The Press Box - Fear After the Jimmy Kimmel Suspension, the Return of Olivia Nuzzi, and Presidential Campaign of Andy Beshear

Episode Date: September 22, 2025

Hello, media consumers! Bryan and David discuss Vanity Fair hiring Olivia Nuzzi after she parted ways with New York magazine last year, continue untangling the Jimmy Kimmel situation, discuss the new rules for covering the Pentagon, and more (00:26). Then they share some football audio from the weekend, including Joe Davis’s call of Eagles defensive tackle Jordan Davis’s touchdown, Gus Johnson’s ultra-specific statistic during the Auburn-Oklahoma game, and Tulsa coach Tre Lamb's comments after his team dismantled Oklahoma State (31:27). In the notebook, the two discuss Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear's Presidential campaign (40:59). Hosts: Bryan Curtis and David ShoemakerProducer: Kyle Williams Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hey, it's Danny Kelly, and it's officially fantasy football season, which means the ringer fantasy football show is back with the latest news from around the NFL and everything you need to get ready for the fantasy football season. So join us at the ringer fantasy football show on Spotify or on our new YouTube channel. David? Yes. I've got a press release from Vanity Fair here announcing some new hires for the magazine. Yeah, journalism is a growing industry now. It's really a growth industry. It really is.

Let me see what I was looking for here. No, not the new global creative director. Not the new associate editor of Vanity Fair. Oh, here it is. Olivia Nutsi's back. Oh. The press release says that Nutsi joins Vanity Fair as West Coast Editor. In this new role, she will be editing stories across platforms and topic areas

with a focus on events. industries and culture of the Pacific region. Culture of the Pacific region. I feel like it reads a lot differently than they intended it to, but go ahead. Did it sound like she's opening a new wing of a museum? Yes, yeah. So it's going to be spending a lot of time and like, I don't know, American Samoa or something. Like it's...

She'll also be writing for the magazine. The final line of the release says from 27, 2017 to 2024, Nutsi was the Washington correspondent for New York. Oh, yeah. And that is all it says. Oh, it's just leaving a cold like that. I guess that makes sense.

Are you ready for the new Nutsi? Um, sure. I mean, as ready as I'm going to be, I guess. Yeah, I mean, whatever. I mean, she, this, I'm, I'm conflicted on this one. Why don't you, give me your, give me your Olivia Nutsi take with some time now that she's getting back into the business. For those who don't text other journalists all day long,

Olivia Nootsey left New York Magazine exactly 11 months ago today after she engaged in what the magazine called a personal relationship with a former subject. We later learned that that former subject was apparently Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Correct, yeah. I don't believe in lifetime excommunication

of journalists? No. Even if I did, I don't think it's enforceable in any way. It definitely is not. Just goes to substack, right? Or has their own streaming platform. Yeah, especially particularly in this day and age. That's right.

I think if Nutsi's coming back to Vanity Fair, I want the first piece to be about why she disappeared from journalism 11 months ago. Okay. That's just your, you don't think she should be obligated to do it. You just, that's what you, that's what you would like to read.

Well, we all want to read that piece. Yes. We're lying if we say we don't want to read that piece. Yeah. What happened story. Mm-hmm. But I do think journalism at its basis about leveling with people.

Okay. My criticism of her last year was, whatever happened here, you weren't leveling with people. Mm-hmm. you weren't telling readers stuff they needed to know if there was a relationship with somebody who happened to be aligned with one of the campaigns that you're covering yeah absolutely you just didn't do it and even when new york magazine went through and did their statement i mean like

an internal review of her published work has found no inaccuracies nor evidence of bias that's also not leveling with people evidence of bias like she was a secret republican inside the magazine or something like that that's just the silliest way to do it. So I would just say you have to address the thing rather than just try to power through and start covering politics or the cultures of the Pacific region again. Yeah.

Now, if I had to guess, that's not what's going to happen. I don't think there's any way that happens, yeah. No, and I bet that story, if it appears, gets safe for a book. or something like that and then maybe Vanity Fair runs the excerpt from the book but I don't know just as a reader that's what I would want

yeah I don't disagree with that I'm not sure that I feel like she owes us some sort of you know public come to Jesus moment but I do think that it's in every reader's right to sort of lack some trust for if and until that sort of

that sort of thing happens. I mean, it is a sort of an interesting turn, and maybe Vanity Fair, the West Coast editor, which, you know, West Coast editor can be a very sort of, honorary title, or it could be a very, you know, like, you know, knee-deep in the line editing situation, who knows? But, but, yeah, maybe this will be a good place for.

I mean, she's just incredibly talented writer, and unless you think her, you know, moral or otherwise, you know, otherwise, you know, journalistic integrity issues are somehow the base, you know, somehow the core of her writing gift. Unless you think she has to, you know, be corrupt to be good, which I don't think is anywhere near the case. It's just, you know, talent's going to win out.

And, you know, hopefully this would be the beginning of a good next act for her. I mean, I don't know. I'll tell you, I don't want to be. too down on the situation. That is an important point. And this is not breaking news. You don't have to credit the press box with this one.

But your ability to get a second chance in journalism is based as much on your talent as it is the nature of your sin. Yeah, for sure. We just put that out there. The other thing that this taught me or reminded me of is journalism doesn't have a penalty box. It's not like you wait two minutes and then Nozzi can put her skates back on and get back on the ice. Yeah. We're just making all of this up. Sure.

