The Press Box - Jimmy Kimmel Is Suspended, Molly Qerim Leaves ESPN, and Ivan Maisel on the Cult of the College Football Coach

Episode Date: September 18, 2025

Hello, media consumers! Bryan and Joel discuss ABC's decision to indefinitely suspend 'Jimmy Kimmel Live!' (0:46), why The Washington Post fired columnist Karen Attiah, Molly Qerim's abrupt departure from ESPN, Tom Brady's glaring conflict of interest, and more (38:32). Then Bryan is joined by sports journalist and author Ivan Maisel to discuss his new book, 'American Coach: The Triumph and Tragedy of Notre Dame Legend Frank Leahy' (59:22). Hosts: Bryan Curtis and Joel AndersonGuest: Ivan MaiselProducer: Kyle Crichton Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

This is Bill Simmons, and I want to tell you about my movie podcast, The Rewatchables. We're each week, I'm joined by Ringer movie lovers, Chris Ryan, Sean Van Van Lathen, Kyle Brandt, Malley Rubin. We have a whole bunch of people on. We talk about movies. We can't stop rewatching. And now you can watch us cover these movies on video in the Spotify app. We have covered over 350 movies, including Heat, Goodfellas, Boogie Nights, Pulp Fiction.

We have some real heavy hitters coming up here in 2025. Make sure to follow us on Spotify, where you can watch. watch every new episode right now. Just head to the rewatchables on Spotify, now on video. Hello, media consumers. Welcome to Pressbox. Brian Curtis, Joel Anderson, and producer Kyle Crichton here. Joel, every sports radio host, tells you that they've got a big show today.

Yeah. We've actually got a big show today. I think we do, don't we? Yeah, I mean, has something happened in the media or things going on in the world? that we need to address. There have been a notable, notable issues in media that are worth discussing today.

We're going to talk about how Karen Adia is out at the Washington Post, how Molly Karam is out at first take. We'll talk about Tom Brady wearing a headset, not in the Fox broadcast booth, but alongside Raiders' coaches, plus how the late Robert Redford

gave a top edit to all the president's men, and a visit with the great sports writer Ivan Maisel about his new book, and the cult of the college football coach. But Joel, we got to start with a fact that Jimmy Kimmel got canceled. Cancelled in the cultural rather than TV sense of the term. In TV terms, Kimmel's ABC show is merely off the air indefinitely. Now, this story reaches into a lot of places

from Donald Trump's Federal Communications Commission to Bob Iger's big office at Disney. But let's begin with the monologue joke in question. Here's Jimmy Kimmel on Monday talking about Charlie Kirk's death. A topic that one talked about has caused a number of people their jobs. We hit some new lows over the weekend with the Maga Gang desperately trying to characterize this kid who murdered Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them and doing everything they can to score political points from it. In between the finger pointing, there was grieving. On Friday, the White House flew the flags at half staff, which got some criticism.

On a human level, you can see how hard the president is taking this. I condolences on the loss of your friend, Charlie Kirk. May I ask, sir, personally, how are you holding up over the last day and a half, sir? I think very good. And by the way, right there, you see all the trucks? They've just started construction of the new ballroom for the White House, which is something they've been trying to get, as you know, for about 150 years. And it's going to be a beauty.

Yes. He's at the fourth stage of grief. Construction. Demolition, construction. This is not how an adult grieves the murder of somebody called a friend. This is how a four-year-old mourns a goldfish. Anything bother you there? No.

I didn't hear anything that seemed particularly out of bounds. I mean, I guess it seems like it's within the realm of appropriateness to scrutinize the president's response to somebody. he allegedly cared a lot about. Now, I know that there's been a lot of debate about, you know, how the kid politically identifies, right? And allegedly, you know, Jimmy misspoke or misstepped or it's not at all clear about where this kid is on the political spectrum.

And that's what people are seizing on, right, to make the case that he overstepped here. The first part of what he said, the MAGA gang desperately trying to characterize this kid who murdered Charlie Kirk as anything but one of them. Right. Some people could hear that and say, oh, he's saying that Tyler Robinson, the suspect, was MAGA. And here's the thing. I guess maybe, you know, if Jimmy and I guess we're going to talk about this, if Jimmy, you know, wanted to clarify that remark later, that's fine. But it's not like people that are immediately pegging Tyler Robinson as a leftist are being any more responsible, right, by doing that.

Like, it just seems that the kids' politics are inscrutable. He comes from a family that seems to be MAGA affiliated, but his political views, as you might expect with somebody at 21, is sort of unclear. I think that's exactly what he was trying to say. I think it got a little garbled. But what he was trying to say is something that we've said on the, this pod, which was before people even knew who Tyler Robinson was, they were imagining all these political reasons, all these leftist reasons why he would have done what he is alleged to have done. Right. That's what Jimmy Kimmel's saying. And maybe that got a little garbled. The second

part of that joke, now wait a second, we're not allowed anymore to make fun of how Donald Trump talks? No, apparently not. That is now a safe space. base, Donald Trump is allowed to talk, even when he pivots to ballrooms? You know, obviously people are seizing on this moment as an opportunity to do what they've always wanted to do, which is silence people that would make fun of them or criticize them for anything, right? Now, wait a second. Wait a second here.

What you're saying sounds a lot like cancel culture to me. You know, and it's just so funny because cancel culture is a phrase that I've hated. I hated along the lines of think piece because, like, first of all, like, canceled did not. What did think piece do wrong to get in the same list as cancel culture? I'm like, say essay, say column, say, you know, whatever, right? You don't have to say think piece. But cancel culture was just always, I mean, it's really hard to define. And oftentimes it described people who had done actual horrible things to people.

And they may have faced some sort of professional, a personal consequence, right? and they say this person is canceled. But if you actually look back at what happened to a lot of people, like for instance, like the media mad bad men list, for instance, a lot of those people, nothing happened to them. They didn't go to prison. They didn't get charged with anything. Many of them didn't even lose their jobs or they ended up right back where they were within a few years. So I just kind of don't like that term.

But yeah, I guess that's where we are now. Like this is whatever people think cancer culture is, this seems to be an example of it. I was told very specifically that the Trump administration, the second administration, was going to save comedy. Yeah. I mean, forget like speech, forget criticism of political rivals. They were going to save comedy. Well, I mean, they certainly have elevated a lot of comedians. Now, did they save comedy?

They saved a lot of comedians. All those people funny enough that what they does should qualify as comedy, that I'm a little less sure of. Does Jimmy Kimmel not have a podcast? Was that his mistake here? Because he would have been saved if he had explicitly had a podcast. You know what? It's actually now that you mentioned, it's kind of surprising. Jimmy Kimmel doesn't have a podcast.

He might. Yeah. I feel like he might and you and I are just kind of vaguely unaware of it somehow. Yeah. I mean, it's funny because when we were thinking about what was going to happen when Trump got reelected or if he got reelected. Saving comedy was one thing that was in the air. the other was that Trump's political rivals would be punished. Right.

Here we see those two stated ideals running into each other. Right. Well, I mean, I guess like, to clarify comedy, right, what they were talking about is something that, like, is even a little bit further than like Don Rickles. Like, basically it was like the ability to say the R word or to mock people that it had kind of, we had learned in recent years. it's like, oh, like, maybe we shouldn't make fun of people for their marginalized identities. Like, there's a room to laugh at things and to laugh at, you know, our identities or the culture or whatever.

But, like, it really just seemed like people who had a heart on to just make fun of people who can't really fight back. Mm-hmm. And here, what Jimmy Kimmel was doing was not treading into any of that territory. He was making a joke about Donald Trump. He's punching up. He talks. I mean, how much higher can you punch up than punching at the president? That's about the highest office in the land.

At least that's what I think it's called. Now, usually when we see these stories, there's a conservative or another grieved party who finds a tweet, who finds a skeet, finds a joke, and then pressures the owners of a media company to cut ties with the offending party. This was different because the aggrieved person here is not someone on Twitter. well, not just someone on Twitter. It's Donald Trump's FCC chairman, Brendan Carr. And here's what's important to understand.

Brendan Carr, who is part of the administration, Brendan Carr, whom ABC is answerable to, because ABC is broadcast over public airwaves. Brendan Carr went on Benny Johnson's show this week and said this. But frankly, when you see stuff like this, I mean, look, we can do this the easy way or the hard way. these companies can find ways to change conduct to take action, frankly, on Kimmel, or there's going to be additional work for the FCC. Again, there's actions that we can take on licensed broadcasters.

