out. I found that very refreshing. And in many ways, she is probably the best pure candidate I've ever seen. And you know, I'm 97 years old. I've seen it all. And, you know, I found that, you know, her, you know, I mean, made Mike Bloomberg, you know, turn to noodles. That's going to be her positive legacy of this whole thing. She took out Bloomberg.

I kind of feel like, and you seem to think that this is still a little open-ended with Joe and Bernie. That seems to be what you're implying, Bill. I don't think it's open-ended. Obviously, Joe is a major frontrunner, and if you look at the gambling odds and stuff,

he's a significant favorite. I think the one thing we've learned in 16 and 20 is that it takes 48 hours to flip. The momentum goes so fast. I mean, the fact that Biden won Massachusetts, spending $11,000 there and never setting foot in the state. The same state that is the, you think you're better than me, Joe Biden? You can't come here?

You think you're better than us? And he doesn't even go into Massachusetts and he wins the state. At that point for me, all bets are off. I mean, all bets have been off since Trump was plus 500 two days before the election and won the presidency. Since Trump won the Republican nomination, which none of us, nobody thought could happen. I think it's so funny in sports. There's this whole, all the nerds are against momentum. I disagree. I think momentum exists in sports. Obviously it exists in politics and it can be 48 hours. It can be one debate. And the thing with Bernie

and Biden, why I think Bernie's actually a good bet right now, he's like five to one, 10 to one, depending where you are, is it's one debate where Biden looks like a stammering, super old guy who can't handle it. And Bernie laying into him. Bernie's one-on-one. I think Bernie could be really good. And I think he could flip it in two hours. So that's why I don't think it's over. Well, Mike Bloomberg lasted one debate, right? He lasted 10 minutes of one debate. That sort of seemed,

was starting to seem to certain people like a good idea. The polls were going up and then it was just over. He should have done the, what Spielberg did with the shark and jaws, where it's like, this shark's scary. You're not going to see it yet, but trust me,

we're going to play some music. There's a fin. And speaking of sliding doors, he was only on the stage in Nevada because he got one poll on the final day of eligibility. But that was a mistake. The mistake for him is he never should have done a debate. Just I'm not showing up? No. Just hang...

You'll never get a look at me? Hang around, have the bloodbath until have nobody get enough delegates and then get to the convention and like, couldn't he have done it that way? Or am I crazy? I don't know. At some point, you think he has to go attack one of the boats?

I think you have to appear in public at least once. Could he have waited until New York, though? He could have waited until New York, right? I mean, the other part of this is that this is like, it feels like the end of Act One. There's this vibe of finality here, right? Because all the other candidates have dropped out. I guess Tulsi Gabbard is still in the race as well uh but you know we still have a lot of time left lots and

lots and it sort of reminds me of like you ever go to like the rental car place and they have like one rental car left and they wheel it around they go here it is and you're like i'm gonna drive that to california like yes you are and like there's a lot of road to make up here and a lot of sort of, you know, unforeseen circumstances and obviously a president who is,

plays by a different set of rules and I just feel like, I like that. Plays by a different set of rules. It sounds like a CBS drama.

It does. Yeah, that's what's on CBS. Dennis Farina stars as, following young Sheldon. Yeah, that's what's on CBS. Dennis Farina stars as... Following young Sheldon. But, you know, what I'm saying is that I just feel like, you know, we are really, really in the early days here still,

as much as everyone wants to make their big proclamation about what it means for America. I feel like it's going to get really wacky. The two subplots left are, does Warren pledge her allegiance to one or the other because if she pledges her allegiance to biden i think that probably kills bernie unless he can flip it in a debate in a significant way because then it's him against the entire democratic establishment then the second one is Obama. And I think he's been hesitant to come in

because, you know, Bernie's got a really rabid fan base and he, you know, he's one of those, one of those, Hey, yeah, I made the best person win. And you know, he's wants Biden to win, but he's not going to come out and say that when once Biden locks it down, Obama's going to come in hard behind him. And that's going to really help biden i think that's the best asset biden has what did we hear the other day that obama had not come out and he didn't come out and say anything but he had given this kind of wink to people around him because it because it got a little you know okay now you can now you can go support biden do you think Obama, I feel like this is the biggest black mark on his legacy, really, for this century, is him not thinking enough about who is coming after him and how to shape the party and all that stuff. Where, you know, he should have been thinking about that in 15 and 16. And I always felt like a lot of that last year was about how do I leave the office shaping with the perception of what my eight

