The Press Box - Covering Kamala Harris and Listener Mail. Plus: Rodger Sherman on College Football Twitter

Episode Date: August 13, 2020

Bryan Curtis and David Shoemaker weigh in on how the Kamala Harris selection could affect the Biden campaign (2:15). Next, Listener Mail, where they answer the question, “Why does every celebrity who gets written about by the media have a great sense of humor?” (21:45). Then, Ringer staff writer Rodger Sherman joins to discuss the news that conferences have canceled college football this fall (35:30). Plus: the Overworked Twitter Joke of the Week and David Shoemaker Guesses the Strained-Pun Headline. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

David, in a Fox business interview this morning, Donald Trump threatened to withhold funding from the post office. What I want to know is if the post office were to wither and die, what would you most miss about it? Oh, my God. Can I answer first? Yeah, you wanted you go first. Yeah, it's like when you get to the front of the line and you know you've paid to mail your package and the person says, do you want any stamps with that? Yeah. I can't tell you as a kind of minor league stamp collector how happy I am to say I already got some last time I was here.

There's a certain bravado. You're the only person who doesn't work in like a mail room who's just like, no, I have plenty of stamps. I'm kids, right? I got the hot wheel stamps last time. I don't need any extras. You're here helping keep them afloat. Without people like you, we'd be in a much more dire situation than the dire, the incredibly dire, we're in right now.

I'm also going to miss arguing with the person at the post office about what can go in media mail. Like if my book can go in media mail, why can't this old copy of the New Yorker go in media mail? Oh, it has ads in it, does it? You want to make a law against me? Well, I'm starting to think this Donald Trump really has a point. I'm hard to believe in what the president's saying about the nefariousness of the post office. It's time for the press box, a part of the ringer podcast network. Hello, media consumers.

Brian Curtis and David Shoemaker here. Did we have enough news this week, David? Gimini Christmas. We got a lot to cover today. We'll answer your listener mail, including the question, why does every celebrity who gets written about by the media have a, quote, great sense of humor? Plus, the ringer's own Roger Sherman comes on to talk about two college football conferences

decision to cancel their sport this fall and the truly amazing days that that produced on college football Twitter. All that plus David guesses a strain pun headline and the overworked Twitter joke of the week. But David, the big news is that Joe Biden, Democratic nominee for president, has picked a running mate. It is Kamala Harris. And as many people noted, we had a dumb, wacky week on political Twitter that ended with the most logical conclusion possible. And I've got the metaphor for you here. This is from a tweet from strangest days.

Biden was, quote, like your dad at his favorite diner when he pretends to look at the menu and then gets the thing he's ordered 5,000 times in a row. Yeah. Can you top that? I think that's pretty great, right? A couple of notes on the few days of the media chasing the scoop, which, by the way, when it comes to the vice presidential nominee is really a non-scoop. it's like the NBA transaction story

where we're going to know what the trade is in five minutes anyway. But as Mike Allen of Axios noted, the political media found out the nominee was Harris when Biden sent out a text at 4.14 p.m. The decision did not leak, which is kind of amazing because I always thought of Biden during the primary as a really leaky campaign. Sure.

They seem like they were constantly talking to the press, but we did not know. found out at the same time. So without the leak, the Kamala Harris reporting became like a college football coaching search on Twitter. Did you see people that were studying the flight tracking software to see who was flying in and out of Wilmington, Delaware this week? It was actually a plane from South Bend, Indiana. And someone said, oh my gosh, now Pete Buttigieg is not going to be the Veep, but perhaps Biden is going to announce his entire cabinet. this week.

Well, it turns out Biden did not announce his cabinet and Pete Buttigieg was not on the plane that flew from Southman. So that was a strikeout. Another great bit of detective work before announcing Harris Biden released next week's Democratic Convention Speaker schedule. Now, would you guess that some people looked at this schedule and drew way too many inferences from who was on it and who wasn't? Because it turns out Harris was on the schedule, but Susan Rice wasn't. Oh, right, which you could read both ways, but I'm assuming a lot of people read it as if that meant that Susan Rice was the nominee. There was a very prominent liberal Twitter member who went there. And I loved one of the replies was, it's the Democratic National Convention, not a game of clue.

Beyond the work of Twitter's Baker Street Irregulars, we had the kind of microscoop. one was a stage has been set up at a hotel in Wilmington. We didn't know who the nominee was, but we knew a stage had been set up. On Tuesday, CNN reported Joe Biden has selected his running mate. Not who he had selected, but that he had made a decision. In the NBA, this would be like Woj saying a trade has just happened in the NBA. Yes. The sons have decided who they're.

going to take with the number one pick. Kevin Durant has selected a team, but it didn't tell you what team it is. Basically breaking something is happening. The New York Times put it this way. Biden's VP pick is said to be imminent. Eminent. A lot of overworked Twitter jokes about Biden eminent running in 2020. Later, we got news that Biden had informed possible veeps like Gretchen Whitmer that they wouldn't be vice president.

So we still didn't know it was Harris, but we knew who it was. wasn't going to be. We're sort of whittling it down. Not just reporters, David, but liberals on Twitter were affirming during this period that they would support whomever the nominee was. So this is from the Palmer report. Everyone on Joe Biden's VP list is very good to grade. Therefore, I will immediately get behind the running mate no matter who she is.

