The Press Box - ESPN’s Gamble, CBS and John Dickerson, and Graham Platner’s Reddit Posts

Episode Date: October 29, 2025

Hello, media consumers! Bryan is joined by Joel out of the bullpen to dig through everything that has come out of the NBA’s gambling scandal (0:40) before they share their thoughts on how ESPN handled the coverage of that news, who at the worldwide leader should be covering these stories, which former ESPN employees would have covered this in the past, and more. Next, Bryan and Joel discuss John Dickerson leaving ‘CBS Evening News’ and what names have been reported to replace him (24:46). Finally, Bryan and Joel break down all the news surrounding Maine Senate candidate Graham Platner (40:55). 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? Hey. You're here. Oh, I'm sorry. I know I'm sitting in somebody else's seat. Is this okay? Dude, this is like Clayton Kershaw coming out of the pen last night. Stop it.

Stop it. Is that baseball? That's a baseball reference, right? That's a baseball reference. Okay. David is not feeling well. Oh, man. So we're bringing in Joel.

Okay. To the Monday slot, which is already the Tuesday slot. Oh, man. We're going to send good thoughts David's way. Yeah. I hope days feels better and soon. But I'm so happy you hear because I want to talk to you about this NBA gambling story. Sure, let's do it.

On Thursday, we were all in the ringer office here in Los Angeles. We were fellowshiping. Do you ever hear that word growing up in churches in Texas? Fellowshiping? Yeah, fellowshiping, yeah, absolutely. Fellowship was both a noun and a verb. Well, the great Lindsay Jones and I were fellowshiping. And then we looked at our computers and realized we were about to see a Chauncey Billups perp walk.

And a clutch hoodie, by the way, clutch sports hoodie. Yeah. I guess we could argue about perpwalk since he was actually walking out of the courthouse rather than being transported around. But needless to say, three notable NBA figures were arrested last week, Joel. Billups, who is the coach of the Portland Trailblazers and a great NBA player in his own right. Terry Rozier of the Miami Heat Terry Rozier Insert laughter

and Damon Jones who is a former player and LeBron James' friend Yeah, homie, man and a Houston Galveston metro area legend he's Galveston Ball grad I didn't realize that

yeah he's from Galveston Ball yeah I think it's class in 96 which is our class so The charges were these and here I'm quoting from the athletic Billups was indicted for his alleged participation in a wide-ranging years-long scheme to

defraud card players in poker games that were said to have involved numerous members of the Banana, Gambino, Lucchese, and Genevesee crime families. I mean, I, you know, I don't know about the cards, what? That just seems like the group of people

I would not be fined to defraud in a poker games, but, you know, everybody's different. Rozier is charged in that indictment for allegedly taking himself out of a game on purpose in 2023, so a co-conspirator could place a bet and win, and Damon Jones was charged in both cases. I mean, that's just, that's really unfortunate.

I mean, I guess that's the best way to get started here. This is a really unfortunate set of allegations here. That is the euphemism of the day. You hate to see that, as the announcers like to say. Yeah, you hate to see that happen. Let's just take a breath here and say this was just an absolutely amazing story. on a Thursday morning. I mean, so much.

And again, gambling stories have been percolating. We had Sho Hay's interpreter. It was always going to be, what's the first big one? What's the first big one? Again, allegedly. Gilbert Arenas?

Here it is. Sure. Jonte Porter. We've had some nibbles. Yeah, yeah. But here is an NBA coach, an NBA head coach being arrested. And again,

walking out of the courthouse, and you're going, Oh my God. I mean, he's not just, he's an NBA Hall of Famer. He's an NBA Hall of Fame player. A guy is responsible for the Detroit Pistons' last NBA championship as anyone. However improbable that one. Yeah, a problem it was.

And to see him walk out of there, when you sort of think, it's very surreal, right? Like, I mean, if you had, it should be a story that feels unbelievable, but actually when it happened, and I don't know if you had the same sort of thing. It wasn't that I was like, oh, yeah, that's right. But I'm like, I could kind of see that. Yeah. It was shocking, not shocking. Right, exactly.

At the same time. So that morning, I flipped on ESPN. And my first take, if you will, was, oh, they got the wrong guy on TV. And by wrong guy, I mean Sham Sharania. Oh. He's delivering this halting, even by Sham Sharania standards, halting report on the allegations. Yeah.

And you can just feel how awkward it is when he leaves the world of transactions reporting. Yeah. And has to do the real news. He felt so uncomfortable. And I, as a viewer, felt so uncomfortable. It's just really tough, right? Because obviously he's good at the thing that they hired him to do, which is, you know, break whatever transaction about Mucci Norris signing with the,

you know, Beijing, Golden Hawks or whatever. But that's the thing that I always kind of thought that was the little, the comparisons to Woj sort of underplayed how good of a reporter and writer Woz was and like how he wasn't, I mean, he wasn't Bob Costas on TV, but he was really good at it. Like, you know, he was like a person

when you had him on air, he could talk about pretty much anything related to basketball. And I imagine if this had happened under his watch, he would have been great at it. And Shams is not that, guy before he's much younger and has much less experience doing that sort of stuff so it yet i find him uncomfortable to watch on tv i'm sorry shams just in general i do too and on tv you know there's knowing stuff and then there's being able to do a performance like you know stuff you have a mastery of

the facts that are known at least at an early point like that in the whole story and that was just a failure on both counts and i saw two takes out there about ESPN okay one is that ESPN is just not set up to cover real news anymore. Drew Lerner had a very good piece about this in awful announcing. And one of the examples he cited was that ESPN was showing first take that morning. And the ESPN schedule has become so rigid that they couldn't even dump out of first take to show the Cash Patel press conference that was taken live by all three cable news networks. So if you're watching Fox News, you saw that news conference.

live, but if you're watching ESPN, which cares about the NBA, which is an NBA rights holder, you were not seeing that news conference live. Yeah, I, and yeah, there's not even, you know, the hint of, oh, this has something to do with politics or whatever. This is a pretty straightforward case involving, you know, the integrity of the NBA, right? One of their broadcast partners. And they didn't, yeah, they didn't run that live.

I don't, maybe they have their reasons for that, but I think that Drew is absolutely right. It's just not they don't, I mean, they have so many fewer people, for one, right? They've gotten rid of so many people. So they're just, when you just go off of that, that's one thing. And then it's like the people that remain, those, the people that tend to hold those kind of jobs, they cost a lot of money. And ESPN, for whatever reason, has decided that that's not the kind of stuff that they want to invest in anymore. Let's tick off some of the people that have walked out the door.

Bob Lee retired 2019. The Daily Outside the Lines program that was hosted by Lee, canceled, 2023. Legal analyst Roger Cossack laid off 2017. Pablo Torre, Joel, who has shown an interest and aptitude in such subjects. Yeah. Now doing it for someone else. I mean, and that's it. So where's Jeremy Schaap?

