The Press Box - Here Comes the Democrats’ Blue Wave. Plus, the New Dennis Miller ‘Monday Night Football’ Doc!

Episode Date: September 28, 2026

Today on The Press Box, Bryan and Joel get into a wild weekend in college football, from Texas-Tennessee and Steve Sarkisian spilling the beans on what happens to coaches’ headsets when President Trump moves around the stadium, to the scary Dante Moore injury and Desman Stephens's fallout at USC. They also get into the latest on the increasingly hard to ignore Democratic blue wave, with the midterms now just 36 days away, and ask the question hanging over all of it: Are we actually seeing a wave, or are we falling for this again (17:26)? Plus, Dennis Miller’s strange and fascinating run on 'Monday Night Football' (43:53). Hosts: Bryan Curtis and Joel Anderson Producers: Devon Renaldo and Jon Jones Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Welcome to Pressbox Monday. Brian Curtis, Joel Anderson. We got producers, John Jones and Devin Ronaldo, who's sitting in for Isaiah. Joel, how was your weekend? Man, it felt like it was anending. I started it Friday night, hanging out with Van Lathen in the city of Baltimore. I saw some pictures on Twitter, and I was very intrigued. Yeah, so, you know, Van was the moderator for a book.

Colin Caput at Bookstop event in Baltimore. So he was there. We got to meet the mayor of Baltimore. There's a former NBA point guard who was there. Then I'm not really supposed to mention who was there. So, yeah, that was interesting night. Saturday, football all day. And then Sunday, I was out all day.

I had my kids out. We were on a field trip. I've been basically like a field trip. We were gone all day long. So it was nice. It was a lovely weekend. What about you? Well, Saturday was one of the best college football days

wire to wire that I can remember. Wow. Okay. Best. All the way down to the Cal Bells in Starkville with Mississippi State beating Missouri at the end of the night. I just, I had a full college football day, and then we got to Sunday,

and Cowboys Ravens and then Rams Broncos were both great games and truly wacky NFL games. That's true. That's true. That's true. Now, I did check in with you on Sunday, and you sent me a picture of you with your kids, and I was like, are you guys at a food court? Yeah, yeah.

We were hanging out. So, yeah, I mean, we did everything. We went to the National Building Museum that day. We went and got pizza at this great pizza place in Hyattesville that has like a playground outside. And so then we went and got snacks. I was trying to get my daughter to go to sleep. Like, that's the big thing, like, just trying to get my little two-year-old to go to

sleep. And finally, when we put her in the stroller at the mall, she fell asleep. And so then me and my son went and got Panned Express. So that's what you called us on. Because you were texting me about something that was happening in NFL action. And I was like, not unfortunately. That was one of the best days of my life. But we were not in front of the TV watching football.

It was such a picture of happy fatherhood. Yeah, man. Where your son sitting there eating and your daughter just sacked out in the stroller. Yeah, man. That's what fatherhood looks like. It was so cool. Yeah, I had a great time. And like you said, Saturday was amazing, man.

I mean, we have had, this is the best start to a football season that I can remember. It truly is. I mean, what we need is congressional legislation to fix college football. Got to put it into all that. We've got to bring the house back in session. Yes. We could get this bill passed. A few of Brian's TV notes before we jump into the main event today.

First game of the day, first big game of the day was Texas versus Tennessee in Knoxville. Yeah, man. The Longhorns won. Texas is absolutely back, folks. Okay. Four and oh. Hey, do you wish you could have been like that's, I mean, just imagine we told you 20 years ago

that Texas would be playing a conference game in Knoxville at Nealostadium. Wouldn't you want to be a part of that? Wouldn't you want to go see that? Absolutely. That they'd be playing Tennessee at all. The team we found out this week, they haven't played since the 60s. Yeah, man.

These are the kind of helmet games we're getting in college football now. with the new conferences? I have to admit, as a big 12 partisan, I imagine for UT fans, that's a lot more fun than having to go to Manhattan, Kansas. No offense to Manhattan, Kansas. Truly. And Ames, Iowa.

Also, no offense to Ames. And I've actually been there in that case. I've heard it's left. Donald Trump went to Knoxville to go to this game. Oh, man. And early on, we got a sideline report from Laura Rutledge, who talked about one of the craziest stories this week, which is that when Donald Trump goes

to a football game. Secret Service security mandates that anytime he moves around a stadium, you have to cut off radio communications. And this includes communications in the coach's headsets, or at least it did during the Miami-Indiana National Championship game. What's interesting about this is that it wasn't Kurt Signetti, Amario Cristobal, who broke this news. It was Steve Sarkisian.

The Texas coach, who just blurts it out at a press conference on Thursday. And you saw Pete Tham and all the writers be like, whoa, what? Yeah. And they went and got it confirmed. And it was real. So when you have the president at a game, you may not be able to talk to your quarterback on the headset. How is it that we're just now finding out about this? No, no.

That's crazy. It was a huge story. So Laura Relage gives this report on the sideline. She's talking about some of the measures they have taken to make sure that when Trump moves around the stadium, they will still be able to communicate. Well, at that moment, the moment she makes this very good and very complete report on the sideline,

Kirk Herb Street's mic in the booth goes completely to hell. Wow. Yes. That's right. I mean, completely to hell. And it's not that we couldn't hear Herbie. It's that every time he spoke, it was just terrible static. For like the next 10 minutes,

and they could not get it fixed. And eventually Fowler was like, hey, just scribble stuff on note cards because you really can't talk because nobody can understand the broadcast when you're speaking. Crazy. Is that what the weirdest coincidences you have ever? I mean, man, you know, this year we're really getting a glimpse at how vulnerable all this stuff is, you know, from the lightning storms to the power going out in Tallahassee.

What a weird for game date management. And I was complimenting Bill Binell's ABC crew a few weeks ago. And they do do a terrific job. But guys, the stuff has got to work. The hardware has got to work. It's as simple as that. Remember a couple of years ago, Fox was doing the Super Bowl. I think this was Tom Brady's first Super Bowl.

And one of the generators that powers their trucks exploded during the game. Wow. You didn't notice because it didn't matter. Stuff's got to work. It's just the thing. This is live television. It exploded. I never heard that.

It exploded. Note number two, USC Oregon. Big game later on Saturday. A must win for USC, which means that USC definitely lost. That's right. The moment everyone will remember

his Oregon quarterback, Dante Moore, was scrambling. He slides, and a USC defender named Desmond Stevens took his head off. Yeah. And immediately we saw his arms go out in what we now understand

to be the fencing posture. Truly, truly scary moment in the game. They have to stop. Everybody just is standing around in that horrible way when somebody's really injured, which I'm sure hits you in a different way that it hits me. And then we get this shot from NBC. At this point, Dante Moore had been loaded on to a cart

and then he'd been put into an ambulance. And NBC has a shot. It was real low, so I'm thinking it's a low end zone. camera, it shows the Oregon offense walking up to the line of scrimmage to start the next play. And in the background, we can see the ambulance driving out of the Coliseum. That is some haunting 1970s NFL films style television right there. I don't think people understand how haunting it is after something like that happens. Even when I was at TCU, my first spring scrimmage, a guy was a safety on like the second play.