So it's sort of a loyalty pledge. I don't even need to know the name. I'm going to commit right now to supporting whomever Joe Biden select. Texas is running right. Yeah. I mean, it's sad to say, but on Twitter, I think that's the pledge is more necessary there than just about anywhere else. I mean, we're not, we're not that far removed from a world in which that would go without saying for anyone on the liberal side of the spectrum, right, that you would support the Democratic nominee for president and, and whoever else is on their ticket. Yeah. A lot of people said that out loud during the primaries. I just like that

there was, for some reason, everyone needed to be on the record. before the nominee. I just, I want to go ahead and get it out there that I will support whomever Joe Biden comes up with. One person said, if Biden's VP is an inanimate carbon rod, I will do everything I can to make sure they get elected. And Rod we trust, yeah. There you go.

Then Biden announces the pick. And on Wednesday afternoon, he comes out in Wilmington and gives a speech. And then Kamala Harris gives a speech. First of all, I thought both of those were absolutely. absolute knockout speeches. What did you think? I totally agree. I totally agree. I mean, I feel like I say something to this effect over and over again, but it really made you remember why people were clamoring for Kamala Harris to run for president, right? I mean, and not even like immediately before the primary, like several years

ago, like, you know, like first exposure to Kamala Harris where everyone was just sort of applauding, you know, I mean, she was, she's just fantastic. It seems like right off the bad. What a great pick. Absolutely. And it's so funny because we had this huge discussion back when the Chris Dodd thing was happening, is Kamala too ambitious, right? Everybody's getting mad at why are female politicians judged on these terms that male politicians are never judged on?

And then it was hilarious because as soon as Harris's speech ended, I turned over to CNN. Everybody was like, oh, tonally, she was just great. Her tone was just perfect. I was like, wasn't that what we were talking about? before the selection. But okay, anyway. Other interesting part of that was Joe Biden just decided to give a full-blown campaign speech

that went way beyond just introducing Harris. I was sitting there watching with my wife. I'm like, is he just giving his acceptance speech at the DNC right now? Because he unloaded all this stuff onto Trump and nicely sort of weaved Harris into it. But did you think, is that Biden just thinking, look, I've got everybody's attention right now. I don't know when I'm going to have it again. Here we go. I've got everybody's attention.

And without the normal sort of stages of the cross of the primary season, you don't know when all the cable network cameras are going to be trained on you, right? I mean, you don't even know if you'll have, I mean, if every time you give a speech, you're sort of sitting on the same office backdrop from your home, would CNN tune in even if it was labeled as like your big foreign policy speech or, you know what? I mean, you just don't know when you're going to have that kind of, that kind of permeation. And so, yeah, he just went all in. I mean, I'm trying to think of times when we're all going to be paying attention to Joe Biden between now and November. We're going to be paying attention probably at the Democratic convention, the quote unquote convention. But have we really all paid attention to Joe Biden since the end of the primaries? I mean, might it be one more time that we're all sort of.

to locked in besides the debates that were all locked in on him giving a set piece speech? I mean, debates. I think it's a conversation for another day. Yeah, I think so. And listen, it's working out for him, right? I mean, he's doing really well for having been, you know, ignored, or at least in comparison to previous cycles. This was a big opportunity for him, but also, you know, maybe it was an opportunity to kind

of get this out of the way and not have to, you know, be waving his arms. for our attention as the months go on as much. Somebody on CNN made a really interesting point where they said both neither Harris nor Biden are great arena speakers in terms of like using the crowd and surfing off the crowd. So you put him in this empty gym in Delaware, which would normally be a pretty terrible place to make a really big political speech. And it turns out it accentuated their strengths. it's maybe in Harris maybe especially so like if you just were sort of bought into them without the

interference of the crowd and and that may have been actually the best thing that happened to them so yeah it's they're not they're not they're not exactly queen out there you know getting the whole arena stomping their feet they're in there's more of them we only found out what Clapton could really do when he unplugged right yeah Joe Biden is definitely not a an arena band then we David we got to the final part of the media here, which is the Trump conservative Fox News response to the Harris selection. The first problem was that conservatives could not correctly pronounce her name. Tuesday night, Tucker Carlson comes on Fox and goes on and on about Camilla Harris.

Not Kamala Harris. Camilla Harris. Listen to what happens when Richard Goodstein, a former Bill Clinton advisor, steps in to offer an assist. Service is running mate. Sincere question. Tucker, can I just say one quick thing because this is something that will serve you and your fellow host on Fox. Her name is pronounced comma like the punctuation mark, look, Kamala. Okay. Seriously, I've heard every sort of...

Okay. So what? That's how it is. Kamala. Okay. Well, I think it's out of respect for somebody who's going to be on the national ticket, pronouncing her name right is actually not, it's kind of a bare minimum. So I'm disrespecting her.

by mispronouncing her name unintentionally. So it begins. You're not allowed to criticize Kamala Harris or Kamala Harris or whatever. No, no, no, no, but Kamala Harris. Okay, look, I. Oh my gosh. That's it. Every time that someone corrects me for the rest of my life,

I'm just going to respond with so now, so it begins. The liberal takeover of my life is marching. Is it full march? Yeah. Exactly. Tucker's rage there is just incredible. So you're saying that I'm supposed to pronounce her name correctly? You're just saying it's like this? I can be attacked.

