The Press Box - Listener Mail on Liz Cheney and the NFL Schedule Release, Plus NASCAR Announcer Jeff Gordon

Episode Date: May 13, 2021

Bryan Curtis and David Shoemaker answer your Listener Mail! They discuss Liz Cheney’s removal from her position as House GOP conference chair, the spectacle that is the NFL’s schedule release, and which book given by a first date would make you get up and leave (2:10). Later, NASCAR announcer Jeff Gordon joins to discuss his experience transitioning to the booth, working alongside Clint Bowyer, and what he has planned for the future (26:40). Plus, the Overworked Twitter Joke of the Week and David Shoemaker Guesses the Strained-Pun Headline.  Hosts: Bryan Curtis and David Shoemaker Guest: Jeff Gordon Associate Producer: Erika Cervantes Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Ringer Dish is the place for all things celebrity, for major celebrity moments like the Met Gala and the Oscars, to the weird habits of the stars you love, to refreshers on the biggest tabloid stories from the last 20 years, Ring or Dish has all the vital details. On Tuesdays, catch jam session with Juliet Lippman and Amanda Dobbins for Royal Family Rumors, Celebrity Real Estate, and Industry Analysis. And on Fridays, listen to Tea Time with me, Kate, and Amelia, for lightning fast coverage on pressing celebrity news and gossip. Check out Ring or Dish on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. David, as a kind of symbolic farewell to the pandemic, you will be doing this podcast in the presence of your two-year-old son. Oh, no. Who could be heard right now?

What I want to know is... Yeah, that's pretty much what I wanted to know. Oh, my God. Good job, Aubrey. This is amazing. Say hi, everybody. Oh, my gosh. He's a natural.

Aubrey, do you want to start doing the Overword Twitter joke of the week? Yeah. He's in. Oh, my goodness. This is great. I said, I was interviewing

TV and I'm a Chicago. He's interviewing Sebastian Younger on Monday. It's resolved. All right. He's in. He's in. Put him on the payroll. Coming up on today's show,

we answer your listener mail on topics ranging from Liz Cheney to the NFL schedule release. Plus Fox NASCAR announcer Jeff Gordon on how he went from the track to the broadcast booth. Plus more Aubrey. All that more in the press box. A part of the ringer podcast network. Hello Media Consumer's Brian Curtis and David Shoemaker here, along with Erica Servantes.

David, it's Thursday, so let's answer a little listener mail. Why don't we? Our first comes from Jamie Garwood, who wants us to talk about the NFL schedule release. I want you to talk about the NFL schedule release because from where I'm sitting, and I know I should be more excited. We always talk about the NFL being a 12-month sport now, and they always find new and exciting ways to make TV specials out of things that normally were non-things.

this seems like the most, like the smallest thing that is now being pushed up to the big, to event stature in all professional sports. And I know that there must be some people out there who really want to care when certain rivalries appear or need to know about when the, you know, the games where they go to Mexico, although they're not doing it this year or that sort of thing. But like, I just could not, I just don't know what the audience for this is. Are we totally sure this is smaller than the NFL making an event of somebody running in a straight line at the scouting combine for four and a half seconds? I don't know.

I mean, I don't know philosophically how we're really going to differentiate between the two. But at least there is something actively happening at the combine, right? We're showing you footage of a thing. We're not just showing you footage of someone reading a thing, right? If it were Todd McShay reading scouting reports from the comming. Combine live on the air, I think you'd have a case. But this is, this is just, it's a, it's a non thing. If people don't know what we're talking about, the NFL has made a national holiday

every year right around this time where they release the schedule of the upcoming season. That's all they do. They tell you which teams are going to play which teams on which dates. And as our colleague Roger Sherman pointed out on Twitter the other day, we already knew which teams were going to play each other. All that was happening yesterday was they were telling us on which dates those games would occur. Yeah. That was all the content.

And I did feel, David, not only was it incredibly small and strange, but we had this dawning awareness in the sports media world of why are we doing this? Yeah. How did we get to this place where we just stop all human activity to pay attention to the schedule release? And I know the answer to this question. This is what happened. The NFL network back in 2003 came to life. Right. And they had a little problem, David.

They didn't have a lot of actual NFL football games. So they thought, well, what are we going to do? You know, no, no, no offense to Michael Irvin, but we can't just have him talking on television all day. We have to have something people want to watch. And they're like, I know there's this NFL schedule release every year that we were just sending, that is the league, was just sending to like the AP. over the wire. Right. And they were publishing the whole schedule.

We will make that into a television show. Mm-hmm. And this will have two benefits. Benefit number one is we will have something that at least kind of looks like a special NFL game type thing. That's good, right? It's programming. But number two, David, and this was the true genius. As soon as we put this on the air on NFL network, ESPN will have to match us.

Right. Because they're wait a second. they got NFL programming. We can't let them get away with that. We got to have our own schedule release show. Yeah, we're going to have Adam Schaefter. We're there with his Blackberry. We'll show them.

And then something even more diabolical happened, which was all the NFL writers across the land were like, wait a second, Adam Schaefter's tweeting about this. That means it's my job to also tweet about this and make podcasts about this. Because, hey, if you're, you know, Mr. or Mrs. NFL writer and you're competitive. editor is tweeting about the NFL schedule.