As we go along. It's like what publication is like, okay. And under what rules or what expectations are they saying, okay? Have to write a piece about this? Have to address it at all? It's, you know, kind of go through. I could also see West Coast editor, by the way, being. her writing primarily or also about other stuff?

Because Olivia Nozzi on Hollywood, you'd read that. Oh, absolutely. I think it's just Olivia Nozzi not on politics is what we're going for here, right? I don't, is that going to be the case though? Do you hire her and be like, yeah, not the thing you were really great and famous for writing about? Yeah, please write about something else. I don't know. At least it's not entrenched in politics, right?

She's on the West Coast. If she's writing about a candidate, it'll be from probably a different point of view. Well, but who knows? All right. Coming up on today's podcast, we have much, much more to say about the jawboning of Jimmy Kimmel. For instance, did you know what jawboning meant before last week? Plus, weekly football audio takes us from Gus Johnson to one of the NFL's biggest

defensive tackles, a new edition of Their Running, featuring Kentucky Governor Andy Bashir. and is there some good news for inside the NBA? And we're not done with tortured acronyms or sliding doors metaphors quite yet. All that and much more on the press box. A part of the ringer podcast network. Hello media consumers, Brian Curtis, David Shoemaker, and producer Kyle Williams here. Kyle's sitting in for the other Kyle, Kyle Crichton. David, we need to talk more about the Jimmy Kimmel Affair.

Yeah, we do. I want to start by getting your thoughts on the Jimmy Kimmel Affair, because Joel and I had the first pass at this on Thursday. I mean, I think him Bing Pull Up the Air is bullshit. I think that, I mean, it would be nice if, you know, when these sorts of decisions are made from, I mean, listen, it's not the network owner's responsibility to be brave, right? You can be as cowardly, a rich owner.

as you want to be. That's just, you know, that's not really part of the social contract. But you would hope that somebody who's in the broadcast industries and the news industry who's, you know, owns a public network, would see the moral responsibility and also corporate, like the corporate responsibility to standing up to it. activist government like this. It's just a really bullshit situation, and it's ridiculous.

I think the most frustrating part is that, like, nobody seems to be arguing about this in good faith, right? I mean, even to this, even to now, if you go online, I saw people post the clip of Jimmy Kimmel saying what he said about Charlie Kirk's passing in the right-wing attempts to distance themselves from him. And like the vast majority of the comments underneath said, this isn't all that he said, like post the whole video.

Like there's this widespread perception that he said something specifically derogatory about Charlie Kirk. And nobody's interested in correcting the record on that. He said it was the most blazé thing. I mean, I haven't even seen defenders of his saying, I mean, misunderstanding what the actual situation is. He made a crack about,

an offhanded thing about the, you know, Magaripe trying to distance themselves from the shooter. And somehow that is an insult to Charlie Kirk or an insult to his memory. It's absolutely nonsensical. Like, nobody's, it's crazy. I literally just like, it's so difficult to even comment on it because I feel like nobody's just like accepting the point for what it is. And certainly, you know, the FCC chair being so blaze about, you know, strong arming him off the air.

This is Brendan Carr. Yeah, and, and, and of course, like, but this is just emblematic of the entire second Trump presidency. Every bit of the government just exists to, to settle his grudges, you know? We see him firing the attorney who couldn't, who decided not to prosecute Letitia James for a fake, for fake mortgage fraud so he can get to.

put somebody else in there who would? I mean, it's just nonsense, man. I mean, it's, it's frightening. But I don't know. What's, what's your, what's, what's your general Jimmy Kimmel take? Well, first of all, I'm not sure we're ever going to have a great dialogue about what Jimmy Kimmel actually said on TV when the guy running the FCC is communicating with gifts. I mean, again, that, that's just a real thing that's happening. I think it's hard for us to get our mind around that. I do want to come back to the, first point you made there, which is really important about the people either owning or running these networks, these media companies.

Sure. Charlotte Klein had a big piece in New York magazine and she was quoting the writer of a late night show. And this quote really hit me. The people who have the most money and power are the first to give up. Yeah. And frankly, that should be mortifying for them. Mm-hmm.

I mean, really with Bob Iger at Disney. where you have this and you have the George Stephanopoulos thing where your anchor misspeaks on the air. Yeah. And you're settling this lawsuit with Donald Trump. Yep. And, you know, people I've seen try to tie this into the NFL deal that ESPN made where they bought the NFL network. Mm-hmm. Because that's going to need a nod from the FCC.

Yeah. And I'm just like, that almost feels too specific. for what's happening here. I think Bob Eager just wants to keep the company right in the general sense with Donald Trump. Yeah, totally agree. And is fearful of what Donald Trump and people like Brendan Carr could do to his company. But again, it's like you have the most power. You run freaking Disney.

And we saw how well it worked to give him $16 million. I mean, all he did was just say, now I'm going to go after your other, you know, your late night host. Yeah. It turns out he didn't stop with that. Surprise. I mean, what a surprise that is. A couple of updates as we wait for a word on whether Kimmel is going to come back to the year and what's going to happen to his show.

We got a big update from Cousin Sal on the Bill Simmons podcast. Mm-hmm. They were going to talk about the chiefs and the Giants. and then there was going to be a little sliver of news. Sal says, I wish I could say anything. There are a couple of bombshells still there. I'm feeling good. We're going to be all right.

