The Press Box - How the Media Normalized Sports Gambling, John McCain’s Long Goodbye, and Katie Nolan Gets Called Out | The Press Box (Ep. 468)

Episode Date: May 15, 2018

The Ringer's Bryan Curtis and David Shoemaker take a look at how sports writers may be partially responsible for the Supreme Court's recent ruling on sports gambling (02:15), how the media is celebrating John McCain (21:00), and why Andrew Marchand of the 'New York Post' called out ESPN's Katie Nolan (37:45). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

David, New York Magazine's Olivia Nuzzi reports that Donald Trump and Sean Hannity often talk on the phone before bedtime. My question is, which cable news haircut would you like to hear from on a nightly basis? Jeez. What is the best joke to tell you? Is it too obvious to say, Joe? I want to seriously answer to me talking about a joke. Is it too obvious to say Joy Reid? because she'd make up the best bedtime stories.

Wolf Glitzer certainly would be the most, like, fatherly. I feel like he'd be the most sort of, like, you know, parental, a little bit stern, but, you know, kind of a fun-loving, weird uncle. I think that'd make me tense at night, though. I think so, too. We are getting a breaking story. I don't want to hear that right before bed. I think Brian Stelter just kind of reading the media headlines to me before bed would be fine.

Sure, sure. I mean, Maddow's great. She can make, like, a really compelling. a compelling bedtime story out of anything. Yeah. It'd be long and very fact-filled. Sure. But I'm into that.

That's cool. I don't know. I don't know. Shep Smith, maybe. I'm just going to go with Shep Smith just for the oddity of it. I actually think you've hit on it. I think that's the call.

That's what I want to hear from. More fantasies and late-night phone calls on the press box, which is part of the ringer podcast network. The press box is the media podcast. We are not allowed to write that a source said something if they wrote it to you in a very ornate and stilted email. All quotes should approximate human speech. We are Brian Curtis and David Shoemaker of the ringer.

I would like to plug on shuffle, David, the new ringer podcast from our pal, Micah Peters. It's a great podcast. I got to listen to the pilot, which I guess is not the same one that's going to be out tomorrow or today as people are listening to this. But it's a really, really cool. There you go. I can't wait for everyone to hear it. Mike is the best. David, three topics for you today on the press box.

First, how sports writers helped make sports gambling legal in America. Second, the media is delicate, or if you're Fox business, not so delicate task of saying goodbye to Arizona Senator John McCain. And finally, somebody said something bad about Katie Nolan? What? Was it true? We discuss. Plus, as always, our overworked Twitter joke of the week. But first, David, a topic I'd like to call in writing for the majority, Chief Justice Musburger, because somewhere the grand old man of college football is smiling. On Monday, the Supreme Court struck down a law that bans.

sports gambling, meaning states other than Nevada may now legalize and tax what the New York Times calls a $150 billion illegal sports gambling industry. I'll ask you your first thought. I kind of already got it this morning when you sent me an email saying, Brian, how about how the sports media normalized gambling, which I can read your mind. Which I greedily stole for a blog post this morning. But what did you make of this story? It was pretty, I mean, the fact that sports, you know, the Supreme Court's released their verdict today sort of surprisingly was a, I mean, the first, my, our first reaction is a process related business reaction just like, oh crap, we have to do work about this new thing. All right, but after that. It's pretty stunning.

It's pretty stunning. It's funny that, that I loved in your piece how there are all the trepidations around it. And it's I mean obviously it's very similar to any sort of like nanny state laws, you know, to drugs, alcohol, to anything else. And that like it's really easy to boogeyman. Yes. Once this law has been in place for so long, it's very simple to think of five million reasons why it should be kept in place. Yes. Sure.

Right? Sure. You got to protect the addicted gamblers. We got to, you know, like we don't want our kid. We got, well, what about the children? You know, all this kind of stuff. It makes it makes perfect sense. This is like so milk toast, but like this is what's great about the Constitution, man.

It's what's great about our legal system. They're like, and sometimes it just takes some of this broad-based, you know, like theoretical argument to really just tear it down. Now, the much more interesting part that we're, you know, that I think we're talking about is the way that sports media really played a huge role in this. And I think that the biggest thing to make, I mean, we saw, you know, we have examples of this when and gay marriage went to the Supreme Court. And it was just right on the heels of, you know,

basically a decade of deliberate, I mean, of like active normalization by, you know, the vaguely defined left in the country, right? And it was obviously for the better. But, you know, it was kind of important in the process for Obama to pretend that he wasn't pro-gay marriage, you know? You kind of like, you kind of just sort of introduced the idea and let it sink in after a while.

And that's really the role that the media played in this whole process, right? Yeah. What's funny, though, is like unlike some other great political issues of our day, I don't remember anybody saying, I've changed my mind on sports gambling. It was kind of everybody says, oh, yeah, I gambled, don't you? Yes. That was just kind of, it's sort of just like it came out into the world all of a sudden. Uh-huh.

And you mentioned drugs, I mean, it's a little bit like the pot thing, you know, where there's this like, oh, I might have smoked something this weekend. Uh-huh. Everybody, you know, that was kind of the tone, right? Right. For like the last decade. I went about a big sports bet this weekend. Uh-huh.

Might have done some sports gambling this weekend. And then, but you're right. It sort of did normalize it. And all of a sudden, you know, everybody suddenly was like, wait, that's right. You can't gamble on sports. Oh, wait. Why isn't that legal? Yeah.

All of a sudden. But I don't like, the funny difference is I don't know, but nobody really made the case, at least in the sports pages all that much. I mean, you had, I shouldn't say that actually, because you had Adam Silver, right? Come out as a big thing. We talked about it in terms of an NFL team moving to Vegas, an NHL team moving to Vegas.