Yeah, you got to pay attention to it. I mean, you got to do the same. Yeah, you don't want to get out flanked. I guess that's the whole thing. The real genius of it, I mean, I think you described it perfectly, and it's a brilliant move. The real genius that's core, too, is that they didn't do anything different. Like you said, this was a, this was a fax, or this was a press release that became

a day of, yeah. Yeah, this became a huge media sensation, whereas, you know, one might think that if you were going to try to make a non-event into an event, you would add, you. something to it, right? You would say, okay, schedule release day, everybody knows it's boring, so we're going to have the teams pick their opponents in order of winning percentage from last year, you know, just something to raise the stakes and make it an event. But no, the NFL, in their wisdom, said, we don't need to make it different to make it an event. We just need to say it's an event, and everyone will follow along. And what it really is, is it's an ad.

It's an ad for NFL football. Yeah. And one of the really interesting things about our media age to me is that it's very hard to opt out of covering these things as an organization or as an individual writer. Yeah. It reminds me a little bit of like movie trailers. You could be a movie podcast or writer, whatever, just say, you know what? I love movies. I love analyzing movies. I love interviewing. Whatever you do. I'm just not going to pay attention to movie trailers. Yeah. Because that's an ad for a movie and it's not representative of the movie. So I'm just going to. ignore it. But guess what? If you ignore it, you miss a really important content opportunity. And you're, again, your rivals, your competitors are not going to be ignoring it. Same thing with the schedule release. So you're sort of trapped. We're all trapped. We have to write and talk about this stuff. And by the way, that's how I wound up talking about on locker

room last night with Kevin Clark and Noro Principia. I'm in. Got me. Amazing. Absolutely amazing. J.W., David, points us to the news about Liz Cheney. This is Representative Liz Cheney of Wyoming. She has a very controversial position, which is she does not think the 2020 presidential election was stolen. But Joe Biden.

Because of that, she lost her job as chair of the House Republican Conference yesterday. J.W. writes to us, notice during all the Liz Cheney news, the use of the term oust, oust. Yeah. Feels very similar to embassified.

battled, not something anyone says in real life only used in journalism. What are some other examples where this would be, what would the parallel be? Because it's not that she's fired. It's just that she's being removed from a position of power in a club in which she's an elected member, right? I mean, removed, I guess, stripped of her title. I mean, I don't know. Sounds like she is the intercontinental champion, but yes. I don't know.

I agree. But I do feel like oust in this case, contra embattled, is actually like a word that is not, it is used other places, maybe not in the same context. And it's a good word. And it's a one syllable word. And it's like, like, oust feels appropriate here. Maybe I'm just drinking the oust coolade, though. You and I have both written the word oust. Have we ever said the word, oust?

in normal conversation? Oh, man. Have we ever said the word oust? Probably. Probably. I don't know, man. He was ousted? The manager of the sports team was ousted?

No? I don't think so. Oast? I don't know. I kind of don't think so. This is from Josh Peterson. What is an example of a sports show discussing Tim Tebow in good faith, no pun intended, versus discussing him in bad faith?

another way to put this, David, is was there a single good faith discussion of Tim Tebow, former NFL quarterback who is now apparently coming back as a tight end with the Jacksonville Jaguars? Well, I think in asking to define the premise, I'm, I guess, trying to answer Josh's question. So I'll just try to answer it. I would, in my interpretation would be a bad faith discussion of him is acting like this signing matters or is going to matter at all for the sake of, of, well, because Tim Tebow, a Tim Tebow discussion is more of a ratings grab than the discussion of any other potential sixth string

tight end on a team. It certainly probably does better ratings than the discussion about just about any non-quarterback player in the NFL at this point of the season. So, or, you know, the off season. So any discussion of him, any discussion of this move mattering, I guess is in bad faith,

although, you know, there's a good faith discussion to be had about what, about his relationship with Urban Meyer and whether or not Ira Myers, you know, if this proves that he, he's not built to be an NFL coach or whatever, I guess. Is that good faith or is that bad faith too? That seems pretty good faith to me. It's weird because I feel, I feel you found the safe harbor there for NFL writers was this won't matter because he's only a third string tight end or he's not going to make the team. Yeah. Or he won't have very much effect on the team.

Yeah. That was a safe place to go and then just take all the Tim Tebow discussions that happened on every sports debate show for the last five years and just throw them in the trash can before you even start. Yeah. I mean, there's a lot of good faith, bad faith. But, I mean, if anybody, and I have no idea the degree to which is discussed on ESPN or Fox Sports.

I mean, I can only assume, but if, you know, if first take is having a debate over whether or not Tim Tebow is going to be a good NFL player or good at tight end, I mean, I guess implicitly, that's just a bad faith conversation. I don't think anyone really believes that, right? No. I like it's just impossible to, you're saying that even a good faith conversation is by definition of bad faith conversation. Yeah, because why would you be talking? Like, you're not talking about anybody else. I mean, it's like saying, it's like saying, you know, back when we were, back when we were kids, like, you know, would Michael Johnson be the greatest receiver of all time because he's the fastest man alive? Or like, Usain Bolt, like, could we just do that? Like, that should be for, like, they should have first take just for like out, like, literally random, loud, you know, bar arguments. Just like, dude, if my whole offensive line was sumo wrestlers, I would get the Super Bowl. I would win every Super Bowl there was. I mean, yeah. okay, we can all imagine those things.

