The Press Box - Joel’s Opening Thoughts, College Football’s Playoff Endgame, and a New Theory About Trump’s Media Advantage

Episode Date: December 6, 2024

Hello, media consumers! Bryan Curtis is rejoined by Joel Anderson, who gives his opening thoughts (in a soon-to-be-named segment) about the Woj bomb that came out about Adrian Wojnarowski’s health scare (05:00). After that, they address Jeff Bezos’s recent comments about the Washington Post’s decision to withhold its support of Kamala Harris just days before the 2024 presidential election (17:58). Then, they talk about the College Football Playoff (40:30), Michigan’s planting of the flag following its win over Ohio State (46:22), and Stephen A. Smith’s new deal with ESPN and what his future there could look like (58:45). Host: Bryan Curtis Guest: Joel Anderson Producer: Troy Farkas Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hey everyone, I'm Big Was, Waz, a.k.a. Wazee Lambray, and I'm the host of Weekends with Waz and co-hosts of group chat on the Ringer NBA feed. Alongside weekends and group chat, we have an incredible assortment of NBA coverage. Real ones with Logan Murdoch and Roger Bell, The Answer with Syred Sohi and Kyle J. Mann, and off guard with Austin Rivers and Pausha Hagigi. Each week, we tackle all the major news from throughout the NBA and talk to guests from throughout the NBA world. from famous fans like Jerry Ferrara to current all-stars like Carl Anthony Towns to NBA legends like J.R. Smith, as well as NBA media guys and gals from all over the country. So be sure to check us out Monday through Friday on the Ringer NBA feed. Hello, media consumers. Welcome to Press Box.

You got Brian Curtis. You've got Joel Anderson. You've got producer Troy Farkas who is sitting in for Brian Waters. Joel, last time we met Joel, we started off the, Thursday podcast by having you give us some opening thoughts. Yeah. And I'm glad that you guys have decided to throw this open for me. And, you know, I've, we've got a list of names here, Brian, and I'm excited. And actually, we might have a disagreement right off the top, because you say starting with more fanciful to more likely. Yes, these are names that readers submitted for the Joel Anderson's opening thoughts feature.

The very first one is what I really enjoy. All right. The first one, this comes from Gil Gross, and it is the Joel enchilada. Yeah. I'm a huge enchilada fan. I love enchiladas. I go to every Tex-Mex restaurant, I would order enchiladas is my base order. Okay.

So if you pick a food that Joel likes, you might also get a bit named after it. Just no two listeners out there. Right. I'll give you a few more here, see what you think. Matt Womack suggests Morning Joel. timing is bad on that one maybe another another era it's a tough time in the appeasement era of morning joe listener hotwire it says joel keepers guess that's like goalkeepers i appreciate the submission i maybe not though uh cap city riffs gives us cajoled i could i can get it i can i'm i'm i'm sort of uh an incorrigible person from time to

time. So I could, cajol can properly describe me occasionally. Here's some more for you. The Jold open. Hmm. Okay. That's not bad. It's from Mr. Frankie Beats. We also got Jold pizza. Man, I used to love cold pizza. That, that really hit me in a place right there, man. So I'll talk about the show, not the actual food product. You fish out of the refrigerator the next day. Yeah, we're both, actually. But yes. But the show was, uh, at the time when it came out, I was a huge fan of it. So there you go. That's from corporate Mark. Vince Tuss, who works over at the Minneapolis Star, gives us Hello Mr. Anderson from The Matrix.

Pretty good. Can I admit something? Okay. I've never seen The Matrix. Uh-oh. And people have done the hello Mr. Anderson thing to me forever. And I've got gradually caught on, but I've never seen the movie. So I just don't think that I can actually accept that given that I haven't seen the movie.

Wait a second. Did you mention this when you were interviewing with The Ringer? Oh, you don't even want to get into the list of things that I have not seen. Because we did have a conversation about it. And I've got a lot of homework to do, put it that way. So you passed the Celtics roster part of the entrance exam, but we didn't get to the movies part. That's what you're saying. Hey, look, man, I mean, the Rockets played the 86 Celtics, you know, my hometown team.

So that was kind of in my wheelhouse. But Game of Thrones, don't know much about it. Got to be honest. finally we've got the Joel truth that comes from Coys and Carkeve 1654 the Joel truth I mean that and the Joel enchilada are my two favorites I think okay so do you want to pick right now or should we leave this open for listeners some more I think we should leave it open and maybe you know if you what is wait what's your preference Brian who do you have one on this I mean the Joel enchilada as a fan of puns really makes me laugh okay

I think the Joel truth might be a little longer lasting, might have a little more life in it. But they could both work. All right. Well, I mean, look, your opinion matters to me, and that you're leaning toward the Joel truth makes me, you know, it moves me in that direction as well. So we won't put our thumbs on the scale too much.

Look for it over at Twitter and over at Blue Sky. You'll be able to vote the Joel enchilada or the Joel truth. So presenting our as yet unnamed kickoff feature here at the Thursday press box, I give you Joel Anderson. Well, thank you for seating me the floor, Brian. So today opened with a woebom of another type. As former ESPN NBA insider, Agent Wojnarowski, revealed the Sports Illustrator that he'd been diagnosed with prostate cancer earlier this year. And so that, I think, adds a little more context to his seemingly surprising decision to leave ESPN. and potentially $20 million on the table to become the general manager at his alma mater,

St. Bonaventure, the men's basketball team, general manager of that. And he also mentioned in this story, and this really struck with me, and I don't know if you notice this, Brian. He mentioned that he noticed how few ESPN colleagues went to Chris Mortensen's memorial after he died of throat cancer in March.

And Woz says, it made me remember that the general job isn't everything. In the end, it's just going to be you, your family and close friends. And look, amen. I was reminded of this when I was laid off earlier this year when my wife was eight months pregnant. Work always reminds you of your place in it eventually. But anyway, my dad was actually diagnosed with prostate cancer when he was 48. And as a result, I've had to get tested earlier than the norm. I started getting my PSA test like before I was even 40. And most men don't need to do that until they're 50. So I,

I get how disruptive and scary this can be and how it might lead to an epiphany about how you've been living your life and what your future might look like. And he says, I didn't want to spend one more day of my life waiting on someone's MRI or hitting an agent at 1 a.m. about an ankle sprain. But Brian, can you reconcile this with me? St. Bonaventure is not Kentucky. It's not Duke. Aren't you going to kind of have to hustle in that job in a way that you probably don't at a lot of I think it's not like you can't retire into the general manager job at a men's college basketball program now, can you? No, but I think it requires less all in than being Wouge, the NBA insider.

