The Press Box - More on ESPN and Damar Hamlin, Plus the Excruciating Victory of Kevin McCarthy

Episode Date: January 9, 2023

Bryan and David are back in the new year with positive updates regarding Buffalo Bills safety Damar Hamlin after his sudden cardiac arrest on the field last Monday (10:27). Then, they break down Kevin McCarthy’s dramatic pursuit of and victory as Speaker of the House (34:06), before wrapping things up with a discussion about the revamped TCU Horned Frogs that will play in the college football national title game against the Georgia Bulldogs (42:23). Plus, The Overworked Twitter Joke of the Week and David Shoemaker Guesses the Strained-Pun Headline.  Hosts: Bryan Curtis and David Shoemaker Associate Producer: Erika Cervantes Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

What's up everybody? It's Austin Rivers from the Minnesota Timberwolves. It's a new year and I have a new podcast here at the Ringer, Offguard, hosted by me and my guy, Pasha Higigi. Austin and I go way back and talk so much hoop already that we figure those time to fire up the mics and let you in on all of these conversations. Every week, Pasha and I will hit on the biggest stories happening in the league.

And get Austin's perspective of someone currently hooping in the NBA. Tap into Offguard every Friday on the Ringer NBA show feed on Spotify or wherever you get your podcast. David? Yes. Do you want to start our first podcast together of 2023 with the green chili cheeseburger I ate New Mexico? Oh. Or Mike Pompeo blurbing himself?

Well, I have some food chat, food talk, too. So let's start with Pompeo. Pompeo. Okay. So Mike Pompeo is probably running for president. I think that's the accurate way to discuss his status at this point. could be part of a multi-hitted presidential run that includes Donald Trump, Ron DeSantis, Joe the Kobe Stopper Biden.

Well, Mike Pompeo did what presidential candidates do, which is he published a book. It's called Never Give An Inch. Fighting for the America I Love. Sounds like a presidential memoir or a presidential election memoir. But here's the thing. Somebody tweeted that there's a blurb on Mike Pompeo's book that is by Mike Pompeo. Oh gosh, I'm looking at this now. The blurb reads, my new book reads like a thriller with stories from my heart.

Mike Pompeo. Okay, to be fair, this isn't a print ad of some sort. We're not sure this is on the book. It's probably on the book. But why would you need to do dash Mike Pompeo? Pompeo on the print ad that is devoted to Mike. To be, given the benefit of the doubt,

it is not unheard of for the back of a book, especially a newsworthy book that sort of rushed out, that they don't always take a lot of time to get blurbs or whatever. It's not unheard of to have a quote from the preface on the back of the book, right? Where the blurbs would normally go or a note from the author, something that affect. Most people, when speaking about their own book, would not call it a thriller with stories from the heart.

I mean, he's speaking in blurb ease when he says that. There's no other way to interpret that. It's really weird. That is the generic nonfiction blurb. It reads like a thriller. Yeah. It reads like a murder mystery. It could only have been more disingenuous if he hadn't have claimed to have read his own book, right?

Mike Pompeo is the public servant we've all been dying to hear from. that's the first lie is I read what's in these pages. Yeah. Not not that it reads like a thriller. By the way, there's absolutely zero chance Mike Pompeo's book reads like a thriller. I thought you're going to say there's zero chance he's read his book. Well, I think both.

I think we can, might guess that both are true. Maybe if you leave, maybe this should like for the record, this book was so ghost written that I can that I can blurb it with a clear conscience. All right. Can we talk holiday food now? Please, please.

I was in New Mexico visiting my two uncles, who are bachelors, who you have met and heard much about over the years. And the thing I wanted to do with my uncles besides sitting in bars, sitting in different bars, watching Fox News while they enjoyed that particular channel, was to go down to the tiny hamlet of San Antonio, New Mexico, and have a green chili cheeseburger. Oh, yeah. This is probably the most New Mexico food. You might argue Carnia avada or something like that, red chili or green chili itself, but the green chili burger, which is your basic cheeseburger,

but with green chili, and if you haven't been to New Mexico, to eat the food, this is not chili sauce. This is a vegetable. My uncle Rod compares it to, it's like a grape versus a raisin. You just pick it at different times.

Yeah. And my uncles would just have mounds of this stuff that they would, you know, DC'd and put in the freezer and then just bring it out for 12 months of the year after the chilly harvest. So we go down there to Buckhorn Burger, David. And I want to tell you how awesome this is. There was a sign outside Buckhorn Burger that said number seven in America. Number seven out of all? Yeah. Not the best burger you've ever eaten, folks. It number seven. in America. That's what the sign says. All right. So I did a little research. It turns out, which meaning I googled it, turns out there was a

GQ list of 20 hamburgers you have to eat before you die. I am fairly confident I have Googled and read that list. Buckhorn Burger was number seven on that list. Wow. So truth in advertising. They did not claim to be something they weren't. And dude, this burger, it was so good. Really?