years were like and not, Hey, I got to pass the baton here to somebody good. It's almost like a CEO, like what Bob Iger is doing right now, leaving Disney. He's put real thought into who he's passing the baton to because he wants Disney to keep succeeding. I don't feel like Obama did that. He was all in on Hillary. Is that my, my, my memory here is that he was all in on Hillary and did not want Biden to run against Hillary because he was like, as the democratic quote unquote establishment was, right? Hillary, Hillary's the candidate. When do you think he was all in on that, though? When it became clear she was going to win?

Or sooner than that? Oh, I think sooner than that. There's part of this also that, you know, there's a long tradition of like sitting presidents and even ex-presidents, you know, they're supposed to keep a respectful distance, especially from the early primary machinations. And that like for Obama to pronounce his support of one

candidate in early days, which just, that just was not the way that he wanted to do things. And I think they made that abundantly clear going in. I think I read, though, there was a New Yorker piece or somewhere where, you know, he has been having audiences with all the candidates at certain points, you know, just sort of advising them about, you about, or asking them why they wanted to run in the first place. So I think that he's enjoying kind of having that distance, but I don't think you're going to see him make a significant physical interaction with the campaign until much later.

Plus he had to spend time with Pete Buttigieg so he could steal all of his mannerisms and his voice. Do you think that Obama- CGI Obama. I was fascinated by Obama at the All-Star game and how he was all around it. Obviously, it was Chicago, his town, he loves basketball and so on.

But what are Obama's NBA ambitions? Is it ownership? Could he be commissioner? Do you think he would ever do anything like that in any kind of official capacity with the league? I think ownership... I know for a fact if it was the right ownership group,

he would jump in. It can't be Chicago. It's not going to be the Bulls. Well, because they'll never sell because they're just printing money there. Yeah. But, you know,

I think he would. I think most celebrities and former players would jump at the chance to be involved with the team. And it's actually a really smart move for an ownership group. But it's, so it's as an owner though, not as a commissioner or something like that. So he just doesn't want, he don't want to do anything. You're an owner. Essentially, you don't really do much. I don't see any scenario where

Adam Silver is not the commissioner 12, 15 years from now, unless something terrible happens. Yeah. But we don't think Obama, but if he's an owner, that's pretty much a, you know, it's a nice thing. You see him at courtside, you see him in the box and all that stuff, but it's not like, that to me is kind of like

even less of a thing than making Netflix shows. Yeah, but you could say, I mean, it's cool. It would be cool. You could say if he's an NBA owner though, let's say he does like the Derek Jeter model

where he puts in 50 million, but he is the majority. The team's biggest star. Not he does like the Derek Jeter model where he puts in 50 million, but he is the majority of the team's biggest, not that part of the Derek Jeter battle where he kills baseball in Florida. The part where Derek Jeter put in 25 million, had a bunch of rich guys back them and is the controlling owner of the team, even though they only put up 25 million. If Obama did that, I would say the bigger question would be, what forces of good could come of this beyond just being an owner of an NBA team and having that be a good business investment? How do I help shape a league into being a leading social and cultural force, not just for the country, but for the world? And is that the right use of my time? I disagree slightly in this respect. I think that he is actually quite interested in the granular

aspects of NBA. Like, I think that he is the kind of person who would like to be in trade talks and have at least a briefing on that kind of stuff. I mean, if you watched Obama do that, was it some sort of like, you know, there was the interaction with Zion, but he knows everybody. He's watching everybody. The guy probably watches as much NBA as anybody on the ringer. He's prepped. You know,

he wants to know. He listens to the ringer. He listens to the ringer. We know this. Multiple accounts. Great. Wow. Yeah.