I mean, I'm going to assume that, you know, you can take a shower when you work at St. Bonnys. And you can go to dinner in his office. Yeah. Yeah. And you can go to dinner with your wife. That's fair. and not have to worry about, you know, missing something that Shams or some other NBA insider is going to gobble up and tweet out and then you're going to have to deal with.

Yeah, that's true. That's true. That's true. And I mean, look, I'd be a fool to doubt that man's work ethic because obviously it's, it's legendary in this industry. But there's one other thing that he said, and this really speaks to the media environment right now. He says in this story, also, like, nobody gives a shit. nobody remembers and you know parentheses here breaking stories in the end it's just vapor man i mean

you did this you were the leader of it you could have made 20 million at it uh if you just stuck with it and now you're saying it doesn't really matter huh so that quote really hit me too um by the way we should say a really good story by chris mannix putting us all together uh about woe's something i think a lot of us have been wanting to read but yeah it's just vapor and it hit me You know, on the on the wode scale because of, you know, the way his career has gone. And it hits me because it's something I think about all the time with this job. Yeah. It's easy to get caught up peddling vapor.

Yep. And it's easy because vapor a lot of the times is really popular. Vapor gets you paid. Vapor gets you likes on Twitter. Right. And then you sit there at the end of the day and go, what did I just, do. That's right.

What was the thing? And I'm not somebody who thinks journalism has to be the Pentagon papers every day or even the mini Pentagon papers every day. Like it can be funny. It can be enlightening. It can be enlightening in small ways. It can be informative. It can just be a good hang sometimes.

And that's enough. But there's a line between that and nothing. And utter disposability. that you as a journalist, and in this case, Woj is a journalist, looks back at and goes, what was that? Like, it was so intangible that part of my job,

and it wasn't his whole job, but it was part of his job. And it was certainly part of the job that made him super famous and well paid. It's so intangible that walking away from it is just fine. Yeah, that's right. I mean, maybe in terms of the greater good,

but I think you're a lot like me in this way. And when I was a young reporter, and I'd have to inevitably get assigned to something I did not want to do, you know, a high school tennis tournament or whatever, and you get out there and you just like, first you go out there, does this matter? Am I doing journalism that matters?

And then you get out there and it becomes the most important thing in the world to you because you're talking to somebody. And the one thing that I used to think about, and I don't know if it applies to journalism in quite the same way, but I was like, this might be the only time this person's name is in the newspaper

other than their obituaries. You know what I mean? And so that like even if it doesn't matter on a broad scale, it can matter like it can loom really large in the life of something. I look I look back at my high school clips from when I, you know, you know, Joel Anderson rushed for 119 yards and it ran in the Houston Chronicle. I still have that stuff. So it can still matter, right?

I rush for a lot more than 119 yards in some games, but in it. Just throwing that number out there for particular clipping. Yeah, that was one game. No, no. And it does. But I think it's all up to us to defunders. find that question of what's vapor and what's not. Because it just means something different to everybody. And it means something different on a daily basis. And like I said, I think about this and I worry

about this all the time. I worry about it at the end of the day when I'm sitting there in front of the Christmas tree in my living room at night. I, you know, kind of pre-worry about it for 40 years from now when I'm in a rocking chair at the old media critics home. And I'm like, why did I spend so much time doing that? Right. What was the point? of that. Are you going to be sitting in the Rudy Martsky room? I will. That's the Rudy Martsky wing.

There'll be a number of us in there, you know, comparing notes about the PR guy who didn't return our call in a prompt and timely fashion. Don't make me say any names right now. So you guys talked about Rudy Marsky the other day, and I read Rudy Marsky all the time, like when I stayed in a hotel or just happened to pick up a copy USA Today, which was much easy to do 20, 25 years ago than it is today. And I thought, I'd never thought about, and you mentioned this, about how he sort of pioneered modern sports media criticism. And you mentioned how networks and agents would use those guys to pass along information.

And this occurred to me because last year, when O.J. Simpson died, I wrote about him. And I was trying to make sense of his fame. Like, why did people care about who O.J. was? He's just some old football player, right? And who did a really good ad. And so I started digging through LexusNexus and the newspapers.com looking for references to him. in his broadcast career. And he was always written about. Even when it was clear he wasn't good at his job.

Like, people don't remember. OJ. Simpson worked on Monday night football alongside Howard Coselle and Joe Namath and ended up losing that job because he was so bad at it. Right. But people kept talking about him in the news. He kept like, what is OJ going to do next?

What is the next job? Well, and then he got a job as Bob Casas' sidekick on NFL Live on NBC years later. He was at NBC up until the unfortunate events of 1994. But that guy had a knack for getting into the media. And I just wonder like, oh, like you can see the birth of an industry and how people sort of realize, hmm, maybe I need to get this stuff in the newspaper, right? I need to get my client in this stuff, right? Yeah.

And he's also a subcategory of that bigger category, which is he's on TV because he's O.J. At the end of the day. Right. Then Frank Gifford was on TV because he was Frank Gifford. You know, Tom Brady, the initial thing, well, we don't know how, what he's going to become as a broadcaster yet, but the initial thing that gets Tom Brady to TV is that he is Tom freaking Brady. Yeah, that's right.

That's right. Right. He gets the cut in front of the light. Tony Romo. Tony Romo. I mean, Magic Johnson, right? Like how many commentator gigs is Magic Johnson had? Oh, man.

At the end of the day. I keep trying. It's not because of those tweets that they're put him on the air because they're so incisive. They're put him on the air because he's Magic Johnson. Yeah. And OJ was absolutely the vehicle for that. But then you could also argue, as I think you are, that those columns, those, you know, those, all that coverage of, hey, let's go talk to OJ because he's OJ just perpetuates it.

He was always in the ether. Always in the ether. And I'm going to try to wrap this up real quick because we don't want the whole, we don't want the Joel and Shalada to take up the whole show. But I did listen to that Pod Save America interview that you guys talked about. And I just have one thing that I want to say. Because it just really struck me. And, like, obviously, these folks on the Harris campaign staff are going to be understandably defensive about criticism,

especially so soon after losing an election that they characterize is maybe our last national bulwark against fascism. Okay? So if you've lost under those circumstances, you might be a little sensitive, right? Just a tad. Just a tad. But I was surprised that there were more mentions of Charlemagne, the God, and hot ones. hot ones, then what was going on with Israel and Palestine? Like, there was not a question.

