The Press Box - CNN’s Fate, Trump’s Naughty List, Being Mad at the College Football Playoff, and Only in (Podcast) Journalism

Episode Date: December 9, 2025

Hello, media consumers! Bryan and David start the show by discussing Olivia Nuzzi and Vanity Fair parting ways as her contract ends, what this means for Ryan Lizza’s Substack, and whether Nuzzi will ever get another mainstream media job. Next, the guys dive into the Warner Brothers–Netflix–Paramount situation by breaking down the possible outcomes (15:28), before asking whether CNN would be better off on its own or under the Paramount umbrella (21:02). After that, Bryan and David analyze this year’s College Football Playoff bracket and the role that ESPN’s weekly ‘College Football Rankings Show’ now plays in the sport itself (23:53). Lastly, the show ends with talk of the White House’s newly launched webpage, which shames news outlets and reporters that publish stories it disagrees with (39:54). Plus, the Overworked Twitter Joke of the Week, Only in Podcast Journalism, and David Shoemaker Guesses the Strained-Pun Headline! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

David? Yes. A number of our listeners didn't just hear me say, David? They saw me say it. Yeah. Because the press box is now part of the video tier of podcasting. We ain't trash no more, David. Nope.

How you feel about this? I feel good. I might have to get like, you know, something other than a black hoodie to wear. so people can tell a difference between episodes. But this is going to be great. It's a whole new era. When I saw you through the Riverside link today, the first thing I thought was, hey, it's Tim Pool with glasses.

I'll take that as a compliment. Yeah, the same hat on everything. Very wealthy, very successful podcaster that Tim Pool. That's what I think of when I think of him. It's business acumen. Watching podcast is very funny to me because I am a theater of the mind kind of guy even when it doesn't involve my own face.

Yeah. But we have a lot of listeners, including our old friend Eric, who tell me, all I do is watch podcasts. Yes. I do not listen to podcasts. I just watch them.

Which is interesting. It's interesting. Yeah, we definitely divide it up in our brain. There's this sort of line of thought that, like, podcast doesn't mean podcast anymore. That it's all sort of going towards the same. It's all, like, all the different forms of media are moving, like, converging on one

point. So a video podcast is sort of indistinguishable from a news television show or just a show or whatever. And we're dealing with some of that now and transitioning some of our, the Ringer podcast to the Netflix platform or it's like they're going to have to identify them as podcast to differentiate them. But like, no one's quite sure how meaningful that is to the audience. So a lot of people do watch. A lot of people watch. I've definitely found myself, too. Don't you find yourself on Spotify? Just like, like the first, for the first, however many months that we had,

that all the Spotify podcast had video components, I just, like, tried to just obscure it. I didn't want that on my screen. And now I just, like, enlarge it on my screen. If that's, you know, if I'm doing it, if it's in the background or whatever, like, I'll have the video up full as opposed to not looking at it at all. I had the same experience. My first reaction was, who the hell are? these people. And they're by coworkers.

That's a little bit unnerving, sure. Now I want to see them. I don't know how you and I are going to fare with the 4K cameras. Remember that whole group of celebrities when television changed and all of a sudden without naming any names? Yes. Uh-huh. There was one we used to talk about when we lived together. Anyway, for now we are on the Spotify app. That's where you can see the video version of the press box. Not on YouTube yet, though. Stay tuned for more details going Ford and huge thanks to Bruce Baldwin to Connor Nevins to Ben Cruz and all the people that helped

us get there. In other news, David, Olivia Nudzi, you may have heard of her. And Vanity Fair have parted ways. News was broken by Isabella Simonetti in the Wall Street Journal. Quote, they mutually agreed in the best interest of the magazine to let her contract expire at the end of the year. Does that surprise you? Well, I guess it surprises me in the abstract sense of like, how did it get this far? Like what exactly has happened over the past couple of months that should have been a surprise to the people at Vanity Fair?

I would say this is all, this all should have been pretty self-evident. But it doesn't, but it also doesn't surprise me now. I mean, just in the, in terms of just the sheer number of people who've asked, what is she doing employed by Vanity Fair since all this stuff, you know, since the news cycle came back around. It doesn't surprise me that they did it. What about you? A new cycle equals Ryan Lizza posts on Tellos? Well, I think starting with her stuff, the New York Times, the book release with everything else, you know? I mean, and I thought, I mean, to me, I don't know if Liz's part in this was inevitable. I would assume that there were

people, you know, in the Vanity Fair, Olivia Nuzzi, you know, circles who did not expect it. But yeah, I mean, since this just became a going, even if that hadn't happened, even if that hadn't happen. Even if she hadn't written a book, there would still be some people out there saying, what is she doing, writing essays for this magazine? Why is she employed by them? Like, whatever. I'm not sure that would have had the same weight or the same merit, but regardless. But yeah, yeah, I mean, this whole news, the news cycle broadly defined. I don't think it would have had the same weight. Because one thing we always should remember about journalism is we're all making up the rules in real time.

Olivia Nutsi is not disqualified from working for anybody or writing for anybody. Absolutely not, no. It's just a matter of, is there an editor willing to hire her? In this case, it's Vanity Fair's new editor, Mark Waducci. And he knew at least part of this story. Yeah, that's why it's so surprising.

He hired her because of part of the story. Sure. Like, I read Vanity Fair and I read that there was an excerpt from her new book in the magazine. So her doing this thing that resulted in her leaving New York magazine is part of the reason she got hired at Vanity Fair. So now we're thinking,

okay, did we learn more from what you wonderfully described as those telos novellas that called into question her professionalism? Or did people just keep talking about it and tweeting about it and it became harder for Guaducci to justify keeping her at Vanity Fair?

