The Press Box - Bari Weiss’s First Day at CBS, Reporting on Mark Sanchez, and the GOAT-dom of Chris Berman

Episode Date: October 6, 2025

Hello, media consumers! Bryan and David are back to discuss America’s Softest Target, why they’re sitting out of Taylor Swift discourse, and Bari Weis’ first day as editor in chief of CBS News. They get into the particulars of who Weiss is reporting to, what will her version of CBS News look like, and what it means that just 28% of Americans have a fair amount of trust in newspapers, television and radio. Then they get into the Overworked Twitter Joke of the Week, and the reporting around Mark Sanchez’s arrest this weekend, They also share some football audio from this weekend, including Eric Collins’ first football game, and Greg Olson using an “only in journalism” phrase.  Hosts: Bryan Curtis and David Shoemaker  Producer: Kyle Williams Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hey, it's Danny Kelly, and it's officially fantasy football season, which means the ringer fantasy football show is back with the latest news from around the NFL and everything you need to get ready for the fantasy football season. So join us at the ringer fantasy football show on Spotify or on our new YouTube channel. David? Yes. I'd like to start out today's show with two of our favorite press box departments. Okay. Number one, America's softest target. Oh, I can't wait.

This is where we nominate an individual or organization that has become so unpopular that reporters can write critically about them without worrying about any kind of blowback. Previous winners of America's softest target included Joe Biden, the people that ran Joe Biden's campaign, Dallas Mavericks GM Nico Harrison. There was no Stan Army walking through that door with any of those people. Well, I would like to nominate today WNBA Commissioner Kathy Engelbert. Oh, God, okay. Is there a pro Engelbert caucus out there? No. Who was standing up to defend her after Nefiza Collier.

Talked about the officiating, about how the WNBA front office was quote-unquote tone-deaf and dismissive. Are you risking anything by writing the negative piece now knowing that Engelbert may not be WN? NBA commissioner five minutes from now. No, absolutely not. Absolutely not. And when does it commission? I mean, commissioners are always easy targets unless they have some endless,

this is a David Stern, Dana White type situation where they have some sort of outsized power over your professional career. Most of the time the commissioners are just like, you know, the, the pro wrestling heel authority figures, right? It's like, it's your job is to call them out. It would be crazy if you did. It's true. Adam Silver seemed to

allied that for a number of years. He was well-liked. Yeah, he was well-liked, but even he's in the zone now. But if you want to complain about a sport, the tough call is to call out a player. We see this stuff happen a lot, right? But like, you know, in this day and age, the last thing you want to do is to get on a player's bad side,

one, because of their popularity, their social media reach, but two, because, like, they're cool. And you want to be friendly with the, you know, LeBron James's of the world, right, if given the opportunity. I don't think anybody's going to be particularly heartbroken to not have the Engelbert invitation to the dinner party. How dare you speak of Gary Bettman that way, sir. So that's department number one. Department number two is our newest department. I'm sitting this one out.

We created this, David, because social media encourages us to have an opinion about everything. Everything. Everything. Every single event in politics, sports, movies, television. Mm-hmm. Now, you might hear, have an opinion about everything and think, media podcast, heal thyself. Well, that's what we're trying to do.

We want to normalize not having an opinion. I want to sit more things. As many things out as possible. Well, David, this week I nominate a thing that I, anyway, have absolutely no opinion about. it's Taylor Swift's new album The Life of a Showgirl Well, thankfully we have other ringer podcast to cover that It's breaking all the Spotify records

And I want to be clear here Because when people say something about Taylor Swift It often comes off as Watch you on my TV screen during a football game Or oh my God, I'm tired of her and Travis Kelsey I'm not No I just don't have an opinion about this album

Mm-hmm Did the album have 12 bangers as Swift promised? Was that Rolling Stone five-star review correct? Was planting a Charlie X-E-X disc track on the album, the right move? I have no opinion. I have no idea. And no opinion, therefore, yeah. We're sitting this one out.

Appreciate that. At home, it's fun. Speaking of musical, massively popular musical acts, We probably should have an opinion on the Bad Bunny Super Bowl halftime show. Oh my God. We don't even know what this is at this point. There's a lot of varying opinions on it. But just as a way of dipping a tiny pinky toe into it.

I just wanted to point, I don't know what department this should go in. If this is a pop culture department or if this is just a, you know, just perfect New York Times headlines folder that we can keep record of. but there was a Molly Jong-Fast guest essay on the opinion page this week. And I will not comment on the content of it. The content of it was actually not bad. But the headline was what Chuck Schumer can learn from Bad Bunny, which just seems like not only the New York Times opinion section,

Madlibs, but also, I mean, just like a headline that you would have sitting in a folder somewhere, just waiting for the piece to materialize for three years. It's a headline that needs a piece. It feels like something Slate would have done like 10 years ago with a wink, you know, just like this is the sort of headline that we know we'll get this reaction from you. That might be what they're doing here. I'm not going to discredit that possibility. But man, what Chuck Schumer can learn from Bad Bunny is just an all-timer.

Dude. I mean, the self-congratulations of that headline just comes pouring through. And this is what, you know, to cite another press box department here, this is what inspired all those why politics is like pro wrestling headlines. Yes. Anytime you can take the thing that people don't want to talk about, Chuck Schumer and marry it in a headline to something people do want to talk about, bad bunny, you got to do it.

This is great. This is like when you're a parent watching a TV show and being like, see, the mandible. Eloria and eats his vegetables or something to convince your kid that something uncool is cool. Coming up on today's podcast, David, we got to talk about how Fox announcer Mark Sanchez was arrested in

Indianapolis. You're going to have to help us welcome Barry Weiss to her new job at CBS News. I'm going to have to? Or you the audience? Well, you the audience. We'll just include everyone in on the welcome email. We might even have cake in the cafeteria if anyone wants to join us.