Like, not one. Trump won Michigan 49 to 48, right? I'm not, winning Michigan would not have changed ultimately the results, but like, that was one of the big issues going into the election and like, was she going to moderate her stance on that? And I'm just kind of surprised that it never came up in this interview. Do you think that was because those people that we were hearing from, the four people that ran the Harris campaign, were just so obsessed with tactics and political consultant stuff

at the expense of big picture, let's think about what we're for and what we're against? Or do you think that was just because the questions coming from Dan Pfeiffer, a fellow ex-political guy, were about that stuff? It's a good question. I mean, they spent a lot of time sort of digging into the effectiveness. of Trump's anti-trans ads. So it just kind of seems like maybe they could have touched on a little bit,

but I think you're probably right that they were more focused on. This is how our ground game failed us and this media environment here or whatever. But I just, it seemed to be shocking in its absence from this interview, to be honest. It really did. I hope for the sake of journalism

that those people are talking to journalists, and I suspect they are on background, and giving us a lot more than that. Because by the way, here's the other thing. We can both safely guess. Those four people don't agree on everything. Oh, of course not. Yes.

They are, there's a lot of good chance they are throwing each other under the bus right now in some form or fashion to a journalist on background. The Democratic Party in a nutshell, right? Yeah. Last thing, because I just want to move on, but I listened, you went to the check stop, man. And I have to, I have another thing to admit to you that's embarrassing. Let's do it. Is it anti-textant of me to say? I'd never had a Kalachi until I was in my 30s.

What? Yeah, man. You missed out on the whole Kalachi thing. Let me explain. In Houston, we had the local donut chain, Shipley's. I thought Kalachis were savory. They had like hot dogs, you know, a sausage in them and stuff.

You know what I mean? They didn't have the, I didn't know about the jelly stuff until Buckies. Okay? And so when I went to Bucket, it was when I finally went to Buckys, and I was like, oh, they can have like a little cherry filling or whatever in it.

And that's when I got aboard, but I did not have it then because I did not want to have a sausage in a piece of hard bread. I'm sorry. Next week, we're going to have an entirely different

section of the podcast. It's just about stuff on I-35 in Texas. Oh, my God. Oh, my God. This will be the part two of the Joel enchilada. I love that.

Brian and Joel's food experiences. I've got a lot of opinions. The first time I ever ate at Rudy's was on I-35, that one right before you get to Waco. Maybe it was on the other side of Waco. Anyway.

Oh, my God. Texas people right now are nodding their heads. I know what I'm talking about. going, what the hell are you guys talking about? That first 24-hour Starbucks was on that hour 35, too. Anyway, so there you go. You mentioned Team Harris.

Speaking of people who have no regrets, let me present to you, Joel, Jeff Bezos, the owner of the Washington Post. Mm-hmm. He's talking to Andrew Ross Sorkin at the Deal Book Summit yesterday, and he was asked about yanking an endorsement of Kamala Harris from the Post right before the election. Here is Jeff Bezos.

If I had had the prescience to think about this topic at all two years before, that would have been better for perception reasons. But in fact, we made this decision. It was the right decision. I'm proud of the decision we made. And it was far from cowardly because we knew there would be blowback and we did the right thing anyway. Okay, so let me ask you about that though. There was blowback. I think 250,000 people canceled their subscription. So did you think when you were doing this that some people were going to say that actually creates less trust in media? I mean, part of it was it was aimed at creating more trust in media. And at the same time, clearly there were other people saying maybe there's less trust. No, I don't follow that logic.

You don't? And so were you surprised at the? Not really. We knew that this was going to be perceived in a very big way. As I said, you know, these things punch above their weight. And were you worried about that at all? I mean, you can't worry. You can't do the wrong thing because you're worried about bad PR or whatever it is you

want to call it. So you, this is, this was the right decision. We made the right decision. I'm very proud of the decision. What do you make of that CEO word salad? I mean, well, first of what, do you think you might want back? You can't do the wrong thing because you're worried about bad PR. I know he just kind of mangled his words.

I mean, like, what made it the right thing? Nobody, I do like, maybe there's more to this interview, right? But what, okay, you're proud of the decision. Why? Would made it the right decision? Like, why are you so proud of it? It's something that is like fairly unprecedented, you know, in a modern era of newspapers, that it's fairly unprecedented that Washington Post. What makes you so proud of that decision? Why would you say that? And I just think that he should have to answer that question. And also, he didn't really have to respond to the idea that this would lead to less trusted media. Like,

why are you, I have theories about that, but why do you think, why do you think he did not have to respond to that? Or why do you, maybe he can't, right? Yeah, I think he can't. And I also think he uses this, this, this dodge with the timing of the thing. And he, this goes back to when he made the decision. It says, well, see, I just wasn't on the ball two years ago, because I've been thinking about this. So, but then we roll it out right before the election. But it's the decision. It was the right decision. We just made it at a time that made it seem like the wrong decision. I'm like, you run Amazon. You know, we roll out this feature today versus rolling out this feature in 2022. That's a big difference. Surely, surely you, you understand that the timing is very,

very important here. Well, don't you think that's kind of it? Two years ago, he didn't expect he'd have to think about Trump in this way again, right? Probably not. Two years ago, so he didn't have to have a policy because he's like, oh, it's probably going to be, you know, Biden versus DeSantis. So he probably didn't feel the need to weigh in in the way that he does with Trump because he does the Trump is a lot more volatile than Ron DeSantis, right? Oh, my God.

Of his business. And he was also doing that Trump has grown a lot over the last couple of years. I'm like, if someone in the Washington Post opinion section, submitted a Trump has grown in office or will grow an office column, that would not be published. Because that is the silliest thing. Well, maybe the new post now. But I just, I'm like, that's just like the most bottom drawer kind of stuff you can imagine. And the whole we knew there was going to be blowback.

You really knew over hundreds of thousands of subscriptions would be canceled because of this. 10% of your subscriber base would walk out the door because you made this decision at that time, you would have done that if you'd known that you, Mr. businessman, would have really done that knowing 10%? I seriously doubt that. Also, don't you think it's telling Brian? I'm like, he's not a newspaper guy. This is a side hustle, right? Like, conventional, contemporary journalism ethics don't matter to him. I'm sure he liked it when people liked him and they thought, oh, democracy dies in darkness, you know. He probably enjoyed that. But then he got to see the bad sides of it. And he didn't want a silly-ass newspaper to get in the way of the businesses where he

actually makes money, I'm assuming. I think that's a very, very safe assumption. Speaking of newspaper proprietors that are added again, the LA Times is Patrick Soon-Shong. Really, really fascinating stuff from Oliver Darcy in his newsletter status. He writes, The billionaire revealed that behind the scenes he is working on developing a quote-unquote bias meter powered by artificial intelligence. that will be placed on both opinion and news stories. Soon, Shang said that the hope is to roll out the new feature, which will use technology to seemingly warn readers

that his own reporters are biased as early as next month. As if we didn't have enough reasons to hate AI. Just one more reason to hate AI in journalism. Throw it on the pile. Great. I don't even know what to do with that. I mean, at some point, you don't want to own a newspaper. If you find the idea of journalism to be so radioactive that you have to put the, you know, radioactive label like you would on a barrel at Three Mile Island on your own newspaper, you don't want to own a newspaper anymore.