It's like, yes, that's probably the minimum bar. Look, I know, Kamala Harris. It can be a tough name to pronounce. We and you and I have both mispronounced it on this podcast. At least I have. I'll speak for myself. But she has been a giant public figure in America for a year now. and my rule is if you're going to be snide about someone and you're going to go full high

dudgeon you probably should have the facts right and you probably should pronounce her name correctly it usually just goes better hand in hand when you're trying to make a big point yeah the other thing david watching them uh sort of flail around which is funny was to try to find a talking point about Kamala Harris because as you and I have described here, Trump's go-to bit for the last couple weeks has been Joe Biden is going to hand the streets over to Antifa. Our cities will be lawless if Joe Biden is elected president. So then Kamala Harris, former attorney general of California, gets picked. And all of a sudden, Trump is in this really weird position because one of the criticisms about Harris in the Democratic primary was Kamala is a

cop, right? Kamala is two pro law and order. Two doesn't fit the moment. Well, that's exactly what Trump has been saying that the country needs. So all of a sudden, Trump found himself in this very weird box, and as some people

were documenting, they were actually putting out both talking points. That Kamala had this record as Attorney General that needed to be studied more, and that Kamala was too liberal. And trying to make those two arguments at the same time. Yeah, even if the evidence is contradictory. Uh, you got to enter everything in evidence,

I guess, early on. So you can go back and cite it later. Um, I don't think they know what to say. I mean, I don't, I thought I tuned into Fox right after the announcement and, uh, to see how they were, uh, what they were saying. And it did seem like they were just sort of flailing for an angle, you know, I mean, it, it was in some ways a refreshing sort of commentary. I think Jesse Waters said that Trump would being given that Trump has no problem with people calling him sexist or racist I'm sure this might be a good pick for him

but um but yeah I mean they were they were just trying to figure out the angle and obviously it wasn't it wasn't pre-program like it would be with some of these other choices in the case of the Trump campaign Harris was a super obvious choice so how do you not have this ready to go

well yeah I mean it's tough I think it's probably especially tough when you're, you know, spending campaign energy towards dog whistle racism and all that kind of stuff. And when you actually, you know, are confronted with a black candidate and you have to choose whether or not to just be racist or to leave all that aside. I don't really, I mean, it's, it is shocking. It is shocking that they don't really have an angle with her. But, I mean, maybe the problem is what you were getting at that her, that the, that the, the, the most potent attack, at least in terms of splitting off votes might be that Kamala is a cop, you know, but that doesn't fit at all with

this wacko narrative that Trump is driving home about this being the leftiest lefty ticket of all time. Yeah, he loves to do that, right? He loves to take the left's complaint with a Democrat and turn it into his complaint with the Democrat. Hillary is a warmonger being the classic example. I'm up, Hillary's a warmonger. I'm the one who's not going to be a warramonger. But the fact that you've talked about Portland and talked about, you know, federal presence in all these cities so much really complicates it. Ben Jacobs

had a great tweet. He says, the central dilemma of the GOP with Kamala Harris right now is that they don't know whether to paint her as the face of Black Lives Matter or the face of Blue Lives Matter. That was really nicely put. And then in the cringy part, here's conservative talker Mark Levin.

This is on Tuesday night, David, hours after the historic selection of Harris, Listen to the first words out of his mouth. Levin TV. Hello, America. I'm Mark Levin, and this is Levine TV. Well, I want to take a look at Kamala Harris with you, excuse me, Kamala Harris right now. I'm going to tell you this. I'm not going to be a stickler about this, but the media will insist on it.

Kamala Harris is not an African-American. She is Indian and Jamaican. Jamaica is part of the Caribbean. India is out there near China. I only point that out because if you dare raise that, you're attacked, but the truth is she's not. And so I just wanted to make that clear. Her ancestry does not go back to American slavery. To the best of my knowledge, her ancestry doesn't go back to slavery at all.

So I want to point that out because of the bizarre nature of our politics today about who is what and so forth and so. normally I wouldn't care. I still don't care. But I keep hearing people say she would be the first African American vice president. No, if she's elected, God forbid, or nominated, then elected, she's still not the first African American vice president. Just want to point that out. She'd be the first vice president of color, but not African American. Do you think he really doesn't care as he protests there about these issues? Not that I care. I'm saying this, explicitly because I don't care. Please listen to me care about it and then move on as if I hadn't said anything.

It's about four levels of shittiness there, but I just want to point out in case anyone missed it, where he's trying to describe the position of India in the globe. And he says it's over there near China, just to bring up China for some reason. Like, okay, thanks, dude. That is genuinely horrible. And by the way, can I just get out of the way?

I just interject really quickly because he did specifically, say Kamala Harris before he corrected himself and kudos him for correcting. This is the same week that professional wrestler, villain of our childhoods, Kamala, real name James Sugar Bear Harris, died. Kamala, James Harris, rest in peace. There's a great article by Oliver Lee Bateman about him on the ringer and talked about it on my other show, The Masked Man Show. One would be forgiven for conflating those two in the world of Twitter hashtags.

But I think now is a more important time than ever to sort of get that pronunciation straight. Yeah. And I'm not sure Mark Levin was actually toggling in between those two trimming topics. But we'll see. I did like this good tweet from Jim Garrity of National Review, who's been very critical of Harris's positions, though he did tweet this. You know, whatever else you think of Kamala Harris, it's pretty amazing and awesome that immigrants can come to the U.S., meet, marry, have a child, and their daughter can grow up to be DA,

state attorney general, U.S. Senator, and on a presidential ticket. Amen to that. All right, David, time for the overworked Twitter joke of the week where we celebrate a gag that was so obvious that all of media Twitter made it at exactly the same time. Send your nominees to at the press box pod where they are always gratefully received.