Meat tasted so fresh, cheese melted. There was a lot of green chili. It was not too hot. Might have liked it a little hotter, but it was so good. My uncle made the rookie mistake of ordering the double green chili burger, which I never do because I want my meat. Why was he making the rookie mistake? I don't know.

He's Mr. Green Chili Burger. I don't know. Lifelong New Mexican. I have no idea. But I always think like that messes up the meat to condiment ratio a little bit. That's important. That's important. You want every bite to have exactly.

the right amount of everything. Yeah. So, see, I didn't make that mistake. I just ate my almost half-pound green chili burger, and then I ordered another one and ate that too. See, that's smart. So I went to, I went on, what was a fairly familiar at this point, Charlotte eating tour, which is basically, it has a couple of stops.

One is the diamond restaurant, which is the, it's an old diner, but it is also the spiritual heir to the penguin restaurant, which was a, very like a notorious old smoke-filled diner where they had the best burgers in town. And so at one point, the penguin chains tans or whatever, and all the cooks went to the diamond. And they have their burgers are, they come in one patty, two patty or three patties, right? It's like the single, the half stack, and the hemmy. This is the same choice you're facing that I was facing.

Same choice, except this is North Carolina. So instead of the green chili sauce, we're deliberating over if we want slaw or chili or just regular chili or both on our burgers. But I have the same thing because it's like I usually want, I mean, you have this, you have a similar conversation when you're ordering from Shake Shack, but it's like, do you want the one burger? Is it optimized at the one paddy or is it optimized at the two paddy? And if they're little patties, you want the two. I actually got the two and about halfway through took one of them out. So I had, I started, I started strong. And then I was like, I actually want to eat the other stuff, you know, more than just have it all squirt out the back. So that was great. Also did. So wait a second. Just before you get to that, at, After you took the patty out, did you just eat it like a plain hamburger patty like you were at Luby's in 1992? No, I'm going to, I'm somewhat embarrassed to inform you that I left it on the plate. But we also, we started off with the, we started the meal with some pomeo cheese dip that sort of, that was more than I needed to eat to begin with. So, um, fair enough.

Also had the great Midwood barbecue, which is, I don't believe a historical establishment is one of the modern places or at least feels like one, but it is just the best in the world. but I had it at someone else's house, you know, like it was catered. So I always go in there and I'm just like, do I want the brisket? Do I want the ends? Do I want, you know, and it's like this whole deliberation, which sides do I want? No, no, no, no.

I didn't get to choose. I had pulled pork and I had coleslaw and mac and cheese. They were the only options and it was the best thing I've ever had in my life. I don't, I no longer I'm going to make decisions when I go to barbecue places. I just want all of two things. That's basically it. All I care about is coleslaw and pulled pork, really. also had some barbecue here in States.

Statesville is the big eye opener. Randy's barbecue is a legendary place that we always pick up from, got some from there. And Fifers, my dad kept talking about Fifer's chicken. I had no idea what it was. It's just a barbecue and wing spot that just killed me. It was so delicious. So yeah, we've had a lot of good food on this trip.

I'm sure I'm forgetting something. I will say the one other thing, the one thing that is united all of these meals is sweet tea, which I can get without thinking twice about it. The sugar content, because this is like, hey, I'm on vacation. I'm not in the South that much, like whatever. I don't know that I would think about it that much in the North. But man, we are really, the rest of the country is really, really missing out on like 32-ounce styrofoam cups with the little ice and sweet tea.

It is the greatest drink in the world. I thought you were going to say that what United all these meals was, regret. Never. Never. Because I know I took a big long walk around the neighborhood before this podcast this morning. But a few moments of shame here in the new year. But I'm getting better, David. I'm working on it. Coming up on the press box, the condition of Bill's safety, DeMar Hamlin has improved since he went to cardiac arrest on the football field, a second round of thoughts on how that event was covered. Plus, the way Kevin McCarthy became speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives was the funniest workplace comedy in years. We offer our review. And the

TCU Hornfrogs, yes, David, the TCU hornfrogs of Fort Worth, Texas are playing for the national championship. They are really good at football. Why this requires sports writers like us to rewire our minds. All that more on the press box. A part of the ringer podcast network. Media consumers, Brian Curtis, David Shoemaker, producer Erica Cervantes here. Let's start with the important stuff about DeMar Hamlin, David. He is doing much better.