But it was, I don't, I don't remember a lot of angst among the sports media class about this. I think it was pretty close to, you know, 90, 100 percent. This is a great idea. Or why don't we do this? In the modern world. You touched on some historical examples in the piece that you wrote about how it was, you know, it was frowned upon in many sports people.

It was frowned upon. And I think the people that ran the news. papers and TV stations said, just don't ever talk about this. Yeah. Right. This is this bad stuff. Yeah, you just don't want to get into it. Yeah.

I mean, it's like there was a great Westbrook Pegler thought that Crapes was actually America's national pastime, not baseball. Yes. Right. Which is true, right? Yeah. But these guys, there was this whole kind of winking class of TV people and then writers like our boss who came along and said, by the way, everybody's actually gambling.

Yeah. Well, I think part of it is, I mean, the Crap's being the National Pastime thing is, is is salient, just in the fact that it's, like, you need, there are a lot of people who can, you know, through the years have made booze in their, you know, from like prune juice and their basement or whatever, but like it's not the easiest thing to do just between you and your friends, right?

If Prohibition is working at 100% clip, you're probably not going to be drinking a lot, but you can still play cards for money with your friends. Sure. You know, like it never completely goes away. And in some ways it's like the NCAA tournament pools that never disappeared that sort of kept, you know, I mean, that kept gambling going in the country for, I mean, forever, right?

Fantasy. And, of course, the fact that you could, the fact that it was never a complete prohibition. You could always go to the racetrack. You could go to the OTB. You could go, I mean, not for sports, but to Atlantic City. I mean, there are places to bet to, you know, there's, there's. Yeah. And then later for sports gambling.

Daily fantasy. Exactly. And then, yeah, and it just seems so, it was just so unshocking, like you said, to hear anybody talk about it at all. Now, before there was the stigma, I think the bigger, much more of a stigma than like the sin of gambling. The bigger stigma was like that you had to involve yourself with a bookie. Yeah. Right? That like if someone talked about it, that meant they had an unsavory character in their life.

Yes. And then, but I think. And for those of us who don't do things like that, you know, all the time are like, wait, where did you meet the bookie? Exactly. How do you know the bookie? I think with the advent of the internet, it just tore down all the walls. And it also, I mean, it also comes at a time when media in general is just much more kind of lais-a-old. fair about all that, about just any sort of indiscretion?

So totally true. Yeah. And I think that's the newspaper kind of going away and withering away and also the TV networks, right, which for so many years. Like that's why Al Michaels and Brent Musburger were going wink, wink on the air. Of course. Because there were guys who ran that network was like, please don't talk about gambling. Please, if you're making predictions in the pregame show, don't use the line.

Yeah. I think that the interesting line through the piece that you wrote, no pun intended, that sort of grabbed me was to go and reverse cron reverse chronological order it was when scott was like yeah i just decided to start talking about gambling and nobody cared so how did we so if we're at a point with SVP was that when he started his own when he got the midnight sports center okay so that's not that that's that's recent but like if that's where we ended up at what point do you think al michaels could have gone to his bosses and been like i'm going to talk about gambling on son on NFL games or just said it on the air and know there was no blowback yeah

It's a little different because it's like a it's a commercial partnership with the NFL. It is true. But you know what? Somebody pointed out on Twitter today and I wish I remember to mention this, but on college game day now, which is, you know, ESPN is in league with all the, with all or most of the college football conferences. There's a guy who picks against the line. Yeah. Right. This is college.

Yeah. This is the allegedly quote unquote amateur kids, highly corruptible amateurs, right? Mm-hmm. And, you know, that doesn't seem to be a big deal. So I think it's one of the things like he would just probably need to just say it and see what happens. Yeah. And probably no one would care. I don't.

I think in the last couple years if he'd said that, like instead of just, you know, doing the kind of slide things that, you know, you know what? The Patriots are favored by seven. And now they're going to win by three and a lot of people are really pissed off. I don't think anybody would have cared. Yeah. I think that there's another interesting media angle in this. We touch on this, you know, in different ways a lot of times before. But, you know, the sort of overall vibe, sports and.

and, you know, news and everything else, that people just sort of don't trust their, what's on TV, the way they would have 50 years ago. You know, they don't, they don't trust the talking heads as the arbiters of truth. And I think that there's a general, and this isn't, I don't mean this is like a real, you know, dogmatic argument, but like, there's a general feeling that when you turn on ESPN,

you are seeing entertainers, you know, you're seeing people who are like trying to row you up. People who are trying to, they're just trying to get to the, what's going to get the highest ratings. They don't really care about the news or whatever. And I think that there really is a feeling, and maybe this is just crazy. But I think that there's probably a general feeling that, you know, people making sports picks are actually have more invested in reality than everybody else around them. Totally.

Because they've got some mistake. Yeah. They've got money at stake. They want to win. Exactly. They're not telling you the giving you the general manager's line. Exactly. They're cutting through the bullshit.

Yeah. Oh, I like that. I think that's really good. I'm going to rewrite my piece for the late edition of the ringer. The late edition. We need that. Let me add another point, by the way. Right.

This is kind of, kind of just surfing off what we said. How sports writing kind of became a men's lifestyle brand. Oh, yeah. Right? And it's less now explicitly about, here's all the stuff that happen in the field. Here's what the players are like and more like here's what it means to be a guy or a gal in 2018, right? You gamble, you play daily fantasy. You watch movies.