Does Jeremy Schap no longer work there? No, he does. He does. It seems like Jeremy Schapp would have been the person. Like maybe you can't overextend him, I'm assuming. But he seems like the kind of person that I would have expected in that role on that day. Yeah, or Wendy, Brian Winhorst, former Pressbox guest here, Don Van Nata. If you could get him on television talking about, you know, somebody who knows how to read documents like that.

David Purdom, who was on Zach's podcast on The Ringer, somebody who covers gambling. If you can get him on TV, I mean, it's ESPN. I mean, you better show up when they take you to show up. So, I mean, this is a decision they made, right? I mean, is it just that Shams has to have that sort of per his contract, has that kind of spotlight to himself? So that's the question, I think. I mean, I think, one is you have, you're paying somebody so much money.

And if you have an NBA story, even if it's not really an NBA story, do you have to put them on TV because you're just so into him? But I would say the other part of this is the thing with insiders is that there has to be this idea that they know everything. Right. They can never say the words, I don't know. Right, right. Are the Mavericks going to make a trade shop?

You can't say, I don't know. Well, sources are telling me, and then you do jazz hands for two minutes, even if you don't know anything. Right. And even when it comes to like a massive legal story, a nuclear story for the NBA, I I don't think the job allows him to come on TV and be like, I don't totally understand what's going on here. Right.

Yeah, nobody wants to hear. Well, I mean, because the thing is, if that's the moment you turn on to ESPN, then I'm going to turn somewhere else, right? Like, even if that's the guy you have and he says, I don't have any information about this or I don't have any reporting on that, then you're probably going to start looking for it elsewhere,

which is maybe what is happening, right? I wouldn't, would it have naturally occurred to you? to have turned to ESPN in those moments? Because I don't have that reflex anymore. I turned it on, but I think I was doing it for media criticism, to be honest, and to see how they were covering it. And by the time we got later in the day and inside the NBA was on, and Shams was once again on there and once again failing to, you know,

offer an update that you could, you know, sort of get through. And he offered an update. I was like, wow, I kind of feel less certain of the facts after listening to this. I'm like, you've had all day now, right? This isn't breaking news, scramble the jets to who you can get in front of the camera. Right. This is, and this is, so once again, we're sticking with this guy. And putting him in that position.

Again, again, I think this is on Shams to some extent, but I think it's also on ESPN. Right. To push a guy like that out there when clearly this is out of his comfort zone. Right. I mean, in an offer, it's a very complicated, I would, you know, a lot of any of us, not any of us, a lot of people would probably feel a little bit uncomfortable because with a legal matter involving Donald Trump's FBI, right? Because you say anything there, you know, go in the wrong direction.

You could, you know, be in the spotlight, right? All of a sudden, you're on true social. So I can understand sort of the reticence around that sort of stuff and the difficulty. But right, like the thing is, if you are the leader in sports, right, then you're supposed to have somebody that can do it. I mean, they have gambling programming, too. So. But, again, that's- I said that, and then I'm like, but do they want to feel implicated in the story by having a person that's covering gambling as an activity rather than like an industry or a news story, right?

Yeah, and that's where I think David Purdom comes in because he does cover it as an industry. And again, we had him on Zach's show. It was obviously a guy you'd want to call. So there's the ESPN hollowing out portion of this. Then there's also gambling money, funding, media outlets, including this one. Yeah. And we got the hilarious side of greeny,

Walter Kronkiding into a camera, while the ESPN bet logo disappeared from the bottom of the screen. Yeah, man. I mean, that's going to go down as one of the most immortal moments of this era. Actually, somebody in the control, we're like, let's just get that off right now. This may not be the best time. I mean, the thing is, like, I mean, who are you fooling, man?

I mean, we just have to be honest about who has the money right now and who can afford for all this programming, you know, and either people want to see programming or they don't, and the people willing to front the money for it. And it's uncomfortable. But like, do you like your programming? Do you want to see us on YouTube or TV? Then this is kind of the bargain we're having to make.

Even in its transformed state, I would argue that ESPN can cover stories like this. Okay. And if you want some proof, let's go back to January when there was a terror attack in New Orleans early on the morning of Jan Juan. And Laura Rutledge, reporting from inside the Superdome, did a fantastic job under similar circumstances. Right. I was watching her and it's like, oh, she could do network news. Most of the people in Laura's position, they're still coming up the traditional way, right?

Like they're not hiring a TikTok influencer to work on the sidelines anymore. So you would think all the people that are sort of in that role have some familiarity with doing live news spots, right? They can kind of do that. So, yeah, I don't know. But I guess where are you setting up your live shot, I guess? Well, I guess it's the Cash Patel press conference, right? Yeah, Tim Bontems was there. So, you know.

Yeah. I guess it'll be interesting, and maybe we'll have to find out ourselves, about why they made the decisions they made on that day. You mentioned getting into politics. Stephen A did get into politics on first take a little while later. He was talking about Trump. He says, anybody that has been around him, anybody that has talked to him, anybody that has seen his reactions from the sports leagues and the positions that people have taken, they are not surprised at what's going on today.

It's a statement, and it's a warning that more is coming. And that's what they're saying here. I'm just telling you it's as serious as it gets. this ain't the platform for me to get into it the way I'm going to get into it, but I've been saying he's coming, he's coming. I guess that is a way to make yourself sound like an insider, but without ever really telling us anything. Right, but I don't, you know what people's like, well, man,

like I know what's going to happen. I can't tell you, but I'm going to tell you that I know. More is coming. But it's coming, though. Something is happening. I mean, this is already a pretty, big deal. I mean, I guess, you know, I don't know what Stephen A is hinting at that there are going to be more people to get caught up in this drag net. But, I mean, don't do that to us. And that it's

Trump's, that it's Trump's dragnet. I mean, essentially that's what he's connecting it to, right? Yeah. Right. And that's what I did wonder is like, are people reacting to the fact that he is saying that Trump's actions when it comes to law enforcement and jurisprudence have a political tinge to it, if I can use the only in journalism word? Or are people just surprised that that is on ESPN hours after this story breaks? I was just kind of wondering if people had a little bit more skepticism about this case, in part because of, you know, I mean, the politicalization of the FBI and the law enforcement infrastructure in this country. And I haven't heard anybody.

It is not, Stephen A. kind of went there, maybe? Kind of. Awesome. Yeah. Is that, if we can read into what he was assuming. But yeah, just maybe that's his way of touching on that without ever having. Again, being scared that Trump is going to come after you, right? And being that like, okay, well, he'll start looking for stuff with me or whatever. So I don't, I don't know.

It's just very frustrating because we have to, it would be a nice if somebody had been there and said, hey, what are you saying? What are you talking about? Yeah. Let's tease this out. I know you want to talk about this later, maybe on your. non-ESPN show, but since we're here, right, just the first take, maybe we can get into that.

