The Herd with Colin Cowherd - The Herd Saturday Special Podcast: 02/16/2019

Episode Date: February 16, 2019

Colin talks with The Ringer's Bryan Curtis about Bob Costas taking a shot at the NFL on his way out the door at NBC.  The NFL liking the AAF stealing viewers from other sports and the some media experimentation around baseball in this exclusive podcast.  Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Welcome to our Saturday morning podcast. A lot of times during the NFL season, we'll bring on people to talk RJ Bell to talk about, you know, numbers. And then over the course of the summer, in the spring sometimes, we just bring in people that are interesting. there's media topics. And I thought I'd bring in Brian Curtis, who's the editor at large for the ringer,

a host of the Press Box podcast. And there's a couple of things today I wanted to talk about. I want to start with this, Brian, specifically. Bob Costas, who's going to, you know, he's a Hall to Fame baseball guy. He walks into a room in baseball. He's an iconic, legendary, beloved figure. He's never had that relevance in the NFL.

So he talked about a growing ambivalence toward the NFL, you know, toward the later part of his career with NBC. And he wanted to do, and it cost us, so it would have been a smartly crafted, poignant commentary on the Super Bowl, either halftime or pregame, about CTE and about the damages that, you know, concussions and football can do to people. And my takeaway on this, Brian, I'll throw you my takeaway and you can respond to it,

is that there's a different relationship between a newspaper, Washington Post, New York Times, and the White House, than there is between a broadcast network NBC and the NFL. That is a business relationship. And there are certain stipulations that I know as a broadcaster going in. I was surprised that Costas, because he's not a naive guy, would think the Super Bowl was a time for that commentary. For instance, Bob's a baseball guy in the early 90s,

steroids were not only a baseball problem. There were kids committing suicide. It was a high school baseball steroid problem. I don't think Costas would have been well served or baseball or the viewers for Bob to do a right before game seven. Here's why steroids are bad for baseball. All right, Vin, take away the play by play. I think it would have been inappropriate completely on the biggest stage. I think a broadcaster has a right on his personal time to have opinions about anything.

But you can't trade that on the biggest. showcase event, be it the World Series and steroid talk right before the first pitch, or the Super Bowl concussion talk. So that's my takeaway on it. How does that land for you? It's an interesting question of whether you should do it on the Super Bowl. I actually go back to a Fox example a couple of years ago when we had our first season of the kneeling football players, right? Right. Not as existential an issue for the NFL, but certainly an explosive, divisive issue for the NFL. And I remember in the Fox pre game, Joe Buck doing a very respectful piece on Colin Kaepernick and

company and saying, look, whether you agree or not with him, this is an important message and this is something we should talk about. This is in the Super Bowl pregame. And the next segment, Colin, no joke, it was an interview with Donald Trump who was, you know, talking obviously about the kneeling guy. So I think there's a way to sort of say, look, if this is an overwhelming topic that we just have to touch on in some way we can do it. Now, if it's Somebody's saying, look, I think the NFL is doomed because of brain injuries. And obviously you and I know that's not going to work when you're a rights holder.

And you're right. It's different than the White House. It's totally different. Yeah, I mean, listen. The White House, Maggie Haberman is not paying, is not in a financial relationship with Donald Trump. Yeah. To do White House coverage. On the herd.

On the herd, I can have any opinion I want and I've been critical of the NFL and praise them. But on Fox NFL kickoff on Sunday, I am highly produced. and my producers will say, and I've always seen that show as kind of a celebration of football. It is not The Hurt. It's not my show. It's not a Bob Costa having his own radio show, you know, or being at a town hall meeting or being on a guest on a radio show.

It is now the NFL's property in conjunction with the network, and those shows are highly produced. I'll be on the NFL, I'll be on the Super Bowl pregame show next year for Fox. That's not my platform. My platform's the herd. And so when I go on my Sunday show, the rules change. And I'm totally okay with that. I'm not naive.