Maybe he listens to the press box. Who knows? I'm not sure I knew that. Yeah, he does. Wow. Yeah. I have a last question,

sports media, which is that where does Brady make the announcement? How? My podcast, March 17th. Come on. I should do this, Stephen A. Smith. Come on my podcast, you coward, Tom Brady.

You know there has to be a plan. Come on and represent yourself. He's got to have some media strategy plan. You know that there's something being cooked up. Oh, 100%. Clark and I talked about this on Tuesday. The most fun version of this story is him going to the Cowboys, right? Oh, yeah.

For just content? Jerry backstabbing Kraft. Yes. Dak suddenly being a free agent. Tom Brady going to America's team. All the Cowboys fans who hate the Patriots and hate Tom Brady doing an immediate 180 what a moment that's the all time fun

most fun sports story and then also Kyle we'd never see him again I hope he does it on St. Patrick's Day Kyle would we see you again? what kind of drinking binge would happen that night? I don't even know Brian

were he to become a cowboy how much of a honeymoon would he get that's a good question two and four what happens then I would say oh and one

it's like oh my god Brady's washed up I think it'd be a panic yeah there'd be a quick panic button because everything he did would be every ESPN show, right? First take would be first segment, second segment, probably half the third segment,

then take a break, talk about something else, and then back to the Cowboys and Tom Brady. Well, that's the thing. If he goes to LA, it's like, oh, Brady's in LA. Cool. Well, there's no Chargers fans here. There's not one. Nobody cares.

It would be cool for him, I'm sure, to live in a city with celebrities for two years. His family wouldn't be able to come. They'd have to stay on the East Coast. I don't know whether that's a good thing or a bad thing for him. But Dallas, if you're just talking legacy and you're talking about not spending your entire career in one place and all the benefits that come from that

and you're going to another team, this is not Emmitt Smith going in one place and all the benefits that come from that. And you're going to another team. This is not Emmitt Smith going to the Cardinals. This is not OJ ending up on a crappy Niners team, et cetera, et cetera. This is like, all right, I left the Patriots. I won six Super Bowls there. And for my last act, I went to America's team. And I was a Dallas Cowboy for two years in the biggest franchise in all of professional sports.

Yeah. That's the noisiest option. Yeah. It seems to me the most sentimental option would be the Freaky Friday switcheroo with Jimmy Garoppolo and having him go to the Niners and then Garoppolo back to New England. I find that actually the most appealing. So Kyle signed off on that option.

No, he didn't. Kyle, admit it. You signed off on that. Yeah, yeah, it's fine. It's better than nothing signed off on that. Yeah, yeah, it's fine. It's better than nothing. Don't do the yeah, yeah, it's fine. No, we feel like we'd get duped, right? We talked about this the other day.

It was like the opposite of buying low and selling high, right? Right. But I like them. But if Brady left, that's the only acceptable option for you. Although you would, Jacoby Brissett coming back, you wouldn't be 100% against either. No. Or Dak.

Here's a question. Would you root for Brady to win another Super Bowl in San Francisco, Kyle? Like, could you do the Ray Bork thing? Not a problem. No problem at all. I would only do it if the Pats were out. Didn't Boston have a parade for Ray Bork?

When he won a Stanley Cup at Avalanche? We don't talk about the Ray Bork, how we handled that. Did that really happen? I was living in, but that was when Jerry Callahan was calling us Losertown. And it was just a lot of dark shit happened. Parcells left. Len Bias and Reggie Lewis. Hockey, the owner had ruined the hockey team.

A parade? The Red Sox. We had an avalanche parade in Boston, yeah. It was way worse. Trust me, it was way worse than that. Every sports bar in Boston was filled with people watching Avalanche games like they were Bruins games. It was really sad.

That's like if Dallas had a parade for Tony Romo's new contract. It was even worse than that. Because he had left a year and a half earlier, but we were just down in the dumps. And that's what made this century ironic. Where it was like, we can't win anything anymore.

Let's root for Ray Bork. That's how sad it was. Let's root for Ray Bork. At least we'll have this. You don't think somebody in Austin is going to open a Niner's bar if Brady goes to San Francisco. Try to capitalize on the sentiment. I think so.