The public, David, does not trust the media. What are we going to do about that? Plus NFL audio, the nature of ESPN's Chris Berman and his Goat Hood Hood, our very first Yola Buccoflod gift of the year. All that and much more on the press box. A part of the ringer, podcast network. Hello, media consumers, Brian, Curtis, David Shoemaker, and producer Kyle Williams here sitting in for Kyle Crichton.

A memo went out today, David. to all the employees of CBS News in which a new employee introduced herself. She is, of course, Barry Weiss. The background here is that Paramount, the parent company of CBS, bought Weiss as the free press. They paid roughly $100 million in cash

in Paramount stock, according to the New York Times. And then Paramount installed Weiss as the editor-in-chief of CBS News. that's the title editor-in-chief. Now, if you measure your power in a news organization based on who you report to, consider this interesting wrinkle that was reported by Dylan Byers and others. Weiss is going to report to Paramount Chairman and CEO David Ellison, not the president of CBS News, Tom Sibrowski.

What do we think a verified CBS News is going to look like? it's a good question. I don't want to be too optimistic, but my instinct is that it will change, I think, less than maybe some alarmists would presume. If for no other reason, then because it's a big organization and even one editor-in-chief can only concentrate on so much, right? there's so much of this kind of machine that I don't know that she'll see it as worth her while to rewire.

Maybe she will. Maybe she'll want to drain the swamp. But I do think that the top-level priorities will certainly shift. That the – she's smart enough to know that, you know, CBS News is not an opinion organization, but she's also sort of canny enough to understand how you can shift. straight coverage to lean towards points of view that you prefer. Some might say that's what the free press has been doing since its inception in sort of an inverted way, like finding a way to cover stories in the straightest way possible that totally

skew the way that the news such as it is is presented. So it'll be interesting to see how much she can bring that to bear at CBS. Part of me thinks that she'll just be happy to sit back and watch people freak out at the reactions, any small change or anything, maybe something that was already in progress will get.

But I think the more concerning thing, and listen, I'm not unconcerned about Bari Weiss's editorial vision, but the more concerning thing is the direct line to the top, right? It's that, I mean, this is, in a lot of ways, why you have a hierarchical structure at a news organization so that, you know, editorial decisions

aren't being directed by ownership. And the way that this is structured, it seems like that's not inevitable. That's the point, right? So, you know, it's got, it'll, I think it's going to be a really, difficult for six months, but especially for the people, the existing CBS News employees, but also for Barry Weiss and the new and whatever new people she brings in, because,

you know, you can't just like, I'm guessing what Ellison's view of the, of what the news should be is not always going to be easily, is not going to easily convey to the actual news coverage. Do you know, does that make sense? I just feel like he's going to want things that are very going to be very difficult to pull off or unrealistic. Another way to ask the question you're asking is, what's more worrisome? Weiss running CBS News or David Ellison running CBS News? Yeah. You know, she just an agent of David Ellison in this sense for what he wants.

To your point about it, not being easy, I completely agree. Because if she wanted something at the free press, you just assign the essay. or you just get the podcast made. TV news has a lot of infrastructure. So if you want a piece on the air, you're going to have to find someone to report it. You got to find someone to produce it. And then you're going to have to find a willing executive producer

of the particular show, whether it's 60 minutes of the evening news, to put it on the air. We saw Bill Owens 60 Minutes quit this spring. Yeah. So that takes a lot of steps. Now, could you replace those people, put in your own correspondence, your own producers, your own willing executive producers?

Yeah. But that's a big lift. And that's a whole lot of money to spend after you just spent however many hundreds of millions of dollars to buy CBS News, right? I mean, to buy the whole paramount infrastructure. It's tough. I mean, I can almost imagine it would be simpler to, do some sort of, well, I get, I don't know if it's smaller or bigger because the scale of CBS news is so much bigger, but it's a smaller operation than all of everything else. But some

variation on what we see, like, the Sinclair outlets do where they have their own shop to produce the adjut prop, right? They just sort of like shove it into these like freestanding nightly news programs. Like you could see a thing where there's just like the Bari Weiss report that shows up just to like, you know, cover whatever Alison wants her to cover every week. wants in the cover of you. She's on there like Andy Rooney used to be. Yeah, exactly, but, but that diminishes the entire thing, right? I mean, that just makes it that, that just see that that, that would, that would, that would, that would, that would, that was supposed to be, seem so small, you know. Yeah. And again, John Dickerson's got to be okay with that. The EP of the evening news has got to be okay with that. Because they can all, if they all quit or refuse to do the thing, then it just becomes much harder. And that's the thing, like, it's one thing to me. I think, I, I, I wouldn't, I wouldn't. not be surprised at Barry Weiss looks at her experience over the last, what is it, four years now

since she founded the free press and says, this is easy. I left the New York Times, the news organization of news organizations. And with a couple of people, I started my own. And we wrote stuff and published stuff and now I got paid 150 million bucks for it. And now I'm running CBS news. That was easy. I would just say with television news in an organization of this type, that lift is not the same thing at all. That's just hard. And even if you were to, and clearly when stuff like this happens,

they want some people to quit that almost is always part of the equation. Sure. But if everybody does or a huge number of people do, you're going to lose the expertise of just making television. Mm-hmm. And who there of the Ellison Weiss pairing understands how to make that, bring that back if that in fact walks out the door. Yeah.

I think it's going to be much easier also for her to kill stories rather than assign them. That would be to me the number one thing. If she sees something and she's like, that is talking about the Trump administration, for instance, in a way that I don't think CBS News should be doing. I think it's a lot easier to step in and say no than it is actually to put something on the air. And second, I'd say. And also, just a button before you get to the second thing, I apologize, even like taking an editorial hand. Maybe we should redirect the way. Maybe we should take it on this way.

