The Press Box - Covering Venezuela, CBS’s Anchor Du Jour, and a Pile of Football Audio

Episode Date: January 7, 2026

Hello, media consumers! Bryan is joined by Joel today to discuss the regime change in Venezuela (07:57), including CNN’s coverage of this news. Next, the guys examine the start of the Tony Dokoupil era at CBS News (26:50). They dive into who he is, why he was picked, and more. Then, Bryan and Joel take a look at CBS News’ newly released values (36:27) before giving their takes on the 60 Minutes story Bari Weiss spiked (45:03). Today’s show is rounded out by some football audio from this past weekend (49:45) and a conversation about NFL announcers’ side hustles (1:00:31).  Plus, the Overworked Twitter Joke of the Week, and Joel Anderson Guesses the Strained-Pun Headline! Hosts: Bryan Curtis and Joel Anderson Producer: Bruce Baldwin Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Joel? Brian. You're here on a Tuesday. Yeah, what happened? I did not make a wrong turn, click on the wrong link. You didn't. Shoemakers just feel a little under the weather today.

So we had to dial you up. What do they call it, Venezuela Nitis? Anyone talk about Venezuela night? No, I don't know. I mean, I hope Dave was doing okay, man. I mean, it's not a surprise that he got sick after the holidays

because everybody's going around sneezing and coughing on each other right now. Speaking of which, how was your holiday? You and I haven't talked. Yeah, no, you know what? I had a great holiday. My dad actually came in and visited here for the first time. And it was lovely. Like, I just, we got to watch football together, which is, you know, something we've been doing since I was three years old.

So that was really cool. And I got to drive him around D.C. a little bit so he could see some of that. And you got to hang out with his grandkids. So it was pretty nice. How about you? end up doing? We had a great holiday who stayed here in California. Okay. Okay. We had a little family Yola Boko Flood under the tree. Okay. All right. That's right. I mean, that's not the original celebration,

but that's the original domestic celebration as far as I'm going to sign. So it. It truly is. And for people who want to get into a little advanced Yola Boko Flood, here's what you do. When you have young kids like I do and like Joel does, go to your partner, your wife, your husband and say, hey, what I want the kids to get me is this. Mm-hmm. And then send them the eBay link. And for me, this was a huge stack, a near complete run of Rolling Stone magazines from 1983 and 1984.

I saw that you, because you posted this on the press box Instagram account. And I'm insanely jealous because I want to read that article about Marvin Gay so bad. There's a cover that talks about when Marvin Gay was murdered by his father in 1984. I would love to read that story. So I'm going to bring that to you next time I see you. And let me tell you. There's so many things in here. It's like you have all these great articles.

I didn't know that Chris Connolly basically wrote all of Rolling Stone or 80% of it in 1983 and 1984. Oh, wow. Really? Man, you always wonder where those people came from. Like, I didn't think about it until later, but they had careers before MTV, right? Yeah, and I knew he was from there, but there's being from there and there's us like, oh, he was a guy who was writing all the little small items, you know, the kind of, you know, biweekly little wrap-ups, news from the music world, random notes and profiles and the backpager. Oh, man.

I mean, that's a glue guy, man. That's more than a glue guy. That's journalism glue guy. Yeah, that's, I mean, that's like foundation. I don't even know what that is. Like that's, that's not quite a keen Elijah one because that's not the long reader or whatever, but maybe it's like Otis Thorpe or Clyde Drexler or something. Yes, the Otis Thorpe of Rolling Stone in 1983 is a fantastic description.

Yeah. I've never heard one. The other thing I wanted to tell you is I got a couple of fantastic Yola Boko Flood gifts from listeners of the press box. Oh, lovely. That I would love to publicly thank them for. Zach Marconi. People have heard me say his name here before. He is a bookseller at Brattle Books

Bookshop in Boston, which is a fantastic bookshop. I get this package from him and I open it up and there is a copy of Bull Finch's mythology that's over 100 years old that he sent for my kids, which is wonderful.

That's lovely getting very in a mythology. And then there is also, I open this up and there is a first edition, beautiful copy of the novel the Malagro Beanfield War, which is a novel that has a great importance to me, and I've had a crummy paperback copy forever and ever and ever. And I am staring at this,

and I am trying desperately to figure out how Zach Marconi knows that this is an important novel to me. Yeah. And I'm sitting there just racking my brain because it's like, well, somebody got you the perfect present and you don't know how they got it for you. Yeah. And I finally remembered the,

Robert Redford RIP segment that you and I did. Oh. And I mentioned that Redford had directed the movie version which was filmed near

where my grandmother was born in northern New Mexico. New Mexico, yeah. And I was like, wow, that is some close listening

of the press box podcast right there. Mark, what a good, I mean, man, that's beautiful, man,

people that are book dealers, or booksellers, they have to be incredible to give him gifts, man. Like, I mean,

if you get a book from somebody, like that, like Mr. Marconi here, that is like being, you know, what do they say, touching the hem of the garment or whatever? Like that is, that's, that's amazing. Is he related to the Marconi's folks too, by the way? You know, the Marconi. Radio Awards? Yeah. I don't know. I didn't ask him. We were talking about used books. Not a name I've heard a lot. He should, he should write in and tell us if he's related to those folks. The other one I got is from another guy whose name has been mentioned a lot here, John Walters, Newsroom veteran up in Vermont,

who contributes a ton to this podcast. I always have. smart and wonderful things to say about the media. He sent me this book, Witness to a Century by Press Watcher and all-around character George Seldas. And once again, I get a book like this. It's not a book I have.

It's not a book I've ever read. It's not a book I knew existed. But I'm looking at it. I'm reading John's wonderful note here. And I'm like, it's the ultimate compliment to say, you've given me something that I didn't know existed that I want to read immediately.

Mm-hmm. Absolutely. Or at least after I've, finished pistol, you know, the Yolo Book. Well, you got a lot of other, you got a lot. Man, so the other one did not come in yet? It didn't come. Okay.

You know, you can tell what my holiday was like that I haven't had a chance to follow up on that, but okay. That's crazy because I got to notice saying it was supposed to have been there by now, but okay. Anyway. What's a 12 month year, a 12 month holiday here at the press box, so no rush. That's right. That's right.

Leading Yolobok or flood. All right. Coming up on a New Year's Press box, let's catch up on how Trump arrested a foreign leader and how reporters covered it. Speaking of which, CBS News dove into the Tony DeCopal era, after spiking a story on 60 minutes. We'll cover that too. Plus some NFL audio from fantastic couple of weeks of football.

Troy Aikman and Matt Ryan are trying to pull a Tom Brady and report from the press box, lowercase, at the Rose Bowl. Well, that much more on the press box. A part of the rigor podcast network. Hello, media consumers. It's Brian Curtis. It's Joel Anderson. it is producer Bruce Baldwin with you.

Of the bald ones. Of the bald ones. Is he related? We've never asked. No, we did ask. He's distantly related to the bald ones. We did ask. That was off the air.

Was that on the air? That was off the air. It was after a show. I was like, hey, you have to be related to like one of them? You know, because again, I guess it's a common name,

but not so common that it couldn't be possible. And it was possible. It was possible. I don't know about you, but the holidays laid out in such a way that I felt like I had a couple of bonus days of vacation. You had New Year's Day on a Thursday and I'm like, oh, okay, we got like a couple more days off here. My kids didn't go back to school until today.

Oh, today. So they didn't, man, they went on Tuesday, not Monday, huh? Tuesday, not Monday. But while I'm sprawled out on the couch contemplating football and relaxation, well, there was a little regime change in South America. Yeah, man. We woke up Saturday morning to learn that the United States had arrested Nicholas Maduro and his wife and transported them back to the United States for prosecution. So many amazing media elements to the story, Joel.

Yeah, man. Starting with the fact that the New York Times is Tyler Pager. Right. Called Donald Trump on his cell phone 10 minutes after Trump had announced, Maduro's capture. This is at 4.30 a.m. on Saturday morning. Man. And Trump answered the phone.