Yeah, the larger question is, can you have a good faith discussion on a sports debate show? Yeah, I'm not even trying to argue that, but you're right. I mean, I don't know if that's, it seems impossible. Like, will the Lakers win the title despite having to play in the play in game? Like, that feels like a bad faith discussion. Yeah. Also, there's really, so we're ruling everything out. Yes, Tim Tebow is a bad faith discussion, but no, there is no such thing as a good faith discussion.

We should just start a show. That should be the name of our sports argument show. Just bad faith, Ryan and David. I think the ringer just commissioned that. Welcome to the family, David Shoemaker. This is from Nick Field. Using David's background in publishing to ask something I've always wanted to know. What is the typical author's royalty rate for each book sold?

What about best-selling authors and or celebrities? If I remember correctly, it's like a sliding scale where it's like 10%, then 12.5, then 15%, depending on how many copies you sold or what percentage of your advance you've paid back no i think it's how many copies are sold but it all you you do it all goes to paying your advance and then paperback is usually a set i'm kind of say 12-5 but i could be wrong about that it might be different for different things um and then obviously there's royalty rates for audiobooks and whatever else things that i don't even i wouldn't even be able to speak on because i'm sure all that's been negotiated in the over the past several years. But how much could they be? I mean, in general, you get paid a lot. It's just the

advance number gets higher and higher before the royalty rate gets higher and higher. But I definitely heard of like, you know, Stephen King having just an obscene royalty rate. Obseen, like it's his money. You could self-publish. But, I mean, I remember hearing rumor of Stephen King having 30% royalty rates or something like that, maybe even higher. But, you know, it's, you know, it's, you know, I mean, I think that 10 to 15 is the general ballpark. We got a great email from, or great tweet from Eagles Advocate,

who pointed us to something that a writer named Olivia Pascal put on Twitter. This is types of parachute journalism about the South. She did a typology of parachute journalism about the South. David, this will be really close to our own heart. Would you like to hear some of the greatest hits of parachute journalism in the south. Yeah, please.

This small town is the Brooklyn of Alabama. On this blue dot in a sea of red. Kind of the same piece, really. Gritty, over-edited photo essay about poverty and despair. A small newspaper reported this three months ago, but now I'm here for the New York Times. and my favorite glowing profile of a centrist candidate who actual voters dislike. Great stuff.

Thank you, Eagles Advocate and Olivia Pascal for that one. Evan Bredsman writes this, David, what's your favorite overworked sports profile lead? Mine has always been. It's 503 a.m. and insert subject is late. That's a really good one. Yeah. That's a really good one. That is really great. Now, I mean, that's the, wow.

I guess that really puts you in the moment there when there's not a moment to be had. Man, I don't know. Do you have any other ones on the list? Well, everybody was trying to do Gary Smith for a while. Gary Smith has kind of fallen out of fashion as a sports profile thing to the extent we even have sports profiles anymore. But there was a while where everybody I feel was trying to do the Gary Smith lead. There's a sound in the land. Can you hear it? I feel like there were like five variations on that one.

The other one is anything in the lead about the quality of light, like falling onto an athlete. Oh, yeah. At training camp under the lights on a football field, sun setting. Yeah. Sports profiles were particularly susceptible to those ones too. What about like physical descriptions of the athletes? I can see that a lot, just like so-and-so is bigger than you have. actually realize or more muscular or more imposing.

I feel like I see that I see that one from time to time. What about the thing you notice about so-and-so is his hands? Oh, yeah, exactly. And then describe his hands. Yeah. Or like the shape of some, yeah, you know, just any kind of part of them that's like bigger than a normal human being. Mm-hmm.

Or the muscles in his neck or something like that. That feels like a classic sports league. Please send the rest to at the press box pod from Charles Prior the 3rd. I don't know if you saw this prompt on Twitter, but this was a big one all week. You're on a first date with someone and they tell you the name of their favorite book. You immediately leave. What's the book? Did you see this going around?

Yeah, I did. 10 years ago, I would have had, probably even more. I would have had some hard and fast, just definitive answers to this. I don't know that I have one anymore. So you and I are not book snobs. No. We are not, you know, oh, you know, if somebody told me, I would, I would never, rule anybody out if it were just like, you know, Jonathan Franzen or something like that. I wouldn't

expect, I should say, I wouldn't expect some highfalutin literary novel to be. I would, I would take almost anything. Yeah. Interest in books would be a huge plus. Yes, having read books is good. Is that your red line having read books? No, I mean, I just think, I mean, I think it's just a matter of sort of, I mean, I think now some of the ones that we would have said, I mean, you just had Jonathan Franzen, but someone kind of being overly earnest about great literature or something might be more of a turnoff than someone who was like telling me how good the secret was or something. But like, but yeah, I think just some level of self-awareness, right? Just like, oh, yeah, I read whatever.

I read some of this spiritual self-help book, but I know it's silly, but it was, you know, kind of fun or like, you know, that. Yeah, that wouldn't be offensive. I mean, that wouldn't be. That wouldn't be a turnoff. No. What about what they said, Bill O'Reilly's killing Lincoln? well i was i was writing shotgun for the publication of that book so i don't know really what i could

say about it probably it's a good point of connection for us yeah maybe maybe maybe i may be turned off by that they might walk out on you maybe if it's like the don't the the don junior book like you know just like a really bad book that's not even a good fake book it's not even a good like ghost written and culture book or whatever if it's just like it's just a lousy book that's not even copy edited or anything like that that's that that that might be too much. And obviously, politically, it's, I mean, whatever, pretty problematic.