Everything's going to be just fine. Can I tell you how much I smiled when that got aggregated this morning? In the Oval Office on Friday, David, Donald Trump wanted to explain his thinking about Jimmy Kimmel and the networks with some next-gen stats. I'm a very strong person for free speech. at the same time when you have networks that where I won an election like in counties, I guess it's 2,600 to 525. That's called landslide times two when you have that level of popularity or voter support

as I did in the last election. And yet 97 and 94 percent, different numbers. You see different numbers with different stats. but 97, 94, 95, 96% of the people are against me in the sense of the newscasts are against me. The stories are 90, they said 97% bad. So they gave me 97. They'll take a great story and they'll make it bad. See, I think that's really illegal personally.

That was 97% incoherent. be honest did you think he was going landslide on steroids there 100% thought that was going to be a landslide on steroids also does that that's illegal to me is that what he's was that the line sorry what was the closing that's

that's illegal in my opinion yes I think it was almost like he was again I don't know if Donald Trump is somebody who's hedging just to just to stay clear of you know the media minders here but it felt like it was like well that's illegal but I'm not to say this I'm just saying that personally not

Yeah, that's like illegal. That's illegal in my book. That's not actually, I'm not actually saying that's illegal. Part of what makes this story so amazing is just how out there it is. Donald Trump has benefited from this before. That, oh, wait, he's just saying it in the Oval Office. Oh, wait. Brendan Carr just went on a podcast and said,

Easyware the hard way. Yeah. at that same thought when I was reading this MSNBC I think we're still calling it that for the time being MSNBC story by MSN now MIS now story by Carol Leonegan Ken Delanian that was about Tom Homan the board's on did you see this?

Yep that the undercover FBI agents had heard that Homan was saying he would quote facilitate securing contracts for them in exchange for money once he was in office Yeah. They had a hidden camera with Holman in Texas

accepting $50,000 in bills. That's just on camera somewhere? Now, if this were a pulp novel or a Con Brothers movie, where would that meeting have gone down? In Texas. Yeah. Oh.

I mean, you know, a country and Western, a line dancing bar is a pretty good one. Maybe a sort of like small town small town bar of some sort but it definitely has to have like a line dancing or bull writing component to it.

Is this during the day before the line dancers show up so it's like a quiet bar and you see the dance floor and the still mechanical bull in the background? Yeah, maybe they're playing the same song over and over again to like, you know, get the sound system working for the night but it also just sort of amps up the atmosphere

and just the anxiety of the scene. Yeah, no, I don't know. Where else would you have this sort of meeting? Out of the way Tex-Mex restaurant. Out of the way Tex-Mex restaurant's good. Maybe like the top row of a high school football field. You know, the top row, the bleachers, nobody else is there. It's just the two of you having like a little deep throat meeting at the top,

on the top row. Yeah, there's a lot of good options in Texas, you know. It depends on, is this being made by Texans or people that just have cool ideas about Texas from the outside? That's what gets to do that high school football stadium. Did you know the word jawboning before last week? Not in this context. I can't say that I did. Barry Weiss, it was one of the first people to put this out there in the free press.

What's known as jawboning when state actors use threats to inappropriately compel private action. That was a new one for me. So I will grant that only in journalism status, but it was not in my pantheon, as it were. No. Dave Weigel made a good point about media consolidation. We're in a world, David, where big companies own more and more, slightly less big companies.

Yeah. Thought about this with David Ellison, who just bought Paramount. Yeah, absolutely. CBS News. Mm-hmm. And I want to buy Warner Brothers Discovery, right? Slash CNN. Yeah.

So imagine if the aforementioned Barry Weiss is some kind of spiritual advisor for multiple news networks. Yeah. And, you know, people talk about what are the Democrats going to do when they finally get back in power, if they get back in power? Mm-hmm. Well, one way to think about it is that they get their revenge and, you know, go after some conservative they don't like who's using the public airwaves. But another version of this is the Democrats look at media consolidation. Because talk about the FCC. When we talk about mergers, they can play that game too.

A couple of things I wanted to knock down about this story. Okay. One is when you hear people talking about Kimmel, just like they talked about with CBS and Stephen Colbert, you hear, well, you know, late night is a business in decline. Oh, yeah. wasn't this just an excuse to get rid of Jimmy Kimmel get out from under his contract because they want to abandon these old style expensive late night shows?

I can't imagine a less artful excuse to do that. I mean, it's like just firing him and saying we don't, like he's worthless, would have gotten them less bad press than the way than doing it this way. And doing it right now? Yeah. Remember the fig leaf with Stephen Colbert? And I was even a lot of our journalist friends who are very insistent on, you know, having causation and and having something obvious not imputing motives to anybody. Well, you know, I mean, CBS, you know, he was being paid a lot of money and the show was losing money and all this kind of stuff.

Like, guys, really are you doing this right now? Yeah. When Paramount has this big merger that they want to get okayed. And Donald Trump is talking about these people. on true social? Yes. That is just, but this time you don't even, there's no fake leave. It all happened.

Yeah. Chris Hayes put this out. If it is such an obvious business decision, why did the chair of the FCC feel the need to tell Disney we can do this the hard way or we can do this the easy way? Yeah. The other one that's worth knocking down. The late night shows have gotten so liberal. J.D. Vance, who is the.

vice president, tweeted this of Jimmy Kimmel. There was a point where I'd watch his show nearly every night. Mm-hmm. He's a genuinely talented guy, but like so much good and funny in the world, the woke thing destroyed it. First question. Was J.D. Vance watching Jimmy Kimmel Live or the band show? Yeah.

