The Press Box - More Notes on the L.A. Fires, the Tom Brady One-and-Done Theory, and Sounds From the NFL Playoffs

Episode Date: January 13, 2025

Hello, media consumers! Bryan and David begin the week by showing love to Ringer colleague Yasi Salek, who was affected by the L.A. fires (1:07). If you would like to help out Yasi, here is a link to the GoFundMe that Bryan mentions. Then they get into the stories and sounds from wild-card weekend, including: Tom Brady’s Game of the Year and the one-and-done theory (7:19) A.J. Brown reading a book on the sideline (15:57) The proud franchise tier (20:30) Kirk Herbstreit’s promo on the Steelers (23:57) The "I Have Seen the Future" Call of the Week (31:27) Then, in the Notebook Dump, they discuss: Barstool’s Big Cat’s interesting revelation (33:46) Venu, the sports streamer, is no more (46:23) Rachel Maddow returns to MSNBC prime time (49:24) Plus, the Overworked Twitter Joke of the Week, Only in Journalism, and David Shoemaker Guesses the Strained-Pun Headline. Hosts: Bryan Curtis and David Shoemaker Producer: Brian H. Waters Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

What's happening? It's Todd McShay and I'm back with a new home and a new show at the Ringer and Spotify. The McShay Show. It's a video and audio podcast coming to you year round with all my NFL draft information, big boards, mock drafts and player movement. Plus, I'll be chatting with some of my best friends in football, including some of your favorite football analysts. During the week, we'll have episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays that will include discussions about my player rankings, who's rising, who's falling, and who your NFL team should be. keeping an eye on. Plus, we'll be reacting each week to the college football playoff polls and giving you previews and picks for each Saturday slate. In addition, I'll have episodes on Saturday nights with my immediate reaction to the full day in college football every week. So if you love the college game, the NFL, the draft, or all of it like me, make sure to like,

follow, subscribe, and get ready for the McShay show on the ringer, Spotify, and wherever you watch or listen to podcasts. David? Yes. I thought we should start with a few more words about the fires here in L.A. Oh, yeah. And I know our thoughts are with our teammate Yasi Salik, the host of Bansplaine, who lost her house in Altadena.

I was looking at her Instagram post about it this morning and thought I'd just read a little bit of a paragraph here. Yeah, please, too. She's talking about losing all of her possessions. And she writes, I do know it's just stuff. I really do. It was also thousands of pieces of me. Outward expressions of my passions and tastes and all my past versions of self. Things I loved.

Decades of pouring over thrift stores, vintage stores, antique malls, the internet. So many unique pieces of clothing. God, I love my clothes so much. All my old band T-shirts. Hundreds of 80s and 90s music magazines. Hundreds of records, tapes, CDs, zines. art photos, every concert ticket stub since I was 12, letters, photos, gifts from friends, items picked up from all the places I've traveled, a lifetime of books, thousands of them,

novels and art books and out-of-print music books. I felt so protected and cocooned by these things grounded in my own history. It gives you a small sense of what she's dealing with and so many people are dealing with here as a result of these fires. Rob Harvilla tweeted out a GoFundMe page, Fragasi, which has raised more than $60,000. If you want to help, we tweeted that out from our press box account. Talked a little bit Thursday, David, all with Joel. My family and I were still down in the Orange County in Orange County and my mother-in-law's house.

We were extremely lucky and fortunate to have a place to go. We're also really lucky our house in South Pasadena, which is about six or seven miles south of Altadena was not affected by the fires. And I went up Saturday just to check on the house. And the first thing that was striking is going north on the 710 freeway, freeway you have driven before. And your vision going up that freeway is the San Gabriel Mountains. And how well you see the mountains depends on what kind of hazy,

smoggy day it is in Los Angeles, even in quote unquote normal times. I'm driving up to 710. And the only thing you can see is the barest outline of the top of the mountains to indicate that they are even there. Yeah. Because of all the smoke. I got to our house. I get out of the car.

And the first thing you notice is that the world just smells like being inside a chimney. And again, I emphasize this is six or seven miles south of Altadena in a place that was not directly. affected by the fires. I go into our house and gathering up stuff to bring down to Orange County. And one thing that was just so striking is looking out the window at our neighborhood, very few people compared to a normal weekend day outside and everybody is wearing masks. Yeah. Because of the air quality.

And it was this vision of like, oh my God, this looks like COVID from a certain point of view, except for the smell in the air. Just a tremendously, tremendously strange time. A couple of pieces of reading I wanted to recommend if people want to read some good stories about what's going on. In the LA Times, James Rainey, who came up on this pod fairly recently because he did a big piece about Patrick Soon-Shong

and kind of what are you doing to our newspaper piece for the Times. He grew up in Malibu in the 70s. He went back after the fires to check on his childhood home. His mother had lived there until earlier this year. And he writes, It's not a house anymore. It's an ashy void.

The electric gate is broken, so I hop a wall and see the swimming pool we had enjoyed recklessly as children. Now reduced to a watery charcoal pit. The two chimneys still stand, but now they have become a pair of tombstones. That story is tweeted from our press box, Twitter account. And then Michael Schneider had an interesting one in variety. He wrote about the LA-based reporters who are covering fires in their own communities. All these stories. And again,

I recommend you read all these pieces yourself. But one is about Josh Haskell, who is a reporter for ABC 7 here. And he's one of those reporters, David, who you've seen doing the live remotes. Yeah, of course. In the fire suit with the oxygen mask on. And he was doing those remotes. and at the same time trying to convince his parents that they needed to leave their home in Pacific Palisades. So like I am giving the news on television and I'm also frantically trying to talk some sense to my parents and convince them that this is big. And he tells variety, I'm trying to tell our viewers about what's happening and trying to get important information where the fire is, why people need to evacuate. And meanwhile, I'm texting with my parents and they're calling me, what do we do? I said, pack up the car.

