The Press Box - An AI-Journalist Truce and The Athletic’s Big Spending. Plus: Richard Deitsch on Tony Romo and ESPN.

Episode Date: September 1, 2023

Bryan talks Weekend Headlines and begins with news of The Athletic’s acquisition of sportswriter Diana Russini. Then he discusses how news outlets are utilizing code to protect their content against AI and touches on college football’s epidemic of depth-chart withholding (0:19). Then, Richard Deitsch joins from The Athletic to review the Tony Romo backlash heading into his seventh year of broadcasting and discuss the state of ESPN among the ongoing changes (6:15). Host: Bryan Curtis Guest: Richard Dietsch Producer: Erika Cervantes Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hey, everyone. This is Craig Horlebeck from the Ringer Fantasy Football Show. Join me, Danny Hifitz and Danny Kelly every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday to help you win your draft, win your league, and most importantly, avoid that last place punishment. Follow the Ringer fantasy football show on Spotify. Hello, media consumers. Welcome to Press Box Final Edition. Brian Curtis of the Ringer here, along with producer Erica Cervantes. Coming up, Richard Ditch, the sports media writer at The Athletic, joins me to talk about the Tony Romo Backlash. the state of ESPN, the future of our beloved business sports writing, and much, much more.

That is in five minutes, but first, let's do weekend headlines. Headline one, the athletics, big spending. A story that your favorite sports writers have been chattering about in DMs and text messages is Diana Rusini leaving ESPN, where she was an NFL reporter for The Athletic. Going to the New York Times company website for what's probably a lot. a pretty hefty salary, at least in terms of print. As Peter King writes in his column, To think Diana Rossini will almost certainly make more money than Maggie Haberman or David Brooks,

Times Legends, and crazily, might make more than them combined, is a sign of the strange sports journalism times we live in. Stars who cover the NFL make crazy salaries compared to the money people make covering news that truly matters. Now, here's a pro tip. In media writing, when something is declared a sign of the journalistic times, you should always rear up because it's almost always happened before. Go back, and I think Peter knows this, to any newspaper during the 80s and 90s, and you will find that the star sports columnist was one of, maybe the highest paid people on the entire newspaper, making more money than reporters, even star reporters, that were covering, what truly matters.

Now, those columnists were being paid the big bucks because, to quote the great Tony Chivani, they were putting butts in the seats. And Peter King does ask exactly the right question next. Will the Rusini brand translate into current non-subscribers of the athletic, paying $7,99 a year to read this smart pay site? I'm the last person to insist that journalists are worth only as much to a publication as the clicks and subscriptions

they return. But when you get to that top, top, top tier, the bosses are going to start looking at the metrics. Headline two, I for one welcome our new robot overlords. We've talked a lot on this podcast about journalists fears of artificial intelligence. And journalists scorn for artificial intelligence. Such as all that fun we had with the AI sports writer covering preps last week. Well, CNN reports that certain outlets are now doing even.

even more. As Oliver Darcy writes, a multitude of leading newsrooms have recently injected code into their websites that blocks OpenAI's web crawler, GPTBot, from scanning their platforms for content. Darcy reports the list of outlets includes Disney, Bloomberg, Washington Post, The Atlantic, Axios, ESPN, and many others. Now, the reason these outlets are injecting this code into their sites is because they don't want their articles to be used to train AI models that could one day compete with them, essentially offering GPT bot an internship to get its foot in the door. Now, let's say that that's a good idea. I wonder if we could carve out some columns and websites that we could offer to GPT bot. Now, Brian, you might say that sounds like

appeasement in the face of new technology. Wait a second. What if we gave it Brett Stevens' column in the New York Times? What if we gave it the Outkick website? Okay, okay, GPT. T-Bot, you drive a hard bargain, you can have the hill. See, we're into diplomacy here at the press box. Hope you use those columns and outlets to learn something. Headline three, the granddaddy of all copouts. I am extremely fired up about week one of college football, at least as fired up as you can be about playing rice. So I laughed when Steve Sarkeesian, the coach of my Texas Longhorn, said he would release the team's depth chart, quote, before kickoff,

aka when it's no longer useful to the reporters covering the team. There's been an epidemic of depth chart withholding in college football as Audrey Snyder of the athletic notes. This week, Penn State's James Franklin refused to release a depth chart

before playing West Virginia. Penn State is a 20-plus point favorite in that game. Alabama's Nick Sabin has also refused to release a depth chart before he plays Middle Tennessee. State, a 39-point underdog.

As Saban explained, I don't want anybody in our team to think they're a backup player or whatever. Well, Saban's only going to send 11 players out on the field at a time, so I think they're going to get the hint. Coaches say that withholding who's starting versus who's a backup is about maintaining an information advantage over the other team. It's actually about keeping players out of the transfer portal. And like most instances, when coaches withhold info from sports. writers, it just costs the team free publicity and newspapers and on message boards, and I say

that as a subscriber. Plus, college football coaches already invented a nice little hedge when they make out their depth charts. If they don't want to say who the starter is at running back, say, then they list Brian Curtis or David Shoemaker. See you and then. I'm happy. David's happy and the press gets a little nugget of content. So coaches, release the depth. chart or you just piss off the people covering your team. That's weekend headlines. All right. It's like Spider-Man pointing at Spider-Man.