I mean, there was a point where he was tweeting that his boss, Donald Trump, was, you know, not dissimilar from Hitler. So I'm not sure that you could point, you look at something J.D. Vance says and says, no, no, no, the late night landscape has changed. Jimmy Kimmel's politics has changed. No, I mean, J.D. Vance's politics has changed, like, on the public record. It's not that perplexing. What if he was watching Benstein's money? How many half hours of our lives in college? Maybe he's just a big, like, celebrity millionaire fan or whatever. There's a point I was watching him every night. Then they change the lineup.

Here's Brendan Carr continuing his media tour with Sean Hannity. Look, President Trump ran directly at these legacy broadcast outlets, and he exposed them to these market forces. And a lot of these affiliate groups said, to your point, we're tired of carrying this stuff. Late night shows something's gone seriously awry there. They went from going for applause, from laugh lines to applause lines. They went from being court gestures that would make fun of everybody in power to being court. court clerics in enforcing a very narrow political ideology. I love the way he starts there.

The government exposed the company to market forces. Feel free to untangle that one. But you do hear this from conservatives a lot. You know, there was a day where they just made fun of everybody equally. Yeah. And, you know, whenever there's an argument about this, the non-Trump person is the person that changed. I know.

it's never Donald Trump. I mean, even Donald Trump's supporters, you know, he's a historic president. We've never seen anything like this in the history of the United States. But in response to that, everyone else should do exactly what they were doing before. Jimmy Kimmel should be like Johnny Carson making fun of Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan. That's exactly what should happen with this world historical president. Yeah. But it's always.

And then this idea that. you know, all these media companies, a network television, your newspaper, the wokeness was what really destroyed them. That's why the ratings went down. That's just such a hilarious old story. It's so ridiculous. That's the reason. I mean, our entire lives, David, have been about the decline of network television. Yes. There was cable. There were VCRs. There was the internet. There was streaming. God knows what does now. Oh, but see, it was the wokeness was the thing that ended the three network universe, not all these other technological factors.

So, so ridiculous. And of course, the funny part about this is Donald Trump, according to his own posts, also wants Jimmy Fallon out of NBC. I couldn't tell if he was confusing the Jimmy's as so many people are wanting to do, or if he was really saying Jimmy Fallon's got to go. Well, I'll read you the quote here. That leaves Jimmy and Seth two toes. losers on fake news NBC.

So Jimmy Kimmel noted liberal not shy about speaking up about things. He's out, but Jimmy Fallon, the most milk toast guy on earth, the guy who truly is trying to do it like they did it in 1978. He's also on the list.

Yeah. So it's not just that the shows and the networks got to liberal. No. Jimmy Fallon's probably ask himself, what did I do wrong? Why did I get sucked into this? Yeah.

I was laying up night after night. Doing game show shit on the tonight show. I got sucked into this. I'm not funny. Why are you blaming me? Last thing I wanted to run by you. Okay. I did see people, even people that were standing up for Kimmel.

Mm-hmm. get a little fuzzy with their terms here. Oh, go on. This is Dan Pfeiffer of Pod Save America. I'm quoting here. The amount of cowardice being shown by the corporate media is galling. If the press won't fight for the First Amendment, who will? Mm-hmm.

Now, I was with you on the first half of that tweet, but what did the press specifically do wrong? Or generally. This is SE Cup from CNN. I never imagined the press media comes. companies, free speech arbiters like news networks would help in the project, talking about the Trump project. Mm-hmm. This brings me, David, to the Brian Curtis rule of media criticism.

Go ahead. We like to codify or recodify rules here on the press box. The Brian Curtis rule of media criticism states, anyone criticizing the quote, unquote, media, is undefeated. if you want to be mad at Bob Iger if you want to be mad at Disney if you want to be mad at people that own the network

be mad David and I are mad if you want to be mad at the media generally the press generally everyone who works in this industry whether they host a media podcast or a late night talk show you're just speaking in gibberish. Yeah.

I never imagine the press would help Donald Trump. What do we do wrong? I'm sorry, what? Yep. And I usually get this rule out there because people will say like, the media isn't doing XYZ. You know, they're not asking the right questions. They're not reporting on Trump.

And I'm always like, just please be specific. Mm-hmm. Because if you criticize somebody, then that person can answer back, or we can at least look at what they've written and said and judge whether you're right or not. If you just criticize the media, there's just no answer to that question. No. No, it's a freebie. Anyone criticizing the media is undefeated. In other media suppression news, David, we've got new rules for covering the Pentagon. Oh, yeah.

This story was broken by Scott Nover over at the Washington Post, who's been doing some great, work since leaving slate. A memo went out to those covering the Department of Defense, or maybe it's the Department of War now. The memo was printed in full, by the way, and it's really funny because you can read about where to park and reminders about wearing your badge when you're inside Pentagon. But then it says, information must be approved for public release by an appropriate authorizing official before it is released, even if it is unclassified.

classified. Now, if you don't get that approval for your reporting for the release of information, you could lose your credentials. Yeah. So if you see something, if you overhear something, if you're just told something, that's not specifically off the record. It's still off the record? Well, yeah, I mean, off the record would kind of, yeah, I mean, that feels all too to journalism made for this. This is just don't release. Don't release. Don't play. unless we say it's okay. Yep.

What story do you think prompted that? Was it all the stories about Pete Hegssus bumbling? Was it that New York Times front pager about SEAL Team 6 in North Korea earlier this month? Yeah. Yeah, the SEAL Team 6 one was a good story. I mean, it's a, yeah, I think the Hegseth one is, though, is the really pertinent one. I think that any time, again, anytime reporting that they don't like comes out, they're going to be able to sue, fine, jail, whatever journalists it is that put it out there.