Speaking of which, how many heart attacks do you think there were in the ESPN executive offices? Oh, my God. Stephen A. talking about Trump, and Trump NEE is the one who needs to bless ESPN's merger with the NFL network and NFL media. Oh, my God. Like, every time that subject comes up,

whatever that, man. Speaking of entanglements, I mean, you're going, oh, no. Yeah. I mean, again, I mean, this, and that's just all weird that we already are just sort of, we're already sort of expecting major important influential media outlets to make concessions in their reporting about things that are happening because they're afraid that they'll be targets or that the, the, the, the, there'll be government intervention and their business dealings. That's just, I mean, that is sort of remarkable that we sort of understand that that's kind of what might be at play here sometimes. Yeah, it really is. And even when it's not so obvious here, you just assume it is. Because how could it not be given all the evidence that we've seen?

Well, I mean, the media outlets are not covering themselves in glory with this anyway, right? Like, I mean, they basically are kind of, I mean, you know. See Disney, ESPN's corporate parent. We've been down this road. Yeah. They're saying it without saying it already. So two final things. Did you see the reports that the poker guys knew this had been going on for years?

Man, those were some funny clips, man. They really were. And it just took me back to 25 years ago during the first poker moment when we all had to pretend like we love poker. Oh, man. Oh. Are we going to have to do that again? Are we all going to have to cosplay as poker experts one more time? Man, I'm so glad that I missed.

I missed out on that, bro, because I just did not. I did not. I don't even have a heart to pretend, but yeah, it's, I mean, I think that world is interesting. Like, when you hear, when we have a friend of the show, Nick Wright, talks about it. And you're like, oh, those are some really interesting people. And clearly, that poker world draws from a tremendous circle of celebrities. Like, so many more people are mixed out and doing stuff in this world that we don't know about. And I wonder.

it almost makes you wonder like if you had to dream up beats and how people should cover things now. It's like, man, I almost would be helpful if you were a reporter that was really into poker or something because you would probably have a lot of access to a lot of famous people if you did. Maybe that'll be ESPN's next hire to replace Roger Cossack on the roster. Oh, man.

Poor Roger Cossack. And this is the last one I have for you. I have certain Trump-like powers to ban journalistic cliches. Okay. Okay. No kings. No kings. Yeah, well, there's an exception to that. One of the cliches I've banned is

I'm shocked, shocked to find that gambling is going on in here. Oh, man. Yeah. Of course, from Casablanca. What's your favorite quote from Casablanca, Joel? Is it frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn? Wait, is that gone with the wind? No. It's gone with the win, sir.

No, when, okay, look, you got me. That's fine. Uh-huh. You got me. There's so much revenge. See, on Monday, this is my turn. Okay. We're talking about old movies here. Or is it like, is this going to be a start of a beautiful relationship or something? Yeah, beautiful friendship. There you go. Yeah, okay, I watched this in that same film class at TCU.

So this is how I got the godfather, Casablanco, or whatever. So it's been a while, but I got to you. So that cliche is banned. But the Washington Post used it in an editorial about this story and then the Times used it three days later. So I think we're going to going to create a temporary reprieve here because it is kind of funny when it applies to judsy billis this is true are you going to do anything about houston we have a problem yeah that's i mean that's like every time the astros lose i guess the texans i'm i'm tired i was first i like people acknowledge that houston existed outside of houston i'm kind of done with it now just so if you if you can use your power see what you can do about that

we'll get it done for you jill i promise you that i appreciate it All right, coming up on today's podcast, the Barry Weissing of CBS News has begun. Senate candidate Graham Platner and the Pod Save America Soft Landing. Plus, Joel, the Pentagon found a new press corps. And oh, yeah, we got more of your favorite NFL cliches. All that much more on the press box. A part of the rigger podcast network. Oh, media consumers.

It's Brian Curtis. It's Joel Anderson. And Joel, we should introduce producer Bruce Ball, one here to the press box are we going to add in some clapping too i'm sure bruce can do it for himself yeah bruce bruce add in a lusty applause track that's right we uh of course said goodbye to our producer kyle crichton yeah and we love kyle he did a fantastic job yeah uh with this podcast it was such fun to work with him yeah uh as many of you i am too i had to call him just say, man, I just love you so much and I hate to see you go because he was, he was great.

Careful listeners will notice that this is our fourth producer in the year 2025. Pressbox producer has become the Star Trek red shirt of the podcast industry. I mean, yeah, what job is this? Is this like being the right, the rice head coach or something? Or what is a job that just turns over and over? It's like, oh, they got a new guy now. Indeed. Stick in with us, Bruce.

Yes, Bruce, we wish you an unusually long run. We do. In the producer's seat. All right, a couple quick things for you, Joel. Did you stay up and watch baseball last night? Of course not. No. I'll watch them Monday night football, but I didn't watch it.

It was late. I mean, it was after 11 o'clock here on the West Coast, so it was very late on the East Coast. Here is Fox's Joe Davis calling Freddie Freeman's walkoff homer in the bottom of the 18th inning. It was so funny, Joel, because Joe Davis, once we got into extra innings, was just giddy. Oh, man. Was he just delirious, basically?

It was just... Yeah, you know how as a sports fan when you get into OT or extras? Oh, you suddenly just, you start feeling different. Yeah. You're still locked in, you're still nervous, but it just gets a little loopy. Yeah, you get a little loose because it's like, hey, man, we're all in here now. We know we're seeing something incredible, right? Totally.

And to play an extra baseball game last night. I was going to say, 18. So, I mean, how did that feel to stay up and watch a whole other baseball game? It was wild. And I was kind of like trying to, you know, get ready for bed, read a novel, you know, which I try to like read something before bed just to kind of, you know, get my mind in a slow down place. but I was doing the terrible modern thing of having a book up on Kindle

and then having the game in the top of the screen on my phone, which is not the point of, I know, reading something before bedtime, but it was exciting. I like your sleep hygiene. That's really good.

I need to, whenever I get to a point where I can have lights on at night, that'll be great. But, you know, I don't want people to think I love postseason baseball. I mean,

there's really nothing like postseason baseball for it's like intensity like pitch to pitch it's like great um you know so yeah i wish you know what i need i need to i need to tap in because this seems like a really good a really great series and oh my god micha show hey those aren't involved and then then the intentional walks to show hay and extras last night the crowded dodger stadium is booing and going crazy and oh my god it's very very fun game last night uh we got some news from cbs news i know this will surprise you oh man this came from jeremy bar of the already yesterday, John Dickerson, co-anchor of the CBS Evening News, is leaving the network in December. Man, that's a pretty big deal.

Did you cross over with John Slate? Yeah, you know, why we'd been done political gab fest a few times. And so, yeah, I guess so. Yeah, we're kind of crossed over. What about you? Yeah, yeah. And he was just like the nicest guy, presumably still is the nicest guy in the world. I mean, just a genuinely friendly, nice person.

I mean, for a guy with a job like that, like just surprisingly low, you would not know that he had that kind of a job, you know, if you met him. He didn't have Anchorman in him. No. He didn't have I'm on TV at all. Which doesn't mean he wasn't good at his job. It's just he didn't give that off, right? So the evening news has been one of those things that people assume that Barry Weiss would go in and change.