Finally, David, this was for Brian Monson. I know you addressed this with Claire last week. It was about Michael Lewis reading only chapter one. Just the teaser. Of his new audiobook, but some robot sounding guy reading the rest of the chapters? Yeah.

It was like the, this is the worst connection corollary ever. It was like the snakes on a plane, I mean, not the snakes on a plane, money plane of books. where it's like, you're like, oh, Kelsey Grammer's in this. And then he realized Kelsey Gramer is only to film like two scenes and they're outside of his house. You know, and it's like the movie quickly, and then even Edge, the wrestler who's in it at some point just become, just says, I'll pilot the plane and then isn't in the second half of the movie. You just kind of see like the reasons why you're there sort of got shunted aside and then they let everybody else carry the loaves the rest of the way.

Which is weird because Michael Lewis actually wrote this book. Yeah, it's not like Kelsey Grammer's money plane. He's got a vested interest in this being a good. audiobook too apparently. The reason I love this so much is because it's about the levels of success with authors to me. That's what's so revealing. And Michael Lewis hit the grand slam of this all time when he wrote a profile of

President Barack Obama for Vanity Fair. This is really one of my favorite moments ever. He writes a profile of Barack Obama, the president of the United States. Yeah. The photos in Vanity Fair, and I urge anyone who wants you to look this up, were of Obama and Michael Lewis together. Okay. Like what we were saying is that Michael Lewis writes about the president,

but we're going to put them both in the picture. Yeah. The president of the United States. This is an article. This is not an article about the president of the United States. This is an article about an article about the president of the United States. It's a signal to readers that like part of what's cool about this is that Michael Lewis is writing about Obama.

Yeah. Like that's part of the draw here, not just we got Obama. So anyway, that's fascinating to me. Michael Lewis reading only chapter one of the audio book is right up there. I'll tell you the other one. The publisher sent me Andrew Sullivan's new book. He's got a new collection of his writings coming out. Andrew Sullivan,

a long time, New Republic guy, New York Magazine. Collection of tweets or whatever you did? No, no, it's actually a collection of columns. And instead of coming in the envelope,

which almost every other book, Galley comes in, it came in a box. Oh, like a box with stuffing. Yeah. So it wouldn't be harm. I feel that's a small but important status measure in book publishing land.

Oh yeah, absolutely. Did it come in with like the paper Easter grass kind of stuffing? See, that's the new thing. That's the new thing. It's not just books. People know how to make stuff look fancy now and everyone's aping off of everybody else. All these mail order businesses are informing the way that we publicize things. I like the, can we go back really briefly to the photos of Michael Lewis?

like who are the other writers who would or who should employ this or should have in the past? I mean, think of them at the greats. Imagine if like every, you know, like gay to lease piece just had him at the bar with whoever he was interviewing, you know, just like, and that was how they, that was how they sold it. That would be kind of great. That's kind of how we imagine him now, right? Yeah. Him just like sitting at a bar writing on the shirt boxes, writing notes. Yeah.

While the subject does something. Yeah. I mean, Hunter Thompson, you know, would have been one. Oh, yeah. If he had made it into a different age, I think you would have, you would have wanted. He wouldn't even been a writer, though. They would have just had him doing video content. Yeah.

I had this discussion with somebody the other day that all these writers would have just been doing podcasts. Oh, yeah. And on the one hand, you're like, oh, my God. All these, all these people left behind these amazing books, we would have just had like a collection of podcasts. But then he went like, ooh, that podcast would have been pretty good. Yeah. Like, would you have wanted to hear that podcast? Mm-hmm.

Yeah, for sure. Yeah, it's just a whole different I mean, I guess there's some writers who are doing podcast now and we're, I mean, Malcolm Gladwell is a good example who are putting like the work in and making it, you know, as good as in a different way as a written thing would have been. So yeah, sure.

Let's tune in, tune up the Gay Talese podcast and see what's going on this week. All right, let's do the Overward Twitter joke of the week where we celebrate a gag that was so obvious that all of media Twitter made it at exactly the same time. Send your nominees to at the press podcast. pod where they are always, always gratefully received. As mentioned, Liz Cheney lost her job as the number three Republican in the House of Representatives

yesterday. It was an overword Twitter joke to write Cheney should just demand a recount and pretend she won the vote. Thanks to Adam Waltonbaugh, G. Hive, Andrew Graning, and Kevin Anderson for that. An absolutely hilarious moment in the New York City mayoral race, David. Did you see this? New York Times asked the candidates, what's the mean price of a whole? home in Brooklyn was. And multiple candidates went way, way, way under.

Sean Donovan said, I would guess, I would guess it is around $100,000. Ray McGuire also running from here. It's got to be somewhere in the $80,000 to $90,000 range, if not higher. The actual answer median sales price for a home in Brooklyn is $900,000. It was an upward Twitter joke to reference this moment from Arrested Development. Don't you judge me. You're the selfish one. You're the one who charged his own brother for a bluth frozen banana.

I mean, it's one banana, Michael. What could it cost? $10? You've never actually set foot in a supermarket, have you? I don't have time for this. Thanks to Alex Shepard and rest in power, Jessica Walter. And finally, David, it seems like every major publication has a bird-brain-thirsty social media account. I'm not sure I expected it from the Guardian-Guardian.