You really need to leave within the next 30 minutes. This is coming towards you. I needed them to be scared. Well, his parents finally leave Pacific Palisades. And Haskell sees them because they drive by his TV remote. And he is able to wave to them. Again, that piece is linked from the press box Twitter account. All of our thoughts are with the people who are affected by the LA fires, including our own colleagues here at the ringer.com.

All right, David, coming up on the podcast is Tom Brady won and done at Fox. We have sights, sounds, and doinks from the NFL's Wildcard Weekend. What's the deal with Barstools Big Cat and Chicago? And Rachel Maddow returns to the five night a week cable news grind. All that and much more on the press box. A part of the ringer podcast network. Media consumers, Brian Curtis, David Shoemaker and producer Brian Waters. Here, David, let me start with some personal news.

I am no longer emotionally invested in football season. What about the Dallas Cowboys coaching search? Well, I suppose that is something I'm halfway invested in. But I don't know if you know this. The Dallas Cowboys did not qualify for the playoffs. Yeah, I'm aware. Texas, on the other hand, my alma mater, they qualified for the college football playoffs.

Yes, I'm aware of that too. So I'm texting buddies, I'm planning travel. I bought a nice Texas satin jacket from home field apparel for myself for Christmas. And then Texas lost on Friday night. So David, I am taking off the satin jacket and trading it for the cloak of objectivity. I am once again a neutral sports TV observer. And I've got a bunch of fun stuff for you from the football weekend. Can we start with Tom Brady?

Sure. He was calling the Eagles Packers game for Fox. I know you're watching that Eagles game in Jersey. I thought, and correct me if you think I'm completely nuts here, that that was Tom Brady's best game of the season. Oh, yeah. I thought he was great. Wouldn't it funny? It was like, I mean, we could talk about specific moments like him in the first quarter talking about how you attack the zero blitz or saying that a Jordan love throw in the third quarter was particularly doomed the moment it came out of his hands. But what was different to me was he was just on it for the entire game.

when we talk about the Greg Olsons and the Chris Collinsworth and the Trey Eggman's a play happens and you know a second passes sometimes like half a second and they just know where they're going with the ball to use the quarterback metaphor and it doesn't even matter so much what they say but there's a certain decisiveness in it again I sound like I'm doing bad football analysis here but I haven't heard Tom Brady be that decisive and emphatic for an entire game all year? Do you think he was feeling it? Or was it, was he, well?

Is it playoff, Tom? Is that what you're saying? Yeah, yeah, he's locked in, you know? And this is, this is, these are the games that people are going to really remember. Yeah. I mean, I'd say, I guess I'd kind of gotten to a place where I'm like, this is about as good as he's going to be. Yeah.

In week 16 or 17. And this is kind of where it is. if there's big growth, it'll be next season. But he was better in the playoffs than I've heard him all year. You know, there's still moments. I think he called the Eagles the Phillies at one point. Little, little, you know, stupid things like that. But I thought all in all that that was his best game of the year.

And it's interesting that he should take a little jump. Speaking of next year, there has been a little boomlet out there that Tom Brady is going to be one and done at Fox. That there will be no next year. Richard Dijge put this in his 2025 predictions column over at the athletic. David Samson, the former Marlins guy, mentioned this on the LeBotard podcast network. Dan Patrick did a segment. Tom Clutt, who writes really good stuff for Vanity Fair, wrote a whole story where he acknowledged his rumor being out there.

And I guess the Y is twofold one is. He's Tom Brady. I don't know how to tell you this, but he has more options than you and I do when it comes to life. Of course, yeah. And then two is that he is a minority owner of the Raiders. He is reportedly involved in the Raiders coaching search. And that would either create a kind of, I don't know, demand for his time slash conflict of interest that it would either convince the league or convince him that he just needs to do one job. Sure.

Now, you know, I don't like to get involved in woge bombs. I really don't because I really don't care all that much. But I would like to go on record and say that I think Tom Brady's coming back for year two at Fox. You think so? You don't think that great performance was just the freedom, just the knowledge that he'd be free from the constraints from the judgments of people like you and me. He finally got out of his own head. Tom Brady had been worrying about what people thought of him.

him all year. And finally he realizes, hey, I'm done at Fox. This is great. Now I could tell it like it is. Howard CoSel style. I actually don't think that's the case, David, because I think he's coming back for year two at Fox. You think so?

I would call that an informed opinion. I don't know that for a fact. I don't think anybody knows it for a fact. But that is my informed opinion. The TB 12 will be back. informed by information. Informed by information. Well put.

Not informed by your perception of his performance this year, not informed by his public statements or public presence, and informed by something that someone like me might not have access to. Yes. And I think, by the way, the perception of his performance this year, I think that's informing people on the other side of this equation. Mm-hmm. Because they're saying he's not John Madden.

so maybe he wouldn't want to come back for near two or he's not John Madden yet. But it's funny because it really reminds me of that gap year that Tom Brady took after he retired from Tampa. But before he came to Fox, Greg Olson did one additional year as the number one guy. And there was this kind of trendy opinion where people were like, you know, I don't know if Tom Brady is ever even going to get to Fox. Yeah.