And that's because it was getting bad reviews from media critics long before she got there. Right now, Dickerson co-hosted with Maurice Dubois, excuse me. I watched it on Friday, I went back and watched Friday's episode. It's really hard to grade a show like that in the media environment we're in because it's just doing something different. Yeah. What do you mean by that? then a podcast, then super opinionated cable news,

then Twitter. I mean, just in any way we get our news. It is from the past. It's an updated version of from the past, but it is still giving you the world in 22 minutes. Right. And, you know,

going to correspondence in the field. It was fine to watch it because, like, that show is very, I would say, earnest. Mm-hmm. There's an earnestness that flows through CBS all the way down to its sports department, and it is certainly that.

they had tried to do meteor stories saying like, look, we're going to, if we do a story about inflation and do something like that, we're going to give you a fuller version than you might normally get on TV with more facts, more explanation, more explanary elements. And it was that. It was very, very good at that, I thought. I can vividly remember, I mean, I felt like, because I've seen CBS Evening News in the last, you know, a few weeks and months, it still felt like the program that was on at my Nana house. You know what I mean? Like, you know, it's before Will of Fortune comes on or whatever.

And I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean that in like a heart in like a heartwarming way. I was like, oh, okay, this feels like a piece of the kind of reported that I saw on TV when I was a child. Like it didn't, it didn't overwhelm me with like the new, you know, all the stuff going under the bottom, the crayon and everything. Like it just felt, you know, like it was of a different time. Yeah, because they're in the same place newspapers are in where Nana is still part. of the viewership. You can't change it that much because your viewership's older.

Younger people have gone other places. This is part of Barry Weiss's job is to make CBS News relevant and make it find people that are younger than people that watched the evening news 20 years ago. Right. Now, this is a companion story here, Joel, which is Oliver Darcy reported in status last Thursday

that Weiss is looking around for new anchors. for the evening news, and her candidates include Nora O'Donnell, who had the job before this version, Tony DeCopal from the morning show, and Brett Baer from Fox News.

So, her contention here is that she wants to freshen up TV news, evening TV news, wants to make it more appealing to the younger people who are not watching TV right now, right? And one way you would

do that is you go get Brett Beyer, Noro O'Donnell. Okay, all right. Yep, Brett Bear. All right. Yeah, sure. Whatever. All right. I mean, it sounds like for, is unorthodox a higher issue is, that sounds like the kind of thing that

somebody in her position would probably think about doing anyway. You know what I mean? Like if it was just some other generic network TV person. Yes. I completely agree because, you know, the bear thing was, was, uh, greeted with people. Oh my gosh. See,

this is the conservative bent. They're changing the tenor of the news. I'm like, Brett Bear's a TV guy. Yeah, man. I mean, Brett Bear getting that job under any regime wouldn't shock me at all.

Not at all. Not at all. He does that job on Fox. And it wouldn't, by the way, it wouldn't offend me if he had that job either. I mean, I would say,

like, that'd be my first choice. No, but it's not, he's that guy. You know, he could do that job. I went through the same thing kind of with Chris Wallace,

man. You can, seeing his, him on another network isn't like shocking to me because I think of him as just guy behind the desk who happens to work for whatever network he happens to work for and he will reflect whatever the ethos of that broadcast is at the moment. Like I didn't this we're not talking about her hiring Sean Hannity to do CBS News. But it's still yeah, I mean it's not a surprise that she probably was going to look towards Fox News but still it's like okay. That's what's bringing the kids

The kids are screaming for Brett Baer, huh? All right. That's what they want. They want Brett Baer. And everybody started with Darcy said that Brett Bear isn't even a realistic possibility. He's got several more years on his contract of Fox News. Okay. It's more of a sign of, I guess, of her thinking, though perhaps a revealing in this case.

A couple follow-ups for you. A sister. Maybe. She was on the news the other day. You and I talked about the exodus of reporters from the Pentagon. Yeah. after they refused to sign Pete Higgs's ridiculous and vague rules of journalism. Well, Pete Hacks have found some media outlets that would sign those rules.

Washington Post Scott Nover, who's done terrific work on this story, and Drew Harwell, have the rundown here. The coalition of signatories include the cable network Real America's Voice. Man. Do you get that on YouTube TV? Is that Real America's voice on YouTube TV? You know, that's one of those I've just never seen in its normal state. I just always see clips.

People show us on Twitter. Speaking of which, the streaming service Lindel TV. What? Can you, so you have to pay for that or just download it? We might need to investigate that after we get off the area. We got to go, we got to get down the Lindel TV app going. Okay. The website's The Gateway Pundit.

Okay. And pause here. Did you know it was the Gateway Pundit, like the Ohio State University? Oh, really? Or like the New York Times. Did not know that. I thought it was just Gateway Pundit. The post-millennial human events.

Hey, hold on. Remember when I said human events in the last show, we laughed at it? Human events showed up, man. I was right. Here we go. There we go. The National Pulse and Red State. Oh, Red State.

Still rolling out there. Okay. Still rolling. It also includes turning. Point USA's media brand frontlines as well as influencer Tim Poole's Timcast and a sub-stack based newsletter called Washington Reporter. This is like a list of outlets that were not nominated for a Peabody Award. You don't know what human events is capable of now that it's got access.

Is the Daily Stormer going to be invited there? Do they have somebody that they can bring in? Yeah. I mean, at this point, like the question is just who, has a capability of sending a reporter to the Pentagon. Right. And I'm not, and it's an interesting question because, like, do you have to have somebody, are these people physically there five days a week? I can't imagine that, right? I mean, what kind of news do you think, what kind of Pentagon news do you think they're reporting on human events? Well, I mean, there's a way to find out, I guess.

We could go to human events right now. We could go to human events and see, see what's going on. This is really the playbook of the Trump administration. Yeah. They're going to harass reporters. they're going to take away reporters basic privileges. They may even sue reporters or their outlets. And then as the final step, they will replace reporters so that they have a tame press corps of their own. Yeah.

I mean, I guess, does anyone want to consume any of that? Like, even their own readers. Like, are they really interested in Pentagon News? Like, that's the kind of thing that I'm, I mean, I guess this is more important as a show, right? It's not about actual clicks or metrics or anything. It's a show that, like, we're not going to bend. And if those media outlets don't want to come, they're on the outside.

They're going to be looking on from the outside forever. Like, that's the message. That's the more important thing than rather than who they lit in. We'll have our own party. We don't need you. Yeah, right. Human events has got to come. By the way, headline on.

human events. America's young men must learn the courage of the founders, even if it means putting their lives on the line. It sounds like a banger. So they got some stuff going over there. But yeah, no, man. So I, yeah, I mean, this is very much the Trump thing. I wonder how long it's going to take for this to happen in another department. You know what I mean? It's kind of happened at the White House, at least partially, right? Created that new media seat at the front. Yeah. Get some of the people we just mentioned, you know, some run up there to ask, question. You know, and then you have Caroline Levitt, you know, just talking about reporters in the most,

you know, unsavory terms imaginable from the, from the White House briefing room. So, yeah. I mean, yeah, I guess the thing is, you know, I'm glad that the Pentagon, that the News Corps has walked out because I think that they're going to find out that they'll be better, that though, I don't know that it'll be possible to do better work because I still think that that's a very serious beat. People are always working it and they're working it outside. out of that press conference.