Obviously, Bill is a big person in the story. Sure. Of sort of bending the trajectory of sports writing. Yeah. But, you know, when you say it's a lifestyle thing, like all of sports radio, by the way, is too, it's about gambling. Yeah. And gambling is more easily admitted, I think, into the, you know, okay to talk about subjects than it would have been 10, 15 years ago. Oh, I totally agree. I totally agree.

I mean, I think that, I mean, one of the, you know, morals aside, one of the biggest barriers. Which is really the motto of the show. Morals aside. One of the biggest barriers towards the acceptance of gambling is just like the arithmetic of it. Just the general understanding of how this stuff works. You see some numbers up on a tote board. You're like, I don't know what there's a minus. What does that mean?

That's another way that sports media and people like Bill in particular have really normalized it, right? They teach you how to read. They teach you how to have the conversation. Yeah. There's no, the barrier for entry is gone. If you've ever been, you know, like I remember the first time I went to an off-track betting spot in New York, and it just feels like you're walking into just some foreign country. country.

There's just all this stuff. I'm the same way. I learned everything I know from like the Bill and Salis podcast. I was like, oh, that's what that means. Yeah. Or just kind of reverse engineering it when it was in print back in the day and everything. I mean, it's really, it really made everything very, very attainable. I wonder if this is going to affect going back to what you're talking about the corporate

partnership aspect. I wonder if this is going to affect the way, I mean, the way that networks, the major network partners of the NFL. And I keep saying the, we keep talking. We keep talking about the NFL because they are the most kind of, I mean, they're America's sport at this point, right? And they don't have an Adam Silver coming out in favor or anything. Right. I would think that like a really interesting question is when does the NFL say it's okay for NBC, CBS at all to start running gambling commercials during the product, you know?

So I was in, I mentioned as a piece. I was in Australia earlier this year. Oh, yeah. Sports gambling was and is legalized, right? and it's just part of the fabric of sports and media there. And in fact, they're like announcers can do an ad for a book. Right?

So just imagine Joe Buck and, oh, when I make a bet, I like to go with so-and-so, right? And I want to throw $30 on the Raiders. But I still think that's a line in the sand that's probably pretty deep, right? And we probably still,

I don't think that's going to happen right away. You know, I mean, I feel like, you know, but again, it's like there's an argument, it's like, well, you're advertising but light, you know, which is not good for you. Why is, you know, sports gaming verboten? You know, like, I don't, on, on a television. Yeah, I think there's a couple different tiers of what you were just talking about, right? It's like accepting a commercial. And even like, and some of these could be like, could you accept them on the local broadcast as opposed to just the national broadcasts?

Is there a distinction there? Then there's the idea of like, yeah, of spokespeople doing something. can O'Dell Beckham Jr. Go say like Fandul is my betting place of choice. Everybody go there during a Giants game. And then third would be the formal sponsorship. This is the Brian and David's bets.com

you know, Sunday night football or whatever. Yeah. So I mean, have you already bought that domain in? Should we buy that before? Yeah, it's been flooded with traffic. Yeah, no, it's a different, it's, there's a lot of different levels of it. I think that they'll probably stick a toe in.

I think, and I think especially in it. The NBA will be first. The NBA will be first. Probably. I'm in the major leagues anyway. Because Adam Silver's in. He's ready. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I think that the NBA also has some like structural questions too about like when to the like are we, are they going to allow sports books to be the advertisers on jerseys next season? Yeah, good question. I mean, there's big questions, right? And the jersey thing is it is a, you know, obviously a very like big statement, a fashion statement. But I think that it's, I think that the NFL is in an interesting spot because of all the. the news that we've been hearing over the past two years about declines in viewership and everything else that like when somebody rolls in and

they're like here's a billion dollars. That's what I mean. Who's going to say, who says no? I mean, it's like, the owners are going to say no? No way. So the owners say no, television networks that can get money, right? It's like, it's one of those things where it's like, eh. The interesting, they're really, I mean, one of the really interesting things is that is how difficult it's

been for Vegas to get sports teams. By the way, Golden Knights are you know, defying all logic, but that's a separate conversation, but it's been so hard for Vegas to get a sports team because of sports gambling. I know. And now, and now sports gambling is, I mean, we should stipulate that it's, you know, the Supreme Court struck it down. There are going to be appeals, and not every state is going to legalize this, presumably.

Exactly. It's going to be, there's probably six states that are just kind of chomping at the bit right now, and they'll get in there. But it's going to, it's funny now because Las Vegas is either going to be totally now clear to get sports teams, but it's unclear now that anybody would actually want to start to have a sports team there. Right, because what's the... What's the lure?

What's the juice, right? By the way, when I think of scary bookies, scary sports bookies, do you think of that guy in California split? Remember who was going to break George Siegel's legs? Absolutely. I looked about his name was... The character's name was Sparky, and it was Joseph Walsh who wrote the screenplay standing in. Kind of amazing, right?

All right, David, now it's time for our overworked Twitter joke of the week where we celebrate a gag that was so obvious that all of media Twitter made it at exactly the same. time about that Supreme Court decision, David, you made an overworked Twitter joke if you facetiously tweeted, I can't wait to gamble on sports for the first time. Wink, wait. Speaking of winky-wink. That's great. That's actually from the ringers Kevin Clark.

It's beautiful. Who I promised him, I would know, was early on this one. But everybody has now made that joke. Thanks to John Greenberg of the Athletic for mentioning that. David, there is important news about the restaurant Chili's. Whoa. Okay. Yeah.

this from CBS, Chili's Grill and Bar, aka the greatest restaurant on planet Earth, I inserted that part, has informed customers of a data incident saying some payment information was compromised at certain locations between March and April. Can you see where this is going? I want my data back, data back, data back, data back.

