The Press Box - Maggie Haberman’s Book Arrives, Covering a Concussion, and Shane Bacon on LIV Golf’s TV Deal

Episode Date: October 3, 2022

Bryan and David address the highly anticipated Maggie Haberman book ‘Confidence Man: The Making of Donald Trump and the Breaking of America.’ They discuss scoops within the book, Haberman’s relationship with Trump, and what this type of reporting reveals about media access (00:38). They then switch gears and weigh in on the reporting surrounding Miami Dolphins quarterback Tua Tagovailoa before touching on the Aaron Judge cut-ins that caused a media frenzy (20:34). Later, Shane Bacon from the Golf Channel joins Bryan to talk about LIV Golf’s television deal with Fox Sports and his new children’s book, ‘The Golfer’s Zoo’ (37:10). Plus, the Overworked Twitter Joke of the Week and David Shoemaker Guesses the Strained-Pun Headline. Hosts: Bryan Curtis and David Shoemaker Guest: Shane Bacon Associate Producer: Erika Cervantes Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

I'm Yossi Salick, and I'm the host of Bansplain, a show where we explain cult bands and iconic artists by going deep into their histories and discographies. We're back with a brand new season at our brand new home, the Ringer podcast network, tackling a whole new batch of artists, from grunge gods to power pop pioneers to new metal legends and many, many more. Listen to new episodes every Thursday, only on Spotify. Hello media consumers, Brian Curtis, David Shoemaker and producer Erica Servantes here on Yield Press Box. Coming up on today's show, the Donald Trump book we've been waiting for for seemingly years. We talk about how Tua Tungavaya Loa's concussion was covered on Thursday night football and beyond. And we get into the menace of the Aaron Judge at bat cut-in. plus Shane Bacon stops by to talk about Live Golf's new TV deal.

But let us start, David, with the book that's going to be at the front table at every Barnes & Noble in America. To the extent your local Barnes & Noble is still open. The book is called Confidence Man, The Making of Donald Trump and the Breaking of America. It is by Maggie Haberman, the Trump scribe of all Trump scribes. And we should note first that there was an. announcement, this is actually going to be the last Donald Trump book. The publishers have gotten together and decided, you know what? The point has been made. There are no scoops left. This will be the final Donald Trump book that will ever be published

with a flurry of pre-publication hype. So that's an occasion. It is, don't you think, the biggest of the Trump books? Yeah, sure. I know that you're you were joking, but I don't have any doubt that inside, you know, New York City publishing houses, many publishers had the conversation up until this point. It's like, well, as long as we can get it out before the Haberman book, you know, there'll still be some runway for us. Is that really a factor? Well, I don't know if it's a deciding factor, but yeah, yeah. I mean, these, those, something like that would always factor in. I mean, if you had a, if you had a, you know, a real specific angle or a real specific scoop or something. I mean, obviously, you have pride in whatever you publish or you

wouldn't be publishing it. But yeah, I mean, if you had another Trump book by a beat reporter or someone in this sort of Haberman zone, you would, yeah, you definitely have those conversations. You either deliberately avoid the book or you publish it, you know, you sometimes make the decision to publish it simultaneously so that you'll get some of those like two books in one reviews from the major publications, you know, but aside, yeah, you always factor that kind of stuff in, just like anything else. The Amazon thing, if you bought Confidence Man, or customers who bought Confidence Man also bought, and you hope to land that book. Well, yeah, I mean, I think that might be aiming a little bit high. Generally, those Amazon recommendations for books of that stature lean towards, you know,

other things that are placed close by on the bestseller list, you know, not necessarily just the topic. But yeah, yeah, I mean, definitely like the New York. Times book review. Let's just take on two or three books at one time sort of thing. Michael Cruz has a big profile of Haberman and Politico magazine. And one of the interesting points he makes is this. You and I talk about how the Trump story, the Trump books never end. It is particularly true in Maggie Haberman's case. Because there's a version of this where she is the biggest reporter on the biggest story in America. Then the guy stops being president, gets defeated at the polls,

and she gets to write her book and go off and do something else. But she's never stopped covering Trump. And as she tells Cruz with sort of sleepy, you know, with sort of a let me out of this, you know, look in her eyes, it's never going to end probably. No. Donald Trump's either going to run again and maybe win or maybe lose, but it's hard to imagine anytime in the next several years, there'll be a time when Donald Trump is not a story for Maggie Haberman to cover. Or not a story to cover about which people will be pointing or, you know, awaiting Maggie Haberman's word. You know, you could imagine, you could easily imagine the future if he was, especially if he was reelected, in which she. had a less demanding beat than she did the first time around, you know,

she was more of a top editor of the of the Trump presidency. Or you could see her going right back in and working on her granary like she did the first time. But yeah, I mean, what's definitely true is until somebody comes and takes her throne, she is going to be considered the sort of first and last word on, Trump in terms of politics, at least anyway. Why wouldn't somebody willingly give that up? Well, that's a calculus we all make in life, right? I mean, if nobody would, but also, you know, if there was a, you know, why would Rachel

Maddow give up her seat of, you know, primetime dominance or whatever. If the bosses come along, they're like, we know that you've been working hard. So why don't you just write one Trump piece a week and then produce, podcast for us and maybe she says yes. I think this story, though, is different than your typical, do I want to go and do something else with my life? Because it's not just the biggest story in America. It's one that is directly tied to the economic well-being of all the publications in the

world, including the New York Times. Sure. If the New York Times is a healthier, richer place if it's producing Trump blockbusters on its homepage every day. and if she is the person best equipped to deliver those to the New York Times, that conversation with the bosses is different. Yeah. You know, hey, can you just stay on the granular Trump beat for a few more years?

Because what can we do to get you to stay on the beat for a few more years? Yeah. I mean, listen, I mean, like, I can certainly sympathize with having a beat that sort of, you know, you become identified with without a ton of pre-planning or whatever. You? But you, but, but I mean, listen, I do something. I love, love, love to do. And I'm incredibly lucky to have it.

And there's definitely been some times where, you know, we've had conversations. I've had conversation with Bill. This is so different. I've had a conversation with Bill about like, you know, keeping hold of, you know, what we've built and that kind of, you know, making sure no one else comes and sneaks in and whatever else. Yeah, I totally get it. That said, I'm doing a lot of podcasts now.

