The Press Box - Jay-Z in GQ, Podcasting vs. a Writer’s Brain, and a Sports Media Beef Check-In

Episode Date: March 27, 2026

Today on The Press Box, Bryan and Joel start by discussing Jay-Z's exclusive interview with GQ and the art of celebrity interviews. Then they discuss the trending topic of whether podcasting is rotting writers' brains (21:25). Then, in the Notebook Dump, they talk about the Stephen A. Smith–Jason Whitlock and Dan Orlovsky–Pat McAfee sports media beefs (34:12), Savannah Guthrie's interview with 'Today,' Tracy Kidder, and the Sports Emmys(54:03). Hosts: Bryan Curtis and Joel AndersonProducers: Bruce Baldwin, Isaiah Blakely, and Jaime Yukich Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hello, media consumers. Welcome to Press Box Thursday. You got Brian Curtis. He got Joel Anderson. He got producers Isaiah Blakely and Bruce Baldwin. Coming up on the old press box, JZGQ and the Perils of Celebrity Profiles is podcasting, rotting the brain of your favorite writer.

We have a media beef check-in, Stephen A versus Jason Whitlock, and Pat McAfee versus Dan Orlovsky, plus Savannah Guthrie, the sports Emmys, and a farewell to a great nonfiction writer. But Joel, let's begin with Jay-Z and GQ. All right. I'm not going to do the fake podcast question

because I know you read the big interview. I did. I did. I read it and I watched most of the video. And I know you watched, you consumed it all, right? I consumed it all. Is this the rare exclusive that's actually an exclusive? I think so. I, you know, Jay-Z, much like his much more famous wife, Beyonce, doesn't really do a lot of these.

And I can count on one hand the amount of times I've heard Jay-Z, you know, one-on-one with somebody. And so this is one of those times. Nobody else has this. This is yet, this is truly exclusive. So what did you think? It's complicated. So when I read it yesterday and, and talked with you, text it with you, text it with some other people.

I was feeling one way about it. And then last night, I listened to the Joe Budden podcast, which comes up on here quite a bit. But I listened to it last night this morning, and I came out of it feeling differently. And so I'm just going to bisect this. As a news and culture journalist, I wanted to hear Jay-Z talk more about a range of issues, including things that were applicable to his life, things that he'd been involved in, Right. But if you're a hip hop fan, I think they actually covered quite a bit of what people wanted to hear. Because I was surprised. I was listening to these guys this morning and they were like, oh, yeah. Well, he covered his feelings about Jay Cole.

You know, Jay Cole. What's your favorite J. Cole song? Oh, so I was still working on that list. You didn't think I threw a trick at you right there. You didn't see that in the notes. I was all ready to say where I'm from and you crossed me up. Yeah. You know what? You've said where I'm from twice, believe it or not. So I believe you on that. You Euro stepped me. I did. I did. I told you I was going to keep going on your toes today. But, you know, he also addressed the Kendrick and Drake Beef. And people in hip-hop wanted to hear him talk about that. He distanced himself from rap beefs. Despite being a participant in said Beaves. Oh, I mean, the thing is, and this is the thing where,

if you're an older, more experienced journalist, or you're the very serious, you know, news and culture journalists, you're like, well, hey, man, it's not, it's not just Nas. You've, as a rapper, you've shot at everybody, like, in your career. Like, there's just, there's not really a top rapper that you've not had a little digged or a little disset. And so, like, it's really, you know, it feels like it's easy to say that in your mid-50s now, right? But yeah, like, he, they covered a lot of ground if you're just interested him as a musician and a rapper and, you know, his relationship to the game and his response to the, uh, to the, to the, to the civil lawsuit that was brought against him as part of the ditty, uh, case or whatever. So I mean, that, they got to that.

And he talked about it and people have not heard him talk about that. So I could understand if you felt like he had accomplished something. But I, I, to me, because of the person he is, the figure that he is, I wanted, I wanted a little bit more ambition. and what they talked about. What did you think? Well, you know, people who listen to this pod know that I am a JZ expert. Oh, yeah, big fan.

For the knowledge I drop week after week about him and the genre. Well, you said where I'm front. So what's your favorite JZ album then? Oh, well, see, I have a blueprint guy or reasonable doubt guy. I've got to think about that. Okay, all right.

Some people like American Gangster, the concept album, they want to the movie, but okay, go ahead. But to think about this is a piece of journalism for a second. Yeah. I feel there is a genre of celebrity profile that can be described as awesome person is awesome. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Where what you're getting from it is less the content is less a particular quote or particular insight.

What you're getting from it is that they got the person to talk at all. Yeah. And honestly, how much does it matter? you've got him on the cover you've got two different two hour long interviews and we should note that Frazier Tharp is the writer who worked on this piece

that's how I read it and to me in terms of insight beyond that I don't know like I think to your question of the you know filled up an episode of the Joe Budden podcast how much how

good did it have to be to do that like Jay-Z talking for four hours about various subjects, including the ones you mentioned. Wouldn't that have just filled up any podcast? I mean, wouldn't that have just done the job

no matter how good or bad the interview was? Yeah, I mean, the thing is they were very complimentary of the interview. I mean, they name-checked Frazier. You know, they name-checked them.

They say, good job, Frazier, all that sort of stuff. So, yeah, I mean, I guess I don't know what a bad interview

would have looked like because it, in their eyes and in the fans of Jay-Z fans because they never hear from him anyway. Right? I mean, I guess that's the sort of thing because, you know, we're joking around. I know you're not a Jay-Z fan, so to speak.

But like, are you interested in Jay-Z anyway? Like, that's the thing. Sure. Right. I'm interested. Oh, you are. I read every word of this eagerly. Okay, okay. But my criticism would be,

I don't think the questions pushed very hard on a lot of interesting issues. be fair. For instance. His deal with the NFL and the Super Bowl came up. Right. That was a deal Rock Nation made back in 2019 to effectively take over the Super Bowl halftime show.

Yeah. Here's how the question was phrased. On flux capacitor, you're talking about the NFL deal and the pushback you got from that. How do you feel about those critiques now that we're seven Super Bowls in and each halftime show has been this big cultural event?