Yes. To his bosses, to the public at large, did it just reach this level of noise? Is that what we're talking about? It has to be. Again, it's hard to say whether or not it was surprised

because none of this should have been a surprise. But assuming that it was, we have to be talking about noise because they're not just doing it. It's not like there was some like moral component that he was only just made aware of that, I mean, I would assume that he would have just been a made aware of

that shocked him to his core and drove him to this. You know, I mean, my assumption is this, the story was told in New York Times about how they met at a hotel bar and drank late into the night and, you know, emerged with a deal, you know, about their,

their, about her being the West Coast editor there. And you just can only extrapolate. I mean, you can only fantasize about what the conversation was like, but I'm sure there were some assurances is in there. It's like, oh, my ex, Ryan Liz is not going to say anything. What's he going to do? It only hurt him to come out with more stuff and whatever. And that, whatever was, you know, discussed then was apparently enough. And apparently it wasn't, if it wasn't the whole, it might

have been the whole truth. But, and even if it was, it wasn't, it didn't sink in enough to really make it felt like it mattered. And that's kind of at the end of the day why it's so shocking, is that like, what just the response to her piece or to everything that's going on, the chatter that you mentioned was enough to have them shift gears. It's just a real weird, like stand by your convictions, you know, unless you want to come out and say, I didn't know this, and that's a deal breaker for me. Like, you hired her.

I feel like this should have been pretty obvious. Let me state this in the form of a counterfactual. Let's say that everything is the same, but her book, American Canto. got great reviews. Sure. Instead of getting only in journalism, withering reviews.

Do she and Vanity Affair still part ways? It's a good question. I'm not sure the reviews matter so much as the sales. I mean, if this were like a, you know, number one bestseller with a bullet, you know, everybody outside of the review circuit, if like, you know,

mainstream media was at her door, just wanting her to be the new, you know, just appear on talk shows and, you know, glad hand and stuff like that, that might have had more of an effect. If she could really cast herself as this mainstream media darling and could be cast herself with some sort of literary heroine, you know, which the book attempted to do,

then I think it would have been a different story with Vanity Fair. I think that the problem they encountered was this is actually a pretty niche subject. And the people who occupy that niche are not coming down her side. Two more questions for you. Does Ryan Liza continue his barrage of telos novellas now that she's lost her job? Because I noticed he hasn't published anything

since that happened. Well, I mean, there have been some diminishing returns in terms of the response to his stuff too, right? There was the big teased scoop about Trump knowing, whatever. Stuff that didn't... The assassination attempt? Yeah, there's... I don't want to, like, overly conspiracy monger

here. But there was some, there was that tease, and just in general, sort of like general perception that he's just sort of milking this and successfully right i mean tell us it's like the number three the the the number three substack outfit right now or whatever like it's rocking up i saw one that was like fastest growing in politics or something like that i couldn't quite tell if it was a legit regardless i mean this has got to be the game plan right he doesn't i'm sure he doesn't he doesn't stand to gain a lot from from airing all of this unless i guess the the goal is to move back into the mainstream media and he thought he needed everybody to understand

his point of view. Dude. But, is somebody going to pick up the phone now? Well, no, I mean, I'm not sure.

But in terms of just raising is, you know, raising the bottom line on Telos, I think it's, it's obviously been a success to some degree, you know, it remains to be seen how many people will stick around once the, the juicy bits stop flowing.

and he just goes back to regular political coverage. But maybe that's the whole thing. Maybe it's like come for the, come for the drama, stay around, stay for the, you know, boring stuff. Yeah, stay for regime change in Venezuela. Yeah. They got a lot more coming up on Tellos.

Here's the last question for you. Does Olivia Nutsi get another mainstream media job? I mean, I don't want, you never say never. Never is a long time, right? But like my guess is she won't be appearing on the masthead anywhere. in the next, you know, decade. There's a way to hedge it, right?

You can get an assignment somewhere. Yeah, I think she'll write articles for people, sure. I almost bet yes all the way. You think so? Mainstream media, does that include the free press? That's a good question. Would they hire her? Like, if we counted that as mainstream media,

then I would say 100% yes, she's going to have a job. Well, is she going to be like a CBS correspondent? then? I mean, is that, like, there's, there's certainly ways back in if she's interested in taking them, right? I don't know. I mean, CBS would be a fascinating test case, like Barry wants to hire her. Yeah. Is the ghost of Walter Cronkite that we always make fun of strong enough to bolt the door? Mm-hmm. Or does, you know, David Ellison just go, sure, why not? Well, I mean, listen, there's no reason why she couldn't, why she wouldn't invite her in Fox News or something. if she wanted to be the faux liberal talking head or whatever.

And there's jobs out there for her. But like if she stayed the course basically doing what she's been doing for the past 10 years or whatever, has it even been that long? I don't think so. But regardless. Yeah, most of the Trump years. Yeah. Oh, that's right.

If she wanted to literally keep, if her only goal was to get another like magazine job, I find it hard to imagine that she would be like, like, I think. said, a masked head employee anytime in the near future. Again, she's not disqualified from doing it, but, you know, it just if vanity fair of all institutions is going to

back off, if they're running scared of this thing, it's hard to imagine what the outfit is that's going to, like, be willing to take the risk, even if you, like, believe ultimately in her skill as a journalist. That's why the free press feels like it's almost off the board in Vegas. That honestly feels like the absolute

places is going to wind up. Yeah. For all sorts of reasons. And it's important to say with Nutsi, and I find this admirable about her, she is not somebody I see who says, oh, I'm going to use this as a way to become like a conservative pundit or a kind of, you know, anti-woke liberal pundit or whatever. She just not built that way. No, I don't think I think she was interested in writing.