Maybe that'll just be a press release. And I think I indulged in that too here at the press box. And then later on, when I did some reporting about that for piece I wrote or this year, it's like, that was just wrong. That was just kind of made up. And it was one of those things where it was an interesting thing to think because there was a black hole of information there. So you start piecing things together. I don't know if that's what this is. Again, when I hear lots of people saying and I start to want, do people know something?

I don't know. But I think Tom Brady's going to be back for year two at five. Putting that out there. do you think there do you think that there's a problem there now obviously he was already you know a minority investor in the Raiders

or whatever but like do we think that that there is if he does have a more forward facing role in the organization does that present a conflict that will have to be dealt with um I think that's sort of priced in at this point

mm-hmm I mean I think from are we talking about from the leagues perspective from Fox's perspective. Well, either. I think that the league, I don't expect Fox to be, to actually care, right? I mean, I think that it's, that,

that they would like to have him on TV under just about any circumstances. But for some reason, I feel like they'd also be the ones to take some sort of stand just to sort of curb this conversation, right? You just say he can't call Raiders games, he can't call division games.

Like, whatever the, whatever the, whatever the rule, I mean, the decision would be just to make it seem like he has some distance. I think that the league, obviously, if someone was going to put the kibosh on it, it would be the league. I just, I don't see them getting involved.

Yeah. I just say, I think Fox is, I mean, that's an interesting question. Like, what if there was the best game Fox had that week was a Raiders game, which seems very unlikely,

given how bad the Raiders are and the fact they don't have a coach right now. But I suppose it could happen that you could get into some weird territory there. But just the fact that he's, a minority owner and again reportedly helping run things with the Raiders coaching search. I don't, I've never gotten the sense that they have any problem with that at all. Yeah. Fun moment from that game Brady was calling Eagles Packers.

Fox's cameras caught Eagles wide receiver A.J. Brown reading a book on the bench. We respect that. It's kind of something you and I would do, but we're also not top flight NFL receivers. Here's Brady and Kevin Burkhard talking about AJ taking a reading break. So AJ Brown, while we're figuring that out, he, he's a little frustrated. Obviously, he hasn't seen too many balls. He's going to read a little passage here.

I haven't seen too many people read books, but I've seen a quarterback eat a hot dog. Burkhart said he's going to read a little passage. I did not hear that correctly and thought he said he's going to read the passenger and I'm like, wait, he's reading Cormac McCarthy on the bench during a playoff game. Now that's impressive. No, that's great.

Reading anything on the sideline is, and Adrian Brennan's come out and said since he was just reading a book, like he's just passing the time? Well, he said he was reading a book called Inner Excellence, Train Your Mind for Extraordinary Performance and the Best Possible Life. Yeah. And it's like one of these inspirational, get your mind right books. And he said in the locker room after that he reads it during games all the time.

Often after a drive, whether he catches a touchdown pass in the drive or not. So this has been a long running thing. This is not one man's, you know, two week late, Yoko Boca Flood celebration on the sideline of a football game. You think Brandon Graham was his Yoko Boko Flood buddy? Yeah, I mean, that could be it. But no, but yeah, so he's been doing this for a while, okay. But don't we think that cameras would have caught this at some point if he'd been reading a book on the sideline or some Eagles beat writer would have looked down and seen this? Yes, on the one hand, yes, but on the other hand, like for all of the moments that are captured on the sideline that we talk about on the show that you'd see online, whatever, doesn't it seem like there's just got to be five million of those a game that we don't see?

I mean, isn't the sideline just, I'm sure, rife with, like, I bet if you just had 100 cameras on any football side line, every one of them would pick up 20 things that would go viral in any given week, right? Totally. Totally. I mean, it feels like we see every fight or every exchange of words. Well, the cameras have time to turn and look when there's commotion or something. But, like, just the odd things that you just see, like, once every, like, you know, once every season or two, I bet these things happen all the time. best game of the weekend was Washington Tampa on Sunday night. It came down to a doint field goal by the commanders at the horn.

Here's NBC's Mike Tariko and Chris Collinsworth with that call. From 37 to send Washington to the final eight. Is Doink John Madden's greatest contribution to American culture? He was such a megastard dude, but has any part of his legacy lived on, quite like the word doink. God, I struggle to think of anything else. It seems like there must be other options out there. I mean, the video game, okay.

So let's put the video game aside, but linguistic contributions. Yeah, I don't know. And I remember when doink was relatively new, it's a doyct off the post. And by the way, didn't Collinsworth sound a little like Madden there? Yeah, he did. Collinsworth is sort of like evolving into John Madden as he gets old. I completely agree.

He sounds more like he was the guy who replaced Madden in NBC. And he sounds a little more madden-esque all the time. You could totally imagine Madden delivering that line. I've lived to see a divisional doink. A bunch of people sent us a seat where somebody called that particular part of the field goal apparatus there, the Washington Post. And then somebody added to that, America dies in doinkness. Thanks to all for making sure we were aware of that. Got a wildcard linguistic question for you, David.

Fourth quarter of that game, Collinsworth referred to the commanders and the bucks as proud franchises. How does a team get into the proud franchise tier? Is every franchise a proud franchise? Are there a bash franchises? Ashamed franchises? I mean, there might be an ashamed fan base. Yeah.