So we're talking. about the critique from 2019, which was the NFL had totally screwed up the Colin Kaepernick situation. They had done wrong by Colin Kaepernick. Part of the reason we knew this was because Jay-Z criticized the NFL for the way they had treated Colin Kaepernick, including wearing a jersey on Saturday Night Live. That was the critique. And now you are coming in to bail out the NFL, offer them a lifeline. Well, just listen to that question I just asked. You've raised the critiques, but by the end of it, you're completely diffusing the critiques in the own question. Now that each halftime show has been this big cultural event, well, okay, you know, you've booked

Bad Bunny, then that's great. But like, are we pushing on that? There's, there's no follow-up, at least in the interview as it was printed. That's right. That's fair. Yeah. I mean, that's, I look, you know, one of the projects that we initially had talked about was for here at the Ringer was doing a 10-year anniversary of the Colin Kaepernick kneeling thing. That's this year. That's coming this fall. And we're like, what should we do? And the idea that came up, you know, for me and other people, was that we would look

at that Rock Nation deal with the NFL, right? And there's a lot there. There really is about, like, what is his relationship with Colin Kaepernick? Does he still think that we're past kneeling? What is his relationship with Roger Goodell? What do you think a big, splashy halftime show has done for the causes that Colin Kaepernick supported, for instance? Things like that. That didn't come up.

But don't, let me. Do you think Frazier was allowed to ask that question? I don't know. Yeah. I don't know. It's probably, it's not a compliment that I, that I say, I don't know. Yeah. Because I think if you're going to bring it up, bring it up.

dig into it. You don't want to bring it up and then just move on to the next thing. And again, we're not seeing the whole interview here, right? This is edited and condensed, as they like to say. But I think if you're going to get into that, you should just get into it. I also think, in here,

a lot of the interview was just very nonspecific. So he mentioned that lawsuit that you brought up a second ago. Yeah. And this is Jay Z's answer. He's talking about the reaction. He says, I called, again, after my family, my partners. they were like, what do you need to help?

Don't even worry in a phone call. Not even a, I got to go to the board with this. It was like a testament because people know me. Who are these people? Who are we talking about here? So my business partners were like, hey, no problem. We know this isn't you. We know this isn't, you know, this doesn't describe the person we know.

Who are we talking about? Like, that's just so nonspecific as to be completely uninteresting. The question is, I'm sorry, who? who are those people? Let's at least put some information behind that. And there was a lot of things. He would talk about the album, this 4-44 album. Big face, correct me if I'm misstepping here.

But it's like, it was really emotional to go out and stage and, you know, kind of, you know, expose that, expose myself that way every night. About what? About what specifically? I went back and read up on the album and some of the things he had, you know, he had nodded at in that album. But it's like, you have to kind of talk about what that is. And I just felt a lot of it was very nonspecific. We're taking an answer and not just kind of pushing just a little bit more to kind of get more specific and get something down that I think would resonate a little bit more. I mean, for people that, he cheated on Beyonce.

And she almost left him. And this was like a confessional album. Speaking of nonspecificness and sort of vague answers, can we play that clip that was related to the Busby thing, please? Like, I was really heartbroken by, like, everything that occurred, you know, with all, like, you know, we're in the space now where it's just like, almost like consequence is not thought about enough. So everything is so instant. You know what I'm saying? So that is how the print version of the interview starts out, okay? I truly thought that he was talking about the state of the world and, like, world affairs.

Right? Like, this was some sort of oblique reference to the Trump administration and starting, you know, illegal wars and stuff like that. I did not realize that it was, you know, about that case, which is, it's fine. Like, I'm glad that he had a venue to talk about it and whatever. But even in talking about that, it was so vague as to almost not even really be an answer, right? Like when you say, like, what did that year look like? What did you do? Like, did you, how? How? How? How concerned were you that you were going to have about going to court over this sort of thing? What's your relationship with Diddy? Right? Like, what did you think of those? You know, he's, I mean, he and Diddy and the bad boy records or whatever. Like, there have been contemporaries for 30 years, right? That's your boot.

You've been in pictures with him. What do you think about all that stuff? Like, that did not come up. So I will say that, yeah, that was sort of a missed opportunity. But, well, not sort of. It was a missed opportunity. But I, you know, I guess the thing is. is that, and I was actually thinking about this, Brian, and that, man, hip hop, it turned 50 a couple

years ago. Very few of these artists have been, have even reached the age, live long enough to have people be curious about them as people and, like, the lives they lead, right? Like, there's the myths that they tell about their lives and the story. They, you know, that's part of the, the musician and the character they play for whatever. But like we're interviewing Jay-Z as an elder now, right? Very much an elder statesman interview. An elder statesman interview. And so I, for me, I want to know more about your politics, like your relationship to the

world. You're a billionaire now, right? And there's sort of an oblique reference to, you know, Frazier said something, people try to throw a capitalist at you, right? And I just didn't feel like there was a, I didn't think it was a great question, and I definitely didn't think it was a great answer in response to, all right, you're a billionaire in a time when wealth inequality is growing in this country, in this country around the world. what do you think about the idea that you're a billionaire and you think that this is a good thing. And increasingly, many people think that's a bad thing.

So how do you justify that and that wealth, right? That sort of stuff. Because he's an elder statesman. He's a big, he's not just a rapper. He's a businessman. He's an icon. And yeah, there's just not really been venues for that going forward. And the difference is, and I thought about this because I was listening to Joe Biden podcast.

And I was like, oh, those interviews happen on podcasts. now with their peers. So it happens with Joe Budden. It happens with Noriega and the drink champs. It happens with Fat Joe and Jada Kiss on that podcast, all that stuff. And those guys are that, there is a kind of interview that they do that is really entertaining and can get good information. But in terms of curiosity about the broader world, it tends to, that tends not to come up

very much in those interviews. That's interesting. And that's a transfer from the old days where the only place you'd read that was really in a glossy magazine interview. That you would potentially get that kind of depth. Absolutely. And get a different. And it still does happen in glossy magazines. We should know.

GQ is a glossy magazine, right? Writing about someone you really love is often the hardest thing to do. Right. I think it's harder than writing about someone you have mixed feelings about or, in fact, hate. it's just hard to articulate that, right? And I think, you know, the two approaches I've seen that have really worked with that, and I know I've screwed that up before myself in my life. But the approaches are you want to describe them or their art.