But I think they're going to find, and a lot of people are going to find that they didn't need to be there in the first place. Yeah, Eleanor Watson of CBS News broke the story about another strike on one of those alleged drug boats that we've been hearing about. She's one of the people's not there anymore.

So there you go. We did some good news about the Washington Post on last Monday's pod. Okay. Joel, unfortunately, we have some bad news about the Washington Post. No, not the Washington Post. Ed O'Keefe of CBS News, speaking of which, tweeted out a print headline that said,

University of Virginia settlement appears to preserve academic freedom. Oh, man. This is from the opinion section, the very embattled opinion section of the Washington Post, preserve. Got copy out of this, man. Yeah. They're not just for show. You need them.

You need them. And then way more seriously, David Fulkin, Flick has a great story in NPR today about the Post, and he says in that same opinion section, he says on at least three occasions in the past two weeks, an official post editorial has taken on matters in which Jeff Bezos has a financial or corporate interest without noting his stake. In each case, the post official editorial line landed in sync with its owner's financial interests. So is this like the thing, you know, kind of when Sports Illustrated was bought or when Time sold it to whatever other's like Maven sports group or whatever it was that bought it? And the hope is that the brand, the name will carry through for a long time and the people will just sort of get used to it and they'll eventually come back around because, hey, that's the Sports Illustrated, right?

No matter what the institution looks like on the inside, I want, is that? I kind of wonder if that's the gambit here for the Washington Post or the people say, they say that they're not going to read this, but they'll come back. But I just, does that make anybody that is a Washington Post subscriber currently want to subscribe, it continues to subscribe? And for people that are like, I'm really into human events in Red State. But I see I like the work that Washington Post is doing on its editorial page now. They use the word de-wokification. So that seems like the kind of work that I like. I just can't imagine.

I cannot imagine the latter group subscribing to the post, and I cannot imagine that scandals of any kind are good for the bottom line. There's no sense of this here. Also, we should ask, when you write editorials like that and leave out the full disclosure,

is that personal liberties or free markets? Which one were you free market subjects where you're touching there? Yeah. Also from Fulkinflict's piece, the post in its new opinions editor, Adam O'Dill, did not reply to detailed requests for comment for this story. Good job newspaper, not answering press inquiries. I mean, yeah, you know, we should, I should say that we have a standing invitation to that crew to come over here and to talk with us. We'd like to talk to them. We have some inquiries. I think it would be an interesting conversation. And I would be willing, you know, I think we would both be fair.

We wouldn't bring them over here and be mean to them. and I just have questions. But yeah, I'm just curious. I want to know, like, has they seen, have they seen this work yet? You know, like, what is, like, give us some numbers that show that this was the way to win back readers' trust. Right. That you're making some, you know, making some ground up here, that, you know, this is the right way to go. They have a lot of people over there, man.

A lot of people that we really care about that are good reporters, good jobs, secure jobs that they thought they were going to be able to work at a this great August institution for a long time. And if this is just, you know, a flavor of the month's move, you know, to satisfy Trump or whatever, like, man, you're playing with a lot of people's livelihoods, man. And that's really scary. So I hope, you know, for the sake of all those people over there, that they're making the right decisions. August is a good only in journalism word. Thank you very much. See, you're a natural for the Monday show, it turns out. I don't know. We'll see when we get to the end part.

Shoemaker and I were also talking about the New York Times pivot to video. You open a story now and you're just as likely to see a video as you are a really sharp news photograph. Well, now, I mean, days after we did that segment, there is, you can go on to the New York Times app and there is a little module at the bottom that says watch. So I get on today onto the watch app and here's a video of Donald Trump meeting the new. Japanese prime minister Senei Takahichi and I TikTok my way through the other stories and here is a cool

hurricane hunting plane flying over the Caribbean with some, you know, little, you know, with the words tracking across the screen that you normally read in a news story. Here is, I guess, an oral op-ed on the future of the Democratic Party. Okay. Check that out. This is the New York Times.

Okay. Trying to figure out how to reach those kids just like Barry Weiss. That's right. Okay. Yeah, I'm, you know what? I'm on the front page right now. I've seen a video that was a graphic. So anyway, well, yeah, I'll make sure to check out the video.

I mean, usually, I don't know if you're like me, Brian. Whenever a video comes up unprompted, it does autoplay. I'm trying to get it to stop immediately. Exactly the same. We have not talked about main Senate candidate grand platinum, Joel. Oh, man. Since he became embattled. This stuff, yeah, in battle.

That's definitely the word I've seen associated with him. Politico also used besieged the other day. A nice little change up there. If you get increasingly embattled, you become besieged. I mean, besiege sounds a lot more urgent than embattled. This all starts with CNN's Andrew Kaczynski and M. Steck, who found some five-year-old deleted Reddit posts from Platner. I hope you enjoyed his Reddit handle, which was P-Hustle.

I mean. Yeah, man, that's the... We need to see if he's got any old hip-hop songs on... Oh, Cloud, like Mom Dani. Because... Mom Dany or... Yeah. Did he have the unfortunate rap career as well?

It might have... P. Hustle, that's a rap name. Really is. What's your favorite P. Hustle side? Why don't black people, too? Oh, God. Okay. I was going to go there in a second.

These are some of the Reddit post. They're deleted. You just stop me. want to talk about any of these. Let's go. Platterner's political views. He said, I got older and became a communist. Okay.

Also said he was a vegetable growing psychedelics taking socialist these days. I mean, I would be friends with that person. That sounds like a, I knew somebody like that in college. I'm not going to say his name, but I kind of want to say his name because I just, I hope he's listening. But yeah, those are some cool people, man. All right, let's talk about the police. This is again from CNN.

one deleted comment in a thread about a black army lieutenant who was held at gunpoint and pepper sprayed by police during a traffic stop. One Reddit user wrote bastards, cops are bastards. Platner replied, all of them, in fact. I can understand why he deleted that comment, but I also could understand the sentiment behind it. Let's talk about 2020. This is another one. Platner responded to a thread titled, white people aren't as racist or stupid as Trump thinks by writing living in white rural America, I'm afraid to tell you they actually are. Yeah, I mean, that, do you think that is as, do you think that is as unfortunate a comment as deplorables? Or do you, like, or it's damaging a comment as deplorables?

Well, it does get to a bigger question of if it's on Reddit rather than a video clip. Right. what is the political salience of that? How is that different than a clip that could be played on every ad from Susan Collins in a general election?

Fair point. I would say that you could just remove out white rural and say, in white period, and just that people are as stupid as racist and stupid as Trump thinks they are living in America. It could just be everybody.