One week ago tonight, Hamelin went into cardiac arrest during the Bills, Bengals Monday night football game. He left the field in an ambulance. There were very few updates about his condition for the next day and a half. And then yesterday, before the suite of NFL game started,

we saw DeMar Hamelin on social media. breathing tube is out. He's talking. On Twitter, he was making a heart symbol with his hands for his Bill's teammates who were about to go out and play the Patriots. Dawson Knox, the tight end when he scored a touchdown, did the symbol right back to him in the end zone. That was a very cool moment.

Before we do any media naval gazing here, if you could have pushed the fast forward button last Monday night and found out that this would be where we would be a week later with DeMarne Hamlin. what a relief that would have been. Yeah, it's totally true. I mean, it's, well, I mean, with what information we had, I mean, at the time, and certainly just like the way that we all felt at the time, this feels like nothing short of a miracle, right?

I mean, but it's, it's, it's incredible. It's incredible to think about it. And, and, I mean, in this day and age, it's going to sound so melancholy. I mean, so cloying, I guess, but, like, what a great trajectory. What a great narrative arc of a story, you know, where things only. things start bad and just get better. That's not always the way that... We hope, again, knock on one, we hope is continued recovery.

But yes, it is nice as we sit here today to talk about this in happy terms. I wanted to get to a few things about ESPN's coverage of the event on Monday night football. Jason Gay and I had a first pass at this last week and I feel this is one of those things. You almost need some time to think about and process. Yeah. A couple of things I wanted to talk to you about that I thought ESPN did really. really well on Monday night. The first was the sideline

reporting of Lisa Salters. Let's listen to this clip. This is one of her updates after the field had been cleared, after DeMar Hamlet had left Pecor Stadium in an ambulance, she told this to the nation. We've grown accustomed to it, seeing guys

take hard hits, see them stay down for a little while, get back up, give the thumbs up. And that's all we were all hoping for was that that DeMarie Hamlin was going to get up and that he was going to get in that ambulance. He was going to give us a thumbs up and we were all going to know that he was okay. And when that didn't happen, I think this entire stadium was just devastated.

I mean, right now, all I can't really think about is that player, his teammates, just seeing the agony on their faces, the concern on their faces. They're scared for him right now and they should be. We all should be. You can hear it in her voice there, David. She's not only doing a great job providing all the information, what she's seeing from the field, but in the same breath managing to convey the emotions that she's not only seeing, but she's feeling herself. Yeah, it's true.

I mean, we don't get that sort of humanity from any kind of journalist, any kind of broadcaster very frequently. And, you know, if you want to take it on its own turn, on those terms, there was really no way to convey the moment outside of showing the sort of humanity. And so I think just by opening herself up did the best possible work she could have done. It was interesting. They came back from a commercial. And this is when I believe Hamlin was still on the field, the paramedics there and the training staff was still working on him. And ESPN was showing the faces of these Buffalo Bills players. Those images that would just become so emblazoned in our minds over the next 24 hours.

And she just had, you know, Salters just had this amazingly sort of brisk and complete way to just talk about it. You know, she talked about the looks on their faces as we were seeing them. She talked about them holding hands of players praying. And it's so interesting because I was thinking, you know, the sideline reporter. has been this job in sports television that has, you know, been critiqued, to put it mildly for the last several decades. Sure. I've found, you know, when I've gone and sat in trucks a couple of times during football games,

sideline reporters are actually talking to the truck all the time, providing updates. Hey, that player who just went out of the game, he's actually getting taped up right now. And then the cameras will go find them. or hey, that guy, he's actually standing on the sidelines ready to get back into the game. They're offering way more information and helping the broadcast along way more than we ever see from our living room couch. Sure. So there's that.

But even if you just take Lisa Salters and what she did on television last Monday night, I mean, to me, that's what the job is. That's what the job can be. That's why the job's important, right? To have, when you have a situation like that, God forbid, somebody is on. the field and can communicate what it is like down here versus what you're seeing up there. Yeah, I think that's a really good, that's a really good perspective. I think the big critique of it, it just sort of seems like it to a lot of people just feels like an unnecessary job in the age of, you know, high-deaf cameras and zoom lenses and everything

else, you know, and especially, you know, social media and our own, our own eyes. But yeah, no, it's to be in a moment like that, you want to sort of be as present as possible. And that's a great example of how that role is really irreplaceable. After ESPN had left the stadium and then left this studio show with Susie Colbert, Adam Schaefter, and Booger McFarlane, they went to Sports Center studio in Washington, D.C. with Ryan Clark and Scott Van Pelt. I want to talk about each of them for just a second. Ryan Clark is an ESPN analyst who played the same position as Demar Hamlin with Pittsburgh and Washington. He was called on to sort of offer, I guess you would call it perspective about what players feel in times like this, or I guess, you know, more universally, just what a former player is thinking at that moment.

