The Press Box - Listener Mail and the NFL Draft Devil’s Dictionary With Danny Heifetz

Episode Date: April 29, 2021

Bryan Curtis and David Shoemaker answer your questions about Joe Rogan and the vaccine, a New York Post Kamala Harris controversy, and The New York Times losing the term “op-ed” for “guest essays” (2:50). Then, Danny Heifetz joins for the Devil’s Dictionary of NFL Draft Clichés to go through three rounds of top picks (23:12). Plus, the Overworked Twitter Joke of the Week and David Shoemaker and Danny Heifetz Guess the Strained-Pun Headline. Hosts: Bryan Curtis and David Shoemaker Guest: Danny Heifetz Associate Producer: Erika Cervantes Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Dave Chang is an avid student and fan of sports, music, art, film, and of course, food. With a rotating cast of guests, they have conversations that cover everything from the creative process to his guest's guiltiest pleasures. Followed the Dave Chang Show on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. David, a New York post writer quit this week after saying she was ordered to write a story. Listener Tom Hayden wants to know what story if you were ordered to write it would make a story. You Quit. Oh, man. I mean, I don't want to open up too much of a window into my soul here.

There's a lot of things that I would like to say I would quit. I would quit if ordered to write. But if something that's in like the real reasonable expectations of one of our jobs, if the ringer was acquired by somebody else or management change and they were just like, Brian, you have to write a, you know, gushing profile of some major team owner who's going through, you know, who's being accused of something terrible. Yeah, that'd be bad. We're playing defense.

Like, if it's in the normal sort of course of your job description, yeah, you'd spend a lot of time thinking about your mortgage, you know? I mean, but you'd be thinking about, like, your family before you said, before you walked out the door. It's, that's really hard. I don't know. I, it does make me think, though, on a slightly lighter note, did I ever tell you the story about when, um, in the earlyish days of the ringer, uh, as a joke,

Sam Shubi, the incredible editor, former editor of the Ringer, now at GQ, composed a fake ad read that I believe was a Russia Today ad read that was just like over the top in praise of Vladimir Putin. And he just slipped it into Chris Ryan's ad reads when he was doing, when he was doing reads for the, like reading ads for the watch one time. Oh my God. And Chris did everything blind and he's so good at what he does that like he got about halfway through before he was just like in the audio. the audio probably still exists. Halfway through he was just like, wait, what the hell is this? And we just brought it back and played it over and over again.

The good spin on that is that Chris Ryan has an incredible moral stance on such things. Absolutely. The pro-Pooten ad was too much for Chris Ryan. Coming up on today's show, we answer your listener mail, including the question, why do the New York Times change the name of its op-eds? Plus, the ringer's very own Danny Hyphitz joins us to put together a devil's dictionary of NFL draft cliches, all that more on the press box, a part of the ringer,

podcast network. Hello media consumers, Brian Curtis and David Shoemaker here. David, it's Thursday, which means it's time to answer a little. Listener mail. We're going to work on the interchange there. David, topic number one is Joe Rogan. He, of course, hosts a Spotify podcast. Here's what he had to say the other day about getting the coronavirus.

virus vaccine. And people say, do you think it's safe to get vaccinated? I've said, yeah, I think for the most part, it's safe to get vaccinated. I do. I do. But if you're like 21 years old and you say to me, should I get vaccinated? I go, no. What did you make, David, of Rogan and the vaccine?

I am, I think on the record on this show for, well, I don't know if defending Joe Rogan is the right word, but being, I mean, I'm a, for a while. listen pretty regularly to his show and pretty, you know, definitively stopped listening to a long, long time ago. But I do think that just in general, people in the media don't, don't spend a lot of time trying to understand why he's so popular, as opposed to just jumping in and saying, why is he so popular or, you know, what's wrong? You know, making it seem like it's some great pox in our country that people listen to him. I'm going to set aside that the politics of it for one second. I do think that the real issue, this highlights something that's really important because you can make an, an intellectual, if intellectually unsurious case for having a guest on the show

that says something like this, right? You're just listening to voices. You're just opening it up. But I think that the real problem that a lot of people have with Joe Rogan is that he's incredibly influential. And a lot of people who listen to his podcast, and that it kind of goes for anybody who publishes a podcast with that frequency and at that length, and you take up that much of somebody's life and create that much of a subculture. But he's incredibly influential as a celebrity, as a human being in a way that I don't know that there anybody else is. I mean, there's no Hollywood celebrity whose advice you would take, except, I mean, it's like Gwyneth Paltrow and Joe Rogan, whose advice you would take on things that you would put in your body, right?

and the real bright red flashing light line for Joe Rogan has to come at moments like this where he's saying, where he's, where he is actively trying to influence people. If the fear is that he's too influential to his audience, he needs to be careful about actual instances of deliberate influence, right? You can't just toss off, don't get vaccinated the same way you would toss off like you know, an MMA reference or something like that

or a theory about how to win a, you know, whatever, a theory about UFOs or something like that. I mean, it's a, it's just really reckless. I mean, I think that everybody knows it,

but I do think that it's reckless, and I think that he probably knows it too, but I do think that that's, there's a kind of very blurry but important line there between sort of playing nice with conspiracy,

theories and disinformation and trying to sort of accidentally or deliberately push one yourself. Well, it gets to the problem that the Biden administration is encountering or beginning to encounter, which is that we've gone through this period where we're trying to get everybody who wants to be vaccinated, vaccinated. And then you come up against a part of the population that does not want to be vaccinated. Vaccine is available, but they don't want to do it. That number has bounced around a little bit more, a little bit. I saw a Kinepeg poll from this month that said it was 27% of Americans.