And frankly, I think that it's really sort of past time that a lot of these licensed broadcasters themselves push back on Comcast and Disney and say, listen, we are going to preempt. We are not going to run Kimmel anymore until you straighten this out because we licensed broadcaster, are running the possibility of fines or license revocation from the FCC, if we continue to run content that ends up being a pattern of news distortion. Think of all the things being floated there. The easy way or the hard way. Actions we can take on licensed broadcasters. Possibility of fines or license revocation from the FCC.

I mean, in addition to staying out of prison, you know, it seems that a lot of this administration has been dedicated to punishing enemies. Right? Like that is, you know, I didn't seem that they have many policy aims other than making money, enriching their friends, and taking it out on the people that they perceive to be against them. And this is a part of that. So this isn't just ABC bending the knee. It's the government specifically suggesting that ABC bend the knee. Right. You can't do business with us. You're right. You do what I say, yeah. Totally. And let's put that awful term. cancel culture to the side. This is actually much worse. We'd already seen Trump achieve goals through lawsuits. Just sued the New York Times. That's another one of that pile. Here he is achieving a goal through the possibility of government action, of regulatory action. Yeah. He's he's punking everybody. I mean, that's for a term that, you know, I grew up, but he, he's found out that nobody has a strong chin. That ultimately, he's like, oh, if I push a little bit, if I, if I

I scare you. And I mean, obviously, like, he has got regulatory authority now. Like, obviously, all of the checks and balances in this country have just sort of collapsed. So he's figured out that I can punk you guys. I can make, I can make you bend your knee in worse. That's what's so startling about the story, you know. I feel in other stories, there's often been an interpretive leap. Okay, maybe X happened because of why. I mean, you know, here, You have Brennan Carr saying that. Brian Stelter sent a note to Brendan Carr after Kimmel's show had been suspended and said, Hey, do you have any comment? And Carr sends over a gif of Michael and Dwight from the office raising the roof. Yeah, man. I mean, that's sort of the thing, Brian. It isn't like usually you want to have some plausible deniability.

Like that's not what's going on here. We're not trying to leverage, you know, the state. power to make people do things, right? To scare them out of saying things that would criticize us or mock us. But they don't even feel the need to pretend, right? They're just like, oh, no, this is what we're doing. We're right up front. We're telling you that's exactly what we're doing. That's what's so startling about this. There's so many parts of the Trump administration where they don't feel the need to pretend. That it is kind of bracing. But here, you're like, oh, this thing happened and then this other thing happened.

And then the people who were on the front end of it celebrated the thing happening. I mean, Trump was posting about on True Social last night and saying, hey, we just got two more late night hosts left to go, Jimmy and Seth, aka the guys on NBC. Yeah. Like normally you would say that that's incompetence, that people, you know, hey, man, you're kind of giving it away. Like, we have a blueprint here. We have a game plan and like, let's operate it.

You know, what do they say? Real G's move in silence. But this isn't that. Like this is brazenness because they're like, oh, we know that you're not going to do anything. And also we know that everything is in our favor. Like let's say you decide to sue us or whatever you try to, you know, go through this in court. We got the courts, bro. So we're going to, you know, it doesn't make a difference, you know, what it looks like.

And now we can just go ahead and start, you know, they can celebrate before they reach the end zone now. You're spiking the ball in the one yard line? Yeah, right. They can do the Deshaun Jackson, you know. Except there's not a penalty, right? it doesn't come out to the 20. It's actually still a touchdown. It's still a touchdown.

Ref saw it, but it's like, ah, whatever. Yes. If Brendan Carr sends you the Giff on the one-yard line, it still counts as a touchdown for the Trump administration. Now, the New York Times reports another part of the story, which was the decision to bench Jimmy Kimmel comes from Bob Iger. And Dana Walden,

who is Disney's television chief and one of those plausible successors to Bob Iger. And, Joel, you will remember Bob Iger. as the head of the company that folded like a men's warehouse suit when Donald Trump sued over remarks by George Stephanopoulos. Remember that? ABC settled for $16 million, $15 million of which went to the Donald Trump Library. Yeah, man. I mean, they've been on this for so long,

and I think there were early hints that Disney was going to be going in this direction. Like, I worked at ESPN, and I think I've told the story here before where when the Roseanne show got canceled and they were like, hey man, don't tweet anything about that because we don't want to run a file of anybody, right? Like this is during the first Trump administration. And so there were always these early hints that managers were going to be panicking over tweets

or panicking over doing something that would run a file of the Trump administration. So it was never about, like, truth is that people were always scared and trying to appease the Trump administration. And like, this is the ultimate, you know, This is the end game here right here. Do you see Roseanne reappear on Twitter yesterday?

I'd actually see her reappear on Twitter. She was like, yeah, you know, nobody was sad when I got thrown off my own show. Oh, man, that's so funny. And people had to step in and go, I hate to break it to you, but Donald Trump was president when that happened. Right. Yeah. So, again, these are different categories here, right? This was not Joe Biden saying, you know what we should do is get Roseanne off network television.

that is not a thing that happened. Donald Trump was president when ABC took Roseanne off the air. Right, right. Yeah. It's just that, I mean, and that's sort of the thing that reveals it is that, you know, from Bob Iger on down, this is this is what happens when people, there's no real policy or there's no value system outside of, like, what if people who will hate us regardless get mad at us?

You know, like people that are already inclined to go after us. Like, let's just go ahead and appease them in hopes that maybe something will happen down the line. Maybe they just won't. Maybe they won't beat us anymore, I guess. Yeah, no, because they won't ask for anything else. Right. As soon as we gave him $15 million for the Trump Library, the administration wasn't going to ask anything else of ABC or Disney. No, sir, no way that could happen.

Oh, wait, they asked for something else. You know what? If you give the bully your lunch money, he'll never ask for it again. No, next time you get to go to the Coke machine, if you still have one of your school and you get to buy the bully of Coke. Yeah, right. If there's a snack machine, you get to buy one of those yummy frosted pies, which I always wanted to buy out of the snack machine in high school.

You just actually just wind up giving the bully everything. Oh, yeah, right. That's right. It's just, you know, yeah, can you drive me off school and take me to my favorite lunch spot now? You know, is what the bully's going to want next. Amazingly, Joel, there's still more to this story. Oh, man. Yeah, there's still more because you might have seen.

the term or the company name Next Star in the Kimmel story yesterday. By the way, what a name, Next Star. 1980s, you can just see it written on an old cable, like, conversion box where you have to like flip it to A or B or whatever. I can see Next Star coated in dust on the back of my TV. Yes, what the 80s thought the future would be named. Next Star, yeah. Next Star.

Now, this is going to sound like me explaining how kids used to ride bicycles to the neighborhoods and throw newspapers on people's lawns. But let me explain the next part of this. ABC is television network. It puts shows on the air. But because it's using a very, very old form of television, the original form of television, it counts on local affiliates to air those programs. There's an ABC affiliate in great cities like Dallas and Houston and other cities like Kansas City and Chicago. And if they don't show, the Jimmy Kimmel show at 1135 Eastern 1035 Central, then the show doesn't work. It counts on those two things happening.

So Next Star came forward yesterday and said that they were also going to preempt Kimmel, quote, for the foreseeable future for that very same monologue that involved his remarks about Trump and Charlie Kirk. Okay, well, that's interesting. Was Next Star just very, very upset? Did they have a political, you know, were they big fans? What drove them to this? I wonder. Well, in an unrelated story, Joel, Nexstar just bought another owner of affiliates called Tegna.

Oh, Tegna. Did you see Tegna on the box in the 80s as well? Kind of sort of. It seems like an old video game system in the 90s that failed. You know, like they were trying to compete. with PlayStation and Sega Genesis. And it was like the Tegna, yeah. Three games came out for it,

and then you were out $200 and you didn't have a viable system. 32-bit, you know, graphics? No, it didn't work, though. Yeah. Last month, Next Star bought Tegna for $6.2 billion. And guess what? That deal is going to need a sign-off, or at least a nod from Donald Trump's FCC.

Brendan Carr. Brendan Carr. It all comes, it's all coming up, Brendan Carr. Who knows what gifts he might have? I mean, you know, the thing is, it's like I was going to say that it just betrays the idea that any of these companies have any particular set of values. But actually they do. Like, their value is promoting conservative or the right wing causes. And so everything is lined up for them.