His, like, he had a compound fracture in his lower leg. Like his leg was this way, then one was going this way. We could see it from the sideline. And it was just like, I remember thinking, how are we going to play? How are we going to play again? Like, that was horrible. He was screaming and agony. And then he went into shock.

And I was, how are we going to, so it's just the fact that they were able to move on, because that was a notably nasty hit. Like, people texted me, they were like, oh, man, I think Dante Moore is dead. Like, and they weren't playing. You know what I mean? They were not. Yeah. It was that kind of hit. Yeah.

And just thinking about that shot, you know, on the one hand, it's really capturing the moment, right? Because here's this guy driving off. But also, it really shows the barbaric nature of football and how gruesome, to your point, that phrase, next man up is. Like here's the quarterback being taken away from the Coliseum in an ambulance. And meanwhile, here's the offense. All right, first down. We're stepping up. We are playing football again.

Yeah, man. Huddling up again. Like, yeah, I mean, I think the orchids scored like two plays later. Like, they still had it enough together to do that. But yeah, it's the idea that they were able to do that under those circumstances. And, I mean, you know, I do wonder about like the temperature of the. fans as they watch stuff like that. Because you remember there was, I feel like a decade ago, there was more discussion

about people being turned off by the violence of football and everything. And I just feel like those kind of conversations are over. Like football won them. We collectively powered through. Yeah. I remember at the time when all the, when there was a new focus on brain injuries and CTE and it was like, am I going to ever be able to watch this game the same way again? You know what?

I did. I just kind of forgot about it. Well, actually, okay. It's been great because even the people have reached, you know, Tailgate has released some clips of us talking about it. And I've actually been kind of surprised at how many people are like, just some football, man. There's got, you know, there's just football play.

Bang, bang. I was like, okay. If you say so. Anyway, great work by Matt Marvin's crew on NBC, because that was a really, really great and haunting shot. Also, Chris Sims, we should mention, comes out at halftime. And it should watch what he said in full, because he did get around later to the USC players celebrating after the hit,

which was definitely part of the whole story during the game. But he starts with this idea that quarterbacks have to slide earlier and have to protect themselves. It's like, my guy, this guy just went off on an ambulance. We have no idea what his condition is. You're really going to, this is the corner you're going with, your halftime comment? It's just tough because Chris is really good at this. Also a former UT legend.

Absolutely. Former UT legend. At school when I was in school. Oh, you see, man. Yeah. If you talk, like, he's just really good and he's very, he's really opinionated about football in a way that not many people are in the industry, right? Like, a lot of people, they have, like, you know, generic. Form takes.

Who's going to win that kind of stuff? That's not what Chris Sims' deal is. Like, that's how he kind of came to notice. And so I'm not surprised that he did it and maybe totally lost his place out there. But I mean, I thought it was a policy. was good. And to be honest, it was a conversation that was happening concurrently, strangely enough. We talk about people getting used to football again. But that was a debate that was happening as Dante Moore was being driven to the hospital.

It was in the tailgate comments. Yeah. And I think if anything, he was probably trying to extend a moment of secular grace to that defender and saying, this is really hard, right? This is happening so quickly. You are trained to go out and kill the other guy, but only kill him in a certain way. not actually kill him. Yes. Anyway, and he did apologize, as you mentioned. Note number three, and a final note, J.J. Watt,

the new, if maybe temporary number one announcer over on CBS. Houston Strong, look at that, flex by Joel. Yeah. He and Jim Nantz were calling Cowboys Ravens in Rio. And let me tell you something. I know you were at the food court when this game was happening. Yeah. So much of what they were doing was like the first five pages of a lonely planet

guide. Rio involves dancing and Brazilian steakhouses. Did they show Christ the Redeemer? They did we definitely got Christ the Redeemer. It's like this is what I know about Rio from playing Carmen San Diego back of the day. So thank you for all these sharp cultural observations.

I got to sit with JJ Wat for three hours while the Cowboys found a way to blow that game. My thoughts on the big man with this. He's really sharp. he sees the field really well. We'd come back into a replay and he always had something to say before the replay even started.

One way you can tell a really good analyst from just an analyst is they're not just narrating the replay. They have a point to make that they've already seen on their screen. Yeah. The little replay they can see in the booth. So they're coming out and proactively,

here's what happened on that play. Let me explain something to you. I think if he has this job forever, he's probably going to be fine. Okay. I look at him and I see the rough materials of a potential number one guy. Oh, okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Like, if I'm a network executive, I'm David Burson, so the CBS guy's making this decision, I'd look at him and say, I can see a number one announcer there. I can see a star there. Also, he's not there yet. Well, that's what I was going to say, because you were building up to that,

and I was like, so you don't think he's quite of the number one caliber quite yet. I don't think he's as good as Tony Romo was in year two. This is squat second year in the booth. Okay. I don't think he's as good as Tony Romo is right now, even flawed Tony Romo. Okay. He's just not.

And the difference is he doesn't have Tony Romo's sense of television. Yeah. I swear to God, Tony Romo, the first moment he was in the boot, just understood how TV worked. Yeah. He had a presence. He knew how to do funny stuff, emotional stuff. He knew when there was a big moment of the game, you got to come in. and not only tell people what happened,

but emotionally underline it. All that stuff got so grating at the end. Ooh, Jim. Oh, my God, Jim, it's going to be Jim. It's a huge point, Jim. But that, to me, was his superpower. It's kind of his only power at the end when he wasn't, like, doing anything else.

But he really just understood how to narrate a game and take you like Chris Collinsworth does that so well, did that so well last night too. Right, just the emotional aspects of it. JJ Watt, very downbeat. He sounds like a, big galute in the best way, like an old Alex Karris-style lineman. Dan Deirdorf.

Dan Deirdorf, too. Dan was, Dan, I think, had a lot more bite than he does. But, you know, to me, like what he'll get better at is those emotional moments. When the game got exciting, he just started shouting, which is not the same as helping us understand where we are emotionally in the game. And that, to me, is a big difference between him and Romo right now. The interesting thing about this is that if I'm not a Texans fan. I'm a Houston fan.

And so you read about JJ White a lot. And I just remember one of the, it wasn't a criticism or a critique of JJ. But he's not even a critique. It was just a point of his personality is that he always seems to know the right thing to say. But sometimes it can just be a little bland.