Send a memo? Yeah. Revoke credentials? I think revoking credentials is the tip of the iceberg, but yeah. There's also stuff about how reporters can go fewer places inside the Pentagon now, which is another great old strategy, which includes not only the government, but football teams. Sports writer, you can't walk in there. You might find some news. Yeah. Let's do a little podcast cleanse here.

and do some football audio, David. Yes, thank you. Strikes me that this feature needs a name. Football audio is like the cultures and industries of the Pacific region. You have a name for our weekly football audio feature. Please write me, brian.com. You could win a press box button designed by David. Game Day, David, in Miami.

Did you see the Pat McAfee Swan dive? I guess it was a pencil. pencil dive, is that what we're calling this, where you put your arms to your sides? Yeah. He climbs this high dive and please note that I'm using the very specific terms here, an Olympic style high dive. He takes off all his clothes down to his speedo briefs and then he dives at the end of the show to show that he's picking correctly the Miami Hurricanes to beat Florida.

Took a congratulatory call from Lee Corso after it was over. I mean, that was really the passing of the torch moment, wasn't it? Yeah, for sure. We said goodbye to Corsa three weeks ago, but Pat McAfee climbing up the diving board. That was it. In other football news, I love it when an announcer has a note, usually scribbled out on their board. They hold these big boards when they're calling in with all the numbers.

Well, Gus Johnson was calling Utah, Texas Tech. crowd in Salt Lake City was going wild Listen to how specific Gus Johnson got here The 18th loudest stadium According to USA Today What an amazing boast What a bizarre factoid

A bizarre thing to know But also just yeah Just incredibly The 18th Couldn't you say USA Today? Yes USA Today Who were looking to Couldn't you find like a like a, you know, unpaid Forbes.com blogger who would tell you it's in the top five?

I think somebody on Twitter pointed this out. Maybe just say one of the loudest stadiums in college football. Yeah. Yeah. My brother-in-law was recently, he has a pizza shop in New Orleans. And they recently won this like giant pizza award. But I think they were, I think they were the number. number 11 pizza shop in the country, which is, you've been there.

You know how good it is. It's so good. Saint pizza is the name, by the way. But I told him, I was like, yeah, it's too bad. You didn't get, you know, if you got one slot higher, you could say one of the 10 best pizza places in the country, right? Number 11, you're just outside that. And then I was like, you know, what's even funnier if you just put up a big sign that said

one of the 11 best pizza places in the country? Just own it. Yeah, it just owned it. But yeah, whatever, 18th. This is one of the 18. It's not the 18th loudest. It's just one of the 18 loudest stadiums in the country. There you go.

It's really funny. And then I looked it up on USA Today and it turns out that measure doesn't exactly exist. There was some EA sports rankings about toughest stadiums to play in. And USA Today went and looked up the records and found out that Utah had the highest, the 18th highest home winning percentage since 2004, which is even. less quotable, but I believe that's what Gus Johnson was trying to... So it's like the 18th

hardest place to play. That's way more impressive than loud. It is. Also, one of the toughest places to win a game in college football. Probably would have done the trick. OU, Auburn, Saturday. ESPN cuts away to show

a wrestler walking backstage. But now wait. Am I saying? Yeah, you know, wrestlers walking. You know, This is a lapsed wrestling fan. Wrestlers walking is one of the most impressive things they do. That's like the standard shot of there's a wrestler walking. He could be walking to the ring.

He could just be entering the building and walking for another hour and a half. Yeah. But they cut away. And of course, when they came back to Sean McDonough, he had no notes about CM Punk walking backstage. That made me laugh so much. ESPN now in the wrestling business. And then a fun one Friday night, David, Tulsa beat Oklahoma State. This game was mostly talked about as the end of the Mike Gundy era in Stillwater.

But Tulsa's coach had a very fun clip with ESPN's Paul Carcatera. 1551 was the last time Tulsa beat Oklahoma State in Stillwater. This could win here. Why? Yeah, we got a good group, man. We got a lot of fight. They've worked hard in a weight room. We're tired of being a little brother, man.

Tulsa football's back. We're not going to be on the third page of the paper anymore. That was a statement win for us. Thank you, Coach. Yeah, appreciate you guys. Third page of the paper. Is that the third page of the sports section? Or the third page?

They went on the front page of the whole paper. I don't have the Oklahoma in front of me or the Tulsa World. I'm thinking they were on the front of the Tulsa World, don't you think? At least the front of the sports section? I would think so. Yeah. I love that, though. Third page of the paper.

because you think just in historic terms, Oklahoma, Oklahoma State, Tulsa. Third page of the paper. On the NFL beat, Sunday, CBS was celebrating the old school NFL today. Brent Musburger

just got honored by the Hall of Fame. They brought Brent back. And then if you, Lance at the Google Doc here, David, everyone else was dressed in 70s gear because the modern version of the NFL today hosted by Brent started in 1975. Yeah. Funny story about this. I was looking through my old sports announcer books, Irv Cross.

Former Eagle and Ram was part of that original cast. And Earth Cross wrote in his memoir that when CBS hired him, they took him to a clotheier and put a leisure. and put a leisure suit on him and a gold medallion. Yes. Cross said in the book, Shaft was a thing at the time and they saw him as this cool shaft-like character. And Irv Cross called, This is so bad.