So I can understand half of it. But yeah, no, listen, this is a very specific thing because there's a sort of like moral imperative part of it. And obviously there's a huge careers part of it. And like you said, regardless of what happens, there is sort of a timeline on it, right? I mean, you can always make the case to yourself, to your family, to whoever else.

just got to do four more years. You know, it's just, it's, and then I'm free and clear. I can do whatever. Imagine all the money I will have made or the success I will have had or whatever. I mean, yeah, it's, it's, you know, it does, it does seem likely that she'll stick around. Yes. And it's interesting because she talks about in this profile that Michael Cruz wrote that she has kids. And of course, if you're working this much on a beat that is this demanding.

you were spending less time with their kids. I think my own children have that toward me. She's talking about this complex feeling about her parents. And I feel endless guilt about it. And it's not anything I will ever be able to reconcile in my soul. And there's some examples of this in the piece. Like you and I like to work. We want to work a lot.

We want to balance family time with work time. But I think if you and I were out at dinner or out of a Broadway show or something like that, There's a fairly small list of things that would happen in the world for you and I to say, I need to go home right now. We need to cancel what we're doing and go home and this family outing immediately for me to go to work. Being at that hypothetical show, I think, is a statement of itself, right? I mean, there's certainly a lot of people on Haberman-esque beats who would have to be, for whom the show would be the extravagance and there'd be a lot of planning.

planning, you know, pre-planning about that kind of stuff ahead of time because you're right. I mean, it's just, it's all consuming. There are things on this list, but yeah, but it's a small list. I mean, I remember I was at the San Diego Zoo with the kids and John Madden died. I think we were back at our hotel room. I was like, oh, time to write and pot about John Madden from my zoo vacation over the Christmas holidays. But Maggie Haberman has a job where it's like, that stuff happens all the time.

Yeah. And the scoops are rarely one where you can say or the stories are rarely one where you can say, you know what, I'll get to this in a couple of hours because, again, of the gravity of them, because of the competitiveness of the beat. Well, that's said. Yeah. First of all, you're totally right. But you're getting, but you're edging close to the part of the bigger conversation that's going on around this book,

which is there's a lot of stuff in the book that it was apparently determined could wait, right? That as big as it may or may not have been, waited, you know, a couple years until the book's publication. How do you feel about that as someone who comes both from journalism and from book publishing, holding things back to put in the book instead of reporting them right away? Well, I mean, from the book publishing side, it's an interesting calculus. I mean, it's frankly kind of amazing that they held the book this long. I mean, I held like it was done and they were sitting on it. But a lot of times when something is this newsworthy, you know, you find a way.

to rush it into publication, whether that entails a heavy hand from the editor, a ghost writer, a, you know, whatever. You know, you just get it out there as quickly as you can. And so I'm sure from the publisher's point of view, they would have been happy to have this out a year ago. You know, I mean, it's not. So, I mean, I don't know what the process was. Maybe not.

Maybe, like, we just want the most perfect book we can make, and it's going to take some time to do it. I think to the bigger question, I mean, it's kind of hard to not be. be distracted, sort of consumed in our own way by this sort of the conversation. It's sort of, we need a word for it, right? I mean, it's not, it's not quite a milkshake duck situation, but it's kind of a milkshake duck where the entire conversation about the, about all of the breaking news of the book becomes the conversation about how this news could possibly have been held all this time,

right? It's like, the writer is damned for reporting news, for breaking news in the book format. you know, we don't know the details of the day to day at the New York Times, you know, every single thing in this book may have been pitched and shot down, you know, or it might have been, it might have happened on the same day as something else that was way bigger and just never found its way into print. I doubt that's the case with all of these, but, you know, when you, when you credit, when you kind of blanket, when you issue a blanket critique over this stuff,

you're sort of operating in a little bit of a vacuum. But it is interesting. I mean, it is a question that I think is really valid. And I'm glad that people are talking about it. I mean, it's also interesting to look around and see that she's, you know, a lot of these, a lot of the excerpts from this book and everything are coming out in the Atlantic and everywhere else. You know, like places that aren't the New York Times, which is, again, part of the book publication process. Uh-huh.

And you always want to spread it around and, you know, try to get your hits, everywhere. I'm not sure that in this day and age it makes that much of a difference. A lot of the people who are learning of the revelations from these books are probably learning about them, you know, in like the third iteration of aggregation and not from the source, you know, not from the whoever paid for the first serial or the second serial or whatever on the book. But, I mean, I think that sort of raises the collective eyebrow even more. Like to what to, it, it sort of paints a picture of a journalist who's sort of operating sort of as a mercenary, right? That I'm going to report these things and he'll keep these things in my back pocket.

Then when the book comes out, we're going to put it somewhere that's not the New York Times or whatever. I think it's all overblown. I think it's all just sort of the way that, how many metaphors can I throw into this? It's the way the sausage is made. It's the whatever, whatever. But I think that in, I think that the modern age, you know, as if book publishing needed any more problems, I think that, sometimes.

somehow, despite the fact that you can turn a manuscript into a book in almost the blink of an eye in this day and age and have it in Barnes and Noble and everything else, it does seem like there's a bigger chasm, at least a perceived bigger chasm, between news and books. Because I think that journalism, you know, news and books used to be in the sort of the same silo or adjacent ones. And now news is sort of in the internet silo. It is, it has immediately. immediacy is sort of what defines it, I mean, which is always the case. But, you know, and books just seem like something totally separate. Books seem like a vanity exercise, which part of that is the perception because so many people who were tweeting about this stuff knows that that's, you know, for a lot of these writers, your book deal is your house upstate or it's your kid's college fund or whatever. It's the bonus, you know? Paying down your student loans.

Yeah, and that's the, and that perception is, is, is, is, is, to some extent, reality, although I don't think it should be frowned upon. I mean, I think it's just part of the deal. When you talk about all these scoops that come out in the weeks leading up to the book, some of which are the result of journalists like getting their hands on an early copy, like actually going through a bookstore or something like that. And some of them, in some cases, are clearly the authors going and say, hey, want a copy of the chapter of the book and want to write a piece that aggregates the scoops from this chapter? Is it the more the merrier, because I often feel with these books that I've almost read the whole book

just by reading Twitter for a couple of weeks before it comes out, because I've read so many of the scoops. Is that just you and I being on Twitter all the time? Does normal book consumer think, oh, another mention of this book, I should, I should order this on Amazon today. Well, yeah, I mean, back when, back when you were, back when you were writing juicy bits columns for the Daily Beast or whatever, like pulling out the best parts of the books, that was kind of novel, right? How many years ago was that? I don't want to date us too much. That was a slate. I think about 15 years ago. That was a slate, sorry. But now, even without the, like, the official serializations

and the stories about the thing, I mean, I think that you and I would assume that we will get everything that we need to know, that if there was something worth reading, there will be an article about it, a blog post about it, a tweet about it, like, we'll know everything. And I think just in general, that fear has always been a little bit overblown. It's not like the end of a movie. It's not like, you know, the cliffhanger at the end of the TV series or whatever. There's no spoilers inherent in a, in a nonfiction book. I think that the more that you've put out about the book, the more it's going to drive traffic. Because I think the vast, I mean, the personal opinion, I think the vast majority of people that buy just about any

newsy nonfiction book are not reading the book. They might start the book. They might, they might happen to finish the book, but I think you kind of buy it as to have this, to have it, right? I mean, maybe you think you're going to read through and get all the stuff, but I mean, I don't read all the newsy books that I've bought over the years. And I think that it's, that it's, you know, people go into the Barnes & Noble and they say, oh, that's the book I've heard so much about. You pick it up and you buy it.