They are in their glory days here. Well, I just want to say this too. Bob Eiger is ahead of Disney. Yeah. That is not a notably conservative company historically. Conservatives would say just the opposite. Right. I mean, I mean, and again, let's not be, you know, we don't need to disgrace the word liberal by calling any corporation liberal, but you understand what I mean here. Right. They're going, they're going to say that about Disney. Yes. So he's he's nearing retirement. Allegedly, there have been a few near retirements for Bob Eager. But this is what we're doing on the way out the door.

Yeah, man. This is what we're doing on the way out the door. Really? Yeah, man. I just, you know who I would love to hear from on this Willow Bay? The head of the U.S.C. journalism, the communications journalism. Annenberg Center over there, U.S. Center. Yeah. I would love to just kind of know, like, what are they saying about, you know, media and journalism ethics over there just out of curiosity. I mean, it's really something. And as a number of people have pointed out, there's a remedy to all this or something you can do with all this, which is that Jimmy Kimmel could have gone on his show last night and addressed this matter.

Right. If you were really, really and truly aggrieved by the MAGA portion of that joke, Jimmy Kimmel could walk out on television and talk about it. He could say, here's what I wanted to say, here's what I meant, whatever it is. That didn't happen. The remedy here, as chosen by ABC and also as chosen by their affiliate owners, two of their affiliate owners, was to take them off the air. You're off.

That's it. You don't know explanation needed. Sorry, we're all good. I mean, they need to make an example of him. Because remember, I mean, part of this is that Sinclair also allegedly wants him to make a donation to Charlie Kirk's family and Turning Point USA as part of his suggested contrition here, which is, yeah, I mean, that has nothing to do. Like, that is not, that has nothing to do with what has gone on here. But it's just another way to punish him and to make everybody else understand that if you step out of line, we will, we will, we will try. try to take your job away from you and humiliate you in the same way.

What would you do if you're Jimmy Kimmel? I mean, presumably Jimmy Kimmel is a very wealthy man, right? Safe to say. I don't need this shit, man. Like, you don't have my back. If this is what it's going to be like, I can fund my own endeavor theoretically. I don't know, you know, who knows what this country is going to look like a year from now. We're only eight to nine months into the Trump administration.

but I would not want to work for somebody that doesn't have my back if I had the financial freedom to walk away. What about you? What would you do? Yeah, and he's talked about, I agree, I completely agree. And he's talked about winding down the show before. You know, it was always a sense of how long does Jimmy Kimmel want to do this. Yeah. Given, as you say, how much success he's had in this, the general state of late night TV, that that was once the ultimate destination.

And now it's not really the place you want to be. Yeah. I mean, and that's sort of the thing, too, Brian, that's like, that's another angle to this is that a lot of people have pointed out, and I've seen on social media have pointed out that, like, late night TV has been a financial drain on networks for quite a while. It doesn't bring the attention to eyeballs, the advertising dollars. So it could just be that the network needed an excuse to cancel this show and that this is, this was as good a reason as any, right? But, yeah, so you could easily envision. in a scenario with Jimmy Kimmel could have even said at the end of the year. I don't need this anymore. But it could just be too that he's like, well, I don't want to go out like that. So I don't know like how he's built. That's what's interesting about this.

Because pulling somebody off the air, how does he feel about that? Because they didn't even pull George Stephanopoulos off the air, even though they're settling the lawsuit. Pulling them off the year, you can't do your own show. Right. That could be a red line. I mean, I think it probably would be for me if I were. him. But as you say, if you walk away, there's a certain, there's a certain, you know,

grandeur also to coming back and being like, actually, I'm doing the monologue. That's kind of what Stewart did after Colbert. Yeah. And that shows an outs, right? He's like, oh, actually, I'm not leaving this media conglomerate. I'm coming back and doing the monologue. Yeah. There's definitely something for leaving on your own terms, right? In case we need to do any full disclosure during this segment, our boss, Bill Simmons used to write for Jimmy Kimmel. Sorry. Our beloved colleague, Cousin Sal, is literally Cousin Sal. That's how we got the name anyway.

I'd say all the same stuff. Let's move on. Well, so along the same lines, last Thursday, Karen Adia was fired by the Washington Post, where she had been a columnist in the opinion section since 2021. Adia, for those people don't remember, she first made her name for herself in the industry as the post editor for the Saudi writer, Jamal Khashoggi. and after Khashoggi went missing in October of 2018, after he went into the Saudi embassy in Istanbul, Adia's follow-up concern and coverage led to her being named the 2019 journalist of the year by the NAPJ, and she also was awarded the George Polk Ward in journalism, along with her colleague David Ignatius. Important to note here that Adia, since being a columnist, had written about race, gender, culture, justice.

you know, the kind of stuff that wouldn't seem to fit in the new right-leaning opinion section at the post. And so she was likely already hanging on by a thread there when she got an email last week from post-human resources head, Wayne Connell, that said, quote, I am writing to inform you that the post is terminating your employment effective immediately for gross misconduct. Your public comments on social media regarding the death of Charlie Kirk violate the post's social media policies, harm the integrity of our organization, and potentially endanger the physical safety of our staff. And that was reported by Oliver Darcy in status. Brian, what did you think of that language used there by the HR department? I chuckled at it.

I mean, potentially endanger the physical safety of our staff. Yeah. It has echoes of the New York times after the Tom Cotton op-ed, right? Which my wife was there. She was at the time. There you go. More full disclosure. That's immediately what I thought of. Yeah.

I mean, are we just using that? And also the thing I thought of was they didn't want Karen Attia to work for the Washington Post's opinion section anymore. Right. Don't you think? Yeah, I kind of got the vibe that this is a situation where they wanted her to take a buy out earlier, probably didn't do it, and then found whatever. needed to send her away.

It sure seems like that. Yeah. And, you know, so I've been thinking about this a lot. And it just kind of speaks to the general climate of fear about litigating Charlie Kirk's legacy in public. And so it's a scary time to be working in the media or be a person with the platform. Because, you know, over the past week, like, we've just seen this wave of people expelled from school or fired from their jobs, essentially for, like, thought crimes.

and social media posts. And it seems to me, you know, is somebody who was not necessarily a fan of Charlie Kirk that the only acceptable response to the murder is to be quiet or pretend that he was someone other than who he was, which was a very effective, far-right media personality, who had little use for people who weren't like him

or didn't share his politics of vision for the country. Now, I don't. I don't think anybody with any sense of brains knows that I'm anti-death. Like, I don't think people should be killed for any reason. Like, even if you've killed somebody. Like, I don't think you should be killed. So let alone for having what, you know, political opinions that differ from mine. But I was sort of thinking about this, about sort of the climate because, you know, I don't, I don't know if I've ever told you this story before, Brian, when I was working on my slow burn podcast season on Clarence Thomas.

In the middle of it, I started getting these harassing texts from somebody. Like, there's like, I know where you are. I can see you in your house right now. I told my wife about it. She just like got scared. She started my wife who leaves windows and blinds open all the time, started closing blinds, locking doors and everything. She was so scared.

This went off like a couple of weeks. So I reported it to Slate and our security team and they tracked it down to a former college class weight of mine who's like, she kind of looks like Paula Dean. I didn't even have any interaction with this person. It was just so weird. I was like, what is going on here? But the story of that one unhinged person bothering me seems laughable in retrospect. But the threats seem so much more serious and frightening now.

And so many people yesterday and last night called me to tell me to be careful about what I say. Like they're like, are you sure you want to be talking about this? Like, you know, I have to say like, this is my job. Like, this is what I do. But I also think they have a point. But to cope, I'm pretty getting perspective and thinking about people who have to be much more courageous than we have to be. And so maybe this is helpful to others who are also feeling shaken up by this moment.

So just a few examples, like people who have been in this country for years who go about their daily business and fear of ice raids, kids who go to school knowing that they could be a shooting at their school any time, right? Or they return to school after surviving the school shooting. There are people in Roseland, Indiana, and I learned about this through Capital B, which is the sort of media venture that I'm sure is at risk in this new media environment, where there was a fire at a lubricant factory and the town is covered in a black oily substance and they have no idea how it will affect their health. Or like more personally, I thought about my parents

who when they were much younger than I am now, were trying to navigate the Jim Crow South while trying to build a middle class life that nobody in our families had ever had before. Like nobody had ever really owned property or a home, been to college, done anything. And they were venturing off into a world unknown that they only knew as being hopified, to them. They had no safety net. So all people are asking us to do is tell the truth or the truth as we see it. And it just seems like a small ask in comparison to the other dangers of people are facing out here. So that's what I kind of have for the Washington Post, for the Bob Igers. What are we doing? Like if not for this, like it can't journalists, like we're not doing this

for money, right? Like there's a lot of other ways to make money. And it certainly is not for public adulation because there's none of that. You're a journalist or a reporter. So what sort of media do we want to have? What do you want to do? What do you want to produce? Because it just seems like if this is it, like why don't you just go work in PR? Why don't you just go do something else?