I don't know if there would be a... Certainly there are ashamed fan bases. See the Jets. And the Cowboys, for that matter. You have to have probably won a championship to qualify to be a proud franchise. So don't you usually hear this in terms of a team that was once really good and then has hit the skids?

Yeah. And they were a once proud franchise? Yes. I don't know if this would. I don't know if I would insist upon this clarification, I mean, on this specification, but it does seem like the way that it's used implies a proud franchise is a franchise that is attempting to reclaim past glory. Yes.

Which the bucks have been to the playoffs like five years in a row. To me, the commanders absolutely qualify as a proud or once proud franchise. As a once proud franchise. Right. So the bucks are not once proud. They're just currently proud. and after this season, I guess the commanders are there too. I tweeted this out last night and somebody came back at me as like,

yeah, you want to compare how many Super Bowls, the Cowboys and Bucks have won this century? I'm like, no, I don't. I'm just after linguistic answers here. The Cowboys are a once proud franchise. I think the difference between Proud and Once Proud, right? Maybe that's it. I just thought that was a funny turn of phrase.

It is, it is. I mean, and then there's, I mean, I guess there's probably some franchises that you could say are just, sort of so hopeless, feel so aimless that pride doesn't even factor in. But I don't want to start listening to those. Not the ones. A never proud franchise, except for that time with Joe Namath. A great sideline moment from that Buck's Commander's game.

NBC's Melissa Stark asked Buck's head coach Todd Bulls, how was your defense going to stop Jaden Daniels? And on defense, how do you limit Jaden Daniels? Got to get them in long third and long a yard. but it's got to win first down. They keep getting out of the pocket to his left, to our left, his left, his left. I mean, our left is right,

and we got to cut that down. Thanks, Scott. Yeah. So not shockingly, the Bucks did not stop Jaden Daniels. What if they were just playing on the wrong side the whole time? If they, if that whole miscommunication,

it just trickled down to the team and they were all just loading up on the wrong side. Was it his left or our left, coach? But you said, That side. On Saturday, David, Al Michaels and Kirk Herbstry were doing the Steelers Ravens game. Mm-hmm. And wasn't Brian Waters excited watching his Ravens just pour it on?

Now, I thought this is funny because Herbie has been working very hard lately. He was in Arlington to call the Ohio State Texas game on Friday night. He was in Miami for game day before Penn State Notre Dame on Thursday. Mm-hmm. Now he's in Baltimore. So maybe he's tired. Maybe he's just had a lot of football in his life over a 72-hour period. Because when Baltimore went up 14-0,

Kirk Kyrn Street cut a promo on the Steelers. A game like this, a chess match, it's a cliche. But this is a chess match, two grand masters. If I were a Steelers fan, a thing that would concern me just watching this first half, you're in the postseason. You're getting dominated. I don't see any fight. I don't see any pushback.

It's one thing to lose XOs against a really talented offense. But where the hell is the fight? This is the Pittsburgh Steelers. There's nothing. They're just going through the motion. That's pretty tough stuff for a playoff game. Yeah. He was right.

Yeah. This might be, this might be, the sports softest target this week. Everybody seems to be piling on the Steelers and Mike Tomlin in the aftermath of that game. Welcome. Congratulations, Steelers. You are America's softest target.

A lot of noise this weekend, David, about the games that match the two seed against the seven seed. This was the Eagles, Packers game, and then the Bills who clobbered the Broncos. The 27 game has only existed for five years. Before that,

you had six teams from each conference make the playoffs. But since 2020, the NFL said, hey, we want to create an extra playoff game. Yeah. Two extra playoff games, in fact. So we're going to have seven teams from each conference get in. Yeah. And it turns out that has often been a really crappy game. Only one seven seed has won their playoff game.

Yeah. And that is the Packers who beat the once proud Dallas Cowboys last year. It was all worth it just for that. Nick Wright spoke for many of us and said, my annual reminder that even though last year's Packers Cowboys game was fun, the 2-7 matchups are unnecessary and simultaneously denied

deserving teams of a buy Buffalo and Philly this year, while also making it far too easy to make the playoffs. The previous format was far, far better. So I think that is right on the merits. Yeah. Don't you agree? Do we need that extra 27 playoff game?

No, I mean, I think the arguments about the by week is probably the strongest, right? I mean, if you want to have some expansive wildcard, you know, thing where there's four teams fighting for the eighth playoff spot or whatever and while all the other, while the, you know, the better teams actually get a buy week or two, you know, you can talk me into it. But I think watching the Eagles and the, and the bills have to have to beat themselves up in these games just seems just really unnecessary. And it seems like it's done for television purposes.

We had four games and now we have six games. And look how nice that is, right? Because if we only had four games at Wild Car Weekend, we'd have to give it to one of each of our TV partners, NBC, CBS, Fox, and ESPN. But if we have six, we can sell one of those games to a streamer like Peacock last year or Amazon this year and clear a hundred million extra dollars for that game. which brings us back to the rule of the postseason, which is the playoffs may expand,

but they will never contract. Yeah. So this is never going to happen, right? Like this is one of those things. The NFL is not going to be like, you're right. This is not aesthetically pleasing football. We will now give the $100 million back

that we got because of the expanded playoffs. Oh, of course. Yeah, it's not going anywhere. The other thing I think about this, while the case is totally right on the merits, is are we sure people want fewer NFL playoffs? games in their lives. No, they definitely don't.