You know, it's not, it's a, you sort of earn the buy by getting it out there, I feel like. Last thing I want to talk to you about that's in the cruise. profile is this whole idea of access. There's always a question. There's always a conversation on Twitter about access and journalists and, you know, are you getting more access to the subject because you're writing about the subject in a certain way? One of the interesting things to me about this profile is talking about how much Donald Trump is obsessed with and wants to talk to Maggie Haberman.

No matter what Maggie Haberman writes about Trump. Yeah. I'll read you one passage here. I love being with her. she's like my psychologist. Trump said to a pair of staffers sitting in on one of the three interviews with him that Haberman conducted for the book. I've never seen a psychiatrist, he added. But if I did, I'm sure it would not be as good as this, right?

This is somebody who over a period of six years has uncovered all kinds of amazingly damning things about Donald Trump. Yeah. Donald Trump granted, again, Donald Trump is very, very unusual in this respect because he needs attention more almost any human being alive, even every former president. He granted three interviews for the book and is still obviously obsessed with what Maggie Haberman might write about it. Yeah.

It's just different. Again, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, okay, a couple of things. Yes, I mean, Trump does seem to need that sort of, I don't know, attention, affirmation, validation, whatever, um, more than most. but that's not to say that the rest of us don't need it, right? I mean, if you had, if somebody was, like, widely regarded as the top report of the New York Times, she was just like, hey, fill in the blank, I think, I'm just going to make you my life's work.

There would be some, you know, we would all feel validated by that in some way, and you get talking about, what is the, what is the, you told me a great, like, bit of reporting advice at some point. I think it was in the not too distant past, like, what is it that, that no one's ever going to, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, is ever going to respond badly to tell me about yourself? Was that, is that the phrase? Yeah, I think so. Yeah. I mean, I mean, as soon as you go in, you just want people to, you know, to, to, to, you know, to, to, you ask people about themselves. There's a sort of flatter, flattering aspect of that's just like inherent, right? I mean, it's not, and you're not setting out to flatter, you're setting out to get them to talk.

You're getting, you know, that's the whole point is to get them to open up and, and, and, and totally Fair. Usually that person is not the president of the United States. Sure. Yes, absolutely. And I think it's frankly, I think it's frankly telling that Haberman told that story about, you know, Trump calling her his therapist herself, right? Because I think that it does give a window into the former president. And I think that someone said, and it might have been heard, that this is a sort of, it's either a sort of thing he said about other people or a thing he said about other people or a sort of, the sort of thing he said about other people, that he's sort of flattering her at the same time that he's feeling flattered to try to sort of curry favor or whatever else. I'm not sure that it speaks badly about her at all. I mean, I think that there's a difference between

newsbreaking, straight up, reportage or whatever, and conducting an interview with somebody in a different set of techniques. And I think that you are looking sort of inward. You're looking at the person when you're doing it when you're conducting an interview like that. Let's talk about Thursday night football. There was a big game on Amazon last week between the Dolphins and Bengals. Dolphins quarterback Tua Tunga Vialoa gets sacked.

His head whips against the turf. He's hurt. And you could hear Al Michaels say on the call, uh-oh. And in this case, there's some context here. week before game against the bills Tung of Ioloa got up from the turf started walking back to the huddle his legs went wobbly and he fell down

during that game he went to the locker but came back into the game the dolphins later said it was a back injury so it looked weird it looked kind of suspicious on at the time they said no no no it's a back injury now he plays four days later against the Bengals

and suffers from a concussion this brought up all kinds of media critiques on Twitter. The first one comes up every time a player is injured in a football game or any game, which is how many replays do you show of the play in question after it happens? It's an interesting one, right? Because I saw a lot of people on Twitter really reacting and saying, this is too much. I don't want to see this anymore.

We should note that those decisions are always being made in the truck in real time. And you're trying to do two things. You're trying to be sensitive, not show gruesome injuries over and over again and to a point where it seems wrong and cruel and too much. But when you're producing a football game, you're also trying to tell the story of a game. You're trying to cover the story in front of you. And you want to make sure that viewers understand what happened just now, even if it's something awful. Right. And it was funny to watch that game because there were a couple replays.

Tung of Iolo's arms were extended in front of his face. His fingers were all askew. And then they went to a commercial. And then they came back and showed that particular shot one more time, which to me, sitting there watching the game was like, ooh, that felt like one too many. Yeah. And they wanted to talk about,

they actually wanted to add information and talk, this is what's happening. This is this response, which is called the fencing response, which often follows a brain injury. They were trying to add context there. But you had people on Twitter being like, I don't want to see another replay of this.

How do you feel about that? Well, you know, I'm usually, maybe it's due to so many years watching so many people, you know, spill blood in wrestling rings and jump off cages and whatnot. I'm not actually like weathered to it, but I am a little bit of a nihilist about it. Like it's sort of like it exists, you know, it's not like a billion people aren't watching it, watching the clip on Twitter right now. So I don't know that there's like, a moral line that you must avoid crossing in these situations. That said, I do feel like, I mean, I totally agree.

That last one felt like one too many, you know? And I think that a lot of people agreed with that. And, you know, that consensus has to mean something. I, I mean, the flip side of it is I'm also not a big fan of the, hey, you can just change the channel argument for someone, you know, if someone's saying they don't want to see it, you know, I mean, you do have to strike a balance. But, you know, it's a real, it's a really difficult call. If this ends up being a career-altering injury, I think the decision will look a lot more

gruesome in retrospect. And, but I mean, but frankly, I think. that there's I mean, I think that if you take the alternative, right? If they had just, if there was a hit

and they had just cut away and they were just, I mean, the far other end of the, the far other end of the spectrum. And they were just like, another great night of football. Let's go, you know, whatever. Right.