She can see that for what it is, yeah. She has. And she is interested in writing. like writing profiles and going out and whether we we thought that her formula was the best ever or the worst ever or somewhere in between like she was a writer she was a magazine writer

so I don't think this idea that she's just going to be like on substet going hey it's me Olivia I cooked up some delicious food today like that's not that's just not her at all no I mean and obviously she has an incredible amount of access I mean I'm not even like trying to wind up for a joke here if it's for a substat or for the free press or whatever.

I mean, if she keeps breaking stories, then she will be retired. But again, was she really breaking stories? I mean, it was more like getting a big interview. Writing profiles that had like newsworthy tidbits in it, right? I mean, and getting big interviews with Donald Trump at Marlauga. Yeah, exactly. If she maintains that sort of elite access, then yeah.

I mean, she might make her way back to a mainstream outfit sooner rather than later. Elite access. I love that. You pay 99 or Patreon. You can have the elite access of the press box. All right, David, coming up on today's video podcast. What does the big Warner Brothers Netflix deal and Paramount's hostile takeover bid mean for CNN? Plus the upside of being mad at the college football playoff,

Trump's naughty list of reporters, and your entries in our new contest, only in podcast journalism. What kinds of cliches do podcasters like us use over and over again? All that much more on the press box. A butter the rigger. Podcast Network. No meeting consumers. It's Brian Curtis.

It's David Shoeemaker. It's producer Bruce Baldwin. David last week, Warner Brothers Discovery, or a big chunk of it, got bought by Netflix. Mm-hmm. For $83 billion. We learned pocket change. for all of us. We learned Monday morning

that Paramount, the company that tried to buy Warner Brothers Discovery and Lost, is now saying we're not done yet. They are launching a hostile takeover bid.

According to the New York Times, Paramount would pay $30 per share in cash valuing the company at around $108 billion. We're going to leave the heavy lifting on this deal to

Matt Bellany and Lucas Shaw, not to mention the folks over at the Ringer wrestling network, who've been doing some who've been, I know you've been teasing out all the wrestling ramifications here. Yeah, well, it's not clear there are any, but it's a big thing to talk about.

One thing I want to talk to you about is the fate of CNN. Yeah. Which is one of the properties owned by Warner Brothers Discovery. Mm-hmm. And here's how you can size up the two bidders when it comes to CNN. Number one, Netflix doesn't want CNN. Right. They don't want the over the mainstream TV channels.

They want Harry Potter. Yeah. They want HBO Max. They want Batman. They want the movie studio that is Warner Brothers. So if the Netflix deal goes through, then Warner Brothers Discovery is going to proceed with a deal, which got announced last year, where they take all the cable networks and spin them off into their own public company. Company is going to be called Discovery Global. include the following.

CNN, whatever is left of TNT, the Discovery Channel, HDTV, Food Network, True TV. We're always reminded the existence of True TV around the time of the NCAA tournament.

Absolutely. Not to mention TCM, which is the only cable network that people on Twitter actually like. Yeah, very, very common crossword, New York Times crossword puzzle answer too. Yeah.

Whenever there's any sign of that TCM might be in danger, people go bonkers. Yeah. Nobody does that for T&T. Nobody's like, my God, my childhood memories, the fate of cinema is disappearing because of the four-hour version of the Phantom Menace. TNT is really the key, but the TNT and TBS, which I don't know if you mentioned, both have AEW wrestling, which is why it's a wrestling concern. It is funny, though, how many times I'll, like, turn on the TV or, you know, whatever pop-up

open the YouTube TV window after having watched wrestling. And it'll be something like, it'll be a marathon of some movie where I'm just like, oh, that's awesome. And then I immediately go to whatever app I can stream them commercial free because inevitably I have that too. It's like the what's on TCM. Yeah. Twitter account.

Yeah. Except to just divert you to somewhere else. Yeah. I actually watch the movie without commercials. So this is exactly what NBC Universal did with its cable channels. Sure. The reason MS now. is no longer MSNBC is because it is getting divorced from the mothership.

Right. I mean, in this case, it's because Netflix doesn't have any particular desire for them, right? An anti-desire for cable channels. Right. In NBC, and then in the, like you said, it was announced last year, in the broader game plan of time order discovery, whatever, it's more of just like, it's a accounting tool, basically, right? we're just going to put all of our losses in one drawer, you know,

and make them their own thing. And it's a logical drawer, but everybody knows that just the regular channels are going to be declining in value over the next decade or however long they last. And so, you know, that part of it makes a certain amount of sense. Now, if it is split up, you know, I guess the idea is that Skydance or whoever, if they buy this, we'll buy all of it. Paramount, we'll buy all of it.

If Netflix wins and they're split up, who's going to want that cable, you know, those cable channels? I mean, presumably somebody, or maybe it just continues on, limps along on its own, but I'm sure there'll be a number where a Paramount or somebody

would be interested in taking it on. Here's a metaphor, David. If you think of the combined Netflix Warner Brothers as a giant cruise ship, what they would be doing is putting CNN in a smaller boat. and saying, we're not sure how much gas is in the engine. Sure.

But good luck to you guys. Now, you mentioned Paramount. Paramount, if they were to take over Warner Brothers Discovery, they do want CNN. And as Brian Stelter has said on CNN, they would take the network and merge it with CBS News. Yeah. An early Yolo Boko Flood gift to Bari Weiss. Mm-hmm. That would almost certainly mean lay off.

you know, hey, we're trying to do two different things. We're doing news gathering for two different places. Let's combine all that stuff. Sure. So the interesting question is, which of these is better? Going off on your own with all these other cable companies that are part of a contracting business, or going under the Barry Ellison Paramount umbrella and having to deal with what you're going to have to deal with there. If you're CNN, which is better?