And that was him just off mic. You know what I mean? Like that was JJ White's personality in some as a player there. And it sounds like kind of what's happening on screen. Right thing to say means dull to me.

Yeah. It doesn't mean like, you see Tom Brady how frustrated he was getting at Justin Herbert on Sunday? Yeah. He just threw the safety of meatball sub. Brady, you could always tell when he does not believe in a quarterback. It just, he gets frustrated and he comes through. We need some more of that. I don't, I don't say the right thing.

Say what you think. I don't think, see, that's tough because I feel like it's weird. JJ, even though he played a very brutal game and was, excellent at it, one of the best defensive players ever. He seems like a really gentle, nice guy. He's never seen mean or have a little cutting edge to him. And if you're a quarterback, you kind of got to have that because you've got to yell at people sometimes. You do.

And you just got to be a little bit more raw about it. There was this moment where Nance set him up to talk about Derek Henry. Here's two dudes who played against each other in the AFC South. J.J. Watt knows what it's like to try to tackle Derek Henry. Yeah. And he says, well, you know, what was that like? You must have had that experience. And what JJ said, I wrote this down, you have to try to get him in the backfield before he gets going.

I'm like, no, no, no, that's my norming no-nothing sports analysis. You dackled a dude. Come on now. You know something better than that. I could have told you that. Forget you. I could have told you. That's something I would like turn to a fellow dad and be like, listen to this insight.

You really got to tackle him before he gets going. Right. Oh, my God. All right, big story. Yeah. Our friends in the political media, Joel, have decided that there is a big, bright blue wave coming. Really? Hmm.

In November, in just 36 days. 36 days till the midterms. Can you believe that? Not at all. Do you feel like we're living in a world that's going to happen? I'm still skeptical. Like currently. I'm still skeptical.

But I do think if you look at. the world, again, the only reason should be dissuaded that there wouldn't be a blue wave or a wave of serious magnitude is because Trump defies expectations a lot. I think it's hard to calculate how much

2016 and 2024 made a lot of us think whatever we're seeing is not what's going to happen. Because Donald, old Donnie Trump will pull it out somehow. Yep. But if I told you like a warn of Ron that is,

and stalemate is the nicest word you could possibly use to describe it. I'm paying California prices at the pump right now. And I move to Maryland to do that. High gas prices, high diesel prices in the Midwest, a president parting with the Chinese premier in Elon Musk, a president seemingly going out of his way not to address what voters are actually concerned about.

A lot of 2020 energy where he felt like he would try to lose the election down the stretch. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Extremely flawed candidates. A few of them were about to talk about in a second. I don't know. Like, what is there other than Donald Trump? I just abracadabra. It would lead you to think that Democrats aren't going to win Bay.

I kind of feel like Americans like this. I feel like the only way it's happening is if we like it. Because I'll just want this to be happening. So I just, I feel like our, you know, in the absence of any real intervention, our default setting is like, well, we kind of like it when things suck a little bit. Suckin are in constant state of chaos. Yeah. It has certainly been the last 10 years of American life.

Here's some signs that Dems are actually going to win big that are beyond just the fields. They're leading by more than eight points in the generic congressional ballot, according to Nate Silver. Okay. Republican ad buys in places like Georgia and North Carolina show that they are all but conceding those states. Hmm. Still could change, but it certainly looks like that way. Yeah. Polls from places like Iowa and Kansas show that Josh Turek and Adam Hamilton,

Adam Hamilton, have a fighting chance to win Senate seats. That's, now, that's, that's interesting. I mean, once upon a time in our lives, those were competitive states. So, you know, that's interesting. Kansas, I believe the last time a Democrat won a Senate seat there, Google this in a second was 1960, so actually not in our lives. Not in a lifetime. Wow, really? But Democrats have been elected statewide in that period.

What the hell out of here? The to be sure paragraph is the one scary poll that came out of Maine for Democrats that had Susan Collins. Yeah. The survivor Susan Collins leading Troy Jackson by three points. That makes sense. The argument that people made for Grant Platner is that he somehow had managed to come in dear a lot of attention, not just in the state but nationally. Like however flawed he was,

he could command national stories. He had presents, all this other stuff. I've not heard about Troy Jackson in quite a while. I mean, obviously, I read stories about him in the New York Times had just done something on him, I guess, last week. But it wasn't, you know, again, kind of like JJ White. It wasn't a lot of static there, you know. Not a lot of heat.

Correction on Kansas. Democrats last one, a Senate raised in Kansas in 1932. What? What was the book? What's the matter with Kansas all about? I thought I'd never have read what it was about. Okay. All right.

Even Nate Silver says at times, it's literally been hard to find contrary data points to the hypothesis of a huge Democratic sweep. Wow. You know, Nate Silver has had a rough go of it since 2016. But. Fairly or unfairly? unfairly. Yeah, I agree.

I think because there's just been some unprecedented things around this, but he's largely been right, but he's not his own best defender. He had his issues of precipitation over the last decade, so I think that that hasn't helped him. So if this was 2015 and Nate Silver set this, I'd be like, well, shit, it suck. Democrats about to do it. But when you add in all this other stuff, which really doesn't have anything to do with his polling data, it makes you be like, I don't know, let's see, you know. Nate Silver is kind of the Danny Connell of poll watchers.

Oh, man. What a pull. He's not even in this to be like, he's going to tell the truth. This is crazy, too, because it's like, I know that they're trying. Even Danny Connell. He was trying. He's trying to some level. The other big thing we saw over the last week is Republicans breaking with Donald Trump.

Yeah. Now, that's a really normal thing to do when you belong to the party of an unpopular president. Democrats did it with Obama in the midterms in 2014. But in this case, it's different because it's breaking with Donald Trump. And we know how that goes for Republicans. But they are breaking with Donald Trump on the Iran war, even ICE. That's interesting. So, I mean, that's polling data. nationally in general, but not, because ICE is still really popular with Republicans, according to most polling data. But I'm surprised that they're breaking on, the Republicans are breaking with them on ice, given how popular it is among Republicans. Well, some of this is really localized. You have cattle feeders associations, livestock associations in the Midwest,

saying, hey, you're conducting ice raids on meatpacking plants, and that is raising the price of beef. locally. And the price of beef is already really, really high. So again, it comes back to prices, right? Ice, perhaps popular, but high prices. The biggest single drag on Donald Trump right now. I mean, Jemel Bowie, he came on here for 25 for 25 last year and said people, the business people that supported this, they had to be dummies. Like he said dummies. And it's just like, well, all of this was inevitable. Anyway, but I'm glad the reporters, you know what? I hope people are paying attention in reading the stuff because, you know,

it's all been there the whole time. Let's go through some of these Senate elections, state-by-state. Oh, right. As a reminder, the Democrats have to pick up four seats to take control the Senate, have a net gain of four seats. Yep. I want to start in Texas. It's been way too long since we did a Texas check-in.