That just, that's work. That takes extra effort. You know, it's much easier to kill. But go ahead to your second one. Well, December two was repair relations with the Trump administration. Yeah. Which is clearly something CBS News and Paramount more broadly is trying to do. Max Taney a semaphore reported last week that 60 Minutes is now negotiating for a Donald Trump interview.

You'll remember that Trump refused to go on CBS on. 60 minutes last October. He then sued for $20 billion because of the editing of the interview that Kamala Harris actually gave to 60 minutes. And now they're trying to get him back to be interviewed, Tanny says, by Bill Whitaker, who was the correspondent who interviewed Harris last October. We've come all the way around. I mean, it seems like, right, you'd want to be on the good side of the Trump administration,

not you or I, I mean, saying that seems. to be part of the obvious every media company on earth. Yes, but I mean, because of the apparent financial penalties to not, but also because that seems to clearly be the motivation here. But depending on him is just such a mugs game, you know? I mean, he's so fickle even towards the outlets that are,

that are nominally positive towards him. So that'll be an interesting thing to watch. Also, I mean, listen, no one's really asked this question. and I'm not sure that I even believe it, but just for the sake of it, to play devil's advocate, has anybody, I mean, thought about the, you know, Bari Weiss just made how much money, $150 million? Is it, has anybody thought about like the, the contract year scenario here? Like, maybe she's just made enough.

Maybe she's finished, you know, I mean, she's going to take the job, draw big salary, but maybe she's done all she wants to do now, you know? I mean, this is, this is, you said it was easy for her. This is a massive success to go from quitting the New York Times to being a multi, multi, multi, multi millionaire. I mean, who knows what I mean, I don't think it's easy to predict at all what's going to happen with her next. I do wonder if, you know, satisfying the Trump administration too is just, as we've seen, sometimes a gesture does all the work for you. Yeah. You don't actually need to change the content all that much.

He's going to be very satisfied from, I mean, starting now. Like he's already satisfied, right? I'm sure he will do the interview or whatever. Yeah, and Bill Whitaker does a tough but respectful interview, which Bill Whitaker would have done under a previous regime. Yeah. And Trump either pronounces himself satisfied or just says the same things on true social that he would have said about CBS News anyway.

Mm-hmm. So we've reached a kind of stasis. Yeah. The New York Times in their report about Weiss this morning called CBS News, the storied, only in journalism. home of Edward R. Murrow and Walter Cronkite. Oh, yeah. This is a violation, David, of our Walter Cronkite rule of media reporting.

This used to be the Dan Jenkins rule. I just rejiggered it. The rule goes like this. When writing about the sorry state of a media company, you may not cite someone who left that media company more than 20 years ago. I will have you know that Uncle Walter went on the CBS evening news for the last time in March 1981 44 years ago

and Edward R. Murrow died in 1965, 60 years ago. And the reason that rule exists is because if we're talking about the way media companies change, this is not happening to the CBS news of Walter Cronkite. This is happening to the CBS news of Nora O'Donnell

and Scott McFarland and John Dickerson and nothing against them, but that is a different thing than Walter Cronkike that he kicked off the air by Barry Weiss. First of all, the rule is sound. I'm not taking exception to it. However,

do they use it because it's a shorthand for a reputable media organization? Is that the idea? Which is, I guess what I mean is if CBS News had been just a, you know, crazy biased mess for the past 20 years,

would they still be name-checking Walter Cronkite at this moment in time. Yeah, I mean, look, there's a, there's a totally a fair argument that the values of Walter Cronkite are in some ways the values of CBS news or what they, what they aim for on the daily basis. I just think when you do stuff like that, you make the contrast heightened. Yeah, of course. You make it like it's what if I say, hey, you know, something bad happened to Sports

Illustrated, the home of and list three modern writers, it sounds, you know, a lot less dire than the home of Dan Jenkins, Frank DeFord, and Rick Riley. Yeah. But it just hasn't been that for a really long time. Mm-hmm. And part of the reason things like this are happening is that it's not enjoying the, you know, massive, you know, centrality in our lives that Walter Cronkite's evening news in a three-network world enjoy it. Like the world's changed so much.

That's what's left it vulnerable to your Ellison's and your wises. You think Walter Kronkai would have been standing up to Ellison and Weiss? He would have been just like shaking his fist, yelling into his into his, into his thrice weekly podcast microphone about how just disreputable this whole new situation is. Well, I've been reading a lot about SORA and maybe we can make that happen. Walter Kronkite yells about what's happening at CBS News. Andy Rooting too. Mike Wallace, we can get the whole gang together. This all brings us, David, to a new poll about trust in media.

Is 28% a good number? Is that a winning hand? Do you think we in the media are playing? I'm guessing no, but I honestly have no frame of reference here. Well, I don't know what it was last year. I don't know. They were the year before. All right.

I can explain here. This is all a Gallup poll that measures Americans' confidence in the mass media. What their trust is in newspapers, television, and radio. More on that in a second. But Gallup reports that it has edged down, David, that trust to a new low with just 28% expressing a great deal or fair amount of trust. 28%. The number was 31% last year to answer your question. It was 40% five years ago.

Five years ago, meaning just before the 2020 election when Donald Trump would falsely claim again and again and again that he had won the election. Gallup started measuring trust in media back in the 70s. The high point, our Apex Mountain, if you will, was 1976 when 72% of Americans had a great deal or fair amount of trust in the media. Right after Watergate. 1976? 76. Right after Watergate, right after Woodstein.

