The Press Box - Bill Belichick’s Awkward Goodbye, Business Insider, the Iowa Caucuses, and Campaign War Stories With the Atlantic’s Mark Leibovich

Episode Date: January 11, 2024

For the ‘Press Box’: Final Edition, Bryan starts off with his thoughts on Stephen A. Smith’s takedown of Jason Whitlock and what it says about ESPN’s management style (07:37). Then, Mark Leibovich of The Atlantic joins the show to discuss Bill Belichick’s farewell press conference with the Patriots, his relationship with the media, and whether he could find himself working in television (07:37). Then, they talk about the lead-up to the Iowa Caucuses, Nikki Haley, how a horse race–less field impacts reporters, and more (19:23). Host: Bryan Curtis Guest: Mark Leibovich Producer: Eduardo Ocampo Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Did Don Draper really buy the world of Coke? Did Tony Soprano really die? Or just order more onion rings? Were those guys really in hell the whole time, or was that just the audience? The finales of our favorite shows can make us argue, make us cry, and make us crazy. From Spotify and The Ringer, I'm Andy Greenwald, and this is Stick the Landing, a new podcast where we'll be telling the story of modern TV backwards, one fade out at a time. Each episode, a guest and I will choose a celebrated series from history,

from the 70s to the streaming era and beyond and do a deep dive on its very last episode. Was it all a dream? Did it turn into a nightmare? And most importantly, what can we learn about tomorrow's new shows from the way yesterday's ended? TV is a journey.

I hope you'll enjoy this podcast about the destination. Starting January 17th, find Stick the Landing on Wednesdays on the prestige TV feed, on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. Hello, media consumers. Welcome to Press Box Final Edition. Brian Curtis of the Ringer here,

along with producer Eduardo Ocampo, who is sitting in for Brian Waters. Coming up on today's podcast, Bill Belichick gave a press conference saying he's leaving the New England Patriots after 24 years. My guest host, Mark Leibovic and I do a little theater criticism,

and we ponder, can Belichick, Tom Brady, and Nick Sabin become TV stars? Plus, we talk about the latest on the presidential campaign in last night's Trumpless debate on CNN. Chris Christie, whose campaign just went RIP, was a journalistic muse. Mark talks about that. And he tells a great campaign war story. But before we bring on Mark, I spent last night watching

clips of Stephen A. Smith's 40-minute nuking of Jason Whitlock. And between that and every headline that's come out of the Pat McAfee show for the last two weeks, I wanted to lay out a quick theory about ESPN, and tell you the question I am fascinated to see answer going forward. A name you heard last week was that of ESPN executive Norby Williamson. Norby is not the most powerful person at ESPN, no matter what anybody says. He is not single-handedly going to bend the arc of ESPN's history. But Norby is symbolic of a kind of management style that ESPN's, like to practice.

In the old days at ESPN, an anchor or a writer would become a star, and they would become a star because they were really good. And then management would come to the anchor or writer and say, you know what? We want you to be creative, but only so much. I remember conversations with Dan Patrick and Keith Olberman, whose big show Sports Center is still my favorite thing that's ever been on ESPN. Dan and Keith were huge TV stars in the 90s.

Full stop. They changed the language of ESPN. And they would get called into meetings by executives and told they were doing it wrong. The same thing happened years later with Stuart Scott, with my boss, as he's talked about. The list of people who found themselves getting the full Norby, either from Norby Williamson or from someone like him, was just about everybody. As Kevin Draper wrote in the New York Times this week, the biggest star at ESPN was ESPN. And as Draper would note, the story always ended the same way. Those employees left and ESPN kept right on rolling.

You might say, at ESPN, the house always won. Now, fast forward to the last year, when things changed at ESPN, or at least appeared to, Pat McAfee and Stephen A. Smith, I believe, have more creative license than anybody who has ever worked under the ESPN umbrella. Stephen A didn't engage in political speech. He tried to raise money for Chris Christie. Nothing happened. Pat McAfee, you know the highlights from the last week, which included sticking a fork in Norby Williamson on the air. nothing happened. Nobody got reined in. Nobody got the full Norby.

I was struck by the split screen we had on ESPN TV this week. On Monday night, President Jimmy Pottaro was on the field at the college football national championship, limbering up for the next playoff rights deal. The next day, while his network was in flames, Jimmy Botaro was, as Olderman used to say, not appearing in your picture. Bataro had nothing to say publicly,

despite some of the most ludicrous TV the network has ever produced. Remember that press release ESPN put out when McAfee went after Norby? We'll handle this matter internally. Pataro was like a basketball coach that sits on the bench and refuses to call a timeout. Now, Pataro is running a different kind of, of media company, which might require a different management style, much like NBA coaching in 2024, is different than it was 20 years ago. If ESPN tells McAfee or Stephen A what to do, the fear is not that they're going to go to a cable competitor like FS1. The fear is that

they're just going to go solo and take some of that audience with them. For me, Pat McAfee, the loudest guy in the room, the guy who is always going to push the limits, Pat McAfee is the ultimate test of how much of that old ESPN culture still exists. When the next crisis happens, and you know it will, probably by the time you hear this podcast, is ESPN the institution going to exert itself and say, you don't get to do this? You are not bigger than the company. Or does ESPN watch from the bench and hope things sort themselves out? Right before we recorded this podcast, there was a tweet from the New York Post's Andrew