So well said. I completely agree. And so much of that misunderstanding of why our journalists in the business comes from politicians. Yes. I mean, that's what they do. I mean, if you talk to people, regular people. people. And they'll often say, well, you know, journalists have this agenda. They're getting rich off this. All those things you went through. Actually, the vast majority of people in this business

are motivated by what you're talking about, by truth, by helping people understand the world, by making the world into a less confusing place. That's what they're trying to do. And we're not perfect at it. We screw up all the time because everybody screws up all the time with their jobs. Like, that's just what happens. And sometimes it's screwing up. Factually, sometimes it's just the interpretation was wrong. We didn't do it as well as we possibly could have. But that's the motivating factor here.

Right. Right. Yeah. I mean, I get like, I was inspired. Like on my wall, I have the three books above me that inspired me the most. Friday night lights, the warmth of other sons and the collected works of Ralph Wiley. That's the stuff that made me want to do this. And it motivated me to,

want to tell stories about people that normally don't get stories told about and go to places that I've never been and tell the stories of those places. And I always just sort of thought that people would, you know, I think there's this assumption that people are waiting on, they're going to be waiting on us when this is over. Like if we ever get through this moment in history, that they're going to be waiting on us and they're going to come back to Washington Post is going to get all their subscribers back and people will forgive them because they'll do some good reporting or whatever. But I don't think so, man. I don't think people are going to be clamoring for our work if we keep going in this direction, if we keep to use your phrase, bend the knee.

Like I don't, we will have not earned a public trust. We've already sort of lost it, but there will be nothing there for us if we keep going down this road, I think. I worry it's too late already. I worry even if we stopped all the bending of knees right now, if we called a halt to all knee bending from any corporate parent of journalism, it's just everything's been. so broken, so stigmatized, you know, there'll be a need for journalism. Like, there will be people in the world of like, I want to read that. I want to learn more. I want to learn something like the truth of the closest that you can, you, the reporter can get me to the truth. There will be certainly people who want that in all walks of life, right, not just politics. But it does feel

like something has changed over the last few years, married to the change in technology, where you now have all these ways to get information, quote-unquote information, right? Like those two things happening at the same time is an illness that we, as a media, broadly speaking, it's going to be very, very hard for us to overcome that. Absolutely. Yeah, man. I mean, people want the real thing. If you're going to, if you're trying to appease the kind of people that want to look at Fox News

or, you know, spend a lot of time hanging out on truth social. they're going to go get the real deal. They're going to go get the real article, man. You're not going to be able to win and get those people. I think I would have thought people would have learned that by now, but maybe they're just going to have to learn the hard way. That's, you know, there's a moral dimension to what's happened to the Washington Post and other places and CBS News soon to come.

And then there's just a common sense dimension to it. Those people aren't going to buy the newspaper. Like the whole, no, no, no, they've been trained not to trust the newspaper. And they say, oh, now they'll buy it. If we put our people in charge of the newspaper, if we, If we change the complexion of the opinion section, that's not going to happen. This is just not going to happen. You can't be like, everything on CBS is a complete lie.

Oh, there's a new administration. Check out CBS. It's like, brother. No, no. It's funny you mentioned complexion too. And obviously this no longer matters and the low IQ, don't have the brain processing power, you know, segment of society now. But the Post doesn't have a black or African-American columnist in a majority black city at this time. So, I mean, it goes without saying I don't have a post-scription now.

So, you know, what will it take for them to bring it back? I have no idea. We did a segment on that. We did. Yeah, I don't have a subscription. And I believe my answer and our collective answer was yes, even given everything. Yeah, just can't. Can't do it.

Can we take a deep breath and talk about Molly Karam? Yes, we can. A deep cleansing breath. My therapist, obviously, you got to shake it out, you know? Like, just rub yourself. There you go. All right, there we go. So Monday, we got a scoop of a different kind.

It's from Austin Karp of Sports Business Journal. That Molly Karam, who you know is the host of First Take, spending that job for 10 years, was going to leave ESPN at the end of the year. Carp noted that Caram had been offered a contract by ESPN but was done with ESPN. Here's a somber Stephen A. Smith announcing the news on Tuesday. Good morning and welcome to First Take. Normally, our friend Molly Karam would greet you. However, Molly announced last night she will be departing from ESPN.

She's hosted First Take for 10 years and elevated the show with her grace, her expertise, an incomparable kindness. She's been an enormous part of our success for a decade. Not only did she keep me and many others in line, she did it with dignity and class and kindness, to say the least. We'll miss her and wish her every blessing on her future. I personally am grateful to her for her friendship, and I will miss spending every weekday morning with her right by my side.

Man. Don't you love when Stephen A. does the very very, serious voice when he's, you know, putting on his Walter Cronkite, you know, bringing us the news. Yeah, man, the only thing I could think of when this happened is like, oh, they offered her a contract, as they said, and it must have been hugely insulting. And she was just like, I can't, I can't do that. It's a, it's a, and it's a, don't you think that's a tough job to excel at? Because, like, it doesn't really lead to anything else. Like, have you ever seen anybody go from that job to do anything else at a network?

That's a good question. I think Carissa Thompson may have had a job like that sort of similarly once in a time, but she was already sort of a sideline. Jenny Tafts still does sidelines, right? She did that undisputed, carried champions, done things. I mean, yeah, I mean, it's, first of all, it's a very weird job. Yep. It's also historically at ESPN and other places has been a very generous.

gendered job. Absolutely. The boys are going to argue. And there's a woman who's going to sit between him and go, now, now, guys. I mean, it's funny you say that because we've talked about Cameron's show before with Mace. What's your favorite cameras? I'm just checking out. If you said horse and cares, that'd be fine.

That's where I was going for you. Yeah. The first single was always one of the best ones. Yeah. But they have a host on their. called stat. And it's the same, I mean, it's just funny that they know sort of what to do, you know, a young, attractiveish woman who's in the middle and leaves the, you know, leads them in and out of topics or whatever, right? And it's like, all right, they're going to show

their opinion. Sometimes I could do my thing, but mostly I'm here to just sort of, you know, shepherd you guys along. It's funny because Molly Karen was so good at hosting first take. She was awesome at it. Yeah. She had this way, whenever you saw a clip of Stephen A. getting himself into trouble. If you watch closely, the clip would be coming to an end, like he'd be finishing a monologue that you knew was going to wind up on awful announcing in like nine seconds. And Karam had a way of giving him this kind of side-eye,

sighing that communicated to the audience that we've gone to a bad place here. And I know we've gone to a bad place here. But what she wouldn't do is be like, Stephen A, you're completely full of it. Stephen A, that because, as Dom Foxworth told you, the whole thing crumbles as soon as you do that. Right.

You know, or Ryan, Clark and Peter Schrager could tell you. The whole thing crumbles as soon as you invalidate somebody, especially somebody like Stephen A, the host of the freaking show. Oh, yeah. She would have this way of doing it very subtly, which would communicate that message. But then next step on first take, well, Michael Parsons get his revenge against the Cowboys next Sunday night.

Right, right. Yeah, just think of the egos that she has to manage, like all the people, because it's not just Stephen A, it's like people that are also very accomplished in their own right. And you kind of have to navigate those egos and keep them on track and let them know, all right, like, we're moving on or whatever. And like, that's not an easy job. Like you can't just. You think? Imagine having Skip and Stephen A on the same set at the same time. Imagine the kind of person you have to get who will have the confidence to step into that role going forward. Yeah. And you, you have. have to keep the show on the tracks. Yeah. I mean, just think about that. Like, this is, this is not Dan Rolovsky, you know, giving you his 35 quality seconds and then we move on. I mean, this is guys who are like, no, no, I'm right. This is not just me playing a character on TV.