Here's a little bit of what he said. I was as relieved as these players are that Sean McDermen. and Zach Taylor said, you know what, we're not playing tonight. We understand what you're going through. Because we, this is all we've ever wanted to do. This is all DeMarne Hamlin has ever wanted to do. This is the only job in his life he's ever worked for him since the time he was in elementary. And he got to do it.

But part of it is this risk. And for him to be in this position right now, no one on that sideline, nobody in the stands thought that this could happen. And this is why it is such a difficult thing for everyone to. to deal with because that young man, not may it never play again, that man, young man may never breathe again. And that's something that the entire world

had to witness about football. I think there's something almost schematic sometimes about ESPN where you have, here's your host and here's your former player. And we must have some version of that pairing on every single ESPN show. Man, when I was watching that last Monday night, I was like, oh, right, here is absolutely the moment

moment where we need a former player to talk about what this feels like as a player. Yeah, and I think that the, I don't know if it was deliberate or slip at the tongue, but by far the most sort of poignant, the most profound words that he spoke were the last two, about football. They saw this about football. They didn't see this thing happen in a football game. They didn't see this in football. They saw that, and what's I think most sort of heart-rending from a zoomed-out perspective about the whole thing is that this sort of injury while obviously this is not common but this

sort of the the specter of this sort of injury is intrinsic to football you know and that's why we someone this is all they've ever wanted to do with their life you know this is what they fought so hard for this is what we're seeing is the is the is the is the flip side of that and and and it sort of amplifies the level of commitment the level of passion the level of love that it takes. But it, you know, it also is a, you know, some tragedies are, are senseless. And this was a senseless tragedy on some level. But I think part of the great depths of sadness and the, just the, the outpouring of feeling from other players is that there was maybe not sense to it, but there was a certain, there's somewhere in the back of every football player's mind,

there's this fear. Totally. Totally. I said that, you know, I mentioned this a minute ago. There weren't very many updates at all that night about Hamlin's condition. You know, we're all watching this from home and wondering, you know, is he going to be okay? And, you know, so Ryan Clark was put in this position where he wasn't really responding to anything. You know, it wasn't like, here's an update. Here's something. Tell us, tell us about this or tell us what a player's feeling.

He just was essentially given the prompt to just talk about this. And I think that's really, really difficult. he wound up talking about it and taking it to places that I would not have expected it to go and covering the emotional part of it, the prospective part of it, as you say, that lingering fear in people's minds, that part of it. He mentioned his own injuries while, you know, being careful to not try to equate them with what Damar Hamlin was going through. It was just amazing. And sitting across from him is Scott Van Pelt.

You and I have talked about before the job of being a sportscaster on TV almost leads you into being a robot. You're going to call the touchdown pass perfectly. If you're going to deliver the catchphrase on SportsCenter with just the right timing, you wind up becoming robotic, right? You wind up becoming this creature of television. What's so interesting about him to me amidst all the great sports center anchors we've seen over the years is he has just been able to keep his humanity intact. on the job. You know, all these people are humans, but he has been able to bring that part of

himself to work. Yeah. For lack of a better phrase, you know, we've seen him talk about his dad. We've seen him talk about his dog. We've seen him talk about so many different kinds of things. But like when you that night, right, like you could hear his voice. It was, it felt like it was right on the edge of breaking for a long periods of time. And not breaking, but just acknowledging, I think and not being afraid to acknowledge just how emotional that whole situation was. Yeah, I think that says it. I mean, you can hear so much in the audio. You can hear an end.

Yeah, I mean, it's, you know, it's, it was just an incredible, just such a bizarre, heartbreaking, just such an indescribable, I guess, moment when it happened in real time. The last thing you want is for someone to have to be trotted out there to explain it, to describe it, to whatever. You'd never want to be in that position. I mean, Bill, our boss said out on his podcast, you know, when it happened. But of course, I'm reminded, I'm sure you are of Owen Hart dying in the WWB ring. And that moment of not knowing what to do as a fan, right? And we didn't see it in the way that we saw the NFL game, obviously, thankfully.

So what we remember is Jim Ross, the announcer, the camera cutting to him out of a break and him saying, you know, this is as real as real gets, folks. You know, this is not part of the show. And you feel the visceral pain coming out of, as J.R. tries to be as straight down the line, you know, straight down the middle as possible. He's walking a line trying to not be in character.