Yeah. Oof. I mean, I would say going it alone, but that's a tough call. It's like you're out in the ocean. We have no idea what that's going to happen to us, but that is better than boarding or getting boarded by a different pirate ship. Yeah, I mean, maybe, I mean, listen, it's all going to be part of this, like, the separate cable deal,

but, like, on its own, I feel like CNN has more value absolutely on its own and then it does as part of this like broader family of discovery channels. You know, I mean, like CNN maybe. Yeah. I think CNN could actually be meaningful if it weren't,

if it weren't kind of emblematic of the decline of television, right? Like if it could be its own out, it could have, you know, like streaming, you know, it could sell streaming rights to the highest bidder, you know,

it could be, it could, as an independent, it makes a certain amount of sense. But, um, yeah, it's a tough call.

It's a tough call. I'm sure people, involved would probably pick CBS just because of the continuity and the security, the company security. Obviously, staff security is a different thing that would come from that. And as you say, somebody could swoop in and buy this new public company. Somebody might want all those cable networks. So it's not like you're saying, hey, we're going it alone and we're going it alone forever. You may have another boss. Yeah. Good or bad. Well, you know, I mean, somebody will definitely be, we're definitely interested in buying all the cable

companies, right? I mean, if you're one of the, if you're Comcast, would you come in buy them? If there's certainly a dollar figure where it makes sense to be like, you know, to own the means of production too, and then not just the means of distribution, you know, like it's like there's there's a lot of people who'd be interested in it, but it's just, it's

impossible to value these things right now. One last note here. I saw a lot of people tweeting about Barry Weiss having a town hall with Erica Kirk. This is going to be on CBS. news on Saturday, December 13th.

Uh-huh. And as you can imagine, there was a lot of rending of garments, gnashing of teeth. Nashing of garments, rending of teeth at that idea. Oh, my God, it's changed CBS News. Let's bring out Edward R. Murrow and Cronkite. Here we go. Folks, Erica Kirk was at the New York Times' deal book summit last week. Yeah, I know.

She is promoting a book that her late husband wrote. She was interviewed on stage there by Andrew Ross Sorkin. Mm-hmm. So we don't need to dive on every single data point to talk about how CBS news is changing. There are plenty of data points out there. Yeah. Just with a little context. Like, does anybody not take Erica Kirk right now for an interview?

Everybody does. Come on. All right, David, ESPN's college football selection show. This happened yesterday. It's always a weird appetizer to an NFL Sunday. Mm-hmm. Because ESPN stops down their NFL pregame. show. Rex Ryan and his super white teeth just stopped talking and we suddenly go to college football

for the hour before the NFL, which is of course the main course of American sports life begins. I'd forgotten about the aesthetics of ESPN's college selection show, the tense violins that are playing while the bracket is filled. Just getting you in the mood, yeah. Also, Kirk Herbstreet always does one hit before the brackets actually revealed. And yesterday, his voice was all blown out. He's been working really hard. But he was like, you know, I think it's coming down to Alabama versus Notre Dame. Whatever Kirk says, I'm like, this is going to be what is going to happen.

He knows stuff. He already has a sense of the room. And in fact, it did seem like it came down to Bamba versus Notre Dame as much as Miami versus Notre Dame. Also, Nick Sabin, for a couple of things. years now on this special has come out in a crimson which is to say crimson

tied colored jacket. Yes. And he has posed in front of a crimson pool table. Now you guys may do your CIA Jimmy Sexton pulling the puppet strings conspiracy theories. I'm looking at my

TV and I see Nick Saban wearing Alabama colors. When the question is will Alabama get into the college football playoff? Not sure we need to go to the conspiracies here, folks. I can just hit on my television. What's happening? We know where his sympathies lie.

ESPN, by the way, really good panel, had Boogam McFarland, Joey Galloway, Greg McElroy, Reese Davis. Those guys are not on ESPN's number one college football pre-game show or ESPN's number one college football crew.

Yeah. Except for Reese. I mean, that ESPN has just got so many good people doing college football. I always reminded of at times like this. Then we got the results, David. Alabama was in. Yep. In the tournament at number nine.

Miami was also in at number 10. Now, if you're not a college football person, if you live somewhere other than the U.S., let me tell you why this is important. Alabama finished 10 and 2 in the regular season. They beat Georgia and Athens, which is probably the best road win that anybody had all year in college football.

Absolutely true, yeah. This weekend, they went to the SEC Championship, game. Even though we're told these title games don't mean anything anymore, they got their doors blown off by Georgia. Yes. And joining that with some of their recent results, people that this doesn't really feel like a playoff team or feels like a marginal playoff team. Yeah. The case of Miami is slightly different. So in last week's Tuesday night rankings reveal, and ESPN has a rankings reveal show every Tuesday night, Miami was behind. Miami was behind, mind Notre Dame in the rankings.