I think it's been slightly lower in some of these other polls. And the administration's like, so what do we do? You know, do we court religious leaders? Do we, you know, court pharmacists? Like these are people that people listen to, right, locally. Do we do advertising? And one thing they really haven't done that's been really interesting is try to turn this into a political thing or stigmatize people, you know, like, oh, look at this, you know,

this matches up with certain political stances. The Biden administration has tried to stay way out of that because they're like, as soon as we start pointing fingers or doing things like that, this is a public health crisis. And we're just going to make people mad and make people dig in. I don't know. I mean, do you think the Biden administration or somebody should send an emissary to the Rogan show and say, we want somebody to talk to you about. this issue. You can serve you and ask them whatever you want. I mean, I really, really do.

Because I think of any, I mean, I think of nothing else, even Joe Rogan would be susceptible to an argument from somebody like that, you know, if you make good sense, then, I mean, it's not just conspiracy peddling, right? It's not, and it's not, and listen, what he's saying is not completely devoid of some sort of like logical structure, right? I mean, you can say, you know, only, I mean, what are the numbers? Like, only 2,020-somethings, whatever, died from the COVID virus, right? I mean, I, but you could also say

2,000 people died of the coronavirus you're telling to not get vaccinated, right? Also, and also that those people could be vectors for other people. Of course. I mean, and that's, I mean, that's, yes, I mean, so, I don't know. I mean, I think a lot of times when people look at Joe Rogan, and people like Joe Rogan and use phrases like, you know, blood on your hands and whatever, it's just really,

specious, but this is, this is, you know, this is, this is a real, this is a real problem. From listener to the epic, uh, there's a request for us to talk about the New York Post Kamala Harris story. The epic asks, is this is as incredibly weird as it seems to me. So here's what happened. We, we mentioned this a little bit in the open. The New York Post published a story saying that the Biden administration had bought copies of Kamala Harris's children's book, which is called superheroes or everywhere. and was giving the book to migrant children out here in California. So in other words, it was one of those, your tax dollars at work.

Look, look, they're buying copies of the vice president's book and giving them to migrant children. You can see all the squares on the Fox News Republican Senator Bingo card that are being checked here. This story was, of course, not true. Someone donated one, repeat one copy of Harris's children's book through a toy and book drive. that benefited migrants. Taxpayers were not funding this in any particular, in any way. Well, the New York Post wrote a story about this. The author of the post story is named Laura Italiano.

And after the controversy blew up, she tweeted this. Today I handed in my resignation to my editors at the New York Post. Nakamela Harris story, an incorrect story I was ordered to write in which I failed to push back hard enough against was my breaking point. It's been a privilege to cover the same. city of New York for its liveliest wittiest tabloid, a paper filled with reporters and editors I admire deeply and hold his friends. I'm sad to leave. So what do you make, David, I think the bum story, I think, kind of speaks to her itself. It's not surprising. What do you make of the resignation after

you've written that story and the way that was handled here? I mean, there's still a lot of questions. And I don't inherently fault somebody for not realizing the gravity of their decision in the moment as opposed to later. I mean, if she had said no, presumably someone else would have written it, right? I mean, they would have fudged a byline or something else. But there's a lot of, I guess, questions about the process, although it's all going to be, you know, bullshit one way or the other. Is she basically just a stenographer for like, you know, turn this crazy email into a story or something? Or, you know, is this something that she was very aware that she was falsifying at the time? I mean, there's a lot of questions.

But yeah, I mean, it's this is a, this is a really weird space. The New York Times, I mean, sorry, the New York Post seems to be occupying with more frequency. That's sort of pushing the boundaries of, well, at least I'm. American tabloids, right? I mean, usually their standards would be higher than something like this. And, and, uh, maybe. Well, what do you think? Yeah, I mean, I'm old enough to, to remember stories that we're in this zone. It is interesting that they have a new editor who is name is Keith Poole, 44 year old Englishman, according to New York Times, who remade the Sun's website in recent years. And I don't know, I just feel like there's been an uptick in New York Post tweets.

being passed around, especially like stuff, a couple that involved the COVID vaccine, like there were scary tweets about the COVID vaccine that were not what the tweet, the story was not what the tweet made them out to be. So I don't know if this is a vein or not. It's not beyond that paper to do something like this, but did I notice boost sales

of Kamala Harris's superheroes are everywhere. Now number one, David on Amazon and children's political biographies beating out that series of books that are like, who was Alexander Hamilton? And who was Jesus? I don't know if your kids have any of those. Mine do. So anyway, I guess this is one of those stories that probably brought more attention to Harris's superheroes are everywhere than it would have gotten otherwise. David, we have lost a term of art in the newspaper world, at least as it relates to the New York Times this week. Op Ed. Since 1970,