Man. Trump was available for comment. That's unbelievable. Yeah. I mean, I guess it's not unbelievable because that, I mean, people do say, I mean, I think even you're truly, oh, man, American Conte's own told us that, you know, you can pretty much get a hold of him. Yeah, do it.

Do it. No, no, no. And we're moving on. Yeah, we're moving on. But yeah, that he can, that he will pick up his phone. And people have thought of it as a security concern, but it doesn't matter because that's just how he rolls. And yeah, and he's up at 4.30.

Like, I don't, that could mean a number of things. I don't know what it means, but it's like it could mean, you know, an older guy having trouble to sleep or he wakes up early in the morning and is ready to go at 4.30. Or you're deposing his South American regime at the older night in this case. Do you think that would keep him up at night, like, or normal? though. I feel like he would probably still get his sleep in. You think Trump would do it? You guys got this and go to bed?

You guys got this and I want to hear about it when I get up. Not too much though. I might believe that except that Donald Trump also went on Fox and Friends that morning and bragged about getting to watch the raid in real time. He said, I watched it literally like I was watching a television show. He consumes a lot of the world through TV, so that covers a lot of ground. So Trump, you know, keeping his distance from foreign affairs, absolutely believe it. Trump keeping his distance for a thing that's like a television show. Can't do it. Can't do it.

Him in that room watching those planes, those special forces planes, fly out over the horizon after the operation. Like I'm just like, I'm sure they, because they said that he stopped watching after that. And I'm just, he was like, I wonder how far they got off the screen before he finally thought it was okay to turn away. CNN. I sat down and watched a bunch of CNN that morning. And you and I bag on CNN so much on here when they screw up. CNN was great that day. Yeah.

Wolf Litzer has been, go ahead. It felt like old CNN? It did. Yeah. You know how CNN, old CNN had that, always that international feel to it? Oh, yeah, absolutely. It wasn't just Chris Hayes doing donuts in the parking lot at MSNBC. It wasn't all domestic politics.

They knew what to do when there was a foreign story or foreign crisis. Often you could watch an international edition. And it would be that too disillus. It wouldn't look even like, you know, visually all that dissimilar from the domestic ones. So yeah. Absolutely. Absolutely.

Well, Wolf blitzer was roused, clearly roused. Okay. Wolf. To come on the set. He had all the analysts there with him. Okay. You had Aaron Burnett on a separate set going to people like Mary Mayna, who was reporting pretty remarkably from Caracas.

Again, this is just hours after Maduro's arrest. Elena Trine, whose work I was not super familiar with, was doing a great job. explaining the political elements Sabrina Singh who'd been a spokeswoman for the Pentagon was talking about national security elements of the story. It was just great CNN.

Yeah. Oh, man. I can, I can, I mean, they've still got the bones of the organization to do it. Like, they haven't, they're not having overgrown, grown through that many wholesale changes that they can't, that's still not part of their DNA, right?

Right. And you know, there's a lot of cheapo media criticism out there, whenever there's a story like this, like, oh, the press is just cheerleading for the administration and tub thumping for the United States. I'm going to run out of synonyms here in a second. If you watched CNN that morning, all the questions were, is this legal? What happens to Venezuela now? Question that Trump would sort of partially answered his news conference a little bit later.

It was all the big questions, right? That's all they were doing. reporting was pretty scant at that point. We didn't have the big newspaper TikToks yet. But if you watch that, again, I just challenge anybody to watch that and say that they were not asking the right questions. Okay. Not thinking through the issues at stake in that moment. Yeah, I mean, it's probably very hard to, I mean, even if you wanted to succumb to the influence of the White House or whatever else, you know, you'd be too aware of their interest in their interest in

story and how you present it. It's just very tough because like you said, there wasn't already a lot of information. It's a very serious international event. There's only so many ways you can go with it. Like it should trend towards really, really good or horrible. There's probably not going to be very much middle ground there, I assume. No. And Trump has also not given the press much of a case for anything that's happening with Venezuela. Right. It was so striking. Like you just read like a newspaper story about blowing up the alleged drug boat. in the Caribbean or the Pacific. Yeah.

And they would always say, they would have a sentence in there that Mr. Trump has, has offered no evidence. Right. Well, it's just like when people got to the point of saying a lie or saying that it was being using dishonest language or whatever, whatever euphemism for lie. And that's that sort of new, right?

But it became necessary around about 2015 for reasons that should be obvious. Yeah. It's not like a rock where you're like signing onto a case for war. There is no case for war. And again, or the cases being made in real time. Oh, it's about, it's about oil. It's sort of about democracy. It's, it's this, it's that.

And, you know, and again, to read the TikToks, there were some amazing nuggets in there. New York Times had one that the Trump team was upset because they felt that Nicholas Maduro was dancing in public. He's dancing a little too much, huh? He's dancing a little too. Trump has a signature dance. Yeah.

We can't let this guy get a signature dance. not in our hemisphere. Yeah. And I think also, like, from the video I saw, like, he was doing a little bit of the Trump dance, so he was kind of clowning him a little bit. It was very adjacent to the Trump dance, yes. I could see the Maduro. I mean, I assumed a Maduro.

If I were Maduro, I would definitely think I had, like, more rhythm than Trump. So it must be real fun to mock that. So, yeah. So, yeah, I can just, I mean, just, it's sort of an outrageous thing to learn into media. But like this is what the media is for, man. Like they don't always get it right, but like that is a detail that, you know, if you assume it to be true, it's like pretty incredible. And this is a classic scramble drill. Yeah.

Oh my God. Okay. We got to go, right? We got to have a big, somewhat comprehensive story by the end of the day. Latest early tomorrow morning about how this happened, what happened. And there's so many things to report. The Delta Force details on the ground in Venezuela. this CIA asset that was just mentioned in nearly every story.

I'm like, did that person get on the plane on the helicopters on the way out? Yeah, yeah. That person is still in the country because that's interesting. The CIA assets from the United States were on the ground in Caracas for a long time before this operation happened, and according many, many months, if you read the news stories. Yeah, going back to August, allegedly, something like that. Back to August. And then this was from Max Taney and Shelby Talcott over in Semaphore.

They write, the New York Times and Washington Post learned of a secret U.S. rate on Venezuela soon before it was scheduled to begin Friday night, but held off on publishing what they knew to avoid endangering U.S. troops. Two people familiar with the communications between the administration and news organizations set. I'm of two minds of this. One, it didn't appear that, I mean, Maduro knew something might happen, but he didn't know when or where. And it's like, man, the New York Times and the Washington Post knew, and Maduro didn't, you know. which is a pretty incredible piece of information. And also, I guess, Trump won versus the Pentagon Corps, right? Is that pretty clear?

Well, I mean, so they reshaped under Hexef. They reshaped that press corps and kicked out people that weren't friendly to the administration, right? Or they chose to forfeit their seat. I mean, I guess there's some, you know, whatever language you choose. I'm okay. kicked out. Kicked out. Yeah.

And so then they're like, okay, you know, we're going to report on the Pentagon from the outside, right? That sort of makes you like an opposition in a way, right? You know, I'm not going to be reporting on or writing things that the administration

wants us to write because they want us to write it or when they write it, right? And then it's just kind of like, okay, the way that you show that you're not, you know, that relations aren't normal, that, you know, that this is going to be. a whole different thing now that like, you know, we're all right. Well, you know, if you're not going

to conduct yourself as a traditional president and under these norms, then we don't have to abide by those norms and it's game on, right? But it just shows that, you know, the president is a very powerful person. And, you know, the media can't help but be, you know, either there's to fall into the routine of it. And I'm sure they're, I mean, again, they claim that the compelling reason here is to protect the lives of soldiers. Okay, sure. But American soldiers. American soldiers, right. But I mean, again, I mean, frankly, I mean, what about the lives of like Venezuelan citizens? Whatever, when do you, when does that happen that they take in the number of lives or potential casualties? Like, who did to decide, like, what the scale is in terms of these,

we will withhold reporting if this kind of person dies, but we won't. you know, or we'll report on something, what we know in advance. Consequences be damned. And this kind of person might get killed. Like to me, that's just a larger conversation about it or whatever. But I don't know, man. I just feel like Trump beat the Pentagon corpse, man. He beat the Pentagon press.