People love Brady. Yeah. He could pull it off, right? The DeFleke thing pushed it to another level and really made it like an us-against-them thing with Brady. And now if he left, and I think that part of the reason he's been doing this whole dramatic thing for so long,

I still think he stays. But part of the reason he's put up the drama is because it seems like he's been doing this whole dramatic thing for so long, I still think he stays. But part of the reason he's played up the drama is because it seems like he's preparing people for the chance that he might leave. And he's leaking like, well, you know, I've been underpaid for a long time and blah, blah, blah. But it is such a bizarre construct compared to like,

people want to say it's like, you know, Durant and his decision or LeBron's decision. But like, he's 43. This is so weird compared to those situations. This is not somebody at the peak of their powers. I mean, you know. I know, but if you think about him like a celebrity holding on to his last vestige of his prime,

like almost like he's an actor, you know. Think how many weird decisions actors make. Like what made Johnny Depp want to do the fourth Pirates of the Penzance movie? Whatever the fuck it is. Pirates of the Caribbean. I've never seen any of them. But like when Ben Affleck

became Batman, why'd he do that? Things were going so well. Why are you trying to be Batman, Ben Affleck? He's like, ah, fuck it, I'll do it. Maybe Brady's just like, ah, fuck it.

I'm tired of being underpaid, I'm going to another team. It'd be like if Johnny Carson, you know, in 90, whenever he retired in 91, 92, had gone to like CBS. You know, I'm tired of being underpaid I'm going to another team it'd be like if Johnny Carson you know in 90 whenever he retired 91-92 had gone to like CBS you know I'm going to do one more contract or Letterman or Kobe had gone to the

Knicks for the last two years of his career like would that have would what have happened in the last six weeks would it have been 100% of what happened if he just kind of ended his career in the fucking Knicks for no reason? Having remembered Emmett to the Cardinals and

Tony Dorsett to the Broncos, right? Oh, that was brutal. I think people would forget. I think people forget about the little end note like that. I hope you're right, because I was talking to somebody who was talking about, a diehard Pats fan friend of mine, who's still mad Adam Vinatieri left

and went to Indianapolis. And we were talking about Brady and the Brady legacy. And he was saying, Adam Vinatieri, if he stayed, if he was the kicker from 1996 till now, for 25 years, he's the kicker. He's actually in the conversation with Brady and Belichick in a weird way.'s actually in the conversation with Brady and Belichick

in a weird way we're just talking about the Brady Belichick Vin and Thierry Pats and it was like never would have paid for a drink in Boston again he would have owned

25 sports bars called Adams or Adams Sports Bar and Grill he just would have been this eternal hero and he fucking

went to the Colts and he gave that up and I know he made a little more money and he's had a great career he's going to the Colts and he gave that up and I know he made a little more money and he's had a great career he's gone to the Hall of Fame first ballot but had he stayed

this whole time his whole career is different and the legacy of it and so I I don't know I do think this stuff matters for Brady he's

you know it's hard to compare him to anything but Belichick totally would have cut Vinatieri like 10 years ago by the way he would have probably poisonedatieri like 10 years ago, by the way. He would have probably poisoned him.

Yeah, yeah. Here's somebody who's not sentimental. Bill Belichick. Well, that's why Vinatieri left. But, you know, I do think it matters to be in the... I remember when Yaz retired and we had Yaz Day and Yaz is like, you know, plowing through Marlboro Reds on the bench

in 23. But it was, you know, heowing through Marlboro Reds on the bench in 23. But it was, you know, he was our guy. He played for the Red Sox his entire career. You know, I don't know. That stuff matters. I don't think it matters to Brady as much the legacy part. I think this

really does seem like there's some sort of justice at play here with him. Mm-hmm. Yep. I've been in a bullet for this long and I'm not doing it anymore. You're going to pay me what I'm worth. really does seem like there's some sort of justice at play here with him. I've bitten a bullet for this long and I'm not doing it anymore. You're going to pay me what I'm worth and you're getting me weapons. Sorry, Jason. Yeah, no, I mean, one part of this I find funny is this suggestion that he has so many options. But if you really look at them in sharp relief, they're not that great options.