It would have to be just a restructuring, maybe one that even added a game. You know, there's no way that is going anywhere. It's a sort of, it's a ridiculous case to even try to make. What I'm talking about is, I think there are people out there, like, probably even including you and me who are like, this is wrong. This should not exist. But if there was one fewer or two fewer playoff games, I would also not like that. Because we like NFL football.

Yeah. I mean, listen, there's a, you can make a lot of, you know. You could say whatever. The games were better before they had the cameras on wires going back and forth above the field. Do you see the kick at the wire yesterday? Yeah, exactly. But I don't think they're going to take the wire cams away.

They're not going to be like, well, football was at its best and purists before it was televised. They were not getting rid of games altogether, you know. It's a fine argument to make, but it's not making, it's not changing anything. It reminds me a little of the NBA play-in game. Like that is just preposterous to me. but people who are NBA fans are like this kind of sucks but it's NBA basketball so I will watch this like I like this having this in my life

and if it went away I would be slightly less happy than I am now Jim Nance and Tony Romo David were doing the Buffalo Denver game yesterday there was a little pushing and shoving at the end of the first half see if you heard Jim Nance say a funny word whatever he makes you want here on special teams after a 44-year punt and now the teams are out here with a little fracas fracas why is fracas funny uh well partly because

it's an only in journalism word right very very seldomly heard spoken aloud uh and also it's just it's just so ye old you know it's just like something from it obviously from a totally different era that doesn't you know well and it's just part of the general sports thing of trying to to trying to minimize or sort of, you know, put a smiley face on any sort of non-sanctioned violence, you know, you got to just use some other word. Remember the whole discussion we had about what to call the nether regions of a man when they're being kicked or punched in a basketball game? Yes. You got to find some just bizarre a word, just kind of take that sting off of it. Then we felt that I feel like Jim Nance was trying not to say it's getting a little chippy out there.

Which is a usual go-to. I listened to Philly Sports Radio last night after the game when I was driving around. I see, sir. And Philly what knocked, I mean, like four players, four opposing players out of the game over the course of the game. And just to watch that sort of obviously the Philadelphia radio audience is a little bit more forgiving than a national NFL game. They were still just trying to figure, like in real time, trying to figure out how to congratulate Philadelphia for injuring other players, you know,

with the strength and determination of their hits without actually saying it, like, in the most obvious way. It's a, it's a strange world we live in. God bless Philly Sports Radio. You know, Howard Eskin might have, he might have been able to figure out if A.J. Brown was reading a book on the sidelines.

Finally, David, I have the, I have seen the future call of the week. As much as it pains me to replay this, Texas, Ohio State Friday night, the Longhorns played like absolute crap early, but got the game to 7-7 right before the half. There's like 30 seconds left before halftime. All Texas has to do, David, just defend like one or two plays and they go in tied. And then Ohio State Stravion Henderson takes a screen pass to the house. Now, this is the I have seen the future call of the week because I want to

want you to listen as ESPN's Chris Fowler says the words house call before Trayvian Henderson had even gained five yards. Howard, how aggressive will they be in the final seconds? Henderson can make a house call from anywhere. And look out. He just might do it. Trabian Henderson Gatsman went back for Ohio State. You get extra credit if you predict the play before the play actually happened. again, as much as it pains me to replay that, it was, it was quite a moment. And David, now, see, I see, I'm dawning the, donning the cape of neutrality now. Yeah.

Just observations about things I heard in the sports media, uncuttered by any fandom. It's impressive. Thanks to awful announcing and C.J. Fogler for those clips. Always appreciate those people who are looking out for the fun stuff on a football weekend. Coming up, David, Barstools, Big Cat, and Chicago. a confession. 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 Pressbox Pot on Twitter or Blue Sky where they are always gratefully received. A lot of blowouts in the first round of the NFL playoffs, David, which reminded people of the blowouts in the first round of the college football playoff. It was an overwork Twitter joke to write that the NFL committee shouldn't have picked the Broncos and Chargers.

Thanks to reporter Ryan Glassbeagle for that. Ryan Glassbeagle who just joined front office sports. Yeah, I saw that. Congratulations. Congrats on that, Ryan. And congrats. You made the overworked Twitter joke of the week. All right.

In the notebook dump, can we talk about the Big Cat story? Okay, let's do it. You know, we could talk about some kind of network news thing or cable news thing that people don't really care about, but fills up all the media newsletters. Or we could talk about the thing I saw tons of people tweeting about and texting me about, which was Big Cat. Big Cat for the uninitiated is Dan Katz. He is one half of the extraordinarily popular podcast, pardon my take, with PFT commenter.

When I give you the name Big Cat, David, you think of what? Am I supposed to say Chicago Sports? Is this, was that, was that the cue? I think that's the thing we think about a lot with him. Yeah. Besides those pictures of donuts that he tweets out on weekend mornings. And by the way, when he ever he tweets those out, I look at those and with absolutely no shame, I think I would like to eat some of those donuts.

Those look really, really good. Oh, gosh. Any picture of donuts. Well, on Thursday, Big Cat sat down on the Barstool Yack podcast. And this was just an amazing scene if you watch this clip because there's all these hosts sitting around, including our old pal Mark Titus. And Kat says, I'm ashamed of something.