Marshand, stating, with the Bill Belichick news, ESPN will have SportsCenter on from 12 to 2 instead of the Pat McAfee show. Wow, the full Norby lives. Turns out that McAfee's bumping from TV lasted all of 13 minutes. The House always wins at ESPN, at least for 13 minutes. And now I promise you, it's time for some content that is not about Pat McAfee. Let's start the show. All right, our guest host today is a staff writer for The Atlantic. Before that, he wrote sparkling features and columns for the New York Times and Washington Post. He has written books about both politics and the politics of the NFL.

He is a University of Michigan grad and a New England Patriots fan, and yes, we plan to hold both of those things against him. Mark Liebevich, welcome back to the press box. Brian, good to be back on the press box. And yeah, we're in the news this week. You know, the Michigan piece, the Patriots piece. I prefer the Michigan piece this week. A lot of pieces.

Yeah, we feel very relevant. At least I do. All right. We just got done watching that Bill Belichick press conference. I guess you'd call it a press conference. Even if the press doesn't get to ask any questions, here is a little of Bill Belichick at the podium announcing that he is parting from the New England Patriots. At this time, you know, we're going to move on. And I look forward.

I'm excited for the future. But always very, very appreciative of the opportunity here, the support here, and, you know, what Robert, what you've done for me. Thank you. What did you make of the theater mark of that presser? Well, first of all, you know, the audio was weird. It was like wobbly and mumbly. And I was thinking, wait, is that the audio or is I just Belichick?

you know, normal form, right? But once I got it to work, and actually it was much better on the TV than on the website or the laptop feed, you know, I guess it was effusive by his standards. I mean, it was pretty minimalist by farewell press conference standards. I mean, there's a lot going on behind the surface there, I'm guessing a great deal of tension, a great deal of very mixed feelings, I'd say the least, between those two. And look, I'm not one of these people. I mean, Belichick was sort of celebrated, obviously, for his football and coaching exploits.

But, you know, as this incredible presence at the podium because he's so, you know, understated and uncommunicative and so forth. I always hated that act. I mean, I know it sounds like almost a fresh take now because it's been so commodified in some ways. But I just thought at the, you know, ultimately beginning to end, I just couldn't believe he would treat the people who go to work there every day that way and the media and the fans and the people who actually care about football and want answers. And, you know, it's sort of like, there's like a parallel between a kind of leader who just really likes to mistreat his audience and his market in some

ways. And it's like, yes, give us more of this complete, completely dissatisfying, you know, theater. I mean, it's like, this is, I don't know, I always, I never thought it was funny at all. I never thought it was entertaining at all. You know, occasionally he'll parcel out his incredible football genius and history, and people will talk about that.

But, yeah, so, you know, that was the last dance. I made better. It lasted, what, five minutes without questions. And it lasts,

what, a nine-part series, which I guess we're going to get an apple or something pretty soon. Yeah, he did the classic athlete coach thing where he started being gracious

to the media as soon as it doesn't matter anymore. Absolutely. He said, I respect what you do. We don't see, die all the time, but most of the time and then gave a little sly smile

there from the podium. Yeah. Despite the last 24 years of how I've treated you, I respect what you do. It's very, yeah, I don't know. I mean, there just seemed, I mean, I don't know, why don't you just go out with contempt?

But, I mean, and then, of course, the media will cover this as like, you know, looking visibly relaxed, as opposed to audibly relaxed, right? And he did have a cold, apparently, which is perfect. It's like, you know, Frank Sinatra-esque, even though no one will call Bill Belichick old blue eyes. Well, Kraft said, I'm not going to kiss him because he has a cold, which would have been quite a shot for the reporters.

It would have been. I kind of like it, though. It had this mob vibe to it. First of all, it was incredibly awkward. I mean, you know, I think the two of them were kind of awkward. I mean, I don't know anyone who wouldn't be awkward up there, you know, especially with Belichick. But, yeah, he has a cold, so I'm not going to kiss him. Um, weird, landed a little wrong, but like, yeah, it had mob kind of tones and,

and the whole thing. Anyway, I wouldn't have kissed them either. Yeah, they tried to do this thing where they put their arms around each other. Neither seemed especially enthusiastic about putting their arms around each other. No. No, and they, they kind of tried and they didn't try and they didn't know what to do. I mean, it was, you know, it was a kind of thing you would expect to see from an incredibly awkward, broken couple that probably had been together too long.

one thing I always hated about the Belichick affect behind the mic was you would get this victim-blaming vibe to it where people would come to you who met with him maybe in those private TV conferences before the game starts. I say, you know, if they just asked Bill Belichick the right questions, if you reporters were just football guys and football gals to a sufficiently Belichickian degree, he'd be great. he might favor you with a 20-minute diatribe on the history of the drop kick or something like that yeah i i always hated that too it's like oh well in private he's cape and and you know and the sort of patriots media industrial complex kind of they like they bought they you know ate that right up i mean they wanted to be favored with something some kind of goofy little joke or meme or something like that speaking at which a bunch of boston sports writers have been tweeting out about the of Belichick becoming a TV announcer.