And I understand there are no good options for the LA Times. Like this was the best option. This was way better than Tronk and everything else that came before, I guess. But like this this dude doesn't want to own a newspaper anymore. That's it. Absolutely. Actually, for a second, do you think this is more of an existential crisis than Trump? Because I remember the thought what Trump was that they were actually trying to tear that paper down bit by bit till it no longer existed. And there was real concern. Like, there was really going to be around in a few years. This is different. This is like, oh, I don't like this after all. And I'm just going to, I'm going to do it the way I want to do it until I can figure something else out is what it seems like.

It may be, I mean, there are different times of, in different periods in newspaper time. You know, the business was, was so much worse now than it even was in the, the trunk years. As crazy as that is, it doesn't seem like a great time for newspapers either. But this, I mean, I just don't, this is so just, I don't, I just don't, I just so why would you, who's going to read the paper if the stories have, say, bias. next to them. If the AI bias meters is like, this is not real, nobody's going to read the LA Times, dude. That that's not going to help. I just also like this is such an anti-journalism. A pro because like, I worked at a newspaper and I'm not going to say it because this is me being, you know, a more matured Joel that tried to like tease out the bias in their articles and like they really

were like really big on like what they tried to prevent it before it ever got into the newspaper. This was a big ongoing concern within the newsroom. And it just does not work. And if you're going to be an aggressive newspaper, like you got to do a lot of different stuff. And sometimes, like, it may appear to be biased or whatever. And other times, you know, people will think you're biased in another way. But like that actually goes against what people would consider to be an aggressive investigative style of journalism, I would think. But like he's, again, not a newspaper guy.

He doesn't care about like the newspaper as an institution in that way. It's a business for him, right? It's a business, and the business sucks. And there are other businesses, perhaps, as with Jeff Bezos, that are more important, or they're higher up in his power rankings. So the whole idea becomes, let's make this newspaper my idea of inoffensive to everybody. But the thing is, and I just keep saying this as a purely as a business proposition, what Bezos did at the Washington Post and what Soon Chong is doing to even worse effect at the LA Times,

this is not going to cause conservative readers to walk through the door. They're gone. They've been told that mainstream news sources are only handy when they write devastating articles about the Democrats. That is their only utility. They are not going to come back at all. So what you're going to do is you're going to chase off the small but remaining audience you have.

You're going to convince them that this is not the place for them. This is not where they want to be. And you're going to wind up with, I'm going to say, nothing, though some newspapers are pretty close to nothing, but you can wind up with a lot less than something that didn't make sense economically to begin with. Absolutely. It just

makes me sad, man. We live on the West Coast, man. We do. And like, the West Coast could really use a great regional newspaper. And I had a lot of hope for the L.A. Times under his ownership, something that punched maybe not at the level of the New York Times, but Washington Post. You know what I mean? Like, and

it's just not happening, even though there's still lots of great journalists on this coast and at that paper who is still doing important journalism. But it's just like operating with that cloud over your operation. It just, it doesn't portend well for the kind of aggressive stuff and type of investigations that you think a newspaper would be interested in because the guy at the top is like, hey, man, I don't want to offend the guy I might want to do business with later. It's truly wild. L.A. Times all the two was always a writer's paper back in the day. They weren't the New York Times. They weren't. They weren't the Washington Post, but there was maybe because it's LA, maybe because the letters

to the editor were always filled with screenwriters who were weighing in. There's always just a real writerly quality of that paper, especially the sports section. And we'll see how that goes. Joel, since the election, we've been searching for answers. Yes, we have. Media answers. We say, well, Elon bought Twitter and that helped Trump or Republicans had the Nelk boys. And as those people on Potsave America said, we didn't even have the hot ones. The hot ones, man. I need to check the hot ones out, apparently. I mean, it's really important.

They could have swung the fate of American democracy. There is an interesting new explanation in a story by Nathan Heller in the New Yorker. Nathan Heller, a graduate like you and I are of the Slate Finishing School for Think Piece writers. Story is called Republican Victory and the ambience of information. And you want to help me explain his thesis here before we dive into what we think about it. Basically starts with the idea that Kamala Harris and Donald Trump were just talking in very, very different ways to voters. Harris, he says, she was very rarely straying beyond her talking points.

Here's what I'm going to say. I'm going to go out and deliver this speech. She was a very, you could always tell us. She was so prepared. She thought through every line. how everything would sound, both in a politician's way and also in a prosecutor's way.

Like, I'm going to go talk to the jury. Right. And when we go from paragraph four to paragraph five, this is how it's going to sound. Right. And very thoughtful about the audience that she's addressing and why she's addressing them too. That like, if you read this piece,

it gets back into like how she was sort of a political phenom earlier in her career, right? Like she knew about micro-targeting voters and like going and meeting them where they were at. And like, in the last, In the last 20 years, a lot of that has kind of gotten lost because she's become more of a, you know, the national figure. And it's easy to mock them at that point. But it really talked about, yeah, like she was really, really good at addressing people and meeting them where they were, right? Donald Trump, Heller writes, did the inverse.

He spoke off the cuff on national platforms all the time. He said things meant to resonate with specific affinity or identity groups, even if they struck the rest of listening America as offensive or absurd. And Heller continues, planning ideas this way isn't argument, and it's not emotional persuasion. It's about seeding the ambience of information, throwing facts and fake facts alike into an environment of low attention with the confidence that like minnows released individually into a pond, they will eventually school and spawn. What do you make of that? Man, you know, and we talked about this about being uncomfortable, venturing a guess as to what actually impacted the vote, which disproportionately did. and this guy did that. But it actually seems very plausible, right?

And I'm sure it's the people in your life or the news that you came across. And I just remember the early fixation when Kamala entered the race. And there was this fixation with, like, the details of her proposed policies and plans. And I was like, you don't want that. You really want to know about her affordable housing program?

Like, you want the nuts and bolts of that? You don't want that. And that the idea that Trump went so broad and so incoherent that it was a perfect news environment where people aren't seeking out news. I mean, this was the one to get. It's like people don't look for news anymore. News kind of comes to them in a bunch of different ways have formed, maybe not even really news. And ideas take hold. And Trump is really good at that.