Yeah. That he hasn't really talked much about. He may not have hidden this, but he hasn't exactly gone out of his way to publicize. Which is he grew up, not in Chicago, but in Newton, Massachusetts. And for his first 18 years on this earth was mostly a Boston sports fan.

Yeah. At age 18, he goes to college in Wisconsin and then moved to Chicago after that. But for the first 18 years of his life, he was a Boston guy. Yeah. He asked when he started working for Barstool, asked Dave Portnoy, should I just come out and admit this? Yeah. Because apparently some of their previous Chicago bloggers had gotten whacked for not living in Chicago or having been from somewhere else.

And Portnoy says, don't worry about it. And Katz then said, you know, I just kind of had this weird shame for the next 14 years where I felt like if I came out and talked about this, people wouldn't want to listen to me anymore. Yeah. They would think I was some kind of fraud or something. Mm-hmm. This is one of those stories, again, this will not make perhaps the Brian Stelter media

newsletter and CNN, but I heard about this more than almost any story this week. Oh, absolutely. Somebody texted me and said, imagine if we found out Bill was from Minneapolis, which does have certain parallels to that. I mean, what do you make of this whole thing? I have to admit.

I mean, I think I'm missing some of the details here, and maybe they don't exist, or to the extent that people are covering the story. Did he ever tell any lies about his fandom or about his timeline? Not that I know of. I don't think he was ever creating anything. I think he was, he explains that he was.

I mean, obviously the bill, the bill comparison comes up a little bit short because then you'd be left with all these questions like, wait, so when you said you were attending bar in Boston, where were you actually living, right? I mean, there's, there's obviously going to be some like, just questions of veracity. The whole thing is sort of just mind blowing to me. And the video, like you said, to watch it is sort of an experience, not just because of. the regular barsoil yak setup which require you know which has where there's like 12 chairs in a seemingly very large room that people are like getting

up and sitting down in as you're watching and you know the weird camera cuts to people who are you can't tell if they're 10 feet away or 100 yards away um the but big cats like

his emotional state as he was saying this like I've never felt more honesty from anybody, any podcaster that I know in such a vulnerable, such vulnerability, I guess. It's obviously something that had really been weighed on him. I think if I were there, if I were part of the brain trust, he came to me for my advice, I would just say, split the difference, you know, like, let's just organize some people talking shit about, you know, making fun of you for that on podcast, just sporadically over the next year. And then a year from now we'll pretend everybody already knew it, right?

Just sort of like water under the bridge. Just to go the PR route, you know? But the fact that he felt so burdened by it, which was really clear, or else he was just an incredible actor trying to drum up attention. But he seemed to feel so burdened by it and the way that he sort of like felt the need to come clean while repeatedly saying what I think a lot of people would say, which is, it doesn't matter, you know? It's like it's not like it's not that big of a deal.

but like, I just don't want to be keeping this secret. It was pretty, pretty just amazing thing to watch him break down in real time. Now, I know that some people, certainly some more so than myself, have very strong feelings about the rules of sports fandom. You know, as someone who is like varied between teams and switched teams over the years, I obviously don't care very much. but I'm also someone who, like, moved around a lot and didn't have teams, you know, built into me as a young child. I didn't have my parents and grandparents

didn't have, like, strong rooting interests. So, you know, your mileage may vary on that. I saw some people reacting on Twitter just like, I can't believe that I can't believe this, this sham. I can't believe, you know, I can't believe. And a lot of the responses were like, really, who cares? You know, I mean, like, both sides were being, voiced, I think, you know, in a reaction to this.

I mean, I guess the real question in so much as there is one at all is, did he adopt Chicago sports fandom strictly for the purpose of employment of views for hits, like whatever? Was it strictly a crass commercial decision? And if so, does that make it wrong? Well, it's a good question. I mean, he says essentially that he had family in Chicago when he was a kid. And so he was rooting for the Bulls, which I think any child of the 90s was, which could be familiar with like Michael Jordan is my favorite player.

That's a perfectly, that was probably true of you too. Yeah. Listen, my parents are from the state of North Carolina. And so despite living in Kentucky, we were nominally like UNC fans. And so Michael Jordan fans and so Chicago Bulls fan. So yeah, those Chicago Bulls were my first, the first team that I had a rooting interest. David was not cosplaying as a Chicago Bulls fan. That was real.

That was from his parents. So anyway, he says, like they were kind of always my second team growing up. And then when I graduated college, I wanted to live in Chicago. Like, that's where I wanted my life to be.

Mm-hmm. So then naturally, I then I start, you know, become, I start reading with Chicago teams. I start writing about Chicago teams. And that's how it happens.

Yeah. I mean, I am weirdly of the old school on this just because I grew up in Dallas Fort Worth where they had, all the teams, which at that time was three teams because we weren't quite in a four team or five team universe at that point. And I always just grew up with this is like sports fandom is hand of fate. Yeah. I grew up there. Hence I was a Dallas Cowboys fan. Hence the Dallas Cowboys did the most wonderful thing ever, which is when three Super Bowls in my four years of high school.

And the other year they went to the NFC championship game. And that was the awesomest thing ever. Oh my gosh, fate has touched me, Brian Curtis. Oh, wait. It's also touched me that the Dallas Cowboys never did anything after that. That once proud franchise. So I always thought of it like that, and I always found it weird when people would just move to a different city and say like, hey, I'm now Mr. Sports of L.A. or whatever it is. But I also know that people think of all this stuff really, really differently.