But then it's kind of stairs all the way down. By 1997, so Bill Clinton's second term, it was down to 53. percent. 2004, Bush administration, Iraq war, trust was underwater at 44 percent. And it's really remained there. The 28 percent is the first time Gallup notes that that number has ever dipped below 30 percent. It won't surprise you to note that this really depends your trust in media, that is, on what political party you identify with.

For Democrats, Gallup says, 51 percent trust the media. 51% not terrible yeah independence 27% with Republicans according to this latest survey 8% 8% of Republicans

say that they trust the media yeah not not great yes and again once again that's that great deal or a fair amount of trust number 8% also older people trust the media more 43% of adults age 65 or older trust the media compared with no more than 28% in any younger group, Gallup says.

Back in the early 2000s, trust was about the same across age groups. So a couple questions here. Newspapers, television, and radio. How different do these figures look if Gallup defines the media more fully? I mean, gives a more, gives a different definition of it or broadens the already established definition? I guess either one, but let's say somehow podcast, I think that's Twitter. I think the breadth of it is the, is the problem. The media, I mean, I think any institution that feels so broad in this day and age is going to have a negative approval rating, right?

I mean, you might love your car, but I don't think anybody's going to say, like, I trust the auto industry, right? You see the same thing, obviously, in health care and any other big business, big industry. It's going to have a negative, people are going to have a negative opinion of it, you know? And I think that the, I think that there's a lot of reasons why the trust, such as it is, skews older, I know, we all have older people in our lives and we know of many that that spend a lot of time watching the news and associating themselves with it to the point where I might not believe I might not like all the news but I sure trust all these people that I watch on this channel. It's also a lot of people who probably just in general and maybe this isn't separate from what I said

just a second ago that have a more narrow view of what the news media is, right? but I think for people of our generation and younger generations, it's like we might fully, we might, you know, you might say the New York Times is a great news organization. I dearly trust, sincerely trust almost everything that they do or that they set out to do. But when I'm thinking of news media, I'm still thinking of like the clickbait headlines that pop up on my iPhone that take those New York Times stories and twist them in such a way that, turns into something completely different, and that is not trustworthy, right? So for every good news story, there's five bad news stories that flashed across my screen.

It doesn't shock me. I mean, and also it's a leading question. I mean, we've been seeing the decline in trust in the news media be a news item for it feels like a decade now. What are you going to say? What have you seen in the past two years that would lead you to trust the news media more? I suppose if you're hearing stories that I'm not talking about to you as someone in the media. I'm just talking about the average consumer, right?

All I know is that I keep seeing stories about the faith in the news media is going down. And I haven't seen like a reorganization at the top or, you know, I haven't seen the swamp drained. I mean, I don't know what really to say. So it's just going to naturally trend downwards, I would assume. It reminds me when I used to be on college football message boards and would see people talking about the NCAA. Yeah. This is in the age before you could pay college football. ball players and there'd be a group of people like me who would be like, I don't like the NCAA

because you don't allow college players to be paid. Yeah. Then there'd be a much larger group that would say the NCAA isn't enforcing its no payment rules stringently enough. Yeah. So we both agreed that the NCAA sucked. We just couldn't decide why we agreed. And this really reminds me of that because with Republicans, you have, you know,

know a lot of people saying hey the leader of our party the leader of all leaders is coming on tv every day or on true social every day and saying don't trust what you read don't trust what you watch just trust me then you have democrats saying how has the news media not done anything about Donald Trump how have you allowed him to be reelected so everybody can kind of get their licks in even if it's just for completely different reason totally true which is funny jack shaffer used to write columns, my old boss, about this all the time, about trust in the media, would note that trust in every institution, American life, or just about every institution has plunged over the decades.

Organized religion down. Yeah. Well, you mentioned health care banks down, right, from previous levels. And he also floated this theory, I thought, based on a couple of academics that I thought was interesting, which was that the media in the 60s and 70s really changes. if we can speak broadly. Newspapers get more investigative, more pushy. You know,

they start, you know, pushing back against the established order in the United States. We know the reasons. The reasons are the 60s, Watergate, et cetera, et cetera.

Well, what happens is you, the media teaches the public to think skeptically, to question what they are reading, right, through that reporting, often when it's good. And Schaefer once wrote,

he said, it only makes sense that the public exposed to critical thinking by the press should redirect that critical thinking back onto the press itself. The more people know, the less they trust. Yeah. I do think that's baked in there too.

It was like, wait a second. I am a critical thinker. I am not a sheep. So I'm not just going to believe something because somebody said it on TV or I read it in a paper, even a reputable one. Yeah.

One question as it pertains to CBS News of the Washington Post is this. Okay. 92% of Republicans are out or neutral on the subject of the media. Is your job to try to get them back into the tent? That's a good question. Or is your job to take that 51% of Democrats who are hanging on and say, hey, let's super serve you and maybe even try to lure that 49% of Democrats who are out because we think that they're more. persuadable back in.

Which audience are you looking to sell your product to? I mean, isn't looking at, well, I was going to say isn't targeting an audience just the entire, I mean, exactly the problem here? I mean,

shouldn't, isn't the correct answer just like, do what we feel is right, cover these stories in the most appropriate way, and then let the chips fall where they may in terms of, you know, people's perception of you? It is,

but they tried that. And thanks to technological, factors, nobody cared. And they got pilloried for just doing that, right? They got called liberal or conservative or both for doing that, for being straight up. So I think the question is not, I'm not talking about like slanting the news or doing it. I'm just saying like, who are the people you're going after here? Clearly, the theory of the case at CBS and at the Washington Post is that there are Republicans who've checked out who will come back. Yeah. You know, they haven't been poisoned. The ground hasn't been poisoned forever. It can be cleaned up.

in some way, whatever method that is and bring it back. You and I, I think, have said multiple times that doesn't seem possible, at least in any great numbers, that you're going to convince people have been told that the media is a bunch of lying scumbags to say, hey, I will now pay for the Washington Post. I will now check in to see that CBS evening news because it's under different leadership. It might be good. I think they've checked out to podcasts and other things and they are gone and not coming back. But I think people read that data differently.