It's kind of an interim landing spot before he would take another coaching job and they're tweeting it in such a way like, ah, it's a possibility, which makes me think maybe they know something. Here is Tom Curran, excellent reporter for NBC Sports Boston, also possesses one of the best accents

anywhere in sports media, perhaps the media period, on Belichick, the potential television star. If you look at CBS or NBC or Fox, At Fox, you have the opportunity to work with Tom Brady or Rob Gruncowski. At NBC, you have the opportunity to work with Deb McCordy or Rodney Harrison. At CBS, they're going to perhaps wipe out all of their older folks who've been there for a long time because they have expiring contracts. Cower, Phil Sims, Jim Brownson, James Brown.

So there would be opportunities for Bill. You got J.J. Watt there now. You got Nate Burleson. You go there. You catch your breath. You bounce your grandchildren on your knees for a while. you show what a great communicator you are. You show how sharp you still are, which he unbelievably is,

and then you don't have to rush in to go coach the Panthers or the Bears or the or the Chargers. You don't have to squish this staff together in three weeks and be ready to go someplace else. You don't have to get into a pissing contest with the crafts. All right, Mark, do we think Belichick can have a career in television? Oh, I'm sure he could. Yeah. First of all, shout out to Tom.

Tom is, I agree. he's got a great accent. He's got great. I don't know. He was, I think you wrote a piece about him, or at least about the Patriots media, and I always found him very, very informative. So shout out to Tom. Yeah, he's got a feature in television. I mean, Nick Saban does. I mean, who wouldn't have a future in television? I mean, that's the thing about football, especially. There's so much media around it. I mean, that is the logical, you know, next act or kind of interim kind of waystation act if you're someone who probably wants to coach again or play again or whatever. have you. So, you know, unlike major league baseball where you can go play in Japan or in Latin America somewhere or basketball where you can play pretty much anywhere in the world,

I mean, football, you can't, I mean, it's not like people will say, well, I'm weighing options from Canada. But there's just, I mean, your next move is football. And Belichick would obviously be, or football media. And Belichick would obviously be like a prime, like studio person, like certainly Bill Kauer with more charisma. How's that? More cashet, more. More. More. with more career victories. I can't imagine more charisma than Bill Cowher on CBS. Sort of blows the mind. Hold my Bill Belichick.

So Belichick may be CBS. Nick Sabin, who just quitted Alabama's being sized up for ESPN's college game day. And the archetype they would fit on television is the Krusty Coach. John Madden was effervescent coach. They would be Krusty Coach. Yeah, something like that. I mean, they already have such entrenched.

persona, personas, whatever, coming in. I mean, they could sort of, they would bring their existing persona to it. And like, you know, obviously Belichick would have to be communicative or more so than he is now. And it's like, whoa, he's talking and he's making sense and this is interesting. So it would be kind of like a, not a bait and switch, but kind of like a change of pace with him. And you'd see the different iteration expose itself. And that would be the value proposition for us viewers, right? So finally, now that he's being. paid by them. There's a small Freudian slip in that Tom Curran clip where he says Belichick doesn't have to go off and cover the Panthers rather than coach the Panthers. And you see that's a Patriots guy, right,

who's gotten 24 years of fantastic material. His biggest nightmare is having to go cover the Panthers. Yeah, I think it is. Yeah. I mean, look, you could actually, the Panthers would probably be an upgrade over the Patriots now because at least the weather is probably a little warmer. Yeah. You've got an owner throwing drinks of people. I mean. Yeah, I can. I can't imagine, I mean, the Patriots, I mean, I don't know, if they guess maybe they bring in Mike Rable or something. But I mean, it's, I can't imagine it's attractive. It's going to be an attractive beat for a while. And, you know, I don't know when they're going to be good for, you know, anytime soon.

Speaking of Patriots football men turned announcers, Tom Brady looking at a career calling games for Fox. you interviewed Tom Brady a couple of times for a New York Times magazine piece. How did you find Brady as an interview? You know,

he's surprisingly good. As an interview, I mean, he knows, you know, that the tape recorder is rolling and everything, but he is capable,

kind of like Belichick. I mean, he has his favorites. You know, he had some, you know, some documentaries made about him and,

you know, authorized it. I mean, Gotham Chope. who's a great documentarian, but he's very good friends with Brady. So, but you see him. I mean, he's very thoughtful. And when you sit and talk to him, you realize that he can go extremely deep on football,

obviously, but can communicate it in a very thoughtful way. So, yeah, I don't know how that's going to translate to the booth. I mean, what's kind of a, I wouldn't say it's a curse, but what's going to be challenging for him is Greg Olson has kind of, you know, created a high bar there at Fox, right? And, you know, Brady's going to have to, you know, meet that or come close to it, given the expectations around him, certainly given his contract. But I think he could be really, really good. I mean, the way Troy Aikman is, the way Peyton Manning is and, you know, Peyton Manning doesn't do, or Eli, they don't do, you know, traditional color. But, no, I think he would, he could be fine.