And one of Big Cats, I think, strongest points is he's like, dude, I traded the Patriots for the Bears. Yeah, for sure. So if that was not like an honest trade, like what else would there be? I didn't leap on the bandwagon. I leaped off. Yeah. But he'd also had his fill, right?

There had been enough Boston championships across this, across the sports world. Well, he lives in 2003. So this is right at the beginning of the, of the new dawn of Boston sports. But you're right. You're right. I mean, you're right. There's not, I mean, that is a strong, that is a strong case. I mean, I don't mind the team switch.

as long as you're not putting yourself over is something that you're not. Although, you know, whatever. I mean, we work in sports media. First of all, it's not, I think there's less of this these days, but there's, I mean, a million sports writers who have moved from one city to another.

That's separate from fandom, but in the pre-podcast, pre-Web era, that's who we looked at is like the arbiters of truth, you know, across the sports world. And, you know, the folks that were writing about the, whatever, I mean, the Dallas Cowboys are in some ways this sort of closed loop, but the people that are writing about the Cleveland Browns

might have moved over from the Indianapolis Colts beat or whatever. You know, I mean, those things happen all the time. And just in terms of being inside sports meet, I mean, listen, you don't think that there's anybody at the ringer that, like, is more of a fan of a team now than they were than when they started because the conversations, because the expectations have pushed them in that direction. You don't think that like whatever, like, if you grew up in Oklahoma City but weren't particularly a basketball fan. You don't think you're paying attention to the Oklahoma City Thunder on a daily

basis in case a call comes out for you to show up on a podcast or something. I mean, these things happen all the time and not from a disingenuous place. I mean, it's just sort of human nature. I think for me, it's just, it really is a non-issue. His fandom, his fandom, at least as it stands now, should not be called into question. But, you know, should, when, Like if the Bears were to win an NFL title next year or the year after, should people give him shit about it? Yeah, sure. I mean, that's part of the game too.

That's Barstall, too, Ray. Like, you talked about making fun of him like retroactively to kind of introduce the idea. Now he will be made fun of for the next five years on Barstool podcast, and that will be the bit. Aren't you from Massachusetts? Like, that will be, that will be a thing. And I'm, and I'm with you too on this. And I think it's like, it's one of those things we're just like, people are different.

And they're different than us. and it happens. I do understand why he's sensitive to it and why he's worried about his fans because what is his superpower other than being funny? It is he is like me. Yeah. I'm a sicko sports fan devoted to some wretched team and that guy is like me. Yeah. So if people then look at him like, wait, wait, you're different than maybe I thought you were or something like that. I could totally understand why you would be worried about that because that is part of his appeal. Absolutely. And to say one thing about what you just said about sports writers leaning into fandom, I think that was exactly right.

I think we have come, and I wouldn't, I don't, I'm not saying this about cats, but just generally, we have come to this weird moment in history where people in our part of the business grew up because they crossed the line between being sicko fans of a particular team. Uh-huh. They crossed the line to performing as sicko fans of that team on social media. So I just look at all social media. now and I look at all expressions of sports

way and I'm like, I kind of don't believe you. Not that you're not a fan of that team that you didn't grow up and all that stuff, but just like what you're doing here is just not, it's not real. This doesn't feel real to me. Yeah.

Because it was just all, again, it's just that has become a way in our business to just, to, you know, make relationships with readers and listeners. That's what you do. Right.

Oh, I'm a crazy sports way. Okay. There we go. And I see that stuff and I'm like, eh, I've had enough of it. couple quick ones for you.

Venue, David, is no more. Venue was the streaming service that Fox and ESPN and our pals at Warner Brothers Discovery, we've gotten so much airtime in this podcast over the last year, were forming together. This was announced with great fanfare at the Super Bowl or Super Bowl week last year in Vegas. These three companies were going to get together and say,

hey, we are going to have a sports streamer that we're going to sell to you. And you'll get ESPN, you'll get Fox, and you'll get the Turner networks. Yeah. There were a lot of lawsuits. There was a lot of problems. On Friday, they decided, we're done.

We're out. We're not doing that anymore. And we can talk about the legal stuff, but really this was one of those cases where I looked at this back to the Super Bowl last year, and I'm like, I don't know who this is for. Speaking of sports fans in my life, I don't know anybody who's like, you know what I want. I want the NFL games on ESPN and Fox, but not the NFL games on NBC and CBS.

Yeah. I want the kind of big chunk, but not the full enchilada of the sports world that I would get from these three companies. Yeah. And I understood why they were doing it because what there is to do, and Andrew Marshan and Richard Dich wrote about this in the athletic, but what you you do now is just put yourself out there and say like please buy my service you want to put yourself out in 800 different ways ESPN's going to do that with their over the top service this year. But I'm just like what sports fan was this ever for? Yeah. So even before we got to like the legal hurdles and those kind of things I was like I just don't understand. I never understood. I never

understood that the person who would buy this and only this. No, there's no one that's going to buy only that. It's just for the people with the sports fans with the disposable income to buy this amongst their million, there are many other things. But even though you can probably get most of these things. Yeah, exactly. It doesn't make a lot of sense. Now, we'll see when ESPN's over-the-top thing comes out. I mean, I think that then you might have a second life as just ESPN, you know?