I'm comfortable with it. So that's why I'm, you know, I kind of feel like Bob had a growing ambivalence about football. He's never been quite the football revered figure as he is the baseball revered figure. And, you know, maybe that war on him. And I'm not discounting his concerns about football and all the other things, you know, the concussion CTE stuff. But I do think for a seasoned host and. broadcaster. He does the Olympics in the NFL. You got to know, you're going to get major pushback on that. Yeah. And I, you know, I came away, honestly, from that ESPN piece with more questions,

I think, than I did answers about this. Because, look, Bob is, as you say, not only a legendary broadcaster, but specifically the golden boy of NBC, right? NBC sports, you think Bob costs for the last 20 years, along with Dick Inberg, Al Michaels, those guys. I just think, Look, what happened with Michelle Beatle, your old co-partner, when she said on ESPN, I no longer watch football, right? They didn't fire her or get rid of her. They said, okay, you're our basketball person. That's okay. We'll find out we like you.

There's another job for you. And why couldn't Bob Costas, who really had a small role on Sunday night football? Right. He was sort of there because it was, let's find something for Bob Costas to do in our number one sports event. Why couldn't he just do the Olympics? Why couldn't he do something else? And that's why I almost think there is a larger story here about Bob Costas and network television as much as Bob Costas in the NFL. I'm with you.

I find his – I have talked to him about this. I find his viewpoints about the NFL and brain injuries completely sincere. He is sincere about this. He is real about this. But he's also a guy. I think if I said anything about Costas over his career, it'd be that he is pitch perfect for network sports, right? He understood how far you could go on television exactly where that line that you're talking about that magic line that broadcasters have in their head. He knows where that is, right?

So for him to go purposefully over the line, and he was definitely doing it on purpose, you have to think, I just think there is a larger Bob and network television got out of think somehow. And to me, that's kind of the background music to this that is way beyond the NFL stuff. Well, and Dick Ebersol, Eversal, Eversal left NBC, right? His son now running A-AF with Bill Polion. And I think when that relationship was over, you brought in people at NBC who didn't have the gravitas or power. Maybe Costas doesn't have the same relationship.

I think if he'd have gone to Ebersol and said, I'm going to do this commentary before the Super Bowl, Ebersoll would have grabbed him and thrown about the 18th floor of NBC Rockefeller Center in New York. Said, Bob, what are you out of your mind? You're crazy. Brian Curtis. editor at large for the ringer, host of the prospect of podcast.

I do see where the, you know, and I've talked about this not really on my show as much because my show, because it's simulcast on cable is, and I think I told you this, it's more reductive. Today, on Friday, I can do just a radio show and I can talk about far more topics because I'm not beholden to a cable TV rating where the next day I get minute-to-minute breakdowns on what works and what doesn't. And I do feel, so this is a topic that I, that I don't get to address enough, but I think it's a real thing.

The media, by and large, it's almost like comedians. It's funnier to make fun of rich people. It doesn't matter who it is. People in power are who comedians make fun of. It's not fun to be the ally. It's not funny to say, hey, I love Mitt Romney. He's rich. So the NFL is powerful.

And so they should have to deal with some crap. The NBA is less powerful. But I do think it's funny. So the NFL Combine is going to be broadcast on ABC this year. So the commissioner of the NFL is now getting measurements, cone drills on network television. Goodell has changed the rules appropriately. It's an incredibly nimble league in terms of catch rule.

Let's flip it. Baseball struggles with that. Overtime, let's flip it. A.T. Let's flip it. It's an incredibly nimble sport that way. The draft has become a multi-day broadcast network show, multiple networks. Is it possible that the media, like comedians, always pushing on power, which is probably an incredibly healthy thing, has never given Goodell a fair shake. Whereas the NBA with Adam Silver, the underdog in that battle, you got a tanking issue. The draft is a two-player event. They're not getting their combine on network television.

You've got a situation now where New Orleans has a franchise that they shouldn't, it is a disaster what's happening there. Stars only want to play for four teams. You've got a parody, top heavy league. Is the media a little tone deaf? Now, tone deaf's the wrong way, Brian. This is too long of a question. Goodell gets ripped by the media. Silver gets a pass when, frankly, look at what the consumer gets with Goodell. It's a hell of a product. I think the media has always put way too much into personal style with commissioners, right? And we see the difference.