You want to draw that out of them so that people like you look at them anew and say, oh, I didn't think about that. That's a new angle. That's a new approach. Or you just want to get them to. say a bunch of quotable stuff. Yeah. That, you know, see Quincy Jones

in New York Magazine as interviewed by David Marquesi years ago. Everything, like, every answer was like, holy shit. You want that interview. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Those would be the two ways because I do think it's, I just think it's hard to go in like that and be like, oh my gosh,

you know, what am I going to say? And I don't, and I'm not a person, I brought up a few things there. I don't think these necessarily need to be interviews where you're, going at them. Right. I don't think every interview needs to take the form of, you know, Isaac Chotner versus Cass Stun's Sunstein, right? Like, that's not going to work for everything. No. Jay Z's not sitting, JZ is not either not sitting down for that interview or he's getting up as soon as it gets to.

You know, nor do you even want that. That's what you kind of have to like, it's like, what's the side door here? What am I going to bring to this? Right. Can I, can I go over a few things that come in the GQ package. Yeah, sure. When you put Jay-Z on the cover. Yeah. I was amused to see the headline from GQ inside Jayz's world-class watch collection. Oh, man.

Kind of like a sports writer. You have to write a column and a sidebar. Oh, man. That's a sidebar. God bless the person who got to decide to write about Jayz's world-class watch collection. I mean, it's crazy because, again, GQ is a fashion magazine. That's the place where you're supposed to get that information. But it's just, man, really out of step with the...

world right now, but yeah, that's, okay, sure. The other one was outgoing editor Willowell's editor's editor's letter. Hmm. He was, Will Welch has been editor of GQ since 2018 and global editorial director, which is the new, the new editor. Mm-hmm. The new title since 2020.

This is his final issue. He's going to Paris to work for Farrell Williams. That is his new job. What? It's a different pivot than we often. and see in journalism. To do what? Does it say? It's not clear. Creative opportunities. But I just want to read some of this because this made me smile inside. Okay. Sometime in the late arts, Will Welch writes, Jay-Z said something to me that changed my life.

Do you know what Jay-Z said, Joel? Take the $500,000? No, what is it? He said, I walk into every room as myself. Now, Willge took that advice, and he continues, while I might never light up rooms with the megawatt super presence of Jay-Z, I can say that now, all these years later, I do indeed walk into every room as myself. To me, that means with a mix of confidence and humility, clear values and strong boundaries, a flexible, sober mind and a steady heart, an intense work ethic that is balanced by an active spiritual presence.

Honestly, it feels like one of my most profound accomplishments, the kind of thing that takes years of hard personal work to realize and that all the other good things in my life now flow from. All that, I walk into a room as myself, huh? If anybody's looking to establish an editor's

letter AI, I've got the text for you to draw from. You know, man, people really, and again, I go back to the button pod, People really want Jay-Z to be a profound person. And it makes sense because, I mean, I don't, you know,

you can tell me where you have him in your top five of all-time rappers or whatever, right? Maybe he's not in your top five, maybe he's top ten, whatever. But for him to have been sort of the dominant force in hip-hop for generation, you want it to mean something. And you want the things that he says to have impact and value. Because, I mean, any of us that grew up with hip-hop, hip-hop, those who grew up consuming it on Yon TV Raps or Rhaps City on BET or Red

the Source or Red Vibe or whatever, like those early dudes, KRS 1, even, you know, L.O. KooJ, you know, Bob Deep, whatever, people that just had so, at least a somewhat of a critique of the world, you know, you kind of were hoping, okay, well, you've done all this, you've sold all these records, you've won, as they talked about social. much in the interview, the idea of him winning. And it's just like, what do you have to say about all that? Like, what is, you know, we've, we've hung on to your every word, your every bar for the last 30 years, bro. What do you have to say about the world? And it just hasn't, I don't think Jay-Z, either he's not sharing it with us or he doesn't have a lot to say about it. And in lieu of that,

people have just decided to impart meeting into like really trite things that he said instead. And so that's, you know, I think that's sort of the misfortune of it. But you know, if I think about it, in that most music artists for the most part, like it doesn't, it's most celebrities. It's not, yeah, celebrities, like, it may not be fair. We never got that with Michael Jackson.

We didn't get that with Prince. I mean, I don't, just Madonna, like has, she have a lot to say. I mean, maybe Cher, maybe Cher has done stuff like. Air feels like she's unburdened herself more than... Yeah, I feel like we've heard a lot from sharing like Barbara Streisand or whatever, right? But, yeah, but I just...

Yeah, I just think that maybe that's just not a fair expectation and, like, that could be it. Like, so what Frasier, Sharp, and GQ got out of Jay-Z, that may be the end of the depth of the pool right there. And we may just have to deal with that, because, I mean, again, it may be an unfair expectation because nobody else is doing that either, really. On another note, there was an interesting tweet from Kendall Baker.

Yeah. Kendall Baker is the Yahoo newsletter guru. Yeah. And he tweeted this, Hot take, most sports journalists get worse at analysis when they stop writing and go full podcast slash video mode. And it makes sense why. Writing forces you to slow down and organize your thoughts.

writing is where you pressure test your ideas podcasts let you just say stuff is podcast rotting our writer brains Joel I mean I guess it depends on the podcast you do right I so I'm look I do think that there probably is a sort of degradation

of the sports conversation and coverage if all you do is talk and you don't plan out how you talk and it's based on like theater and arguing, right? But I don't know about you. And I do know about you because I'm looking at the notes that we have. I'm looking at the sheet. Like, we still write like to talk to people here. Tons of words. We do a lot. We write so much that we, there's in just the previous topic that we had, there were things that we wrote down that we didn't even get to. Right. And so I come, maybe this is just my fear because I didn't grow up in front of a camera or on the microphone.

I have a real fear of getting on the microphone and not knowing what I'm supposed to say or not knowing how to say it. You know what I mean? And so I'm preparing. Like even sometimes, look, and especially if you see me on tailgate, maybe that it could be a little confusing. But even then, bro, I'm writing down the things that I might say. Not all the time. A lot of this is, I'm still freestyling up here a lot. And I'm working with, you know, with an outline more than a script. But we're doing writing. And so I think that I don't think that's fair.