The New York Times has used the word op-ed, which is newspaper jargon meaning the opposite of the editorial page, like literally the page that faces your editorial page. So you have your editorial page with your staff editorials and you have op-ed with editorials where you often print stories from outsiders. The Times will now call op-eds written by outsiders guest essays. Guest essays. Now, what do you make of that particular change in terminology? Well, I understand the desire to be more clear and specific than op-ed. I mean, I think that, you know, yes. So op-ed means opposite the editorial page, and I think a lot of people know that,

but I also think that there's a sort of like blurring of the lines between those two spaces, right? I mean, you'd be forgiven for thinking that it's one and the same because it is all sort of broadly the opinion section of the paper. You know, you and I have talked on the show about a number of what now, I guess, would be guest essays that people deem to be really problematic. A lot of times they were. And I think that one of the biggest issues, obviously, is the sort of sense that the Times is putting their stamp of approval on whatever they publish under that rubric. Guest essay feels very much like an attempt to kind of wash their hands of it, right, as opposed to really trying to solve the problem. It feels, the terminology feels a little bit like, the old like early internet. Doesn't it feel like a guest essay is something that would be published on like early Huffington post or something? It doesn't feel like it quite has the gravity of what

the New York Times really lends to, you know, these guest voices. I'm not sure. And I do. I think you're right though. I think that they're trying to keep it at arm's length. And I guess the problem here and this came up a little bit in the discussion around this is that so many people are reading

articles online and you're just reading things completely out of context. And when you stop reading something on a piece of paper, a lot of this stuff starts to just not make sense in the way it used to. Like I really don't think anybody knows what op-ed means. I think a lot of people might know it means editorial. I don't think they know what kind of editorial it means at all.

But if you don't have a paper copy in the New York Times, you're like open to a particular page, which is buried at the back of the front side, the back of the A section and see, oh, here are two pages of editorial. mixed in with all this uneditorial hard news. And that is the, when you're reading online and that is the one story you get,

I do think it gives you a really weird idea of what's in the paper. And what kind of values the paper is placing on dirt certain things, right? Tom Cotton op-ed or guest essay is very, very different than the Maggie Haberman, A, front page A story about Donald Trump. It's just completely different. Yeah. Especially, and at a time when those, I mean, it's just every week. There's some other flare up about, you know, political bias and newspapers and, you know,

and the New York Times in particular about, you know, and a lot of it is a lot of the most sort of ingrained stories are false or based in some sort of false premise of the New York Times wrote this thing. New York Times, you know, it believes this thing and it's not true. You know, it's in the old way of thinking, it's not true. Now it's, you know, I can understand their desire to. be clearer. I'm not sure that I don't really love the term, the new term of art, and I don't, I'm not sure that it's going to be particularly helpful in the overall mission there in solving that problem, but I understand it. This is from Small Town Teach. Do you ever skip over an article or a podcast because you already know what the author's take is going to be. You might not

disagree with them, but you don't want to go through the mental exercise of experiencing their obvious point of view. That's a good one. That's a good one. I mean, there's definitely some people that you listen to for some topics and not for others. Are you going to draw that line? I think at some point if I'm just like so-and-so is going to talk about whatever again and I just can't bear to listen to it, that might be time to unsubscribe. Maybe I'm, maybe I'm, I can't think, I'm sure there's an example that proves me wrong. I worry about this with us all the time because whenever we're like, you know, texting and be like, hey, did you see the thing Tucker Carlson did? that we are just, you know, having another segment that says Tucker Carlson did something.

Yeah. And that people know how that's going to go and they're going to get bored of us. So I worry about that with us all the time. On the other hand, when I'm listening to podcasts, when I'm just a listener rather than a host of one, I think I kind of like it when people play the hits. When I see something show up in my feed and I kind of know how that's going to go. And again, I'm not against surprise and people surprising me by going completely in a different direction. but there is to all media comfort food aspect.

And kind of knowing, you know, when an event happens and you kind of know how the host is going to come down, I don't know. I don't know. I like that too. So I don't think I would, I don't think I'd be more concerned whether they're talented or not. Yeah, there's definitely, yeah, because I mean, I can think of things that are repetitive and that I disagree with. That doesn't make me not listen. So in that sense, you're totally right. There's a certain freedom that podcasting has that, you know, straight journalism doesn't,

which is like unless you're a old style, like old fashioned local columnist, just like, you know, hairbrand thoughts by Brian Curtis. And even if you're that person, you don't really get to go over the same ground over and over again, right? You don't get to repeat yourself. And that's one thing that I think a lot of people, I mean, a lot of journalists stress over, right? They got to get it 100% right. I mean, not I'm just talking about facts, but they got to do the best. job they can possibly do because they're not going to get another crack at it. And

podcasts allow you to have as many cracks on a subject as you want. You know, you get to evolve. It's like blogging with your voice. And it's a, you know, well, anyway. So newspapers took out the term op-ed but they left in the column title, Hairbrained Ideas by Brian Curtis. Is that what you're saying here? Yes. It's your perspective on hairstyles and other things. Hair-brained ideas. I like it. This is from Adelaide. I'm Biss and David, do you subscribe to the New Yorker? And have you ever finished an issue in one week? What is the preferred method for stacking back issues? That's fantastic. I do not subscribe right now. For hard copy issues, I guess I might have a password or two. I can use if need be. But I, but generally I...

So that's a no. I might have a password I can use. No. But I have subscribed for, I'd say the majority of my adult life. And, um, Yeah, back in the day, I used to, I think I used to finish issues. I mean, I did use to finish issues. The big, I mean, the game changer on that front is the subway. And it was the subway in the pre, was not, wasn't the pre iPhone era. It was partly in the pre iPhone era, but the pre, like, you can just watch a TV show on your phone era. And, you know, reading the New Yorker on the, on the subway was a thing that people did.

people, you know, had, listen, it's a lost art. The bigger lost art is people that, the art of reading a full newspaper on the subway, but having that weird sort of origami that you only, that it doesn't get in anybody's way. That was incredible. That was an amazing talent. What a great old-fashioned thing. Yeah. I remember when the New Yorker just kind of hijacked the news cycle on Mondays when it came out?