US, which went hunting for engagement this way. This is an actual tweet. Gwyneth Paltrow broke down and ate bread during quarantine. What was your lowest point? Worldwide pandemic. They want to know what your lowest point was. And oh, yeah, Gwyneth Paltrow's was eating bread. Worldwide pandemic in which many people died.

Yeah. It was an overword Twitter joke to write reading this tweet. We would have also accepted probably when all the people died from the virus. Thanks to Scott Tobias. If you gave the Guardian the engagement it deserved, congrats. You made the overword Twitter joke of the week. All right, Dave, in the notebook dumps something a little different. Felt like we had had enough Southern or Texan culture on the press box lately. It had been at least a week and a half. So we dialed up former NASCAR driver Jeff Gordon, who's now announcing races over on Fox. An interesting guy because he's in the

small group of athletes who completely dominated a sport, but with a little. still interested in a full-on announcing career? I think that's a pretty short list. Yeah. I wanted to know why. Here's Jeff Gordon. All right, Jeff, you retired as a full-time driver after 2015. When did you start thinking being an announcer is something I might like to do?

Yeah, I mean, you have to plan, you know, in advance. It's not like I just all of a sudden woke up one day and said, you know what? I think I'm going to retire. So, I mean, I think first and foremost, I go back to, and I don't want to make this story too long, but I started having some back issues in the race car after a couple accidents and some other races. And I wasn't sure if I was going to be able to, you know, to race for a lot of years ahead of me. So that's when initially came into the back of my mind of just, just, hey, you know, maybe I'm close. to the end of my career than I thought I was. Luckily, I went through some rehab and was able to make that better, never great, but made it better. But you can't ever get those thoughts out of your mind.

So I started thinking about, talking to my family about it, people that, you know, work for me. And then I went to Rick Hendrick and told him that, hey, you know, I think that that day is coming. So this was probably 2012 maybe. And so at that time, you know, he and I had a conversation. He's like, well, I'm going to do everything I can to get a few more years out of you. So, you know, let's talk about what that date might be. So I was probably thinking 13 or 14. He was thinking, you know, 15 or 16.

And then, you know, once we kind of landed on on what the year would be, then I started thinking about, okay, what am I going to? to do next. I knew I had a future with Hendrick Motorsports because, you know, I've been an equity owner there for many, many years. And I love it. You know, I've been a part of that company for such a long time. But now, you know, I started looking at, all right, maybe TV is something I should do. So, so, you know, talk to Rick about it. And then I started talking to the networks in particular with Eric Shanks and Fox and said, hey, you know, is this something that you guys would be interested in in pursuing he's like well you know tell me about tv and some some different things that

that you've done and how comfortable you'd be doing it and um one thing led to another and we we basically said yeah you know let's do it so i would say that was probably 2014 um you know so you know it was before i announced that that 15 was going to be my final year it's interesting jeff because the athletes that wind up being TV announcers a lot of the time are Tony Romo, Chris Collinsworth types who are really, really good at their sport, but maybe left with a little something to prove. That does not describe you in NASCAR. So what was interesting to you about announcing? Well, my parents introduced me, especially my stepdad early on when I was a kid. And I was the shyest kid in front of a camera when I was younger. but for whatever reason, you know, my, well, they were proud of me, number one, but, but, you know, they, they saw some opportunities to, maybe expand my racing. And I don't know if they had this grand plan of, hey, Jeff's going to be a

professional race car driver one day, but I was seven, eight years old and, and TV cameras were at the track and wanting to do, you know, interviews for a show that they were doing. There were some of them that were really kid-centric and and I didn't want to do it but by the time I was like 11 or 12 I did do a few things where I did an interview and got better at it and then of course when I started racing sprint cars and midgets when I was you know 14 15 that's a part of of your job is you know you want to be because almost every race I ran somehow was either being filmed and put on tape or was live on. on TV. And so my parents were kind of coaching me and putting me with other people to say,

hey, here's how you could do a better job with interviews. Here's, you know, presence in front of a camera. So that all started at a very young age for me. So once I started getting comfortable in front of a camera and speaking in front of larger groups, you know, then I actually enjoyed it and liked it a lot. And I would say then, then, then, came probably around 2009 or 10. I can remember being at the racetrack in my bus that is where all the drivers pretty much are stationed during a race weekend and watching maybe the truck race on a Friday or the Xfinity race on a Saturday and kind of looking at a wreck and analyzing it

or looking at a pass and analyzing it just kind of, you know, to myself. And I would say that's probably the first time that it kind of came in the back of my mind of, hmm, you know what, that could be kind of fun or interesting to do one day. And if the opportunity came up, believe it or not, I actually did a, so Larry Newber, who was a longtime ESPN analyst or reporter who helped coach me along the way. We've lost him since, unfortunately. but he came to me, I bet I was 17, 18 years old, and he said, hey, there's a midget race.