I'm not sure we've ever had more consensus with the overworked Twitter joke than we had this week. Everyone said, these three, they are the ones. Press box, you don't need to sift through them this week. So here you go, David. First up, at a concert in Sturgis, South Dakota, the front man of the band's smash mouth. Steve Harwell told the crowd,

we're all here together tonight. Fuck that COVID shit. It was an overworked Twitter joke to write, he ain't the sharpest tool in the shed. Oh, man. Thanks to the ringers, Matt James, Mark Eisenstein, Joe Walski, Papadab, Schneider, and like 9,000 other people.

And then there's the Kamala jokes. The runner-up previewing the vice presidential debate will have this fall. It was an overwork Twitter joke to write as Mike Pence allowed to stand on the stage alone with a woman. Oh, my God. Thanks to Matt Zeitland,

Alex Quigley, and many others. And finally, a joke made by about 90,000 people on the internet. It was an overworked Twitter joke as soon as the Harris decision came down to write congrats Maya Rudolph on getting the SNL gig back. If at this late date you're still interested in Saturday Night Live political parodies, God bless you. And congrats, you made the overworked Twitter joke of the week.

In the notebook dump, David, let us do some listener mail. We do this every Thursday. We were talking earlier in the week about cussing during NBA games, how that was getting in the television broadcast. And we got to talking about the bad edits TV. makes of movies. Well, Eric Raskin and Al American sent some classics, which we unfortunately

cannot play because I cannot say the original version of this on the podcast. Here's one we can play. This is from Samuel L. Jackson's classic movie Snakes on a plane. Listen to how the sensors handle that tricky word, motherfucking. We got to clear the snakes out of the cockpit.

Yeah, yeah, clear the snakes out of cockpit. Enough is enough. had it with these monkey fighting snakes on this Monday to Friday plane. Everybody's strapped in. About to open some freaking windows. This Monday to Friday plane. The plane does not fly on weekends with the snakes on it. That's fantastic.

Thanks to Eric and Al for that. This is from Lakito. Thoughts opinions on the overworked tweak construction, blank, colon, a story in X number of parts, followed by an assortment of various headlines. It seems like I've been seeing it everywhere lately. Is it the modern day equivalent of Hemingway's six-word story? Love the show. So there's the story in so many parts.

And then there's also the headline, headline one week later, headline that completely contradicts the previous headline. Yeah. Or tweet that contradicts the previous tweet? Yes. Am I doing this right? You and I don't do this stuff. Never.

No, we never sign off on that. No, we got a lot of very positive feedback, by the way, on the levels. The way journalists tweet about stories the other day, because we were talking about, you know, quite the read. Oh, yeah. When you tweet quite the read, you just mean a slightly more point of the normal newspaper story. Somebody who shall remain nameless sent me a DM and he said, the problem is, as a journalist, you want to tweet on behalf of your journalistic teammates. Yeah.

But you don't always really have time to read the story. Yes. or engage with the story. So you go to the mad lips, right? Great piece by so-and-so. Yeah. This piece by so-and-so. I think the lowest form of Twitter praise is

fun piece by David Shoemaker. The faintest praise. Yeah, because in a way it means like, I don't think this story is that great. Maybe the idea is kind of cool, but the story isn't that great. What it means is I'm totally unthreatened by this story as a reporter. My favorite one is a way that you can not make it seem like you've read a piece without ever having to profess that you've read a piece and also just to sort of, you know, really, really see.

I guess, yeah, you seem like you're deeply invested in it is just to pull a quote from the piece. So you just have like some little reportage that they've done, like, you know, just like an original quote by Dabo Sweeney. or whatever and then just the and then straight from that to the link. It's a great one. Just like, oh, I read the piece well enough to pull out, well, thoroughly enough to pull out this quote. You can attribute it to Brian Curtis, whoever, and then just the link.

But you don't have to say, I read this or this is good or fun or anything. And it's sometimes it's the wrong quote. You know, if you actually do read the piece, like, why did they pick that? It's only because it was in like the first three paragraphs. It was a pull quote. Yeah, it was there waiting to be taken. How much do you trust the tweet always,

read David Shoemaker. Oh. Well, if it's often unclear whether they read the piece. I usually do, I mean, depending on who says it, obviously. I think I would actually take, I would probably take it somewhat seriously. Or that would at least, you know, affect my reading of it. But yeah, you can know, no one, no one's ever totally straightforward, are they? So, yeah, I don't know.

What do you think? I mean, if somebody says, always read Brian Kurz, like, I'm completely flattered. I'm also not totally sure that they read this piece in question, right? It's more of a command to someone else. Always read Brian Curtis, because I don't have time to or really any desire. This is from Bernardson. Thank you, Burner, for your contribution to this podcast. How should the press balance the desire for ratings on election night with the expectations that we likely won't know the winner for some time?