Or we just don't want to show you that again because something really bad has happened. Yeah. Yeah. Or just, I mean, or frankly, everybody at home would be like,

I didn't, what happened. Yeah. Or they, no, they'd probably be saying the NFL's covering it up. Right?

So, um, there's going to be complaints in every direction. It did feel like, it did feel like a lot. And I think that what it's because what we were seeing was so, just felt so dire, you know, and intimate in a weird way. Intimate, absolutely. And at the end of the day, what we're upset about is, is the injury. What we're upset about is what happened to Tua. And then you're watching it one more time. And you're like, oh, oh, I can't, I don't want to see that again. A couple more points I saw. I saw at least two people who are paid

to talk about football, ask on Twitter immediately after the injury, what's happening with two his fingers? Yeah. Did not seem to understand what the fencing response was, which was slightly alarming to me at this point in history. Mm-hmm.

Somebody tweeted into my feed, and I totally agree with this. Chris Nguinsky, whom you know and I know a little bit, has a class that he has developed for journalists. along with the concussion legacy foundation. And they do this class.

It's usually for young journalists where they go into J-school and say, hey, let's watch some tape of announcers talking about brain injuries or concussions. One of the points of this class is do not call them head injuries, which is a bigger category that's not particularly distinct. We call these concussions or brain injuries. Let's watch announcers trying to talk about this so that we can figure out how to talk about this. have the vocabulary for it.

Talk about here are the things you can say from the booth. Here are the things that are not really great to say. You don't want to, you know, you don't want to try to diagnose certain things. But they all comes back to having a responsibility to the audience. That we're going to talk about this in a certain way because announcers who are the people that viewers are listening to. Yep.

Whenever you and I run out that stat about 80, whatever of the top 100 programs, last year on television being sporting events, like sports being the thing people are watching live now, that responsibility seemingly becomes bigger and bigger to get it right. And what was so interesting is they went to have, so not only do you have these people on Twitter, then they went to the halftime of the Amazon show,

and they didn't provide the context about what had happened to two of the week before against the bills. They had some interesting stuff. Ryan Fitzpatrick was talking about him, former teammate saying, you know, talking about how he felt, Richard Sherman was talking about, but nobody says, hey, by the way, people watching it home, here is the context here that we're dealing with.

Yeah. We had this injury last week. They got chalked up as a back injury. Now we're here a couple of days later. These are the questions going for to what we can be concerned about. I was just like, and I tweeted about it. I was sort of mad. I was sort of said something like, you know,

the host or the reporter has got to tee that up. And it was actually the wrong thing to tweet. It just has said, everybody's got to tee that up. Yeah. Producers, host, analysts, all of them, any of them can talk about it. They're all aware of what happened. Yeah. It's just one of those just complete collective failures when you're watching the game.

And again, it's not, we're just talking about covering the story and providing the audience with context. They did a much better job after the game in fairness. And clearly the message was received to the extent. that came out of her Twitter wherever. Sometimes the hardest thing is to say the thing that's happening, right? I mean, because you're already, as in a room full of people that know it, you know, that, that are, that know the subject so well, sometimes the hardest thing is to say the most obvious basic thing.

But, but there's, that's not really an excuse, especially in an instance like this, where the background is the foreground, right? I mean, the, the, the, the, the, the, what happened last week has, has, has, is, is, the second most important thing in this conversation and after the thing that just happened. And maybe the most important thing. And yeah, that context is, you know, obviously you're right. They, they kind of fixed it. But that context is just really important.

Finally, did you see the Aaron Judge cut in angst that college football fans were experiencing on Saturday? I did catch a little bit of it. Yeah. So Aaron Judge has hit 61 home runs. He has tied Roger Maris's record. Now we're waiting on home run number 62 that will take him past Maris. And during college football on Saturday, whenever Aaron Judge had it at bat, we would get a split screen of the college football game people were watching. And then Aaron Judge.

Remember a couple weeks ago we were worried that Michael Kay would miss his big moment? Yeah. Michael K was now on every television station in America. Michael K was like Trump. He was unavoidable. You could not miss Michael K if you wanted to miss Michael K. And people got really mad. And I don't actually put much stock in the anger because I was watching Texas lose one of those games when they were doing the cut-ins.

And I really wanted more cut-ins. I was like, can we just show a whole inning? We're losing to Texas Tech. Can I get some more Aaron Judge historic at bats here? But what was interesting to me about it was, one, is clearly the decline of baseball is mixed up into this. I mean, this idea, I know this is not the home run record back in 1998. That moment is never coming back, even if somebody were to break Barry Bonds' record. I don't think that's ever going to come back on the same level.

But the fact that like a huge number of people who are big sports fans are like, I don't care about this. I don't want to watch this. Do you think it made it worse, though, that it was during college football Saturday? I mean, I think that if, like, is that so sacrosanct? If college football Saturday? LeBron James is breaking the scoring title during a cut. What? Would it line up?

Yeah, it could line up. I think people might get mad at that, too. I think people get mad too, right? I mean, it's just like, wait, wait, if I wanted to watch that sport, I know how. Like, this is. So that's the argument people made. We live in this media universe where it's like, if I want to watch Aaron Judge, damn it. I'll be watching Aaron Judge.

You are making me in this in this al-a-cart universe, you were turning this back into, you know, all you can eat buffet. You were turning us back into a monoculture. And that's the other interesting point here, right? It's like sports monoculture doesn't exist in that way anymore, at least not when it comes to baseball. Well, I think it probably exists in, you know, the production meetings for, you know, ESPN and Fox Sports more so than exists for other people, right?

But I, because it's, you know, this is part of their, part of their, their body of work, right? I mean, they're always considering all these things at the same time. But I, you know, I do, I do sort of, I think that people are, I always think people are in search of the monoculture, right? We all want these things to, to unify us and, and, and bring us to, and, and bring us to, together. I just think that like anything else, I think if they hadn't done it, there would have been a lot of people complaining that they should have, right? But I, but I also think that there are a lot of people that were upset, but I think there are a lot of people who were just really into being part of the monoculture of complaining. Right? Like, we all want to, we all want

to be unified by just being pissed off by this thing. Dude, it felt so much like that on Saturday. As if college football fans needed an additional reason to complain about something. Yeah, well, now they don't it's it's um it's like when uh the SEC when SEC football crowd started chanting SEC instead of chanting for their teams right they think you wrote about that long ago it's like instead of now we don't now we don't have to just be unified by our hatred of the NCAA and the and the college football playoff and you know all of the teams switching conferences willy-nilly now we can be unified in our anger towards this other sport and towards the TV networks that are putting it on. I mean, it's pretty exciting.