I want my data back. Everyone who tweeted that is a hero. All right? I don't care how many people tweeted that. That's the best thing I've ever heard. Also heroic Washington Post headline writer Hamza Shaban, who has used as a headline. Thanks to Paul Bosson for that one. That is fabulous stuff.

How, what is the, why is Chile's hanging on to your data? I have no idea. I just, this is where I just runs. I don't understand identity theft. We're going to have to do an identity theft segments that you want to actually understand what's going on. Finally, David, not an overworked Twitter joke, but I think we should take a moment to appreciate this. Did you see this after Sunday's blowout loss to Boston? LeBron James was asked by a reporter what happened early in the fourth quarter, and this was his answer.

We ran him in the first possession. We ran him down all the way to 200 shot. Marcus Morris missed a jump shot. Followed it up. They got a dunk. We came back down. We ran a set for Jordan Crawford, I mean, Jordan Clarkson, and he came off and missed it. They rebounded it.

And we came back on the defensive end, and we got a stop. They took it out on the sideline. Jason Tatum took the ball out. through the Markets Smart and the short corner. He made a three. We come back down, miss another shot. And then Tatum came down and went 94 feet,

did a little step, made a right hand lay up timeout. There you go. So he just takes it and does like a Wikipedia entry of the whole fourth quarter. Yeah. Which makes me believe that like when basketball players and athletes

give the really bland answer, look what they're hiding. Like he knows. everything. If you would ask me what happened in the previous segment of this podcast, I would give you about five seconds of broad strokes. I have no idea. No idea what happened this morning. Nothing. I know I have like three cups of coffee. I don't remember anything else. All right, David, before we talk about John McCain, let's take a brief commercial break. Hey, it's Bill Simmons. I wanted to tell you about the revamped Ringer NBA show podcast. We are Monday

through Friday on Mondays, John Gonzalez's host, Heat Check, bounce around, talk to a bunch of different ringer staffers about the weekend that was and what's coming up on Tuesdays, Chris Vernon and Kevin O'Connor, America's favorite couple. On Wednesdays, sources say with Chris Ryan and Julia Lipman, maybe some interview podcasts as well, and then Thursdays group chat. Chris Ryan, a rotating cast of ringer staffers. We even put this on YouTube, too. And then Friday, draft class.

Kevin O'Connor, Jonathan, Chief. sharks, sometimes Danny Chow, talking about the 2018 NBA draft, mock stuff, who's rising, who's falling, who's going to do what. You get this every day all the way through the playoffs, the draft, and even free agency, five days a week. The ringer NBA show, subscribe now on Apple Podcast, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcast. Our second topic, David, I'd like to call John McCain's long goodbye, speaking of Robert Altman. David, a few weeks ago when you first suggested a segment,

about covering John McCain in his battle with brain cancer, I thought we'd talk about the trickiness of hagiography. How does the media cover a towering figure in American politics without completely losing its mind? But, and I know this is going to surprise you, this segment will now begin, but with something awful that was said inside the Trump White House and that leaked to the media. Said leak was Kelly Sadler, a Trump communications aide when they were talking about the nomination for CIA director Gina Haspel said of John McCain, his vote doesn't

matter because he's quote, dying anyway. And then over on Fox Business, we had this. Retired Air Force General Thomas McInerney, talking about John McCain and how torture works on Fox Business Channel. The fact is, is John McCain,

it worked on John. That's why they call him Songbird John. That was retired Air Force, Lieutenant General Thomas McInerney, who was then subsequently banned from all Fox television shows. Charles Payne, who was the anchor, later called those remarks false and derogatory and said he only didn't push back because he didn't hear them. A producer was talking in his ear. I don't know there's really a question about this so much, but I guess I'll say this. old problem

hagiography of complicated public figures new problem Trump and company just say what's on their minds dispensing with the idea of politeness and formality altogether and we get that

where does that leave us in our media world I mean there's a second new thing I mean it's not a new new thing but the sort of a 24 hour drive of the news cycle means that it's the it's the there's this hagiography it's basically the pre-mortem obituary right that we have

all these long feature stories about john mccain and his all his accomplishments that are coming upon the event of his death but before he's dead yep um his presumed death no no jokes apologies to anyone that that that reads it as such but the trump the trump the trump white house thing is is interesting and separate i think that one the the big i mean there's a real the real news hook or the real angle that involves the media is that the entire media is perpetually aghast that the Trump White House doesn't know how to deal with the media in the way that they deem as appropriate? The news story now about this is not that this person should have come out and apologize.

Certainly that would have stemmed off this whole thing. But it's that they continue to do other things besides apologize, that they do anything else besides, you know, formally apologizing about this one event. and it would be someone else apologizing for her, I guess. I don't really know exactly what the appropriate turn of events would be. Yeah, that's just not in their vocabulary. It's not. Politeness in that.

Just like, let's call it Washington formality. Yeah, that's what it does. I make mistake. I say I'm sorry. No one believes me, but I've accomplished my debt. Right, but news media has something to put in the first paragraph of the story about the apology and then they move on. Because they just don't do that.

But watching all this endless coverage of it, it's hard to imagine that there's not a to thread the needle too, right? Like Trump on the campaign trail would have dispensed with this. I'm not apologizing to you or I already apologized and we just leave it at that. Yeah, and fake. I did.

I apologize. But it's the oil and water nature of Trump and what sort of establishment he has built around himself and the media that make it impossible to find that middle ground. Yeah.