And as you say, and then you ask the right question, which is if you're going after Democrats, what do you change? How do you do that without compromising the kind of reporting values that are important? You think make your news organization what it is? I just think the vast majority of news consumers don't know the difference between CBS and ABC News. Yes, probably. And I don't, and I don't think that like, I don't think that CBS becoming newsmax, if, you know, I'm just taking it to an extreme, obviously, short of it becoming newsmax, I don't think people are going to be like attuned to the fact that they're like two news organizations with like different opinions. I think that they're going to have, they're going to think that the whole combination of CBS and ABC and NBC and whoever else. just like adds up to the news media.

And I don't know that that anybody's faith is going to be restored and where the other. That's separate from attracting viewers. I do think there will be a nominal number of viewers that will, you know, make CBS their new news home. But I don't think that's going to change the way that the vast majority of people perceive the news industry. In a related note, there are a lot of people listening to us right now

that thought they were listening to the Ringer NBA show. and they're wondering why it's taking us so long to get to the Jonathan Caminga extension why these guys talk about trust in media and Barry Weiss get to the real news of the day can we file that one under let's sit this one out the Jonathan Caminga extension yeah I bench myself on that one immediately leave that to smarter people than me I think I read like three stories on it and I still I'm just like yeah this is the more I know the more I want to just like sit that out. Sure. I'll just wait till the next transaction. Okay. We'll have an opinion on the Jaime

Hawkes extension coming soon. But coming up in 30 seconds, David, did you hear about what happened with Mark Sanchez in Indianapolis? First, let's do the overworked Twitter joke of the week where we celebrate a gag that was so obvious that all of media Twitter made it at exactly the same time. Send your nominees to at the press box pod on Twitter or Blue Sky, where they are always, always gratefully received. David, we got the news last week that Nicole Kidman and Keith Urban are separating. That they are Splitsville

after 19 years of marriage. It's an overword Twitter joke to write. I'm reading this as I'm about to enter an AMC theater and I'm going to tell them to put the flag at half-mast. We would have also accepted Nicole Kidman knows a place where heartbreak feels good. There you go. Thanks to our friend Stacey Weiner.

you realized it had been a while since you'd actually seen that AMC promo or been inside an AMC theater. Congrats. You made the overworked Twitter joke of the week. I learned this week that that promo was written by Billy Ray, the director of Shattered Glass. Really? Did you know that? No, I had no idea. It would work by Billy Ray.

All right, in the notebook dump, David. Big story on Saturday morning as we were starting our first. football weekend. It was from TMZ. And the story said that Mark Sanchez had been stabbed early Saturday morning in Indianapolis and was in the hospital with critical injuries. Mark Sanchez is, of course, the former NFL and USC quarterback. He was in Indianapolis to call the Raiders Bears game for Fox.

And, of course, as soon as that story hits Twitter, everyone goes into a particular mode. We're thinking of Mark Sanchez, thoughts and prayers, et cetera, et cetera. As soon as that story hits Twitter on Saturday morning, you know what happens. Everyone gets concerned about Mark Sanchez. Well, on Saturday afternoon, David, we get the U-turn. And I learned this from local reporters in Indianapolis who were playing a very different game than NFL insiders, particularly reporters at Fox 59. Max Lewis and Angela Gannote came across my Twitter screen there.

They did a terrific job talking about the whole thing. And of course, we would learn later on Saturday that Mark Sanchez was arrested in the hospital. Arrested in the hospital. Here is a story from the charging documents, as told by the New York Times. This is, of course, involves Mark Sanchez and a delivery driver. I'm quoting here. the driver, an unidentified 69-year-old man who wears hearing aids,

had arrived to recycle the hotel's frying oil. This all happens at a hotel. Early on Saturday, the police said, Mr. Sanchez confronted the driver at the loading dock, saying the man did not have permission to be there and that the hotel did not want its friar oil replaced, according to court documents. The driver who told the police he did not have his hearing aids

in at the time was confused and told Mr. Sanchez he needed to call his manager. He said Mr. Sanchez smelled of, alcohol and that his speech was slurred according to court documents. Mr. Sanchez then attempted to enter the truck cab blocked the driver from retrieving his cell phone and eventually shoved him. The man fearing he was in danger, pepper sprayed Mr. Sanchez, whom he did not recognize, court record said. Mr. Sanchez wiped his face. The driver told police and continued advancing toward him. This guy is trying to kill me the driver called thinking, according to the police,

fearing for his life, the driver took out a knife and stabbed Mr. Sanchez, who eventually ran away. And I will underline the phrase according to court documents there, according to court records. So we know this is just again, this is an early read of the case. This is Mark Sanchez has not been convicted of anything. He was charged by the Marion County prosecutor with battery resulting in injury, public intoxication, and an unlawful entry of a motor vehicle. And Gnott noted this morning that a felony battery charge was also added to that today. So that was quite a story.

you had a couple of things coming off that, David. One was an Adam Schaefter tweet on Saturday afternoon that said that Sanchez had been hospitalized quote after being stabbed during a robbery. Yeah, that was the first news about it that I saw, really. And that tweet stayed up for 24 hours after which, to his credit, Schaefter deleted it. Now, I assume he was not doing original reporting

on an alleged crime in Indianapolis because he's linking there you saw it to like an ESPN breaking news story. Yeah. And perhaps the idea that it was a robbery was in that in a breaking news story or was some garbled early idea of what might have happened in that incident.