But I think every broadcaster has to do that, right? you are in character when you're when you're on and and the best some of the best are people who find a way to be somewhat themselves while they're playing a character you know but it's it's that that tension and that and you that comes through in the heartbreak is um is is part is going to always be part of our memory of it that is exactly right and it's almost like we've all seen ted coppel and peter jennings and you know network newsmen when we're growing up have this particular manner on the air in a, you know, after a tragedy or in a difficult time. And it's almost like something in our brain tells us that's the way we're supposed to act in a time like

this. Yeah. Whereas Van Pell, you know, when he, when he asked the question to Lisa Saltors that produced that clip we just played, he started the question as a human being, comma. You know, almost as if he's saying, you know, let's, let's bring this in. Let's not forget this. We don't have to be, Kent Brockman doing the news here, right? Or Dead Gobble doing the news. We can just, we can acknowledge this as part. And the audience wants us to acknowledge that this is part of the story we see in front of us. I tell you something too, I thought really contributed to the Van Pelt-Clark pairing was they were in the studio in Washington, D.C., where Van Pelt does Sports Center now.

And if you notice, they were really, that's a small studio, much smaller than the studios down in Bristol. And they were very, very close to each other across the desk. It almost looked like they were about to reach out and give each other a hug. I mean, they were face to face. And it gave it this real intimacy, I thought. It made it feel like, you know, it again, allowed them to acknowledge it emotion. It gave it this intimacy that I think, you know, whenever I watch the sports centers,

since they built the new studios back, I think it was 2014 in Bristol. It just seemed like swallowed up by that massive set sometimes. This, and again, maybe this is just because that's the go-to studio. I don't think there's any more thinking than there. It just felt like the right place to do that broadcast. I couldn't agree with that more. I didn't even notice that. But I'm watching right now as we're talking.

You're totally right. A couple of things I've been thinking about two cents last Monday night. You know, there's obviously always pronouncements online because we're sitting there Monday night. We all want to do something, right? we all feel powerless in that instance. And so we're going to, you know, we're going to donate to the toy drive. And that will make us feel a little bit better tomorrow Hamlin's toy drive. Right.

We're going to make big pronouncements about ESPN and all this stuff. And I almost think it's like one of these things that you, if when ESPN sits down and huddles about this at some point in the future and says, what are the things we should think about next time when God forbid if we find ourselves in this situation again? Here are a couple of things I suspect will come up when they have those discussions. Okay. First one is this is not unique to ESPN, but football, when there's an injury on the field in football, an injury more than just a guy who sits down for, for, you know, 10 seconds and then hops right back up, we always go to commercial. That is industry-wide.

ESPN, NBC, CBS, everybody, Fox, you go to commercial and almost look away. And because DeMar Hamlin was on the field for more than 20 minutes, ESPN wound up going to four commercials during that time. Okay. Yeah. And, you know, just as a viewer, we're sitting there going, oh, my gosh, is he okay? What's, you know, what has happened to this guy? And you're seeing like Paul Giamati and Cecily Strong in these ads over and over again, which are just very light and very tonally different. Mm-hmm.

And I kind of wanted to ask you about that because, again, This is something that sports television does and has always done. Almost like, let's take a breath. Let's look away. Let's not linger here, you know, any more than we need to. What do you think about cutting to commercial, especially for commercials in a time like that? I've thought a lot about it. I don't know what else you can really do because it's the, the, talk about the human reaction from Lisa Salters and everybody.

you know, Scott Van Pelt, the human reaction in a time like that in real life is to stand silent, you know, or to hug the person next to you or ask what's going on. Part of the difficulty of doing on television is any part of that that you can accomplish kind of gets accomplished pretty quickly, you know, and you don't, there's a lot of repetition in real life. There's, you know, you can repeat things on television, but, you know, once you've done something, you don't do it again. I mean, if you stay, if you just keep, the camera on the field, you run the risk of seeming or being exploitive. Yes.

If you send it back to the studio, it's going to be performative at beyond some point, or else it's not going to be about what's happening. If you go back to the studio to talk about the other games or to talk about the playoff standings, then it becomes, it runs the risk of seeming slash being totally wrongheaded. right um so in some sense the commercial is the only way to sort of like bide time without making a decision and even if you feel like it's the wrong decision and i think what a lot of humans reach for in moments like that is that is not having to make a decision you know what what is what is how can i just continue doing how can i just not have to choose what comes next because what comes

next is frightening you know for any number of reasons so i i mean listen it's easy to to say it's in bad taste. It might have been in bad taste. I don't know. I don't know. I mean, I feel like when we were kids, it would have been like, and now, you know, now we're just, they would just like cut to like three stooges reruns at a moment like that or something. You know, I mean, you would just try to find some way to get away from it. And I think the reality is too, is kind of almost too much to digest. I think that's well said. Just to be clear, I'm not necessarily saying it's, I'm not saying it's in bad taste, you know, to cut to commercials. I just think it's it's an interesting feature of sports television because if you imagine something like this had happened on CNN, some medical story like that, they're staying right there the whole time.