If Spider-Man were a sports media critic, Richard Deich of the Athletic is here. Let me tell you something. Nobody writes and pods better about the breadth of sports TV. That includes, and this is just a list of his recent topics, Tony Romo, Chris Fowler, Carly Lloyd, Burke Bagnes, the WWE, and Sage Steel. Richard came to the athletic after a 20-year run at Sports Illustrated. You can also hear them on the Sports Media podcast, which has a new episode out. Thursday with Todd Blackledge.

Richard, welcome to the press box. Brian, thank you for that kind intro. That was a good cue card reading by you. Secondly, now that I have my opportunity to be on a podcast that people actually listen to as opposed to mine, I have seen your recent guests. list. Jake Tapper, Tim Mack, Stead Herndon, Jim Miller, and major figures when it comes to either political reporting or, you know, the breadth of sports media coverage. So this, Brian clearly feels like to me, it's like when Letterman and Leno back in the day, like they took that one week off

before like the fall season started and whoever the guest host has come in. And so clearly this is, This is me for the press box. You've brought in the summer sea list to, like, fill it out before the NFL season starts. Regardless of all that, it's great to be on. And as I said, off there, I'm a big fan of Erica Sermontas and great work that she's been doing on this podcast for a long time. Well, actually, tap her email today. We said, I'm sorry, we're all booked. Yeah.

No repeats here at the press box. I saw you, Richard, this week, talking to CBS's NFL A team, Jim Nance, Tony Romo, and the like. And it brought to mind one of my favorite topics, which is the Tony Romo backlash we've had over the last year and change. What do you make of the Romo backlash? Yeah, so first of all, you know, for your listeners, and it's important to get this out there. And Brian, you've been on these kind of car wash-like interviews. So I had the A crew and very kind of CBS to sort of include me in what was not a very big car wash here for about 30 minutes. And I have Tony Romo, Jim Nance, Tracy Wolfson, and Jim Rickoff, who was the producer of that show.

And so within a 30 minute period, Brian, as you know, you have to sort of figure out a way to sort of talk to everybody because you kind of look like a knucklehead. if you're just asking Tony Romo 15 questions and everybody else is sitting around watching. So amid question sort of about broadcasting a Super Bowl year, sort of talking about they have a very, very good schedule, not surprisingly just given how great the AFC is, and CBS still is the dominant AFC network. I asked Romo two questions about the criticism he faced, which certainly last year felt like he was in the middle of, you know, pinata season. And so I will say, and I know you as a longtime Cowboys, Texas guy, like, have seen him answer this as well. I really think there is something to have been a quarterback in the NFL, and particularly a quarterback of the Dallas Cowboys, the most famous team in the NFL. With this criticism, like, about your sports media career, it's like, you know, being patted on the head. I think he has faced so much more criticism as a player that I think he has a pretty good perspective on this.

And I think while it was not the forum to get into the specific criticisms of him, which I certainly could have done if I had him for an hour, I do think that some of this, and I'd imagine you would agree with me on this as well, is once the sort of snowball starts about criticism of a broadcaster, many times it plays upon itself. We saw that with Booker McFarland. I'll give you a great example.

Remember Mike Carey, the CBS analyst, I mean, once he made a couple of calls that were different than the refs on the field, like he became like a guy who would trend on Twitter all the time. So, well, I do think there's an interesting conversation to have about, you know, has Romo, is Romo a different broadcaster than he was in 2017? I think the answer is yes. Did he and Jim Nance have some chemistry issues last year? I think if you're going to be fair, the answer is yes.

But I do think some of this, too, is the fact that it was. was Tony Romo's year to sort of be in the middle of the fire. And for me, and I know it's been a long answer, it will be interesting if last year's darling Greg Olson maybe gets it two or three or four years from now. And I'm always, that's always interesting to me because I do feel some of these are sick with them. I totally agree. And I feel Twitter as at least the masses on Twitter always notice something a little

ways down the line. Like whatever issues people had with Tony Romo last year. I would say, well, I thought the same thing in 2021 or 2020. I don't think this appeared necessarily last year. I guess, you know, I don't think you can talk about him without us remembering 2017. And just what a revelation he was and just the way he seemed to be playing by a totally different rulebook than Chris Collinsworth and Troy Aegeman, whether it was talking over the snap, whether it was predicting plays. It just, it was like, whoa, this guy somehow has figured out the medium of television

immediate, despite never having called the game. And I guess if I had a, if I had a gripe within my part of the backlash as it were, as I would just say, I don't know how much better he is now than he was in 2017. team. That's interesting that you say that because when you invited me on, I look back a little bit at the coverage. Do I'm going to give you a headline from the January 2019 or one of the editions of the New Yorker? Let's do it.

Why Tony Romo is a genius at football commentary. Same week, Washington Post. What makes Tony Romo so good? Let Bob Costas and Dick Vital explain. So he, you know, he really. from 2017 to let's say the end of 2019 could not have had better press for not just any NFL broadcaster. I would argue any sports broadcaster.