Absolutely. We added it to the list because I'm a college football fan and when we're there sitting on Saturday, here are the things we hate. We hate the announcers because they're screwing up this game for us. We hate ESPN. We hate the refs.

We hate our particular offensive or defensive coordinator or possibly both. And now we also hate Aaron Judge and the Ains. Number five, we're going to hate on and Judge and the Yankee. Absolutely.

You bring up ESPN. I think that's an interesting point if you're ESPN. We're the sports network. Once upon a time, 20 years ago, that meant that we have everything in the world of sports covered for you, that you're going to come to this sports channel. And if there is something important, we are showing it to you, the very least on the bottom line, but probably with some kind of live break in or announcement. maybe the world has changed so much that ESPN's mission isn't that anymore.

And that ESPN, what ESPN is providing is, hey, our platform shows a lot of games to you. We've got the rights to the SEC. And for a while longer, the rights to the Big 12 and a couple of other conferences. So that's what ESPN is, this place to see the games you want to watch as much or more than the place that guarantees you all the news in the world of sports. like CNN does all the news and, you know, the world apologics and world events. Yeah.

That's interesting, right? Like, I think that, and I think that probably has changed some. I think you and I could probably find lots of things that would happen in sports that ESPN would and should break in for. But maybe Aaron Judge catching and then passing Roger Maris doesn't make it in 2022 at ESPN or shouldn't. I mean, it obviously did make the cut.

but maybe people are saying that it doesn't. But again, I'm with you. College football fans like to be mad. Come on. They love to be mad. Coming up in 30 seconds, David, golf channel Shane Bacon explains the TV contract. And I use that term loosely that Live Golf has apparently gotten.

But first, let's do the overworked 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 box pod where they are, always gratefully received. Today's winner comes from Matthew Zitland and Andy Mosley. It was a note from Lakers Training Camp, from Dave McMinneman over at ESPN. Anthony Davis told ESPN he plans to have a chip on his shoulder this season.

The Lakers have training camp t-shirts that say chip across the front, a little double entendre for their mindset and motivation. It was an overwork Twitter joke to write, Anthony Davis will miss four to six weeks with a chip on his shoulder. The mention of Anthony Davis and a body part scared the crap out of you. Congrats. You made the overworked Twitter joke of the week. I think Kirk Henderson made that joke to the most acclaim.

Wonderful Mavs writer Kirk Henderson. And I laughed very hard when I saw that. It's an excellent joke. Sometimes overworked Twitter joke, it's a B minus. That's an A plus. us. Yeah. All right. In the notebook dump, we are joined by Shane Bacon. You can see him on Golf Channel, hear him on the Get a Grip podcast, and read his new book called The Golfers Zoo. Shane Bacon, welcome to the press box. Longtime listener, big time fan, Brian, this is very

exciting for me. This is, and I'm not just saying this because I'm on the podcast, but this is one of my never miss podcast. So to be a guest is very exciting for me. Erica, can you make sure we leave all that in when we publish this thing. All right, Shane. Let's talk a little TV, first of all. Live Golf, which is the renegade tour funded by the Saudi Public Investment Fund, which has poached all kinds of big-name golfers and not big-name golfers, was looking for a TV deal.

Their tournaments have been on Facebook Live and YouTube. And last week, they ended up with a TV deal, kind of. According to Golf Week, they're going to pay Fox to show. there are tournaments on FS1. What do you make of that? Well, you know, I mean, first of all, you know, I work for Golf Channel, which airs, you know, the PGA Tour and part of with the PGA Tour. So I've, you know, obviously throughout the year, I've been trying to kind of separate those things,

right, and to try to just look at Live as a golf product, outside of all the bad parts about, you know, the Saudi Investment Fund and everything they do personally, I've been trying to simply look at it as a golf product. And as a golf product, it needed TV. I mean, golf audiences, as much as we like to talk about, them being young and youthful and we're trying to quote unquote grow the game, it's still older people. And someone like my father who lives in East Texas and doesn't quite know how to turn a computer on, if he wants to watch golf, it needs to be on TV.

I mean, this is something that I know a lot of older viewers are battling with with Thursday night football, right? Where can I watch this on my TV? So, Liv needed that. I mean, being on YouTube is one thing. Being on a network where somebody could actually click on it and watch it is a whole other. And I know that they'd had, you know, a lot quicker movement. elsewhere outside of the United States with some of the other countries that some of their

biggest names and athletes are partnering with. But to go to FS1 and Fox and to say we will pay to put this on your network, which is obviously very unprecedented in terms of how these types of partnerships work, I felt the urgency from Live to do this and to really make moves. And the interesting part, Brian, which I'm sure you're abreast to, is Greg Norman, who's behind Live was a part of the Fox package with the USGA back in 2015. Greg only lasted a year. And then, of course, Paul Asinger came in and took Greg Norman's chair. But to kind of bring that band back together, I felt was very, very interesting. And obviously, there's a lot of political backing that was a big part of why this might or might not work. You're talking about Jared Kushner serving as kind of the agent

between Live and the networks and that whole business. Yeah, sure. So Norman said a while back, I have four networks that I am talking to. He has been a lot of bluster, and of course there's been a lot of bluster in the whole live experience. This outcome, is this a belly flop, do you think, for the Live tour, to wind up paying a network

to show their tournaments? I do not think it's a belly flop. I mean, I think getting on a network is a big deal. I think being able to watch it on television is important. You know, as much as we've bashed and smashed live for a lot of the things they've done wrong, you have to remember this is its first year,

and they've only been, what, four events in? And I mean, to kind of go through some of the steps they've gone through, to have a network deal is a big deal. Even if you're paying for it, even if you're footing the bill and everything's flip-flop to what we usually see, at least you can say potentially by the end of this year or early next year, you are, in fact, on TV, and that is still a big part of it. I mean, you and I've spent years writing on the Internet, and writing on the Internet is one thing. And it's very, very cool to see your stuff on the front pages back of my day of Yahoo Sports or CBS Sports or now Golf Channel. It's a whole other still to see your name in print.

And when it's in a magazine or it's in a book and you see your name printed there, and I feel the same way about television, to have this on TV as opposed to being on YouTube, is in a way a win for them because, again, it's going to get eyeballs and viewership that wouldn't otherwise be able to find it or watch it. Beyond the Kushner and Norman Connections, Fox was the logical place here given that every other network, including yours, has a deal with the PGA? Yeah, absolutely. I'm an NBC, CBS and ESPN, of course, who does a couple of major championships and has continued to kind of put its foot in that golf world, even with the ESPN Plus stuff that they do a great job of with the PGA tour.