Will they be partially accountable for the fatigue that will set in? It's a great question, right? Well, I mean, I actually think that this question is, I think this question is pretty strong. straightforward. I mean, I think they're going to go all in on, well, I think the practical answer is that they're all going to go on, all in on election night, like it's the biggest election ever and like it'll be fully decided by 11 p.m. Eastern time, that won't be true, but I think they're going to be geared up for it. I think that getting at a kind of more interesting question, which is, or concept, which is that they're kind of, every station is going to have to be geared up for like five

different things, right? They're going to have to be fully staffed for a, you know, know, Grand Slam coronation result. And they're going to have to be fully staffed for, you know, this is going to go to the courts and let's explain that to people. They're going to have to be fully staffed for, you know, many different eventualities here. And specifically depending on, I mean, if Trump were to lose, depending largely on his reaction, right, even if it was a clear victory. And as not to jinx it, I'm sure that there would be, you know, if Trump wins,

even in moderately decisive faction, fashion but loses the popular vote, I feel like that's going to be received a little bit differently this year than it was four years ago. So, I mean, every station is going to have to have to have a lot of different, a lot of different game plans for whatever happens that night.

It's like back in 2000, Tim Russert had a whiteboard. And that was a big deal. And what you're saying is that we need like five whiteboards this time. Yeah. Yeah. It's, I think what's going to happen is the,

the straight talking types. The Jake Tappers, basically everybody on MSNBC is going to spend the month before the election saying over and over again, we may not know the results on election night. We likely won't know the results. But as soon as election night happens, the cable news machinery is going to kick in. And that red breaking news thing that's always on CNN and the sort of MSNBC music, and it will just seem like we will just forget about all that. At least in the production of election night, that is all going to be. completely forgotten. And it's going to be like the action is happening right here, folks. This is a Super Bowl. Yeah. I mean, I think that just to reiterate what I said, I think that,

I mean, I think not literally, but almost literally, you're going to see like MSNBC is going to have, you know, John Meacham behind, they're going to have like three curtains on the stage, right? And depending on what happens or depending on where we are in the night, they'll pull back a curtain. John Meacham will be behind one, Cornac will be behind the other one. If it's just like a vote counting thing and they'll have, you know, God, it's a tourier or whoever behind number three to examine like what the legal with the Supreme Court battle will look like.

I mean, there's a lot of different iterations of how this thing could go. And I think that it's going to be a, it'll be an interesting roster construction conversation to say the least. This is fantastic. No, you just,

you just figured it out. Like Jake Tapper or Brian Williams has like three buttons in front of him. Yeah. And he just smashes a button and Jeffrey Tubin is revealed as being behind the door. Oh, it's John Meacham.

Here we go. Is H.W. brands back here somewhere? Can we get another? What does this election remind us up? I love that. I'm absolutely in. This is from John Paul Roman. What happens to all the backup articles announcing the other contenders as the VP selection? Would you pay money to see what the New York Times would have written if Rice or Warren were the VP pick? How many articles do they have ready to publish? Funny question, because these are treated like the T-shirt that says San Francisco 49ers, 20-20 Super Bowl champions that we always hear about.

I got to say this. I would pay no money because those articles would be really boring. And would have, the article is just going to say, you know, going against conventional wisdom, Karen Bass became Joe Biden's running mate on Tuesday. I mean, that's literally what the article would say. It's only the next wave of articles that are actually then people rushing to the phones to try to get details from the VP. search that are interesting.

So yes, that is, that is, it is the equivalent of the t-shirt of the 49ers winning Super Bowl. But I don't think it's interest as goes far beyond that. Trace Sheehan wants us to comment on Dion Sanders leaving NFL network for Barstool. Is it RIP for linear networks? Um, yeah. David is, Deion Sanders is, I mean, listen, was probably the biggest football playing star. of our youth.

One of them, sure. Doesn't necessarily have that same level of kind of prestige in his post-playing career. I think it would have to be somebody other than Dion Sanders for me to, you know, put a fork in the idea of, like, linear networks. It's a big move. It's a, it'll be interesting to see how it shakes out. But it is, you know, it says, it definitely says something about Dion Sanders and says something about Barstool and says something about the sort of, leveling of the playing field between linear and, well, more amorphous networks or network-like entities, but I don't know exactly what it says just yet.

Yeah, to me, to me, it's most interesting about just the structure of the media universe we live in now. It's also interesting in this way because if Dion Sanders or when Dion Sanders leaves NFL network, they're not going to lose a single viewer because of that. I just can't imagine anybody's going to be like, you know what? I just love Dion Sanders analysis. Sure. So I'm going to stop watching. I'd say that about almost anybody on any of their shows.

Mm-hmm. But he's worth more to Barstool. Oh, yeah. Because it legitimizes Barstool in more of a way. He can also just be brought on to say like funny things that don't, that he probably couldn't have said in the confines of a basic game day NFL analysis show. So, you know, he can just be used completely differently. And I think that's part of the question here, beyond Barstool, which is just like, you know, oh man.

But it's just there are a lot of guys on those shows, I think, who are legitimately really interesting and funny. And the pregame studio show basically squeezes the least interesting and least funny stuff out of them. So to me, it's like I would just, I'm also just interested to see anybody out of the confines of that particular vehicle. Whether Dion is the guy or not, I'm not sure. This is from Joe Walski. Is there a more common answer to the question? Tell me something we don't know about Perrin, celebrity that is notoriously serious,

boring, quiet, et cetera, then he actually has a great sense of humor. I can confirm this. I feel like whenever I've reported on somebody, particularly somebody who has passed away at some time in the past, and you say, what was he like? What was she like? The first thing people say is he had a great sense of humor.