Yeah, man. James Tallerico, the Democrat versus Ken Paxton the Republican. James Talariko has not trailed in a poll in the, the New York Times polling database since June. Republicans are coming to Paxton's rescue. They could spend as much as $200 million between now and Election Day, according to the New York Times. Joel, I ask you a question that you and I have answered no to repeatedly over the last few months.

Do you think James Talleyco can win a Senate election in Texas? No. Not yet. It's like Indiana football. I'm going to have to see you do it. I'm going to see you do it first before I sign on. What about you? Do you believe?

That's a really good analogy. I'm probably, if we're going with that, I'm with Indiana in the first round of the playoff right now. Okay. They've beaten Ohio State in the Big Ten championship game, and I increasingly believe. But if you said like, hey, Brian, Your life savings, you know, the happiness of your family.

You have to bet one way or the other. Yes. No, absolutely not. But I'm closer to yes that I've ever been. All right. Hey, man. Lucy's right there. We're Charlie Brown.

Let's see. We might kick it this time. We might kick it. There was this interesting story by Jay David Goodman in the Times today about Tala Rico's effort to attract black voters. Yep. He beat Jasmine Crockett in the primary. this has been a story, partly thanks to Crockett interviews.

What do you make of those efforts? We saw Tala Rico at the Prairie View A&M game for the weekend. I mean, I think, and I think the stories are showing this, and the polling is showing this, is that the black people who are inclined to vote in this election are going to vote for James Tala Rico, and Jasmine Crockett's primary loss isn't going to get into the way that. Now, I think one of the interesting things that people are talking about is the enthusiasm

for James Talleyco that like he's going to win his share of Democrat and black Democrat voters, but are they going to be able to show up. And people are tabbing that to like, you know, general enthusiasm for Tala RICO. I don't, I don't even know if that matters as much as like the fear of Senator Ken Paxton. But also one of the things that media just seems to forget when they talk about black voter turnout and enthusiasm is how difficult it is to vote in Texas. And if you read like the Brennan Center of Justice, like Texas has been at the forefront of trying to like fuck with things to make it difficult for people to vote. There was a, I'm sorry for cursing, Brian.

I didn't mean to do that. But do you remember, do you remember going back in March when the Republican chairs, and it was Dallas and Tarrant, they moved all the voting, you know, precincts around and stuff? like that and they caused all this chaos, which also affected the returns and the Crockett and Tala Rico primary. And I'm just like, y'all remember that? Like, just sometimes when people talk about black voters enthusiasm, I wish they would just be reminded that there are other hurdles in that.

And that's also worth, as we go into and we just assume this blue wave, I haven't seen a lot of people talking about the reality of us not having a voting rights act anymore. But there are structural barriers to enthusiasm, that's what you're saying. in this case from the Republican Party in Texas. Yeah, I mean, but also, man, this is funny because I know we get in trouble for talking about Jasmine Crockett, man. Did you see, did I send you this list of endorsements that she made for people in Texas, you know, people in Texas. It's a, I'm going to look it up right here. It is her new 2026 firepack Texas endorsements.

And she endorses the Houston Freedom Act and frontline candidates. and a bunch of, you know, Leticia Plummer and Harris County, the Harris County Judge, Michelle Williams and House District 127. Who is not, whose name is not on here? James Talariko's. Old Jimmy Telerico. If you wanted people to stop asking you questions about if you support the guy or like what your role is in this, you would, that's just a real easy thing to do, right? It's just on paper. It's strange because she endorsed him the day after the primary.

Right. She's moved further away. on the list. She's moved further away from the endorsement. And people got mad in our comments last time when we were like, she's playing games. This is a game she's playing right there. That is a game.

You said, okay, you said you endorsed him. You put out your list of endorsements. The name isn't there. So if people keep asking you about this, Representative Crockett, this is why? Because you're playing games. Absolutely. And it'd be so easy to say,

hey, I'm not going to go campaign for him, but I'm going to put them on the list to make sure. people know that I'm supporting his campaign. Brian, did we talk about this already, too? Before we move on real quick about it probably is real easy to see who she's supporting, right? Because as she said, I'm going to be supporting people down-ballot campaigning and all I got time for the Tala Rico thing. So far, what I've heard about, and this is probably the fault of media, but I know more about her bringing out Chris Brown at a concert recently. And I know that she was at CBC here for CBC Week.

So, again, I'm sure she's doing a lot of stuff out there, but I'm just like, somebody reporters, go find out, you know, if she's doing what she said she was doing. I love this quote from David Goodman's story about Tala Rican and Black voters. Goodman got the quote from someone, I call him unsweet tea. I called him hospital food. If I'm hungry, I'll eat it. You should put that on a flyer. Unsweet tea, man. When would you ever just have to drink tea that wasn't sweet?

I don't, I only drink on sweet tea. Sorry about that. No, a sweet tea guy. Wait, you don't drink sweet tea? No. Wow. Okay, I'm not saying you drink it all the time. No, but I never liked it.

It was always too sweet for me. Wow. Your Texas Bonifidex right here, bro. All right, here's some Texas bonafidez. Yeah. Beau French. Oh, man. Who we last saw with a racist tweet during a Texas football game.

He earned a new headline on CNN from an Andrew Kaczynski piece. Texas GOP candidates' extreme posts extend beyond racism. For some reason, that made me laugh because I'm like, well, the racism has been established. But actually, there's quite a bit of got. He's got some other stuff going on too. I'm like, what else could it be? Here it is. A k-file investigation has uncovered since removed posts from the past six years in which French

repeatedly advocated having public executions for political opponents. including former President Barack Obama. Anybody who has followed Bo French for the last two, three years, probably going back further, knew this stuff was going on. Like nobody in the party, nobody in media can't pretend that they didn't know. This is why he got popular by being racist. Like, the racism really helped elevate him to heights that we didn't even know that he could go. but somehow he got there.

Can you imagine if we wake up the morning after the election and James Talleyico and Bo French got elected to statewide offices in Texas? What are people going to say about Texas, man, if that happens? Oh, I have to say this. It's the new Texas, but wait, it's the old Texas, but even worse than you remember. I mean, right.