I think that that is sort of a real, it's an unfair stereotype from all podcasts. Because I don't think we're all doing the same thing. Is Stephen A. Smith writing down everything he says. Well, shit, actually, I don't know. I think Stephen A. Smith does actually write down a lot of the things that he says. But what do you think? he might not need to. There's some people that don't need to.

Yeah. And you're talking about writing it down, but I'm guessing that just about every good podcast, especially the ones we work with, are doing tons of research before a podcast starts. Absolutely. They're doing it. They're soaking in a lot of stuff before they go in. It's hard to fill up an hour if you're not prepared. Oh, it's impossible.

I mean, you can do it, but I think you know it when you hear it when people are just, you know, winging it. And sometimes that's fine. Sometimes that happens. Sometimes you wing it in a piece of writing. Yeah. That's right. Yeah. Not all writing is equal either, right? It's not. Writing is a great, you know, considered pieces of thinking there. I thought when I saw Kendall's tweet, I thought about the sports writers who stay at the newspaper forever and don't do multimedia stuff. And I'm like, half of those guys, okay, 95% of those guys are writing the same column again and again and again. like sticking with writing has not sharpened their brain it's actually made their brain into mush

and they're just writing they're writing stuff over and over absolutely I think we've gotten a point with podcasting where we actually take for granted how good a lot of them are I also think and first of all actually let me back up for a second I think when I read Kendall saying I'm like that that hits me as cleanly as any professional critique could hit

me because the more we do this, the less we do the other thing. Yeah. The more we pod, the less we write. I was having lunch with somebody yesterday from a television network. You haven't written to me pieces lately. And my explanation is always, I haven't because we do two podcasts a week and I want them to be really good. Yeah.

Just like I want a piece of writing to be really good. And I don't want to do a half-ass thing. So if I'm going to do two pods a week, a lot, most all of my attention has to go into doing that. Yeah. It has to. It just absolutely has to. But when you, when you say that to me, I'm like, a little bit of me dies inside because you're right. And a little bit of me dies inside to Kendall's point about not sitting there and making the nut graph of the think piece perfect. Yeah. Here's not what I think I think. Here's what I know I think. Let me craft this so it really is precise and it's different. And I don't have to sit there and talk to Joel for 60 seconds.

before I figure out what I really think about this subject. Let me write it down so you just read it right off the bat. So he's right in that. I mean, you know the difference between a column and a riff, right? Yeah, of course, of course. Yeah, I think that he is, again, I think that he can be both right and wrong, like, to your point. Again, this is, I guess have gotten a lot better, man, I would say. I kind of felt like we were at the same place with writing too.

Like there's never been more bad writing on the internet, but there's never been more great writing either. Right. We're exposed to so much more and so many more people, and there are people out there doing, like, fantastic stuff that's like data-driven or, you know, just really creative ways of presenting new information on podcasts. Like, there's just all the time people are putting me on the game for something different.

And it influences the way that I think, and why the way I try to comment to this. So, yeah, and we should say his tweet says most sports journalists. He didn't say all, right? I still think that that's overstating the case a little bit, but I kind of get where he's coming from, but I also think that, like, it's a cool thing to say on the Internet because a lot of people want to talk about how good of a writer they are,

you know, yeah, podcasts suck, man. Is people just having a chat fest or whatever? But no, there's all kinds of everything. And it sort of betrays the complexity of that, I think. Here's what the people on the internet are right about. Okay. If you're doing a podcast, at least a conventional podcast, you're probably not bringing that much new reporting into the world.

If you're doing a podcast, at least a conventional podcast, you are very, very reactive. Yeah. It's one of the things about this. There's so much volume that it makes you like look at Twitter and hope something happens so that you have something to talk about. That's right. That's right. If you're sitting down to write something, I feel you're more likely to say, I have an idea I want to put out into the world.

I want to think about. And even if I'm writing about something that everybody's talking about, I want to tell you how to think about it differently. Or I want to argue that this is actually more important than the thing you're talking about. Yeah. Podcasting, it's almost like we're all looking at the wire machine go, okay. some NBA player I've barely heard of signed a contract extension emergency pod let's go oh my god

oh my god Bill Brian's taking a shot at you no that's not that I'm joking I'm joking Bill he wouldn't do that I also think Baker and people responding to him are right in the sense that like this is going to get out of whack at some point if it hasn't already

I'm going to make up some numbers let's say we have 100 writers and 100 podcasters talking about what those 100 riders doing reporting okay what if we have a hundred writers and a thousand podcast what if we have a hundred writers and three thousand podcasts yeah at a certain at a certain point you're like we don't have enough new facts in the world so we're just waiting for shams to do anything so that we can all feed our podcast and i do feel that has gotten out of whack and is going to get much much worse as we go along what is cheaper paying for a pot i mean see see theoretically

theoretically people would say, oh, the podcast is cheaper, right? But you got to get studio equipment. Maybe you got to get a studio. You got to have all the right tech. Whereas with writing, man, it's, I mean, maybe you need a phone line. You need a computer. Internet. Phone line.

Internet access. Do I say phone? What decade did you, you beam in from? Man, I mean, I did grow up on a rotary phone. You know what I mean? But no. So I think the thing, the thought, that people have is that we'll, particularly like people that come into media and they want to shake

shit up and their ideas always do a podcast, right? They're like, oh, yeah, we'll do a podcast. And that way you don't have to send people anywhere. You don't, you know, you don't have to pay for reporting or whatever. But I actually think that people are underestimating their writing doesn't have to be that expensive. I've done, you know, this is not in a dream world, I'm working on a piece right now that is bedeviling the hell out of me. And in a dream world, I would go to Texas. and I would interview people in line waiting for barbecue like Brian did, or I would spend time at the state capital in Austin and try to catch people or follow Tala Rico on the campaign trail.

But I still can talk to a lot of people from here. Like I can get them on the phone. I can get them to email me responses. And then I can write and I can do some research from my house. And I spend a lot of time on it. And that's cheaper. Like that's a cheaper proposition than doing the podcast thing. So I would encourage people to also think about writing is a way to make your way in it.

And that's kind of the reason, Brian, I don't know if you feel the same way. It's one of the reasons I always like, right. Like, first of all, I think it's just a good discipline to have. It's just good practice, like to keep those muscles loose to be thinking in that way. When I think of ideas, I think first in writing. And then I'm like, oh, wait, that could be a podcast, whatever. But I don't know. Is that how you kind of come at it as well?