It doesn't have to be limited to white people. But let me give you some more here. Washington Post's reporter Liz Goodwin found Reddit Post downplaying sexual assault in the military. And even the Bangor Daily News got into this. Reporter Sawyer Loftus writes, and Reddit Post from 2013, Grand Platner asked why black people, quote, don't tip.

Did the Bangor Daily News publish the responses that he got to that? Because I would be curious and knowing what people said. Because I would like to know. I know that this comes up a lot. and I'm curious to know why people assume that this thing is true. So he was a bartender, right?

And when you're listening in Maine, and if you listen to him, well, that's interesting, an interesting nugget here. But if you listen to him on POTSave America, he, when he was, he was, you know, explaining or trying to explain away a lot of this stuff. Yeah. And he said to this one, he goes, I was just generally interested. I just was asking a question. And then I guess he got educated by people he knew or something like that.

Like, hey, this is just asking a question, is itself a statement? I tell you, without dwelling on this too much, that those black people that showed up in this bar in Maine probably, their behavior was scrutinized unlike any other customer that ever showed up in there. So you probably are taking a lot more attention to the things that they're doing as opposed to your everyday normal white. customer they're showing up in Maine. Unless there's some sort of part of Maine that I'm unfamiliar with. In Portland is, you know, a little bit more like Cleveland or something than I know. Yeah, that's a good question. Plattenor's explanation for these posts, he was a marine infantryman. Later, private security contractor that in his years after the military, he was disillusioned, he was angry. He told CNN, I can honestly say that that is me just being an asshole on the internet.

Yeah. Then there was a second story, separate story, Joel, that Graham Platner had a tattoo that resembled a symbol used by Hitler's SS. He got that tattoo covered

with a tattoo of a dog or something that looks like a dog. And that produced this unbelievable sentence from the AP. Platner's campaign initially said he would remove the tattoo, yet Plattener said he later chose to cover it up with another tattoo, due to the limited options where he lives in rural Maine.

What do you think of all of this? So I think he's done everything wrong but the initial apology. By which I mean, I don't think the initial apology was great, but he explained how he ended up in this place. And I was moving to me and that he just said, you know, I was lost, I was depressed. I didn't have community.

And then as I got older and move along, you can see that my comments change. And, you know, he says my language gets less crude. My thoughts and feelings get a lot less kind of rough around the edges. I sympathize with that. People can be in a really dark place and come out of that. But, you know, it should be hard to run for and obtain public office. And if you're going to offer yourself up to the public, this is the sort of thing that is going to happen.

And it's up to voters to decide if that's disqualifying or not. So I think this is all fair game. And if people want to hold that against them, they should be able to. Because, I mean, what do people say when you're a child? This is going in your permanent record. People, there's always, I've always, I don't know about you, Brian. I always had a sense from a very young age that people were tallying up these things. You move around in the world and people are taking stock of.

of everything you do, and they weigh it. So at the end of the day, like, is this a guy that I'm comfortable with, or is this a guy that I'm not? That's what we're doing with Grand Platner. And, you know, like, it should be hard. Like, everything that you've done, it should count when you're offering yourself up

for public service. What do you think? Well, there's a difference here that he's a millennial so that everything he's done is somewhere online versus a conversation he had with somebody. Or, you know, a view he, you know, announced in college that was not, is not a view about people that he would have now. Is that the difference here?

Um, I mean, I mean, I just, I, you know, sometimes I don't think we give 16 year olds enough credit or like young people that are on that. Because I knew not to put crazy shit on the internet at a certain age. And I'm not saying that like people don't get better judgment and become even better people. Like, they evolve. And so I think that's the thing is like, we need to see the work. as opposed to the words. Like, your works are going to speak louder

than whatever words you left on Reddit. And so people will decide for themselves if they're comfortable with you. The thing that makes people somewhat fancy about this dude is that he's been a little bit defensive. And also, there's maybe some suggestion reported that he lied about the tattoo that, like, I didn't know.

He was aware of the implications. And then he was aware of the implications when he first got it. And so some people, they would say, oh, like, why are you, you know, if this is true, if people are saying this about you, then we have some reason to sort of question your sincerity and your beliefs and you're offering yourself some, if you want to run for a Republican spot,

I'm not trying to be mean here. It will count less. Like, this sort of stuff won't hurt you as much, right? But, like, you want to be a Democrat. You want to run for a high-profile Democratic seat, And it just so happens that there are a base of people among Democratic voters that are hold this against you. So sorry. You don't have to be Senate.

And I completely agree with you about the legitimacy of the story. I mean, this idea, here's this oyster man rising up out of the waters to, you know, save the Democratic Party and win a majority in the Senate. Of course it matters what he thought. Yeah. Of course it does. We don't know anything about him. Right. You know, another politician would have a long record wherever they served so that we can say,

okay, you did this, you did this, you supported this, you opposed that. He doesn't. So we are trying, both as journalists and then secondarily as voters, to learn all we can about this guy. Right. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, I mean, right. He doesn't have this long record of public service that we can investigate and say, okay, we know the kind of politician or public servant you would be.

Like all we can go off is the stuff you've put out into the world and we're going to judge it accordingly. And so like this is some of the stuff. It doesn't have to matter. Like, I mean, it could be that he could still win in spite of this and people will, you know, you know, feel comfortable with his explanations for that behavior at the time. But yeah, I just this, it should be hard for everybody. Everybody should face this sort of scrutiny if they're going to run for office. Like it should matter for everybody, not just him. And maybe that's why he feels a little aggrieved.

here because, like, clearly, everybody's not being held to that standard, but, like, this is what we should have if you're going to run for office. Jonathan Martin had a column in Politico where he was having some fun with voters that swoon whenever they see a Platiner-like candidate. Oh, yeah, man. Here's this plain-spoken guy. Finally, somebody who's saying what I've been thinking. I've just been waiting for somebody to say it. And look, all of that is correct. But he has a line in passing where he talks about the journalists who are rushing to profile

candidates like this. Oh, yeah. And I feel that's also a much bigger part of this story, especially with Democrats, because Democrats read, Democrats subscribe to media outlets, right? They take their cues from mainstream media. Right. And look who, how many mainstream profiles have you read about Graham Platner? James Tala Rico down in Texas or Zeranamani, right?

They're out there available. They're giving interviews. They're great stories. to write right now before any votes are cast. And I'm like, aren't we kind of complicit in this whole, if they're swooning, don't you trace that back to the way and the frequency with which we're writing about these guys?

Well, yeah, I mean, it also helps that they do seem, appear to be legitimately different and passionate. Like, the argument for a sort of passionate politics that not everybody does. Because, like, for instance, Colin Allred, who ran for office in Texas, right? Like, he has that same profile. They're like, oh, big tough former NFL player.

You know, and Democrats really wanted to play it up. But like at the end of the day, it seems like people just weren't as moved by his story or his oratory. Right. Like they're just like, he didn't have what it is that Graham Platner has or whatever. And there's reasons for that. I mean, I found when I first started seeing the videos of Platner, I found it to be compelling too because for a lot of the same reasons. I'm like, man, you just kind of don't expect a guy that looks like that with that backstory. to have those sorts of political views and beliefs.