Yeah. But I'm looking at that on Sunday morning and going, I don't think we can just pivot to who's active and inactive in the NFL games. Yeah. Without going back and, saying something about that tweet had some editorial mechanism kicking in and saying, hey, whoa, whoa, this was not what we know or at least we think to be what happened.

Or if it does, if there's any kind of theory about what happened, let's say that. Yeah, for sure. What else was there? A Dan Dinkage tweet, which I'm not going to read on the air. Look it up if you're interested. A whole bunch of Indiana politicians piling on to each other. Mm-hmm. I mean, listen, it's a weird story.

And in some ways, this is, I don't know, I mean, I felt particularly affected by it in a way that being as kind of plugged in as I am as you are. I don't always feel that way. But I heard that I saw that tweet on someone else's phone and just sort of, and so that piece of, that misrepresentation of reality is what I took to be reality for about the next 12 hours, right? Like, I just sort of, like, I went about my day. I don't know that there is anything untoward in the reporting. I don't know if anybody deliberately misinformed the press or anybody in the press deliberately misstated the truth or, I mean, who knows? Or people were just making assumptions. Yeah.

I mean, I think that's, I, frankly, I think that's probably likely, right? I mean, the, the assumptions that, yeah, it feels like the version of the story that you, you would assume in some ways, you know, based on really limited knowledge. And that's not the way you should be reporting anything. Um, but it's, it's, it is, it is crazy how much the early misreporting and just totally alter, skew your view, your, you're, you're even, even in the future and your memory of, of, you know, events like that. 100%. I mean, the Fox 59, uh, reporters posted some pictures of the other man, the 69 year old man who was involved in this incident in the hospital. Yeah. And, you know, use discretion if you want to look those up because they are

very graphic. But when you talk about changing your perception, we go from Mark Sanchez is in the hospital. He's been stabbed. Is he okay? Yeah. To then the presentation of these pictures. And here is this other person who again, looking at pictures like we all are. You're going, my goodness, look at this. You know, look at this person. Yeah. Yeah, it really, really does change your perception. And then all these Indiana politicians, I thought of Adam Ren. Politico who knows Indiana politics like nobody's business. Yeah. You know, it's like there's a tweet from the governor that was deleted and then the Marion

County prosecutor was jumping in and then people are like, you sir haven't tweeted in years and now is the time you jump in. Yeah. And do this. A local politician was also, you know, on the Schefter tweet because they're thinking, look, this is portraying Indianapolis as a dangerous place. There's some kind of crime problem here. Like that's that's what if you read about a stabbing in Indianapolis you're like oh my goodness what's going on there and of course certain people want to portray it that way and it's like oh my good is now the person charged as a fox announcer yeah uh weekend football audio notes from our still unnamed segment I was watching the North Carolina Clemson game on Saturday.

It was 28 to 3 at the end of the first quarter. Yeah. Clemson just beating the brakes off the tar heels. When does the bill? Belichick thing go from a ha-ha to something that is genuinely sad? Already? I mean, I think if depending on how the... Are you sad for Bill Belichick, really, though? I mean, it... Well, I'm not exactly laughing.

It is a sad thing to look at that. You're like, this is not, this is bad. But when will we feel empathy rather than Shadenfreude toward Bill Belichick? Is Belichick just officially empathy proof at this point? I think another shoe would have to drop. Yeah. It's going to take a while. I'm not, I'm not, I'm not saying it could never happen. Mm-hmm.

But it does feel like that's a tough one to get there. I mean, I was watching that. I'm like, this team sucks. This is, this is awful. I was watching Jets Cowboys on Sunday morning. Greg Olson and Jason Benetti on the call. Listen to Greg Olson bust out an only in journalism word after the cowboys forced a Justin Fields. in completion. It's fourth down coming up. So this is really good, a much maligned past defense of the Cowboys. Watch when Justin Fields

breaks contains. Is anything ever just maligned or is it always much maligned? Yeah, nothing's ever maligned. Malign? No, nothing's ever maligned. Because the Cowboys defense is both maligned and much maligned for being honest.

there were 21 accepted penalties in that Cowboys Jets game including a really cheap personal foul call on the Cowboys' Lade. Listen to Olson walk right up to the red line of criticizing the refs too much. Punching his way for a couple of yards to set up third down.

Yeah, I don't know that any of the officials saw it. I mean, the white hat was standing right there. The 18th penalty is your limit. Is that how many it's been? Combined, young. We've had a few to clock. Just walking right up to the, right up to the boundary there, David. You can see on the slow-mo replay Greg Olson's cleat just getting inside.

We're going to go there too much and talk about those ruffs because that's going to make everybody mad. But we're going to say what we need to say. We're going to get it out. Yeah. Listener Jake Madtown on Blue Sky says, we need to have a press box segment on Eric Collins calling his first NFL game like it's the fourth quarter of the Super Bowl. Eric Collins making his debut on Fox with Dolphins Panthers. What a way to start your NFL broadcasting career. Here's a little bit of Collins on Sunday.

That is as excited as anyone has ever been about Rico Dowdle. I'm for this because I used to have a Joe Tessitator theory of Monday night football, which is that by the time you get to Monday night, you're just kind of on the ropes. You're a little bit dazed from all the football. And you just need somebody to wake you up. Yeah. To just talk you into the tent and get you excited.

Look, Dolphins Panthers, absolutely the same theory applies. Yeah. Absolutely true. Absolutely true. Great work by him. Let's get this thing up as excited as possible. Related news, by the way, semi-related news. Did you see that the news about the Carolina Panthers podcast that is shutting down?