Adam Silver is the guy who would jump on the phone or jump in front of a microphone and say just the right thing. When I say right thing, the thing that kind of your intelligent media cognizanty wants to hear, right, about a given issue. Roger Goodell is the guy who stood in front of microphones at the Super Bowl in Atlanta, and I was there, and for 45 minutes wouldn't admit in any kind of satisfying way that the refs got the call wrong in New Orleans, which we all saw with their own eye, right? And that was really the first time Goodell had talked all year, because we know the NFL strategy now is not to put Goodell in front of an interview situation, but basically to kind of keep him away from the microphones because people get mad every time he talks. It's an interesting question you say, I think there's something to that. And I think a lot of us bag on the NFL, bag on the owners, bag on, as you say, the number one team, the number one sport in America, and then take all the clicks of the NFL gives us, right? We're going to spend the next two months talking about whether Kyler Murray is a viable NFL quarterback.

At the same time, we're saying the NFL has X, Y, and Z problem. But to me, I just think people invest so much in personal style. And look, that is kind of nuts. you're right. They paper over a problem in the NBA in New Orleans. But at the same time, aren't these guys politicians, right? And isn't personal style an important part

of their arsenal? You know, that was Pete Roselle, right? That was, you know, to a lesser extent, Paul Tagli you could probably pick a couple of baseball guys, Bart Giamatti, guys like that. But I just think Gadell's he's had a lot of problems but one of his biggest problems

with the media specifically has been his inability just to connect to people on a personal level. His inability to go in front of a microphone and say, look, I got this, right? I'll figure, we'll figure, where the NFL will figure this out, I'm in charge here. He just doesn't project that. We'll get back to Brian in a second, but first, Robin Hood is an investing app that lets you buy and sell stocks, ETFs, options, and cryptos all commission free. While other brokerages charge up to $10 for every trade, Robin Hood doesn't charge any commission fees so you can trade stocks and keep all your profits.

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but the WNBA exists because the NBA wants it to exist. Maybe socially it's a good thing. It's a good thing for our daughters. And, you know, it's a good thing to support women's basketball. My daughter played. If I ran the NBA, I would support the WNBA. But it's not, it's not, you know, its numbers are going up. But it's never been, basically the NBA co-signs on the house, right?

They couldn't pay their own mortgage. Mom and dad co-sign on the house. That's what the NBA is doing. To some degree of the NBA, NBA, it loses money. but it works because the NBA wants it to work. I think the NFL wants spring football to work, and I'll tell you why. February, March, April. They want less NBA talk.

And they see the growing social media influence and momentum and avalanche of the NBA. And you put a spring football league in there with Vince McMahon or a Bill Pollian. I think those leagues could converge in five or ten years. And for February and March and early April, guys like me and a lot of people on social media are going to talk football more than basketball. I really believe the NFL wants spring football to work and it's a minor league system A and it dings the NBA.

I really, because I think leagues can make anything work, virtually anything work they want to work. Your thoughts? Yeah, I am inclined to agree. The one thing I'd say is they have to figure out a way to connect it to the NFL in some way or at least college football, right? I want, to me, watching that, I watched that on Saturday, and I had a good time and I enjoyed it. Yeah.

I don't know that I'm going to rush back this Saturday and find out wherever CBSSN is on my cable dial, which I'm not sure I know. But if, look, if you told me Johnny Mansell is in the league, Brian, I'd say, whoa, I'll check that. If you told me kind of Jay Cutler is wandering out there out of shape and, you know, trying to come back to the NFL, I said, oh, okay. Hey, Kaepernick, I would watch Kaepernick. of course I would. Totally. And if you told me, look, the Cowboys backup quarterback has been sent to this league to work on his craft. And as a Cowboys fan, you need to watch this because this guy could be playing snaps next year.