But I also think he could be boring. But I think I would say that I would put the chances of being better that he would be fine. not to sound like a 90s sports newspaper columnist here, but it just strikes me the psychological element of Brady that will help him in broadcasting is the same one that'll help him in football. He's going to look around. He's going to see Peyton on ESPN. He's going to see Troy on ESPN. I want to be better than that.

I think that that's definitely true. I mean, I'm sure they already compare contracts. I mean, they're competing on all of those levels that, you and I could never imagine. But yeah, so I think that, yeah, that's what's going to motivate him. And I don't know if he's going to be wake up every day and say, I want to be the greatest, you know, color guy of all time. But, yeah, I mean, I think he would go in there and I would say be scared enough to want to take pride in his work. Let's talk a little bit about politics because we are four days away from the Iowa caucuses, the GOP caucuses in Iowa. we had another Trumpless debate on CNN last night with just Ron DeSantis and Nikki Haley.

Did you have a headline coming out of that debate? Well, I didn't watch it. There you go. It was my job. Bad news for the debates. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, they got terrible ratings, which, you know, I don't consider an upset. And I guess there was a Foxtown Hall with Trump at the same time.

And, you know, I had a dinner, so I couldn't. And actually, I was watching the Celtics game, which was a great game against Minnesota, went into overtime. So that's my takeaway. No, but you want political insight, don't you? No, I am, you know, I'm watching it. The Iowa caucuses is, I mean, it's not unlike one of those, and I think Jack Schaefer, who I think you know from, you know, Politico had the analogy of like the DeSantis. Well, he was talking in terms of the DeSantis, Gavin Newsom debate on Fox about maybe six weeks ago or maybe two months ago. Now you have sort of like the runners up or the Battle of the also ranes to Santos and Haley.

And he compared it to that consolation game they used to have in the NFL. And I guess they had it in the final four too. Like they discontinued both. But basically the losers in the final four would play like a consolation game. Or is Jack called it or someone called it? It might have been Vince Lombardi that Jack was quoting, the shitball, the shit bowl. So yeah, I mean like these there are these Trumpless debates, but you can only give us so many of them.

Because, I don't know, I mean, it's, like I said, in the story I read about Nikki Haley today is like trying to run for president without Trump is like trying to talk about the civil war without slavery, which is something Nikki Haley tried a few weeks ago. There were a couple of funny moments. Nikki Haley was flogging her website, desantis lies.com. And she just kept doing it in every answer. And eventually it got to that point that you and I've seen where we have a journalism, journalist friend who's plugging a piece on Twitter a few too many times and you want to just

send a note. Yes. You know, we saw it. Yeah, we saw it. Yeah, that's one thing I don't miss about Twitter. You know, I actually miss Twitter more than I thought. But, you know, since Twitter is, I would say no more, basically, at least in any form that I want to spend a lot of time on.

But you're right, though. I mean, she didn't carry it off very well. And also, like, who's going to go onto a site that says DeSantis is a lot? lies.com. It's like, you know, you got your, whatever, you know, whatever your, you know, ESPN or whatever offerings you, I don't know, I'm going to go see, check out DeSantis lies and see, like, what's going on over there. Like, it's just, it's a weird tick. It's also a wonderful moment with Ron DeSantis after the debate. He consented to an interview with Anderson Cooper, which I guess is a new story in and of itself. Cooper asked him about becoming Donald Trump's

vice president. And DeSantis, of course, gave us the immortal quote from John Nance Gar, about the job being not worth a bucket of warm piss. But this is what was so funny, Mark. He wouldn't say the word piss on the air. It's that a word I can't say on television? So what did he say, spit? Because I've heard that quotes, quote, quasi-sanitized. I mean, both, first of all, that quote is kind of gross.

And I guess it's sort of the intent, but it gets repeated too much. But, yeah, he, I guess that, But I will give him credit, though, in the substance of this is he was saying, no, he will not be under any circumstances Donald Trump's running mate, which is more than you can say for Nikki Haley, who, you know, has her little cutesy. Oh, no, I'm not running for second place, which, you know, as Chris Christie pointed out repeatedly to his credit, that means she is ruling herself in. You know, she's basically saying, oh, yeah, I'll do it. So, yeah, at least DeSantis really, you know, close the door on that. Speaking of Chris Christie, dropped out of the race yesterday with a memorable hot mic incident, which is sort of perfect because Chris Christie is kind of a human hot mic. On the power rankings of politicians, reporters love to talk to. Does Christy slot in a little below John McCain but above Lindsay Graham? That's a good question.

You know, Christie is definitely very accessible. Reporters do love him. I mean, he gets the New York, New Jersey, Washington. I mean, he gets that whole Morning Joe, Ossela, you know, thing going, and he's very available. He's always, he's always in New York and so forth. As far as the hot mic moment goes, I mean, it was a great hot mic moment. My initial suspicion, and I have nothing to go on except that it was a suspicion, and I think it's an informed suspicion. It might have been planned or something like that.