And it can be compelling. But you also, I mean, I don't know about everybody else, but I'm also smart enough and black enough to know that just because, you know, you're saying all that stuff. It doesn't mean that you're going to necessarily have like a clean record, a perfect record on that stuff. But that's not necessarily necessary, but it's just like you need to be able to answer for it when the time comes.

I want to talk to you about the pod. Save America soft landing. Speaking of answering for. Because last Tuesday, Platter went on Pod Save America with host Tommy Vitor. Podsafe has become a home for besieged and

embattled Democrats to get a sympathetic hearing. Let us not forget all the Biden people or Kamala Harris, excuse me, campaign team that went on that podcast. So they could get their interview out of the way rather than answer to journalists over and over again about what they've done.

I did that interview already. I don't want to talk about that anymore. I've talked about that. Asked and answered, right? Yeah, right. You can go check out that interview I gave to POTSave America. Exactly. I just want you to listen to how this interview with Platner starts.

I want to cover a bunch of stuff with you. But first, I just wanted to ask you about this kind of flurry of news reports about Reddit posts you made between 2009 and 2021. There's an Axios headline this past week that described the week for you guys as Bernie back main Senate candidate melts down. So maybe by the end of the conversation, we can fact-check that headline, too. And you tell me if that's how you feel.

The, yeah, Axios, yeah, they summoned it all up for you, primary in June. Now, I'm as happy to make fun of an Axios headline as the next guy. But you just hear the kind of contempt and distancing from these stories already at the beginning of that interview. There's flurry of media reports. I'm sorry, these are actual Reddit posts. The guy's not running away from them. He's saying I did them. And, you know, look, and DeVito's credit, he goes through and he asks about a number of these things, but there are very few follow-ups.

There's very few interrogation about what Platner believes, why he believed this then, why he believes this now, the nature of his evolution, if there was one about this topic or that topic. It's just very, you know, this is a, this is an interview that is helping somebody get past. a scandal. Right. Rather than asking questions and holding somebody accountable. Right. Well, I should say right off top, I have to do this every now and again. My bias here is that I like Tommy.

I've had some, I previously had conversations with them about doing some work for them. It didn't work out all good, but whatever. But, you know, the thing that I think about this, because you're right, that there's no follow-ups. Like, there's a reason these interviews exist, whatever, like these platforms, because, and if it wasn't Tommy, Vito, and Pod Save America, it would have been something else. You know, he would have just gone somewhere else that, you know, somebody else that was sort of, you know, a friendly venue. Very few people sign up for tough interviews anymore, right? I don't even know who does, like, we haven't seen, like, the Oprah thing or the, I mean, I guess, you know, RIP, Barbara Walters or whatever. but people just don't that's I don't how often do you really see that happen anymore

well occasionally occasionally and I would say with with Platner with Mom Donnie they have they have given quotes to just negative stories about them right stories that they knew were going to be tough to to their credit they are out there yeah right I guess just my my thing here is just like I know those guys the pod save guys be like we're not journalists and that's totally fine I totally understand that. But when you're doing something like this, you're kind of replacing journalists. Right. You're filling in for journalists. And if

one of Obama's opponents had gone to the friendly confines of Fox News to clean up a bad story, they would be yelling about it. They would be upset about it. They'd be like, well, you know, he's going to run over there and not answer a question. Well, isn't that what we're doing here?

I agree with you as a journalist, but I could also see them saying, the Pod Save guys and Platner can't worry about that. I get why we do, but they have a different mission, right? They're trying to win. Like, they have political aims, helping the Democrats win elections. Helping the Democrats.

And so, like, yeah, they're doing something different, which doesn't mean that they don't occasionally perform journalism or whatever, right? Sure. But in this, this is what that project is for. And so I understand why Democrats are being, or the reasoning for this sort of thing is that we're trying to win against opponents, that don't have any of these concerns. Like, we're already kind of fighting this battle

with a left, you know, one of our arms tied behind our back. So if we spend a lot of time worrying about, you know, following the conventions of journalism or making media happy, this is a losing game. And we just, it's more important to win. But to your point, as a journalist, I would like to see, you know,

going to doing the tougher thing from time to time, but I understand why they don't. And all of that, like, you know, I'm going to have a podcast to help the Democrats win, to be at this. This is all I've ever been in my life and this is all I want to be now. That's totally fine with me. Like there's no, I don't, I do not discount that at all, nor say that that's not interesting, you know, at certain times. I just want people to understand the difference.

Yeah, sure. We were, we were fellowshiping to use that word one more time with Van Lathen in the Ringer office last week. And he had this great point where he said, because we're all on social media, media, we just assume everybody has the same job. Yeah. And sometimes that's manifested like, you know, I'm yelling about Trump. I'm mad at you, New York Times reporter because you're not also yelling about Trump. Right.

But I think another way that's manifested is, oh, you're doing an interview with Graham Platner. That's the same as an interview Graham Platner might do with CNN or another outlet or the New York Times, the Washington Post, or the Bangor Daily News. it's not. And I just think it's important to understand the difference. I, again, once again, I agree with you, but don't you just, that's over? Like, it's not going to happen.

It's only going to get worse. Unfortunately, I hate to be cynical about it, but I don't, I mean, early on, even 20 years ago, I noticed that people had a real difficulty telling the difference from like straight news reporters and people that were columnists

or editor, you know, worked on the, editorial board at a newspaper. Like, they really couldn't make the distinction. And this is 20 years ago. It's only got, it's only flattened now. It's probably very confusing, right? Because sometimes I report on things, right?

And I don't know which hat I'm using. And then they'll see me on this podcast talking about stuff. And they'll be like, well, what role am I seeing Joel Anderson in now? So I kind of get the confusion because it's just people are just consuming stuff. And they don't know what's coming from. It's all just stuff. And they don't even, they may not even get it off the front page of a, of a particular outlet or whatever, and they're just getting stuff.

And so, yeah, I just, I think that battle is kind of over. I mean, it doesn't mean we shouldn't try, but I just think that with the public, at least for now, that they're just not to call people like Graham Platner said, you know, dumb and racist or whatever, but people just are not that sophisticated or readers, I don't think. All right, Joel, coming up in 30 seconds, more NFL cliches from a ball nowhere near you. But first, this is where we do the overworked Twitter joke of the week. where we celebrate a gag that was so obvious that all of media Twitter

made it at exactly the same time. Send your nominees to At the Pressbox Pod on Twitter or Blue Sky where they are always, always gratefully received. Did you see the story about the heist at the Louvre? I did. I did. I mean, what some movie shit that was, man.

It really was. Two thieves scaled the building and stole some of France's crown jewels. I mean, those are so badass. That's right. right there, bro. I gotta be honest. Yeah. It was an overwork Twitter joke to write. Hang it in the Louvre. There's room now.