Is that why you still write? Yeah. Yeah. And it's fun. It's, it's, it's bedeviling. and it's fun and it's very satisfying when you do it well

incredibly satisfying and I'm playing devil's advocate a little bit here but I do think like as we as we lunge forward into the podcast era there are these moments

we're like okay the Super Bowl just ended do you want your absolute favorite sports writer doing their absolute best column in the press box after the game

or from home or do you want your favorite sports writer and your other favorite sports writer talking on a podcast for an hour, hour and a half and breaking down the game? Which one of those is a better vehicle? And I'm not, again, I'm not consigning deadline columns to the ash heap of journalism history.

I'm really not because I like reading them. But it's one of those things where it's like, well, maybe that's, you know, as good or better, a better vehicle for that kind of thought. I don't know. That's what I come from. Don't you think also, too, that you can tell, you know that I never know what podcast is good. If Brian says that was a good show, I believe you, because I just never know.

Like, it's just I can never tell how good I am at this thing or not. But I know when my writing is good. And that is the thing that I, you know, that's the thing that I will never let go of. Like, knowing, I like, I did that. I know that piece is good. And it's resonated with people and people are reading it. I don't get that same feeling with podcasts, no matter how many people in the comments say that it's good or bad.

And by the way, I just have to say this because I have to get it, this person, and I'm glad you said this. There was somebody that came in one of our podcast mentions on, I don't know if it was YouTube and Spotify, and they're like, Joel's acting like he's so busy. Only does two podcasts a week. Well, first of all, you do two podcasts and you explain very well that you want them to be good. Motherfucker, dog, it is very hard to do.

Well, first, probably you may be doing too, but you'll probably guest on somebody else's podcast too, and you're probably prepping for that during the week. That's a lot of work, man. Again, I don't know what kind of podcast y'all be listening to where people are just running their mouth and not preparing for it. But that ain't how shit work over here, brother.

You know what I mean? There's a lot of stuff going on. I don't know why I had to get defensive about it, but I just want to let that person know. I'm not over here bullshit in all week, okay? That's the best defense of the podcast we've heard yet. Yeah, yeah. It's not over here, brother.

We say this is a real shit. Mm-hmm. Let's do a little notebook dump. Okay. It's a feature from the Tuesday pod that we're going to import over to the Thursday pod. All right. A bunch of short items like media beefs. Ooh.

Sports media beefs. Stephen A. Smith versus Jason Whitlock part 19. Where are we at this point? I mean, yeah, man. Jason Whitlock is the only person that can get Stephen A. Smith Carson. He really is. Wait, so other people can get him mad, but he stays within FCC boundaries most of the time. Jason Whitlock is the one who takes this to PG-13.

You can tell because, like, Stephen A. Smith, like, it's such a build-up to him. You, like, you fat bitch. You know, like, it just, he really, you can just tell, like, he does a person that does a curse a lot. And it's just really hard. But he wants you to know that he does not like that guy. But, like, yeah, he doesn't really reserve that for anybody. He's never cursed Max Kellerman at Jamel Hill or Kerry champion anybody, as far as I know. And the context here is that Whitlock went on Cam Newton's podcast, and Stephen A had elevated Cam Newton into the first-take football guy role, once occupied by Shannon Sharp.

So there was a little bit of a fence taken. Wait a second. You had him on your podcast and let him say things about me on your podcast? Yeah. I mean, I thought Cam, I don't know how much of a bit. but you watched. I thought Cam pushed back some when Jason Whitlock said that because I don't know how much you heard, but Jason Whitlock said something to the effect that if you go to a basketball game and you look at Solitaire, you're gay, something like that. He said that and he did something else along those lines. And then he said, I didn't really call him gay. But Cam and his co-hosts were like, no, no, bro, that's not. And so he cleaned it up. So Cam did do some pushing back. But also, as people remember, Jason Whitlock had had some unkind things to say about Cam.

So Cam wasn't just addressing Stephen A. Smith. He was also dealing with Whitlock over some things that Whitlock had said about him, too. We were getting a lot of, there were a lot of beefs interacting with each other. Not beef. We've been strogan off. Can I share a theory about Stephen A for a second? Yeah, please. I think we will soon learn that Stephen A is not running for president in 2020.

28, which means that he would have to start running in 2027. He all admitted that to Sean Hannity. Well, I was going to say, didn't he already say that he wasn't going to do that? He basically already said it. Yeah. As soon as that happens, a lot of the non-sports media attention that has been paid to Stephen A is going to fall away. It's just going to disappear because as long as you're a potential presidential candidate,

no matter how far-fetched the idea is, people are into you. That's when CBS Sunday morning is calling. There's just a different, there's a different press corps that follows you around. Stephen A, one of his gifts is he is sensitive to when things die down. It could be an episode of first take. It could be in his life generally. And I feel that that's when he goes in. When it's like, uh-oh, you know, the attention is, it's peeling off a little bit.

I just wonder if we are going to see. Now, Whitlock may be its own, like, category where it's like, I just get so mad when this guy talks about me that I have to come in and cut a promo. but I don't know. I'm fascinated to watch Stephen A post-presidential teas and to see how that changes him if at all. That's an interesting way, I think, but my thing with Stephen A is that he always, like this is part of his non-ESPN profile, that he is engaging in all these beefs,

even like LeBron. Like LeBron is a part of that way. Like, the beef he had with LeBron and kept how he were going other people's shows and talk about LeBron and how he didn't like LeBron, but he respected him and all this other stuff. So I think that Stephen A is real about his reps, like, for me personally. Like, I think that he doesn't mind beefing. Yeah, I think he, I definitely don't think he likes Whitlock. And I don't know exactly what it is.