This to me was kind of the only really option outside of maybe Turner getting involved. Turner obviously has been very involved with the matches and they've done a great job with those. But I felt like if it was ever going to land anywhere, it was going to be here. Live is a very different kind of sports league. We've been told over and over again it doesn't need to make money in the same way. So why is TV important to live? Because everything needs to make money. We can sit here and sing that song all we want.

But at the end of the day, two years, five years, ten years, it's going to have to see some return. I mean, nobody just wants to burn cash, even if you have billions of dollars coming in every quarter. And what I've started to see with Live is movements made to where eventually money is at least going to be something that they're going to ask for, whether it be the teams, you know, be in team Australia, team South Africa, potentially team Japan,

and then selling those teams to companies in and around those countries. I've at least started to see some stuff shake out in that regard because initially, Brian, to your point, it was all about we're just trying to have fun, we're just trying to bring something really loud to your screens, and it doesn't matter what the return looks like. But, you know, we live in a world where it's all about return.

It's all about money, and it's all about making a little bit of cash. And so I feel like these steps are at least getting to that point where, again, it might be five years from now, but at least they're putting themselves in a place to where they might make a little bit of money at some point. How important is it to the players who signed up with that tour to be on television again? I think it's huge. I think being able to tell people you can actually watch my golf tournament somewhere other than your computer or your iPhone. It's so funny, right? I mean, our world's moving to watching things on your iPhone and your computer. I was picking up dinner last night watching Sunday Night Football on my iPhone, right?

But still, again, kind of going back to that printing your name in a book besides printing your name on the Internet, I just feel like it's a huge part of where we're going and is a huge part of being established to actually be on television. So I think for those players, it at least tells them they're working on other things. What has struck you about Liv's streaming broadcast so far and the way they've shown golf? It is very loud. I'll say that. It is very loud and in your face. You know, I mean, listen, is it something that I'm that interested in right now? No, not at all. You know, I mean, the PGA tour right now is in its part of the season where even casual, even casual, golf fans might not pay a lot of attention to the Sanderson's farms. But I felt a friend of

mine made this point to me the other day, they said, no matter if you're watching the Sanderson Farms or not, when you wake up on Monday morning, you know what the champion receives and you know how important that weekend was for the champion. They get a couple years on the tour. They're going to get into some major championships. They're going to get an invite into the masters. It still matters, even if the tournament isn't the biggest deal, and even if all the eyeballs aren't on it, for me with Liv, they're getting competitive players to a certain capacity. I mean, Dustin Johnson's a player. People still want to watch. Bryson the Shambow is someone that I think people still want to watch. I feel like that's

waning a bit, but still, you know, he's a name and he's interesting. But, you know, to me, it's still the PGA tour. And because of the kind of the quote unquote history and the legacy and also just what comes with it, it's more than just a trophy and it's more than just the four days. It matters to these players' career for the next two or three years. We know Liv has reached out to virtually every living professional golfer. But Charles Barkley, who turned down a TV deal there, said earlier this year, I had 15 or more prominent announcers calling me and saying, Chuck, I've been talking to Liv, we're scared to pull the trigger. And he continued, I'm talking about some of the most famous announcers in the world. Have you heard that Liv has tried to poach the biggest TV announcers outside of David Farity?

I think that Liv has been interested in making splash after splash after splash. And if that's going after people leaving they don't feel like they could get or under. contract and very established and very happy. I think their hope was to try as much as possible to shake things up, right? They are trying so hard to kind of get into the party and ruffle some feathers. And so I'm not surprised by anything I'm hearing. I also take a lot of this stuff, Brian, with a grain of salt. You hear rumors every day.

I mean, that's the one thing about being in this golf world. And that's why I give so much credit to people like Aeman Lynch, who, you know, wrote the story for Golf Week about this is I can only imagine what Aeman's phone has looked like over the last six, seven, eight months, you know, people like Rex Hawley. at golf channel.com who get a lot of this information sent their way to have to kind of vet through it has been probably as much work as they've done in a long, long time in terms of reporting in and around golf media. But you know, you just hear so many rumors. You hear so much stuff about players leaving that don't leave or players not going and ended up leaving. So I have, I've really

tried to take it basically at about a 50-50 face value, what I'm hearing versus what actually happens in terms of the new cycle. So on that note, I feel the two beats in sports that have been the most mind-blowing over the last year are college football with the NIL and all the conferences changing and golf with the challenge to the PGA from Live. What has your life been like over the past six to nine months? It's been a lot more rumor mill than I ever imagined it would be. I mean, you know, what we used to talk about with golf was where players are going to go in terms of equipment deals. You know, I heard this player's going to titleist that was with Taylor made or I heard this players playing a Nike driver when they were playing ping. Like that was the

breaking news. Maybe there's a caddy change up. You know, golf doesn't have a lot of front page headlines outside of the result. And that has been what's so crazy about Live is it's felt, and I know a lot of people, Andy Johnson's made this point on the Shotgun Start podcast a lot, but it's felt a lot of like NBA off season where so much of the focus is on where the players are going to go. And then you get to game five and 10 in the season. And it feels like it doesn't matter as much as that news mattered. And I feel so much about that with Liv, who's going to go, who's not. And then when the tournament actually's played, I don't hear a lot about it.

You know, it almost feels like Twitter goes a bit silent when there's actually a golf tournament on your computer and now potentially on your television. It's all about what the players are going to do and if they're actually going to go to live or not. And this is like just following LeBron's career the last 10 years, right? Is he going to stay with Cleveland? Is he going to go to the Lakers? Is he going to end his career somewhere else? And then, again, middle of the early parts of the season, you're not paying as much attention to the NBA as maybe you were in June or July. So we had the Wojification of basketball.

Now we have the Wojification of golf. If Woj gets into golf, then you know it's really going to be a big thing. I don't know who's going to be the Woja Golf. Maybe it might be AIMA at this point. A couple broadcasting questions for you. When you do play by play or have done play by play of a tournament, are you tempted to do golf voice where you talk in a very, very particular way while you're announcing? You know, this was something I used to talk to about with Joe Buck, you know,

and I know you've talked to Joe about kind of crack it into golf. off over the years. You know, Joe had a point in his career where he felt like he was broadcasting like other people. And that was something I battled early on. You know, I'm sitting in a chair next to Brad Faxon. Joe Buck and Paul Asinger are in the other booth. We're splitting time. You're inevitably going to want to talk like Joe Buck, right? Joe Buck's one of the greatest to ever do it. I've been trying to be a little bit more myself lately, where I'm just being a little goofier and having a little bit more fun on the broadcast, you know, getting a chance to do the Fortinet. And, you know, I'm good pals with Max Homa who went on to win it, you know, there are moments on Sunday where I have to

remind myself, this isn't the Masters and this isn't the U.S. Open, and that's not a knock to the fortinet. It's okay to have a little bit of fun on the broadcast, but you inevitably fall in the Golf Whisper Voice. You know, you have to. And occasionally you're like, I'm in a booth. Like, I'm not out on the golf course. Why am I whispering? Does golf allow for goofiness in the broadcast booth? Sometimes. I think it depends on who you're working with. I used to do PGA Tour Live work. When I'd get the schedule and it would be John McGinnis and Robert Damron, I knew it was going to be a really goofy week. You know, both those guys can go off the rails like I can and we can have a little bit of fun.