It was like, okay, I'm going to give you most of what I think, and like I'm going to sort of go out on, the sort of, you know, well-rehearsed and sort of scripted terms that I intended to. But here is, not only this is what I really think, but this is what I really, really think. And, I mean, come on. How do you, like, within a couple of minutes of going on stage, actually say that? Like, who comes up to him that he would talk to like that? Anyway, it struck me as a little curious, but it was a great hot mic moment. I mean, that's, I mean, yes, I mean, it's the same as like a burner account.

Like, as we're taping this, I mean, Kim Reynolds, the governor of Iowa, was busted for having a sort of a burner account for herself. By the way, she would, you know, she would be more critical of Donald Trump. I mean, she's a dissanist supporter, but I guess she goes, you know, full next level on her burner account. The New York Times broke that a few hours ago. So, yeah, I mean, reporters, I think, and a lot of people love burner account stories, hot mic stories, because they actually get to a much truthier version, to use the old Stephen cobert word of who politicians are rather than the normal bullshit we get you had breakfast with christie for an Atlantic story last year and he was kind of pissy with you the whole breakfast at

one point he asked how many different ways are you going to ask the same fucking question mark yeah i think that was that that was the first line i think um which wasn't there i yeah no that was weird i mean christie is uh he he he kind of leaves it on the field sometimes he was very annoyed. I don't quite know why he was annoyed. I mean, I've always gotten along with him, but I don't know if he was just in a bad mood or something, but, you know, I went with it. I mean, it was like a cranky breakfast with like a cranky dude, and he went with it, I went with it, and he didn't try to hold back, and I wasn't going to, you know, I just thought that the back and forth itself was, was interesting. And, but I, it was kind of a weird, I mean, he's usually, I've never been around him, like,

with that crankily toward crankly, is that a word, cranky towards me, but, um, but, um, but, um, It was fun, though. I mean, look, I much appreciate a more human-ish encounter than you do with the normal sort of soundbite of spewing politician like, you know, Nikki Haley. I want to ask you this is one of our nation's foremost chroniclers of the political media, ambitious political reporters, which is to say all political reporters. Covering 2024, here we go, right? A big moment in my career. And it turns out there really hasn't been a horse race. of any kind from about April until a couple of polls recently that show Haley doing fairly well

versus Trump in New Hampshire. How does a horse raceless election affect political reporters? You know, it makes it challenging. I mean, I'll say this, Brian. I mean, we're taping this Thursday, which is four or five days before the Iowa caucuses. I'm not in Iowa right now. I'm sitting in Washington, D.C., and I'm not going to Iowa. This is going to be the first Iowa caucuses I've missed pretty much since 2000. So it's not so much the lack of horse race. I mean, it's going to be three degrees there, so that doesn't help. But, I mean, there's not much going on there. First world, there's no democratic race at all. And it's a race for second place, essentially, between two people that I think we're all kind of sick of, and most people are kind of sick of. I will go to New Hampshire,

which one is much closer and also things are closer together. And but no, I mean, and I also think that the story is much better in New Hampshire. I mean, there actually could be a horse race to speak of, which is that Nikki Haley could be very competitive in New Hampshire with Trump. I mean, she's polling pretty close and there's been nothing since Christie got out. And it makes sense that Christie's 10, 12 percent could migrate pretty seamlessly to her, which would make it even closer. And then you go from there to South Carolina,

which is her home state and where Trump is very strong, but she could, you know, her own familiarity with the place and being propelled by a good performance in New Hampshire could make it really, really interesting, especially if DeSantis doesn't do well in Iowa and he drops early. And then, you know, I think Haley could have a clean shot of him and it could be really, really interesting.

And then, you know, you have a Biden, I mean, assuming it's Biden, a Biden, Trump or Haley, I'm probably Trump. which is, again, it's dispiriting to a lot of people. It's what a lot of people don't want to see. But, oh, my God, it's, like, monumentally important. I mean, the stakes couldn't be higher. And it's going to be close as hell.

So, I mean, the general election, if nothing else, is going to guarantee you a horse race because it's not like, oh, well, so-and-so is 20 points ahead. So we're just not going to bother to care. I mean, we haven't had an election like that in a long time. So the tradeoff for political reporters is no horse race. of any note in 2023, but big, freighted, ultra-important horse race, the mother of all horse races, if you will, in 2024.