That's a safe assumption. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I don't know exactly what it is. Like, I know that there's some, like, Whitlock, Whitluck's argument are the cases that Stephen A is a fraud, that he lied about his basketball career and all this other stuff and that, you know, that he's a clown and everything else. But, and I think that that probably burns Stephen A a little bit. But I also think that, like, he is legitimately a person who is sensitive and wants to beef

with people, and that's how he gets down, man. You know what I mean? And I'm, and I can sort of relate as a person like that. I don't, I'm not like that. I don't, I don't want to. want to, you know, use my microphone time to beef with people. But I can understand being like, I can't, I can't, I cannot not respond to that. I've got to respond to that. And also, Jay-Z. You're not, you're not stepping away from. Oh, no, I'm going to the beef, man. I'm going to the be. Are you going to come to the, uh, the Joel Anderson versus Billy Gill, uh, 60 meter dash or 40 meter dash race that we're going to have? Is it going to be here in L.A? I think so. I'm in. Of course. Yeah. I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm,

All about a challenge, man, whatever. But yeah, so I want to do that. But also, it's just good for business, man. So it's not a surprise for a lot of people. Bomani Jones is a friend of mine. And he doesn't talk about Whitlock. Like, that's just not like Whitlock was one of his OGs earlier in the day. And Whitlock has said some unkind things about Beaumani, even within the last week.

But Bomani won't talk about him. But Beaumani did have Van on. to talk about the Stephen A versus Jason Whitlock beef, and the numbers went up. I mean, if you can look at the YouTube numbers on this podcast, and it went up. People eat this shit up. They like it. We're talking about it. You know what I mean?

So it's a reliable way to get some attention, man. People like fights. I don't know if this counts as a fight or a media beef, but Pat McAfee and Dan Orlovsky had an awkward interaction. Okay. They were talking about who's the number one. one quarterback and next month's NFL draft, is it Fernando Mendoza,

the Consensus Number 1, or is it Ty Simpson from Alabama? Okay. Who Orlovsky's been putting out there. Here is McAfee versus Orlovsky on that subject. Be boots on the ground saw Fernando for the biggest games, and it's just like everything about them just screams.

What biggest games, Pat? Huh? What biggest games? The college football playoffs. Now you're playing possum. Now you're right. Those SEC, games are bigger than the fucking playoff games.

Are I allowed to ask questions and have an opinion? They played each other head to head. Okay, Dan, do you just have... So the college football playoffs, a big mockery, a scam. Doesn't mean anything. These games just don't matter. Like, what do you mean? What are the biggest games? They have a full fucking committee. They have billions of dollars in TV rights for what the biggest games are.

That later said, this is why people think you're getting paid to do this. An apparent reference to Orlovsky and Ty Simpson, both being reped by CAA. when you push the CAA red button, you've gone up a level, at least in terms of sports television. There's a couple of things that are dumb about that, which I think on McAfee's end here. Well, Fernando Mendoza didn't play against the Indiana defense, and Todd Simpson didn't play against the Alabama defense.

So, I mean, like, it's not fair to be like, when they played against each other head-to-head, they didn't defend against each other. So you know that that's a dumb comparison. Like, you watch football. You understand that. But also, it's like Todd McShay, who, you know, we work with. It's a colleague of ours.

If you listen to Todd McShay's show, he says, look, if you look at the first eight, nine, ten games of film of Todd Simpson, or in Fernando Mendoza, you compare him, he said he thought Todd Simpson had the better tape, right? Like, this is not, I think the thing is that people saw Fernando Mendoza when the Hizman, he was clearly, you know, the best player on the best team. He's at this great season. He has this great personality or whatever. And like, people think to to dispute that he's the, uh, the consensus number one pick is bullshit. But like, there are some people out there that have a critique. It doesn't mean that it's stupid or that he's doing to anything

nefarious by bringing it up. It's a real thing. Like coming into this year, a lot of people didn't even know who Fernando Mendoza was. So it's not like the dumbest thing in the world. And I just kind I hate when people like stooped that kind of shit. Like, oh, are you doing this? Like, what is, what's behind this opinion? Like, no, I mean, Dan Olofsky is free to watch tape and come up with a different opinion about Fernad O'Mendoza and Todd Simpson. So I don't, I don't dispute that.

And I actually do like to take that maybe there's another QB1 in this draft. Because I do think we now have so much draft coverage in the world that we're getting close to this draft hive mind. Have you seen how people put together these can. consensus draft boards where they take everybody's draft board and they combine it. Yeah. And if you have the 12th pick in the draft and you are drafting the 21st guy on the consensus board, then you've done something wrong.

And I'm like, surely that's not, you know, surely that's not what matters. The only thing that matters is where that player is going to be good and worthy of the number 12 pick in the draft. Like it just gets so silly after a point where you're like, we're talking about what other people are doing and mock drafters to do it. It's like my favorite one when somebody takes a guy in the top five and he's a bust. Yeah. And the draft analyst says, well, that's okay because everybody thought he was going to be great. Right. The personnel director's job is to do what everybody else thinks.

Your job is do what you think. We know that people are not good at this, especially when it comes to a quarterback. If they were good at it, Lamar Jackson wouldn't have lasted to the last pick in the first round. Drew Brees wouldn't have been a second round draft pick. Tom Brady wouldn't have been a sixth round draft pick. Like, people get this shit wrong all the time. So I don't understand why people think it's just so, it's absurd to question the idea that Fernando Mendoza is the overall number one pick.

Like, I can look at, I can look at Fernando Mendoza and say, that is a great quarterback, but did I see John Elway? Did I even see Andrew Luck? No, I didn't see that. And it's fair for Dan Olofsky to say that. And I know people, far be it for me to defend Dan Olofsky. He doesn't need me to do that. I just, I think that it's dumb to think that it's, to question the wisdom of the consensus

number one pick, especially when it's a college quarterback, because we always get the shit wrong. Here's the thing. It's not just, it's not just the wisdom that people are reacting to. It's the way he's making the case there. Like, what are the big games that Fernando Vendoza played in? Come on. What are the big games?

Do you mean just running through the college football playoff? Jumping in the end zone against Miami in the final. And like, I don't think we played it there, but he said something. about, well, he only scored some, what is the six points in the first three quarters against Ohio State? Yeah, and then he made the throw of his life in the fourth quarter. Like, that stuff happened too. So we need to just, and look, I'm all four. I watch the tape. I think X is better than Y. I'm all good there. But there was a little bit of the case was being made in a strange way there. In a big game, again, and I again, I'd far be it for me to,

because we can talk about the, you know, the football of it all. But he, he, played with the great he had the best coach he has three receivers who are going to be early round draft picks he has two running backs that'll probably get drafted he has a great line a great defense like fernando mendoza didn't win the national championship on his own yes he played in big games but he didn't do all that shit on his own can we just pause to hear what you're saying for a second just and i i agree with you but just you're saying that he had unfair advantage just because he played in indiana instead of alabama let's just mark this moment history That is fair.