It's so horrible. One of the most quietly awful moments in sports TV history. Irv Cross called the people running the show and said, I will be on the NFL today, but I will wear a sports coat and tie, which is what I normally wear. And of course, wore that and everything. So very funny to see the tieless look on here. People perhaps nodding at a bit of history they did not know. Finally in the NFL, Rams Eagles are a hell of a fun game in the early slot on Sunday.

Rams are trying to winning a field goal when Eagles defensive tackle Jordan Davis, a very slim down Jordan Davis. got the block and the scoop and score. Take it away, Joe Davis. How many pounds does Jordan Davis have to lose before we don't go for the icing on one big cake analogy? Oh, God. That was a great call, and on the replay, the way you just played it,

I couldn't understand a word of it. At some point, it's just the beats. It's just the tone, the volume, the rhythm, You know, it just, the words hardly matter. 1,000%. All right, coming up in 30 seconds, David, or 97% as Trump might say. Can Andy Bashir use his southern accent to talk his way into the White House? But first, let's do the overword Twitter joke of the week where we celebrate a gag.

It was so obvious that all of media Twitter made it at exactly the same time. Send your nominees to at the Pressbox pod where they are always gratefully received. This week's winner, David, jokes about OSU's Mike Gepard. Gundy losing to Tulsa, the best of which was, I'm a man, Tulsa is about to hang 40. If you're sad, you're not going to hear a sequel to that speech or at least another sequel. Congrats. You made the overworked Twitter joke of the week. And thanks to Beat writer extraordinaire Ben Roya for bringing that Trey Lamb clip to our attention.

All right, in the notebook dump, David, we have a new feature here at the press box. They're running. Mm-hmm. This starts with the idea that every Democrat is running for president right now. Maybe not every Democrat. I'm not sure there's any Democrat that would say no to the call if they got it. But yeah. Didn't you see an AOC president or something else, 2028 story?

Was that Alex Thompson and Axios last week? Oh, yeah. I mean, she's running. I don't think that's at all. I don't think that's very much to object to there. Yeah. Andy Bashir, the governor of Kentucky really seems like he's running. This is a story from Adam Sexton from WMUR up there in New Hampshire.

Bashir will visit the Granite State. God, it's, you know, it's politics time when we started in the word of Granite State. On October 7th, holding multiple events to help Democrats at the municipal and state levels. So this is the fun part. I'm not in New Hampshire because it's important in a Democratic primary. I just want to help local Democrats in any way I can. A source close to the governor said Bashir will start his day in Concord, dot, dot, dot, and we'll end it with a brownies with Bashir event. You also know it's politics time when you have events with names like that.

Sexton writes, while the governor is already facing questions about his intentions for the next presidential election cycle, the source said his political focus remains on the midterm elections and his work heading up the. Democratic Governors Association. I mean, in New Hampshire, aren't you just a little bit? If you're a local politician and someone from another state volunteers to come help out, help with fundraising and whatever else planning, would you be a little disappointed if they weren't running for president? I mean, no way, like, that's part of the deal. You're retracting these future stars, right?

Or maybe sometimes current stars. Like, I'm a big Bashir fan. I don't get to hang out with that many people from Kentucky at this point in my life anymore. So then there's one on the national stage. I just sort of glum on to them. I think he's a good politician. I think he's got a bright future in politics. I think he's done great stuff for the state of Kentucky.

This is where I'm obligated to say, you know, these red state Democrat governors or even purple state Democrat governors. are very, you know, mainstream political talking head, horse-racy candidates, not actual real liberal candidates. And there's a lot of the base that would rightly reject him if his politics didn't bend a little bit on the way up, although who knows? Who knows? In the post-Trump era, maybe there'll be more of a return for, you know, presidential candidates of the sort of. a Clintonian middle of the road spiritually left wing variety. Who knows? Spiritualally left wing.

I love that. But there is something about Bashir that just feels like a candidate out of central casting. It feels like more of a consensus choice than a movement even before the thing is started. And I don't think that will,

I don't think, that will result in a huge success for him in primary season. I think every candidate has to feel like a movement now. Almost every candidate has to, I mean, he does have the kind of little-known governor, relatively not well-known governor, thing going for him so he can feel like he's your,

that you've discovered him, that every potential voter has discovered him on their own. But doesn't he just feel a little bit like, like central casting? Not like he's cast in a movie, like he's being cast to be a governor who's going to run for president. Like it just feels a little bit on the nose, something about it. I completely agree.

I remember sitting at the DNC last year and he came out to talk and I was excited. Largely for, you know, future reasons at that point. I know it would be 2028 because we were still thinking about the Kamala Harris presidency to name someone who's got a book out this week. I just remember being really underwhelmed by the speech. It was boring. the delivery was boring. So there's a degree here to which he's sort of,

I don't know if he's being deliberately boring, but there is a very deliberate boredom to some of his policy choices, right? He needs to be the tough on crime liberal. He needs to be, he straddles the fence so much. And he needs it. And he does a lot of very liberal, he's had a lot of very liberal political stances that he's got to kind of sell to a Republican, to Republican voters in his state.

So in his response has largely been to sort of, I mean, he's been raw, raw about his own shit when it's, you know, when it, when it's, when it's warranted. But he just feels like it's like he's decided to be like a little bit to be a little bit low key. A little bit like, you know, I'm not all talk is sort of the gimmick. But I, but go on. Because there is, I know what you mean about the, about being bored. Also, what was notable is that he was wearing a suit without a tie during that speech. I know I'm being the worst of every political observer here, so let me just get it all out of my system. But like, that was really strange to me, saying the, I have the suit buttoned at the lectern, but I'm not wearing a tie, which just felt like I was trying to communicate regular guy vibes in some way. Yeah, well, you know, he doesn't have a beard, so he's got to do that.