Right? It's not even so much, I mean, the media is unnecessarily perplexed by this whole thing. Yeah. And look, and I think some part of it is that's what people in the Trump White House believe, right? Yeah. Trump was ruthless to McCain all through the campaign.

Mm-hmm. Right? Yeah. This is the guy. I don't want people to get captured, okay? He's not a war hero. He's a war hero. He's a war hero.

He's a war hero because he was captured. I like people that weren't captured, okay? I hate to tell you. Do you agree with that? One of his aides saying this does not, it sounds like what Donald Trump thinks about John McCain. He messed up the Obamacare vote. McCain.

from Trump's point of view. And now he's not inviting him to his funeral. Inviting to his funeral. The Haskell thing is obviously the kind of going concern in the political sphere right now. There's a lot of reasons for him to not feel necessary to kiss up to McCain. And that would be his perception, right?

Yeah. There's also, by the way, we've been to joining leaks, and you know, I've talked about that quite a bit over the last year and a half from the Trump White House, which is just amazing. I mean, it's amazing that people just keep talking and talking.

And John and Swan and Axios did the story about this. Do you see this? Quoted one of the leakers. He went to the leakers and said, why do you leak? There was several leakers that were quoted, right? Great conceit for a story. But one of the leakers said, to cover my tracks, I usually pay attention to other staffers' idioms and use that in my background quotes.

That throws the scent off me. Also a great way. This is unbelievable. That's also a great way to throw the scent off you if you actually didn't, if you actually used too many of your own idioms the first. I thought about that. I thought about that. I'd be like, whoops.

I gave myself away last week. So now I'm going to throw Trump's attention to somebody else. Who would be impersonating Brian's like ticks? You're like put all of your emails through like an English-Spanish language converter and then back again or something? Absolutely. Unbelievable, right? But yeah. And look, I think in the cold, heartless calculation of Washington, we're not going to have to worry about John McCain being a thorn on our side is exactly what the White House thinks.

I just I just I just it's one of those things where you know we talk about like the old definition of a Michael Kinsley Gaff is when a politician tells the truth. Oh yeah. This is a politician. This is a case where they are telling the truth, right? It's it's not what nobody wants to hear. It's not delicate. But this is what the White House actually thinks. On the on the subject of celebrating McCain's life for these months, right?

A couple of things he has a new book out called The Restless Wave, which he has said is his last book. Also an HBO documentary, which is. called John McCain for whom the bell tolls. Wow. By the way, some really, really portentous titles to both of those things. There was a good Jonathan Martin piece in the New York Times last week or two weeks ago where he talked about how McCain continuing his mavericky persona tells Joe Biden not to walk away from politics. Despite Biden, obviously being a Democrat.

He said he was regretful that he picked Sarah Palin and wishes he'd pick Joe Lieberman. in 2008 as his vice presidential nominee, as you mentioned, does not want, or his team doesn't want Trump at the funeral. They want Mike Pence at the funeral. So it's funny because I think now this is like, it's half celebration. But for good reporters, it's really grappling with what McCain's legacy is, and especially his media legacy. Because this is a guy, right, who was the media darling of Washington for as long as I can

remember. I mean, he gave so many interviews. He gave great copy. I seem to remember, and I bet the checklist last night, I forgot, Michael Lewis's trail fever that like the last scene is Michael Lewis sitting on a park bench talking to John McCain. Like that's how available he was. And he was arguably, you know, one of the most famous people in the Senate at the time. Sure. And don't you think some of this like also goes to the old Washington, the very long held Washington idea of they just don't make senators like they used to? Oh, absolutely. Right. You know, at one time we had Bob Dole and we had George Mitchell and we had Sam Nunn and we had these giants walking the earth. And when John McCain leaves, we have Lindsey Graham, right? We have Bill Nelson if he gets reelected. You know, we have, you know, there's this whole kind of Washington idea that, you know, we can talk about what that's based on, but there was that there are these guys that were so big and it was so amazing to cover them and now look what we're left with.

Sure. And there's a lot, I mean, without demeaning his legacy at all. I mean, he was a fine man and a fine senator. I mean, there was a lot of, there was a lot of McCain where that sort of previous generation entered modernity in a slightly awkward way that you could see the myth making happening in real life. And it sort of was like a little bit like of a peek behind the curtain. This is like early 2000s. Yeah. And I think just the sort of, I think it's just, this reflects more on me as a consumer as a media consumer than it does on McCain. or any of the arifice that's around them or whatever, but you're just sort of more aware of these things, right? That you're, that you, I mean, part of the 24-hour news cycle is seeing,

you know, your anchors react in very, you know, human ways to things in real time. But also just that it did sort of feel like, you know, he's not that different a character than like Rudy Giuliani, although he has a much longer important,

significant life and a broader body of work, but in the way that, you know, you can kind of see why the hagiography is happening. happening throughout his life. You see why people are attracted to him in different ways. And let us count the ways, right? Subvert your own party. Yeah.

The press loves people when you subvert your own party, which he did a lot. Yeah. We can debate the degree and certainly people do, but he certainly did it a lot of times, right? Flirt with becoming a member of the other party, as I seem to remember him in the early 2000. Run for president. Always a president. Be involved in a giant scandal like the Keating Five. Give interviews all the time.