Yeah, I mean, it's just like, I mean, man, that doesn't speak well. You're not wrong, but I just want to mark that as being hilarious. It is crazy. It is crazy on its face, yeah. But, I mean, Indiana is a good football program. People are going to have to get used to it. And sometimes, like with anything else, with any other quarterback that players on a stacked team or a really good team, you've got to be able to parse how much of it was this guy and how much of it was the situation

surrounding him. But the one thing that I kind of want to pick at real quick, Brian. is that the CAA thing, bro, do you have an agent? I'm not represented by CAA. Okay, you don't have a, okay. So I actually do have an agent. A lovely agent. Tyler Glass, we would get ESPN.

Tyler Glass and CSE. When you work at ESPN, you kind of got to have an agent, man, because that's the way that the contracts work and everything else. And so initially, I had another guy who's pretty big up into business, but I was very low on his priority list. And so Tyler came in and I've worked with Tyler for the last eight years. He's a great guy. Loving.

But how much do people think they think about their damn agent in an argument? You know what I mean? But I'm saying when you push the CAA button, this button has been pushed to just, you know, dump a bucket of slime on all kinds of journalists and all kinds of situations. That's all I'm saying. That's all I'm saying about this. That is leveling up in an argument. it. Oh, yeah, right. I just, yeah, and I just think that's, it's just, that's not how people work. I mean, do people think clients or loyal to their agents? I just, I don't, I could, I've had another agent before. You know what I mean? I just don't think people are in the argument thinking, how can I help CAA today? I just don't think that Dan Olafsky is thinking like that. I think this is a whole separate segment, but I would just say when you get to a certain level and there's, there's money involved. I'm not saying anything about Daniel Woski's, there's draft takes. I'm just saying that the whole agent thing. You think there's something to it. I don't necessarily think there's something to it with this, but I think when you get to a level where you're, it's big stakes when the agent has not just helped you out, but made you multi, you know, generational wealth times 20, then just different things involved.

Well, I just want to just very quick because I'm sorry because it's more of a business deal than anything you and I could frankly wrap our minds. So do you think CAA, like they reach out to Dan the week before? No, I don't. I'm not talking about, I'm not talking about Ty Simpson. I'm just. saying. You said loyalty to agents. And I'm saying when loyalty to agent equals 20, 30, 40, million dollars over X number of years, there's a different level of loyalty that, hey, thanks for helping me get my book deal. And there are favors and different things that are called in. Again, I'm not talking about our loss because I don't know. Yeah. And I'm certainly not at that like me, me, you know, Tyler has much bigger clients than me. I don't operate at that level, so I don't

understand. So that that that that that is fair. Yes. Two things before we go. Okay. The Nancy Guthrie disappearance has still not been solved. Man this she disappeared on February 1st. Now there's all this uh news that Savannah Guthrie is going to go back to the today show. Ryan Stelter says she's going to start there next month. Um, she has given an interview to a hoda copy. I just want to play a little bit of this because it's it's so moving. She's addressing this idea of whether or not her mom disappeared because somebody was targeting Savannah Guthrie or trying to extract money from Savannah Guthrie. I don't know that it's because she's my mom and somebody thought, oh, that girl, that

lady has money. We can get, make a quick buck. I mean, that would make sense, but we don't know. But yeah, that's probably. which is too much to bear to think that I brought this to her bedside, that it's because of me. That's about as bleak as, you know, it can be, man. You know, it just sucks because, yeah, I mean, they don't, I mean, one reality of life is they don't solve all disappearance cases, right? like her right and um i just wonder if we're all going to have to live with the idea that we're not

going to there's not going to be any closure here right um which there's a bummer it man i just imagine having to go back to work like that i just ugh i just i just my heart goes out to savannah guthr because i just would not want to have to i would not want to have to go back to work i don't know how she could do it and doing morning television like you know the things required there like you're going to go back and do a cooking segment and smiling through that kind of stuff just man we cook the fuck out of cooking segments on this show by the way i know that there's more stuff that happens on morning shows do you like i just mention that every time that's yeah it's like what else do they do the morning show sometimes who was it fergie that did that cartwheel on stage

was that a morning show was that today you remember when fergie did a cartwheel vaguely yeah yeah sometimes that happens there too but yeah i mean just the yeah the whole like chipper wake up this is going to be a great day kind of that's part of that's part of what it is even if you're you know George Stephanopoulos or Michael Strahan or Savannah Guthrie, right? Some of it's like, good morning, welcome to Today Show. Yeah. I'd like to say goodbye to a great nonfiction writer, Joel.

Ever read a book by Tracy Kidder? I've seen that name on books before, but no, I've never read Tracy Kidder book. He is in the nonfiction pantheon. People cite, you know, oh, you know who I really love to be. I bet Tracy Kidder's name

comes up a bunch. He wrote books like Soul of a New Machine, which I'm embarrassed to say I have not read. House, which I'm familiar with, old friends, certainly. The last book of his I read was Strength in What Remains, which is about a refugee from Burundi who comes to the United States. And he wrote it in this kind of two parts of the book. And it's just a fascinating book.

And I remember going to the late great book court in Brooklyn just to hear him talk about that book and his writing process and everything else. He's amazing. He's a guy who wrote, first of all, he had a great talent for finding stories where other people did not see stories necessarily. House is about the building of a house, a normal house. So all the new machines about computers. He just has this sort of sense of looking at things and being able to just accrete so much detail that it turns into a great story. It's a really good obit of him by John Schwartz in the, New York Times that people should check out anyway. Wait, wait, wait, no, I'm an idiot.

I have read Tracy Kidder because I read Mountains Beyond Mountains. There you go. Because Dr. Paul Farmer. Paul Farmer. That's right. He's from an area of Florida that I had to cover. He's from WikiWachi, Florida, which is in Hernando County, Florida, which is just a little bit north of Tampa.

So when I worked there, I had to do some stuff on Paul Farmer. So I forgot, yeah, man, that was a great book. And Paul Farmer is an amazing person. So, yeah, that's, it was a loss anyway. but yeah, that jogged my memory a little bit. I'm going to tell you about something you don't know anything about. Really? The sports Emmys.