Listen, I have no problem with that. Chris Murphy is the one who's running with a beard, right? Yeah, well, there's going to be a lot of beards in the prime, well, or a lot of freshly shaved. and off beards, you know, when the primary season really hits. Yeah, yeah. Listen, I've had a beard. I often have about a week's worth of beard.

The half-ass beard isn't going to work. The JD Vance is not going to work in the Democrat Party. Well, to work for him so far. Not for I'm just saying on the liberal side, you either got to, you either got to be like the perpetual five o'clock shadow, or you got to, you got to, you got to be like the perpetual five o'clock shadow, or you got to. to go in all the way on the beard. And you can't have the... Jeremiah Johnson or get the hell out of here. Yeah, exactly.

Yeah, Jeremiah Johnson is a great... Yeah. RIP Robert Redford, by the way. That gift will live on forever. But yeah, no, no, you got... You get on something there, though, but somebody like Bashir, I always...

You and I always have said this now that we've been doing this together for a number of presidential cycles. People just have not heard these guys talk. Well, that was the... That was the Ron DeSantis thing, right? I mean, as soon as he started talking, people were like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Yeah.

I feel like this guy's been like, you know, I feel like I've been renting out a bedroom to him for the past nine months. In time how I've never heard him say a word, you know, it's crazy. He was especially off-putting. But sometimes your idea of a candidate is different than the actual candidate. Yeah, for sure. And also we're in political pundit season where people are sizing them up. can use the only in journalism term. Sure.

And not actually measuring them against, do people want these people, though they like these people, voters actually. But it's just, it's very funny to see somebody because Bashir feels like a very realized version of that. He's never run for president like Pete Buttigieg has to throw out another name. He's gotten elected in Kentucky, which as you say, requires a very specific set of political stances, or at least that's how he interprets that job. There is this mythical 1992, I,

of someone who can talk to people in the South and talk to Republicans. He checks those boxes as well. He does. And listen, it's not, it's mythical. I mean, it's, it has a lot less to do with a drawl and a lot more to do with having a compelling way to express a political message that should be very appealing to the vast majority of Trump voters in the South, right? But sure.

I'm not sure of Bashir has that as. as much as like Bernie Sanders has that, despite not being from anywhere near the south, you know? But yes, yes, he's got a lot of the, he checks a lot of boxes. And there is, I say it's from central casting, but not like in a TV show, but he is like if he's a guy, he's a TV show candidate, you know, it's like he's,

yeah, yeah, I think he's great though. I hope, I mean, I, I hope that, I hope, it's just, I just don't know that given his obviousness, Like just hanging out in New Hampshire a year early is really the look I would go for. What's he supposed to do this time of here? I don't know, man. Pass them laws. That's his, I mean, you and I are amateurs of this, but if he's going to win an early

primary, it's going to be a place like New Hampshire. Oh, yeah. A little more right-leaning, a little bit of a different Democratic electorate than some other places. Well, and frankly, probably a little like, you know. prone to vote for guys who seem like traditional great candidates because you want to be, you want your vote to mean something, right?

Yes. I forgot, I forgot that South Carolina's in the early, in the early rounds too now. So that's an obvious place for this year to do well in. Yeah, absolutely. No, no, no. He'll do, I mean, listen, he'll do well in South Carolina,

but I do think that there'll be a lot of, I think, I think there's going to be a lot of movement voters even in red states there too. I mean, I think that he'll, I think that obviously, Kentucky is not that far from South Carolina.

And there's a lot of similarities there. I've spent a lot of time in both places. But, you know, it'll be interesting. It'll be interesting. I don't know if Utah Governor Spencer Cox is running, but I noticed he did Stephen A. Smith's new serious politics show. Yeah. And Ezra Klein's podcast back to back.

Yeah. Which brought to mind, David, the. Sunday morning television term the full Ginsburg. Explain. It's named after Monica Lewinsky lawyer, William Ginsburg, who went on all the Sunday morning shows on every network. And there's a Wikipedia page for the full Ginsburg now that lists anyone who has completed one. And let me tell you something. There are some you do not remember, like Kathleen Sebelius and Janet Napolitano, 2009, talking about swine flu.

that was nobody is not citing that full Gensberg in the litany but it strikes me that we need a new term to describe the presidential hopeful or maybe hopeful who's going on every podcast

I think he is running by the way I don't know if this warrants a full segment on he's running or they're running sorry he's running he's running belongs to Dave Weigel they're running is our IP Big shout out to Dave Wego I think the first time I saw this is

I saw this news about Bashir was just a tweet from Dave that just said folks dot dot dot and then the story attached That's how I get my political news Yeah Yeah but I mean I think I mean this is At the risk of being canceled

I mean I think everything that's happened in Utah I'll just keep this vague over the past couple of weeks. If there's anybody that's come out politically better for it, it's him, right? I mean, it's like he's been a good leader, appropriately middle of the road. I'm sure, appropriately conservative as well. You know, I've seen a lot of complimentary stuff written about him. I'll just say that. A couple of quick things before we get out of here. You and I talked about inside the NBA the other day. Charles Barkley was on

Bill's show. Oh, yeah. We haven't even heard from ESPN about whether we're going to be able to go long. Well, Burke Magnus, ESPN's number two executive had a big interview with it. Who is at WW Russell Palooza on Saturday, on the front row? Yeah, on camera. Oh, my goodness.