Yeah. And say fascinating. things in the interviews that often subvert the party. Sure. The other one was like this. Well, I mean, his time in Vietnam, I think, I don't even know if you mention them the list, but I think that that, in some ways,

that gives backbone to, I mean, to everything else that follows, right? Totally. And also, he did many, many important things and impressive things and, you know, laudable things in his life. No matter what thing you want to admire him for, you can always back, you can always reinforce it with his, you know, patriotism. Totally. And I think he imbues that whole generation of politicians with a certain

Granger, right? George H.W. Bush, Bob Dole, John McCain, right? These are all war heroes. Yeah. You know, that's different from a lot of the people who come along now. Yeah. Right? We don't, it's the whole, it's a, it's, you know, John McCain's not part of this, but it's the whole sort of greatest generation kind of thing. The, um, the other thing I'd add about him is just he had, he had and has such a sense of

drama with the media. You know, when he does this thing with a skinny, uh, remember when he gives the thumbs down, the climatic thumbs down vote to the skinny healthcare repeal bill. Absolutely. He had this quote where he said, you know, people are asking him that day, how are you going to vote? And he said, watch the show. That was his quote. Yeah. Other places it was rendered wait for the show.

But the whole thing is like, I'm going to do something dramatic on television. And apparently Chuck Schumer knew before the whole thing on the floor where he walks up and dramatically gives the thumbs down and is talking to Mitch McConnell and everybody before that, that he's going to every it's all known but he is creating this moment of drama it's so like here is one last great john mccane's set piece for all of you dc jernos to just write about it was happening like in the middle of the night on c span everything it was it was unbelievable and john he he knows theatricality like he just to me that's his groove right and jonathan martin's times piece that you mentioned at length earlier for my favorite part of the whole thing is right above a photo of

circa 2000 in like a jeans and a flannel or a sweatshirt with a flannel over the sweatshirt which is fantastic and an Arizona ball cap he's out there by his grill on his porch the line the paragraph right above that says mr. McCain who is not doing interviews but by the way it's great that it's necessary to point that out and also said with such definitiveness right it's not who could not be reached it's like who's formerly not doing interviews mr. McCain who is not doing interviews delights in sitting out on his deck where he He once handled slabs of ribs on the grill, friends say. I love that he's not doing interviews, but it goes right into a deeply sourced retelling

of what he's doing right now. There are people giving proxy interviews for him. That's the purpose of the piece, obviously. This isn't inside baseball. But it's just the degree to which the narrative is tied in with the way the story is told is just fantastic. Oh, totally. And it's funny because, like, the Martin is an excellent reporter, but also like the people

that were in the kind of McCain Club were like. who are like Lindsey Graham and Joe Lieberman who are like the blabiest senators you know they were and I think I think I don't know this for a fact but I suspect that McCain probably created this idea where you give interviews and you talk to people and you you know are kind

of this publicly available statesman The straight talk express was a thing The straight talk express But you know when it's like when they do the When they do the OBets gonna have to grapple with with plenty of stuff But here's one He endorsed Donald Trump for president

Yeah He's been sticking forks in Donald Trump since the election, but he, you know, like the most basic way that you can tell people not to vote for a certain candidate is probably not to endorse him. Guess what? John McCain really likes being a senator. Yeah. He was up for reelection. Yeah. Splitting from Trump would have been really dangerous, right? Yeah. He wanted to be elected to the Senate. Yep. And, you know, I think he bailed after the Access Hollywood tape, which was very, very late in the process. What a couple of weeks before the election. But he endorsed Donald Trump. And, you know, that's that's one of those things that will be in a very, his obit is, is for, you know, for an honest person, one of the toughest right. You know, because there is a lot, you know, the whole, I think sometimes now he's almost devalued because like liberal, by liberal Twitter. But it's going to be really long and full of contradictions, switchbacks, all kinds of stuff. This is what I like about the sort of pre-obit thing.

Well, I mean, one thing that everybody knows, I mean, I think for the most part, is that John McCain's obituary was 99% written by the New York Times eight years ago, 10 years ago? More than that. 15 years ago? Yeah. And they just steadily update these things as they go, right? I mean, there's a whole department dedicated to this. So, you know, putting together these thoughts in advance of someone's death is the farthest thing from radical in the news industry.

But, you know, having him sit there on the porch and sort of receive people and have this, have the, you know, this conversation. begin in such a programmatic way this early is is pretty interesting but you can kind of imagine what the obituary is going to say. It is a hard one to write. It would be hard to write on deadline. But you know it's going to be it's going to say what you just said. For a

senator that fancied himself a champion of straight talk, there were some moments of fill in the blank. You know, it's kind of... But to me that's the that's like the penultimate paragraph or that's like the third out of four sections. Sure. Well, yeah. Because like the one thing that's interesting about him

is like you're both interested in reading conservatives writing his obit and liberals. Because for both, he was a uniquely, you know, charismatic, a uniquely, uniquely inspiring and uniquely frustrating character. Right. But Bill Chris Tristel's Weekly Standard endorsing for president over Bush in 2000. Yeah. You know, for Democrats, it was like, oh, McCain, could you switch parties? John Kerry going to pick McCain as his running mate.

Yeah. That was a thing in 2004. And yet, and yet, and yet, you know, disappointments. Like Mitch McConnell's, you know, liberal obits are not going to be. It's going to be like Mitch McConnell sucks. Like that's going to be the end, right? There's nothing there. But McCain's will have, will be, will have some life to them.

And they'll be really, really, really fascinating. It is. I mean, and I think that a lot of people like myself included will probably learn a lot more about his politics and we know than we win it. Because in a lot of ways, being a firebrand was a proxy, it was a stand end for actual political conviction in a lot of ways. Absolutely. Oh, yeah.

Why would you want him to jump to the Democratic? The conversation about him becoming a Democrat had nothing to do with policy. It was like a wrestling like face turn to the liberal side. It was literally, that was the grounds it was considered on. And the fact that he was just like people thought, oh, well, he split from the Republican Party on immigration. Yeah. Why won't he do this? Right?