I mean, even Charles Barkley, who I think both of us admire and really like and would probably say it's the best studio announcements of all time, there's backlash for Charles Barkley. That's always existed. Romo had about a two and a half season run where it was very hard to not find people who just did not find everything he did appeal

I read your piece that talked about Romo and some of the things that you were sort of providing as a hypothesis as to why we might think of him differently. And I thought one thing you hit on, it was really interesting. It's Romo's enthusiasm and giddiness for football, which essentially is his calling card. Like, it's not fake. I think he loves football. He really gets excited about plays. And I do think some of the problem, if that's the right word,

with that kind of broadcaster is, if the game is a route or if the game isn't interesting, that makes it a lot harder for someone who sort of sells enthusiasm to come off as good if the game is 40, 4140, one minute left,

and a quarterback is driving. Something that I was thinking about with Romo where I think he's gotten very unlucky with he and Nance is they've never called a good Super Bowl between the two games that they call their blowouts. And one of the things that a producer told me a long time ago, and I know you've talked to a lot of producers, and I like talking to producers and directors. I just find them really, really interesting because they have really hard jobs in there. Even bad television is hard to do, quite frankly. And a producer told me that so often a lot of the perception of what you think of broadcasters only comes down to the game and how competitive the game is. And if the game is memorable, generally speaking, it directs and produces and broadcasts itself. And I wonder, at least for Romo, especially as a lot of people started watching his games that much more closely, you're going to find flaws with the guy because you can't keep up like that giddiness for four straight quarters. And then finally, and I do think this is something that like I know CBS, I'm sure is thinking about and we'll see how Romo and Nancy do this year.

You know, the bar has been raised by people like Greg Olson who are just right off the field who instinctively know. all these offenses and defenses because they play, you know, they're, the players that are playing now are people Greg Olson played against. And so Tony's now in year seven. And it's not as current, right? As, as it was when it was 2017, 2018, where a guy like Olson is right off the field, having game planned against all these coordinators. And I think Romo now, and I, I'm still a believer in Roma. I like him. I think now there has to be like sort of the next step when you're a little removed from playing is to really immerse yourself even that much more deeper. And I think he will.

I mean, I think he does. The idea that he doesn't prepare is just silly. All these guys prepare. I mean, you have to prepare in order to do the job. But my thesis on this is I think a lot of the Romo bashing, the cycle ended last year. And I predict it's not as bad this year as it was last year, just because I find these things to be cyclical. same way Al Michaels got it last year for, you know, tags of being tired or not selling the game as much as he had sold it before. Yeah, I would, I totally agree with your, with what you said about

the other announcers. And I think also just even more generally, the level of A crew football announcing right now is great. It is, I hate to be a golden age guy, but this is the best that I've ever seen it in my lifetime. There was always a weak spot. We were, we were, remember Tony Romo benefited by the fact that he was coming off a couple of years of Phil Sims where Phil Sims was not very good or you had a Jason Whitten in there. You had, you know, Lewis Reddick and Brian Greasy who were fine but did not seem like a crew kind of guys. And so yeah, you're competing with people. To the point about the exciting game, I think, I think the other part of that is he gets really excited about great offense. So if you have a

classic AFC game with Mahomes and Josh Allen and Joe Burrow going back and forth, he may be the absolute best announcer at calling a game like that. In fact, he probably is the guy I want to call that over anybody else, even the really great announcers. But if it's a defensive battle, I also think he just sort of powers down. I don't think he cares about line play. I don't think he cares about defense nearly as much. And so maybe it's not preparer in the sense of like, you know,

you're prepared for the game, but I just don't think he studies that stuff as much, or at least it is not reflected when I watch him on TV. It's an interesting observation. And I think like everything else, it's a subjective observation, and it's what you hear. And maybe, because I happen to be someone who really likes Romo, maybe I overemphasize when I hear him talk about offense, like that to me is like, wow, that's like really cool and interesting and exciting. That's where someone like Greg Olson has been really interesting because he sees,

the game from the tight end position, which is a very different way to see the game than Romo. It's why I like a guy like Charles Davis, who he's not as flashy as Romo or Collinsworth or whatever, but he was a cornerback. And I think he sees the game differently because he has a lot of reps on defense. The thing about Romo last year was,

and again, I don't know how real this is or how it's maybe perception of the ears or it's the game. It just felt to me if there was one thing that was a tick off, it was that he and Nance were not in sync as they had been in previous years, like whatever that means. But I do think, and Brian, both of us have probably watched far too much television than any human being should be processing, right? I do think some of that, it's like anything else. It just could be, I hate to be sports cliche here, but it really just could have been one of those years in the same way there are great athletes who just happen to not have a particularly great year. Yes. Quarterbacks on TV are like quarterbacks in the NFL.

That may be, honestly, that may be a really true statement. And here's the last one. And I always find this sort of interesting. And like someone like Joe Buck has had to deal with this for sure. is do you think there is something to the effect that like when you are on television so much calling the biggest most important games which means 20, 25 million, 30 million people seeing you at a certain point the exposure of that alone will tend to lead some people towards being tired of your voice or being tired of the same thing. Even if your performance is

good. And I think Joe Buck is an example of someone who got better, certainly as a baseball broadcaster. And I would all argue as well as a football broadcaster. But he's someone who faced backlash, I think, because he was just on so much in your face calling all these games. And I do wonder, even though I get it's only 17 weeks and in a Super Bowl, whatever, it's 21 weeks, if some of that stuff just happens to the Romo's and the Collins works to the eight men's is, you know, they're not calling, you know, they're not calling. You know, they're not calling. the University of Buffalo versus Akron. They're calling these games that are like watched by 25 million people.