Burke Magnus had a long interview with Richard Deich and seemed to say that inside the NBA would be on ESPN in its original Turner Sports form. When these guys are going, we're going to let them go. We have a few more complications in Turner with live events, but we also have more platforms and more networks to deal with. We want the same outcome as the headline here. The equivalent would be if we acquired college game day and then said, you know what? We think two hours is better than three. None of that is going to happen. Yeah. So that's good news. Do you believe it? For all of us fans of inside

the NBA? I think so. I just don't, I don't think you buy it and then just change it. Like, what's the point. I don't think you buy it and you just change it. I do think that you buy it intend not to change it. And then when it actually comes time to push record, you're just like, wait, we're only doing half the commercial breaks we could do right now. Maybe they'll have to do the commercials. That's a good point. You could be long and not as podcasty. Yeah, I mean, it's all good and well to say we're not changing a thing, but like there's other people making these decisions too. I guess no, but not a lot of people much higher on the totem pole than Bert Magnus though. Front row, a Russell Paloza.

It's crazy. He's in charge of what's going on. You've got a lot of notes from readers, as we always do. I always appreciate these. This is from Jordan Tomiama, who referenced you and I talking about replay reviews and how we could hear that ACC replay review of Georgia Tech the other day in Clemson, what was going on, how the ref was talking to the control center there at the ACC. Jordan writes,

In Fiba and Eurohoops, they always let you listen to the refs when they go to the video review. It's really cool to hear them talk through decisions and if they'll change the call. So this is already happening in Europe and damn it needs to be a full-time thing here in the United States.

Sliding Doors metaphors, David. We haven't done one of these in a while. This is when people reference a book or a movie like Sliding Doors but may never have actually watched or read the thing they're referencing? Sure. Who has, really?

Who has time for all that? Chet Tegedis, excuse me, writes, don't know if you guys are still doing sliding doors words, but the writings on the wall, I hope would qualify. Did we have the writings on the wall in our original suite?

I don't think so. What is that from? I'll look this up. You'll have to confirm this. The Book of Daniel? Wow, wow. I mean, like the biblical and even like the myth,

the logical ones are kind of in their own category, but, uh, so Wikipedia says an idiom that suggests a portent of doom or misfortune based on the story of Belchazar's feast. I say that right?

Oh, Balshizer, yeah. I mean, you know, no one knows how to say this shit, but yeah. The writing's on the wall. That's a new one for me.

Thank you to chat for that one. Who's got a press box button, uh, coming. Another tortured acronym, David. Okay. This is part of our Hayes challenge. Horrible acronyms you encounter, sucka.

Named for the former MSNBC now MS now host. This comes to us from Mike Bliley. I've got a submission for the ill-advised acronyms wing of the Hayes Hall of Fame. I'm an alumnus of the law school at George Mason University. Yeah. In 2016, I was only a few weeks away from graduating when the law school announced. it would be changing its name to honor the late justice Antonin Scalia. This rebranding would have no doubt drawn some criticism even if executed flawlessly.

But they somehow decided on the Antonin Scalia School of Law without realizing it shortens to, yes, ass law. Even keeping the O for School of Law offers little relief as you could just label members of the school as ass law as ass. souls. Yes. Even more confoundingly, they announced this change on the worst day of the year to do so, April 1st. This left much of the student body questioning and frankly hoping that it might be an elaborate April Fool's joke. Oh my God. Better or worse, ass law was short-lived after some justified backlash.

The university pivoted to Scalia's law school a few days later. Excuse me. Hey. instead of just going with the Scalia School of Law it's Scalia's Law doesn't Scalia's law school sound like a late 80s sitcom yes it does

with him walking in the door and slamming it with a suit on Scalia's Law School is that like at a it sounds like at a strip mall somewhere it really does it really sounds like a place you call it 800 number to enroll in than taking the L-Sat.

All right, it is time for a feature that requires no standardized test. It's time for David Schumaker guesses, the strain pun headline. Yeah. Last Monday's headline about cheesemakers gutting out the Trump tariffs was where there's a will, there's a way. That's so good. Today's headline comes to us from alert listener Jeff Ditzler. It's from the Wall Street Journal, Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris, David.

You'll remember there was a big fire there six years ago Oh yeah, of course Well, the towers of Notre Dame reopened to the public Over the weekend Oh, cool The cathedral is back What was the Wall Street Journal's Strained Pun headline?

Is it a hunchback thing? That is definitely the pun we're playing with here The hunch Hunch back We're reopening Yeah, Hunchback again, hunchback and better than ever? No, it's, you're going to want to stick with hunchback of Notre Dame and just tweak that first word up a little bit.

You don't like hunchback and better than ever? You like I switch to Notre Dame when I stopped talking about football because that shows you what that sophisticated person I am. A hunch, uh, hunchback of Notre Dame. hunch, uh, um, it's, it's in good shape now. It's, it is open to the public. It's the, not the hunchback. No, I know. Dunch, cunch, punch, punch. Don't call it a... Oh, the comeback of Notre Dame.

That's great. Notre Dame, you say? Notre Dame, sorry. Oh, sorry. Sir, this is a media podcast. He is David Shoemaker. I'm Brian Curtis. Prodictive Magic by Kyle Williams.

Thank you, Kyle. Back with Joel on Thursday and a very special guest. We hope we won't jinx it by saying it. Shoemaker, you and I are back Monday with more lukewarm takes about the media. See you then, David.