The one that makes the most sense logically is staying in New England. And so when you start from that standpoint, are there people out there who are making the argument that the Titans is actually marginally a better destination from a football standpoint? I guess you could do that, but they have free agency concerns of their own. I find it kind of funny that we're all kind of hanging in the balance if Tom Brady goes to the LA Chargers. This is what he wants. The last thing is Raiders. I know, he wants it. He craves that kind of thing. Two straight podcasts. I've talked about it now. This is what he wanted.

You dick! Brian. Brady and the Cowboys. I just, I mean. I'd be dead what's the first 20 minutes like after

Brady the Cowboys happens I just can't imagine it because the Cowboys it's just who cares the Cowboys are just such a

content machine look what's happened to the Knicks this week the Cowboys are like that even more you know just anything they do they're our number one. They're our number one content machine.

Absolutely. They really have no playoff success at all for the last 25 years and they're treated like the six time champs. Yeah.

Yeah. Well, I think the first thing that happens is that Eric Shanks calls the NFL and says, uh, I'll have all 16 of those,

please. Thank you. I'll just take the whole Cowboys schedule. Yeah. I don't care about the rest of stuff. Just give me 16 those, please. Thank you. I'll just take the whole Cowboys schedule. You'll take the whole schedule, yeah. Yeah, I don't care about the rest of the stuff. Just give me 16 Cowboy games. Thank you.

Could Fox, could they pay Brady under the table like 20 million bucks to come to the Cowboys? Why not? Hey, Tom, in your mailbox tomorrow, there's going to be a check. Just cash it. But yeah, I mean, for Fox, that would be, that would lead to some of the

highest rated football games, regular season football games of all time. Al's definitely not going to Monday Night Football. The Patriots are going to be on Sunday night. Joe Buck wins the lottery. Aikman is in a weird place. An eternal cowboy defender.

Now he has to defend Tom Brady. He's kind of killed the Cowboys last year. Which part? Defender? Not of the front office. He's been critical. Oh, not of the front office. I mean, he wouldn't criticize Dak Prescott. He doesn't criticize the players.

The Aikman-Brady, that'd be fascinating. Because I think Aikman was quick on the draw on Deflategate, if I remember correctly. He had some, you know, critical... That would be a fascinating dynamic. Oh, we remember. Yeah, I was going to say. Also remember Chris Collinsworth bringing it up with like seven minutes left in the Seattle pass game. You can't see this, Jason. Bill's got it.

He just brought out a list. I'm still mad about Deflategate. Well, the good thing about Deflategate for Patriots fans is that, you know, the Astros have just kind of like broken the world record by 50 minutes. So like the whole notion of like deflating a football by, you know, a half a gram of pressure, that doesn't really feel like a scandal when it's matched up against someone pounding on a garbage can to alert about a fastball.

It just, yeah. Yeah, the Astros are Bob Beeman. They're like, the Astros jump 30 feet? It will never be broken, yes. What? Yeah. How high was the altitude? Yeah, it won't be broken,

and it kind of puts everything, I mean, look, you're getting a whole run of like, you know, put Pete Rose in the Hall of Fame in the trail of this. So, you know, it's just, it's set a new standard. Hot take, best thing that could have happened to baseball. I kind of feel that way too. When did we talk about baseball and spring training? I believe that. I really do. Honestly, what was the last spring training conversation you've had with anyone about anything? Well, and the other part of it is that like,

there is a little bit of an insincerity when people get so upset about the Astros, like sort of bungling the apology. Because had the Astros come out and just been completely contrite and really nailed the apology and gone into great detail about how sad and embarrassed and mortified and apologetic they were, we all kind of would have sat around and been like, oh, okay, all right, fine. But the fact that they were defiant and klutzy and all that, that just kicks the story into a whole different gear. So I feel like there's undeniably good press, bad press part of this. Correa was my favorite. Jose Altuve did nothing.

He was not part of this. He's a good man. But Alex Bregman, he's a scumbag. I mean, what was... He's just singling out this one guy who's nice, not defending any other teammate. I enjoyed all of it. Can you imagine if that had been a football story?