Neither team played this weekend. But in the final rankings, despite having no additional data, Miami jumped ahead of Notre Dame. It was like, wait, what? Yeah. By the way, they played this year in Miami beat them. So that was what was supposed to happen, but it had just never happened until the final release of the rankings. Yeah. And the explanation, the best is the explanation from the explanation from the,

people inside. I don't know how these stories come out, but it's always there was a feeling in the room that and then like fill it and just like the whatever the excuses. There's a feeling in the room that Alabama didn't deserve to be penalized for choosing for opting to play in this, you know, SEC title game. As much as I like the journal, the access is for journalistic means. It's sort of like just make, just make your decision and quit talking because you're not making anything better, right? Dude, it was awful. When they tried to describe it, they're like, see, well, what happened was it was

Notre Dame ahead of Miami, but BYU was between them. And as soon as BYU dropped out, because they actually lost this weekend, too, then we were able to compare them head to head. They gave all of their delegates to Miami, is what? Right. Like an old-fashioned political convention. But they were like, we were not able to compare these two schools until the school that was between them in the rankings.

had been disappeared. Yeah. I mean, absolutely no sense. Are we at like full, like, is, are we at like the full cluster fuck level with the selection process now? Like,

could it possibly get any more chaotic and, and have more people saying that it's broken than it does right now? Hold that thought because I've got thoughts on that very subject.

The first takeaway, though, from all this was, we got to get rid of the Tuesday night ranking reveals. Okay. All season?

Well, yeah, because the committee's boxing itself in. Here's Kirk Kurb Street on game. Oh, right. You can use its own logic against it or whatever. Yeah. Here's Herbie on Game Day explaining why we should get rid of the rankings reveals.

Honestly, I think we should remove, with all due respect, the Tuesday night show. Because truly, until all the data is in, conference championships head to head, I think it's all the data comes in, then you can look at this fairly. But to look at this week by week, I just think it sets us. up for things like, well, that, how did, that doesn't make sense? How can you do that? You've had Notre Dame ahead of these guys all week. They didn't even play.

How are you going to flip Miami now? Some awesome music backing Herbie there. We need to get that for the press box. Just to say the halftime marching bands, that would be, that's incredible. Yeah, that should be a whole segment. Your media points would seem so much more dramatic if we could have that. I'm always leery about networks getting rid of programming. Yes.

I mean, this, I mean, Herbie is Mr. College football at ESPN. So his opinion carries a ton of weight, but I'm like, wait a second. You have a Tuesday night show, Tuesday being an absolute nothing sports night. Absolutely. That you can roll out throughout the fall. And then the next morning on first take, you can bring Paul Feinbaum on now that he's not running for Senate in Alabama and have him light up the committee. And then there's all these downstream effects because every college football podcaster, you know does a live rankings reaction podcast every single Tuesday night.

And they're going to lose the opportunity to be mad at the committee every time. Now, you mentioned being mad at the committee. Here's where I want to go with this. Yeah. As we just explained, the committee has some incredibly bizarre and nonsensical explanations for what they do. But also, in this case, the committee. committee probably got it right or got it mostly right. So what we're arguing about is Alabama versus Notre Dame.

Yeah, but that's the problem with the current setup. To think that like adding more teams is going to make more, going to make fewer people unhappy is the craziest thing in the world because now there's just twice as many teams on the on the outskirts who can claim that it can be offended that they weren't included. Who could have seen that coming when we move from two to four and four to 12? that every time you would have teams that would be left out and you'd have an aggrieved fan base going crazy.

And the differences in a lot of cases are a lot more marginal like we saw with Miami and Notre Dame at Alabama, right? I mean, it's like if you're letting two lost teams in, period, then there's just going to be a lot, or three lost teams, there's going to be a lot of teams that have to, once you're weighing the value of the wins,

it just becomes impossible. Oh my God. Joey Galloway said this is a lot yesterday on the rankings reveal show. So this is the first year I've ever wanted to go to 16. And I'm like, so we're going to let in all the marginal teams and then some further marginal teams, which will inspire even more argument? Yeah. It would, 16 would be neater in a certain way, but it wouldn't be, but it wouldn't, it certainly wouldn't make there be less

argument about this stuff. In some way, maybe it would, maybe that's good for college football, though. Maybe if people are, you know, complaining about teams 13 through 16, then, then that means more teams are getting talked about on TV. And, you know, like, maybe that really matters. Here's the thing I think we should be straight about with all of this college football talk. Mm-hmm. We, podcasters and writers who cover the sport have huge incentives to be mad at the committee. Yes.

Huge incentives. It doesn't mean we're making it up. It doesn't mean we're feigning anger. Mm-hmm. But if you come on your podcast or write in your column the day after the rankings reveal, hey, all in all, the committee kind of got it right. Yeah. You don't have a podcast. You don't have a column.

Yeah. It's true. It's the same with the Oscar nominations. If you look at the Oscar nominations and be like, hey, the Academy more or less got it right. Get the hell out of here. Nobody wants that. Nobody finds that interesting the day after. an event like this.

Mm-hmm. And furthermore, if you think of this generation of college football writers and podcasters, these are people whose careers grew when they bash the old bull cartel, yeah, bash the BCS, bash the selection process of the 14th playoff, and are now bashing the selection process of the 12-team playoff. Yeah, it's a comfortable position to be in. Yeah, and again, they're not wrong necessarily.

But I would propose to you that they may have forgotten how not to be mad. Yeah. That there's something reflexive every single time where you come out and be like, oh, they've done it again. That committee. Well, I mean. Yeah. I mean, that's just how I feel about this.

No, I don't, I think you're right. I guess we could argue about the degree to which it really matters, but it's true. I mean, I don't know if there'd be anybody at this point that would be like, just throw up their hands and say we were better off before all this shit. started. Look, let's just go back to the old system of like, you know. People have definitely said that.

No, yeah. I mean, and justifiably so. But the whole evolution from, you know, an arbitrary one versus two championship game and then a bunch of other bowl games that don't affect, you know, that don't add up to that unless you're USC that one year and you claim the national championship regardless. I mean, it's, it's the, the whole evolution has been wrought with all these problems, right? I mean, And part of it's just like when the process started, I think there were a lot of people who were justifiably very upset with the system. But nobody knew how to fix it, right? It's like saying, oh, God, the health care system in America's broken.