If Jack Prescott gets hurt, I'd watch that, right? Because that's directly connected to the NFL. To me, this is, they really need the NFL's official blessing, right? It can't just be, this is spring football and we don't mind this. it sort of needs some kind of tie. But look, you're right. I mean, obviously, it's weird to me also, by the way, to say we don't have spring football in America. We do.

It's the draft, right? It's the combine. Right. It's the Kyler Murray. How many Kyler Murray segments are we going to get on the herd in the next two months? No, I put Lincoln Riley on this week. You know, I think it's fascinating. There's a push, there's a pull, baseball.

And, you know, I think he's the classic great. debate and opinion show topic. Will he make it? Will he not make it? The clunky Dan Patrick interview. Oh, my Lord. A small guy running. There's so many angles on that.

It's for guys like me in the opinion space, Kyler Murray is a great topic. Mm-hmm. And I tend to think he'll be a first-round pick. Some think the number one pick. Again, like Baker Mayfield. Not my guy I draft number one, but I would draft him if I needed a quarterback at some point.

Do you think he'll work? I think Conler Murray will work to some degree in the NFL. But it's the ultimate topic right because he's totally divisive. He's an amazing college football player, no matter what. He comes in high profile. He turns down baseball, right? The ultimate metaphor that like of sports right now, right, you walk away from baseball to have a chance, however small of being a successful NFL quarterback.

You know, that's sports in a nutshell right now. Yeah. And yeah, but, you know, when I see that, I just think. The NFL still has a lot of the offseason. We look at Twitter and say, okay, the NBA is making inroads. But, you know, I just think, you know, look, the Pro Bowl had a bigger rating than a lot of NBA playoff games will be. Kyler Murray will do better numbers than a lot of NBA segments this offseason. So, you know, I think the NFL still does have a huge toll.

Brian Curtis, editor-at-large, the ringer host of the PressBlock podcast. I'm going to throw this edge. I thought this was interesting. And again, this is not a topic I'd use on my show. And that's why I like this Saturday podcast. So the Boston Red Sox had a fine announcer Tim Nevers. And they got rid of him. And they decided this year they want to take, and baseball is going to freak out about this because baseball is into lore and it's history.

And it struggles with new stuff. Hell, it struggles if a player's flashy. It's struggle with Yssel Pweig. It's a very traditional sport. I mean, I don't know how many segments I supported Yassieel Pueg saying he missed a cutoff guy. Who cares? You know, he's giving you 27 jacks, 90 RBIs, and I take my kids to the game, and he's the only kid, he's the only player they care about. So the Red Sox are going out, and they're going to kind of shift the paradigm of how to broadcast a baseball game.

They're going to bring on opinion people. Chris Berman, local people on WEEI radio. And I can just see, I'm not going to mention names, I can just see radio in deeply embedded baseball people. hating this and cringing. But, but this is where I think the NBA and the NFL beat baseball. Exploratory, experimental. I mean, David Stern came out with a new ball. I mean, literally the NBA, I'm going to change the ball.

It didn't work, but baseball is struggle sometimes moving off tradition. What do you make of the idea that bringing opinion people, Chris Berman, to a broadcast booth, the Red Sox, really shifting the way you do it instead of the traditional ball two outside. What do you make of the whole move by EEI? I like experimentation, and I agree with you that baseball, especially in terms of broadcasting, has been locked into this old-timey, Vince Scully, Mel Allen, Ernie Harwell kind of mode probably for too long. I would say that I don't know if radio is the right the way this is really going to hit. Because what is a baseball radio telecast, right?