Yeah, I think so. And that sort of gets to the larger kind of philosophical journalism question, which is, it's not so much the race as it is the stakes, right? And, you know, I get it. I mean, but at the same time, I mean, I think the media and everyone has sort of struggled to figure out how to talk about Trump and sort of the excesses. the abuses that he's talking about pretty daily and what context to put it in. And, you know, it's hard to, we all sort of have our own categories of numbness that we're

trying to fight through. But look, I mean, the large kind of definitional question is you have this pretty nakedly authoritarian candidate, you know, that owns one of our two major parties, and you have whatever forces are going to be aligned to stop. it. And, you know, unclear if Biden himself is going to be strong enough, you know, there, we'll see who like, who else endorses him, who gets behind him, what his coalition looks like, who else runs, what the third party candidate's good. So there are a lot of dimensions to this. It's not a class of course race where you have people saying, well, so-and-so could

come out of Iowa. I mean, I'm always amazed how people think you have to be smart to figure this stuff out. I mean, it's like, it's like following like the American League East. It's like, oh, well, Baltimore has to win like two-thirds of its game on there. I mean, it's like it's not that complicated. You don't need to like any kind of education. But like, obviously, there are other parts of your brain that I think that the media has to like to use in a race like this. One last thing for you on the campaign. I was really amused by the journalistic race for just the right metaphor to describe Nikki Haley's long-shot chances of actually winning the nomination.

We've got a former Republican senatorial committee official telling Politico she needed to pull off a quote, early state triple Lindy, which a very dated reference to the Rodney Dangerfield vehicle back to school. Yeah, man. I wouldn't have gotten that one. Here's another one for you. David Urban, former Trump advisor on CNN last night, tried out a metaphor. He said it was like a game of horse where he had to go off the backboard and down the drain pipe. Can you improve on those two metaphors? Yeah, she's a long shot.

No, I can't improve on it. You know, although I do think if people really put their heads, you know, really like think about it, they could probably come up with a bunch more metaphors before the voting actually starts. But no, yeah, I wish I were more clever and actually had. I mean, you know, you hear bank shot a lot, or like Hail Mary, but I mean, that's sort of class

classic sports cliche applied to politics, which is, you know, it's all one of the same anyway in some ways. But no, I don't know. I think she's a very small chance of winning,

but she does have a chance. And I do think that like that chance will all be kind of revealed within like about a week right around New Hampshire and South Carolina. I want to touch briefly on this Bill Ackman story. Bill Ackman is a very rich hedge fund manager. New York Times notes that he was campaigning on Twitter

slash X for the ouster of Claudine Gay, the president of Harvard. Gay was accused of plagiarizing in her academic work, and she did indeed resign from Harvard. Well, then Business Insider comes along and reports that Ackman's wife, and I'm quoting here, Neri Oxman, a former MIT professor and celebrity within the world of academia, stole sentences and whole paragraphs from Wikipedia, other scholars, and technical documents in her academic writing. business insider has found. This is so interesting to me because it brings us into that journalistic gray area.

Axel Springer, the German company that owns Business Insider, has said the facts and the report are not in dispute. But what is at least theoretically in dispute is should you have written the story? Was this the right story to do? What do you make of that gray area where it's not true? truth on truth, it's should we have run it, should we have not run it? Yeah, I mean, I don't think it's a gray area at all. I think it's like, you know, shame on Axel Springer. I mean, if I, you know, I'd be furious if I worked at Business Insider,

certainly the people who were involved in the piece. I mean, you know, if you're going to come out and say, you know, we, I mean, there's nothing wrong with the piece. And again, if you can like bring factual stuff to bear on this or correct the record to bear, I mean, that's one thing. Or accuse him a plagiar. or something. That's another thing. But what are you talking about here? Like, are you, they're talking about a vendetta? Anyway, I'm there smearing their own people probably because

Bill Ackman threatened to sue or, you know, probably brought some kind of intimidation tactic down the way billionaires do who think that they, you know, are entitled to things or are smarter than than everybody else. And yeah, it's just like, you know, my, my sick of listening to billionaire's bone is aching here. And like this guy seems like the latest to kind of come along and because he's a billionaire and, you know, in the tradition of Elon Musk and whoever else, Donald Trump. You know, we got to listen to him. We've got to reckon with them and we got to sort of like, you know, cater to him. And I wish Axel Springer had not, you know, done that. But, you know, I guess I reserve the right to learn like with everyone else if there's anything behind this.

But I'm really dubious that there is. what they did was a classic media company owner thing, which is they put out a statement saying over the past few days, questions have been raised about the motivation and the process leading up to the reporting questions that we take very seriously. Yeah, you could do a perfect diagram. Right. Just put out the bait that maybe this story, there's something wrong with this story. Yeah, the perfect passivity there is, again, questions were raised.

I mean, it's sort of like in a newsroom. Editors used to come to my desk. say, your name has been mentioned or there is interest. Like, it's always in like a passive kind of way. And like Nikki Haley, you know, who is so terrified of criticizing Donald Trump too hard, her favorite line is, rightly or wrongly, chaos follows him. It just does. So, you know, chaos. That's what this is. So everything embedded in like January 6th and the 91 counts, you know, is under the heading. of chaos. And he doesn't cause the chaos. It just follows him. He is just a, a sort of, you know, innocent victim in which, you know, chaos reigns down upon him. It's just, it's remarkable uncanny.

You're giving me the shivers with that classic newsroom phrase. There is interest in a column about. There is interest. Mm-hmm. Yes. Someone has mentioned, your, your name has, I mean, it's, yeah, I don't, yeah, that's definitely a newsroom flashback I don't like to have. Your alma mater, Michigan, won the national championship on Monday night in very, very convincing fashion, as the sports writers like to say over Washington. Every college football fan base has a caricature, a go-to caricature as a University of Texas person. I find that caricature is largely true.