And that's a lot of people in the audience. And then I think sometimes, and I know I'm guilty of this, I look at sentiment, whether it's on Twitter or Facebook or threads or Instagram, and you name your social media thing. I wonder if sometimes you get a little bit overweighted as to what people really believe these guys are versus what the average person at home is thinking. And the average person at home may not even be thinking anything. They'd just be like, hey, this was a cool Cowboys commander's game.

I just watch and now I'm going on with the rest of my life. Just imagine the average person sitting at home and they know two things about Tony Romo. One, he's on my TV all the time. And two, he made $17 million this year. Yeah, a little higher, by the way, but yeah. 18, whatever. I mean, that sets you up. Right.

And he was the Cowboys quarterback and he hated if you were a Giants fan. Or, and sometimes a Cowboys fan, too, by the way. It's like most frustrating guy in the world to watch. No, totally. And that to me is part of the frustration because when I watch him, I'm like, this is the tools, one of the toolsiest announcers I've ever seen. Like,

he's got kind of the hard part, which is the charisma, you know, the way of connecting with the audience or the screen, which is like, I don't know how you teach that. Like he just figured it out. Yeah.

And there's just these little parts of his game. But anyway, you know, I just add really quick. I remember talking to Rick off. It might have been like 20, and they said that they were going to pull the magic trick back a little bit. Like he was telling Tony not to call plays ahead of time too much.

And the other thing they were experimenting with is Romo was trying to figure out, like, how much humor can I sort of show on air? And I don't want to, you know, I don't want to be Rodney Dangerfield, but at the same time, like, I want to show that I got a personality. And in hindsight, I wonder if they pulled the magic trick too quick. Because the reality is, like, viewers react to that. Like when some, even today, you know, you see a low level, like, college football game. If the analyst calls the play beforehand, you go on Twitter and you see,

wow, this guy just called it. So I wonder if he should bring the magic trick back a little bit because I do think this part of the audience who will be like, oh, wow, Romo's back. He's doing this again. Let's talk about a little bit about the state of ESPN. You've been covering that network for a long time. Too long, yes. Got a lot of angry phone calls with an 860 area code. How would you describe the state of ESPN right now? Boy, that's one of those broad, like, questions that Martha McCallum, or Jake Tapper, by the way, might ask. I think they're in a state of transition, and I think they're in a state of flux.

They still remain, as you have said many times on this fine podcast, the most dominant sports brand in the United States, maybe arguably the most important sports brand, although I don't know how you like sort of measure like them versus Nike you know what I mean or under armor or the Dallas Cowboys. Then the top tip, sure. Yeah, they're a very, very important, powerful sports brand. But they are one that's going through obviously massive change. You and I grew up in a universe that went from, you know, networks being everything to cable being everything in ESPN in 100 million homes. And now the latest on that is a tick over 70 million. and fading fast.

And so they are in this world where they are trying to figure out how do we navigate declining subs every single year on our cash cow cable while figuring out what our digital business is going to be long term, where we have about 25 million people, but it's still probably not enough people yet where we throw all our programming that exists on ESPN to ESPN plus And then to charge people, what in the business is called DTC, direct to consumer, how much money will you have to pay monthly to get every ESPN offering without having a cable subscription or the cable bundle? So the larger businesses, they're in a serious flux.

You know, they're smarter than me who can give you better answers on this. But obviously, they're under a corporation that's under significant pressure and significant stock price pressure. So Disney and Bob Iger have to figure out what they even want to do. with this asset. It seems to me that they're going to take investment on it and maybe partner up with somebody. I don't think they're going to sell it, but I think they clearly want a cash infusion in that. And then when we get to the micro level, which is I think the stuff me and you like, how does this affect the talent? How does this affect the programming? How does this affect the content? What's become very, very clear is that they're making and hedging big bets on certain people,

what they consider big personalities. And that's where you see Burke Magnus and company creating a day time lineup, which is Mike Greenberg to Stephen A. Smith, to Pat McAfee, to SportsCenter, to eventually games. That's sort of the content play that they're going to have. They're betting big on the SEC, and we're going to be the dominant network of that. We also have a piece of the Big 12, and we're going to get the college football playoffs whenever they come up. They're betting big on the NBA. I think they're absolutely, I would be stunned if they don't get a part of that package, perhaps the same kind of package they have now that includes the NBA finals. And then obviously they just threw down a ton of money for the NFL.

So there's still a very important company in many ways, Brian. I think they still set the conversation for the country when it comes to sports. They're nowhere like it used to be with us. And they're like all of us in the media business, I think they're going to have a roller coaster over the next couple of years in terms of what they're going to be, where they're going, and certainly when it comes to individual staffers, those jobs were once upon a time,

it felt like, you know, used to be the joke. I know you know this too. Like, you know, you went to ESPN and you bought your house and all your ESPN buddies became your entire life, and you had a 30-year job there, and you'd retire with your, you know, your nice house in Avon and the gold watch. Like, that doesn't exist.

Like, that world is dead. And so, you know, like the rest of us, in some ways, if you're now Maccathy, Greenberg, curb street, Aitman Buck, you're very much a year-to-year player at ESPN. And that's a big significant change in our lifetime of covering this stuff. You know what I mean?

Well, once upon a time, that was the destination job. If you landed there, you had not only made it, you had probably made it for 10 to 15 years. That world is done. That world doesn't exist anymore. I saw the news the other day that CNN is going to put a big chunk of linear CNN, TV CNN on the Macs app. And I started thinking about ESPN.