I think at times you can be goofy. I think at times you can have fun. I think at times you can poke fun at the players. It's so easy to defend bad golf shots now, right? Oh, that putt, you know, he must have read that wrong. And he might have hit a bad putt, right? I mean, these guys hit bad golf shots. I've played enough golf with pro golfers over the years to understand that while they're amazing at golf,

they still hit bad golf shots at times. So I'm trying to be a little lighter, especially on Thursday and Friday. I'll tell you a quick story, Brian. One of the first times I called golf was the U.S. Amateur in 2016, and I was working with Paul A. Zinger, and I'm extremely nervous, right? I mean, I'm on a network, you know, I'm in a suit. I'm wearing a tie. Somebody put makeup on my face.

This is the big deal. And Zinger made a comment. It was a Wednesday because the Amateur starts on Wednesday, round of 64. And Zinger made a comment. We went to commercial. And Paul, who has as much personalities, Zinger, you'll meet. He looked at me straight and he goes, Bacon, that's a Wednesday comment.

Never say that on Saturday. And I was like, nice, you know, like, I didn't even think about that, but it was, you know, he was a little, like, a little lighter, having a little bit more fun. And his point was, as we get deeper into the tournament and we get into the weekend, you know, it's a little bit more about the golf and maybe not as silly. But I just love the fact that

he pointed out that that was, in fact, a Wednesday comment. So what's the key to choosing what you actually say and don't say on the air, let's say after a put? I mean, obviously it's all in the moment. I err on saying less. I feel like it's so easy to talk a lot, especially in golf broadcast. And, you know, we typically have four or five people, you know, kind of in the rotation, right? I mean, you've got the host and Terry Gannon, maybe, and then you've got,

you know, you've got your analyst and Trevor Emelman, then you've got a couple on-course reporters. Maybe I'm doing the whole broadcast. There are a lot of voices. So if it's a really bad put, I'll get in there right away. That didn't, but wasn't a good stroke. That wasn't even close. and then obviously I'll let the analysts pick it up. But at times I'm almost trying to steer it that way because I want to hear from a Trevor Emelman or a note of a bagay on that bad of a put or that bad of a read or what went wrong.

Because if I set them up another way, they're going to go that way, right? I mean, if I say, oh, you know, it must have hit something, then that's where the focus will go. So typically when it's really bad, I'll try to get in there rather quickly and at least try to get that going down that road. Field golf is interesting because a lot of it is so self-explanatory.

You know, watching football yesterday, you know, deep ball down the right side line. I need to know who caught that immediately. I need to know who was in coverage. I need to know whether he got his feet down. We're watching a put. You kind of know what happens. You kind of know if it missed left or right.

You know, and it is a great point. And I mean, I try, you know, I played, I played competitive golf. I played mini tour golf back of my day. I never made Corn Ferry Tour, P.J. Tour, anything like that. But, you know, I've played for dinner, right? I mean, I've played for my livelihood and rent. I had to sell spots at the end of months when I didn't have enough money to basically make rent. I had to sell some of my spots in the tournaments so I could pay off, you know, bills and things like that.

I've been in at least a small capacity of that world. And then you've got your analyst who's obviously been in there in way grandiose ways, right? I mean, been in major championship moments or coming down the stretch like a Trevor Rimmelman and won the Masters. I want to hear the why, right? To your point, we see it, but what happened or why? There'll be moments where a player will be between clubs, you know, for 10, 20, 30 seconds on the T. And then they make a bad swing. And that's a great opportunity to get into your analysts and say, obviously, it felt like

there was a lot of indecision there. And that's really the thing that dooms pros. They're so good and they're so dialed that it's typically indecision. It's like a free throw, you know? Remember when Steph Curry was missing the free throws early in the playoffs this past year? And you're like, obviously something's going on because he's hitting all his jumpers. But the mind gets in the way. And in golf, the mind's always the obstacle you've got a hurdle over.

because you're only spending like a minute and a half the entire day actually hitting golf shots. You're a Texan like me. We're all Texans here at the press box. Shout on Erica. Yo, absolutely. I heard you say on a podcast that you sent a note to ESPN Stewart Scott when you were growing up asking for advice. What kind of advice did you get from Stu Scott? Well, the best type of advice.

So his grandmother was from my area of East Texas. And so got connected with my mom through that. And I sent a note and said, I want to do what you. do. What can I do? And he wrote back, learn how to write. That was the number one piece of advice. Actually, the reason I went to college where I went to college was because of the advice I got from Stuart Scott. Learn to write because he said early in your career, you're going to have to write everything you say on television. And if you can write it versus somebody else writing it, it comes off easier. It sounds like who you are. You speak in your personality. And it was one of

the greatest piece of advice I've ever received. I mean, I'm 38 years old now. I've been doing TV since 2014. That was my dream. I always wanted to do since I was a kid. You know, the ironic part, Brian, was I used to record Keith Jackson broadcast calls. And my producer at Fox and now my boss at Golf Channel, Mark Loomis, produced Keith Jackson games. And I told him that one time and he had a good chuckle about that. But, yeah, Stuart said, learn to write before you learn how to do TV. And so I went to you of a, you know, for journalism, for print journalism.

I wrote for the student newspaper there for four years. And then obviously from there got into kind of blogging in that world. And so writing has always been my thing. And even now, when I'm doing like, if I'm hosting Golf Central, I'll write my bumps in and out of break, you know, I'll write anything we're teasing. Like, I like to write it in my own voice because, again, it makes me so much more comfortable.

Forget imitating Joe Buck. I want to hear you imitate Keith Jackson on a broadcast. I will never even attempt to do it. Keith is like my idol. I mean, I, for whatever reason, you know, I was a young kid and just his call, that booming voice, his ability to just grab you. I'll never forgets the Vince Young game. I was actually in College Station for the Texas USC game. And in College Station, they were making shirts where they had band-aids over the

longhorn horns. And it said, for one day only, go UT, beat USC. And they were in Maroon. And I remember my buddies had those shirts. But yeah, Keith, what a legend. That guy was and how incredible he was at the job. And somebody I very much looked up to. It's going to be an old-fashioned shooting match. I remember every Texas is over you game. You got a new book out. It's called The Golfers Zoo, and it's a kid's book. What led you to write a kid's book? I have kids now, and I was shocked.