And again, I don't think, I don't think anything changed with the New Yorker. I think anything, everything changed with the rest of us. But there was that thing. Like in Monday in media, the New Yorker would come out. It didn't even have to be like a Jane Mayer thing or, you know, like a huge or a David Remnick, you know, giant reported piece. It could kind of be like an Anthony Lane movie review that was just particularly funny. And I feel that would have some, that would get some run in your office.

Somebody would mention it, maybe send it to you, whatever it is. that is really hard to do now. It really has to be almost the Jane Mayer piece for it to just break into the consciousness in the same way. And I'm sure all those pieces are still really good when I get a chance to read it is always really, really well written.

It just does not play in exactly the same way. All right, David, let's do the Overward Twitter joke of the week where we celebrate a gag. It was so obvious that all of media Twitter made it at exactly the same time. Send your nominees to at the press box pod where they were always gratefully received and they didn't get off that easy news.

Yesterday, federal investigators went to Rudy Giuliani's apartment. They also went to his office. And David, they took his phone and his computers. It was an overwork Twitter joke for political journalists to write. I guess Rudy won't be butt dialing me anymore. Also, did you see his son Andrew Giuliani speaking in defense of his dad with very deliberate hand gestures? like just going out there

and it was it was almost I totally miss this oh my God it was an overword Twitter joke to write just to clarify Andrew Giuliani

is not a Will Ferrell character thanks to dad to the people just watch the clip you will understand finally David during Joe Biden's addressed to a joint

session of Congress last night Texas Senator Ted Cruz appeared to be asleep it was really amazing because he has his eyes closed

and he was wearing a mask that said come and take it kind of a weird combination to be, you know, come and take it. But after I get up from this nap, unclear if he was actually asleep or just closing his eyes. Some really good jokes.

Ted Cruz is sleeping on the job. Ted Cruz is dreaming of Cancun. And apparently one senator headed on, wait for it, cruise control. Thanks to John Spalding, Dodgers repeat 2021 and Brian Judd. If you offered up the kind of dad humor Ted Cruz appreciates, congrats.

You made the Overward Twitter joke of the week. All right, in the notebook dump, David. Tonight is the start of the three-day-long NFL draft. And anybody who has listened to five minutes of a draft podcast knows that we all

cover the draft using a particular language. Are you familiar with the concept of upside? Maybe tremendous upside? Maybe generational upside? Welcome to the crazy world of draft linguistics.

Now, we're going to focus on the NFL draft year. We're going to talk about all the words that take on a certain special meaning, a certain salience at draft time. It was over a century ago in 1906 when Ambrose Beers first published a book called the Cynix Word Book, aka the devil's dictionary. We're doing our own little devil's dictionary here on the press box, taking on one of the weird offshoots of the conventional, the conventional English language draftology.

And here to help us with that, he is a man who writes for the ringer, who podcasts for the ringer. You can hear him talking draft, perhaps using some of these terms right now on the ringer NFL big board show. It's Danny Heifitz. Danny, welcome to the press box.

Thank you for having me. I would never use any of these terms. I couldn't be caught that. There's no way I've ever said any of these things. part of what makes this exercise so wonderful is that none of us are blame free in this. Especially if you do it a lot, you're just, you get absorbed into this bizarre culture of lingo. Everything that Mel Kuiper says, like, Mel Kuiper would be unintelligible to someone who didn't know what the football was. We didn't know the NFL draft.

But we all just sort of settle in to this weird thing. like even, you know, people on Twitter eggs are speaking in what would be gibberish in any other time of the year. No, you're just marinating in these cliches. So it's impossible to not have them kind of like, just, they shoot out of you sometimes. There's nothing you can do. But you know, you just, you always got to fight back, you know, your worst impulses. But that's why this is a very cathartic exercise. This is kind of like, you know, I'm, I'm purging these cliches out of me right now. I laugh when David used the word salience in the intro there. We will not hear Melkite. or Daniel Jeremiah used the word salience at any point tonight.

Not a not a draft cliche. All right. We thought we do this draft style. We're going to take turns and each select a particular NFL draft cliche or figure of speech. Danny, you've got the first pick. This is so, wow. So or as I someone say, I'm on the clock. Hmm.

Perhaps. So this is a very big deal. I got, you know, as they say the 101. So with the first pick of the draft cliche drafts, Team Hy-Fit selects, watch the film, watch the tape. Because as someone who was born a little later in time than you two, when was the last time these guys watched film or watched tape? They're streaming at all.

But you don't sound very authoritative if you're like, well, go ahead, stream the games, dude. Like, I guess that doesn't make you sound like you've been doing it for a long time. But every time Mel Kuiper's like, you see this guy on film. I'm like, really, Mel? Do you watch film anymore? I can't believe it. Just get rid of this phrase.

A projector going there in Baltimore flickering in the background as he watches an Alabama game. It's ridiculous. Oh my gosh. I like because it's not just the idea of watching tape, right? We're specifically talking about the command to watch the film, to watch the tape, right? Yes. Like if you don't believe me, watch the film. Yeah.

It's like, I mean, did you watch the tape? Do you even watch the games, dude? Yeah, exactly. It's a do you lift, bro, of NFL, you know, of draft speed. Because. Yes, that is it. And it's crazy because the job of everyone who's using this language should be to instruct us, right? But instead, it's go do your own homework or before, it's a gatekeeping.