Just the magnitude of that. Oh, my God. I love that Houston is now America's villain between that and the Rockets. Everybody just is mad at the Rockets all the time. As a North Texan, I'm delighted. Finally, the world understands a little bit. You did not bring up the fact that the NBA media picks on the NBA and ruins the NBA.

Oh, that was our last topic. I was quickly on Houston. They talked about this a little during the election, a little bit on Dallas's corner. There's a lot of fastest growing state in Texas stuff with Houston. Tough beat for Dallas. It is. And it's a rivalry that the world does not appreciate enough.

Yeah, Dallas has to step it up. I don't know what you need, but you need something. You appreciate the choir here. Don't let Houston just take your Texas corner. I'm not. No.

I don't feel like you are a little bit. Not on my watch. I feel like you're taking something rolled over for these Houston people. No, but I'm referring to Daryl's comments. Yeah, no, I know.

What was that? I texted you about that yesterday because I'm like, I'm sorry, who is the TV announcer who's running down the Rockets? It's got to be Van Gundy. Maybe. I wish he had said podcast host. I would have been like, I'm right here. Right, I know that part of it.

Yeah, he takes it very personally. They're winning and succeeding with this goofy style, goofy formula and whatever strategy they've done. And he doesn't understand why people take it personally. He really is genuinely confused by it. My attitude is, well, you shoot 53's a game and not everybody enjoys that

sorry yeah and if you win an NBA title that's a great way to shut everybody up or even go to the NBA finals

maybe well also isn't part of the fun of being a heretic like that people don't get you and they yell at you and they get mad and then you get your

revenge I mean like that you should welcome that kind of anger that's how I feel Daryl Morey's saying I don't get you and they get mad and then you get your revenge. I mean, like that, you should welcome that kind of anger. That's how I feel. Daryl Morey's saying I don't get enough respect from the media, too.

Did he say that? Well, no, but that's the implication. The announcers, you know, the announcers don't like me, you know, don't like the style of play and all this. I mean, Daryl Morey, dork Elvis doesn't get enough love. Well, yeah, but he drew this parallel. I think he said this, that you would not find a comparable situation in the NFL

where somebody would be playing, I think, three yards in a cloud of dust football and that you wouldn't hear Tony Romo running down a team for their style of play. I think the equivalent in the NFL would be if, like what Tennessee was doing with Derrick Henry, where just like ball control. But that was great. No, no, but I'm saying if there was some way to do even

a crazier version of that where you're almost like stalling, and you're just trying to shorten the game in half and do all these tricks, and you're doing what was that trick Vrabel did where he just kept taking a penalty to- Right, the punt penalty, right, yeah, yeah. If you had some strategy where it's like, we're not good enough to win a 60-minute game, but if we make it a 32-minute game, our odds have increased.

So we're going to do all these ways to ruin the games we play. People would get mad at that. Or the high school thing, like some of those high schools do, where you always go for it on every fourth down, even if you're at your own five yard line or whatever i think that would make people mad i think announcers would get mad yeah i think they would i think or i think they would say like this is dumb this isn't gonna work you know i just feel the rockets are a generation gap i really do i feel like there's a you know an age of a person i think over 40 you're kind of like, huh. And I think there's a whole generation of younger NBA fans who are fired up about it.

And then there's the three guys running for president who's like, Basko, I can't believe this three-point line. What is this? All right. We can read Jason

in the Wall Street Journal. That's right. We can read Brian Curtis on TheRinger.com. You have something this week, maybe? I think so. You and I have been texting back and forth. Something might come out of the oven.

It might. Thing of cupcakes. And you can hear The Press Box, an excellent podcast. Thank you. David! David! You and David Shoemaker.

The Sports Reporters, we are done for winter 2020. Thanks for coming on, guys. Thank you. Thanks. Thanks to ZipRecruiter. Thanks to The Neff. Thanks to Brian Curtis and Jason Gay.

We have Sunday night. Me and Rossello are back yet again. And then a couple of announcements of some new Ringer podcasts coming, I think, Monday or Tuesday. So stay tuned for that as well. Enjoy the weekend. On the wayside On the first of November I don't have to ever