You know, the one thing about golfers is especially somebody that's really in golf. Like, I mean, I've been in golf for a long time. You receive golf gifts, okay? You get the silliest golf things in the world. No laying up, the great, you know, podcast and social media account. You know, those guys. post on Christmas Day every year, a thread of what's the silliest goofiest golf gift you've received today. They'll get hundreds of responses. They're always terrible. You know, the golf pens,

the potty putting mat, all of those types of things. I was floored by how few golf children's books there were when we had our son. Henry's now three and a half. And we got the alphabet golf book, which I think every parent receives. And so I really started to do some research. And I was just like, hey, why don't I just do it? You know, I've written a children's book. But my goal, my hope, was, as you know, the most fun things you can do as a parent is watch children shows that at least have a little bit of adult humor. And so I threw in some digs at the parents in the golfer zoo, you know, poke some fun at their golf games throughout the book. But yeah, it was just, it was basically there was a hole in the market I felt like and I wanted

to fill it. What kind of reading dad are you at night when you sit down and open a book? I do a lot of voices. I feel like I take on voices for all the characters. We've been and Dr. Seuss lately, which is a lot more fun for me. I don't know if you feel the same way, but anytime, you know, you can bounce in in terms of like a rhythmic book, it feels a lot more fun. That was something we did with the golfer zoo was rhyming, was massively important for me. So, you know, I'm bouncing as I'm talking, right? I'm bouncing as Dr. Seuss is bouncing throughout the book. I'm doing voices. We're doing two to three books tonight with Henry. I pick out two. He picks out one. And I'm just trying to have as much fun with that as possible.

And now Henry is quote unquote reading me the books, which always is entertaining. I wouldn't say he nails it 100%, but we're getting to 60 to 70% right now. See, I feel I started out trying to be Robin Williams every night, the man of a thousand voices. Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. And then as a dad, as a parent, you're like, I just need to take this down a bit. Have you noticed that you lose which voice you're meant to be doing in the book? You're like, which one was the princess? What did I do here?

I've fallen apart. I need to like write down the script. the side. Not only, because then you're, of course, you're thinking about the nine things I need to do after the kid goes to bed. And you're reading and doing that at the same time and you might lose a little thing. Last question for you, Shane, golf for kids. Is that an easy sell or is that a hard sell?

I thought it would be easier for me with my son, just kind of being in golf and having a membership at a country club. You know, we go out. I talked to Joel Clatt about this, and I've actually written about this for the golfer's journal. Joel Klatz got three sons. And I remember I reached out to him and said, what did you do? Because he would really try to get his boys involved with golf. Joel's obsessed with golf. And he said he would play one hole as golf. Like we go out, we hit shots, we try to hold the put. And the next hole is up to the kids. Whatever you want to do, you want to go play in the

bunker. You want to throw rocks in the pond. You want to look at turtles. Like whatever the kids want to do the next hole. So if you play nine holes, right, five are for the kids, four for dad. And I've tried to adopt that. It's not the easiest thing. Golf is complicated. There's a lot of different golf clubs. Henry still doesn't know which way he wants to hit the golf ball if he's left to your righty. But it's been, I will tell you this, I have a six-month-old daughter, Charlotte, and I'm in my basement right now, and I've got a putting mat behind me, and she will watch every putt I hit, Brian. Every put that goes up and comes down, her eyes follow it. And I'm like, wait, I've got it. I've got the next Nelly Corta here. This is, I'm dialed. Maybe Henry's not going to

be a golfer, but Charlotte's definitely going to be. But yeah, I mean, my thing about introducing my kids to anything is I'm just trying to hold their hand to it, right? I want to get him to the line and then see if they grasp it or not. I mean, I'm never going to make Henry play. Again, being so involved in golf, everybody asked me. Is Henry a golfer yet? Does Henry play golf? It's like if he wants to play, he can play. If he doesn't, you know, he doesn't. But the whole idea of the golfer zoo was reminding parents, there's more fun at the golf course that maybe we don't see. And the idea of the golfer zoo was it's about all the animals that live out on the golf course and this whole other experience out there with deer and frogs and fish that we might

forget about when we're playing. And it's about reminding us that, you know, when we were kids, that was the cool thing about going out to the golf course was seeing all those things. When in doubt with kids, cool animals. Again, this is the key. And if you want to pre-order, by the way, it's Back9 with the number, Back9Press.com backslash bacon. You can pre-order it. We're going to ship it out mid-November. I will get you a copy, Brian. Eric, I'll send you one as well. Shane Bacon, thanks for coming on the press box. Thank you so much. Huge thanks to Shane Bacon.

If you saw the story today that golfer Patrick Reed refiled a defamation lawsuit against the golf channel and named a bunch of people in that suit, including Shane Bacon. Shane Bacon could not comment on the lawsuit. All right, it's time for David Shoemaker. Guess this is the strain pun headline. Yeah. Last Wednesday's headline about the flimsyness of the new movie, Don't Work. Darlene was styles over substance. Today's headline comes from our good friend, Bobby Wagner.

It's from Vanity Fair, David. Ooh. Did you follow the tri-guise scandal? Listen, I was aware that there was a thing called the tri-guise scandal. I'm not going to lie, I spent several interminable moments minutes on Twitter trying to see if I could absorb it. Because it felt like something I would have understood at some point in my past. But I got very bored very quickly or very confused, which is a thing that we call boredom out of self-defense. I love that every article was an explainer.

Then began, so here are who the try guys are. But I'll take this from the Vanity Fair piece to get you to the headline here. one try guy the try guy in question was a self-appointed wife guy the wife guy he is no longer part of the group vanity fair reports following the news of an extramarital affair he had with a colleague what was vanity fair's strain pun headline what what i just have try guys wife guys and so wife guy's obviously going to be in there.

He's gone. Wife guys can't jump. Wife guy. He's out. He's not in here anymore. Wise. Maybe think of an Alice Cooper song. Schools have.

Oh, no more Mr. Wife guy. No more Mr. Wife guy. That's great. Good stuff, Bobby. He is David Chubbaker. I'm Brian Curtis. Production Magic by Erica Servantes. I'm back later this week. And then David and I return Monday with more lukewarm takes about the media. See you then,

David. See you later, Brian.