Yeah. And they're going to be the least funny person in the universe. Mm-hmm. It's just the go, like, that's how we think of people. It's essentially it means that they're genial or they were nice. They had a great sense of humor. And I think that's weirdly become a synonym. And when you're really close to somebody, presumably even a pair of supremely unfunny people

would engage in some humorous interplay, would laugh at each other, whatever. You're going to their loved ones. They probably do think there's a good sense of humor there. Yeah. If I ever see that quoted in a story about something, somebody, I immediately know they didn't get any material. If you say somebody had a great sense of humor, I know they didn't get, because I've been there. And great sense of humor is like the bottom of the barrel, baby.

And you want to just move on at that point. This is from listener Tom Rootsie, David. I love this. Australian TV presenter Paul Dowsley is working there in Melbourne. They have a stiff curfew right now in the Victoria State because of the coronavirus. and in this clip, Dowsley is reporting on a man who broke curfew to buy cigarettes. Okay? You literally not allowed to leave your house in Melbourne after a certain time.

Man goes out to buy cigarettes. Listen to the pun that Paul Dowsley attempts on the air. The man caught here who just wanted a packet of cigarettes. You can imagine now he has a pack of cigarette. Regrets. Zigger regrets. He, Dowsley posted that himself

with a little music there at the end. All right, David, so we had a day on politics Twitter earlier this week. We also had a day on college football Twitter. And let me tell you,

days on college football Twitter are a million times crazier than any day on politics Twitter. Here's the ringers, Roger Sherman, with some post-game analysis. We bring in Roger Sherman,

staff writer extraordinaire, Bachelor Watcher, and for our purposes, he are expert on college football Twitter, which just enjoyed a two or three day run that needs to be savored. Roger, how are you? You'd actually be really surprised

how much overlap there is between college football and the Bachelor. Like 90% of the people who win The Bachelor and the Bachelor are former college football players. Now, that's a good point. I don't even think about that. Yeah, Jordan Rogers.

one. Uh-huh. Yeah, Bachelor Twitter and College Football Twitter. Keep that thought in mind for later in this, for later in this segment. So Sunday night, we start to hear very strong vibes of something we've been hearing for a while, which is that college football might not play this fall, especially the Pack 12 and Big Ten who've already canceled their fall seasons. This all comes to a head online Sunday night.

I want you to take us through some of the players who are involved because it's almost like every stakeholder showed up at the same. same time on the internet pleading their case. First up, Trevor Lawrence, Clemson quarterback, national champion, probably going to be the number one pick in the NFL draft next year if we have an NFL draft. What did Trevor Lawrence bring to the party? Yeah. So starting, first of all, starting last week, all of the college football conferences

released their schedules for the 2020 season. And then four days later, some of them started to cancel their schedule. So this is all really well thought out and well put together and makes a lot of sense. Sunday night, Trevor Lawrence tweeted something that seems basic. He just wrote, we want to play. He was one of many players who is hashtagging, we want to play. This is the best player in the sport, the probable number one pick of the NFL draft, won the national championship as a freshman, and just saying he'd like to play football this year.

And it's this type of thing that seems so basic, but got twisted in all these directions because the people who were saying that there shouldn't be a football season this year were very tied up in the idea that it was unfair for these unpaid athletes to play a season at the behest of these colleges to make money for the colleges. And the idea that the players themselves wanted to play suddenly became very powerful to everyone who had been pushing for a season. It's like, why are, it's like the players' voices themselves are the ones that are most in favor of playing. And that really caught a headwind on Sunday as players from around the country kept saying, we want to play, we want to play, we want to play. And the funny twist was then a few hours later, Trevor Lawrence, along with a lot of the other most important players in the sport from conferences and teams around the country, said that he'd like to play but.

And then there was a list of things like anybody who wants to opt out for COVID-19 should be able to and keep their scholarship. and, you know, we'd like to form a players association, which is something college football players have never had because they're not considered employees, and every time they try, they are shut down by the colleges. So all of a sudden, this thing that had started out as like the voice of the players turned into, oh, no, you're giving too much of a voice for the players.

Gotcha. And everyone's words are being twisted in so many ways. the people who started out trying to back the players were told they were hypocrites for not listening when the players wanted to play. The people who got excited about that we want to play movement then looked like hypocrites when they were like, hey, we're not fans of unionizing. Everybody, every sentence in this college football moment has like four different meanings. And everyone is using everything to back up their prior beliefs. and wants and desires, even though it's a very nuanced, very strange situation. Yeah.

So just like, there's all these crosswinds here. So you've got this, let's say quite a lot of college football writers saying, look, you cannot force these kids who have almost no labor rights onto the field this fall. Then you have a college football player, the most famous college football player, come forward and say, no, no, no, I want to play. To which a secondary force of writers and observers say, see, the kids, want to play. You, you elite writers are just completely, you know, off base here. To which then the players say, and oh yeah, we're going to form this union like thing or that's part of our

demands if we, if we're going to play, which then leaves the anti-writer pro player faction grasping for straws. I think I summarized that. Maybe incorrectly, but somewhere, somewhere in there. It's, it's roughly accurate. And it's all tough because like so many people are being told that the things they very clearly want aren't, you know, it's like I am a college football writer. This is my favorite sport. It's the thing I love the most. I will routinely watch 14 hours of college football on a Saturday every Saturday. And I do that even though I say I'm a college football writer, but my bosses are never like,

can you write off the midnight Hawaii game? I still watch it anyway because I like watching Hawaii play football at midnight. And it just then the past few months, you know, I've been told by a lot of people that I don't want there to be a college football season and that I'm rooting for the sports demise direct quote from Danny Connell about me. Who's I think on ESPN, Danny Cannell. Yeah, he's a serious guy. This is Danny Cannell, former college quarterback, now a college football opiner. And he has been saying, so this is another, we should just unpack this for people. another group that shows up on Twitter, Sunday night and also into Monday, is a group of

analysts, mostly, I think, who are essentially saying the media doesn't want there to be college football or the media is taking a lot of glee in the fact that college conferences are canceling their season. And meanwhile, the media that I saw were all devastated because this thing that we love it that her jobs are based off of is disappearing in front of us. And even though you've six months to prep for the idea that there isn't going to be football this year, it really hit home on Sunday that this, you know, or it really hit home on Tuesday when the cancellations actually ended up happening, that like this part of my life that feels like a North Star is just gone this year.