It's easy to all, it's for everybody to agree and say, yeah, let's fucking tear this thing down. But it's really hard to come up with a workable plan for moving forward that's going to make an actual majority of people happy. Right? And so it's without knowing where you're headed, I don't even, I mean, What would be the smartest way to do it now? I mean, it's really hard to know. I mean, partially it would involve conference realignment, right?

Or just some sort of means that like the top four or six teams or like automatic top seeds from conferences or whatever. I mean, there's, but that's totally implausible now. Yeah, and there's no Roger Goodell of college football who can force this all to happen. But if there were Roger Goodell of college football, then he would be the one getting all the booze. He'd be chased out of his job in 10 minutes, you know? I mean. Yeah.

And like I said, I'm happy to admit that every, there's screwed up stuff at every stage. And in this case, if you want to say, hey, the committee came to the right conclusion in the most insane way possible. And by using this same logic next year might come up, come to a bad conclusion, I totally agree. We just need to admit, we are incentivized to be pissed off about this stuff. Absolutely. I'm sure there's an analogy in wrestling when you guys talk about the creative direction of WWE. If somebody comes out and said, hey, you know, Triple H and Bruce Pritchard, another job well done, check plus. It would be like, you are a corporate stooge.

Yeah, oh yeah, I call it corporate stooge all the time. I'm not even that nice. Yeah, that's definitely true. And there's definitely, yeah, definitely the incentive. You can see the people that lean into the negativity and that and you understand that it is incentivized in certain circles. So it's not, I just think that the wrestling isn't even that easy but parallel because there's so many people that are just fans of the product with college football. Like everybody hates the system, right?

I mean, everybody can like find a problem with it. You're not going to find anybody having a conversation, not just journalists, no human beings having a conversation. They're saying, I think they pretty much got it right. Yeah, I think we're good, you know, because if you're invested in it at all, you're, you know, going to want to complain about it. I think that's sort of human nature, too. Yes.

And in college football's case, you have competing networks that represent different conferences. So all the accusations of bias and all that BS coming in. Plus college football's major media arms are not national media. They are school-based media. So the University of Texas website is going to be aggrieved that UT got left out of the playoff with three losses. Yeah. Like that is the way they get their subscribers. They keep their subscribers happy. That's the way this is going to be. Not only have people doing national podcasts, you have all these people for every single school, what do you think Notre Dame message boards are like today? Yeah.

How's that going? Like, you know, and if you're running one of those Notre Dame message boards, talk about incentives. Your incentive is to be screaming at the heavens about what the committee has done to Notre Dame, which of course, has never caught a break in college football. Ha, ha, ha. Another fun complaint for you. The TV referees challenge.

Television Davis has convinced us that referee challenge. that referee challenges or referee reviews and two challenges, I should say, are part of the drama of football. Yeah. We're all there.

We're looking at the angles. We got our ref in the booth who's coming in and seemingly getting it right about 30% of the time. It's incredibly fun. While I'm watching Packers Bears, Packers hit a long pass in the first half,

it's under review. Oh, we're going to commercial. Yeah. I'm like, wait a second. You've taught us that this is part of the game. So we're commercials, Brian. Come on. And now we're going to commercial.

I understand there's a certain efficiency in that, but I'm now upset that I'm being denied the process of the replay review. It's dramatic. Yeah. And during the Big Ten championship game on Saturday night, Ohio State was driving. They get inside the five-yard line, fourth down. They do the old QB sneak, a little brotherly shove kind of thing.

It gets called a first down on the field. Well, all of a sudden there's a replay in which it looks like the Ohio State quarterback's knee actually hit the ground before he dove across the line. Yeah. Fox goes to commercial, and when we come back, Indiana just has the ball. Like they've reversed the call. And I'm like, this is kind of a huge moment in a huge game. Yeah, it's really important. It's right at the end of the third quarter.

And I'm like, whoa, what? So Ohio State's going to come out of this with zero points? Yeah. In a tough, you know, in a one score game up to that point, I was like, oh, okay, well, it's a state's going to come out of. Let's just do this during the commercial. That was interesting. I got Trump's naughty list for you. Oh, good.

Did we make it? We haven't made it yet, to my knowledge. I think we would probably know about it. We'd probably have some new interest in both our video and audio versions from certain media elements. Scott Nover, who does a great job for the Washington Post reports that the White House launched a page on its website devoted to naming and shaming media outlets and reporters that publish stories it disagrees with.

If you want to look this up, Whitehouse.gov slash media bias, the header on the page, David, and they really needed some David Shoemaker art direction here, says, misleading, period, biased, period, exposed, period. And exposed is red and in italics.

Now, to give you a sense here, Washington Post Exposed is on the homepage now, the Trump administration lists the outlet, they list the reporter, they list the claim, and then they have categories like tags, and in this case, the categories are lie,

malpractice, and omission of context. And I've been descending order of problem. Also, they list the sources for their, what you call pushback of a story like this. Mm-hmm. Here's some of the sources.

Secretary of War Pete Hicks' post, White House Communication Director Stephen Chung's post, Press Secretary Caroline Levitt's statement. So we can either go with the Washington Post National Security Reporters, but on a hell of a role lately, where we can go with various posts from the Trump administration. This is just really incredible. I mean, I know it's easy, but anything of the White House just to say it's for an audience. of one. Yeah.