And one of the interesting questions to me is they translate themselves into a streaming product is all those studio shows that go from 6 a.m. until the game start at 7 p.m. 8 p.m. What's going to happen to that? I mean, you know, we are, there's just so much unknown here. There's an economic unknown, but then there's also this known of are people going to watch studio shows that aren't tied to games on streaming? Are they going to care about that in the same way? They don't know the answer to that.

The reality is, I think their thesis would be, well, it's just a different distribution engine. And if you are, if you like first take or if you like get up and you like it on conventional, I'll use the phrase conventional television, whatever you mean that means. then why wouldn't you still watch it on your laptop or why would you still watching on your smartphone or why wouldn't you watch it on ESPN Plus if it's just a couple extra clicks?

Consumer behavior though, man, that's a tricky one to figure out, right? Like, one, how many of these people are going to buy, like clearly ESPN Plus, when it has everything, will be a compelling product. Unquestionably, just look at all the assets they have. But, and here's where I think, is the biggest gamble for Disney ESPN. How do you figure out what that price point is?

And will consumers, like they have been with cable, like invest 20 years of it? You know what I mean? Like, that's the thing with streaming. And you know this too. Like, you might get Apple TV because you want to watch seven episodes of hijack. And then you cancel that bad boy, right? Like a month and a half later when you've streamed what you've wanted.

So the churn is significant. And that's one thing with ESPN, at least with the bundle. the churn for many, many years was not so significant. It is now. But ESPN could count on these 100 million homes for a long time. So I don't know the answer to that. I will say at least as we talk in August of 2023, they at least are still betting that you will watch some of this studio content. I mean, they just, I don't know what the number is, but they clearly paid millions upon millions of dollars to bring Pat McAfee into their ecosystem. So if nothing else, like they made a significant investment that you, you as a consumer still want these kind of programs,

you know, like analysis slash opinion slash debate slash news, however you want to sort of frame a Macapee show or a get up or a first take. But I don't know. Like if you were asking me, like how many people are going to watch first take in 2026? I couldn't tell you. And then the other thing that they have to think about, but, you know, all these places I have to think about this, the ring or the athletic, et cetera, is how do you monetize the stuff outside of just ESPN plus? And is it monetizable? Like, is it, is a Stephen A video talking about that Prescott like that goes on Twitter or goes on TikTok? Like, is that monetizable? And what does it mean, let's say, if it gets a million views? Like, does that eventually lead people back to ESPN? Like,

these are the questions that, you know, they ultimately have to ask in terms of like, what's worth it to pay and what's not worth it to pay. I think at this point ESPN, as I know you've written, Brian, is they've made a bet, a big bet on a handful of people. I'm probably sure to mention Van Pelt. He's part of that as well. Sure. That they believe can carry consumers to what ultimately is the product,

which is live game programming. It's not a bad bet, but the world changes pretty fast. And you just don't know what that bet's going to be or how that bet's going to meet, what that bet's going to be in 2025. I should say lastly, too, in terms of hedging bets, you saw that they entered a partnership with pen gambling, right? So they're trying to figure out as many ways to bring significant money under the ESPN umbrella as best they can.

All right, all 860 area codes please call Richard Deich with any complaints about the last segment. Sadly, they have the number. You are the editor for this year's rebooted edition of the best. American sports writing book. You released the lineup this week, which includes our very own Lex Pryor and our very own Jonathan Charks. Previous editions of this book, a lot of the pieces came from magazines like ESPN Magazine and The New Yorker or obscure journals that I had never heard of before I read about them in the Best American Sports Writing. Where is the best American sports writing coming from now.

First of all, thank you for mentioning that. My longtime colleague and friend Jeff Promen, who I work with in Sports Illustrated, he would always say, you know, they don't teach writers how to market, but you better learn how to market if you have a book. So, like, you know, I haven't learned that, like, you've got to promote it.

The book comes out October 3rd. You can get it on Amazon and elsewhere. So it's an amazing group of people, including the colleagues at the Ringer that you mentioned. And my friend, the late Grant Wall, who my intro essay is essentially dedicated to. It's a great question, Brian. Really now, it no longer is just magazine-centric at all.

In fact, it comes from everywhere. Two of the pieces that I selected, really complete pieces were from the Atavist, which isn't even a sports publication per se, but a publication that specializes in long form. Just so happened that the two pieces that I chose were sports-based, and they were just brilliantly done. But, you know, whether it's the athletic

or whether it's the ringer or whether it's the adivist, I can't tell you how many like digital centric or digital native sort of pieces that I read this year. I still, you know, there was things obviously I still read from like the traditional magazine world, whether that would be like outside or an Esquire or GQ of places like that. But I think what I found for the most part was newspapers really investing the long form that they did for their website,

someone like Alex Coffey of the Philadelphia Enquirer who's in here. She had a long piece that I saw from their website. I believe it ran in the print edition as well, but I never saw the print edition. I obviously were able, or my advisory board was able to see that online. And so that's where I think these stories are going to come from heading forward. You know, my beloved old employer, it's not a weekly anymore, Sports Illustrated, right? You know, it's now, if you're going to get something from there,

You're going to get either from s.i.com or maybe like their monthly magazine. And the one thing I will say, because this is the first time I've talked about this publicly, is my whole goal for this was to have an advisory board that looked different than me and that would protect me from my reading blind spots, which I think we all have. And when I say reading blind spots, it's just there are publications that I love to read. Like I love the Washington Post. Like I'm a big fan of that newspaper. so I know I read it a lot.