I see what they did there. But I'm phone. Thanks to Brian Gluck. If you thought Oceans 14 was still in the script stage, congrats. You made the overwork Twitter joke of the week. All right. In the notebook dump,

Joel, we have some additional football cliches. Okay, let's go. From our fine and educated readers. Now, this whole feature started when I said that a defense was either vaunted or much malign. During the Ole Miss Oklahoma game on Saturday, ESPN's Sean McDonough offered a third way. Laylock in trouble. Prince Willough.

A huge play by Pete Gold. You know what, right? Maybe they should say besieged too. Has they thought about using besieged? There we go. We'd take it. The other one I heard when I was watching football on Saturday, a fresh set of downs.

Oh, yeah, a fresh set of downs. Why do we always say a fresh set of downs in particular? Why don't we just have a new set of downs, a, you know, drier soft set of downs? Why did we always go to a fresh set of downs? It just rolls off the time, fresh set of downs. I get it just, it sounds very hopeful. Here's some other ones.

Alert listener Rob Enger says, A defense that gives up yards but not points is stingy. Man, that feels more like a 1980s or 90s one to me. I still think I hear it on broadcast. You think you still have this stingy? Okay. Stingy defense. Jonathan Amos, when a cornerback is covering a wide receiver one-on-one,

the corner is always on an island. That's, yeah, that's, I don't, what's even the other way to say it? It's a good question. Yeah. I was looking at that, and I'm like, I don't have a great alternative. On an island really does, really does work.

But usually you're on an island by your, You're on an island alone, right? It'd be like if your worst enemy were also on the island with you in this analogy. There's a competition, right? Yeah. Hmm. Very Lord of the Flies. There you go.

Christopher Gamer says that when one team plays well early and another team and another team plays well late, it's always a tale of two halves. I've heard that. I wonder if I've used that before. Might be a sliding doors metaphor, too. If people really engaged with the Charles Dickens novel, or they just, Just throwing that out there during our broadcast. Jared Gruner says, why are blitz packages always exotic,

never creative, imaginative, or unique? Or like, what would be, like, what's the anti-exotic? Like a very milk-tose group of blitz packages? A mundane blitz package. Yeah, those are really a boring set of blitz packages right there. Those will never get home. Get home.

Get home. That is a big one now. Get home, yeah. Jared Christensen says, if a team isn't facing third and forever, they are facing third and manageable. Okay. Okay.

Good one. That's a good one. Ryan Green says, my wife gets irritated when a quarterback is said to use his legs on a play. We kind of know that if he's running with the football, right? Well, usually he's using his arm and legs. Also, is this the Ryan Green that signed with Florida State out of St. Petersburg, Florida in 2013?

If that's you, let me know. We will. Peter Spedaluna says a mobile quarterback always scrambles, but a less mobile quarterback scampers. Yeah. Because scrambling imparts like a sort of like a struggle, right? Like it's like, oh, I'm scampers like, oh, I'm sort of light-footed here. Let me get that out of your way. Charles Chaffin calls out the overuse of flat-out.

He can flat-out play linebacker. Okay. Michael Carson, when a field goal is made from extremely long distance, use the name of a nearby city. For example, if the game is in Philly, that was good from Trenton. Hmm. We do have some... Close enough. Okay. I thought maybe Camden, but okay.

I used to hear Maine from Boston. You know, that was I was... Ah, that's a good one. Go-to. That's a good. Old-fashioned words, Joel. Don Hammack of Mississippi Gulf Coast Community College, writes, I missed a golden opportunity as S-I-D the other night when our team scored to get within 27-26.

we eschewed the PAT and went for two. Oh, man, I love issued. That's a good word. Paul Runnestrand of the Florida Times Union says that we are still calling officials flags hankies, which also feels absurdly old-fashioned. That seems very 80s and that. That's like that goes back with pack. You remember laundry also on the field?

Oh, yeah. Laundry on the field. Sports writer Michael Lev says when an offense is unable to score a touchdown, It always, always settles for a field goal. I've yet to come up with an alternative for settles. The offense resigned itself to a field goal. Does that work? That's pretty good.

Yeah, resigns. And then Jose Luis Kubria says, first time, long time. I nominate the word room, which is now used by certified ball knowers when discussing position groups. We no longer say they're five deep at running back. We say their running back room is stacked.

Yeah, man. Hey, man, I've been in a stacked running back room before. I was going to say that, TCU running back roomed. Danian Tomlinson, Joel Anderson. Basil Mitchell. Basil Mitchell. He played a little. He had some run in the league for a little bit.

He definitely had some run. Wow. Anyway, thanks to everybody. If you heard your name here, hit me up. And I would be happy to send you a press box button, which Joel got a handful of. I got three. I got three. I got my first buttons, man, when we saw each other.

ship. It's a leas. The least I could do. A quick announcement before we end up here, we have an Instagram account now. Is that scary for people? Do you think they, do you think they're dying to see us? Well, we've always said that, you know, we have faces made for audio podcasting and voices made for print. But we now have an Instagram account thanks to the efforts of Ben Cruz and Brian Waters. Yay, thanks. You are, or or you know coerced whatever you want to say to go and please sign up for it it's at press box ringer find some videos on there now we're going to put up clips from the show also going to put up some fun stuff stuff we buy at use bookstore stuff we see you know i like to do to futs around

in places like that so are we going to start going to start going to start going to tell you something yeah i'm reading the newspaper here around here i am getting ready for the show i can't i can't I can't wait to see how stretched this is going to be with the press box. I'm excited. I, you know, I was just thinking I was really inspired when I was in L.A. last week, as you know. And I was like, yeah, let's just start talking to the cameraman and putting it on our Instagram accounts, man. They should see a little bit more of us, so maybe. They should, or they're going to, whether they should or not.

Deal with it. All right, Joel. It's time for everybody's favorite feature. It's time for David Shoeaker. I mean, Joel Anderson. Oh, man. Guess is the strained pun headline. You ready?

I'm ready for this. I don't like, I don't want to do this, but you're forcing me. Last Monday's headline about the No King's protests across the country was Rain, Check. That is, R-E-I-G-N, check. Today's headline comes to us from Dan Perkle and Christian. It's from the New York Times. The Times is never wackier than when it's writing headlong. about marine life.

I'll give you the headline here, I'll give you a little summary. Two years after a sea otter became a viral sensation for stealing surfboards, there has been a string of thefts by furry hijackers in Santa Cruz, California. Okay.

Area of the world, you know well. I love Santa Cruz, man. Oh, beautiful place. Yeah. What was the New York Times Strain pun headline? Okay. So, Otter is definitely going to be there.

Mm-hmm. Okay. That's also going to be there. Okay. Otter. I think video games, perhaps. Grant. Yes.

Grand theft otter. Grand theft otter. Well, good, sir. All right. Yeah, all right. Okay. Maybe I like it a little bit more than I thought.

He is Joel Anderson. I'm Brian Curtis. But thanks a magic. By Bruce Baldwin. Coming up on the press box Thursday, it's Joel Anderson. Whoa. Me again? You again.

Man. That's coming up Thursday, Joel. Can't wait to talk to you with more lukewarm takes about the meeting. Looking forward to it, buddy.