It's comfort food. If you love baseball, if you love the Red Sox, that's what you have on when you're driving around. Or maybe if you're a radio fiend you have on your home at night, right? To me, I almost want to see the television version of this. You know, I want to see ESPN doing it with Sunday Night Baseball. I want to see a fun game on Fox. It's not, you know, a hugely important pennant race game where they bring in some fun and different kind of announcers. I almost think you can do this on television.

and have an even bigger pop, right? Say, we're going to have two guys who are opinion guys on television talking over the game, right? We're going to have a special guest commentator who maybe somebody who's active in MLB on his off day is going to come in and do color, things like that. Because I almost think that the radio baseball is still in that kind of sacred space of, this is comfort food, this is what I like, this is me getting me through the night. And, you know, Chris Berman being on there might be fun once, but he doesn't make it. sense in my world. But yeah, I'm with you. I'm for experimentation. And I think we can't, we cannot,

baseball cannot just keep doing it the same way, broadcast way. They have to figure something else. Yeah, I mean, it's like Jessica Mendoza on Sunday Night Baseball. People, people that don't even listen and watch baseball, go to Twitter and rip her. It's like people. You don't give a rip about, you won't, you don't watch Sunday Night Baseball. Stop, stop giving your defiant opinion in this referendum that she doesn't work. I've watched her. She's fine. I don't think she's smoltz, you know, but it's fine. It doesn't, it doesn't, I don't turn it on. I don't turn it off. I don't watch a ton of regular season baseball, to be honest with you, unless it's, you know, a Yankee Red Sox series. We'll get back to Brian in a second. But first, nobody should feel unsafe at home, period. Fear has no place in a place like home. That's been Simply Safe's mission from day one. You may have seen their commercial about it during big games this year. If you didn't, you can find it. online. Simply safe blankets your whole home with

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PressBock podcast. You know, speaking to Twitter, is that I, when the, when the Lakers got into that situation with the Pelicans, like Brian. and nobody won. Del Demp's didn't win. Magic didn't win. The NBA didn't win. Anthony Davis, clutch sports, LeBron. Everybody came out looking bad. And it goes to something, I believe, just as a business rule and a rule in life is try to stay out of unbalanced relationships. The Lakers are the biggest brand in the league. The Pelicans are a dumpster fire. And they just muddy the water and made the Lakers look bad, which later it appears to be exactly what they tried to do. one of the things about Twitter that I stay away from getting into engagement with people,

not because I don't want to, because it's an unbalanced relationship. Somebody out there getting me into a topic, they've got nothing to lose, I've got everything to lose, so I stay away overwhelmingly from Twitter engagement. It's unbalanced. What do you make of that? So I'm not going to say I never read my mentions. I do rarely, but I do. And maybe once a month, I'll go back and forth with somebody if they're polite and decent.

What do you make a Twitter and people of some level of renowned, a Brian Curtis, a Bill Simmons, you know, whoever it is, and engaging with the public. How do you use Twitter? What are your rules for? Well, I think it's interesting in 2019, right? Because remember when the whole internet journalism thing first started and it was kind of like when sports radio first started. And you're like, oh my gosh, the readers, the fans can interact with the host, right?

That was the spark of sports radio when it starts in the 80s and 90s, right? You can call in and give your opinion. It was the same with internet journalism in the early 2000s. You can leave a comment under the story, right? You get kind of equal co-billing with the writer. Then when Twitter starts a couple years later, you can interact with a person on Twitter. And I think that was kind of this kind of amazing moment. I also think it's a little bit like talk radio in the sense that it has now drawn back.

And we've seen it become, look, we don't like comment sections anymore. Big time writers are now, as you say, or big time media people are less inclined to get in a giant Twitter war with their fans or even just engage really at all. I see that more and more now. Yeah, Brian, I tried. I tried. And then I thought people aren't being honest here. They just want to start fires. I initially thought this would be a great place to connect with the audience.

It's the reason I stopped taking calls on radio, Brian, because people had no interest in getting it right. They just wanted to call and argue and be right. And so I thought there was no win in taking phone calls on radio. So, not to interrupt, but I gave it a try, and it just didn't work. Yeah, and I just almost think, remember, and again, just to push this metaphor a little bit, Twitter versus Twitter and then sports radio and it's early, you know, call-driven days, we now have a place where everybody can have a voice, right?