How would you describe the caricature of the Michigan fan? Well, wait a minute. So what's the Texas caricature? I mean, the Texas fan caricature, because I need like a template here. So there's a little bit of elitism. And when we say elitism, we mean versus other state schools. Yes. The place Claudine Gay was the president of.

You guys think you are above the rest of us. You guys think your motives are purer than other big time college football programs. And you guys don't cheer very loud at the games. That's what I'd say the Texas one is. Oh, interesting. Yeah, I would say that there's a lot of overreaching. overlap between us. There's a lot of room for understanding, but between our peoples, Brian. Well, we certainly get the elitist rap. And again, it's state school driven. It's, you know,

Michigan State. I mean, they hate us. We look down on them. You know, probably overstated, but quite, quite true in many ways. You know, spoiled by success, I would say a probably pretty affluent student body compared to a lot of the other state school, certainly inside. Michigan, as I assume you'd see in Texas also. And I would say when I was at Michigan, the crowds were not very loud. I don't, they were, they were, it's a huge facility I was at the big house. It's like, yeah, the capacity was like 105,000 when I was there and it's like over 110 now. But the games I've gone to in the last few years and I try to go to like at least one game a year have been extremely loud. And I think one of the reasons they did this is they actually moved a lot more student sections down into like the bowl. There's some, they rearrange the seats in some ways that like the kind of, you know, fat old alumni like are sitting in a way where their sound is less relevant. I mean, there's like a whole science to this. But I, you know, basically complacency, spoiled, arrogant, um, moneyed, more interested in the tailgates. Um, um,

And also, you know, we win, man. We're good. So that's good, too. And, yeah, our motives are entirely pure, which is why we are so persecuted by the NCAA and Harbaugh gets suspended and so forth. So, yeah, that makes it all the more fun. I mean, the Patriots, I like rooting for them because we are, you know, we overcome the persecution that the league has visited upon Bill Belichick and Tom Brady and all of us.

and because our motives are so pure. The Michigan fans this year did the same move as the Patriots fans. Like our team cheated. We at least admitted in limited fashion to some cheating, but now everybody's against us. It's Michigan versus everybody. Yeah. Yeah, I think we'd like, we have to retire the blank versus everybody construction

because I've seen it at least in like four or five, you know, markets. Like there's definitely there was a Patriots Nation versus everybody thing like around like the deflate gate thing. That was back when people cared about the Patriots. You know there's definitely a Michigan versus everyone thing

and then I went to the Detroit airport and it's like no it's Detroit versus everybody. So it's not just Michigan. So like the Detroit Lions like everyone's against the Detroit Lions like no they're not. But you know because the officiating in some the game against Dallas a couple weeks ago was such that

that proves the point. But yeah, no, it goes to the sort of Trump-era victim rap where whoever can out victim, the other guy is like a kind of like, you know, sideways winner in the whole thing. Occasionally on this podcast, we have to convene a session of journalism court. And alert listener Rob Pollard points out that the last time Michigan won the national championship, this is back in 97, the Detroit Free Press had on its front page the headline, hail yes, as in

hail to the victors. When Michigan won the title again on Monday, the other newspaper in town, the Detroit News, also went with the hail yes headline. So Judge Leibovic, do you allow the same headline two plus decades apart, or did we need something new? Well, let's think about this. I mean, it's a different newspaper. They did used to have a joint operating agreement.

I don't know if they still do, whatever, whatever that, if that's the thing anymore. And also, by the way, the Michigan, that last team, they only share the national championship. But yeah, I will allow it because, you know, it's perfect for a headline. It's two words. I don't think you can trademark a clever headline.

I mean, it's one thing if, like, someone in, like, you know, St. Louis did, like, a headless man. What's the famous New York Post? Adelaus bar, headless bar, headless man, headless body found in topless bar, whatever. Yeah, I mean, that's, you know, there's a lot of, a lot of torque going on there. But yeah, I don't know. I think that in my younger days, I might have more strenuously come down on the, the hell yes, headline. But now I'm kind of appreciative of it because I had forgotten the first one.

In fact, I never knew about the first one. So even more, better. It also turned out that was only the Detroit news, apparently that was being distributed to players on the field. Yeah, one of those things. That's an interesting subject, like the sort of goofy newspapers that the players hold up as a cheap marketing thing that the newspapers do. They don't circulate beyond there, obviously. It's like, okay, we're going to roll maybe 100 copies of this off the presses, give it out to whoever's celebrating on the field or in the locker room and nothing else.

I mean, what becomes of them? It's kind of like those, you know, I don't know, Phoenix Suns. NBA champions shirts. You know, wherever the runner is up, who lost the Super Bowl last year? Philadelphia, Philadelphia,

the Eagles, Super Bowl champions that you see all over like Indonesia or something, or supposedly. That could be, that could be a, that could be a, apocryful at this point.