And I want you to come and do the commentating with me. It's taped. So, you know, we'll just run through the heat races in the B main and the A main. And, you know, we'll do this together and tape it like it's live. And so I did it. And I was terrified. And I don't know if I was very good at it. But that was my first experience doing it.

and you know so so it's not like i'd never commentated or analyzed a race before and i kind of enjoyed it then but obviously you've gotten much more comfortable in the years following that so i don't know i think i you know once i started doing that on the couch i i thought well i'm gonna i'm gonna at least take a run at it football announcers when they're in the booth have like 15 seconds to make a point maybe 20 seconds how much time do you have during a race to make a point Well, you probably have more time in a race, but you don't want to take more. And the reason is because just in the way that the mind works, right, the way that people that are the viewers, the fans, once you start getting past 20 seconds, then you've kind of lost their attention.

And no, I'm not saying that they don't have a large attention span. It's just they visually are seeing what's on the track. And they want to be entertaining. They don't want it to get too deep. And so that's one of the things I've had to work on a lot because I don't mind talking. I'm a talker. That part's easy. But compressing it down to 15 or 20 seconds is definitely an art form.

And it's something that takes experience doing. But I actually find myself now when I get past that point, I go, okay, I got to shut this down. I've lost the audience, you know, and what I'm trying to accomplish is not working, so I just need to back out of this. It's like an alarm clock going off in your head. I've hit the shot clock here. I need to. Well, or it's like it's as if you're in front of a live audience and all of a sudden,

it just becomes a hush over the audience. And you just realize they're looking at their phones all of a sudden instead of paying attention to what you're saying. So there's no doubt. I believe in that. my producer, Barry Landis, you know, help teach me that. People at Fox help teach me that. Mike Joy, Darrell Waltrip, I mean, Larry McGrathons,

all the people I've worked with basically, you know, will, because they've been in it for so many years, would reiterate the same thing. And I haven't, you know, working with Clint Boyer right now, he and I have had this discussion. And it's, you know, it's, I think for everybody, it's one of the things that is maybe one of the toughest things to learn and work with at the beginning.

So you mentioned Boyer, you're in a three-man booth at Fox. It's Mike Joy, longtime NASCAR play-by-play guy. Boyer, another former driver in you. How do you and Boyer know when it's your turn to talk or the other guy's turn to talk? Yeah, there's usually hand signals. I mean, we don't mind coming in. First of all, this year is unique. Last year is unique because of COVID.

But we are in the same booth together, even though we have dividers between us. So there's eye contact that's very important. But even though we're at the racetrack and you can see the racetrack through the glass that looks out from our TV booth to the track, you really need to pay attention to the monitor. And so the way we have it set up is, so I'm in the middle, voyeurs to my right and then mics to my left. So there's monitors on each side that are angled. So the way it should be is Clint looks at the monitor. next to Mike that's angled at him so that he's making eye contact with me and Mike.

And then Mike has one angle that's over near Clint. And then I have one in the center. So I kind of work back and forth. Those two guys look at one another. And we just try to catch eye contact to know when it feels like a natural time. Or if you have a point you're going to make, you know, you put your hand up to the other person that's talking at the time and they maybe finish what they're saying. and then you come in.

And then there's sometimes where your producers in your ear is saying, okay, you know, if you want to pick up on this point or you want to go next. So when you're on the stand-up in the open of the show or at the halfway point of a race, there's a sequence of who's going first and who comes in next. But when you're just talking and analyzing, it's really about having a conversation in these short-climbing. as you mentioned. And the way you do that is you got to make eye contact with one another as often as you

possibly can. Of course, Mike's running the show. He's the captain of the ship in a way. And so he has business that he's got to attend to, meaning get certain sponsors in or get certain things that he has to read. And so he's usually one that's waving or putting his hand up and you know, okay, you know, Mike's got to take it or we're going to break. he's the point guard of this of this team.

You and you and Clint had a, is it confrontation? Is that the right word in 2012 in Phoenix? I guess you, I guess you could, yeah, you could probably say that. Yes.

An altercation. Yeah, altercation. USA Today called it a melee between the two teams in the garage. That too. Your quote was, I've had it and was fed up with it and got him back.

I guess that's after you guys wrecked in the last lap. Did you ever think you'd be, working with him in this kind of professional setting? I think people are surprised to hear me say that I did see it happening because Clint and I, we had a good relationship up to that point. I had a lot of respect for him as a competitor and had some fun times with him off the racetrack too.

So, I mean, I would have called us friends. But, you know, sometimes you put friendships aside on the racetrack and things happen. And that particular, year that they did. You know, we had the incident at Martinsville, maybe one or two other

incidences, you know, that we had contact or maybe had a disagreement on whether it went the way the other one saw it. And then, of course, Phoenix is where it all came to a head for me. And, you know, every day for the rest of my life will regret the decision I made and that I lost control my my emotions that day. But luckily for Clint and I, we were able to somewhat put it aside over the next couple years with lots of discussions and maybe a few alcoholic beverages along the way. And our friendship is not quite what it was before that, but I think it's actually pretty amazing where we're at today working together. He and I get along really well, and we're having a ton of fun up in the booth.

Okay, you guys called Darlington last week. It's Dover this week. How do you prepare for a race during the days between them? But this is the part that I like is that it reminds me of being a race car driver. it has a lot of similarities about the work and effort that you put into preparing for rates. You're looking at data, you're looking at stats, you're looking at, you know, video or clips that get you prepared for that race and kind of what to expect. You're working with your team and you're giving them as much information.