You know, why not this too? On health care. Well, you know, why not this? Yeah. Fascinating. All right, David, for our final segment. Let's try out the title, Who Wants to Be an ESPN Millionaire? Can I take you behind the sports media critic curtain for just a second?

Let's do it. As I've talked to people in the TV biz over the last few months, I've heard this almost constant refrain, who's going to be brave enough to write something negative about Katie Nolan? Why does the media give her a pass? I heard this literally all the freaking time. Well, Andrew Marshall on the New York Post finally wrote that thing last Tuesday in a piece called Why is ESPN paying Katie Nolan seven figures? Marchand points out that her assignments so far at ESPN includes Snapchat Sports Center, guest hosting various shows.

He writes Nolan's best skill may be, quote, developing projects. So from the look on your face, I'm guessing you don't totally buy this take. What is the valid Katie Nolan, state of Katie Nolan take at this point? I mean, we talked about you. I feel like we talked about Katie Nolan, maybe in a combined segment with the pardon my take. guys when the ESPN was putting that on the air? Yeah. And they'd sign Katie around the same time.

That sounds right. To the extent I remember anything. I should stipulate here before. I don't have the LeBron like memory, but to the extent I remember anything, that sounds right. I should stipulate here that I've never met Katie Nolan. I don't know Katie Nolan. I don't know Katie Nolan. But because you and I think are two of the few people.

Right. But because we're in the sort of same industry as her, I feel like we just refer to her as all the time. So if I say the word Katie, I would make it sound too familiar, I apologize. guys. Okay. Duly noted. But yeah, I mean, I think that in a lot of ways what we discussed before still stands that

when you make a sort of like totemic hire, right? When you hire somebody because of what they represent or like the prospects of what they could possibly bring to your company, when you hire somebody without any sort of plan in place and then fail to

like really actively loudly put it like, insist that a plan be put into place I don't know how you expect much of anything different. You know, are you really going, should we really expect that the monolith that is ESPN, are we mad that they're not adapting on the fly? You know, I don't know.

It all feels like John Skipper just signed this contract and then like everybody else is sort of shrugging their shoulders and hoping that, you know, the problem doesn't get dropped into their lap or their portfolio. Yeah, that's a good point, and that's a very different point than this piece is making. Right. Which is when are ESPN, the people who run ESPN going to figure out what to do, how the best is her?

Good question. Which also, one of these sources may have told me, and I wrote down this quote, in the entire history of ESPN, when has, quote, let's figure it out ever worked. Yeah. Which is true. Yeah. I mean, it's just, it's like, it's funny because one way to think about her and this ties in the contract a little bit is she's one of the last people who was kind of in the Fox FS1 ESPN. bidding more. Yeah.

It happens at later on, and she doesn't, I guess to ESPN last October, if I remember correctly. But there was this moment, right, where everybody was getting huge deals. Skip, Colin, there's some more first names for you. Everybody was getting a big deal. And people at ESPN were getting huge deals so they would not entertain an FS1 offer. Yeah. And she became this thing of, oh, my gosh, you know, we got to get her because she could be a

huge asset to Fox. You know, is she going to do a daily show at Fox? all that kind of stuff. But yeah, I think, like, to me, isn't her, to the extent I understand it, isn't her job at ESPN, help us figure out streaming. Help us figure out, you're not, you're not here to help us figure out linear television. You're here to help us figure out the next thing. Here's my problem with that. Why would they not just announce that?

Why would they not just say we're giving her a million dollars a year to be the anchor of our over-the-top network? anchor figuratively speaking yeah well I guess I didn't I didn't really have it the the OTT was not in existence when she got there no I know but in

or why not announce it since then once that's been decided because it's because right now the overwhelming perception is that they have nowhere else to put her so they're putting her there right I guess

I mean I don't I've never thought of it like she's going to be hosting a television show I mean I don't I've never thought that she again, to the extent I understand that she actually wanted to do that. Sure. So when they said,

oh, she's going to be hosting something on ESPN Plus, I was like, that makes sense. So the question that you were getting at and that the piece gets at is basically like, how is this, what is the million dollars getting you? Yes. Well, and I also think there's this angst among people

who work at that network or think about that, and they think that everything, if you're going to be making a lot of money, it has to be in traditional television terms, right? You have to prove your value in traditional television terms. Sure. Whereas her value seems to lie as much, in the stuff she's already doing.

Podcasting, being on ESPN Plus, figuring out the digital space, which they need to figure out right now. So to me, you know, that's... The other thing, by the way, is the salary thing. Didn't we just do this with Greenie? Like, there's this weird thing is when you reveal someone's salary,

all of a sudden, everybody goes, they're not worth that. Right. Everyone in sports media says that at the same time. That would work for everybody, by the way. We just go to any, we print the ringer salary list tomorrow. Nobody would think, yeah, you and I are not making much money, but no one would, no one would believe that we're worth it. Yeah.

That is just like the universal response in media, oh, they're not worth it. Yeah. I do that job for, I do a better job for half the money. Sure. Okay, well, great. You know, that's not really how these things work. Yeah, exactly. No, I mean, in some sense, it's like, I mean, the, there's the corollary that I think people listening,

You know, people that watch ESPN might understand is it's the value of a sports team. It's like it doesn't really matter what the clipper sold for. If the, you know, Atlanta Hawks are for sale or if any teams for sale, it's, it, what matters is there's 30 of them in existence. And it's worth exactly what the owner wants to get for it. Right? Yeah. So, I mean, yeah, I mean, it's a bidding war. I mean, and she's going to get what she's going to get.