They did what he wanted. They followed his rules. So here we are. Well, I think you hit on something really interesting there, which is that no matter what Donald Trump does to us reporters, kicks us out of the Pentagon or makes the conditions of being in the Pentagon so untenable that we all have to leave. Yeah. Treats us with utter contempt, tries to replace us with toadies who would never, ever question his decisions in any way. We still are members of the priesthood. Yeah. Our behavior doesn't change at all. Right. You could argue that, okay, if the president of United States does that to you, then your methods then change to, right? Not the way, not just reporting from outside the building, but the way you engage with the administration changes too. That's just not what happens in these cases at all. especially at newspapers.

No. Maybe priesthood is a bad analogy because that, for various reasons. But you are taking this vow that you say, oh, I will never venture an opinion about any of this. Yeah. Other than fighting for access.

I will never become anything other than the kind of reporter that I was at the Pentagon under another administration. That's just it. Like, that's the thing. And that is just so strict. We never change. You know,

it's his argument. that we're changing. Pete Hexas are all these liberal people that are doing everything they can to undermine the great leader of the United States. Actually, they're just the same reporters. Yeah, absolutely. Well, I mean, it's hard to buck convention for all the reasons that convention becomes convention, right? You don't want to, you know, presumably Trump won't be the president for the rest of our lives. And it's like once you've sort of, we'll see. Yeah. once you've breached, you know, this sort of, you know, there's a change in the relationship, right? Like, you still want to have that structure there, that infrastructure for when things maybe normalize again.

But I don't know, man. I just, you know, I think the one thing to consider here is that the Washington Post had already been to use a term I would use, moving funny for the last year or so, right, under Bezos or whatever. So they've already sort of decided what direction they're going to be heading in the, thought was that, well, that's not going to affect the reporting or the journalism there, right? And I'm not saying that it did. You know, I don't want to, you know, make that. But I think that if somebody were to ask that question, it would be a fair one. Like, has your relationship the way the Washington Post has been moving in the last year, affect your decision on that. The New York Times, I don't

know. It's a fair question to ask, though. I think this is probably pretty normal. Normal in that, like, deferring, deferring to the Pentagon. Yeah. Deferring to the U.S. government when it comes to things like troop movements. I'm putting American the lives of American soldiers, again, accent on American in danger. Okay. By reporting on operations before they happen. You know, I think we go back to Iraq and then go back to lots of Afghanistan everywhere and see, see versions that. But I agree with you.

It is the right question to ask the case of the post. I mean, again, their leaders, their leaders have begged us to ask that question over and over again. Yeah, man. I mean, you know, look, democracy dies into darkness, right? where did you hear that from yeah i mean i don't remember what uh that was a slogan that was used once or twice so i don't know to help sell some newspapers then we got trump's press conference from mara lago

just after 10 a.m. Easter time he read his remarks at the beginning like someone who had been up all night other than taking calls from tyler pager yeah he really perked up when he started taking questions from reporters did you notice that he got all new energy oh man. That's his shit, man. That is his, that is his venue. He's putting on a performance, man. Yes. Also, you know, when I was watching it the first time, he made news. Everybody's ears perked up when he was talking about the United States running Venezuela. His word, running Venezuela. And I was sitting there on the couch being like, does this just, was this an off script moment that then acquires the, you know, the feeling of truth. because Donald Trump just happened to say it.

You see everybody. Rubio was in the shot for a lot of this and looked incredibly uncomfortable as he always does when Trump's talking. But I was like, did Donald Trump just commit the United States to nation building running the Venezuelan government by this remark? But if you watch it, he was actually looking down at his binder there with his prepared remarks when he said that. So I'm pretty sure that that was in the prepared remarks that the United States is going to,

quote, unquote, run Venezuela. It's something that Stephen Miller, I believe, said later in an interview on CNN, echoing that language. So I would imagine that, yeah, that is the, that's the, that's the terminology they've chosen to use in the White House. Right. That was the Tapper interview about Greenland that Stephen Miller was doing. Yeah. Yeah. That was an amazing interview, by the way. Speaking of complimenting CNN, I thought that was very good. Yeah, man. Just, I mean, you know, it allowed him the opportunity to get geeked up. You know what I mean? And so then you get a good, you know, because I mean, Stephen Miller does not, it's,

interesting. I know that this is very, I think that he is at least tactical in this and he's looking for an opportunity to go on one of those rants and kind of steal the mic back from the host. And so, like, he wanted to do that. Like, I think that it played right into his hands, too. I always forget how he talks. And then he does an interview like day, like, oh, he just has this very original manner of speech. Yeah, he's one of a kind, man. Trump did have a media piss test moment in his remarks and Mar-a-Lago, here's that one. If you go back 20 years, maybe even a little longer ago, that was a great country, and they destroyed it.

Remember I said that if we lose this election, the United States will be Venezuela-on steroids. That's what would have happened. Had we lost the election, the 2024 election, we suffered so badly when you look at the border. So just follow the bouncing ball there, Joe Donald Trump said during the 2024 election that if he lost, the United States would become Venezuela on steroids. Now he has arrested the leader of actual Venezuela and has somehow in a circuitous way

come back to that talking point when discussing the mission. The Greenland talk was campaign nonsense, I think we thought. Right. Like we thought it was like, that's that's, they're just trying to fuck with us.

Like, that's not what's really going to happen. And then, you know, here we are, right? So, again, they test it out, see what people think. And then, you know, they're like, well, they seem too bothered by that, you know. As soon as Katie Miller started tweeting, it wasn't campaign nonsense anymore. Yeah, man. I just, you know. And again, Stephen Miller's just on television saying, no, no, we, we intend to take Greenland.

That's the stated objective of this administration. I'm not new. Don't you think that they're that's going that we I mean let's predict that now that's going to happen right They're going to attempt to try to take Greenland at some point in the first quarter of the year again if it's it's unimaginable just like you know U.S. troops going into Caracas to you know take the president of Venezuela but sure. Yeah if I had to bet yes we will try to obtain greenland in so I don't see Stephen Miller is not saying that but he wouldn't I mean I think I think Stephen Miller does have like a certain amount of dependent um independence from Trump that some of the other folks don't have, right? Like, he's a true believer. But he's the one that's like creating the archetype for the government here. Like, he's the one, like, he sets the standard. And then I think that his public appearances

in media are meant to hammer at home to Trump that, like, this is what we want to see. This is what we're going to do. And then Trump is like, yeah, sure, whatever. All right. Whatever you say, Stephen? I don't, this is my conjecture, of course, right? But I think that that's how this works. We might have to do a whole Greenland segment on Thursday when we're back. You've been to Greenland? Never been to Greenland. Never been to Denmark. Never been to Greenland. Oh, Denmark sounds lovely. More fun at CBS, Joel.

Oh, yeah. It's a new era over there, the Tony DeCopal era. Welcome, Tony Ducopal. I'm familiar with your work. Tony DeCopal. By the way, that's how you pronounce it, because he was going around Grand Central Station doing a bit for CBS. Really? Before he started in the anchor chair, and he had his name written out on a piece of paper when he was asking, people at Grand Central, can you pronounce this? Man, did anybody recognize him in this bit?

It didn't seem like it. Man. I don't think so. I mean, I think he was in that kind of zone of like, are you like a person from something? Yeah. I mean, it's just kind of funny. I mean, do you think Lester Holt could go through there and not somebody would be like,

Lester Holt? Don't you? And Lester might have reached the zone of recognizability. But like, is Tom Llamas? Is he the new NBC anchor? Yeah, man. That's people, people yelling his name out? I don't, yeah, I don't know, man.