You have these debrief sessions, and that's what we do as a team at Fox. We have a debrief every week on, say, like a Tuesday, and spend an hour, hour and a half just with the whole team of director, producer, you know, people that can pull clips and videos and put up a graphic about that track. You know, our pit reporters, everybody. And we just go through, okay, you know, what are we expecting? and then the rest of the week you're just building, you know, ideas and you're, you know, constantly emailing back at work or on the phone of, hey, I had this thought, I had that thought. So, yeah, a lot of work goes into it. And then on Sunday we meet again and kind of see where it's all come to and what we're going to actually see

during the pre-race as well as the race in the broadcast itself. I heard you're one of the few announcers, I think, in any sport who is interested in sitting in on production meetings that involved the lighting or the music of the broadcast. What got you interested in that kind of stuff? Well, I mean, I've always loved music and, you know, I think my wife is probably the one that really introduced me more to the visual aspect of things. You know, she loves fashion. She loves art. She, you know, just loves beautiful things. And I think maybe her modeling background kind of introduced her to a lot of these things, too.

So now, you know, when I'm looking at whether it be a photograph or whether it be a set, you know, then I'm looking a little bit more at it of, okay, what about the lighting? What about the setting, the backdrop, things like that. So, I mean, I listen, there's people far better at it than me at Fox. but I'm certainly interest in those things in the production value of it. So I'll give my 10 cents on it. The music, you know, I just, I've always loved music. I love all kinds of different genres of music.

I even picked up DJing last summer during COVID. And so that, a lot of people know that, you know, at Fox about me now. But from the very first broadcast that I did, I was, you know, maybe during a. a commercial break or a practice session saying, oh, you know, it would be a great song for us to play this weekend on the broadcast. And then they're like, yeah, we don't have the licensing rights for that. Oh, yeah, that's a great idea.

We did that song, you know, on a broadcast one time. Or, you know, I doubt whether we'll ever get that band to sign off on. Or, you know, they might say, hey, you know what? We actually can play a clip of that song or that song. And so, you know, I still do that. I hear a song and I go, this is a great racing broadcast song and I try to get it into the broadcast if possible,

but it's hard to do. This is like the bumper music, the Fox plays when they're going to commercial, that kind of stuff? Yeah, it could be, it could be if there's like, let's say we're going to go to Talladega and there's a lot of different crashes that they're going to show in a buildup of,

hey, here's fans, here's what you're going to see at, at Talladega today and it's going to be three and four wide race and it's going to be cars spinning now, car's flipping over. What kind of music, you know, you think of days of thunder, right? What kind of music is going to make that pop and people, you know, get people revved up and excited about the race. So it could be something like that. Gotcha. The race teams and drivers are sometimes hesitant to give broadcasters too much access to data and information. Now that you're on the broadcasting side, have you found religion on that subject?

Are you demanding the teams to give you all that data? Yeah, it's, I mean, we want, we want to bring the absolute coolest stuff to our viewers every single weekend. And this is one of the things that I love about my perspective on the sport right now is that I drove for many years as a competitor, working with a team on, just focused on how do we go out there and perform? How do we go out there and win?

What are we willing to do for that? And how valuable is that information? And then on the ownership side, right, you're trying to make the financial side of it work and what all is involved with that, from sponsors to marketing to engineering and people, drivers, all those. And then you have the TV side. of, hey, without the fans, without TV, we don't have a sport, right?

And we don't get to do this at the level we do it. And, you know, so every weekend, like right now, we're getting ready to go to a new track, the road course in Texas in Austin, called Coda, Circuit of the Americas. And we're like, okay, how are we going to showcase this track? Well, let's put some cameras, some suspension cameras in there to show them bouncing over curbs or wheel hopping as a downship, good luck getting a team that's going to put that camera in there. It just, it just is near impossible. And I get it, right? Because, you know, maybe there's something that a team doesn't want to show. And they think that that's proprietary.

They think that, you know, that might give an edge to another team, take away their edge. So it's, It's challenging. And I mean, I, you know, I put a call into Travis Geisler this year talking about visor cameras because Penske is known that he works for Penske, team Penske. And they're known for not running the visor camera. And I kept hearing it was a safety thing. And then, you know, and then I hear from our TV side of, no, we've adjusted it. We feel like, you know, the testing's been done and it's safe. And so I was like, you know, love to get one of these Penske drivers to run this if they're interested. So I just reached straight out to him.

And he's all, okay, we'll take a look at it. Nothing ever came about it. But, you know, so yeah, you know, it's, I get it and it's tough. But it is entertainment. And, you know, we find ways to bring really cool things. But, you know, a lot of times there's even more that we're. we could be doing. When you were a driver, if the network could come to you and said, hey, we want to put that suspension camera in your car. Would you have said, I'll take a look at it?

Would that have been your answer? So our director, Artie Kempner, every time, and this is maybe every other week or every two weeks when we're in our debrief call. And we bring up, okay, what driver do we want to try to get a visor cam on or a camera angle or something? Or talk to them on the radio now that we do that during the pace laps. They go, oh yeah, Jeff, tell us, what would you have said to that? And honestly, this is my stand. I say to them, if you're asking me, the answer is no. If you're telling me, I'll say, okay, sure, let's figure out a way to do it.

And that's, and so, you know, I think we've used some of that to our advantage now, where Fox and NBC have gone to NASCAR and said, hey, we think this is a cool idea. but we need your help. And they have. They've said, listen, teams, you are now going to make your driver available on the radio during the pace laps. And we try to respect that, but that's now a part of every broadcast. But when I was driving, it was a part of the ask. And to me, that was a distraction.