I'm obviously going to read something like The Athletic because I work there. But like the rest of my panel, including Robbie's friend of yours and who was the editor last year, J.A. Adande. Like they really did an amazing job providing me with like the 30 best pieces that they read. And they really helped me not miss. I don't think anything that really should have been sort of subject for this book. And then lastly, we have 180 honorable mention. I don't know if you've ever added an anthology, Brian. This is the first time I did.

The reality is, like, I could have taken 50 pieces from the honorable mention, and they would have been just as good as the pieces that ended up in the main book. At a certain point, there's so much good work that you just have to make these really tough decisions. But I was really glad to – when I read Jonathan Sharks' piece, I knew it was going to be in the book. Like, when I – I had remembered reading it, and then when I got this – assignment like I that is there were I would say five to seven pieces that I immediately knew like will be in the book and that happened to be one of them like I literally the day I accepted it I jotted down like five or six pieces that I knew

would be in the book for sure and that was one if I had a gripe well one gripe with the old book it was that it was very chocka block with evergreen long for me profiles that is this hint that is essentially how they define sports writing versus, hey, here's a great column that Zach Lowe wrote after game three of the NBA finals that was exactly the right column to write on that day, that people on the internet who want to know about basketball said, this is the thing I want to read. As you set out to choose pieces and go through this huge pile, what kinds of sports writing were you looking for?

My sort of, well, this is so journalism, cliche, my North Star, Brian. My guiding principle was something that I read that I couldn't forget, that I like, it just stayed with me and I was like, I got to read this again. Like, that was really good. Used to me when I worked at Sports Illustrated, like the piece that, if I read somebody who I worked with that made me so sick to my stomach because I knew I never could write that well, that meant that the piece was great. And there was a lot of, you know, whether Scott Price or Tim Lane, I worked with a lot

of, you know, Michael Farber, a lot of really crazily talented people. So that happened a lot. but my I didn't sort of walk into it like I have to have like the 30 best long form stories of the year I walked into it like what 25 pieces like really impacted and stay with me and it's interesting what you just said one of the pieces I chose with this book is Bruce Arthur doing a column next day column about Louis Suarez in the World Cup that is not something I think most people would have chosen back in the Lupacabashram days. This is a column that ran in the Toronto Star

about Luis Suarez, who this is not messy. Like, you know, I don't even know how many people would have read the piece like when it came out. But he did such a brilliant job of writing about this guy

who was sort of a famous villain in the world of global soccer that it stayed with me. The St. Louis Post-Dispatcher, Gary Gould, wrote about Poole-Holtz's home run. like a memorable home run and he interviewed if I remember like the the the the person who got pooholses bats there's almost in many ways like uh you know the famous it's not the same so you know my apologies for sort of blowing this parallel but everybody famously talks about you know brislin writing about

the person who was digging kennedy's grave right you sort of like look away from the main subject to find something else and so this was a piece that ran next day this was a column as well and I'm not sure Kirk Street or two of the New York Times. I'm not sure how many of those pieces would have run in the past. So there are, you know, these traditional long forms that are in there. But, you know, I did try to make it differently. One of the people in the book, actually I have it right here, Ryan Hockensmith wrote about porta-potties.

It's the best story I've ever read on shit in my life. It was just very, very memorable and how it relates to sports. And so that's in there, and I'm not sure, yeah, maybe that would have made the old book. maybe not. And the last thing I would say is there's always great reporting like done every year like investigative reporting and this year was another exception.

So, you know, I wanted to make sure that like Jenny Rentis' piece on Deshawn Watson was there and her reporting on that. My colleagues, Katie Strang, Dan Robes, and Mendez did the definitive piece on the culture of hockey in Canada and everything that had been investigated there.

So I did want to make sure that I had a couple of those pieces And I would say, Brian, because both of us probably have been a consort of the book, that's different, generally speaking, than what we read in the mid-90s, which was usually like these just long SI or GQ style 5,000-word profiles, right, of somebody as opposed to a piece of exceptional reporting that would be published the next day in a daily newspaper. But then maybe that was it. And then you sort of didn't see anything else. So I just tried with my advisory board to just kind of have an interesting, diverse book. And it'll be subjective. Like, you know, I'm sure the writers who think that their pieces should have been in the main book.

And they're probably right. Like, ultimately, it's a subjective enterprise. Speaking of the written word, what's going to happen to sports writing? You're asking these broad questions. You know, we're not even taught, you know, I mean, you know, depending on like the next couple of election cycles, there might not even be sports writing, right? It should be like, is that in Vibokamashwami's platform?

Can it get rid of the Department of Education and Sports Writing? I will say this. I know you don't want me to get into politics, but I bet- Oh, no, no. That's allowed on this media podcast. Here we go. My dream is for any politician to run on taking the vote away from 18-year-olds.

Please, if you want to finally get 18- to 25-year-olds activated, I beg you to run on that. Because it might be the only thing that gets that group to be like, fuck you, we're now going to vote and we're now going to vote for the next 20 years. Anyway. Richard just went to 5% in Iowa.

This is amazing. Thank you. In terms of sports writing, listen, I think me and you are both in some ways, romantics. People always love stories. People love storytelling. Information has to get out and people crave it.