This is me. Right. I feel very strongly about this. I'm going to get these, I'm going to get these points off. Absolutely. Clearly, the care of departure took ESPN by surprise. First thing I thought about was like, wait. In my inbox, wasn't there a big graphic of her and Stephen A announcing an HBCU tour last month?

I went and checked. In fact, there was. We learned a little bit more about her departure from the athletic today. Richard Dych had an interview with Burke Magnus, ESPN's number two executive. I'll read to you from that here. Magnus made clear that ESPN wanted her to stay at the company, even as Karen was going to be coming off the show, that's first take, by the end of the year. Magnus says she was going to come off first take either one. way, and that was something where we had already crossed that bridge. So it was from our perspective

much more about what else could she be doing. How could we make her more versatile, get her involved in different things? That's what we were trying to do. I read a lot of stuff on X. There's no controversy there. There's no shoe that's going to drop. She's an awesome person. You know it's business. You try your best, and we just weren't totally aligned. You know, I was thinking about this. And if you don't mind, I'll tell another quick story. As a former ESP. I love Joel Storytime. This needs to be a permanent part of every podcast. Well, you know, I try. But, you know, so let's go back to 2019.

I've worked at ESPN for two years, and I have a contract renewal coming up in six months, and that's when you tend to start talking. Well, you know, just out of sheer luck, our good friend, Josh Levine, had reached out to me about possibly going over to Slate. And so I was like, well, if ESPN is going to keep me and pay me what I want, like, I don't know if I want to risk leaving. So I had my agent talk to them, and they made an offer that was below what I was currently making.

And then they were like, wanted me to do, they wanted me to like, well, you know, we just think Joel could be doing more. Like, we want more columns,

there's more and more. And so I kind of wonder if, more for less. More for less. And I've heard that that is not an uncommon renewal tactic or negotiation tactic at ESPN. Like I didn't take it personal because I've heard, that and think of so many other people that are over there that have big names.

Like, this is not an uncommon tactic. And I just wonder if Molly been there 10 years, done well, she probably was like, I don't have to put up with this. And I didn't put up. I took the other offer. I was like, well, I want to do this other thing anyway. But I just wonder that was a big part of it as well. I totally understand her wanting to declare victory after 10 years.

Also, with the way ESPN works now, soon as she leaves one of the protected bubbles, First take is a protected bubble. Stephen A is one of the guys at ESPN. I could totally understand ESPN having a very different idea, either of her value in terms of contract-wise, or what they wanted her to do versus what she wanted to do. Absolutely. Well, I mean, it was, didn't Stephen A just the other day say with Cam Newton

about letting them know like how responsible he is for getting people on who he wants and getting them taking care of the way that he wants? Absolutely. But again, you're leaving the bubble. Right. It's not, you're not, you're not part of the first take machine anymore. Not part of the Stephen A machine, keeping that show on the rails. That's right. That's right. That's right. That's right. Yeah. I mean, it's just a, that's a, that's a tough situation to be in. And also, I wonder if ESPN and given this new world, they're like, well, why don't you start up your own podcast? Like, you know, are you going to do your own thing? And we'll pay you according to that. Like, we can pay you a little less and you build up your own brand. Because that's what, you know, that seems to be sort of a model over there for the front facing folks over there. So a couple more quick things for you. Before we bring on. Ivan. Tom Brady.

It was a shot of Tom Brady, Joel, during the Monday night Raiders Chargers game. He was with the Raiders coaches wearing a headset. This brought back this idea that has bubbled up over the last year and change, which is the Tom Brady conflict of interest. Brady is a minority owner of the Las Vegas Raiders. He's also getting inside dope from teams and coaches and players to, help him call games on Fox. Now, people were already like, wait a second.

Can you be an owner of the Raiders? Can you be helping the Raiders and then also pumping the rest of the league for information? That was already out there. But then you saw it on a headset. Oh, wait a second. He's not just offering suggestions inside the building. He's sitting there, you know, the visual was very powerful. Where do you come down on Brady and the Raiders and the headset?

Do you think Pete Carroll wanted Tom Brady to be inserting himself into this, that way? Like, I don't, maybe, like, I guess if he had some inside dirt. But yeah, I mean, the appearance of conflict is, usually it used to be enough, right? There's like, well, we don't even want to appear that we have a conflict of interest here, so I'll step away from that. But I think we're living in a post-conflict of interest. world and it just doesn't seem to matter much anymore, especially when it comes to media. Dude, a post-conflict of interest world. I love that.

It was like, eh, it would have been disqualifying in another age. Right. You know how I feel about this. Tom Brady is causing a lot of this because he's not coming clean about what he's doing with the Raiders. Now, we might say, hey, minority owner, that's disqualifying right there. But it makes it worse when you're not actually saying what you're doing? Are you helping hire coaches? Yeah. Are you giving Chip Kelly and Pete Carroll input on game plans? I mean, again, whether you're getting secret info or not, like, what is your job with the Raiders? I got to ask him this question during Super Bowl week last week, straight up. He didn't answer. It was a big, it was a big non-answer. And in my mind, that hurts him if this is like,

look, the NFL is fine with us. They've already said they're fine. They could have stepped in this last offseason, they actually gave Brady more access to the Zoom meetings with coaches. Oh, man, I see. I mean, you know, the funny thing is, too, is that Brady has been associated with, like, two of the biggest, like, alleged cheating scandals in NFL history. Like, he's a competitor. Like, and, I mean, he would have no compunction about telling you, like, I'll, you know, did anything to win and I'm willing to do it.

So why should we put anything past him? Right? Yeah. Yeah, I mean, look, you can say that from cheating. Mike Floreos said it a different way this week, which I thought was always like, what does Tom Brady want to do? He wants to win another Super Bowl ring. Yep.

That's what he wants to do. What's the phrase, you know, the next, the next ring. The best ring is the next one. Yep. So why isn't he, why wouldn't he be getting any advantage that he possibly could? It's just, it's just crazy because it's like, man, isn't it? What's enough? Like, I guess there's no such thing as enough.

But like, don't you make enough money? Like, isn't it? What do you need to do this for? Well, but if you're talking about a post-conflict of interest world, if nobody says no, then what's the problem? Right. Who's going to step into saying? Right.

I mean, that's honestly what it is. Now, I will say, in these meetings, now these are Zoom calls because Brady is still, because he's an owner, part owner, prohibited from going on the actual campus, but these mostly happen to Zoom calls these days anyway. There's a good question of the coaches and players know this. They know that Brady, it's not like, it's not like, Wait, what? He's a part owner of the Raiders.

So they're going to approach these conversations in a certain way. Ben Johnson got asked about this this week because Brady, Kevin Burkart, KB, as he's known to America, are calling Bears Cowboys this Sunday. The next week, the Raiders are playing the Bears. So Brady is doing a workup on the Bears. And this is what Ben Johnson said, according to the Athletic, says really not worried about it. We change week to week in terms of what we do. schematically, he's going to be able to turn on the tape and see what everyone else in the world is seeing right now.

Personnel-wise, really the same thing. It's not like I'm going to sit down with him and say, hey, don't do this to Caleb Williams, or you might get it. Like there's not going to be any trade secrets that are going to be exchanged, but I really don't think it's that big a deal, to be honest with you. Now, it'd be kind of an upset if Ben Johnson was mad about it and actually admitted that in a press conference right before he was about to talk to you, the greatest quarterback all time in a production meeting.

Yeah, yeah. I do think it probably hurts Brady on the margins because the stuff you get out of those meetings is all about trust. It's about relationships. It's about trust, about whether, you know, a lot of things are said. It's not just sharing it with another franchise. It's about sharing it on the air at all. Right. You know those guys get a lot of stuff.

And the ones that are able to say it skillfully on the air without revealing, you know, betraying confidences, without really revealing what they know, those are the guys who get rewarded with more information. Like, teams have been doing that forever. Right, right. The Brady thing is kind of an additional element to that. That's the way I say it anyway. There are not as many people in this world who are,

as known and indulge paranoia as a football coach, right? Like, they, I mean, they are crazy about that stuff. So I cannot imagine that they're going to be giving him the inside dope, given that, right? Like, they'll talk to him, sure, because like, who's not going to say no to Tom Brady? Because apparently nobody says no to Tom Brady. But, yeah, like, to your point, that's a great point. Like, they're not going to tell him any, you know, they're not going to give him anything that they might perceive as harming them in the field of play.