Totally. It's also like the break glass in case of emergency in case you disagree with them or like, well, just, you know, it's kind of like a parachute for you know any criticism we would also accepted grinding tape right grinding oh you're grinding tape because it does that come under my umbrella do i get that one too totally totally because it really is this boast in the draft community hey look i watch tape i'm not just looking at other people's boards and shuffling around i watch tape myself all right very good start i like where you went there that was a value pick you might say uh dan it's huge value i mean it was it's the it's the Trevor Lawrence of this draft. It's a generational phrase.

Generational, exactly. All right. Second pick, David Shoemaker, you are at the podium. Well, I was, I mean, generational is now crossed off my list because it would just use conversationally. I don't That wasn't going to be my first pick.

But now I'm just going to make it my first pick. Generational talent. Generational talent. Here, this is what I don't understand about generational talent. Everybody agrees that Kyle Pitts is a generational talent. But the idea trading more than one pick to get Kyle Pitts, you turn your nose up on. If he's generational talent,

trade your whole draft slate for him. If this is the greatest tight end that we will see for the next 10 years, like send out every player on your roster. Do whatever it takes. Generational that part of this whole process is dumbing, is lowering the ceiling

of words and raising the ceiling of words, right? Yeah. So the generational becomes almost meaningless. Generational is like annual. Generation is like, oh, he got all A's, you know, it's opposed to like valedictorian or something. And yet we say things like, we put the greatest importance in, and I'm going to skip ahead here, in phrases like, well, no, I'm going to save it for next time. But this is when we lower the ceiling so much that it's even, what's the point of

even saying? Totally. And like how many all pro teams or pro bowls does Kyle Pitts have to be to be generation? Like to actually live up to that term. Does you just have to be really good? No. He has to be in the Super Bowl every year and miss the Pro Bowl. He has to be a top three tight end by the end of his second season, basically,

because if you look at all the other tight ends that are really good. Gronk was like, you know, a mid-round pick, third or fourth rounder. Kelsey's like a fourth rounder or something. Darren Waller's a mid-round. Like none of the, Greg Olson, I think, is the only guy who's like a first. Greg Olson and Vernon Davis are the only tight ends who were really great, who were even first-round picks and they were late first-rounders. Kyle Pitts, if he goes fourth.

But to your point, David. What's so funny about it is it's like, Cowpitz is generational. But the term is so watered down because, I mean, I think four or five running backs have been called a generational talent in the last eight years. Gurley was generational.

Sequin was generational. Leonard Fournette, Zeke, we're both, you know what I mean? Like McCaffrey, you just hear it over and over and over again. You get completely,

I was going to immunobotomized to it. I don't even know. Yeah. Generations usually last longer than two years. So just, just. Are we technically the same generation? Yeah,

I mean, yeah, I'm sure. David and I would love that to be true. I'm not sure it is. All right. I've got the third pick here. I am also going with a term that David is nodding at. That has just been a completely weird term. It's not really raising the ceiling or lowering the floor.

It's more just the unnecessary adornment NFL draft term. And that is QB1. Yeah. Or wide receiver one. Now, I'm old enough to remember where you would just say Trevor Lawrence is the best quarterback in the draft or Jalen Waddle is the best wide receiver in the draft. But now if you want to look really cool and kind of sound like a scout when you're doing all this, you say, hey, Jalen Waddle, he's my Y receiver 1. Absolute my Y receiver 1. Danny, why did this happen? How did we possibly get here, linguistically speaking? Two things. Fantasy football and Twitter.

So fantasy football, you have actual rankings for every position. And then obviously, you know, your RB1 this year is Christian McCaffrey. And then so much of fantasy football analysis done on Twitter that it just, you can fit more players into a single tweet if you're minimizing it. Like, I don't know how many characters what you just said is, but QB1 is three things. So it works. The other reason is that the other problem with this phrasing.

And me and Danny Kelly, like, really one of our strongest arguments we have? He's the nicest guy in the world. the only time he raises his voice at me is there's also a QB1 or the QB1 which is this is all other subsect because at least in fantasy a wide receiver 1

could be the number one receiver for any of the 32 teams so basically the top 32 player or the wide receiver one which is the number one wide receiver in football and so when you use them in passing it's actually pretty massive difference to the listener or to the reader

whatever you're saying because it's like this is a top one guy or top 30 guy. It's like in draft, when we talk about players in the draft, in the NBA draft, a number one pick is the first player in the draft. In the NFL draft, a number one pick

is anyone in the first round of the draft. Right? Because the draft is so much bigger. So it's, yeah. Or the. Yeah. All right. So now we're in day two as it were here. We're going back around. Danny, your first pick in the

second round of the NFL draft cliche draft. Man, I got to do, it's pound the table. I'll pound the table for this player. I will pound the table for this phrase. You know, there was a lot of debate and consternation in the, the team high fits draft room. Some people wanted some other phrases in our board and I pound at the table for pound

the table. It's so good. It has become so ubiquitous. It's ridiculous. First of all, last year was on Zoom. What table were you pounding? And is this because we know more. about what happens in draft rooms now?