And that seems plausible to me, doesn't it? To you? It does. Absolutely. And especially when the things he's planting in the atmosphere are blowing. want objects. Right. Yeah, right.

He's like, Joe Biden is the worst president of all time. Right. The American economy is a disaster. And then the Democrats are like, here are the details of Kamala Harris's affordable housing plan. Yeah, right. There's a tax credit here for people that have two children. And so it's like, you know, man, come on.

It's hard to rally around that now, which is a, I mean, that is more of a commentary on, I'm trying to figure out how I want to say this. This is a commentary on the American electorate, I think, more than the candidates, right? And, I mean, we just got through saying there were missteps in the Harris campaign, but I also think we have to grapple with, like, the American electorate does not take responsibility for the information it consumes, right? And they're kind of off the hook in that regard. And so in that environment, people that are bad actors can flourish.

And, like, Trump is a master, right? Again, like, in any other time of my life, saying that a group of people, were eating cats. Like, it would just, it would be like, oh, no, that person, that's just, that's disqualifying. But, you know. And it wasn't true, by the way. Like, it was saying that and then it was not real. Right.

Right. Yeah. Just like, yeah, right. It was just totally made up stuff, right? And it still didn't really matter. But it also ceded enough. Yes. And targeted an unpopular group of immigrants enough that it could kind of take hold.

And I've been in enough barbers. to know how this works. Totally, right? And you're just like, I heard something about that. Right. I heard something about that. And, you know, I don't think there was ever a golden age where people were watching political speeches in their entirety.

Like that did not in my lifetime. You know, he was like, let's sit around and watch a whole political speech. Right. But the point he makes about the media environment, I think, is right. Like that there are, for Trump, it's wildly advantageous. And I guess my question or the follow of would be, does this work post-Trust Trump without Donald Trump being the one tossing logs onto the fire and seeding the information environment the same way.

Like, you know, we saw J.D. Vansko on those podcasts. And it was like, where were people like, this is amazing? I can't. This is what a charismatic guy. I don't think so. They were, they was the opposite. It was like, eh, never mind. Don't like next.

That's true, but he's also a senator, man. He won an election. You know, it's like, if people can say whatever they want about Ted Cruz, he's not a likable person. You know, he was embarrassing. You know, you know, for Halloween, there were so many people in my timeline that had that, you know, they went as Ted Cruz fleeing to Cancun, he still won his election. You know what I mean? And so, like, obviously, people that trade in that world, it still has some purchase.

And I think it's, you know, ripe. I mean, when you can't trust the L.A. Times or when people believe you can't trust the L.A. Times, you can't trust the Washington Post and all these other. How many times have you been in a conversation with somebody? And this happens more likely with my parents. And they'll say, did you read this? And they'll tell me something. I'm like, where did you read that?

Where did you get that? And they're like, you know, it was on the internet. It was, you know, I googled it. And I'm like, come on, man. But that's just how it is now, you know? Yes. Or one of my friends summarized it on Facebook and there wasn't a link. Yes.

Even the New York Times is reporting whatever. Yeah. And that's what I mean. It's not to me so much about likability like J.D. Vans can win an election in Ohio. and Ted Cruz can be Colin all red in Texas. Okay. But it's about having whatever

crazy talent it is to see information into the universe in that particular way. Yeah. And I don't know how replicable that is post-Trump. I mean, I think whenever I'm reading these Democratic stories about like what are the Democrats do now,

I'm kind of like, usually the answer turns to be wait two years and the political world turns around. But I'm also like, you're not running against Donald Trump unless he's running for a third and fourth term anymore. That's what it is. And that is just going to change all of this, I think, in a very, very profound way.

Well, that's what the Harris folks said at the end of the Pots Save America thing, too. That was one of their warnings and it made sense, though. I mean, they were like, Trump is the one thing we'll give him credit for it. You seize on that. I was like, Trump is one of one, man. Not a lot of people can do, not a lot of people could be Trump. So that is a very fair point. By the way, are you just fascinated by the New Yorker as I am kind of in the post

magazine era. Man. I mean, yeah, because I mean, I think they do really good work, right? But yeah. I mean, I'm a big New Yorker fan, but what is your fascination in particular? Well, I'm reading like Jane Mayer on Pete Hegson this week. She wrote a really great story about him and about the organizations he worked for and how he left them.

And I'm like, this feels like an old-fashioned New Yorker story that you don't even have to wait for Monday to read. Yeah. I also get their T. TOC every Monday and there's a part of the New Yorker that is just like working like the old New Yorker did almost exactly. Like I clicked the other day was Tad Friend on a controversial rare book dealer. Oh really? And I'm reading it. And I always like Tad Friend stories because such a great writer. And it's going on and on. I'm like, oh my God, this isn't even like the, you know, post print,

2,700 word magazine feature. This is long. This is like, and it's just operating completely out of what we think of as now the, you know, clickable online media sphere. That Hague says story that Jane Mayer did went on and on and on. I was actually kind of surprised you sent me the link to it. And I was like, hey, I just was thinking, oh, I thought there was going to be more of a brief read. I didn't realize it was going to keep going. But it was very, very good.

And yeah, like, I'm, I mean, I would love for that sort of journalism to continue to flourish. And I think there is a place for it, right? Especially when it's on stuff like this. Like, I think that's what you see when you get great. journalist writer with a compelling topic, people will stick in, right? They won't hang on. And I think the New Yorker shows it over and over again.

They will, but then you got to do all the other stuff. Right. Because you can't, you can't just do here as a compelling read. Please stick with it. Oh, yeah, right. Well, yeah. I mean, this is why the New York Times has all those damn games. You know what I mean?

Totally. I mean, and it's funny like the New Yorker because in a way it was the most old media thing, even in the 21st century. Oh, then it seemed a little musty, you know, even... Of course, by design, right? Yeah, yeah. You know, I mean, their editor, as far as I know, last time I checked, isn't on Twitter. Wow, man.

They, you know, the talk of the town still happens in the same way. And then you got, like, things that are built for the web, a Susan Glasser political column, Isaac Chottner's interview, speaking of another graduate of the slate finishing school, you know, things that, you know, you come out, like, here's a, we're going to, something happened. we're going to tweet or here's a great interview we're going to tweet this out. This is going to catch everybody's attention. But seeing just how they've sort of, you know, tried to figure out what we're all trying to figure out, just how to get people to read stuff.