Let's toss that out the window. Okay. But I, but it is, but I mean, the bigger question is, what do you do? You said you don't think she's going to host a show. I said the thing I said to you a couple weeks ago This question of what do you do with Katie Nolan Like you said has been bubbling for so long, right? I'm not sure why it wasn't a directive from the top

To get her on Four hours of ESPN a week Every executive producer, every senior producer at ESPN Like report back to me in the next 24 hours How you're going to have Katie on your show You know, we're paying her all this money We think she's the future of the company we're going to be using her mostly for over the top,

but we want to get her out there, but tell me what your pitch is. Like she is on highly questionable once in a while now. Yeah. But like, you know, she should be having some presence on a bunch of different, now if that's not the goal, again, if that's not the goal,

I think it's, again, I say this all the time. It's about setting expectations. Why would you bring her in and just set her up to have everybody say, why isn't she doing more? What were they thinking?

But was, the weird part is like, I don't know that everybody's saying it. It's like people that I talk every once in a while on this one column. Nobody else, nobody in Twitter world

seems pretty bothered by this. And the one thing is that if people at ESPN were saying, how does she get that much money when we're doing rounds and rounds of layoffs and all that stuff? That would interest me. I don't,

I don't hear anybody saying that. Yeah. I mean, to me anyway, maybe they are out in the world. Yeah. And if so, that's an interesting story. But I don't hear me.

It probably helps to, I mean, the people that might be grousing, it probably helps, you know, that case a little bit, the fact that she's not actually getting all the hits.

She's not, She's not taking their time on TV. She's just taking some money. Robert Lytol of Black Sports Online made what I thought was an interesting argument on the Richard Dijt podcast. Why don't we hear that? I just found that it was interesting. And now she's, you know, another show that is being set up and developed by her. When there's so many, I think, the representation of women of color in media is not where it should be.

And I'm not saying that she's not talented, but I'm saying there's a lot of talented young ladies in media like a Taylor Rooks or, you know, Rosgold over at T&T or the Turner Networks, then I just don't think we'd be able to have the type of setbacks that she's had and still be able to pilot into a million dollar contract. And I think we talked about- I don't know about posting a clip from another media podcast on this. It's like 30 Spider-Men pointing at 30 other Spider-Men, just like it's just a little bit, a little bit strange.

The podcast singularity has begun. The point he makes is an interesting one. And it really doesn't have anything to do with, doesn't have that much to do with Katie Nolan, right? Which is that, you know, what he's talking about is like if you, if, if, if, if women of color were to cut the same career path and do some of the things she's done on television, there'd be all this, there would just be crazy controversy, right?

Everybody would go nuts. I mean, look at, look at how relatively easy she got offered, you know, after her Trump comments on Davis & Mero. You know, I mean, there's just a lot of stuff where it's like, like yeah she'll take some heat but again part of it might be that she's just not she doesn't cut as much of a national figure as someone who's

you know on TV every day it's kind of hard to tell but I agree with that point I think that she's in some ways she's had it very easy and you know and she's there's been she's has had a sort of charmed media

existence but all that has to be tempered by the fact that like I mean we're talking about her sure but there's not there's still not we don't know what she's doing There's no, I mean, the track record's pretty limited, right? Yeah. Well, yeah. I don't think, I don't, I just, I just always assume that whatever it was going to be at ESPN just hasn't happened, you know, that it's still, you know, developing or end-vote.

What do you think about her on the over-the-top network, though? Do you think that she'll be successful there? I don't know what successful means at this point in the terms of that, right? Like what they're trying to do, their strategy so far has been to collect tons of sporting events, right? some boxing, there's some, there's Ivy League sports, just a lot of stuff, right? Like, can we get all these individual constituencies to say, we want this thing, right? She's different, right? Her idea, the idea of her is, here is a show that is on this thing.

Here's a personality that you like that will be on this as a reason to come in or a reason to hang around. Yeah. You know, I think that's different. But I think at this point, like, I don't know, you know, to me that the whole thing is, put stuff on there that people want to watch, right? Well, that's just it. Princeton football is not the same thing, you know, or Harvard football is not the same thing.

Totally agree. When you go to, you know, we talk about SportsCenter a lot. We talk about talk shows sort of broadly defined a lot. But talk shows are as anchors as like, I'm using anchor too much now, but talk shows as like the hook to get you subscribed to a thing seems almost impossible. You know, if you think about like the people,

person sitting at a desk shows, They're actually appointment television and not just what you turn on when nothing's going on. You know, when nothing else is on TV or not something that you wouldn't substitute out for a different version of someone else sitting behind a desk if you had to pay for it. I mean, I guess it seems like there's immense talent that brings about that sort of attention, like Letterman in his prime, right? You would watch that sort of thing. Certain people would be drawn to that sort of thing. Sure. And then there's subject matter and talent combined, right?

John Oliver now maybe. or John Stewart during you have to pay for John Oliver currently Right, but the question is are you paying for John Oliver Are you paying for Game of Thrones and then you want and then you get John Oliver So that's what we're all talking about that day I don't know I just think that it's I think it's a big ask for anybody for for any one character doing a news show Or any or any sort of you know YouTube be whatever desk show to become the anchor for an over the top network

It's hard all right for a future segment How ESPN is going to conquer the over the top world all right David Thanks to our producer Jim Cunningham Yes For wrangling us as he always does Back next week For more hot takes about the media See you David

See you later man Rolls aside One of the biggest barriers Which is really the motto of the show Morals aside My data back Data back data back I want my data back

There is everyone Who we tweeted that is a hero All right I don't care how many people tweeted that That's the best thing I've ever heard