Like it's the inevitable story the day after. Like, uh, you know, there was some uncertainty, right? Like the scouts and the 49ers wanted Trey Lance, but Kyle Shanahan was pounding the table for Mack Jones. Is it to help us understand this process? What is it? Well, it's dramatized, right? Like, I'm sure at some point, like,

you're just like arguing, you're like hitting the table and you're like, damn it, we're taking this player. But in reality, there's a camera in every single room of these draft rooms. Have you ever once seen B-roll of someone pounding a table? Because I never have. As far as I know, it hasn't happened in decades. The drama is what's key, because there's nothing exciting about a dry erase board, right? Well, unless one gets caught on film that shouldn't be caught on film,

and then somebody's draft board leaks out. But there's nothing exciting about that. Relatel magic. There's certainly, there's something mildly exciting about the owner of a team walking in two minutes before the pick and dictating who you're going to take, but that's not the normal course of things. we all can imagine it's really just this sort of fantasy land right we all would like to imagine that if we were there we would have the courage of our convictions to pound on a table but in reality in reality how many times is anybody in their job going to do something that could get them fired

for looking like a jerk or for just being utterly wrong and then you know when they could just go with the flow maybe people are panting on the tables or at least metaphorically all the time i kind of doubt it happens a lot. Yeah, this, this reminds me of like negotiating with your editor about whether you can write a piece or not. You know, there might be times when there's some little passive aggressive email goes back and forth. You're not like just pulling out a knife or something. No, no, you're going to let me write that story. No need to over dramatize. All right, David, Megan Schuster, you will let me write about battle pots pounding the table. David Jumeaker, you've got the next pick. I said it before that, you know, the last one just lowered the

the ceiling on this on a term that that should really be meaningful now i'm going to raise the floor actually no raise the ceiling on something that shouldn't have any meaning at all the phrase is football player or more specifically he's a football player what in the world is this like i know what it man. How do you look? How do you? If there's two players and you're like, they're both good,

but he's a football player. Danny, Brian, either one of you answer this. What is the one who's a football player have over the other guy? Is, I guess it's like,

what's the thing, like the cognitive error, like, you know, true Scotsman or whatever. And it's kind of like, well, there's football players.

And then there's football players. Like, it's, It's all about the tone. You know what I mean? If you were going to write this out, it's, you know, it has to be an italics or something.

It depends as much as the emotion you're saying it on your face as it does as, you know, anything else. It is so good. And I really can't say that term without imitating John Gruden

while I'm saying. A football player. Yeah. I think it might be a Grudenism or at least was popularized by Gruden during his, like, doing his quarterback breakdowns.

But that's, I think that's part of what's interesting about this and sort of all these things, is that so many of them come from the draft room or come from the, you know, the scouting world or like whatever. And those sort of subcultures necessarily deal in a lot of gibberish. But people on the outside, and that includes people that we work with and ourselves and everybody else, but you like to say words that you pick up from the subculture to sound a little bit more clued in, a little bit more

plugged in. And they do have a little bit of extra layer of meaning when you, when employed correctly, right? Football player, though, is just a great one because it really is all about the voice saying it. It's not, it's, it's, I mean, it's sort of just like a verbal slap on the back, isn't it? Yes. And your point about wanting to sound like the subculture is totally red on. Because you know, it's like a couple of years ago, all TV writers saying, hey, did you notice the B plot in that episode of Game of Thrones? Like that, that is just how TV writers, people who write the TV shows, But now when we do a podcast or something, we have to use that term because we sound really savvy. I think football player and stuff like that crept in and it makes us sound like savvy consumers.

I've got another one for you. This is a little bit of a weird one, but I hear it from time to time, dance partner. Okay. And usually you hear it like this. It's one thing to say you want to trade down in the draft, but you need a dance partner. This is always funny to me because when do we use the term, dance partner in human life other than in the NFL draft. Either literally or metaphorically speaking.

I'm not even sure I hear that when you're dancing. No. You don't go up to somebody. Do you want to be my dance partner? It's fantastic. This is not like the USO during World War II or something. Oh. So what I mean, you can't just say you got to find another team that's willing to do

this trade with you. I guess it means you got to find somebody who's like totally in lock step because lining up trades in the NFL is so precarious. It's like, well, I'm not even going to say it's like something because I'm going to end up using another phrase. But you're right. I mean, dance partner is just a beautiful, a beautiful turn of phrase. I think it's a reaction to draft savviness too, because a few years ago, everyone learned

that you're supposed to trade down in the NFL draft instead of trading up. So everyone started going, got to trade down, got to trade down. And then the kind of reaction to savvy take number one was, well, going to trade down. Got to find a dance part. All right. So am I the clock? You are on the clock. Next pick.

I kind of want to trade down. How savvy of you. But I guess if I'm going to trade down, I need someone to trade with. Okay. Another one I love is, you know, they're going to trade. you know, or they're going to draft a player. And so what would you do when you draft a player? You can't just draft a player.

You want to talk to them, right? You're going to conversate with them. Only in the NFL draft is that called visited with. Where did this term come from? It's just, you know, they visited with Devante Smith. Would you ever say that in any other context? You're going to hear that a hundred times on Thursday night. The whole weekend.

They visited with the Giants. I just, I don't know, it's just a strange. Brian, you can help adjudicate this, but visited with just hearing, every time I hear it, it sounds like a, it sounds like it's coming out of the mouth of a southern grandfather. Like it's a, it sounds like something that my maternal grandfather, who is a, you know,

a small town preacher would have said about going to visit one of his parishioners or visit some, see somebody at the hospital, or like even talking about like someone, well, I'm going to use another colloquialism, but someone like, if you're like courting your soon-to-be wife, oh, I visited with her today or something. It's a very simple phrase that Eve, but for years has been loaded,

you know, has been sort of fraught with all sort of other implications. Absolutely. And that is why the only NFL owner I can actually imagine using it as Jerry Jones. Yeah. Patrick Sertane called us on the Zoom and we got to visit it the other day. I could totally see Jerry Jones using that. I cannot see Duke Tobin using that phrase or any of these other like GMs that are like 25 years old. Nobody's it.