So we got the players on Twitter. We got the media on Twitter. We've got the anti-media media on Twitter. And then at some point into this hurricane Jim Harbaugh, coach the University of Michigan shows up and he had a fact sheet what what was going on with that um he was just trying to say that you know we're doing well only 11 of our players have gotten the coronavirus you know only 11 out of 105 is and like this is that a lot of people were arguing that college football teams college football campuses and the team environment is actually the safest place for these

players to do uh dabbo sweeney who's the head coach of clemson the team that won the national championship two years ago, said that without a doubt, college campuses are the safest places for college football players to be just in the sake of fact-checking, 37 players on Clebson tested positive for COVID-19, and one of them now has difficulty breathing and is going to sit out the season if there is a season. So I find it hard to believe that it's the safest place for them to be. And somebody like Davoswini, his conference is still playing football. So we can consider him to be kind of a proponent of what his conference is doing,

at least at this moment. But Jim Harbaugh, there's an extra layer there, right? Because the Big Ten at this point is leaning toward it and now has in fact canceled football. But he is saying as a Big Ten coach, I do not believe the decision that my conference is making. Am I getting that right? Yes. several several people were not excited about the decisions that were being made by the conferences

and just openly rebelling against their conferences and saying this is a bad idea and we don't like it which isn't isn't something you you normally see a lot of people were just like not not on board with the decisions that were being made by people due to medical advice so we got players we got media we got coaches and then at some point like Donald Trump inevitably shows up at this party? Yes, Donald Trump hooked onto the we want to play. Hashtag we want to play thing. He was like the players want to play.

They should be allowed to play. I'm always a little bit, my personal thing about Donald Trump and college football, if you allow me to go on a mini rift here. Please. Donald Trump did not like college football before he was president of the United States. He has a long history with pro football, a long history. a long history with major league baseball. Then he becomes president and realizes a lot of the people who voted for him like college

football. And the thing that always stands out to me is that in 2018, he flew down to Atlanta for the national championship game, which I went to. And he left at halftime. And then the second half of that game is like the best second half of college football I've ever seen. Alabama comes back for a huge deficit. wins. And I just don't trust the college football opinions of anybody who left the Tuotago

Vailoa National Championship game at halftime. Don't talk to me about college football if you went to one of the best games I've ever seen and we're too bored of it to stay around for the second half. But yeah, he's been very adamant that like college football is this super important sport and the players want to play. And some of the players who were involved with a statement that came out on Sunday, we're like, huh, it's weird. Like, the president just retweeted us, and I don't think he knows that he just endorsed a players union. Right.

It was funny because he had two tweets, and I forget who I'm stealing this from, but the first one was really obviously ghostwritten because it was just a very sort of generic statement with the hashtag we want to play. And then the second one, which followed like within a day, was like, play the college football season, exclamation point. It's become hooked into this. political thing, not least of all, because the conferences that have canceled, the conference that canceled the Big Ten has Ohio State. They have the University of Wisconsin. They have the University

of Michigan and Michigan State. And there was an article that came out today written by a Trump campaign spokesperson that the cancellation of the college football season was going to swing those states in favor of Donald Trump because they see that the libs are just out to get him and that they canceled the season to own him and that you can't trust the elite libs and the scientists and the media and that everyone's going to realize this is a plot to take him down and that that's going to be a big deal in those states where but it it just seems like we you know we'd be playing football if there was no unchecked pandemic right that'd be seemingly the bigger, the bigger issues of running all.

Which seems like a thing that, you know, the first time this sport has ever been canceled is happening now because of events in our country. And that's, that seems like it'll be the stronger message in my opinion. One thing I wanted you to, to help me sort of explain is that I remember joining my first like rivals message board, probably early odds. One of the really exciting things about that. And by the way, this is for the album matter of both me and Erica Servantes, University of Texas. And what was so exciting was on a rival's message board, you felt partly in reality and partly just in pure fantasy that what you were posting on the message board was actually affecting events.

Like it was either, you know, you were either showing displeasure of a coach to help him get fired or a coordinator to help him get fired. Or you were just writing and writing. And somehow your voice was affecting things. to me, the couple of days of college football Twitter this week was like the ultimate expression of that, where you had everybody getting on saying like, I can save the season, I can sink the season, I can affect the season somehow by just having a couple of tweets. Did you feel that the sensation at all? That's especially true because you'll sometimes like find out that someone who's anonymously

posting on like the Texags message board is like the secretary of defense or something like that. I don't, I forget which important government official had a tax ags account. It was incredible. But that was a thing a few years ago. Yeah, it, the message boards are where like, I feel like you, you level up to become a, a internet commenter in other places. That's like the battleground where the people are chosen to later become, to later become more more effective commentators at other places. But yeah, it does seem like this war is being, war is a bit of a strong word,

but it does seem like this battle to make this season happen is happening online with tweets between all of the major players in it. You know, like the players are coming out and saying things online, thinking that they can push things in their direction. And it seems as if it kind of worked. because like the Big 12, the conference in which Texas plays, you know, announced yesterday they're going to play. And they said the reason we did it is because the players made clear that they want to play.