At the same time. Like, what are we supposed to, yeah, make of that? I mean, we are, you know, we're more purple that people give us credit for. I'm going to be in Texas for the midterms, by the, way. I am so excited about this. So you're going to do the Monday show. Yeah. The day before, you're going to do it from Austin. I think so, yeah, man. I'm going to do it from Austin and then be there, you know, the next day for the returns. And we'll see what happens, man. I'm trying to formulate

a plan right now. I'm excited for you. I'm jealous. If you feel a tap on your shoulder before we're about to record, that's me that I've just appeared down there without the invitation to join. You know, you should come. I really didn't want to. All right, so that's Texas. How about Michigan? Yeah. We haven't heard Asan Piker's name in a couple of weeks,

so that's probably a win for a BUSA. The only time I heard about him, I don't know if this made it to white Twitter, or the white side of media, but you know, Simone Sanders and Eugene. I haven't checked white Twitter. Yeah, see which white Twitter is talking about right now. It's Simone Sanders and Eugene.

They had Hassan Piker on their show Clocket on MS. now. And that generated some buzz because, you know, like basically Simone Sanders, and she said this to Van Lathen letter, was that she was basically taking him to task that if he wanted to be involved and all this. So it made some waves over there. But in

general, yeah, I guess he's been quiet otherwise. And I certainly haven't heard much about El Sayed now. He's ahead in the polls or most of the polls. Mike Rogers, his Republican opponent, now has a commercial up saying the Iran war needs to, quote, end quickly.

I bet Donald Trump thinks that shit end quickly too. You should maybe clarify the memes by which that would happen. Oh, of course. And Democrats keep hitting Republicans, including Ashley Hinson and Iowa, saying, you say it needs to end, but every time you get to vote, you don't vote for it to end. Right. So what is it? Kansas.

Yeah. 1932. Yeah, man. I can't believe I was off by 30. years. I mean, I was off by 70. Adam Hamilton is a United Methodist pastor. It's funny to hear him described as a megachurch pastor,

which is also correct. He's got this giant United Methodist congregation, but usually don't hear those two words in the same sentence. I know the difference having to run up in Texas. He has led in two recent polls over Senator Roger Marshall. Big issues in Kansas,

the price of diesel fuel. Beef prices, as explained, with those ice raids. And a blockbuster story by Sarah Cliff in the Times about Marshall suing his patients for medical debt when he was a doctor. 81 of them, according to Cliff, were arrested. Adam Hamilton found one such woman. He put her in a political ad that debuted last week. Here is that ad. I'm Adam Hamilton, and I approve this.

this message. One evening, I see lights. I open the door and it's a police officer. They arrested me because I didn't make a $50 payment to Roger Marshall. I was eight months pregnant and I said, please do not handcuff me in front of my two-year-old daughter. Roger Marshall prayed on the low-income families of Kansas. The health care system is broken, but not for Roger Marshall. He's absolutely profiting from it. Woof. That seems to be an effective ad. I wonder if it worked.

Because, you know, again, being poor doesn't necessarily mean that you're going to get the people on your side. But yeah, that's a, that's what. Also, man, shout out to Sarah Cliff, who does this amazing reporting on health care and medical insurance. Like, she's been doing that since she was in Vox, you know, a decade ago or whatever. Man, like, that's, I mean, I didn't even. And I guess it was, I was aware that you could go, you could get arrested for not paying medical bills.

But I guess I just didn't know that that was actually happening, though. And Roger Marshall's pushback on that ad was not that it wasn't true exactly. It was that the woman owed more than $50. He said she actually owed more than $3,000. I'm not sure what amount of money would be worthy of being arrested in front of your child when they were pregnant. Anyway, that is, that is something else. It's amazing that, yeah, I mean, the thing is, I would, they probably don't have enough money to have many good choices. But I was like, man, you know, he was an asshole when he was your doctor?

Well, that's a good question. Do you want your doctor to be an asshole? I don't think, I need mine to be nice. I, see, I remember, like, you know, when I had, like, elderly grandparents or something that we'd go, you know, we talked to the doctor about some serious medical condition. He was really, really nice. And I'm always like, I'm glad. I'm glad he was comforting. He or she was comforting in that moment for you.

But also, like, is this the right doctor? Yeah, that's like, you know. If the asshole can perform the life-saving treatment, let's hire the asshole. That's true. That's true. I mean, I want somebody who's going to give it to me straight, but also in a nice way. So maybe I would say that way. All right.

The last stop on our tour of the Senate is in Alaska. Mary Peltola is running against Dan Sullivan to try to capture another seat for the Democrats. there's also another Dan Sullivan in this race, which is absolutely hilarious. New York Times reporter Kellyn Browning, who by the way flew to an island to find Dan Sullivan the second, had another piece out about Peltola

and how her political operation has been marked by tumult. There is an only in journalism word, if I've ever heard one. The people he interviewed gave instances of Peltola allegedly shoving an aid, using an anti-gay slur.

She denied that. We're making remarks about Planned Parenthood, which has not endorsed her campaign this year. Here's a couple of other notes from that piece. Browning writes, Sometimes Peltola jumped up and down and stomped her feet. Three of these, the former aides said. Two of the aides described one instance in 2024

when Ms. Peltola was so frustrated that she swept stacks of papers on her desk into the air in a way that the two people independently likened to a scene from the political satire Veep. Also says her demands could be unusual, such as requiring aids to feed live crickets to her family's pet chameleon meatball. The spokeswoman from Ms. Boltola's campaign

denied any pattern of abusive behavior, but the campaign acknowledged that she sometimes struggled to deal with the grief of losing her mother and her husband over a few months in 2023. Would you make of that time story? I mean, I thought that it sounds like she would suck to work for. It sounds like a story. I hear a lot about people who have to work with people on Capitol Hill.

And usually, they're about women. Like the ones that have kind of broken through to me, remember, I mean, I've been calling Amy Klobuchar comb salad since the New York Times wrote about it. It was a story about how difficult she was to work for. And at one time, they didn't have any utensils for her to eat a salad on a plane. So she was so mad she ate the salad with a comb. Anyway, so I've called her comb salad sensitive. Anyway, and Sheila Jackson Lee.

So it's sort of in that tradition. And some people have pushed back and said, hey, you know, only women seem to get hit with this thing. You know, we're violent outburst and, you know, being difficult to work with. This happens, you know, men, that's just accepted with men. And I think they have a point, even though, like, it still seems. seems like that's somebody that you would not want to have as your boss, right? Browning acknowledges that in the piece, that double standard of behavior, of the way people's behavior is treated.