If you're a sports fan out there, you can have your own Twitter account, you can have your rivals, you know, dot-com membership. You can be on Facebook, Instagram, however you don't want to do it. It's almost like we're kind of retreating into our own silos, right? I'm retreating to my byline story. You are retreating to the herd. The person on the Internet is going to their Twitter account and talking to the 100 people who follow them or whatever. That's been a weird trend in media, right? We kind of opened it up for a while, and everybody was sort of on the same footing,

and now everybody's kind of retreating back to their own little place. And I sort of like that better. You know, look, if somebody writes to me and says, you are factually wrong about X, then I really like that because I don't want to be factually wrong about anything, right? And I want to go correct it and do it. Or if somebody says, you know, you wrote this is good, but you really missed an obvious point, which is X, Y, Z, than that, I genuinely value that. But in terms of getting into a crazy, you know, two-day argument, no, I don't care.

You know, Brian, I got into this discussion with a friend of mine, Tim Kuhn, who, you know, wrote my two books, co-wrote my books that I put out there. Really smart guy. And I called him a few weeks ago. And I said, you know, if I ran a newspaper, I was an editor, I would not allow the word bombshell would Trump. Russia. I said because after two years, none of them have landed. And I think it's been a disservice. Actually, I think it hurts the media because if you don't land a punch on Russia with Trump, you're giving Trump and his fake news belief huge benefit here. It's great for Trump. In fact, when the Mueller news came out and the Senate kind of like, we got nothing,

it actually his approval ratings on some polls went up. It validated fake. news is that my question to you, Brian, is if I ran a newspaper, I do not want outside of retweeting your previously written reports, I don't want you showing your hand increasingly with your political beliefs. It may empower you, but I think it erodes credibility. I find myself seeing people in the media who I respected being totally unhinged, on Twitter, and I've moved off reading them. I've moved away from their brand. I think there's a real argument, Brian, to be made that Twitter can be used a lot of different

ways, but it is hurting our political media, which seems just unhinged too often. Respond to that. We're talking about political writers here. We're not talking about sports writers. Right, right. Political writers. Yeah. more or less the rule for all of them, you know, at least it's like the major papers.

Like, you're not saying New York Times writers sort of go in on Trump. You know, they may be pointing out, I guess what the biggest change in my lifetime has been for those kind of what we would call elite political reporters is there are a lot more outspoken on Twitter now. Right. Remember just tweeting anything remotely controversial. I'm not even talking about your opinion. I just mean like anything controversial a couple of years ago would have gotten you fired from the New times almost. And now, you know, if they catch the White House in a lie or they catch a senator in a lie, they're really sort of grinding that axe on Twitter, you know, and kind of

being, because look, how do you play on Twitter, right? Factual and boring doesn't play on Twitter, right? Funny and dunking on powerful people to go back to your Roger Goodell point, plays well. So, you know, if you're a political reporter, you say, well, why can't I play in the sandbox, right? Why do I just have to give news? And that is almost always how they get trouble. Yeah, you know, it's funny. The media, I think, thinks it empowers them, but it weakens them. It makes them look snarky. And in the case of the bombshell Mueller, it validates the wrong side. They're trying to diffuse and empower themselves. And instead it hurts the media where the trust level goes down. It's like the guy who buys the red corvette. He thinks it makes him look

cool. And he looks like a dork. It's like a 58-year-old guy having a midlife crisis. Twitter's similarity is the Red Corvette for a 55-year-old guy. You think it empowers you, but it makes me look at you and actually kind of buy into the Trump fake news thing, and I'm not a Trump guy. Yeah, to me, I guess when I find it funny, it's when somebody breaks out of their Just the Fax, ma'am, kind of mold, and I say, no, no, I like you as a Just-The-Fax person. I actually like you. I don't like everybody like that. I don't need Colin Coward to be like that. I don't need everybody.

I don't know myself to be like that, but I like you in that mold, right? And some people, that's okay, right? That's your lane. Right. And you're a great reporter. Lord knows you're going to break more stories and you're, you know, in a week than I ever will. So that's an okay lane. I do think it's also funny.