Also, if we're talking about conflicts of interest, let's be clear. This is a conflict of interest within a conflict of interest. Yeah. The original sin is that the network is paying billions of dollars to the NFL to show. you the games. They are commenting on a thing they're paying to show. They are already in business with the league. Right. So I'm all for going to the barricades here. I know like Florio, you could just so, so excited like, oh, we go. We got something here, folks. I'm like, also you work for NBC, we're just paying billions of dollars to the NFL. Let's just just outline all the potential

conflicts of interest here while we're doing. Entertainment. While we're high horse in this baby. Yeah. We're doing gambling. Just take it as entertainment. now. All right, last one for you. Okay. Robert Redford died this week. 89 years old. Do you have a favorite Robert Redford movie? So I don't have, you've got me on the spot here, but I think the only one. Oh, wait, I got one up on Joel. Here we go. I'm so excited.

The only one that I've seen that I can, is indecent proposal. So I have to go with that one. That's your Robert Redford Filmography is an decent proposal In Decent Proposal Man having his time was a little bit before me I gotta say But indecent maybe I saw Butch Cassidy And the Sundance Kid

But yeah Indecent probably You know Demi Moore How could you miss man? It was a good time So it's always funny when you're like us And you have a great actor Who stretches decades back into the past

But we know him because of what he did In the 90s Yeah And my decent proposal Because I was a little young for a decent proposal was sneakers. Do you ever see that? No, no.

It's a caper movie. Oh, okay. Directed by the guy who directed Field of Dreams. Oh. Phil Alder Robinson. It's fantastic. I was like, I should show my kids that movie this week because it's really, really good. It's got Ben Kingsley in it.

It's fantastic. I should check that out. But you got, I mean, come on now. We got Butch Cassidy and a Sundance kid. The candidate is a great political movie. Awesome. The Sting is just a great movie movie movie. We could go on and on.

But of course there's all the presidents men. Have you not seen all the president's men? Okay. You know what? I saw it in college during a film class. So I did see all the presidents men. That's right. Yes.

What do you think was better for Bob Woodward's career? The Watergate reporting he did or getting played by Robert Redford and all the presidents men. Man, I promise you, bro. If Robert Redford, legendarily handsome man played me in a movie, you would never, I would never stop talking about it. So there's a story about Robert Redford and all the presidents. men, but it's not just about the movie, Joel. It's about the book, which I've always found interesting. So flashback to the 70s. There we go. Make sure your collar's a little bit longer.

Oh, yeah, got that right. I'll grow my hair out a little more. Okay. 1973, Woodward and Bernstein, that is Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, are already stars because of the reporting they've done. Okay? They have signed a contract with Simon and Schuster to write what would become all the president's men. But they're struggling with the book. They're even struggling with a title, which was going to be, and this is not a joke, folks, a point in time. That was going to be the original title of all the president's men. Oh, man. They did better. What a terrible title this was. That would have better. That's when Robert Redford steps in. And I quote to you here from a book I really like. It's called Leak, Why Mark Felt became Deep Throat by Max Holland. If you're interested in journalism, in deep throat,

and Mark felt it's a fantastic book. It was University of Kansas like about a decade ago, and I read it and it opened my eyes, jol and about a lot of things. Be careful, Google and Deep Throat, by the way. Yeah, I was about to say, everybody. Okay. Take your precautions as necessary.

Woodward and Bernstein are struggling to write their book. And the book at that point was just going to be a pretty conventional narrative of the water. It was a book about Watergate. Well, they, Woodward specifically meets Redford in Washington, at a screening for the candidate, Holland writes. And after Woodward described the problem, here I'm quoting from Holland's book,

he and Bernstein were confronted with. Redford responded with a valuable tip. Borrow his conception, instead of writing a book about what they discovered, Redford advised, readers are more likely to be interested in how they discovered it. That was what intrigued him, and he wanted to produce a film

that was a reenactment of their actual reporting. So to recap here, Woodward and Bernstein are writing a Nixon did this, Nixon did this, Nixon did this Watergate book. Redford, who already wants to make a movie about this, says, no, no, no, no, no. The story is you guys, the reporters, finding this information out. Now, think what an editorial note that is. That's so smart. And to think they write the book, they not only do the reporting, but they write the book in that way. And that inspires the entire generation of journalists ahead of you.

you and me. They are inspired by the book. They're inspired by the movie. But that conception comes not from Woodward or Bernstein or their editor at Simon, Alice Mayhew. That comes from Robert Redford. And as Holland writes, what they did after they get that idea is they go back to all their sources. These are sources that were anonymous in the post. They're like, actually, can we name you in this book? Because it's a little weird to say, we went to person X, we went to person Y. Some of the sources allowed them to name them in the book because at that point they were fairly proud or they wanted to clear their names and say, I wasn't part of it.

That was part of the solution, not the problem. Other sources, according to Holland said, you can describe me, but please don't name me. I was it. I worked at Creep and I did this and you came over to my house. That's fine to talk about. So that's how we got that book. That's how we got the Woodward and Birdstein origin story. It's from Robert Redford as much as anything else.

Wow. What a contribution to the field of journalism, Mr. Refra. Even more. I wasn't familiar with your game, but I was a big fan. Also, man, I don't know about you, Brian. Finding out that Robert Redford had gotten to 89 years old on us. Just really, my mouth dropped. I was like, oh, God, really? 89, huh? You know the movie I love of his? Because he also directed all these movies, directed quiz show and ordinary people and all these movies. There was a movie he directed called The Malaugro Beanfield War.

And it was filmed in northern New Mexico near where my grandmother, my maternal grandmother was born. She was born in a town called Chumayo and grew up there. And he went up there because he was fascinated by that area of the world and filmed like a whole movie up there. And I had it. It was one of those, you remember when you had like the movie on tape as a kid? Yeah.

And you had like three movies and you just watched the hell out of them. Yes. It was like the film festival. that never ended. It's like, that was me in the Malagro Beanfield War, which I'm seeing here on my screen came out in 1988. Anyway.

Did you ever get around to seeing an indecent proposal? I have seen it, yes. Okay. And it was not as exciting as my childhood self-imagined. Yeah. I mean, I haven't watched it as an adult. So it was exciting as a kid, I thought.

Joel and I will be doing a special rewatchables here on the press box. indecent proposal and also the good Robert Redford movies. Can't wait. Now that we've cleared the air in terms of media news, another deep breath. Here's one of our favorite college football writers.

All right, let us bring on a sports writer that I have been voting number one for three decades now. Ivan Mayselle has covered college football for ESPN for Sports Illustrated, for newspapers. He has dipped into the sports past to write a book about a coach

who has been lost to history until now. The book is American Coach, The Triumph and Tragedy of Notre Dame legend, Frank Leahy. Ivan, welcome back to the press box. Thank you, Brian. I am delighted to be here. All right. So for college football fans like me,

I can give you a little string on New Grogney. I can give you a little string on Araparshegan, perhaps a little more on Lou Holtz. But frankly, he was a mystery to me. Where does he fit into the, what's the word firmament of Notre Dame coaching? The Pantheon. There we go. Only in journalism, right?

He was a mystery to me, and I think he just, he got lost, Brian. And what intrigued me was, and it was really the threat I started to pull on, was I noticed he was second in winning percentage to Rockney. when he quit in 1953, he was second when he died in 1973. And, you know, and as of, you know, lunchtime today, he's still second. And yet he was just, nobody had written a word about him, really since his autobstumous autobiography came out in 1974, written by Wells Twombly, another, you know, great former sports writer. So I just thought, you know, there's a lot of Notre Dame fans out there, and he's just the name and a record book. Let's go see who he was.

And his story to me was just a fascinating picture of America in the 20th century from, you know, growing up on the South Dakota Prairie where he was literally a cowboy as a kid growing up to climbing that ladder that, you know, to the top. going to the top of his career, you know, family and health be damned. And he got there and all of a sudden, you know, his, he worked so hard and pushed so hard to win football games that he made himself physically too ill to coach. And I just thought that, boy, there's a, there's a story we've seen in other forms written by people much, you know, more talented than I. and I just thought it was a great American story. What made Frank Leahy a great football coach? I think he, Rockney, who he played for,

said he had a great mind for the game. I think he was preternaturally disposed to being a great football coach. He just understood how things worked on the field, but more important, his desire. I mean, he was just going to do whatever he needed to do to win a football game.