And you're right. It's a southern thing. It's like my mom was sick and somebody from Sunday school came over and visited with her. That is absolutely how that term is used. And so bizarre that this should be in the NFL draft circuit 2021. All right, David, you're on the clock. Your next pick. Oh, man.

This is really tough. my draft board is all over the place right now. I'm going to go... I'm going to go with one that I just have to say is a Danny Kellyism or one that our good friend Danny Kelly has been using a lot this season. So he's busy. He probably won't hear this.

He's got a lot going on. And I'm not even... I don't even hate it. But it's sort of emblematic of the way that some words catch fire in a certain year. Field Tiltor. Do you want to explain to me

what a field Tiltor is? Danny Hifeitz can I use that one too. I use field tilter. Field Tiltr is just they draw a lot of attention from the defense. Like you just, if I wanted to be really

hiding tidy about it, I could say that those players have gravity and so they do tilt defenders toward them, you know, but no, it's a ridiculous term. I have not heard that one until recently. Field Tiltter. It's new.

It's a response to, it's a response to players with an insane amount of speed. It's a response to Tyree Kill. It's the same way that, like, NBA has gravity and that Steph Curry can shoot from, like, really far away. So you have to draw defenders closer to them. Really fast players, quote, unquote, tilt the field because defenders have to be closer to them. So it's almost like the field looks different.

And so Jalen Waddle, when he's drafted, you will hear the word field tilter. So when David and I were growing up, that way, we would have just said tracks, speed. And that's gone now. It's kind of an archaic term like that. It feels gone. That is really weird. All right. I think I'm on the clock. Do it. One of my all-time faves, plug and play starter. He is a plug and play starter. Now, for a while we had walk-in starter. And I think before that, we had immediate starter. Yeah, but I've never heard walk-in starter. You never heard walk-in starter? That's a walking starter left tackle? Oh, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, I'm the plug and play generation. I'm the

generational talent of the plug and play era. Okay, plug and play. So how do we get, how do we get from walk in to plug and play? What is plug and play? Is that like a tech reference from like 25 years ago? I don't know what plug and play really means. But that's the thing. It feels kind of archaic, right? But you hear it on draft talk all the time. It's a good point. I don't know what you're plugging and what you're playing is. Yeah. I don't know. It's definitely like, it's definitely, I'm trying to think Dave, what, what generation of technology is plug and play from. I feel like that's relatively

modern, right? Is it not? Is it just... BCR? I have no idea. I have no idea. No more the smack talk hyphids. We're not that old. I mean, it's a great thing because it shows how we've heard, we hear draft analysis on podcasts on the radio on TV all the time.

And the, I mean, obviously, the market for the stuff right now is just unbelievably crazy. But there's the simultaneous, like, overabundance of information that you have to share in a given slot of time, right? You could possibly talk about 15 picks and a 30 second hit, like whatever. But there's also still the drive to eat up space, right? To like go to go longer with each sentence. That's why you say things like plug and play starter instead of he can start, right? Like he will start right away. Yeah. He's a good player and he's going to start in game one, right?

It's too concise. Oh, day one started. By the way, day one starter. Also in this group somewhere. Probably, probably sort of old school now, but there you go. All right, let's do one more round. No, day one starter's big. Hyphitz, your final pick of the 2021 NFL cliche draft.

Wow. Okay, so I got a lot of guys. I'll be calling a lot of, I'm going to be working the phones for someone drafted free agent phase. phrases if this is the last pick. But I think that if there's only one phrase I can still add, it has to be the kid from as in when you can't remember someone's name. It's the kid from Ohio State. You know, the kid from Yukon. So good. So good. That's not even like scouting ease. That's like, no, that's like, that's like, that's like movie coach from 1945 ease, right? I mean, that's like

some like coach with a piece of straw in his mouth. He's just like, what about the, what about the kid from Kansas City? Is he available to play? Hey, kid, stick with me and you can play in the NFL. I'll tell you what always muses me about kid is that draft analysts and recruiting reporters in college start using it when they're 25 years old. I'm like, no, no. When the reporter is 25 years old.

Yeah, I'm like, you know, like that, guy is like four years younger than you. You're not allowed to call him a kid. Right? It's like, remember when people start doing that in high school? You start calling like somebody's a freshman. He's a great kid. You know, it's like he, he is, he is one of us. This is not, this is not, this could not be one of our offspring, right? I think that's how you'd have to, you have to at least go intergenerational, go back to generational town to be called a kid. Yeah, I love it. Absolutely love it. All right, Shoemaker, your final pick. Can I just make a group selection here? Please.

And I really hate to lead us down this path into awkward, uncomfortable territory. But I wish I want to make a group selection for all of the terms that are only used or almost only used for white players in the draft. I want to make a blanket pick for blue collar, first one in, last one out, lunch tail, hard hat, scrappy, gritty. Well, yeah, I mean, I think that there's a million. more on the on the list but um this sort of like well i mean there's also a sneak this sneaky athletic aspect to the whole thing right we have to sneaky sneaky is for the white we have to we have to explain why we like somebody that we that the measurables don't say we should like measurable is another good enough to there's there's no one on this podcast by the way that is even sneaky fast

What is what is the appeal of a of a blue collar worker in the NFL? I guess you just do your job and you don't you don't make too much of a stink. Is that is that the idea of your car workers? Because you know, you just put your hard hat on, put your teal belt on, you go to work. Yeah. First one off the bus. I mean, come on. Absolutely.