Like Trump was mad and we made a website. That's true. I mean, it's pretty well designed for an audience of one, right? I mean, there's a certain, like, clarity of mission here, a purpose. Oh, I see now the category, I'm looking now,

it is, this post against the Washington Post is a lie, is also malpractice, and is also an omission of context. Yes. Those aren't just like, it's not just it had, get that each one gets one label.

Like this is like all three tags were on there. Yes, all three. That's that feels very stricent effect, he doesn't it? Yes, absolutely, because the first thing you're going to see when you go on here is claim. Hegsteth ordered on First Caribbean boat strike officials take kill them all. Yeah, like the 43 to 39 percent of Americans that still support Trump, are they reading the Washington Post? No.

Are they looking for national security scoops in the newspaper? No, absolutely not. but now Trump can point to this. You're right, the audience of one. He can point to this anytime it comes up and say, did you not see the website, the media bias page? That's all that needs to be said about it.

It officially rose to the level of Whitehouse.gov slash media bias, and so no one needs to, no one can bother me about it anymore. It's a pretty good deflection tool. Also, apparently the veracity of this claim that Hexath said to, quote, kill everybody,

just relies on whether or not he said that. It goes down to whether or not he said, edit? Like, isn't this just like Politics 101? I mean, do you need all these quote-unquote sources? Could you not just have Pete Hegseth just on video saying, I didn't say those words? You know, I mean, like- Or on Twitter, which he probably has already been on saying something to that effect. Oh, yeah, that is linked here. His post. Yeah, his post. That's one of the sources. Yeah. We were showing our work. Here is something that he posted on Twitter, because that definitely makes everything true. He has actually pretty clearly not said that he did that he did say it. So,

anyway. As you say, it's a way of reimagining the old cliche. We've already put out a statement about that. Yes, exactly. We've already posted about that on the White House media bias side. All right, coming up in 30 seconds, David, we've got a little

housekeeping to do, by which I mean, we unveil our list of only in podcasting cliches. But first, 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 at the Press Box Pod where they are always always gratefully received. David, speaking of college football,

Oklahoma State's football team has a new coach. They went down to Denton or up to Denton, if you're Fort Worthians like us,

and got Eric Morris from North Texas. It was an overwork Twitter joke to refer to Eric Morris's age when writing

North Texas has a new coach. He's a man. He's 40. Thanks to Joe Healy. If you already missed the mullet, congrats. You made the overworked Twitter joke of the week.

That all got me wondering, who is the most famous journalist who's ever had a mullet? Journalists with a mullet? I think of rock stars. I think of wrestlers. I mean, there had to be somebody back in the 80s who was rocking the mullet

who was doing the about town column in your local paper. I mean, even had like war correspondence back then. Somebody was rocking a mullet. If you know a journalist with a mullet or you were one, write me, Brian.curtisthorner.com. We'd love to meet you.

All right, David in the notebook dump. Usually in this space, you hear a feature on the press box called only in journalism. These are words you read constantly in news articles, but never hear in actual human speech. Well, today, David and I present

a new feature only in podcast journalism, otherwise known as a lot of cliches to unpack here. David, we got so many entries. I'm going to read as many of them as I can. This comes from alert listener Tim Creedon. Tim writes, I think it was David Green on the NPR Up First Pod, probably a good 10 years ago now, who was the first person I heard starting to say this.

The we should say, I should say, verbal tick that broadcast and really podcast journalists now use whenever they find themselves breaking

off from straight reporting to insert something they sense is going to be in some way less objective. I should say

Uh-huh. That's right. We definitely do that. To use another cliche. Doesn't that remind of the old Texas southern thing,

I must say? Yeah. Somebody was that. Oh, God. Is that where it comes But I do hear that on podcasting a lot. I should say it's just a kind of form of over politeness. Man, listen over on Blue Sky gives us another one.

All that is to say, let's say you're a podcaster and you've just been talking for like a minute and you look over at your co-host and they're kind of getting a little antsy. Yeah. You know, and you need to wrap it up. Listen, all that is to say. We need tangents and monologues and podcasts. to fill up the space, but there's a point where you realize you've gotten too far

and you need to bring it back in. Indeed. Frank from NYC has another one for us. Knock-on effects. Okay. That is a phrase I never heard anywhere

until I started listening to podcasts. That's true. Our friend Dennis Schwarks in Slovakia has one. We have a loaded show today. Which I love because it's a straight migration from sports radio.

Yeah. Nobody ever says, you know, we don't have much, but we're going to stress this shit out into an hour. Yep. Another migrant from sports radio comes from Drew Stombs. We have a lot to get to today. Yep. So great.

Kate Sumansky gives us, Don't forget to like and subscribe. Well, yes, of course. Otherwise known to smash that subscribe button. Here's this is from Lawrence in Alabama. Lawrence writes, how about full stop? That is a phrase you hear more than you see written.

Yeah, you never really see it. Yeah. I feel I do that all the time in podcasting. I'll be like, Reese Davis is the best studio host in college football full stop. Yeah. And then I think, wait, did that add anything to the thought I just expressed? Yeah.

Other than making it a little takeier maybe than it was to begin with. here's another verbal take from Thomas Fanders. You have to point at your points. You have to just like underlying. It's italicizing it, right? You can't really italicize it because you'd scream. But you raise your voice. But it's just a way of, you know, just emphasizing.

Where does full stop come from? I was going to say telegrams, but that's something else, right? Or yeah, some sort of old-fashioned broadcast. Is it full-stop? Does that mean just stop used to mean just end of a sentence? And full stop means the end of the telegram? Yeah, well, it says Wikipedia, full stop or full point is a punctuation mark. Most often to mark the end of a declarative sentence.