I always love this in the, in the time with the death of print. When we see a newspaper front page, it's always something someone is tweeting out, rather than physically reckoning with, or something that a player is holding up, immediately after winning a title. Oh, my God.

Yeah, the Fun House mirror is here. I invited you when I sent you an email last night to tell any campaign war stories you have from previous cycles. Even if you're not going to Iowa, you have a favorite campaign war story before we go. So basically what you're saying is if I had prepared for this, I would have one at the ready. So now, because I didn't prepare, I will think of one. Okay, here's one. 2007, I was trailing Mitt Romney, who was then a, you know, I think he was then, he was a candidate for president, the Republican primary. And he was very heavily secured.

There were a lot of security around him at all times. He was much more mindful of, like, personal security than other candidates were, you know, other than, you know, people who would have had secret service like Hillary Clinton was. running and John McCain wouldn't have, but I mean, I'm thinking of that cycle. Anyway, we were in New Hampshire. It was in the spring or something. And I followed his little entourage to get from point A to point B, I think Dover to North Conway or something, because there were a lot of back roads. I didn't have GPS. I don't know. I just didn't have it. So I was following his, his motorcade, and I got pulled over by a car in his motorcade. and like some guy in his car, in like one of his security cars, said, well, look, we ran your license plate and you're not authorized to follow us.

And I put that little tidbit in my story. It's like New York Times 2007. You can look it up. It's like buried. It's like towards the end. And it just turned out that that is illegal. You cannot run someone's license plate unless you're a police officer. And the guy who did it was like a, I guess, a repeat offender of police officer.

intimidation, or he used to pretend he was a police officer. He did this happen like once in Massachusetts and now it was happening in New Hampshire. He was fired. The Attorney General of New Hampshire, who was then future Senator Kelly Ayat, launched an investigation. They asked me to participate in the investigation, but on the advice of counsel in the New York Times, I think I told them I wasn't getting involved or something like that. Anyway, he lost his job. I don't know whatever became of this guy.

But that was interesting because it just goes to show you that the little things that you bury at the end of your story, the little Easter eggs, as Taylor Swift calls them, you sometimes just blow up and they become a whole other story. And at the very least, 16 years later, 17 years later, you get a campaign war story that you can summon in a pinch out of. So that's mine. Very good job thinking on your feet there. I do love that that is, as you say, dumped at the end of the story, but it is telling about Romney, or at least Romney, 2008, and the way he was different than other people on the train. He was. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, he's still, I mean, rightly now. I mean, he's extremely mindful of personal security. You know, it was a different era. I mean, Trump sort of absolutely kind of changed the game there and not for the better. But, yeah, it was a really curious situation. And I guess the guy's name was Jay Garrity. And he was a longtime staffer in the Romney. orbit and I think like he was known as trooper he I think he there was like a whole news thread about him and his history and everything and he became known as trooper garrity

around the Romney campaign which unfortunately he had to leave but anyway that was it was fun it was interesting it was actually I think it was stressful too but I don't really remember the stressful parts all right you can read mark Leibovitch in the Atlantic where he will soon be traveling to New Hampshire and generating even more campaign war stories that he will be able to summon for future podcasts. Mark, good luck to the Patriots in their post-Belichick era. It's always great having you. Thanks for coming on the press box.

Brian, always a pleasure. And now I think I have to probably write something about Belichick and try to like be better than, you know, than the blob that's probably coming out right now and various computers around Foxborough. But yeah, it's all a big adventure and I'll come back anytime. Thanks very much. The ringer's got a 40-minute head start on you. out to inform you because you're talking to

make it. Scoop by the ringer again. All right. Leave it to Simmons. Thanks, Mark. See you. Huge thanks to Mark Leibovic. I'm Brian Curtis. Production Magic by Eduardo Ocampo. Thank you, Eduardo. Two things to mention

today in my letter from the editor segment. Number one is that next week's guest host is going to be Claire Malone. You know Claire Malone because she covers media and media-adjacent topics for the New Yorker. writes under that Annals of Communications banner that I used to read Ken Aletta

writing under back in the day. Claire is a permanent resident of my department of envy, which means that I read all of her stories and I say, not only do I wish I had written that, I wish I had written it the way she did. So Claire Malone next Thursday, please tune back in for that. And number two is, I mentioned this last week,

my push this year to make the press box bigger than before to grow the listenership of this podcast. Well, good news. Checked in last week on one of those podcast charts in the press box placed number 59 among sports podcasts. That is pretty darn good given the fact that we are not exactly a sports podcast. We start with the supreme disadvantage of not having any gambling picks or fantasy advice to give to you. So thank you for that. how can you help going forward?

Retweet this podcast, repost this podcast if you are on another social media app, recommend it to a friend who might think they don't like podcasts about the quote unquote media, but would hear the kind of things we're doing and enjoy it. I can't thank you enough

and please help me continue to push this podcast on the American public this year. I am very, very grateful. Shoemaker and I are off Monday for MLK Day, but we will be back Tuesday with reactions to a huge NFL playoff weekend and the Iowa caucuses. And of course, more lukewarm takes about the media. Have a fantastic weekend.