That's a tough one. David Muir, maybe? Yeah, maybe. I think maybe he might. Yeah, the hair I feel like he might, kind of distinctive. Let's start by talking about who Tony DeCopal is, for those not familiar with his work.

Grew up in Connecticut and Florida. His dad, who's also named Tony, was a huge drug dealer. You don't mean like a pharmacist. No, I don't mean like a pharmacist. No, I don't mean like a pharmacist. assistant. Oh. Our Tony wrote a memoir about him called The Last Pirate. You just say he grew up in Florida, so. Yes. I think it's, he was, yeah, there's something there. We wound up back in Connecticut

later. Okay. He played outfield at George Washington. Really? How did you find that out? What? That's not in his Wikipedia entry. How did you find that out? I don't remember who tipped me off to this. He batted 311 for his career at GW. Did he do some minors or something? Did he do some minor, like minoring? Minor league? No, like minor league. I believe that was the end of his baseball career.

Huh, okay. Though Stephen Shepard, who works for Pew Research, pointed out to me that he played American Legion ball with Mark DeShera when he was in Connecticut. Damn. Okay. As a fellow college athlete, do you have more respect for Tony of the couple now, knowing that he played college ball? I don't think it would affect it one way

another but yeah not really I mean I think he's probably a pretty good athlete I know Tony a little bit because in 2010 I was at the Daily Beast and the Daily Beast merged with Newsweek I remember this yeah yeah what a wheels off media merger that was in retrospect and in fact even at the time

Damn, man. So much has happened. So much has happened. But I was one of the digital people at the Beast and Tony was one of the magazine people at Newsweek. Oh, okay. Man, you know, Brian, can I say something about this? Because you put in our notes about Tony Ducopal. And there's this note here. There's three stars next to it.

It says, Beast, 2010, handsome. And I was like, are you calling him a beast? I was like, because he was so good at baseball. I thought you were calling him a beast, but it was the daily beast. It was the daily beast. Okay. Should I do the handsome part? Yeah.

I mean, he's very handsome guy. Yeah. He's a very handsome guy. And let me tell you something, we were all shoved into an office in the IAC building, west side of Manhattan. And I, you know how you push desks together so that people are basically facing each other, facing their, you know, you're facing your computer. They're facing their computer.

he was like catty corner to me and one he was a strikingly handsome person and two he dressed really well for a newsroom oh man yeah you know like he was I want to say maybe Tony would dispute this but he was always in the you know the nice shirt the nice pants just very

you know it's old dress for the job you want thing so I'm looking at a picture of him and he looks like he also could be an actor and a soap doesn't he he kind of give like you know not the straight arrow leading man who maybe has a quiet dark side

that's revealed a few seasons later the guy dating somebody's wife secretive you know whatever but yes like just yeah he he's got that kind of handsome going we were all trying to get out of there at that point it was just you know I don't know that it was clear to me

that Tony would get out for the anchor of the CBS evening news but he was clearly going someplace yeah oh yeah yeah yeah you could I mean, there's no need in being that handsome in writing for a living. No. People look to me, by the way, and they're like, are you the mascot for the vintage T-shirt shop in the village?

Stop. No, they didn't see any future on camera there. Stop it. Little did they know. Yeah, look, people can look at us all the time now. DeCopo starts writing for NBC in 2013. Later gets on camera. Later, goes to CBS.

It's during these years that he marries Katie Turr, his second wife. He goes over to CBS mornings. Mm-hmm. where he has a big job, but as we said, I still think that kind of anonymity, at least among people on media Twitter, because that's not something they watch until the fall of 2023.

Yeah. When Tanahazi Coats is on CBS mornings talking about his new books, his new book, I should say, here's Tony to Tanahazi. Tana Hashi, I want to dive into the Israel-Palestine section of the book. It's the largest section of the book. And I have to say when I, when I read the book, I imagine if I took your name out of it, took away the awards and the acclaim, took the cover off the book, the publishing house goes away, the content of that section

would not be out of place in the backpack of an extremist. And so then I found myself wondering why does Tanaashi Coates, who I've known for a long time, read his work for a long time, very talented, smart guy, leave out so much. Why leave out that Israel is surrounding by countries that want to eliminate it. Why leave out that Israel deals with terror groups that want to eliminate it? Why not detail anything of the first and the second intifada, the cafe bombings, the bus bombings, the little kids blown to bits?

And is it because you just don't believe that Israel, in any condition, has a right to exist? I mean, that's a hell of a buildup to a question. Right? Yes, it was. And that's the first time that I asked, actually became aware of him because you mentioned like how often are people for CBS news record that's man Gail King and even Nate Burleson kind of famous in my house you know what I mean

like I know who they are you know what I mean and I don't know if that's just because I'm black or what but they seem like famous people to me no I think they're on a different level than him at least yeah yeah and so like that that really did seem to catapult him and man you know I mean it really does go in line with the people think there's no such thing that kind of news can be really good for you because it helped put him on the radar of some people like his future boss. So that's what's funny about this.

Two things happen as a result of that exchange. One was CBS News, if I can use the only in journalism term here, admonished the Copel. Again, important to understand this is pre-Berry-Wise CBS News. Right. They admonished. but number two the free press

very much run by Barry Weiss made Tony DeCopal into a hero for that exchange they published the audio from CBS editorial meeting and the site's editors wrote in a piece it is journalists like Tony DeCopal who are an endangered species in legacy news organizations

which are wilting to the pressures of this new elite consensus I mean yeah you know that man relive in that Tanahasi, Tony de Koppel thing was, it was really illuminating. Like, it was a real inflection point I thought in like our national conversation about this stuff.

And nothing about it has gotten resolved in the last year. And in fact, like, it's hardened the positions of a lot of people. But like, that can birth a whole new class of people in terms of work. You know what I mean? Like, it was like, okay, like, you're right. Like Tony DeKopal appeals to the kind of folks that run. the free press and now run CBS. So you know, you can, it's just like when, you know,

after George Floyd, when people offered me jobs, you know what I mean? And like sometimes like it just depends on who's in charge and what the moment is in the country that decides whether or how far you're going to go in journalism. So in that way, congratulations to him. He was, he seized his moment, so to speak. Fast forward, Barry's running CBS News and Tony DeCopal is now the anchor of the CBS evening news. She apparently cast her.

for other anchors, Brett Bear, Anderson Cooper. People made fun of her for that. I think it's like there's enough about Barry Weiss to criticize. You don't have to criticize everything. Like asking, hey, can we get Anderson Cooper for that? It seems like a great question to me, whether Anderson Cooper has a contract with theater or not. Like, why not?

Now we can get to the critical part, though. I don't know what it says because CBS News did lay down some values for their rebooted newscast. Yeah. May I read you these values? Please. Number one, we work for you. Number two, we report on the world as it is.

Number three, we respect you. Number four, we love America. Hold on that one for a second. And number five, we respect tradition, but we also believe in the future. We believe in the future. Yeah, it was we love America that got the most attention online.