You know, to me, if I'm not thinking about the race car or the competition, and I felt like it was a distraction. I think it's a brilliant idea. And had they told me, hey, it's, it's now, that's, that's part of, of the race is you talking to the broadcasters in the booth on, on the radio, then I would have, I would have done it. I would have said, okay, yeah, let's, okay, well, if we're going to do it, let's, let's make it good. Let's, let's, let's have some fun with it. Year ago, I think it's almost exactly a year ago, you and NASCAR came back with a race at Darlington. Except when you and Mike Joy were calling it,

this is in the early stage of the pandemic, you weren't actually at the track. You were in a remote studio in Charlotte. How did you see a race differently from the studio than you would have seen it at the track? Yeah, we were really concerned. Mike and I had a lot of conversations about it and obviously with the team.

And I got to say, I was blown away at the job that Fox did. We're very fortunate they have a studio in Charlotte, that they do race hub and they've done other shows from. And so I think that that gave us a big advantage of the fact that most of the people that are on the broadcast from the talent side are located in North Carolina. You know, they had a great setup and great technicians to be able to connect what was happening at the racetrack. Also, we had other people that, you know, are part of the broadcast. from Los Angeles, at Fox Studios out there, and then in Charlotte.

And we had a huge screen in front of us that was already there. It was just a video wall that was already in one of the studios there, that they set up cameras, about three cameras in the actual TV booth from the racetrack and had these different angles that made it almost like we were there. So you had that in the backdrop, and then you had your monitor. just like we'd have in the booth. The biggest challenge, I think, that came at the beginning was, was, you know, if we're going to talk to a driver,

is how we talk to them on the radio from the studio. But we even got that sorted out. So really, I'd say by the second race that we did, Mike and I actually looked at one another after the race and said, wow, that felt like we were at the racetrack. It was very seamless and went smooth. mood and and you know what we were we were calling the race very similar to the way we would call it. Yeah, there's a few things.

Maybe we were missing with some of those camera angles I told you about that you couldn't get all the way down pit road and have it seamless. But for the most part, I felt like we didn't miss much. Now, I would say this, this year being at the track, just feeling the car, you know, you feel the vibration of the engines as they roar by even through the glass. You hear it. now that we have fans at the track, you see their reaction. So there's nothing like being at the racetrack on a live event.

But under the circumstances, I thought it was pretty amazing that we did what we did. How long do you want to be an announcer? Well, what is this? My fifth or sixth year doing it. I don't know. I'm enjoying it. It's a great, you know, it's been a great, transition from driving.

But at the same time, I love business. I love the competition. And so I think that, you know, one day I'll probably get more involved in that. Do you watch Jeff Gordon call the NASCAR Cup Series race this weekend at the Dover International Speedway for FS1. Are you going to be wearing those vintage suits with the big collars you guys were wearing last week? No, thank goodness. That was a one-time thing. It was fun.

I love the throwback weekend and race. and, you know, to see the old paint schemes on the cars as cool as well as to, uh, to, to be a part of it and get into it ourselves as the broadcaster. So yeah, that, that, that definitely had some challenges. Right. Race morning, we're scrambling, trying to figure out, you know, how, how to get these suits fitted to us and, and, you know, get as good of a, of a vintage look as you could possibly get. And we, luckily, we had some really cool vintage race car sitting behind us. So hopefully most people are looking at those instead of looking at us. I thought you and Clint look great. The one that really threw me was Chris Myers.

Because I never thought of Chris as a Saturday. It threw Chris too. I never saw him as a Saturday night fever kind of guy, you know, a plaid suit kind of guy. But it took some good against you. I may have, I may or may not have heard a few comments from Chris about his suit. Jeff, thank you for coming on the press box. Hey, my pleasure. You know, you do a great job with the show, and I'm having to blast out there broadcasting

and really looking forward to Dover this weekend. It should be a great race. All right, time for David Shoemaker. Guesses the strained pun headline. Yeah. Uh-oh. Yeah, we got a special guest, a two and a half-year-old pulling a wagon.

Oh, my goodness. This is from Ars Technica, David. All right. I'll read you the first line of this. This is a really good one. Researchers at Security Consultancy Pantest Partners on Wednesday reported that a flaw in Peloton's online service was making data for all of its users available to anyone in the world, even when a profile was set to private. All right?

All the Peloton data available anywhere in the world, even if you didn't want it to. What was ours Technica's strained pun headline? Oh, bike, uh, bike theft, something like that or, uh, by, um, uh, helmet, uh, sweat, exercise. Shoo. How about you think of a, give me a hint, yeah. Horror film series, uh, that began in the late 90s. Final Destination saw.

Maybe starring Jennifer Love Hewitt. Oh, I know what you did last summer? Mm-hmm. I know what you did last session. I know what you did. He's just making noise and get attention now. I know what you did last cycle? You're actually being too creative.

I know where you worked out last summer. Oh. It's our stony. Sorry. All right. A little bit of a doubt. That's fine. He is David Chewmaker on Bride Curtis. Production Magic by Erica Servantes.

We are back Monday with writer Sebastian Younger. Can't wait to talk to him. Plus more lukewarm takes about the media from both David and his son. See you then, David. See you later, Brian. Say bye.