No. Is there a trust-a-media issue with the Carolina Panthers podcast? No, there's a there is a good Carolina Panthers podcast called Meow Mix. And they've officially just thrown it in it. They're thrown in their hats. They're throwing in the towel. Sorry. It's too many, too many years of bad team, bad ownership, bad everything else.

They're just like they can't take like they're going to be. I think I'll read from the, I'll read from the announcement. Stephen and Jerry have enjoyed Carolina let's take from the beginning Meow Mix a Carolina Panthers podcast is going on a definite hiatus

Stephen and Jerry have enjoyed bringing everyone our thoughts on the team since our first episode on July 30th, 2019 and that time we have dedicated several hours a week to the production of the podcast, be it watching film outlining the show recording, editing

and general planning. We've met some incredible people along the way and built an amazing community of Panthers fans who enjoy our two guys talking at a bar style. It's a good idea. More people should do that. But anyway, they go on to say it's spinning all that time away from their wives and the young children has become difficult to justify.

They'll be watching the games regardless, but locking ourselves away for six to seven hours on a Sunday just to watch them discuss a 42 to 23 ass whipping has become more of a chore than anything else. God bless those people. Yeah, you often wonder about that. right like sometimes you'll I don't know be watching the playoffs

and be like yeah I want to get the other side of this game that my team is playing or whatever it's hard enough we don't give it enough that team imagine just having to record a podcast after every Panthers game

and then coming back during the week yeah and revisit some terrible personnel decision yeah it's true um it would be very it's not even the Jets right

like where it's like at least high profile and yeah high profile suffering the giant the this is the panthers is just suffering and suffering yeah exactly and not a particular like you know it's not like the NBA where and you have like the number one you know a top five draft pick coming up to get excited about you know it's just like there's so much that has to change you had some of those but they weren't worth getting excited about yeah we're well damn or they traded them away for you know to move up a couple of spots in the current draft uh Yeah, it's just, it's really tough.

It's really tough. We're going to be, the Panthers will be on their, what, sixth coach since temper took over after the, you know, if they fire, if they, if they, if they, if they remove this one. I mean, it's, it's, it's been quite a run. We don't give enough credit to all the podcasters of truly terrible teams. No, we, we, we don't do thoughts and prayers here at the press box all that much, but thoughts and prayers to meow makes. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I honestly, it's such low profile suffering that I've kind of lost.

track of what bad things have happened to the Panthers. Yeah, it's, it's been rough. It's just been a rough ride, you know, it's like, I mean, like,

like UK, you name the coaches. Like, let's just, let's try to name something, you know, like, okay,

Bryce Young struggles. Well, drafting Bryce Young and, and trading away a future number one pick for the honor of, for the privilege of drafting Bryce Young was pretty rough. Um, but, there's,

there's been a lot of, There's been a lot of just general. It's been a lot of low profile stuff, I feel, though. It hasn't even cracked like the, you know, the Micah Parsons level of just terrible. Oh, yeah, a future number one pick and your best receiver. And it was, there was a lot that was traded to get Bryce Young. It was, it's just a, it's a mess. It's absolutely.

And don't forget the David Tepper stuff. He's going to show up on my door. If I keep saying his name, he's like, Beetlejuice. But don't forget, I'm like smacking the hat. off of somebody or showing up at the bar that had the had the chalkboard that said something about him out front and I mean just just some wild wild stuff uh in happier NFL news Chris Berman celebrated his 46th anniversary at ESPN is that including when he was fired wasn't he gone for a while he yeah so he started I guess this is his start date okay is 1979

because that was ESPN's first year on the year. So he's one of the originals. This is like comic book chronology. It's like you change the name. You change the numbering system. But when the anniversary comes, we'll just go back to the original number. We'll just count all the months in between.

Which is cleaner. Honestly. We're just talking about Chris. And we got to 46. It's not even a round number. Like we weren't even really doing anything to monkey with a, with the numbers here. Oh yeah.

They should have just faked it. They should have just done the Goldberg thing where they just announced it was his 50th anniversary. He's celebrated a few years. years at hell shows or whatever. Do you see all the goat tweets about Chris Berman? There were a lot. There were a lot of goat tweets.

I mean, that was like the entire Sunday timeline. So we're saying what Chris Berman is the goat of in particular? That's what I was wondering. I mean, I don't, I don't disagree with the statement. I'm just not quite sure what the premises. All right. So here's the theory I heard from Keith Olberman back in the day when I was writing about him and Dan Patrick hosting Sports Center.

and I will I will paraphrase Keith here this is the best I remember it Chris Berman Keith Oldman and Patrick very very different funny people very very different

you know it's almost like saying and this is my words here it's almost like saying you have a borschbelt comic and then you have John Stewart or Jerry Seinfeld pick your

favorite sort of modern comedian but you need the Borsch Belt comic to get to Jerry Seinfeld or John Stewart. That was the important evolutionary step. And the way Oberman told it to me was Berman comes on the air in 79 and he's the one who convinces ESPN executives that a sports center anchor can be really funny.

The joke should be part of the diet. That wasn't obvious at the beginning. You know, maybe we should be like CNN of sports. He's the one who creates the idea of fun. sports center anchor. And he's doing nicknames. He's a rumbling, bumble and stumbling. He's doing all of his stuff.

So in a way, I think it's like, that's one way to talk about his importance at ESPN, that nothing that comes after exists without Chris Berman. Nothing, you know, the Scott Van Pelt, Dan and Keith, Stu Scott, like all that stuff is built on what Chris Berman created, the archetype that he created. But I would say what he's the goat of is the connection with fans. I mean, I am hard pressed to think of anybody in ESPN history. And maybe, you know, our boss is probably on this list. But that has the identification with people watching television.

It's like, that's my guy. That guy's like me. He watches football like me. I mean, he was early on the gambling stuff. That's true. Like he was, you know, talking about football, like people at home talked about football, except Chris is way funnier and way more creative.