And there was a little write-up for this one. We love America and we make no apologies for saying so. Our foundational values of liberty, equality, and the rule of law make us the last best hope on earth. We also believe in Franklin's famous line about America as a republic if we can keep it. We aim to do our part every night. One way to think about our show is as a daily conversation about exactly where we are going, where we are as a country and where we are going. I mean, that's the shit that makes it goofy, man. You know, like, I don't even know if we love America would feel out of place anymore for you.

news organization to proclaim is one of its foundational values, right? Because, I mean, you kind of have to say that as an American. I mean, really, I mean, even if you're skeptical of a country or you reserve the right to critique it because you love it, like, I think most people would be like, okay, like, that's, sure, like, your news organization is kind of a weird position to take. Like, why would you do that? But fine. But then to be like, to say that we're the last best hope on earth. Like, first of all, that's just really childish, childishly written. But also, I'm just like, what kind of an editorial position is that? Like, what is that? So, like, how is that going to be reflected in your news coverage when America does things abroad, right? Or how we

conduct ourselves in war. Yeah. What does that functionally mean? Yeah. The less best hope, you're giving us, you're extending us an awful lot of credibility that we do not deserve. Yes. But what it is, is branding. It's Barry Weiss branding. Yeah. How do we differentiate ourselves? How do we, how do we wink at people who might otherwise be distrustful of CBS news? And DeCopal himself continued this with a monologue about what he would be bringing to the newscast. The press has missed the story because we've taken into account the perspective of advocates and not the average American. Or we put too much weight in the analysis of academics or

elites and not enough on you. And I know this because at certain points, I have been you. I have felt this way too. I felt like what I was seeing and hearing on the news didn't reflect what I was seeing and hearing in my own life. It's interesting. When he was winding up there, I know this because I thought he was going to confess that he had been part of the problem. Right. But he had been one of the one's listening to the academics and the elites and the advocates instead of listening to you. But it's actually, no, no, no, I feel the same way that you do. Tony DeCopal was the every man in this circumstance, which is, you know, interesting. I mean, again, I think because they wrote their own stuff, this is why maybe it sounds

a little dumb to me. But in my own life is not a particularly large frame of reference, right? I don't know what kind of, you know, I have some ideas about the kind of life Tony currently lives right now, but that doesn't tell you a lot about the rest of the world and the rest of this country. And like for you to say that, oh, yeah, well, the conversations I'm having in my life is I'm going to being taken to my Manhattan studio. Okay. Right. And again, with the acknowledgement that Manhattan is a very diverse place.

But that's not telling you everything you need to know. the fact that you put it in there just shows that like it just shows like a lack of judgment and in the presentation of the news but also that like the the perspective that you're going to pursue if like if you're being actually serious about what you're seeing in your own life it just shows that okay well I mean that is a particular perspective isn't most it's just branding and this mostly just the new CBS news saying hey you know you people who don't like legacy media see we're going to be different than that legacy media that you've been taught to distrust and hate that you've

been told it's full of elites that don't care about you so we're just gonna kind of push those words out into the universe what's wrong with advocates and academics like they talk about things that care about and things that they're and look at cbs tvs news is going to always going to interview advocates and academics like that's not there's no there's no there's no elites by the way that pete hexeth on the cbs evening news after like is he not an elite does he not count I would argue that an advocate or an academic is probably a lot much closer to the every person than a CBS news anchor, right? Like in terms of like the money they make and the connections they have in the world. Sure.

Okay. Sure. But it's just it's just, you know what, Brian? I seem really mad today. Like, I need to stop. I feel like am I being. You know, you seem very controlled to me, actually. I don't think you seem mad at all.

No. Okay. All right. I want to make sure that I'm not, you know, that I'm projecting. I do have optimism for the year. 2026, I promise. We're getting you off on a weird note. It's like when the very first episode of the press box was after Kamala Harris lost.

Oh, my God. Joe, welcome to the press box. Oh, my God. Yeah, man. What a time. It was good to just get it all out and open, I think. Mention Pete Higgseth was on the newscast on Saturday. Barry Weiss booked him for Brian Stelter over at CNN because her solution to everything is booking a famous person who works for Donald Trump.

I mean, Barry, one move twice. Like that is, I can call this person. I can get them more, man. Like, I mean,

she has clearly a fantastic rolydex. But, yeah, man, just, all right, let me, I can get that person.

I can get them on the phone. Get them with it. Cool. I actually watch the interview. I think a lot of people on, uh, Twitter, watching clips and,

you know, ready to be mad at Tony DeCobble. By the way, go for it, whatever you want to do. But watching him talk to Pete Hexteth. Oh, it's fine.

I tried. He covered all the bases. He just did. get anywhere. Yeah. And I didn't come away from that thinking he could do what Tapper did with Stephen Miller. Like that's actually hard.

Caitlin Collins does a good job of this. Abby Phillips does a good job of this. George Stephanopoulos does a good job at this. Yeah. Where it's like you're with somebody that probably doesn't want to be there. Yep. And you have to figure out a way, a clever way, to ask the questions that need to be asked and also get information out of them, extract information from them.

Yeah. That's really hard. It's very different from. reading the news. And I'm totally convinced Tony DeCopo can read the news. Can he be on that level when it comes to interviewing people like that in real time? That's going to be an interesting, we'll see. I mean, he'll have to, he'll have, well, I shouldn't say he won't, he won't have to do anything. He can probably be in that job for as long as Barry Wise thinks it's appropriate. But I tend to think the people, when they do that job and you can tell me if I'm wrong or somebody

can tell me if I'm wrong here. But I tend to think the more you do it, the better you get it because that's got to be a difficult of a difficult job given everything else you've got to do so I just wonder like with more reps if he'll get at it but I'm also just thinking about the fact that Pete Heggseth you know as recently as 18 months ago was a TV guy so and you it's also going to probably be difficult to finesse that dude on camera he's going to go on and say exactly what he wants to say and yeah absolutely I think it's I think it's a tough one for anybody in that and again you're doing this very very quickly right yeah who knows how long they they he had to prepare for that interview.

But it's also funny because there were like two commercials during that interview. It's like Pete, hang on for a second. We're going to, we're going to, we're going to take a break. When we come back more with Pete Hanks of the Pete was back both times. You just, I just, don't you think, I always think, oh, they're too busy to sit through a commercial break. But no, I guess not. It is not. It's just funny.

It's too. And I'm watching this. You know, I'm just like reminded that we focus on the politics of Barry Weiss, the way she's changing, you know, the focus of CBS news that we can talk about the 60 minutes thing, which happened while we were, you know, while we were gone and wrote that whole memo. But by the way, oh, let's just talk about that for a second. Because that memo, I did want to point out something from the Barry Weiss memo in the 60 Minutes spike story. Yes. This is, of course, about Seekot, the prison in El Salvador. She spiked the story. It said it needed more reporting. And then it ran in Canada,

or was at least available in Canada. So we all got to watch the original unspiked report. this was one line that just stood out to me in her memo. The data we present, Barry Weiss wrote, paints an incongruent picture of the 252 Venezuelan sent to Seacott. We say nearly half have no criminal histories. In other words, more than half do have criminal histories. We should spend a beat explaining this. I'm like, you know, that's just not how news works. Yeah, I mean, if I say half of media podcasters,

have a criminal history. Yeah. The interesting question to ask is that, well, what about the half of media podcasts are who have no criminal history? Yeah. No, no, the news is that they are committing crimes. Right. Exactly.

What are you talking about? Yeah, I was going to say, yeah, you said these people were criminals, though, half of the mart. Right. So we say people are, half of these people are wrongly sent to Seacot or sent under that. Yeah. Like, what's going on? And again, that's not even taking the account that if somebody has a criminal history,

quote, unquote, that they should be sent to this particular. particular prison in this particular Central American country. Like, it's just such a funny way to put it. Yeah. It's not what we would recognize as questions to ask about the news. Her career up until probably very recently was not doing that. Like, she was not a journalist. She was a person that wrote opinion pieces.

So if you're asking, like, why didn't she know, you know, what the process of, the process here is in reporting an important, complex story like this. is because she's never had to do that before in her life, dude. Like, you know, she doesn't, she, and that's what I would think. Like, if I was approaching people, it's 60 minutes. I'd be like, let me tell you how to do your job. Like, I know that you think you're going to present this news here or whatever, but let me give you some critiques here on your reporting,

which doesn't mean that, like, I am above critiquing a story that's on here. I mean, that's what we do for this job. But I'm like, for you to go in there in that room and talk to them like that, I'm just like, man, the gall, I want to say balls, but the balls to be able to go in there and do that with that team in particular, man, that's something. And to do it at the last minute. Yeah.