Oh, well, you kind of diss me, man. Joe, what the fuck? That wasn't, that wasn't a shot like you never been nominated. You don't know shit about that. What I meant was nobody knows anything about the sports amies. Fair point. If you're inside the industry, you probably tweeted about this yesterday. You saw Pablo's tweets about this.

if you are outside the industry, I just, I encourage you, walk up to someone on the street who's a huge sports fan and say, do you know who won a sports Emmy? Last year,

do you know who was nominated yesterday and they will call the police because of like, why in the world would you be interested in such a thing? I mean, that's crazy, man. Yeah.

Orlovsky was actually talking about this last year because he had lost the studio analyst award to Charles Barkley. Really? Perhaps not surprisingly. And Orlovsky was saying in a,

you know, I want to be recognized as the best. Like, that's a goal of mine. And I was just like, I think if you just tell people you won, I don't think, I don't think people would know. I don't honestly think they're like, this is, this is not the Academy Awards. There will be no proof that you did not win a sports Emmy. The funny part about this whole, this whole award is that this is not Sean Penn versus Delroy Lindo. This is Joe Buck versus Mike Tariko.

Now, think about that. they called each just football 50 plus hours each last year and you're supposed to take that combined 100 hours and find people who watch how much of that how much are people watching that in reality how much how much do they remember from that 100 hours even if they watched some percentage of it what could you tell me that Joe Buck said on the air

Mike Torrico said on the air last year well you got to go by big games that's what it is Not all the games, the big games. How did they perform in the big games? And even then, it's the little sizzle reel that the network sends in for your consideration. And apparently some of the best editing in sports television is done for those little sizzle reels because that's how you get your guy, a sports emmy. I only bring this up. We can go back to safely ignoring this.

But I bring this up because there is one interesting thing from the sports semis, which is that Troy Aikman has never won one. and this has been noted by people who've worked with Aikman over the years all the way up to the present. He's never won one. He's nominated again in the category of outstanding sports personality event analyst, which means best color analyst. This is Dr. Aitman who's been calling the number one game on Fox and now ESPN since 2002. to Aitman, who we all agree, leveled up sometime around 2017 and became the best or one of the best analysts in the business. Yeah. Peyton Manning has won this award twice, despite being in television for five minutes.

Wow. And doing what I would argue is a much, much, much less demanding job than Aitman does on Monday nights. So keep an eye, if you must keep an eye on the sports Emmys, keep an eye on this category because not only is Troy Hickman nominated, not only is Chris Collinsworth who won a bazillion of these nominated, I believe Collinsworth has like 17 sports Emmys. Tom Brady is nominated in this category. Really?

And if we're going to give the Emmy to first to Peyton Manning and then to Tom Brady before we give it to Troy Hickman, something's a little off. Man, first of all, let me just make sure you guys aren't represented by the same agencies or anything. I know you're a Cowboys fan. You're a Cowboys fan.

And I have no agenda. It's just fun. And it's one of those things like, does it matter? Like, Troy's making a ton of money. He's doing a great job. Everybody who covers television or just watches television, is like, man, Troy is one of the few guys who lays it out there when everybody else

is kind of pulling back and is afraid to piss off Twitter, Troy is saying what needs to be said, but there is a kind of recognition by your peers that you are the best that's important to people. These people are all competitive, right? Yeah. And it's just kind of interesting. Man, why are you not on the board of,

you should be, you're, if anybody, I, sports Emmy people, are you, do you know who Brian Curtis is and what he does for a living? Why is he not? Let me tell you why this is hard. If you forced me to make a power ranking of like NFL announcers, yeah, it'd be hard.

Collinsworth number one is Troy. Number one, have I watched? Were they number one in 2025, like specifically? Which one of them was Chris Collinsworth laughing after that amazing Caleb Williams passing the playoffs, which is such a great moment. I thought it was pitch perfect. It's amazing, right? Trico calls it.

There was that long silencing because I was like, ha, ha, ha, ha. That was great. How do you, how do you, you know, how do you compare that to what, like, Aitman did on a Monday night? Like, that's, it's so hard. but I'll tell you what makes it even harder. Here are some of the names in this in this category. Aitman, Brady, Collinsworth, Greg Olson, and Bill Raftery. So now you tell me Troy Aikman calling football versus the great Bill Raftery calling a basketball game.

How do you compare those things? Man. And it's the same way for play-by-play. You got Tariko, you got Buck and you got Joe Davis. Like, okay. Where do I start with those to even try to. do it. It's not like, you know, an Oscar category. It's like, okay, I have an hour and a half movie, hard as this is. I can probably come to something. Anyway, so I reject your

suggestion. You don't want to do it? Okay. All right. Well, there's still sports. It many people, make him turn you down. He needs to be on this board. Got anything else? I don't think so. I didn't prepare anything. No, right. Okay. All right. I was just making, I was like, what? Well, does any more media beefs he want to start or describe? I mean, I've got, Most of my media beefs, I've settled in one. There we go. And there'll be more that you're going to. No, you're not walking away from him.

I don't walk away from a beef, but who are you trying to? Oh, we'll reveal that. You're trying to bait somebody into one, but we'll reveal that on a show next week. He's Joel Anderson. Okay. I'm Brian Curtis. He may be an elected official. Productions of Magic.

That's right. That's right, yeah. We've got some magic. Excuse me by Isaiah Blakely and Bruce Baldwin. Coming up next week, wink, wink, the March issue of the press box. It's going to be on Monday. Joel and I have recorded that. David Shoemaker cover is going to be up momentarily on our

Instagram account at PressBox Ringer. Joel's got the con next week. I don't even know what you have planned from Thursday. Well, I think we're talking about it, but I think we've got somebody in mind. We talked about it a little bit. Okay. So you got somebody in mine for Thursday.

He's back and I'll be on spring break up in Northern California. Oh, nice. A little road trip. Gold Rush Country. Okay. Monterey Central Coast Santa Rosa Oh man

Monterey's so great man One of my favorite places in the country Man If anybody knows Forget restaurants We'll find some restaurants If anybody knows any good used bookstores In that part of the world

You let me know Okay All right me Tweet at me write me Well I would be forever grateful And Joel I cannot wait to come back And have more lukewarm takes

With the about Excuse me boy I'm already on vacation mode About the meeting with you See you then I look forward to it man See you buddy You know,