And you've seen this on sports radio when you have a really good, really tied down journalist who in print says XYZ, right? Then they come on your radio show or they go on Twitter and they add like three more things. And they go way past what they were able to put into print. And it's almost like they're feeling that freedom. Well, here's a sentence that I couldn't get in the New York Times, but I'm getting it on Twitter, right? It's kind of like it's either the kind of slashing, you know, analytical sentence or it's just kind of more information that may not have made it past the editor. I used to call that sports radio truth serum because you'd have somebody, you'd had Adam Schaefter say one

thing on ESPN and then you'd go on a radio show and boss, you'd say like three more things. You're like, wait to say what? Yeah. And I think editors. was that in the report. Yeah, I think editors at newspapers feared that initially that you were, that you were somehow if you went on radio or TV, because I know a couple news editors years ago didn't want their columnists or reporters to do sports talk radio shows. Because they thought like, why go and read the newspaper if you're giving people all the free information that morning on the, you know, sports animal in town?

We'll get back to Brian in a second. But first. Hi guys, it's the herd. I'm just like you. I'm older. I want more energy. I want more drive. M drive. Every day. A couple pills. That's it. It's made by a family run business. The dad, Gary, he's a world-class scientist. He made this everyday supplement, M-drive, to keep himself feeling like he did in his 20s and 30s. He's an hiker and a biker, and he wanted to compete with his kids on the trails. So he's not going to let his age beat him. I'm doing the same. Energy. Strength Drive, M-Drive. I trust these guys because they use clinically tested ingredients to increase natural testosterone levels. All right, a lot of other benefits. Get it at Walgreens, Vitamin Shop, G-N-C,

or go to M-Drive4-Men.com, enter the code Herd. M-Drive for Men, Code Hurd, and get 20% off. M-D-for-M-M-D-O-D-O-D-O-D-O-D-O-D-D-O-T-A. Refind your Prime with I always argued if I ran a sports section, I said this 10 years ago to the Oregonian, one of the sports guys there. I said 20 years ago when you had clearly the erosion of the American newspaper, you know, for Craig's List was eating away at some of the profits, right, in the classified ads, blah, blah, blah, and the urgency of the internet was clearly hurting, you know, newspapers. I said if I ran a newspaper, and I said this 20 years ago, I'd have Dan Lebitard write a column and do a radio show. Jason Whitlock, do a column and do a radio show.

Those are the two guys I chose. I'd have Bill Plashky to do a really great Sunday article that made me cry. I would have three to four comedy writers that would come up on page two. Remember Alan Malamud years ago for the LA Examiner? Sure. Okay. I'd have like four comedy writers and we'd do a daily kind of sports talk radio funny riff on the left side of the second page. and that I wanted all, I didn't want beatwriters.

I wanted everybody in the newspaper to be a TV radio newspaper star. Because the celebrity culture was growing 20 years ago. And I remember telling the Oregonian this is that I would have gone the opposite way. I would have just gone heavy personality. And now I think finally newspapers have figured it out. You want people who are names like The Athletic. You know, I would have done, the athletic did it differently than I would have. They went heavy hockey rider.

I would have gone out and paid for a handful of stars instead of getting the third best Baltimore Oriole beat rider. I would have gone, because I think that's how you get through a paywall. So let me segue into the athletic. Do you think it works long term? They don't have the best, you know, they don't have Grant Wall. They don't have Peter King.

They don't have Zach Lowe. They don't have Bill Simmons. They don't have a lot of Clayton Kershaw aces. They do have a lot of Rich Hills. They've got a lot of number three starters. Do you think that event over? overtime works getting people through a paywall with hockey guys. They've got, they do a ton of hockey guys.

Not a lot of, not a lot of headline guys. Do you think it works long term? Yeah, I mean, first of all, I don't understand the economics, and I don't understand how it's going to work. And when people have kind of laid it out and tried to say, here's how, you know, we can get you at a pretty cheap subscription. I think I pay five bucks a month for mine or something like that. I don't get the economics of that.