You know, when the story's about to air, I mean, that's just unbelievable. All right, coming up in 30 seconds, a heap and helping a football audio and a report from the Rose Bowl in Sunny Pasadena. First, let's do the overworked Twitter joke of the week, Joel, where we celebrate a gag that was so obvious that all. of media Twitter made it at exactly the same time. Oh yeah. Send your nominees at the press box pod where they are

always gratefully received. Joel, this week's runner up. After Donald Trump ordered the arrest of Nicholas Maduro in Venezuela, it was an upward Twitter joke to write, I never thought the FIFA Peace Prize would be desecrated in this manner. I mean, I saw

various iterations of that tweet joke posted on all sorts of social media. everywhere. It was everywhere. Everywhere and thought they had got different. Again, I've done that before too, but it was funny. I was like, I knew that this was going to be in this segment today. That was

the runner up, though, because we did have an even more ubiquitous joke on media Twitter. Oh, yeah. And it was after we lost actor Isaiah Whitlock Jr. Oh, man. Played State Senator Clay Davis on the wire. It was an overworked Twitter joke to write.

You know the answer here. Yeah. Shee. I've never seen the wire, by the way. Really? Yeah, never. Never seen the wire. Nope.

I know, I just dropped that there. We can revisit it some other time. But yeah, see, I know you've also, like, had never seen Star Wars until recently. Maybe still have never seen Star Wars. No, I still have never seen Star Wars. No, yeah, no, that does this change.

I'm sure I will in a couple of years, you know, figuring it out. Yeah. If you're wondering when Joel is going to be on the Ringer Prestige TV pod. Congrats. It's never going to have. Overwork Twitter joke of the week.

Maybe if they do rock a season on rock or the Cosby show or something. Rock. Mark. Live. Yeah, rock live, man. I'm telling you. And thanks to Philip Sanford, Adam Waltonbaugh and Michael Salerno for that. All right.

Before we get out of here, we got to talk some football. I got some sound for you that you will enjoy. Okay. Eagles bills. Do you watch that game on December 28th? Probably. I'm sure it was on team. fun driving rainstorm kind of game yeah okay i remember some some of the snippets of this

tom brady needed a way to describe bill's linebacker matt milano listen to what he came up with scud a missile what did brady know and when did he know it wrong act of uh foreign engagement sir yeah uh it's you know can i tell you a brief matt milano story please I went to a high school football game in 2012 between Plant High School in Tampa and Orlando. Man, the school has three names, but it's Dr. Phillips. Dr. Phillips, Dr. Phillips High School, Orlando. The game was at Dr. Phillips. Plant was favorite to win.

They did not. That night, Matt Milano was the third ranked safety in the game. What? Yeah, one went to Georgia. The guy paid a plant and the guy, his team. roommate is this fellow safety for Dr. Phillips went to Florida. The first two guys, they both dealt with injuries and stuff and never panned out. And then that third guy was Matt Milano, the third drink safety at that playoff game.

Yeah. There's now a pro bowler. No, it's now a pro bowler. That's unbelievable. All right. That was number one. Number two, New Year's Eve, when I know you were getting ready to podcast, Citrus Bowl, between Texas and Michigan.

This was a sickos only game. but it was great. I'm a sick of. Mark Jones was calling the game. Archmanning broke off a 60-yard touchdown run. It's an incredible, incredible play. I couldn't believe what I heard

when Mark Jones made the call. Listen to the word that Jones inserted here. Texas with possession and the lead. Archmanning keeps it himself, and he's got nothing but chattel. Real estate. He popped the clutch. Happy New Year long ones.

Pop the clutch. No, not that part. Before that, wait. You want to hear, again, you will not believe just please. Oh, yeah, yeah, right. That's right. Yeah. Somebody tweeted me.

I was like, yeah, pop the clutch. I was like, no, though, that's not what. Oh, man. It was. What a collection of words. It was just such a strange moment. I'm like, okay, I understand one meaning of chattel. Let me just, let me just Google before anything happens here.

Yeah. And I look up Webster's and it says, chattel, an item of tangible, movable, or immovable property except real estate. Okay. Except real estate. Right. We know Mark Jones used a lot of different words, unique words in his, in a podcast, in a game. So do we think he's sitting there? and he's trying to come up with a synonym for real estate.

Yeah. But he says a word that means not real estate. That's, wow, that's really interesting, man. Because how in the world do you get to that word? Yeah. I wonder if there's a word that we're not thinking of that's kind of close to that. I don't know, but I was just like, what? That is a, yeah, that's what a pull.

What a pull. And let me tell you, it's one of these things like our friends over at awful announcing, who see all, hear all, know all. They didn't even make a clip. It was almost like just to stay away because nobody knew what to do with this. We'll just, we'll just, we'll just, we got to get Mark gone to talk about that.

I want to ask him what he meant about chattel. Sean McDonough, he was calling Ole Miss Georgia in the quarterfinals, the college football playoff. Were you podcasting during this game? I know you guys went live right around this time. went pretty, yeah, we were pretty, we were in the second half of Ole Miss Georgia, I think, when we were on.

Fewer, not a college football fan. Here's what you need to understand. This was the final game of the quarterfinals. Late on New Year's Day. And it had been an absolutely dreary day of football. Dereary! I mean, the two losing teams scored a combined three points. Some good football, though, man.

I don't hate Oregon. I don't hate Indiana at all, but I was like, man, we just need it. We need a game. But it was shot. But I thought the way that they ended up with three points was so entertaining and shocking that it almost made it more watchable. But I hear what you're saying, though. It was true, yes.

I mean, Indiana was a great story because I was like, this is shocking. And I think Oregon probably more so because tech was just didn't show up. But we needed a good game. Yes. Ole Miss and Georgia delivered Trinidad Chambliss, quarterback for Ole Miss just going nuts in the fourth quarter. Here's McDonough on a big third down conversion late in the game. You don't convert Georgia has timeouts in a strong-legged kicker. Chambliss, lobbying and strebling 40 yards.

Don't you love the Sean McDonough voice crack? That's some good stuff, man. I can see that play in my head. Man, that's a good. That was a good call. I guess I'd forgotten it was that good. But yeah, man, I can literally remember when we were watching that live. I was like, oh, you know, you just like, oh, that's the moment you know that old

miss is going to win, right? Wide receiver got behind the DB. I mean, it was just that it was an amazing play. Amazing play. Amazing play. Sean McDonough got a lot of praise on social media. Rightfully so. But to me, what distinguishes him is that he has an unbelievable mastery of the emotions

of a football game. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. And what I mean is every announcer when they're getting excitement, has a range of let's say zero to 10. Yeah. Running back gets the ball in the first quarter, falls down after getting a yard, that's a zero. Game is one on the very last play in crazy, shocking, mind-blowing fashion, that's a 10.

Yeah. Sean McDonough knows how to get to a 9.2 and an 8.6 and a 7.2. He knows exactly where to be on the emotional scale. Yeah. And I think people lose this because they watch games now, especially pro games on Red Zone. So they just see the big calls. And the thing is, you're telling a story as an announcer for three plus hours. Yeah.

And if you go too high too early, you have told the story almost in a dishonest way. Because it didn't turn out that that play in the second quarter really was that important. You know, what if you're just an excitable person? I guess you probably can't do that job very well. Well, there's a lot of people like Gus Johnson's like that. We could come up with a whole list of names. And again, I think those people, Kevin Harlan's like that on basketball. Joe Tessator is a little bit like that.

And I think there is, I like announces like that. I do. But there's a certain skill, I think, in saying like, I'm just going to go there. I'm not going to mislead you emotionally. I'm going to just take you exactly where you need to go. And if you listen closely to that call, Sean McDon is not at 10. Yeah, that's right.

10 is Michigan State blocking the pun against Michigan where his voice really crack. That's a Sean McDon of 10. He's at 9.7, 9.8 there. Oh, yeah, right. Yeah, it wasn't turned up like a, you know, what's homeboy did he go? What's up?

Oh, yeah. God. Andres. What's his name? Yeah, one thing, yeah, Andre's Contour. There we go. Andres Cantor, there you go. Yeah.

And it's just, like, he's right where he needs to be. And he's always like, that when he calls a football game. You know, certain people like Mike Green almost spells it out. Like when he gets to bang, that means okay. It's important. And he goes to bang, bang, bang. That means really important.