But yeah, I agree. And I saw a few, again, we live in a weird world where journalists exist along on Twitter alongside people that are just rooting for Democrats to win. Yeah. So the response to a piece like this is, well, I still want her to win or this isn't disqualifying as if Browning set out to. only write pieces that disqualify one candidate or another from office, that's not really the way these things work. And I always start with this idea that we don't know these people who are

running for office. And journalism is our imperfect way to get to know them a little bit better. And even if you want the Democrats to win the Senate, even if you look at this, oh, well, that stuff isn't all that bad and that thing, I understand her, she was dealing with grief. And that's the way she was processing it, I still want to know what these people are like. Yeah. That is still, there is no more important thing than to know about these people before we elect them to office. Well, yeah, no, I mean, the thing is, is that you want to know what you voted for and

like, would you stand behind? So, like, if it crops up later that your candidate has been known to take advantage of younger staffers, for instance, right, and have affairs with them. Well, if that happens when they're in office and then they have. to, you know, resign or they leave in shame, you know, you need to know that, hey, when I voted for them the first time, that might be a possibility. I was okay with dealing with that. So, yeah, I think those stories are important. The thing that I thought about, though, I was like, because the Times did a follow-up story, and the people they talked to seem to not really give a damn,

along with those people that were talking to us on Twitter. And I'm like, man, should we be worried if this stuff doesn't actually matter anymore? Like, we report this kind of a story. Like, and it doesn't move the needle at all. It's really fascinating, right? Because that's one of those things about journalism. We talked about this in a totally different context with Pablo. Yeah. If you write a piece and it's true,

but it doesn't produce the desire or not even desired, it just doesn't produce any kind of outcome. Yeah. Because you don't control outcomes as a journalist. You just publish the piece. Does that make your piece less worthy? Does that make it unimportant? And I think sometimes, weirdly, the scoreboards get switched

and you're like, oh, well, you know, she didn't, you know, drop out of the race in shame or, you know, this didn't materially matter in her race, you know, and the number she puts up against Dan Sullivan the first. So what? Like, it's, you know, and again, good for the times for tracking the feedback to the, you know, writing. I read that, I saw that piece too, and I was like, oh, okay. I'm glad they did that. But also, by the way, there was a peg here because people were leaving her campaign right before the primary. Yeah. And I remember reading that story and be like, what the hell?

happened. Right. Like why would you do this? Why is this happening right before the primary? And again, if she loses that seat, we're all thinking of a Democratic win here and hey, they got the majority. But if she loses that seat, this is where you're going to come back to. Right. Just like they did with Kamala Harris,

and there's another woman, but like, you know, how is she treating her staff? What was her ability to manage her staff and all that stuff? That is a crucial question for a politician who's trying to run a competitive race. Mr. President, my company for me of the explosion. on our rig. On October 2nd. Causing massive water displacement

and triggering a tsunami. They all heat the blame on me. Tom Cruise is. Digger got us into this mess. And Digger's gonna dig us up. From the director of Birdman and the Revenant. What would happen if I stop guling? You starve.

You freeze to death. That's what? With great power comes great deniability. I'm not the earth nanny. Digger. See the trailer online. Only here's October 2nd. We got to talk about something else before we get out of here today. Okay.

There is a new documentary coming out about Dennis Miller. Interesting. And the two absolutely fascinating years he spent as an announcer on Monday night football. The doc comes out tomorrow, Tuesday, on HBO Max. It's 40 minutes long. Yeah. God bless the filmmakers. behind this thing

for making a doc we can watch in 40 minutes we don't need six parts and six hours not everything has to be in chapters sometimes it could just be a short story 40 minutes

of Dennis Miller on Monday Night Football I absolutely love it I mean I thought that was one of the things that made me enjoy it the most which is very digestible you know a big epic eight episode documentary you're going to miss so much stuff.

There's going to be so much information coming at you. It's not possible to remember it all. But this, it was just very punchy and really good. We've just kind of gotten used to documentaries not being as good, you know, in the last few years for whatever reason. This was much better than that. But also, like, we were going to like this, right? Oh, my God.

This is just right in the Brian and Joel zone. Yeah, man, you know. It's called Miller Night Football. And I don't think it's, you know, it really is like a lot of docs now. It looks like them. It has the same cadence. It feels like it has exactly the same graphics. Yeah.

But it's this little pocket of broadcasting history, and you're just happy to hang out and see it relived in 40 minutes. They got Dennis Miller, obviously. Al Michaels is in it. Dan Fouts is in it. Melissa Stark, who miraculously was on the sidelines in those years. And it's still on the sidelines. It was on the sidelines last night in Denver.

What amazing. Dana Carvey's in the dock. Some broadcasting people like Howard Katz, who used to run ABC sports, Freddie Gedeli, who was the producer of the second season of Miller on Monday Night, later was the genius producer of Sunday Night Football 2 on NBC. So to set the stage here,

Monday Night Football has different eras. There was the Howard CoSell, Frank Gifford, Dandy Don Meredith era, which is before our time. Great. Created the show. There's our era of Monday Night Football, which was Al Michaels, Frank Gifford, and the aforementioned Dan Deerador.

Dan Deirdriff, yeah. That will always be my Monday night. I love that crew. It's underrated. They always, you know, it was always like, oh, it's not the 70s. And it's like, man, look back at that crew and tell me that was not a solid, solid broadcast. I mean, I could just, I mean, like right now, just have like, it almost makes me emotional to hear that. Boy, that I get a hold of you, man.

Oh, I missed that. Your Dorf was underrated. Al was in his prime, which would last another 30 years. So what happens after that? Well, Monday Night Football started having ratings problems. So this feels really weird to talk about because at the time, people were like, hey, you know, ABC has some very popular series like Desperate Housewives. Are we sure football in prime time is such a good idea? Because Desperate Housewives, you can control that.

Football, you might have a game that's 35-0 and it's sketched. Before the season, Goodellie notes in the dock, this is before Flex Schedulings. They were locked into a whole schedule. And maybe it's a crappy matchup in Week 11 that nobody wants to watch. Now, of course, you're like, hey, I can have pro football. Here's a billion dollars. I will buy your pro football. I don't want series anymore.

Nobody watches that. I mean, it's crazy to think. I mean, CBS got out of the football game. You know, they're just, eh, we don't want to do that. That's fine. Price is a little high. If Fox wants to do it, let that be their burden. You know?

So, yeah, it's just the idea that football ever had to have ratings considerations like that is just almost shocking in retrospect. It is not almost. It is truly shocking. Yeah. The Monday Night Booth in those years was Al Michaels and Boomer Assison. They did not like each other. Ask either one of them, and they will tell you to this day that they did not like each other. So the Monday night team went into a room and said,

hey, what can we do to reconjure the magic of the 70s? To get a little bit of that crossover between sports and popular culture. Bring Monday Night Football back to that place in the culture. And by the way, that was always to me the problem of Monday Night Football in a lot of those years. They were just chasing that dragon over and over again. I was going to say, I felt like for you, years. It always felt like it always went back to Howard CoSell and Dandy Don and them wanting to recreate that specific era, which it feels like we were sort of alive

for, but we couldn't have been. But I feel like I have memories of hearing Howard Cosell's voice on TV. You know why? Because everybody imitated him. Howard Cosell. It was like one of those things that everybody could do when we were kids. Shoemaker and I talk about that sometimes the impression championship belt, how like when we were kids, everyone could do John Wayne and Howard Cosell and a couple of other people. And then now it's like, nobody, if you started doing that on a ringer podcast, have our colleagues look at it and are like, what the hell are you talking about? Well, those names are you?