Okay, well, I guess we're using it correctly anyway. Thomas van der Schaft has another verbal tick writ large. Just very funny and somehow has migrated from articles into podcasting. This is another good one from Homer Erotic, piggybacking on what you said there. We've definitely, we've definitely done that one before. Nick Field, our good friend, says when you're announcing something about your own podcast, like a future episode, you do. You always say first some housekeeping.

How do we land on the word housekeeping is the only way to announce future podcast episodes? That's a great question. I mean, we rarely say the word housekeeping. I guess we're staying in a motel or something like that. Once and then you're done. That's it. From Jimmy D. on Blue Sky, he says every podcast ad starts with, if you're like me, he also notes that there's some weird guest introductions that begin that way.

If you're like me and you love national security scoops, you've been reading the work of, and then you bring on your guest. Yeah. And finally, this comes from Zach Storer and Travis M. Andrews. And really, it might be the mother of all podcast cliches. the something of it all for instance the Glenn Powell of it all

I feel I either said or almost said the Ryan Lizza of it all sometime during the last couple of weeks truly one of the great podcast and cliches again if you have any more Brian.curtis of the ringer.com David and I will be feasting on those

through the holidays and speaking of a feast it's time for David Schumacher guesses the strained pun headline Woo! If you had, if we're watching the press box on video, you can see David beating his mic. I was trying to clap. It ended up more of like a seal thing.

By the way, is heraldo ever have what could be described as a mullet? I've been racking my brains for the answer to this. Okay, Geraldo mullet. Definitely there was some. It was shaggy in the front. It wasn't like just a buzz cut with the long in the back, but it was certainly longer in the back. There's definitely some weird 80s, 90s,

these long hair going on there. I shouldn't say weird. It was very much of the time. I've been doing, Geraldo was always the cool reporter. I've literally been Googling this since it, like, since you said it,

just like off this. And yeah, it's weird. I'm shocked to learn that Sebastian Younger never had a mullet. That was my first guess. What? Just because he's a war reporter?

Yeah, you know, you kind of let it go long a little bit when you're out there in the field, but yeah. Yeah. He was always, you know,

just we're all tapered. up on the sides. He looks great. There's got to be an unfortunate author photo out there for someone. All right, David, our last pre- Thanksgiving headline about John Updike's letters was straight white male, M-A-I-L. Today's headline comes to us from Max Jacobs. It's from Puck. Always good headlines over there at Puck. Trump, as you know, is entering his lame duck period. So I want you to think of Donald Trump, and I want you to think of his physical characteristics. As you ponder, what was Puck's strained upon headline?

Lame duck? Mm-hmm. Lame. And what are the things we love to make fun of about, what did you say? His orange skin is there. Yes, you're right there. Oh, oh, oh, duck lo orange. Lame duck a orange.

Lange. Yeah, that's a good one. You and I've never had duck all orange. No chance. No, never had duck la ranch. I don't think. Definitely had some French duck dishes at restaurants, but that always seems like so extreme.

It's such a choice. You really want to be out that much money and then decide you don't like it? I don't know. Maybe we should get together and have some duck laurenge. That'll be the next press box event. Be a piano player in the background and duck orange being served to everyone.

I feel like have certain things about you. Like if you tell me I read that book and I didn't know you read that book, it would really surprise me. Like when you said you had a, was it a Kafka period the other day? Like that way through me. But I also feel like I know every food you've ever eaten.

That's true. We should. We have to find some sort of journalistic hook and we can get together and have our meals. I was also thinking we should just get together and have like the sports, the heyday of Sports Illustrated like drunk lunch through drunk end of work day

and just like put just as a physical exercise and just make, you know, have like our bosses try to get touch with us at 4 p.m. and just see the state that we're in. I think that that could be a fun one too. That is a that is an inspired idea. We're going to do the three martini lunch in 2026. And then go straight to the corner bar where we, where we finish the work day. Yes, with some good stories too that we can tell about the grand history of this and the time life drink cart and all that kind of stuff. Are we doing this in New York City? Are we going to meet there? Are we doing some Princeton?

Where's this happening? I think New York City. It's got it. Well, somehow, yeah, we might have to get a hotel. But yes. It would be New York's the place to do it. We'll find the old bar. We'll do it at whatever the bar with the most history is that we can get a hold of. All right. Expense report incoming, Bill and Sean, Duck Ola Raj and the Three Martini Lunch. There you go. He is David Shoemaker.

I'm Brian Gerdes. Productions Magic by Bruce Baldwin. David, a little housekeeping, if I may, because we have a loaded, and I mean loaded month coming up here at the press box. Joel's working on a big interview that I believe is going to run on the Thursday show. We're going to have the final edition of our 25 for 25 series. We're going to have a three-man weave, Brian, David, and Joel for our final podcast before we sneak away for the holidays. That'll be really fun. First time in Press Box history. You and I have a Yolo Boko

Flood gift exchange a week from today. Yep. You've been doing any last minute shopping? I've had my books for a while. They're just sitting in a pile on my desk. I got to just shoot those over to you. I went a little bit crazy this year. Oh. You know how when you were a kid and your grandma would kind of overbuy on Christmas and your mom would be shooting grandma look? Yeah. Think of me as your Icelandic grandma. Oh, no. Because I might have put a few. Maybe I need to do some last minute shopping. No, you're fine. You're fine. Just to put a few extra things there in the box. All that, not to mention, we got the January issue, already in production coming after the holiday. I cannot wait to do one more of those with you, David,

and I can't wait for Monday when we will have more lukewarm takes about the media. See you then, David. See you later, Brian.