Yeah. Bang. Madonna just has a way of always to be getting his voice exactly in the right place. Yeah. And as you see, as soon as the plays over, he's back down. Here are the stakes. They're in field goal range. Here's the name of the kicker.

He's everything you need to know. Here's my favorite line from that. Georgia has a lot of penalties and a strong-legged kicker. Like, I just like, I, it really is evocative. And it feels like a piece of writing almost. Like, I feel like Dan Jenkins would write something like that. Strong-legged kicker. That does feel like kind of an ancient phrase.

Does that? Yeah. Yeah. It just, it felt like writing and not like something he's out the top of his head. The other thing I heard on Twitter after this was, it's just like an opportunity to shit on Chris Fowler. It's like, you know, Sean McDonough should be doing their one game. Guys, Chris Fowler is also really, really good at understanding. understanding the emotions

of the game. Yeah, Chris Fowler's good, man. Really good. He's got that newsman kind of brain where he's just very good at like stakes,

story, here's who this is. You can tell he used to host game day, like his mind really works in that way. Yeah. But in terms of him getting to the right excite at the right time,

he's awesome at that. We don't need to pulverize Chris Fowler to compliment Sean McDonough. You may disagree with me on this and this, we could talk about this in depth another time. But I think that there are more people who are really good at this

than that or not. You know, I think that by the time you get to this point, you probably have an interesting way of calling a game. And so I'm more off, it's very rare that I'm listening to a game. I'm like, ooh, having a rough day out there, you know? Especially a big game. I mean, yeah, that is. And I don't know if it's right now, if it's always been like this.

We'd have to go through the rosters back in the 80s. But it's like, you're telling me that like a game is being called by Fowler or McDonagh or Joe Tess. Yeah. Dave Pash called a fourth of like, I'm happy. You know, I'm not, there's nobody there that I'm like, well, this person doesn't know how to call football. Ron Franklin coming through. Yeah, man.

ESPN's always had a big depth chart with college football. Our last item here for you, NFL announcers with side hustles. Last week, Adam Schaefter of ESPN reported that his colleague, Troy Eggman has a new gig. The Miami Dolphins, Schefter writes, have brought on Hall of Fame quarterback and ESPN analyst, Troy Eichmann as a consultant to advise the organization on its general manager search process, according to sources. It is not a permanent role, but he will be an advisor throughout the process for the Dolphins' next general manager. Miami ownership wanted an outside respected perspective from someone who had strong relationships

across the league. Aikman brings this after more than three decades as an NFL player and broadcaster. So did Troy Aikman want us to know that? Because what that is, if you want to do it, is, hey, man, you know who knows a couple guys? Let's talk to Troy real quick, because he's in all those meetings. And then they talk to Troy. And then you just work, you just, that's just the cost of doing business.

Like, you know what I mean? Like, that's the part of the process of just deciding who you want to call who's out there. But I feel like the only person to whom this really benefits is Troy Aikman. Oh, that's interesting. Just because, like, for his future, he'll be hires an advisor in the future. Yeah, well, just like, does he want to be a GM? You know what I mean? He definitely has wanted that in the past.

I don't know that he actually wants that anymore. Okay. Because the gig is so good now. Yeah. I mean, he has a great gig. I wouldn't give it up. But I could understand him wanting to be, you know, if you're an athlete, man, you probably still kind of want to be a part of it if you can.

He's not making $18 million a year to be a jam of the. I mean, do you think, Tray, does he need any more? I mean, far be it for me to say, but does he need any more money? I don't know. I know. I agree, but it's a huge pay cut for a quote-unquote new challenge. Right. Fair point.

Fair point. That's item one. Item two, Matt Ryan, who just joined the CBS NFL pregame show this year. He's also working it. Tom Pelliserra reports that the Falcons want to hire him as their president of football operations and that Ryan also wants to keep his CBS job while he is president of football operations. I mean, dog. That's kind of a big job, right, to be doing?

I mean, wait, so what are you going to do? So on Sunday, he's going to be on CBS, and then he'll fly to Atlanta or wherever the Falcons happen to be playing that week. Like, maybe he doesn't have to go to the games, but then already I'm kind of, that's sort of a concession. I just kind of feel like if that's your job, I want you at the game. I, no, no. Is it a different no than we have for Tom Brady, minority,

owner of the Raiders who's surely going to help the Raiders go replace Pete Carroll? I mean, see, again, I just think that that benefits Tom Brady more than the Raiders to like to say, hey, you know, look at me. You know, I'm making some decisions out here, man. And if it goes great, I can take an outsized bit of credit for it. And if it doesn't go great, well, I'm just, I'm just kind of an advisor. I mean, I didn't really have a lot of role. I'm a minority owner, but he's a minority owner. So I actually do own a chunk. This is, This is real money. Big bills.

Yeah, right. This is money. And like for, I just, I can understand making that concession for Tom Brady. I mean, Matt Ryan. Again, no disrespect to Matt Ryan. He was great at Boston College. So the, we care about conflicts of interest if you were a halt, if you were the goat versus a guy who's like on the border of the Hall of Fame and Matt Ryan.

Yeah. Is he kind of a border? I don't think he's going to go. He did win an MVP and did lead a team to a Super Bowl. Maybe if he had won, I think it probably, I mean, the NFL Hall of Fame is so hard to get into. so I don't know. It's weird. Yeah.

I mean, even Stafford wasn't going to be a Hall of Famer until he won that Super Bowl. Yeah, I think it's still an open question. I don't know if he's locked yet either, but, yeah, we'll see. It's funny to me how nobody in broadcasting has the juice to just tell these guys no anymore. Yeah. I mean, there's no way anybody at ESPN was going to tell Troy Aymann not to engage with the dolphins. I just... Absolutely not.

I mean, there's just no way, just like there's no way anybody a Fox was going to tell Tom Brady not to, it's like, hey, you know, you should pick between us and the Raiders. I'm always going to say that. I mean, man, Brian, see, that's the thing too, right? Because I'm thinking about it from the NFL side of it. But like, done the platonic ideal is that the person in that job is spending a lot of time gathering string before the games on Sunday, right? They're doing a lot of work and a lot of buildup so that they can know everybody.

They have conversations around all over the league, whatever. And it's like, it's kind of hard to do that if you have. a side hustle, you know? So you're talking about something different than Conflict of the Ventures. You're just talking about actually able to do both jobs at the same time. When you were talking about, like, why would the team, like the networks aren't capable of telling these guys

know, my argument would be this is a really hard job. We need you to kind of be locked in here and doing your prep and getting better at your craft. That's if I was ESPN or whoever else. But they're looking at, well, that's Troy Eichman. and we can't tell him no, which is kind of surprising to me. No.

No. We know he's on the tier, right? He's on the Stephen A Pat McAfee tier. That's right. That's right. He gets paid like that, too. He's using his power not to say, hey, I'm going to host an outside podcast where I talk about politics and sex.

That's, I'm not interested in that. He's just like, well, you know, if this dolphin thing comes up, I'm going to do this. And again, I think you coined this phrase like they're just under the end of conflicts of interest. There are just no more. They don't exist in the world. anymore. There's no such thing as conflict of interest anymore. You can do like it. If anybody's willing to sign off on it, it's okay. You just don't make it, nobody has to make choices anymore.

Yeah, man. I mean, that's just, and it's about doing everything, you know, and you're like, it's okay just to be like, I don't want to do that or I can't do that. You know, maybe that, maybe that would make my job more awkward or something. It just nobody gives a shit. They don't care. And their bosses, again, do not have the Jews to tell them they can't do it. Yeah. I, I admire the ambition. I don't think, like, functionally, that it's really that big of a deal. Like, I don't, I mean, I guess there could be some slight competitive advantages here. I don't, you know, that the, you could convince me of it.

But my thought on either side of that is that I kind of want somebody who's locked in. You know, both of these are very difficult jobs. They can be had by one person, right? And that is focused on that one job. You don't need to have another job if you have this job. But that's just me. Is the pregame show on CBS that difficult? Let's be honest.