And the Atlantic, by the way, is doing a very, very similar, I don't know if very similar, but they're doing a, they're doing a version of that as well. Yeah. I, I'm compromised. I don't think I'm allowed to talk. I don't want to talk about the Atlantic and public anymore. more. I have a very good story that I would love to tell on air, but I don't think I, I don't think I should. All right. After you vote for the Joel enchilada versus the Joel truth, please vote. Should

Joel tell his Atlantic story on a future edition of the past box? I could be compelled to do it because I'm, I'm not afraid of blowing up some of my professional relationship, so it's okay. Let's do a whole, let's go. Okay. Somewhere down the line, we'll do a whole, the Atlantic in the post magazine era. Okay. Look, I'm, I will, uh, I will, uh, carefully choose my words before because that's a whole different thing we got we got Jonathan chate we got this we got this way you know it's yeah look at Joel i wish you could see Joel's face right now i mean i just uh I'm I'm sitting the ambience of information just to try to get Joel worked up you're fighting against my I'm fighting against myself but I'm going to stay disciplined I promise

I'm going to save you by talking about college football yes we got conference championships game championship games this weekend. We're also going to know the 12 team playoff field. First ever 12 team playoff field. This last Tuesday, we got the latest edition of ESPN's playoff ranking reveal. Yeah, man. I hope you enjoyed the violin music that they were playing when they unveiled all 25 teams. Oh, man.

That sounds like a movie trailer, didn't it? Oh, man. I just get the warm fuzzies. I mean, I love all this. So yeah, it was great. I mean, the only person that probably didn't enjoy it are like, you know, I mean, the usual haters and like Ward Manual, right? He's the AD at Michigan and he was in the, so whenever we have any kind of selection show, we must bring somebody from the committee on for kind of a polite interrogation. Oh, yeah.

This punching bag. Bring him up. Yeah. That everybody on the message boards is going to hate. Right. Right. He's going to become this just avatar of anger and hate and bias, quote unquote, no matter what, because he will make this. case is what Miami fans because

they're out of the playoff as it exists today maybe Ole Miss fans and South Carolina fans too yeah yeah yeah and Heather Denich also gets a lot of it as well Heather was former co-worker of mine really I really like Heather but yeah I mean they they really get it hard I mean those SEC I mean

those SEC fans and Miami fans I mean actually that's actually really good like the combination of like angry Miami fan and angry SEC fans that's like just the perfect nexus for college football like to get to have them engaged right it's so perfect heather was kind of in the steve cornycky thing in front of the big board too they had to go over to a different place to talk to her which always makes me smile oh yeah when i'm watching tv i'm like you're not at the desk with booger you're over here so let's talk to you over here in front of kind of some kind of

screen yeah live action live action yeah let's get some uh let's get some camera work going there also So Reese Davis was trying to ask this question of Ward Manuel, which is just fascinating, which is okay. So there are teams in this bracket or in your rankings here that aren't playing this weekend. Right. Will they move up or down the ranking if they are not playing this weekend? He had to ask it like three different ways and finally gets Ward manual to say no. Right. They've finished.

We'd have nothing else to evaluate. It was very, it was. it almost seemed contentious if you didn't realize that he was, Reese was just trying to get through to make himself understood. Yes. And it was a short show, so he was short on time to, you could tell he was feeling the clock.

Oh, yeah. But let me, can I ask you, is this not interesting? Because as I was watching the show, did you feel the same way that I did, by which I mean,

these shows always seem to be discussing Syracuse basketball. And let me explain. Okay. So, because I looked this up. After 2014, Jim Beheim's teams never lost fewer than 10 games in a season. But five times they were on the bubble, four times they got in, three times they advanced to the Sweet 16, and once they made it to the final four. And so some of this is revisionist history, but I feel like an inordinate amount of energy

was spent on fucking Syracuse and whether the 18 and 13 asses were going to make the tournament. Like, you know, it was just like, oh, God, it's Syracuse. The non-conference schedule is great. But the difference in college football that's amazing is that instead of Syracuse, they're discussing Alabama. He's discussing Bama. Yeah. God. And you know the message board people were like, Reese Davis went to Alabama.

Yeah, right. Yeah. He's got an in force. He's always trying to talk about Alabama. SEC haters. Yeah. It's like, come on. I'll say there are two other fascinating things about that show.

One is Davis put out there when he was talking. I think it was when he was talking to the panel that they need to get rid of the all. automatic buys for conference champions and just see the tournament one through 12. And this is, you know, again, we know this tournament is, A, about the SEC and the Big Ten, B, it's about ESPN, and C, it's about what the tournament itself wants to be. So when I hear a suggestion made like that on air, I'm like, how quickly will that be adopted? I mean, I also, I mean, I mean, this is one of the rare occasions where it theoretically sort of make sense because like explain to me why Notre Dame can't can't can't get that by I know that

like they're not in a conference but I doesn't seem like these things don't seem like they're going to last and so it's good you know I mean we know that this is just an evolving thing like it's going to change in two years and it's probably going to change again after that so we're seeing it in real time right yeah and it's going to change at the you know again I'm not one of these college football conspiracy guys except when the conspiracy is real. and it's going to change at the behest of the biggest conferences in America and ESPN, which owns the college football playoff. Like they will have a massive voice at the table.

I noticed that Herbie had retired from the college football selection show because he got so much last year with him from the Florida state people. And it was seen as like too problematic to put him on there anymore. But I watched him on the late sports center Saturday night after Miami had lost and seemingly, you know, we're out. And he was like, oh, I think Miami's out. And I was like, okay, you know, we got the work. from Herbie, so you're right back in it again. We're all, we're all good, you know.

I mean, enough people, and I mean, look, I'm a TCU alum, whatever, enough people saw SMU and that buyer, you know, getting that buy to be like, I don't know if I like this. So, I mean, it's, in some ways it was inevitable anyway. I just want the TCU people to come for Herbie. That would be my dream. Please, Herbie blocked me on Twitter. So I would love to, you know, go for, go after. No, don't do that. Don't do that. Don't do that. Don't do that. Don't start the avalanche. Don't do that. Topic number two in college football was the announcer ethicists weighing in on the plant the flag at midfield celebration this week. Oh, man.

Starts out after Ohio State somehow loses to Michigan again for the four straight time. And all the Michigan players congregate at midfield there at Ohio State. Here is Gus Johnson weighing on that celebration. Folks, something interesting is going on on the field right now. Michigan tried to plant their flag in the middle of the first. of the Ohio State field and the Buckeyes rushed right to them. And now there's some skirmishes going on on the field. An unsportsman-like gesture by the Wolverines.

Unnecessary. They've won the game. As our official correspondent from college football locker rooms, should we get upset at players trying to celebrate? and midfield on the road? I think the only people who have the right to get mad are the people that got mad, right? I think Ohio State has every reason to be pissed about that. But if you really hated it, you would have turned.