Who wouldn't want those kind of players? All right. I've got the final, I've got the final selection. The Mr. Irrelevant, if you were, if you will. of draft cliches. And this one's a little, this one's a little small, but is the leading pendant

of sports media. I'm going to go there. It is the weird practice of saying, not the draft, but this draft. If you want to move up in this draft, the best wide receiver in this draft, the real value, David,

in this draft, we're not talking about the draft from 1995 here. We're all talking about the draft, the draft that happens today. But we always have to make sure we specify it's this draft, this draft. How did we get there, either one of you? I like this one. I use it.

I will defend it. It sounds more pressing, more urgent. You have to tune in. I like it. I mean, always falling back on my wrestling fan background, this sounds like a top note from Vince McMahon, right? It's just like there's certain things you have to say to just really goose the,

the audience, you know, into thinking like this is like, there's something more slightly, if you got to turn up the volume knob just a tiny bit, any chance you get, right? And this draft, that you put that little emphasis on the, you know, right before the draft. And it really just like, like, focuses in your, like, it helps, it helps with like the cadence of the sentence too, right? Yeah, I think it's a Khyperism. I think that's where I first heard it. He would always say, this draft, you know, and you kind of like shaking because he's so excited,

right? This draft. I mentioned this on Twitter the other day. Amina Kimes came back and said she had not only caught herself doing this, but caught herself saying the 2021 NFL draft when she's talking about it. Again. Just to specify. That's slightly different in so much as you can, like to be more, just the being more expansive, right, saying the longer name for things should not be unusual in a sports league that we regularly refer to on ESPN as the national football. league when we're trying to make a point, right?

No, it's true. It's more of a Gidelism, though, than a Kuyperism. Yeah. With the first pick in the 2021 NFL draft, right? He has to say that every time. Just in case we think we've gone through a Philip Dick time shift tonight, you know, and whoa, whoa, are we still in 2021? No, that makes sense because then they play the clip of Gidel doing the draft eight years later.

And you're like, oh, yeah, right. This is the 97. Like, you know, it's, you need that part. It's for posterity. Maybe we all hope that whatever we do, whatever we say, someday will be played again because we were so right. That's what you got to put on. If you tag on the 2021 draft, this, by the way, is the 20, the 2021 NFL draft, Devil's

Dictionary on the press box. We should have said that year a whole lot, many, many more times. Yeah, I screwed up. Yeah. I said the first pick. I didn't even say the year. How are people going to know what year I picked the phrase? Yeah, I don't think we're going to get on the ring or clip show at the end of the year with

this one. but we'll do our best. Can I read you like some of the phrases that didn't make it? Oh please. These are the undrafted phrases. This is the notebook. The undrafted phrases.

The UDFA. I mean, high you will. Sealing and floor. But I got off platform, which is now just a thing. So good. I mean,

steal of the draft. Yeah. Big frame. More get to the future. And then my favorite is foxhole guy. Oh, yeah. Foxhole guy is great. I think the blue collar worker

and the foxhole guy. are pretty close on the Van Diagram. Cousins. I have a lot in the raise the ceiling category. He makes all the throws or he makes all the catches, you know, which is a great one. He always shows up on film. I mean, these are just like statements of fact, I guess,

that you can just like say in a certain way. Yeah, he's not invisible. It's the wrong film if he's not there. I'm not quite as passionate about this because I knew that I under because I understand the motive, but the date like the the post draft litany of, uh, we got the number one player on our board.

We never thought he'd still be on the board. So good. He's that we had him ranked number one. Everything like that. Like that, that's just unbelievable. Um, and man,

I wish we got into good in a phone booth because I'm not sure I still know what that, what that means. The only one I had left was luxury pick, which I always love because NFL analysts are always telling me you have to turn the roster every year. but then when we get to the Super Bowl team at number 32, it's kind of a luxury pick.

You know, they got everybody back. Very funny. Yeah. All right. I'm going to be like Johnny Carson here, David, when the comedian does such a good job on the Tonight Show in the old days. Let's keep Danny Hyphitz over for the Strain Punt headline.

Oh, let's do it. Wow. It's time for David. Wow. And Danny. Guess the Strain pun headline. Monday's headline about the big stars of a Baltimore Orioles win. was Oakland can't get past Hays and Means Committee.

Today we got a really good one. It's from MatchuV. It is about a nuclear plant. A nuclear plant. Here we go. Indian Point north of New York City will permanently stop producing nuclear power Friday. The AP reports. The closure caps a decades-long battle over a key source of electricity in the heart of New York City suburbs, etc., etc.

Okay. A nuclear plant is closing. What was the Associated Press's strained pun headline? Nuclear into, um, atoms split, um, nuclear, man. Residence mad over closure with the MAAD. Right? Like mutually assured destruction.

Oh my God. Wow. That was some high level stuff. The end of the end of the Say goodbye. What do we think of a process that happens at a nuclear plant? Adam splitting, right? Party for yellow cake.

Fission? Fission. Come on, Danny. Goes out with a fission. Fission. Remember, clear, clear fission. Goodbye plant. The plant has left.

The plant has left. Goodbye to. Left the fission? No, leaving. A note that the note on the door might be. Closed fission? No. Oh, my God.

Oh, no, vision. I've defeated two geniuses here. This is incredible. I also know this power plant. It's close to where I grew up. This is really good, by the way. Really good pun. You guys ready?

What? Gone fission. Oh, God. Oh, gone fission. That is so good. Oh, my God. That is so good. He is David Chewaker, and he is Danny Haifitz.

I'm Brian Curtis, production magic by Erica Servantes. We are back Monday with more lukewarm takes about the media. See you guys then. See you later, Brian.