And he trained his players, I mean, harder than anybody else, but also you're going to do whatever you have to take. You have to do in order to win. A lot of his colleagues thought that he coached dirty football. And it was really his kids, his guys, his men just played harder. And they were more talented. You write the book that he was not calling a lot of plays from the sidelines. he didn't think of himself as a good game time adjustment guy.

So his greatness is located a lot of it anyway in practice before games even start. Preparation, absolutely. And he was one of those guys. There's an anecdote in the book about a dinner party with the coaches. The minute he walks in the door, he's carrying a football, and he starts demonstrating some line technique to the other assistants, whose wives are sitting at the dinner table waiting to eat. And the other assistants are just looking at each other and rolling their eyes.

You know, as Leahy gets down in a three-point stance in this living room with a ball in his hand and is talking about, you know, some new discovery he's figured out. But that's who he was. You know, the old, you know, Nick Sabins, you celebrate for 24-hour rule. You know, there was, he won a national championship, finished the season. You know, Notre Dame didn't play in bowl games. They finished the season in an L.A. hotel against USC.

They're in LA hotel that night and the other coaches. He calls the coaches together and they think they're going to celebrate. And he wants to start talking about next year and they just stopped him. No, no, no, we're not doing that. Yeah, we're going to go celebrate. That's who he was. You mentioned Saban of all the modern coaches you've written about in your career. Who reminds you of Leahy?

For the arc of his career, a little bit more Urban Meyer, who also made himself too sick to coach because of the stress he put on himself to succeed. And I haven't talked to Urban about that. I haven't asked him about that. But I just, you know, to me, that's the obvious comparison. Because Urban, unlike Leahy, Urban came back. You know, Leahy wanted to come back and couldn't. But Urban came back one again and made himself sick again.

and then he was gone. It's part of the great fun of the book for me is reading about how college football was conducted in the 40s and 50s. How did Frank Leahy recruit? He, you know, he didn't really recruit. I mean,

he, they had what were called bird dogs, which was also a baseball scouting term, but they were alums or friends of the university who would funnel kids to him. And that's how he got Johnny Lujak, one of his four Heisman winners, five, if he count Paul Horning, who he recruited but never actually played for him. You know, there was a guy in western Pennsylvania who operated a gas station in Lou Jack's hometown, and he kept bugging Leahy about Lou Jack. And, you know, Leahy found out Lou Jack

was 5-11 and 160 pounds, and he was not very impressed. But then he went to Connell's Pennsylvania and met Lou Jack and watched him work out a little bit and he was sold. That's kind of the way things were done though. You know, kids came in, kids came to campus. They went on tryouts, which were not legal, nor were the Notre Dame policy. Leah did it anyway. You know, among the players that tried out who didn't make it were Teddy Kennedy, whose father was a trustee, so he was going to get a tryout.

and it was one of those, you know, he looks at one of his assistants and says, hey, yeah, you try him out, you know, and they wink and a nod. Johnny Aninus, who weighed about 135 pounds and, you know, was not good enough to play at Notre Dame and, you know, ended up going to Louisville. Not sure what happened to him after that.

Whatever happened to Johnny U. Yeah, exactly. So, you know, it's just, that's the way things. were done back then. Today, a college coach who's any good has a kind of cult built up around him. What kind of cult was built up around Frank Leahy? Oh, there was a cult, I mean, of its day. I mean, he was a national celebrity.

He was a figure. Made the cover of Time magazine. I think the week before Eugene O'Neill, you know, he was on all the big radio shows of the post-war era. And you can still listen to the Jack Benny show he was on. It's on the Internet, and it's actually funny. You know, pals with Don Amici, the actor, who was a huge Notre Dame fan. Went to a big game one time with Bing Crosby, you know, became a golf buddy of General and then President Eisenhower.

I mean, he was a national figure, which was also fascinating to me. in the sense that now nobody, he's just a name and a record book. And, you know, this was all so, I guess, fleeting. You write about this game between Notre Dame and Army, November 9, 1946 in Yankee Stadium, which I only knew about because that game has one of the best press boxes of all time, one of the best collections of sports writers that showed up to cover it. Why was that game so big? Well, it was the first big national sporting event of the post-war era.

You know, Grantland Rice that week said it was bigger than any Joe Lewis fight. And, you know, Joe Lewis had been the heavyweight champion of the world since the mid-30s. So that was big. You know, the Army athletic director famously said, you know, if we had had a million tickets, we could have sold them. there was just this hunger in the nation to get to stop sacrificing and get back to normal whatever normal was and that was sport you know sports this should be this should be important now new york was of course there was a housing shortage everywhere but new york that week the hotel association put out news releases saying don't come to new york we don't have anywhere to put

And people just wandered the streets because there was, you know, nowhere to sleep. It was nowhere to eat. It was nowhere to sit down. You know, it was a huge game broadcast on radio by all three of the biggest radio stations in New York, all with different networks. It was one of the early games televised, and NBC said 150. thousand viewers on the East Coast watched it, which was remarkable because in 1946 there were only 44,000 televisions in the country. So it was just a huge event. And I think honestly, and Johnny Lujak said this later in life, it's remembered because it ended

zero zero. If somebody had won the game, then nobody would, nobody would remember it. But both coaches, Frank Leahy at Notre Dame, Red Blake at Army, loathed one another at that point, and they let their animus toward one another get in the way of coaching the game. They were both so intent on not losing to that guy that they didn't make very good decisions. And both had opportunities to win the game and didn't do it. We live in a time now where you're either a few,

fan of Notre Dame or you wish nothing but bad things to happen to Notre Dame, like what happened against Texas A&M on Saturday? How did college football fans feel about Notre Dame during this period? Well, I was going to say, we live in that time. I'm 65 years old. I've always lived in that time. I think that's part of being Notre Dame. I think at that point, look, you know, the NFL was an afterthought in the late 40s. The NBA was literally just starting. In terms of American team sports, there was Major League Baseball and there was college football.

And in terms of those two sports, there were the New York Yankees and there was Notre Dame. And I think Notre Dame was even a little more of them or us because of Catholicism. because it was a little bit other compared to what mainstream society was. And, you know, that theme of Notre Dame's years-long, lifelong search for its place in American society really infused this story as well. You know, it's the reason Notre Dame never got into the Big Ten was anti-Catholic feeling in the Big Ten. reason Rockney took them to the major cities where there were a lot of Catholic immigrants, you know, his people were, Notre Dame's people were, which is how Notre Dame became the one national school in a regional sport. So all that informed what was going on with Notre Dame

and the fan base in the post-war era. There are great little scenes in the book of nuns bringing their students to train platforms to watch. the Notre Dame train passed through on the way to New York or on the way to Seattle. You know, it was great fun. I'll tell you, one journalistic, just great event for me was I kept trying to find a way to tie the Yankees and Notre Dame together. And naturally, I found it in a Red Smith column from 1952. and, you know, Notre Dame opened at Penn.

The Yankees clinched the American League pennant at the Philadelphia A's, and Leahy went to the Friday night game where they clinched it and walked into the locker room, and Red Smith was talking to Mickey Mantle, who had been offered a football scholarship to Oklahoma. It was a fantastic running back, and he said to Red Smith, you know, Oklahoma's going to kick Notre Dame's butt this season,

and Red just sort of smiled and said, well, why don't you go tell Coach Leahy that? And Nick and Mickey goes, I'll tell him. Yeah, I will. And he got up and he walked over and just completely melted in front of Leahy, and I coach Leahy, you know, and what do you think of Oklahoma this year? And, you know, there was this just wonderful scene that only Red Smith would capture and be smart enough to put into a column.

One of the fun things about reading history like this is we see that the obsessions of the day, in this case, college football in the 40s and 50s, are pretty much the exact same obsessions that we have right now. Yes. So we're sitting here coming out of the COVID exemption where we had a bunch of college football players who were 24 and 25 years old with gray hair around their temples. What was college football like after World War II when Leahy was coaching? Well, the Notre Dame roster in 1946 has been called the greatest roster ever.

those four seasons after the war, Notre Dame went 36-0 and 2. And in part because he had guys that had played for him before the war that still had eligibility after they came back. He had guys who had been in the war and then enrolled as 21-year-old freshman. And he had his usual group of 18-year-old freshmen who wanted to play at Notre Dame. So, He had this incredible roster. And again, at a time when you only had a lot, you only needed 11 players. And he had an entire roster that could have played

at any other college in the country, much less in the NFL. I went through a number of guys who left Notre Dame weren't good enough to start at Notre Dame and had long careers in the NFL. And, you know, and there's one anecdote where a guy came to coach Leahy and said, I got a chance to sign with the New York Giants. And Leahy told him, well, you'll play for them.