When we did not want to watch cable news for either the first couple weeks of November, we turned it off, right? There was a lot of other football on. If the fight offended so many people, they probably could have turned, I imagine. there's nothing stopping them from from changing the channel so yeah i mean i was actually kind of surprised at gus that just that seems anti-fun to him like the cameras i mean stayed on it the whole day of time obviously it was something something compelling was going on right oh my god and then we got that incredibly damning video of ryan day ohio state's coach saying what happened

to one of his players i mean because he was not aware of the fight i mean that that was one of those magic moments of television, we're like, oh my God, here's a guy who is, as we like to say in the press box, embattled, extremely embattled because he cannot beat Michigan. And then you just have this piece of video that it seems to explain everything. Look, I read Stu Mandel wrote a column last week heading into that game about how Ryan Day had said, other than losing his father at the age of nine, losing to Michigan has been the worst thing that has ever happened to him in his life. So in that context, I was like, oh, I get it. Like that, I mean, just, I mean, in losing the way that they did at home, I had a little bit more sympathy for the guy, I think. Right. I have a, I have a question,

and I just wanted to know if anybody else thought about this. And I know it's been nine years since the movie Concussion was released. So I know people have sort of moved on. Yeah, nine I know that people have sort of moved on from head trauma as, you know, affecting these games. I'm just a little more, I'm a little surprised more people in the media didn't look at Will Howard possibly sustaining a head injury in the second quarter and never looking the same afterward. And at the point that he gets hurt in that game, he was six of eight for 61 yards with a really bad interception, but that'll happen. After that, 13 of 25 for 114 with another I&T. Like, is that, did you ever anybody talk about that as a potential reason for why Ohio State did not look good offensively? And did you think that's because of the mystery that we don't know exactly?

I think so. Or do you think that we just now in football, if you're out there, we power through it and we don't worry about it like we might have when we were attuned to this stuff more a decade ago? One minute he's riving around on the ground. The sideline reporter says he's getting evaluated for head injury. And then we hear from the reporter, Will Howard says he's doing okay and he's back in the game. I just, I mean, we've already put it out there. He was evaluated for head injury. So like it seems like it's in fair play to be like maybe that was a factor even if they didn't take him out of the game.

Yeah. I mean, it's again, it's just, it's one of those things about football and violence that I think we've, you know, there was this moment, right? Where people you and I know were like, I'm not watching football anymore. I don't feel comfortable with this. I'm out. And the rest of us were watching and feeling, you know, this weird cognitive dissonance between a great sport, the greatest sport, and head injuries and watching what it was doing to the people playing it. And then at some point, it felt like everybody just kind of moved on. It was like, well, okay, you know, back to football, back to football, back to the cognitive

dissonance anymore. Yeah, if you're still into it, I mean, here we go. I mean, Damar Hamelin. I mean, that was how many years ago? That was last year, right? Yeah, maybe two, two, yeah, you're now almost two years ago because it was January. Yeah, it was January. Yeah, man, we're all back in. But I mean, you know, people get hurt out there, man. And people, I mean, I would venture to guess that actually were irresponsible that not suggesting that head injuries affect games more often because people are banking heads out there all the day on every play, right? So you got to think it matters at some level.

Wednesday was signing day or at least the first signing day now in college football. Yeah. Big day on the message boards. The transfer portal is also open. There's just a lot going on right now. It's, you know, I'm always, I'm always kind of fascinated because every sport has its season and it's off season. Right. And they're trying to follow the NFL model to a point where they're like, okay, we stop playing games, but then it's not off season because we got other stuff going on to distract you. some of them like baseball the other day i swear the other day they're like chris sale won the sion and i'm like is this still happening like what the hell what the hell is going on you're doing this now i didn't realize i did that at this point of the year for yeah i'm same here uh was like well that that caught me off guard college football everything's happening at one time we're having we have rivalry

we have rivalry week we have conference championship games we have recruiting and we have the transfer portal opening up let me tell you what i want to read and i don't know if this piece is possible to write, if it's possible to report now and publish you in like five years. But now that players can make significant money off the NIL, especially high school prospects, we're hearing that for the tippy top players, it's seven figures in some cases. I want a piece about the final hours of a recruitment where the offers are coming in. That's not every recruitment, but there were certainly a couple that felt like we're waiting, right? And more power to them for waiting. We're going to get the best offer here, see or at least see what our offers are before we

make a decision. And what that must be like and how crazy that is. And if you could get it, again, I don't know how you do this, but if you get it from the school's point of view, where it's like we have a $20 million salary cap, basically. And we're going to have to go a rich guy if we're going to go to $21,000 and throw in some more money. Yeah. Like, what is that like? That would be a fascinating story to read. Man, you know, and it's because I've disorganized, have the link in front of me anymore, but there was a kid who committed to, I want to say it was LSU, but I might have it wrong. And he was not, he was supposed to have been going to somewhere else the day before and then all of a sudden he ends up at LSU. And nobody mentions, you know,

what may have gone on in the background. He's like, I just thought it was a better fit, you know, and he was really thinking it. Family atmosphere. Yeah, family atmosphere. Everybody wants to play for Brian Kelly, I understand. So, but I don't know. It may not be LSU. But I mean, And I was just like, I don't know, I think there's probably some context because this was like a high four star kid. And I'm like, I think we're missing a little context of what happened here. Like surely he was taking some phone calls that night before he made that change of heart, right? Totally. And if you like, you know, read those college football insider type reporters and, you know, there's a bunch of mini woges in that space now.

And if you read message boards and kind of get, you know, a version of things, you can understand some stuff, but to have a richly reported piece from someone who was into it and whose family was into you doing it and whose de facto representative was into you doing it. And if you could just get at the team part of it at all, it would be so interesting to read. Because I want to know what the numbers are. And I want to know how they're presented and when they're presented because I know a lot of schools come in with the Godfather offer right at the end. They don't want to bid it up all fall long.

They want to be right at the end. Yeah. Yeah. That's a fascinating world that we just don't know much about. Oh, man. I bet Bruce Feldman probably end up doing something like that. But yeah, I mean, obviously, I will say, by the way, too, it wasn't Tulsa.

I don't know if you read about what happened to Tulsa this past week. Oh, my God. So Tulsa's coach by Kevin Wilson, who used to be the head coach at Indiana, and he got fired there. And he just lost his job at Tulsa. There were a bunch of kids at school there that were saying, hey, they've been promised all this money,

and they never got it. And the starting quarterback was one of the kids that spoke out about this, too. And so there's a lot of stuff I mean, there are so many stories that have yet to come about how NIL is impacting recruitment and roster management and everything. And yeah, like,

there's a lot of space to make some to make some hay there, man, because it'll be a lot of fun. Who doesn't like reading about, even though Eric Dickerson will never tell the truth about that transam? You know what I mean?