What Tom Brady does, yes. It should be. What Troy does on Monday night, yes. With the pregame show on CBS that difficult? I mean, you know, this is interesting because people talk about like, I mean, we do talk for a living, right? Like, this is our show. And it's like some people are like, you're talking about college football. You're talking about media.

Dog, I know sometimes it doesn't appear that way. A lot of prep goes into this work if you want to be good at it. And I would just, if I was going to be on CBS in front of America every Sunday, I would just want to be locked in, you know? I agree. I agree. If I were CBS, I would want you, Joel Anderson to be locked in. Say, man, CBS, man, no offense to the ringer, but if you've got, you know, you could pay me one million and I'd be okay with it. Can we put you on their college football pregame show?

Oh, man, look. I don't want a certain former Texas linebacker to get replaced, but I too well. I mean, look, man, I could, you know, man, all. I want to do is buy a house. That's my goal. Put a little bit more away for the future. Get my kids, you know, down. Well, actually, I have a lot of desires, financial desires, but one million is a good start. I got a quick report from the Rose Bowl press box for you. Man, I saw your picture, man. With the mud? Yeah. Yeah. Dude. I mean, this is, I'd be like,

it was, it rained here all through Christmas. Oh, man. And into New Year. So we're getting there. And the rain did taper off before 1 o'clock. on New Year's Day. So we did not have a rose bowl played in the rain, which would have just been against nature in every possible way. You cannot have a rainy rose bowl. Can't happen. But the parking lot,

the parking lot was like either Big Ten or World War II levels of mud. I'm not sure which. I mean, the thing is, because it's really kind of surprising how, like, feral the area is around the Rose Bowl, right? Like, it's just kind of like a big, just grass. Yeah.

It's just lots, just grass lot. And so, yeah, like it's like parking at an old high school baseball field for Friday, you know, for a Friday night game and everybody's parking at the high school baseball field or so some adjacent field. It feels like that when you're doing it at the Rose Bowl. It had an interesting feel. I would say last year, Ohio State Oregon felt a little bit bigger and maybe had a few more national type reporters though Bruce Feldman was there and Brett McMurphy was there and a number of the people you like. And I don't know if that's just like an Indiana thing. Indiana may win the national championship, but Indiana just doesn't yet have the, you know,

accumulated glories of an Ohio state type program. The two things that I think about this should have made it huge is that that's Indiana's first time in a Rose Bowl in their lifetime. Like that, remember when the Rose Bowl and a school that had never been there went, like I remember when Wisconsin went in the 90s. Northwestern. Yeah, Northwestern, Oregon. went in like 94 for the first time.

Arizona State of Jake Palmer. Yeah, the Jake Plummer team. It used to be a big deal when a new team went to the Rose Bowl. And yeah, to your point, like, obviously that wasn't reflected in that. And it's like Alabama came out to the Rose Bowl. But now, you know, conference affiliations are kind of weird. And teams play in whatever bowl, the bowls just rotate. They don't have anything to do with conference affiliations necessary.

So I kind of get it, but I'm like, Indiana was in the Rose Bowl, you know, in an undefeated season and they played against Alabama. Literally once in a lifetime moment. Yeah. And again, let me just be clear here. For Indiana fans,

they showed up in droves. They were there in force. Oh, yeah. And of course, you know, we go up to the press box, you've been the press box

of Rose Bowl, ride the elevator, and you're also on the suite level. So as soon as he come out, Mark Cuban's suite, Indiana's very own Mark Cuban. Oh, yeah. It's just right there at the 50 yard.

I was like, okay, here we go. Man, I told you, I was like, Did you, did you knock on his door? How did you, how did you find out that? I just wandered over there and there was a guy standing outside his door, not a security guard, but just another Indiana fan.

I was like, where, you know, say, Cuban, da-da-da-da. He's like, yeah, he's down at the tailgate still. So, okay. Oh, man, that's what's up. Yeah, man, that's so fun. I was so jealous of you for that because that sounds like such a, I don't know, this is a beautiful day and Indiana being there, man. That just seems so cool.

It was on Mendoza scrambling for yardage. And it was just, it definitely was fun. But that game, again, much like last year, that game was over. Oh, yeah. Maybe you say, yeah. Yeah, I mean, definitely. Definite business decision by Brian Curtis in the second half to get out and beat the crowd. Oh, you left early.

I liked a little bit early. Brian. I wasn't writing a gamer. I thought you were like me. I like to be the last person in the stadium. I do too. But if you were there, I would have done that. But, you know, then it was like, get home with my family.

See the late game. It's a holiday. That's right. There were other games going. going on. There you go. You're right. You're right. My only celebrity siding is I was sitting in the press box and I look over at the suite. I don't know if this is Mark Cuban Sweet or just another one. And I'm looking at this guy and he has like grayish, whitish hair. I'm staring. I was like, I know who that person

is. Hmm. Took me forever to realize it was CBS News's major Garrett. Man. See, I'm a journalist recognizing. I was going to say, man. That was a little bit of a deep cut for me. Yeah, brother. Yeah. Bruce Feldman. I knew who that was immediately. But like Bruce is a dude. Yeah. And I was like, Major Garrett and I looked up his Wikipedia page. He was there. Apparently was his wife, looked up her Wikipedia. I just, I don't understand the connections to either Indiana or Alabama.

So someone can explain that to me. Maybe he's just a college football guy. I have to give you a press box buffet update. Oh, okay. What would they work and what out there? We had a little, let's see, a little Caesar salad to start with mac and cheese. Mac and cheese. To start with mac and cheese.

This is the free game spread. Barbecue sandwiches, they had a little brisket. Okay, what did you think of? With, it was not bad. And they had biscuits so you could do the biscuit with the barbecue and a little coleslaw and a little barbecue sauce. Nice. Okay. Half time was hot dogs and chips.

Okay. You know. That's fair. As you know, I'm only, I'm only pro-body shaming when it comes to me. And I was, let me tell you, I was hitting that buffet hard. I enjoyed that. Oh, look, man. That's me, I mean, that's where I'm at right now, too.

They call it a dad bot for a reason. There was no dessert? I think there were cookies. I may have had a cookie. It's going to say, yeah, man, you got to mention because sometimes some places have the ice cream, you know, machine or whatever. And that's what, you know, you're doing stuff like that.

Yeah, yeah. Anyway, thanks to the rose ball. I enjoyed all the hospitality, as always. All right, it's time for not David Shoemaker, but Joel Anderson guesses, the strained pun headline. Okay. This is where you react, Chelsea. David is like, yeah. Oh, yes. I'm like thinking I'm trying to get my mind right because I'm just like, okay, I'm scared. Like, I don't want to be embarrassed here. Well, this is a little bit of a weird one. So we'll talk it through together. We should note our last pre-holiday headline about Indiana Republicans telling Trump to stick it was Hoosier Daddy. Who's your daddy?

Pretty good. Today's headline comes to us from, when we find my email here, comes to us from where is it? Sorry, folks. Ali Fami. Thank you, Ollie. Sorry, I forgot your name there for a second. It's from Defector. Oh, okay. I know you've been following the story about the sacking of man-you-manager Ruben Amorum. Yeah, I'm all over it.

Ruben Amorum has been fired and may be happy that he's fired. I want you to think of a song you might hear in an Italian restaurant in the United States. Yes, okay, that's good. Let me just give it to you here. This is almost unguessable. When a coach gets the can and it makes him feel grand, that's a morum. That's a morum.

He is Joel Anderson. I'm Brian Curtis. But Xia Magic by Bruce Baldwin. Guess what, Joel, you and I get to tee it up on Thursday. That's right, man. We'll be back at it. We have a very special guest. Maybe we'll just keep this under wraps and make sure everything goes just fine.

Smart thing to do. But it's a big guest. It's an exciting guest on the press box. Join us on Thursday. Joel cannot wait to talk to you with more lukewarm takes about the media. Look forward to it, buddy.