I mean, I don't, it wouldn't shock me if some of that Fox Sports content was bargained, was factored into the ESPN deal. I think Turner is now sort of going to do their own thing because they have Max to worry about. But yeah, especially when you had ESPN to begin with. And I think part of the issue is you're sharing space with these other companies. But ESPN is the thing that people would buy and pay an ungodly amount of money for kind of blindly. And venue just seem, if no one's going to get venue to get ESPN.

it just seems it seems like you're you know you just assume you're getting lesser some lesser value farewell venue we hardly knew you one more update for you and just because we talked about this couple of times over the last year but rachel maddow is going back to doing a nightly show on msnbc rachel maddow had one of the weirdest deals in media history where she got a huge raise to do her show once a week and then do things like documentaries and podcasts and stuff like that on the side. Yeah. Well, you saw NBC, they've lost a little traction since the election.

So now for the first hundred days of the Trump administration, she's going to take back her show five nights a week. Alex Wagner was filling in the other nights. But she's only going to do it for the first hundred days. So on April 30th, she will go back to the old Rachel Maddow deal. Yeah. We live in such a strange time, dude, for TV and media deals. this is like the John Stewart like I'm coming back for the election

oh wait Trump got elected I'm coming back for the first year of Trump yeah but nothing just continues into infinity anymore it's all part time gig work and in this case extremely lucrative part time gig work yeah it's true

I thought it'd be incredibly funny if they tried some weird sleight of hand to like bring Rachel Maddow back but not to the Rachel Maddow show like continue can't see like just everybody thinks rachel's back everybody knows she's back so they tune in for that but then really it's rachel maddow hosting the last word with lawrence o'donnell you know and then lawrence o'd everybody kind of gets moved around or move rachel maddow to like 830 so she like

junk you know hops in on the back end of jinsaki's show and then she and does the beginning of the rachel maddow show um you got to the you got to discuss these things you know when you're when you're a serious news network absolutely it'd be like barstow where everybody's on every show you know, just a little look, oh, it's the big cats on this show too. Yeah, exactly. The little bumpers that they do to, like, drag people from one show to the next or whatever would be, or as close as they get, I guess. Yeah, no, it's a, it's a very interesting thing.

I mean, listen, I'm sure that she's motivated to be on the front lines telling the story of the first 100 days of the Trump administration. I'm sure that, you know, I mean, the contract that she signed, I'm sure looks absolutely ludicrous in retrospect to the people inside, you know, NBC Universal. Not that they, I don't know that they wouldn't do it again, but they probably shouldn't, wouldn't approach it with the same exuberance this time around. You know, I think we always talk about ESPN on this show and what do we keep saying time and time again there. It's like, yeah, we'll give you all the money in the world to their big front-facing people. but guess what? You have to be on 30 hours of television a week, you know?

And it's like, and if we invent, and if we acquire a new sport, if we acquire the rights to a new sport, you're doing that too, you know? So it's a, I mean, that, that would, I would assume that the expectation for Rachel Maddow's next contract

would be that she would do more screen time and not less, although she's producing in these other directions. But at a bare minimum, it behooves her because it behooves her parent, or, you know, her bosses to be back on television, at least for now. Well, it's weird, right? Because there's like MSNBC right now is mostly a cable news network.

But in a couple of years, if MSNBC is a thing, it will not be mostly a cable news network. So it makes sense, on the one hand, that you're like, we want our stars on television every night to extract as much value as we can. And also, you know, because we got to make money right now. Like there is money to be made right here. And we still want to have as big a chunk of political talk as we can. But then you also say, okay, if MSNBC is something else, we need those stars, not the B team, to be helping us figure out what that is, which is I guess the idea. But it just results in this just very, very strange thing where she is sort of on television and sort of not.

Very, very weird. All right. It's time for a feature that shows up to work every day. rain or shine, it's time for David's Shoemaker guesses. He's strained pun headline. Yeah. Monday's headline about a chess master who wore the wrong outfit

was jeans gambit. Jeans gambit. Today's headline comes to us from disc fan over at blue sky. It's from the Associated Press. David, it's a story about an elk. Yes, an elk.

Kind of a sad elk. Wildlife officials and several climbers rescued a bull elk by lowering it down a cliff after the animal became entangled in a rope at a popular ice climbing area in southwestern Colorado. So an elk is trapped in an ice climbing area. What was the AP's strained pun headline? An elk is trapped?

Am I supposed to know a send him for ice climbing area? Well, there is a particular term that would be helpful. Like a pickax, like Spalunk. No, what is it called? What about a level of an ice climbing area? It's an ice... I'm speaking confidently. Oh,

O'clock. Continue? Elk on the shelf. Yeah, elk on a shelf is exactly right. Well done. You got shelf pretty fast. I thought I would have to give you a little nudge on that one.

He is David Shoemaker. I'm Brian Curtis. Braxia Magic by Brian Waters. Got a little scheduling to tell the people about David. Thursday. on this year podcast, Joel Anderson and I will be doing duty as normal, but then Joel and I are going to turn around on Friday and fly to Atlanta for the college football national championship.

The University of Texas, I mean Ohio State University versus Notre Dame. And we're going to trade slots. So Joel and I are going to do the Monday show. And then David and I are going to do the Thursday show. Yeah, the old switcheroo. The old switcheroo. It's a whole new world this week. So David, I won't see you Monday, but I will see you Thursday for more lukewarm takes about the media.

See you that, bud. See you later, Brian.