Now maybe as you said, it would have veered into exploitation or you'd have announcers just freestyling and talking about things they don't understand that are in front of them. And sometimes it's better to just not do that, not put people in that awkward position. But it's just interesting. And to me, it's, like I said, it's one of those things, I think, with ESPN, with Fox, with everybody that you just should think about with football, especially, and injuries. You know, what's the way we react to this? Do we stay there with it? Does that acknowledge it more that we think this is something serious? Or do we need to move away from it and look away from it for a few minutes at a time?

Just something to think about. The other thing, and you ask like, what are you going to do in terms of, you know, going to a studio or something? something like that. I will say the one thing I would have loved to know more last night with or last Monday night, excuse me, as a viewer, was just more about Demar Hamlin, I think. You know, that's, he was a guy coming into that game that a lot of people were not that familiar with or familiar with at all. Yeah, it's a good point. And I think like the main question ESPN could not answer, which was what, you know, is he going to be okay? Right. That was the singular question. I think the secondary question was just, who is he?

Right? Tell us more about him. You know, is this something where you just have a PA, you know, reading his Wikipedia entry into an anchor's ear so they can just start putting information, you know, into the world about him? Because I know I was sitting there and just wanting to know as much about him as I could in that moment, especially in that moment of uncertainty. I know ESPN had a bill, their bill's be writer, Elena Getsenberg, was in the press box at Paycourt Stadium. you know and I don't know if there was a you know a scenario where somebody thought maybe we should send a stage manager down there and just bring her into the booth with joe and troy and just like tell us everything you know about this person she certainly did great work all weekend and interviewed him and

knew him um that was just something interesting too i think just answer you know and again i don't have all the wisdom in the world but just in that moment when you think when you're in this situation you think what can we do i think explaining who he is what we should know about him is perhaps something you could go to in that in that setting. Yeah, you're absolutely right about that. All right, David, coming up in 30 seconds, let's talk about the greatest workplace comedy of the last 20 years, the election of a new speaker of the house. 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. Senior nominees to at the Pressbox pod where they are always gratefully received. One of this week's runners up, David, is about Rick Singer. You remember Rick Singer because he is the Operation Varsity Blues guy. Oh, yeah. He was helping rich people's kids get into college. Last week, he was sentenced to three and a half years in prison. It was an overwork Twitter joke to write,

Singer of all people should be able to get admitted for the full four years. thanks to Trey Bates. Also in weekend news, David, the Miami Dolphins made the playoffs. Kind of, you know, made the playoffs in the most basic sense of the term. Yeah. Which got a congratulatory tweet from superfan Darius Rucker. It was another word Twitter joke to write that dolphins finally didn't make us cry. Thanks to Elliott Powers.

And this week's winner, David, is jokes about Kevin McCrace. McCarthy trying and failing and failing again and failing 14 times to become Speaker of the House. A lot of sports theme jokes. Despite six losses in a row, McCarthy can still become Speaker with a Patriots loss, a Jaguars win, and a Steelers tie. If there's no speaker after nine ballots, each party gets to start with a runner on second base. Kevin McCarthy isn't elected on the 15th ballot. The decision goes to the Veterans Committee.

Carlos Correa to be Speaker of the House pending physical. And this wasn't sports, but I always laugh at this one. If you're in line to be Speaker of the House, stay in line. Thanks to Matthew Ziland, Mark, Fein, Marcus Gilmer, Dave Mulhern, Riley Abel and John Walters, if you think the next Speaker election must be held at a neutral stadium, congrats. You made the overwork Twitter joke of the week.

All right, in the notebook dump, David. Let us talk about Kevin McCarthy. I got to tell you, man, I had some flashbacks to Mrs. Philp A.B. History class in Fort Worth. Remember when she'd show us those old political cartoons where like House of Representatives member was holding a club and threatening another one? I'm not even sure that was a political cartoon so much as an artist rendering. We almost got to that on Friday night. Yep. Kevin McCarthy was trying to get his dream job, David. It's a representative from Bakersfield, California, 57 years old. Kind of has that frozen smile face where he looks like he's always

happy even when he's suffering enormous professional embarrassment. Katie Edmond said the New York Times said he was an affable class president type, which just seems to get Kevin McCarthy pretty good. So damning, yeah. So he had a problem, which is the Republicans only have a narrow majority in the house. And if he was going to get a majority of the total house, he couldn't lose very many Republicans. And there were a lot of skeptical Republicans who did not like Kevin McCarthy. I don't even know if it's worth teasing out the ideological reasons because it seems like we're sort of post ideology here, right?