Because I feel like could people do Pee-Wee Herman, where you were at? I feel like people always had a voice for Pee-Way. So Monday Night Football says, how can we recapture some of that cultural sort of just juice that we had back in the old days? they're bringing Dan Fouts. That's not cultural Jews. No offense to Dan. And then they're looking for a celebrity. I did not know until I saw this doctor

that their first choice or their first thought was actually Billy Crystal. Crazy. Crazy. Crystal, who would have been the non-divisive Dennis Miller. Right. Yeah, well, we can get to that in a minute.

But, I mean, it's shocking to me because Billy Crystal had been in, Had he been in when Harry met Sally by then? Yeah, I guess so. City Slickers and everything else. So, yeah, so he's already on his way and the idea that, you know, that he would have been in the booth is, I mean, it would have been interesting, but I could also see, well, I mean, I really wish we could have seen that in

in retrospect, actually. He was too big by that point. That was the problem. They thought about Tony Cornheiser, who would get the job later. They taught that. They thought about Rush Limbaugh, who even flew out to Los Angeles and did an audition. ESPN loved Rush Limbaugh.

I mean, for people always talk about the liberal media, man. ESPN has been, had a love affair with Rush Limbaugh for two decades. They put him on Sunday countdown. They put him on the pregame show later. And there's a really good line from David Israel, whom I know a little bit out here in Southern California. He said, he was good, but he's a racist. That was the eliminator for Rush.

Finally, they get to Dennis Miller. who had been so big as a Saturday Night Live player doing Weekend Update, by this point was doing an HBO show. He was a little bit like Bill Morris today, and I think that's not a bad comp politically and otherwise. You know, he was not a liberal, so to speak, but he was doing the kind of edgy political comedy on pushing back against your priors.

Disaffected, vaguely right, independent kind of guy. Yeah, totally. Yeah. So he gets the job and it's a three-man booth, Al Michaels, Dan Fouts, and Dennis Miller starting in the fall of 2000. I don't know about you, but like to me, the best part of this doc was just watching reels of the stuff Dennis Miller said on Monday Night Football in those two years.

I really forgot about it, like about how it sounded at the time. I did too. Yeah. I was like, wait, he was just making a Sylvia Plath joke. Yeah. I mean, look, man, and it's funny because in there, they say that, oh, you know, he was a little ahead of football fans. I mean, I'm a football fan, so I was squarely in that group because a lot of those references, they just, they were totally. And if you want to call me dumb, then whatever.

But I did not. There was a lot of Dennis Miller. I just could not. I could tell that for the people it hit with it, that was the shit. Nothing else could replace it, but I just did not get a lot of this references. Is football fans watching, do you think got that in 2000? Great question. Or let's just say the audience of Monday Night Football.

It's a pretty general primetime audience. The network audience. Saturday Live. I mean, he was a Saturday Night Live. I don't, at least 25%, you think? Yeah, like a Sylvia Platt joke. He made a joke about the artist Christo. Yeah.

I think that's lower than 25%. We're driving about a little bit when you say that, yeah. Neville Chamberlain maybe higher because politicians mentioned Neville Chamberlain a lot. Yeah, that's within, you know. War War II stuff. So people, that's, that's fans. So yeah. Yeah, were you a fan?

Did you like Dennis Miller? I was trying to remember my reaction at the time. I just think I thought it was weird, which is literally what it came off as. Yeah. It wasn't like it so much was bad that it just was a weird thing that didn't really work.

Right. Well, did it not work? I don't think so. I mean, as announcing, like, I admired the idea, and I still admire the idea. Would you just be like, screw it? Yeah. We got football in here.

We have Dan Fout. So if there's a play, we have somebody to talk about it. But we're just going to put a comedian in there and just sort of let him go and let him do his thing. And, you know, I just remember at the time, it just, again, and I grew up with Dennis Miller Saturday Night Live. So he was a very big figure to me. And I was just like, this is just so strange hearing him. do one-liners. Yeah. He talks about it about, and that was the thing that I kind of forgotten about how prepared, or like it just seemed very scripted, that the jokes that you could tell

they weren't just coming out of anywhere. It was just like he's reciting a line right out of his head like he's on stage. And that's what made it a little less funny in retrospectively. But the thing that was actually funny to me in this documentary is how funny Dennis Miller thinks his jokes are. He tickled, tickled by himself. He cracks himself up all the time. I would love to live life that way. So he would say at the end of the broadcast, and this is where Don Merrith used to say,

turn out the lights, the party's over. Dennis Miller would say, it's time to start blow dry and Teddy couple's hair. And they had to remind him on the doc that he said that. And when he was reminded, he had said it, he just thought it was really funny. Yeah. which is, by the way, a comedians thing, right?

Some comedians crack themselves up. He's one of... He, by the way, Dennis Miller, I've not heard from him in a long time. I know he does a podcast and all that kind of stuff, but I'm like, he comes off as this just delightful figure in this documentary, whatever you think of him. So that's the thing.

If I didn't know, and I'm just vaguely aware of where Dennis Miller's politics have gone in recent years, like, where a lot of, you know, elderly comedians tend to go. But, so I was shocked. and how much I ended up liking him, just watching him talk about himself and reliving that time and just being so like, well, you know, we're trying something.

Didn't work. Like, he didn't, he wasn't bitter about it. He didn't take himself. He took the job seriously, but he didn't take himself seriously. So I thought that was kind of cool. And also, he's 72 years old. He looks fantastic.

He looks absolutely amazing. It was great. Great shape. Looks 20 years younger. Yeah. If you had said Dennis Miller was 57 years I would have believed it. So he did it for one year.

Then he came back for year two. He decided, strangely, he wanted to be a football guy in year two. Oh, man. He actually went to Chargers training camp to visit with Norv Turner, which made me smile. What a 2000s-ass name. Freddie Goodellie had joined the broadcast as producer. If you know anything about Godelli's broadcast, he likes things done a certain way. He has really, really high expectations of everybody on his crew.