Like, that's fun. That's what we're in it for, you know? That's what I mean. And now we're like in the legal Lambo era of college football. Oh, man. It's not, it's not, you don't, we don't have to whisper it anymore, but it's still kind of in the whisper stage.

You said legal, were you watching that video of the left tackle for Colorado then to Jordan Seton? There's a lot of Lambeaus going around. There's a lot of Lambos. Oh, okay. All right. Texas might have its own, uh, its own fleet that is, uh, being deployed, you know, here and there when necessary to, uh, get those recruits.

Well, Brian, because you're my friend, I listened, I stomach to listening to you on dance with who brung you, you know, that Texas Longhorn's family. talking about Chris Sims and Corey Redding. And I'm sure this is the first time Texas has ever paid for players to go to school there. This has never happened before under Coach February. So I'm sure you're delighting in this. So before we go, I do want to talk about this. Not more about Texas to just completely make your head explode.

But a particular fact of when your team wins a big game, how you as a college football fan want to go enjoy everything about that moment. Yes. You want to watch the highlights. It used to be you'd wait for SportsCenter to come back on now. Now I was just like Ethan Burke search on Twitter so I could see that fourth and one stop at the goal line against A&M, watch him come around the right side like a rocket. But you also want to visit the message boards of the opposing fan base. Yeah, man. I mean, is there anything like that in any other sport? watching the fans of the team you hate most like going through a collective meltdown no like it's amazing you know just like you know they're just they're doubting their whole fandom and that their coach is not the guy their quarterback is not the guy they're recruiting your shit you know like it is it's so i mean because you you shared with me a few examples from like techs ags and it's just like hey you guys

were one game away for playing for an cc championship this is one of the best seasons you guys have had and it was much better than you expected and yet and yet Brian uh you were looking at them trolling uh being excited about them having this existential crisis yeah and some of it honestly it's such an existential crisis that i'm not sure it's real i kind of feel it's like russian disinformation actors that are in this point and i'm being like we our school should be torn down and you know kids should be funneled to u t san antonio like i don't i almost don't trust it because it's so perfect. It's exactly what, you know,

Brian's looking for. I feel like our relatives who are reading Facebook and be like, did you read about that thing? Trump was talking about. But it is amazing nonetheless. Yeah, you enjoyed it. You enjoyed it. I know you did.

I did. All right. Here's the last one before you go because it's semi-breaking news this week. Stephen A. Smith's close to a new deal at ESPN. Supposedly going to be $20-ish million with other opportunities at Disney. and ESPN, which I think I would translate, meaning he gets to pitch them shows that he would own at ESPN like Pat McAfee owns his own show. Stephen A doesn't own first take, can't own first take, but he would like to own things within that empire. What would you like to see

Stephen A do besides host first take and be on the NBA pre and post game shows? Well, you know, he's starting to answer questions about romance and sex and dating. Yeah. So I just, I mean, let's just go whole hall. Dr. Stephen A, man. Let's get him out there. Have you ever, actually, have you ever seen him? There's this clip with him on the internet going around.

There's this attractive reporter who ultimately is Jim Harbaugh's, is his, wait, what is it called? Your sister is his daughter-in-law. Okay. That's who she ends up becoming. But at the time, she's just a sylon reporter. And he's like, well, you know. Stephen A loves the Latinas. And I was just like, oh, okay, like, let's get more of that out there then.

I mean, it's not, you know, I mean, let's just go whole hog with it. You think Bob Eiger and Jimmy Patero want that on ESPN's air in particular? They want Dr. Stephen A all the way. I mean, not another sports show or late night show. That's what we needed. I feel like, don't, I mean, he covers it all during first take. I mean, it's on for like eight hours, right? I mean, I feel like when I turn on first take is always on.

It is. It seems like it. It's on all the time. I turn on right now it's on. So, I mean, we got to, we got to, you know, mix it up a little bit, right? What do you want him to do? What do you want Stephen Day to do? I don't know.

I don't know. I think he wants to be, I think he wants Jimmy Kimmel's job eventually when Jimmy walks away. You know, I think the thing about him is that I don't think he wants to do anything with sports anymore. Yeah. You know, he does do the lifestyle. I'll put it that way, talk on his podcast. And it's a political stuff too. Once in a while, I see him on there with Hannity.

Yeah, he hangs out with Hannity. Yes, this boy, which feels like dabbling and other things. But I think he wants like a big entertainment thing. I think he wants to be a late night host. He wants to do something giant in that world, which is a world that's kind of going away. You know, I don't know. He feels like he's as big as any of that right now. I was just going to ask you.

Like, what, I mean, is he, is he, what do you think he's about is culturally relevant? Is Jimmy Kimmel at this point? Like, I don't, you know, people are already talking about late night shows kind of going away because the clips of the thing and everything. It's not people don't sit there and watch those shows like they used to. So I don't, I don't know why he would want that. But, you know,

maybe, Kimmel, I think has the Oscars not doing it this year. But, you know, I just feel like he has more of a, maybe more of a toll hold. I don't know.

I don't, you know, when you have people like that that look at each other. Yeah. They're always looking at each other. Oh, yeah. What do they have?

What do they have? What could I have? What could I have? Especially. Absolutely. Absolutely. I mean, yeah.

I mean, I'm sure, but I just, I mean, quite, wouldn't that what quite frankly was? Was quite frankly on at night? Don't remember the time. I think it was on during the day. I think it was on during the day. But, you know, I just, I mean, sure, man, if that's what you want to do.

I mean, for, first of all, he's only getting woe's money. I was kind of, I mean, that just shows you how much they valued woes in his information that Stephen A is going to get that deal. And they're like, that's a big deal, you know? It's a very, very big deal. All right. I'm going to see you next Thursday. But in two weeks, that's Thursday, December 17th.

Let us do our. year-end show. Okay. Amongst other topics. We have some ideas about the year in media figures that we've been texting about with our pal Connor and Evans here at the ringer. I would also like Joel to do kind of a best moments from cable news, from sports television. Oh, wow. It doesn't have to be, it could be profound, it could be not profound, it could be funny. I know my leader in the clubhouse for just like things from this year on television that I watch over and over again and tell me if I'm wrong here is Reese Davis and let a naysay or no oh yeah that was jan 1 2024 just the side of joey galloway wiping away tears on the other side of the desk oh yeah

so we're looking for everything at the press box pot on on twitter and on blue sky jill i'll see you next week on Monday. Shoemaker and I return with more lukewarm takes about the media. Have a great weekend, Joel. All right, you too, man.