You're not going to play here. So, I mean, you know, just, you're right. There are huge parallels in that sense. You know, Diego Pavia would have fit right in. There you go. You know, the bandy quarterback who's, you know, I think 37 or 38 years old. You know, that's exactly where we were after the war. here's another parallel that we saw during the Clemson Georgia Tech game last weekend.

Fake injuries? How did Notre Dame use fake injuries to help them weigh? Oh, my God. So that was a wonderful story, and the more I looked into it, the more the better it got. Late in the 1953 season, Notre Dame's undefeated. They're playing Iowa at the end of the, at the end of the first half, I was ahead 7-0-0.

Notre Dame fakes an injury to stop the clock and scores a touchdown with two seconds left. The end of the fourth quarter, I was ahead 14 to 7. Notre Dame fakes an injury again, scores a touchdown to tie the game and escapes. They still cost them the national championship,

but they escaped and finished the season 9-0-1. But But Grantlin Rice, the aforementioned Grantlin Rice, was greatly offended by this protocol of Leahy's foray into the gray area of the rulebook and lashed out. There were football writers luncheons in New York on Mondays, and all the writers would gather and coaches from the local schools would gather. and they would talk about, you know, their guys would get fodder for their columns that week, and someone asked Rice what he thought about, about what Notre Dame had done,

and he lashed out at Leahy and said it was against the spirit of the rules and how awful it was, and that really, that really hurt, took a big chunk out of Leahy's hide and contributed, I think, to his decision not to come back at the end of the 1953 season. It was definitely became a huge story

when if Rice hadn't said anything, it probably wouldn't have been. So that brings us back to a question we started with, which is Frank Leahy getting a little bit lost to history. Was it because of the way he left college football? How did he get lost in the whole story of the sport? I'm not sure I can give you a really good answer on that. I think part of it was he left coaching at a young age, surely.

I think part of it was when he left, he was not a good businessman, and he got into a couple of bad business situations that ended up before the Security and Exchange Commission in one case. and that hurt his reputation. And he was, you know, he helped get the AFL off the ground, you know, which was a plus. But again, his health prevented him from diving too deeply into working in the AFL. He just kind of disappeared. And his relationship with Notre Dame was fraught. He didn't really leave on great terms with Father Theodore.

Hesberg, who was sort of the Frank Leahy of the priesthood and academy on campus. He had a singular mission to make Notre Dame a world-class academic institution and succeeded, but football got in the way of that. And so he just parked football at the curb for about a decade, and that including Leahy leaving and him not really replacing him with anybody who could succeed. until he hired Araparsigin in 1964. So his relationship with Notre Dame was not great. He lashed out at his successor, Terry Brennan,

that left a sour taste in some people's mouth. And it made Leahy look bad. He just never found his footing in a post-coaching life. And then he died at age 65 of leukemia. And then he was gone. You started covering college football, Ivan, in the 80s. How did you see the job of college football coach change between then and now? Oh, my God.

Wow. You know, the job between the lines is not all that different, Brian. It's just everything else. I mean, you know, these guys are now, you know, they're running little NFL teams. I mean, they really are. you know, the amount of money that is needed, you know, that they have to, you know, that they need to have a top 10, top 20 program is astounding. You know, they're hamstrung by that. The amount of money they're making the size of their staffs.

You know, I remember 1990, the NCAA curbing the size of football staffs. to I think nine assistant coaches. And you could also have two entry level positions. Now, staffs are just ridiculous. And I mean, it's like comparing football when I started to what it was like 40 years before that with leather helmets and one platoon. I mean, the sport evolves at a stunning pace.

The only thing that doesn't seem to change is the way we feel about it. And thank God for that because that's why we have jobs. The media world that these coaches existed in changed a lot to over the last few decades. We saw the rise of the recruiting website. We saw a lot more national coverage of college football that we ever have before, at least more detailed coverage. Do you think coaches have more or less power in this new media age? I think they have more power only in the sense that I think our voices,

are more muted than they used to be. You know, when I started in 1987, there was a group of 10 to 12 national guys at newspapers. And we traveled together, you know, and almost like a pack. We weren't all at the same game every week, but a lot of times we were.

And, you know, it was, I was at the Dallas Morning News. It was Gene Wojahowski at the L.A. Times. Mark Blouchin at the Balloucheon at the ball. Austin Globe, Malcolm Moran in the New York Times, you know, Chicago Tribune, Ed Sherman, you know, big papers. And we are all, we're all very good friends to this day because of those experiences. And, you know, and we had, we also had some, we had a voice that people listened to. You know, I was not, I was, I got my phone calls returned, not because of my Sterling personality and terrific talent, I was in Dallas, which was the biggest recruiting

market in the country. You know, Bobby Bowden, Bobby Bowden made sure he and I were buddies, and, you know, both because of the talent in Dallas, but because he had family in Fort Worth. You know, that's all, that all is gone now. You know, I mean, and we had a lot more access back then, even though we didn't think we had a lot, you know, but you could get players more easily than you could than you can now, from what I'm told. You know, so it's, yeah, it's a little more closed off than it used to be. If you had to pick one, who was your favorite coach to interview? Well, Bobby Bowden was pretty special.

You know, he was just a great people person and a very smart. and cagey guy behind his awshuckness and he would he used to have what was called breakfast with Bobby and he was the only coach who did this on Sunday mornings after game it was just his you know he would we would meet at the Holiday Inn in Tallahassee

and there would be a breakfast and he would get up and talk about the game the day before and that's where he said that you know the fame after the 1716 lost to Miami in 91 the next morning, he said, you know, it's going to be on my tombstone, but he played Miami, you know, and we all looked at each other. Yeah.

How great is that? My story's written for me. Yeah, he did a great job of that. I mean, I had a lot of terrific conversations with him. He was a World War II history nut. We used to send him books about World War II history because he had romantic. fever as a child and was bedridden for a year and all and he had a huge map of the world on his wall in his room and he would keep track of what was going on in the war with this map

on his wall and so he became a huge World War II history guy you know uh but I mean there have been others you know the best father's son I think would be you know Spike Dykes and Sonny, you know, both who were just great people, persons. Pete Carroll and at the peak of USC loved having us come through, you know. I mean, there were a lot of guys. Which coach was the hardest to wheedle information out of? Oh. Well, it was just, it was the ability to get to them.

You know, once they opened the door to you, you generally could talk to them. But, you know, late in his life, Joe Paterno, just didn't want to be bothered anymore. Bo Schembeckler, who I really, I only, he did my first, my first two seasons on the beat were his last, my first three years on the beat

were his last three years. You just, it was very hard to get to Bo. You know, once he retired, you could get to him and he was great company because he was a really, you know, he had a magnetic personality, but again, didn't want to be bothered with the writers. And, you know, the beauty, Brian, of being a national guy was I didn't try all that hard to talk to people.

They didn't want to talk to me. I had another 105, now 130 schools I could go do a story at. You don't want to talk to me. You know, good luck to you. Which of the coaches you covered best understood how to use the media to his advantage? Oh, the ones that talk to us. I mean, you know, and again, you know, Bowden, you know, I mean, he always got the benefit of the doubt from us because he talked to us.

You know, the great, you know, the great, uh, unsolved mystery of how to deal with the media. Talk to them. You know, if you, you know, if you just rub our bellies, you know, then, then we're yours. Uh, you know, he was really good about that. I'll tell you else was good at it. It was Nick Saban, you know, just to get his message out and to, you know,

to say things at press conferences and to the writers that. that he would talk to, and I was one of them. You know, he'd put stuff out there. And it was, it might be a message to those players. It might be a message to, you know, the football rules committee. It might be a message to whomever recruits. But Nick was always very strategic in how he communicated. I felt like every line in every press conference had a meaning, had a purpose.

Oh, yeah. No question. No accidents. Yeah. All right. Ivan Maysel the book is American Coach the triumph and tragedy of Notre Dame legend Frank Leahy.

Ivan, thanks for coming on the press box. Thanks a lot, Brian. I enjoyed it. All right, that is the press box. He's Joel Anderson. I'm Brian Curtis. Prodaxi Magic by Kyle Crichton. Coming up with the press box Monday, David Shoemaker returns, Joel.

I'll see you next Thursday for a special guest. More lukewarm takes about the meeting. Can't wait.