Like that's, you know, in the way you looked, you know, he didn't look like a normal blowdried television guy. I don't know. To me, that's, that's where his, his goal is. Well, that's certainly true. He definitely had some of that every man, euphemistic, every man persona to him. He also got that, you know, NFL Sunday job. I mean, that was like the most prime real estate probably on the entire channel, not just because of the prime time.

I mean, MNFL primetime, not just because of the, you know, the popularity of the NFL, but because at a time when ESPN was leaning into the notion that their hosts were all sort of cogs, you know, there's sports center hosts. That the ESPN, the sports center was the brand, you know, or was it was the star and the, the brand was the star and that the, the host were sort of replaceable. he got this sort of, he got a position that he got to you just stay on for years and years and years. I mean, it's no wonder that people identify with him not just because of his skill and personality, but because he was in front of us for so long.

Yes. You know? Plenty of time to use the phrase, Eric's sleeping with B-enemy. Yes, that's a good one. And he got the opportunity. I mean, I think the bad jokes are almost as important as the good jokes, right?

I mean, it's like, it's about the persona. You know, other people might get taken off the air if you got that, if that was your first outing, your first inning, your first down. I guess I use the football metaphor. But yeah, I mean, he was just, he was just so unique, man. Everything about it was just like so good. And I wonder how much of that stuff, I'm not talking about the sleeping with B enemies, the puns, which I obviously wholeheartedly endorse. But you got to wonder how much you got away with just because he had such a weird growl. that like I'm sure half the stuff that he said

that people, the producers and executives were just like, did he just say that? I'm really not sure. Yeah. Like what? Did he really just say Oda B Young again, McDowell? Yeah. Really come out of his mouth? Yeah. But he was, he was, I mean, listen,

no problem with the goat moniker. It's handed out relatively freely. It's like, you think. You know, basketball Hall of Fame membership. But, uh, but he's, but, you know, he's certainly one of the best at whatever you want to say it was that he does. Yeah. Yeah. And like I said, I just think you can, you know, if there's an evolutionary chart at ESPN, I think you just, he is, he is the first guy, you know, like that. And that's important. And that brings us to to ESPN of modern day. It really does. Like, you know, and I think, you know, all those people now you have a whole group of people us included that just grew up with them and people that work in the media and people that just enjoy, you know, watching sports on television. That just birthed on Chris Berman.

Absolutely. And, you know, can't underestimate that. Two quick ones for you, Dave, before we get out of here, we got our first Yolo Boko Flood gift of 2025. Is it Yolobuco Float already? I'm not. Yolo Bokoflod starts earlier and earlier every year. If you missed the press box in 2024, we discovered that there is an Icelandic holiday tradition called Yolo Bokoflod. We're really late to the game on Atlantic traditions. We were.

But early in the first of the tradition. podcast game because I don't know and there's not too many podcasts are celebrating this. It translates roughly to the Christmas book flood. We found out that the people of Iceland give each other books on Christmas Eve and then read them that night. And David and I, who seek out any excuse to buy books, embrace this wholeheartedly. Jeremy DeRosa David of Portland sent us an early gift here. It's something called, it's a book I've never heard of.

called the left-handed dictionary by Leonard Lewis Levinson. Levinson was a humorist, died some time ago, and he produced this left-handed dictionary, which is a little bit like a devil's dictionary. And this is a really funny one here. He had the word conflagration. Conflagration is in the dictionary. What a great only in journalism word.

And here is his definition. Conflagration, a report. orders first fire. So good. So good. Anyway, thank you to Jeremy, who's got a press box button

coming his way. And you better believe, sir, that you and I will be celebrating this holiday because I want you to know, I have already made Yolo Boko flood purchases for you and Joel. Oh, I'm ahead of me.

You're way ahead of me. I'm going to get on this today. It's just like, yeah, I can't fall behind. This is my only my second, Yola Bokoflot. I got to take it easy. I mean, I got to take it seriously. Take it easy. Speaking of books, you and I talk in our private lives time to time, David, about how genre novelists,

even the most successful ones occasionally run out of titles. To that end, have you seen the title of the new Dan Brown thriller? Yes, I have. Do you want to tell me? The Secret of Secrets. You've written so many successful books, sold tens of millions of copies, but it's just harder and harder to think of a title. So eventually you get to The Secret of Secrets. This follows in the tradition of I'm All Out of Titles. Examples like John Grisham calling a book

The King of Torts. That's Real. And Tony Hillerman calling a book Sinister Pig. Congratulations. To Dan Brown for running out of titles. All right, it is time for a feature that never runs out of gas. It's time for David Shoemaker guesses, the strained pun headline. Last Monday's headline about Cory Lewandowski's reign at a cabinet agency was Top Goon. Today's headline comes to us from our friend Nick Field.

It's from MSNBC, soon to be MS now. And it was about the James Comey incident, David, or excuse me, the incident, the James Comey indictment. Jen Saki was doing a segment that featured a strained pun on the Chiron. I want you to think of beloved children's books. As you ponder, what was MSNBC's strained pun headline? Okay, so James Comey indictment? James Comey indictment. We're going to want his first name to be a part of this.

James and the giant impeach. that's really good if you were impeachable uh james and the james and the giant and man this was this is quite a stretch this indictment david reach james and the giant reach is correct all right that sounds pretty good reach he is david shoemaker i'm brian curtis production magic by kyle williams back with joel anderson thursday david and Guess what? Jen Saki, the aforementioned, is going to be on this here podcast, talking about the political scene and where she sees cable news going from here. Jen Saki coming Thursday, I will see you, David, next Monday with more lukewarm takes about the media. See you then, David.

See you later, Brian.