Zoe's always going to be a platform for it. What I do worry about is how many places can actually sustain and pay, like, decent wages to do it. What is very clear is that the substack model is going to continue, and I think some people are going to try to roll the dice on that and see if they can not necessarily get rich, the top 1% gets rich, but at least maybe be able to make a living, providing, like, what your thing is, whether it's analysis, newsbreaking, or something else. And then I do think, like, interestingly enough, given the place I work, I do think you are

going to start to see some funding. in cities around the country that try to go very small, let's say like a six to eight person staff where they try to own a city when it comes to sports riding. So in some ways, sort of the early athletic model. I do believe some people are going to with some, whether it's venture capital money or whether it's some kind of funding, I think you're going to see people try to make that run again. I don't know if it's only going to be like the written word, Brian, maybe it's a combination of some kind of multi-platform, multimedia play. But I, you know, I just saw the Oklahomaan, you probably saw this too, a whole mess of their

sports riders just left that place and had formed sellout crowd.com. Yeah. They're going to cover Oklahoma State. Yeah, Barry Trammell, Jenny Carlson, they're going to cover Oklahoma State, Oklahoma, and the Oklahoma City Thunder. That's one I'm going to watch because they, when I talk to Jenny. on my podcast, she said they have funding for a couple of years. They're going to be able to make a go of it. And so if they can pull that off, let's say, where they're sustained and they're all, no one's really going to get rich, but if they can sort of sustain a, being able to pay your bills and stuff,

be able to pay your mortgage, I don't know why some other cities, mid-sized kind of cities, upper mid-sized cities, aren't going to try to pull the same exact thing off. Maybe you can't do that in New York or L.A. or Washington, just because there's too many a staff. established brands there. But that's one I'm watching really, really close because I think some people are going to try to make a go of it. And then I think there's going to be sports people, too, are going to try to pull the defector model as well.

And maybe they'll be able to pull, maybe it won't be as many staffers as they have, but maybe you can pull it off with like a five person collective and like, I'll make this up in like Tulsa, you know, or like a city like that. And I root for that model. Same. But then you think, okay, the six to eight person, you know, you know, you know, you know, Mission Impossible team in Oklahoma City. I don't know how many they actually have, but say Oklahoma City is replacing a 30 to 40 person

sports desk at a newspaper. Yes. So we're already talking about fewer jobs. You know, we're talking about fewer jobs at ESPN.com. I think people forget how many sports writers present company included work for ESPN.com 10 years ago. I was like to remind people that Wesley Morris worked for ESPN.com, which is now just completely mind-blowing. The amount of talent that has floated through ESPN, like,

its course of life, is it almost unimaginable if you're like a sports media nerd like the two of us are? Yeah. So that shrunk, the athletic shrunk, newspapers keep shrinking and probably are going to shrink into something very, very, very different here in the next couple of years. So it's almost like, you know, ESPN going to the streaming model. You're going to replace it with something, but is something going to have anywhere near the number of good paying, you know, livable wage kind of jobs as the previous world? I mean, I don't want to bullshit your audience. No, like it sucks.

The answer is no. Like, they're not, I cannot see at the moment some kind of panacea where all of a sudden, me and you have this conversation in 2027, and there's all these new sports writing jobs. Like, I don't see it. I do think, though, that the, how do I sort of say this? What you might think of sports writing, capital S, capital W, like, will exist. So, like, there will be jobs for you to work for a team, let's say.

You work for the Los Angeles Chargers, and you are one of their writers slash social media slash multimedia content people. So like that job exists and you might get that job out of the University of Missouri or the university. And I'm not saying it's journalist. I'm just, I'm not talking about content. But I don't see it.

I don't see where the scales of economy exist for some kind of major change in what has been an inevitable decline in sports riding jobs that can pay a living wage. It's trust me, it sucks. And every single day, I don't know if you think about this, Brian. Like, not that I like it getting older, but I think I am fortunate to have been born when I was

because I'm closer to the end of my career than I am at the beginning. And while I would tell every 21 or 25-year-old to go for it in this profession, you owe it to your creative desires, you owe it to your passion to be a writer, but you have to be realistic, like in terms of what you are walking into.

And what you are walking into, in my opinion, is 10,000 times worse than what we walked into. And I don't think we necessarily walked in a Zanadu either. No. I hate to be a killjoy, but like, I've just seen too many companies.

Like, there's not a, there has not been a week, it seems like, in 2023, where I have not read about media layoffs somewhat. And so I just think at a certain point, you have to be a realist. And the realistic take is that it's going to be hard to get a job. You have to try to hold on to it as best you can. But the reality is particularly if you were a 25 to 35 year old in our profession,

you are going to have multiple jobs during your career. And some of those jobs may be out of journalism. And then you will float back in. One last thing, because this is important. Because they used to tell us this when we were young and this has now become bullshit. You know the whole notion of like once you get out of this, you're not going to be able to get back in. You can be branded with a big X. If you get out of journalism and you go to like someplace else, that at least thankfully has changed.

We have seen a lot of people who have more from traditional like sports writing or journalism go into another field and then they do come back or they can't come back if that job exists. So that's one positive. But the problem is you're coming back to a field that's where the jobs just continue. to decrease and shrink. And I wish that wasn't the same. And I wish I was, you know, I wish I had Elon's money because I would try to fund a shitload of people to have these jobs. But I just, I don't know where that's coming from.