Yeah. Get what, 20 holdouts? And they were like, well, we don't like this guy. And if we oppose him, we can extract all kinds of concessions from this guy. Yes. So, and that's where the funny workplace comedy part comes in because it's like, I want to be the boss. In order to be the boss, I have to get these. employees to sign off on me. But in order to do that, I have to make myself less of the boss

than I would have been. Yeah. I have to make my dream job less dreamy. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it seems like even on the other side, you're asking for all these concessions, right? Clearly, you're going to ask for the moon and stars. Maybe you won't get it all. Maybe there'll be some negotiation. But at some point when you're asking for it, so you have to say like, but if he's saying yes to me, what has he already said yes to for everybody else? If he said yes to Matt Gates, Yeah. And Lauren Bobert, what is he given to the rest of the Congress people? Exactly.

Gates was just like all the personal attacks on Kevin McCarthy that he had. He called him at one point the LeBron James of Special Interest Fundraising. Weirder mixed metaphors I've ever encountered. The LeBron James of, we need to have a LeBron James Award. Is the implication that he was better at special interest fundraising for years? ago and and now he's got a even though he's got a co-equal potentially better partner

in a special entrance fundraising and still not adding up to much in terms of special yeah he's always trying to get himself involved on Twitter in special interest fundraising is that how he is the LeBron James of that so we went to this weird kind of appeasement David I guess you would

say for the holdouts there were all kinds of concessions given there's this thing that I did not know about called the emotion to vacate rule. This means how many representatives have to stand up and say, I want to replace the Speaker of the House. And that number is how many it takes to get a vote for that. Under Nancy Pelosi, it had to be a majority of House Democrats. They would have to be so disenchanted, a majority, not 10, but a majority or a member of the party leadership. With McCarthy, he initially

told the rebels, okay, if you just get five people, just five representatives. And we know there were already 20 holdouts at the beginning of this, you can proceed with the motion to vacate. That didn't work. Five was too many for the rebels, or they sensed weakness and kept going. So now we got it down to one representative can stand up and say, I want to replace the speaker. One. So the guy who called you the LeBron James of special interest fundraising can stand up and potentially derail everything.

Yeah. Which they're going to do, right? Well, at some point, what's the downside? I mean, if there's anything that we've learned from politics over the past five years, especially on the Republican side, it's just like, dude, if you can stake out more claim to being lowest common denominator or whatever, that's either. I don't even need to be that antagonistic. If you can just be the most hardcore of the hardcore, then, you know, you can make yourself a lot of money, if nothing else. This is a pretty rare in American life for a speaker candidate to lose, especially lose on the first ballot, according to Molly Jong Fast and Vanity Fair.

The last time this happened, America had 48 states, which is a little bit of a time frame if you're wondering. Then this all comes to a head on Friday night. It came home. I was alone in my house here in L.A. David, and I turned on the TV. I was actually tweeting out at Chris Fowlerpod, and somebody responded like, are you okay? because you need to be on CNN right now. And what had happened is McCarthy had won over a bunch of these holdouts, but he still needed six more.

And on Friday night, it was very late on the East Coast. On the 14th ballot, he was like, I got it. I get to be class president now. His family was in the gallery there for the big moment. Washington Post said he was straightening his jacket like he was, you know, knew he was about to be on camera and give his big speech. and then Matt Gates, the aforementioned, voted present, which meant that McCarthy was still one vote short.

And this is when it turned into AP history. Because first McCarthy went up to try to talk to Gates. And by the way, did you know that like so much of this happened with just somebody standing up and crossing the chamber and talking? So weird. And then Mike Rogers, representative from Alabama, had to be restrained when he would, was approaching Matt Gates.

Somebody tweeted, I'm going to tell my kids, this is the first Survivor series. Yeah. Enjoyed that. By the way, it was a great still photograph from Andrew Harnick of the AP. I put it in our Google Doc here. This was an amazing night for C-SPAN as we'll just talk in a minute. And also amazing night for Still Photography. Welcome Back Still Photography.

So after that 14th vote failed, Donald Trump started making some phone calls. And speaking of photos, there's another great one of Marjorie Taylor Green holding up her phone. It's ringing and it says DT on it. Oh yeah. I saw that. It's fantastic. DT is calling. She's trying to get someone else to take the call or trying to hand the phone off to someone else. And D.T. had been pro Kevin McCarthy because Kevin McCarthy was pro D.T. Trump called him my Kevin, which is really, really funny term of endearment. Gates then indicated McCarthy he would change his vote. But Republicans, meanwhile, had voted to adjourn.