Of course, I don't get really the economics of anything in digital. journalism of this point. Either do I. I guess we could put that. I guess we could put that aside. I have noticed that a lot of these, and this goes to exactly what you just said, a lot of these people who were kind of pretty stodgy within the lines, newspaper guys and gals have become more interesting on the athletic, because they're kind of freed to write and have more fun. They're also freed from this kind of horrible newspaper thing now where you have to file a blog item about the Denver Broncos every eight minutes if you're a person. So you never write anything, right? And you're kind of, you know, putting these pellets on the Twitter and, you know, into your newspaper sort of blog software. And you're not actually explaining to the reader, here's what's really going on. And I feel that the athletic ones that have been successful is when they've let their writer say, look, you don't have to write Tuesday. Why don't you get some more stuff and write something really big for Wednesday?

Yes, that's the way to do it. Yes. And really just tell me what's going on, you know. And so I guess the thing I appreciate is they've figured out. the newspaper thing that you're talking about, where we can't, I think we're beyond when we have league pass and we have, you know, all the, you know, all the television we have now that we're beyond the straight gamer almost. We're beyond just the facts. We need almost you to skip that, you know, break news, of course, if you get a trade, break it, do all that stuff. But we need good interpretive writing, right, that is written for sports fans who are up on this stuff. And I think they've sort of figured that out before a lot of newspapers anyway.

Listen, when Rick Riley left Sports Illustrated, it was never the same. That's why John Skipper hired him. John Skipper told me that. He said, I hired Riley because, you know, we always thought that Sports Illustrated growing up was kind of a rival to us. And if we took Riley out, put Selena Roberts in or, you know, clearly capable people, Phil Taylor. I mean, people that are very, very good. But when they got Riley out, it hurt SI. So even in writing, which is the, you know, the kind of.

cerebral level of the sports media, the writers, even when you took out the celebrity writer and SI, it hurt SI. I never felt they were the same. So even, I want my writers to be Michael Wilbon. I want him to be Mitch Album. I want celebrities to get you to a paywall. I want in soccer, Grant Wall or Peter King or Tom Verducci.

Yeah, totally. And multimedia, as you say, and I think the only way you change your kind of dream newspaper is that now you do a podcast for the newspaper, right? Maybe into the sports radio, right? You'd somehow keep them, you'd keep at least part of their multimedia life in-house. You know, maybe they did a sports radio, but they also did a podcast every day or every week or something, right? And, you know, and kind of were, you know, kind of multi-yeah, and look, to me, that's the parts of the athletic I really like are those kind of parts. It's, again, it's sort of a middle ground between old school newspaper writing and just going completely Bill Simmons, off the grid, right? It's sort of, here's a lot, here's an information rich, voice-rich

kind of interpretation of the news that you care about. Yeah. Hey, Brian, you're great at what you do, a press box podcast, listen to that, press box podcast, also editor-at-large at the ringer. He covers media, good guy, and I like these kind of just make it up as I go, exploratory things, and good luck to you. You're welcome anytime, and I just love what you do, Brian. Thanks for having me, Colin, as always. Last night, a blown call changed a game.

This morning, the internet lost its mind, and nobody's telling you exactly what happened. That's where SportsSlice comes in. I'm Timbo, and every episode, we're cutting through the noise, breaking down the biggest moments in sports and giving you the real story behind the headline. And we're going straight to the source, the athletes themselves, their locker room stories, their reactions in the moment, and the stuff nobody gets to hear. Listen to Sports Slice on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. And for more, follow Timbo Slic Life 12 in the TikTok podcast network on TikTok. Another podcast from some SNL late night comedy guy, not quite. Unhumor me with Robert Smygel and friends.

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Hey, what's good, y'all? You're listening to Learn the Hardway with your favorite therapist and host, Kear Games. This space is about black men's experiences, having honest conversations that it's really not safe to have anywhere, but you're having them with a licensed professional who knows what he's doing. How many men carry a suit or armor? It signals to the world that you're not to be played with. And just because you have the capability that does not mean that you need to. Listen to learn the hard way on the AHA Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast. Life is full of hurdles, so how do you keep going? On Hurtle with Emily Abadi,

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