So funny what happens in journalism, because I remember coming in and thinking, damn it, I missed the glory, glory, glory days of SI and the glory days of the great American sports page when it was operating at its richest and most powerful. And now people look at it as no, no, you were in the golden age. It turned out at least compared to now, so the rule is the golden age is whatever happened 10 or 20 years before you got to the business. Yeah. Here's my last question for you because I saw you tweeting the other day about here's my blue sky sports writing journalism job. I'm reading my tweets.

My feet is terrible, Brian. What are you doing? And you were talking about, you know, without kids or, you know, just kind of one of those. If I just got out a yellow pad and wrote down what I wanted to do. what keeps you coming back to the topic of sports media all these many years later that's a good question listen i i you know i respect this i respect this show um too much to bullshit to bullshit performative answer and start singing and dancing uh but i'm not going to well we'll save that for next time yeah the biggest reason is that i do have i have some now

how do i say this without sort of coming off like an asshole. I mean, I've worked, I've done it a long time. So if nothing else, I have at least I hope some credibility in the space. And credibility means you can work. Like credibility means that somebody may hire you and pay you. So first and foremost, you know, because I have a family and because I, you know, I really enjoy where I live is, you know, it's a good job.

And I want to continue it. And I can functionally do it because I've been in it long enough where I have access to people or I have, I think about. this stuff a lot and I read a lot so I can come up and generate story ideas on my own. So there's a real functional reason that I continue to do it. I do find it interesting like you do. I've always found even when I was really young, like I was always transfixed by how did these people write this story? Like how did like how does that happen? Like I would watch the Mets game right in New York and then I'd read like Newsday or like the Daily News or something the next day and I'm like well how does this even happen like how are these people able to write this stuff like what is the function of this and so I was always like totally like mesmerized by like um by just how like media sort of existed I was somebody who loved to watch television you know my my single parent my mom so you know like many of us in the 70s and 80 had dropped got dropped in front of the you know box um and so like I

I fell in love with sports television. Like, and I would be one of those kids who like, you know, I'd fall asleep, like listening to the radio of some out-of-town baseball game or out-of-town football game. Like, that was me. So in some, you know, it's clearly like been a passion of mine. I will say, I don't know if, I don't think this is going to happen to you. And nor do I think it's going to happen to me because I think you're too elegant a writer. But one thing I promised myself was I would not be like the 68-year-old guy screaming about like some, some, uh, ridiculous like broadcast or doing X or like some baseball player like not running out like a like a like a like a

fly ball or something like that. So I think this stuff has a shelf life and I'm going to be really honest. Like I don't know how much longer I'm going to write sports media. I do think at a certain point you get written out on a subject. I still think my work is good. I mean, I know just functionally in terms of metrics and page views and subs, I get a lot. Like, you know, I'm the athletic and I feel like have a fair relationship. I'm providing them something and they're providing me something. But I do wonder if I'm just going to be a little existential. I think everybody's got a shelf life in terms of a certain subject. And I feel like I am getting closer to the end for me than the beginning. But at its core, I still, I find a lot of things about media and sports media interesting. And generally,

and this is not a lie, I usually find the behind-the-scenes people far more interesting than the front-facing people. Because I really have a lot of respect for what they do because I know how hard it is. You can't always get the page views, like if you write about the camera operator or if you write about the video editor. But that is still something that keeps me coming back to this subject. So I don't know if I answered your question, but that's, you know, it's important. It's how we process all this stuff. And at a base level, that's important content. But that said, I can't be somebody like at a certain point who's like caring about like what the, what the morning show host just said about like Kevin Durant for the 80th time. And I do wrestle with that because I feel like, you know, I don't know how much longer I have to sort of think about that stuff.

When I got the 19th press release from ESPN, what was it? A couple of weeks ago, a couple of months ago that said ESPN reimagines NBA countdown. I'm all good. Yeah. I'll just let that one unfold and maybe have a take later. You're at the right place because you're one really good thing about the ringer, in addition to many good things, is you're not necessarily a prisoner of the day-to-day news cycle. And nor am I all the time.

I am a little bit sometimes. And that's the kind of stuff that just gets a little tiring because, like, as you know, the content machine never, never, never stops. Never. It does. And if I'll give you a fire at up speech, fire you up speech, Richard, to continue along this path. The one thing, as we said earlier, talking about sports writing and talking about ESPN is we're here at a wildly fascinating moment. There was a good 10, 20 year period where it was ESPN got him again.

That was the story. ESPN comes out on top or the newspaper comes out on top. It's not the story anymore. and it's a period of wild change. And to me, that's what makes this as fascinating is interesting. And guarantees another Curtis Deich podcast somewhere down the line, if I can pronounce my own name. Richard Deich, read him at the athletic, listen to him on the sports media podcast. Richard, thanks for coming on the press box.

Thank you for the therapy session, Brian. That's the press box. I'm Brian Curtis, production magic. As always, by Erica Servantes. I have some stuff written down for Monday. edition of the press box here. I got a segment called the What Do We Cover Now campaign?

What are political reporters supposed to do when the polls aren't moving very much? I've got NFL TV preview. Pro football. NFL football starts next Thursday. We will get you all set up on what to listen for, what to look for, what's new this season around the dial. And then I got one more topic here. Let's see.

ESPN embraces closed circuit television that has a very 1980s WWF paperview vibe. Hmm. We'll discuss. Plus more lukewarm takes about the media. Have a fantastic weekend.