Having a wild card like that is just such a funny pairing. And Gidelli says in the dock, and he said this before, that he wanted Dennis Miller to just do weekend update at halftime, just looking at the camera and do a monologue of sorts and do some jokes. That would have been a fantastic idea. I thought that was a great idea. I really did it. And when Miller got replaced the next year,

he could have even stuck around and maybe done that by himself. You know, just like he wouldn't have even been in the booth, but you could have had him in halftime. and that would have felt special. Yeah, his own thing. And it could have been a little bit football themed and a little bit not football themed. I think Chris Berman was doing the fastest 90 seconds in sports

or whatever it was at that time. But that was a thing. But what happened is Gidelli was like, dude, we don't want you to talk about football. We want you to be funny. Yes. So then we had this weird hybrid Dennis Beller who was like trying to be a football analyst

that he was never really going to be kind of being funny at the same time. And then after that second season, and this is 2001, John Madden is available. Yep. And Monday Night Football did what ESPN did years later on the same broadcast. They said, oh, we can get Joe and Troy, let's just fix this with one fell swoop. Yep. And they went out and they got John Madden.

And Dennis Miller, when informed that John Madden was going to be on Monday Night Football, did wonder aloud whether it was going to be a three-man booth. with Al, John, and Dennis. And if you know anything about John Men, that would have absolutely been his ex. Not enough room. Not enough room. Really, really funny.

But they asked them about it. And I get, it's just, I really ended up liking Dennis Miller here. He said, if I, he said, I said that? He said, well, if I did, that was bad form. He didn't dissolve into hysterics. It was funny. But also, yeah, just. So will I be in a three-man booth with the greatest football announcer of all time?

Isn't this a challenge all the time with football, though? Like talking about football, like, if you're going to start a football product, you either got to be really entertaining or you got to be hardcore ball. That's what people seem to think. And I don't know. Like, there's a way to do it. I feel like Meena Kimes has done a really good job of, like, being, you know. Yes.

Become, I'm a tape grinder, but also I'm a personality. Yes, I can talk about anything. Yeah, it's tough. But I mean, you had to be really smart to do that too, right? Because you got to be able to grasp the football stuff, which is really, really hard. But also just have, like, the mind and the dexterity to be funny and loose and, you know, whatever. Do you think a network will ever do anything like this again? Yes.

Really? Yeah. I think so at some point, like, I think somebody's going to, I mean, they are kind of, what's the Skycast? So that's different, though, to me. Or the main cast and stuff. It's one thing to say, let's have a funny. side telecast. Yeah.

Let's have Pat Manning, Pat McAfee and his boys down on the field making jokes. Like that's one thing because that's cheating, right? That's not the main telecast. That's right. You don't have to, yeah, that's true. Will they ever put somebody like Dennis Miller in the main booth again? I still think so, yeah. Don't you?

You don't think somebody try eventually? I'll give you two reasons. One is because they're not brave enough. Okay. See what happened after Tony Cornerhizer left money. that football. That's right. Number two, I think football fans have changed so much in the last 25 years. Everybody, including dumbasses like me, are smarter. Yeah. And they know a lot more about the game. You can't tell him like JJ Watt did, hey, you got to tackle Derek Henry in the backboard

before he gets going. You have to give him something. Yeah. And I think if you look at like the way like Troy Aikman and Chris Collinsworth and announcers like that, they talk about football in much more sophisticated terms than even they did 20 years ago. Yes, right. So I just don't think you could put a non-football person in the booth and have them make jokes and not have fans completely revolt. The thing is, I think that person is going to have really good football knowledge

and also be like, the thing is it's going to be really tough. I just feel like they always try stuff again. I feel like in TV and content, like stuff that was tried once, they tried again, they run it back out like it's original. Maybe it works, maybe it doesn't. But I could just see somebody wanting to try that. But to your point, it does make, because I don't,

if you want that, you can get that on another channel, right, if the game is big enough. So, yeah. I hesitate to say this because it's like saying Candyman and something bad appears. you know the person who would actually cross this divide? Who? Pat McAfee. Oh, man.

He's kind of that guy for our time. Yeah. You want, and if Troyman doesn't get re-signed at Monday Night Football again, Candyman, Candyman, I'm sorry. I'm sorry to all of humanity if I've done something here. But he to me, putting him in the booth would be getting football. Mm-hmm. plus funny I mean he played football

he can talk ball we know that yeah and then you'd be getting all the off the top of the head comedy stuff I'm sorry oh man you know what I apologize but that that to me is

I think is as close as we get to death Miller wait do you think that that's why they keep they're in business together even though he sort of is you know bracing under the the leadership of ESPN like he's kind of work with somebody it's not just the end you know a solo operation and i just wonder if oh he's hanging

on because that's on the table someday he's already on the pregame show yeah i mean i don't know if they would just light that fire if greg olson or some other i mean again to me them not signing troy eggman is still just insane like if that didn't happen that was such a course now i want to say course correction such a swerve from what we thought was going to happen five years ago whether it would just be a formality that both of those guys got re-signed. Joe Buck's already been resigned, by the way. Yeah.

But I would say that, you know, that would be, I mean, somebody would ask that question, somebody internally would like, should we put Pat on this broadcast? Also, I'd say another guy that isn't quite the same, but maybe gets you all the way to football and halfway to comedy would be Jason Kelsey. Both Kelsey's.

Yeah. Like, what if you could put Jason and Travis on that broadcast with Joe Buck? Is that as close as we'd get to Dennis Miller, circa 2026? I guess I got to see what the appetite is for Kelsey, because didn't he have a show on ESPN that didn't work out already? Yeah. Was that the late night show? The late night show.

That was one of those things like that's only notionally on, like those of us who watch this stuff. Barely even know it's on. It's like, wait, that happened. But to me, that would, that at least again, if you're just talking about the same zone, Yeah. That's the same zone.

Good. I see that. I mean, they would never do it. I mean, they kind of tried this with the keep to lead, you know? The keep to leave experiment that worked out. I mean, or, you know, I'm going to throw another name out there, Marciaun Lynch. Like, I can see that they're just trying to be like, you know, what would he be like in that role? That would be a party.

I mean, that would be, I want to watch that for one game. I don't know if I want to watch that for the whole season, but I don't know. want to watch it for one day. Yeah, I think it would have a short shelf life probably. I think it would too. Also, by the way, some really old school Monday night when they have people like Arnold Schwarzenegger just come into the booth and just do color for a few minutes. I know, man.

How just from another dimension. Tom Hanks? Yeah. And you were just like they were so into celebrities. Yeah. And trying to forge that connection between sports and pop culture. and then guess what? Sports just became pop culture.

Yeah, I mean, it works. At least as far as television is concerned. It's like, actually, we don't need the actors because this is the A-list. Right. It's right here. It's the game itself. Which is one of football's ultimate victories.

All right, check out Miller Night Football. Coming to you on HBO and HBO Macs, September 29, tomorrow, Tuesday. That's the press box. He's Joel Anders. I'm Brian Curtis. Producing Magic. by John Nodd Bones-Jones and Devin-Rinaldo.

Thank you, Devin. We will see Isaiah back soon enough. That's right. Joel, I'll see you back soon enough. Next Monday, more lukewarm takes about the media. See you then, buddy. Looking forward to it.