Is that actually why they did it? No, they did it because they want all the money from the football season. But it feels like the swell of tweets from these players made it a little bit more socially acceptable for them to say, this is justified by the players themselves when we can all see very plainly that it's justified by the 100 million plus dollar television contracts that will get to stay in cheap if they are if they play the season totally and at least it it at least kicked the decision a couple of days or a week down the road you know so they didn't cancel it this week in the case of the big 12 there's a good really good piece i read a couple weeks ago by john taltie writes her al dot com and he

described the last couple months of college football media as an information war, not quite the Alex Jones level, but this idea where like athletic directors and college coaches knew there was an incredibly large chance that this season wasn't going to be played. But at the same time, they had this enormous interest, and you've written about this a little bit, in keeping up appearances online to limit bad news and at least sort of be publicly optimistic. Am I putting that correctly so that there wouldn't? Because they are, the media cannot cancel the college football season. That's bullshit.

But these people are highly lobbyable and they are subject to political pressures. Yes. And the thing about this sport is that no one is in charge. You know, baseball has a commissioner. The NBA has a commissioner. A country has a president. A company has a CEO. The college football is so disjointed that

it's hypothetically a part of the NCAA, but the NCAA doesn't technically cover the Division I national championship. It's its own entity. Each conference is making its own decision. Each conference is made up of schools, which are making their own decision. So, you know, like you said, your ability to influence what's happening, you could reach someone who actually does have a role in this. and I feel like that's why it is sort of this, you know, back and forth online lobbying thing

because when there's no one that's really, there's no one that was able to step in and say, we're going forward this season or we're not. It's all being made by smaller or more influential. What's the word for influential? Influeniable. It's not influential. Yeah. We'll go with influential. It's a coinage here on the press.

Influencible people. And I just wanted to clarify that the Texas A&M user I was referring to as the former Secretary of Defense, Robert Gates. Robert Gates was the message. Robert Gates was the Texas A&M. So you could go on to a college football message board and be talking to the Secretary of Defense. Yeah, which is power of a sort, not just influencing maybe the course of the college football season. but, you know, our policy somewhere in the world. I want to ask you one more thing, Roger, before I let you go,

you mention how terrible this is for the media if college football in whole or in part goes down. If that happened to the NFL or MLB, I think that would, we could quickly make a list of all the writers and broadcasters affected. Give me a sense of who's affected by a college football season going down. Which media members? It's a thing that's so tough to define

because in so many cases, the entities that run the sported directly profit format also have their own media setups. The PAC 12 canceled its season on Tuesday, and I think Wednesday you started seeing layoffs at the PAC 12 networks, which is a television company that exists to broadcast Pac-12 games. ESPN is one of the primary companies that benefits off of this. CBS, Fox, make a lot of... you know, not only broadcast the games, but in some cases own some of the games.

ESPN owns a lot of bowl games. And the finances of the sport are so intertwined there. If there's no college football season, if there's none of that revenue, the media that exists only to support these, you know, conferences, these individual conferences of the sport at large, you know, I don't know what they're going to do. There's, there's, there's, there's, it's, it's, not like they could just switch into another sport because there are none currently happening at

their colleges and their universities. And it's unclear when they will again. So there is this whole media ecosystem where the stakeholders in the sport are also own their own media that makes it a little bit stranger and more intertwined and really subverts the idea that the media were rooting for this to fail in the first place. It's not just that, media, it's not just that media, you know, can't necessarily bring down a college football season. It's, I don't, in so many places, they're financially motivated to keep it going. And I'm sure you've seen this in other sports, but that that's the thing that really, like, eats at me. when people say like the media is obviously already against this.

It's like not only would we all personally just enjoy watching college football, a lot of people really depend on this happening and they're not going to have it happen. And it's going to be bad. Absolutely. All right. Roger Sherman, you can read his analysis of an occasional participation in college football Twitter. Roger, thank you so much for joining us. All right, it's time for David Shoemaker.

Guess is a strain pun headline. Yeah. Monday's headline about racial disparities at ski resorts was the unbearable whiteness of skiing. Today's pun comes from my inbox. It's a press release, David, announcing a new slate of shows that will run on the ESPN Plus streaming app.

I'm going to give you the description of one show. Quote, Mike Greenberg brings fans the stories behind sports most iconic bets. stories behind sports most iconic bets you have to tell me the name of this new ESPN Plus show the show or the article

the name of the show what was ESPN Plus's strained pun show title greeny um wager uh you're definitely going to want to go in the gambling side bet uh that's your pun word or

or form of that betting, betting the, betting the line, betting, betting, betting, betting, betting, better. What if I told you the word was better, B, E, T, T, O R? Better, better, better, better, better, better, better things, better, better. A little straighter, better. Better, better. Better days is the answer. Oh, God.

Better days. My God. New show on ESPN Plus. He is David Shoemaker. I'm Brian Curtis. Research by Chris Almeida. Production Magic by Erica Servantes. Join us next week on our Monday to Friday media podcast.

For more lukewarm takes about the media. See you then, David. See you later, Brian.