So like Friday night, they were going to say, okay, we'll come back on Monday. And then, uh-oh, Gates is changing his vote. Let's go unadjurn. So we actually saw on C-SPAN or on CNN people racing to the front of the chamber to change their votes on adjournment. Yes. The vote total flips Republicans finally on the 15th ballot elect Kevin McCarthy. And that's where we are.

today. Speaker Kevin McCarthy at Long Last. What drama. What success. What a dream for political writers. Yeah. What a dream for political writers. Although I did see photos on Twitter of a lot of said political writers hanging up in the balcony with their eyes drooping shut. You know what I mean, but you know the joke always is- Almost too much drama to appreciate. They want a brokered convention, right? Like, you know, that's their thing. And it's like, it's such a, it's a gag. Like, well, if we could just, If it would just be like with, oh, Hubert Humphrey, we could really do some magic on this beat, you know, just like my old pal, Jack Germann did. They kind of got their brokered convention. Yeah, they did.

Jake Tapper was doing that face where he looks like he's really serious, but he's also the ends of his mouth are curved into a smile. Mm-hmm. So you can tell he's enjoying it. I love them. Finally, Dave, before we get out of here, TCU, playing Georgia tonight for the national championship. People might hear this after the game's over. but man, we got to talk about how sports writers' brains get rewired. When teams, they don't expect to be championship level or suddenly championship level.

Okay, go on. You and I are both from Fort Worth. We were both bathed in TCU culture growing up. We did not go to TCU, so we're not fake rooting for TCU tonight. I am rooting. I would prefer them to win, but I am not, I'm not, I just didn't count. I don't get to notch this one. Not wearing any hornfrogs gear, as you see.

speak. TCU football games were kind of like your parents' friend doesn't have a better idea or we went to put putt last week. So let's go to the TCU football game. Sure. Yeah. How do you find it trying to wrap your mind around the idea that the TCU horn frogs? Again, team's been pretty good at football in the Gary Patterson era for Sunny Dice came in,

which could suddenly be the national champion. What's the question? How do we reconcile that? How do we feel about that? Yeah. Don't you think it requires a kind of. of rejiggering of the sports writerly mind when a new team comes in like. I've been through so much of that with Baylor, I mean, which is my alma mater since I graduated.

I mean, when I left, it was women's basketball aside about the most, the most depressing sports school you could possibly imagine. And then, you know, they started putting in the work, aka money at the same time that TCU did. And it's pretty amazing how, you know, several multiple millions of dollars can turn something like that around in a hurry. But it is. I mean, it's, it's, it, it changes, especially when we're talking about the national

championship game, you know, one of one. There's nothing else like it. It is, it does sort of alter your comprehension of the whole thing, you know, footballs. Of all the, of all the sports relies so much still to this day on storied, you know, storied schools with, with, you know, long legacies and stuff. And then a bunch of kids in purple with a frog on their helmet come marching in. It's a very different thing. I think it would also be different if it were like, you know,

the University of Texas had been bad forever and then they appear. And it's like, well, but those uniforms, the school sounds legitimate and the uniforms look traditional. Well, we'd be doing the sleeping giant thing. Yeah. They were always a sleeping giant. Sure. All this was, I saw Seth Wickersham the other day saying, I wish Dan Jenkins was alive to write a TCU story.

And it's true. And one of the things that always amazed me about Dan, who was a Sports Illustrated writer in native Fort Worthy and NTCU grad was he was around in the 30s when TCU claimed a couple of national championships. Yeah. But the idea of TCU being the best football team in the country, he alone was totally comfortable with that idea. He remembered always, always amazing to me.

I think I said this the other day, but like best TCU game ever went to, they beat Texas for the first time in like decades and they were going to the Independence Bowl in Shreveport. that was the, if they won, that was, I think they were head to get to six and five. And they won the game, the stadium, Amin G Carter Stadium felt like it was going to fall apart. It was amazing. And then there's two old Texas guys in front of me,

when I'm turned to the other one, and goes, well, we're going to Sleesport. Sleesport yesterday, tomorrow, the national championship. Oh, that's great. Sleesport, one of my favorite places to visit. It's time for the first 2023 edition of David Shumaker, is the strained pun headline. Yeah.

Our last headline of 2022 about chat GPT's attempt to do Shakespeare was the bard of AI Von. Today's headline comes from me. I was in Albuquerque and I was looking for stuff to do, David, and came across a concert for country music superstar Clint Black. Wow. Now, Black was playing his whole catalog, but his wife, Lisa Hartman Black, who was a TV actor and singer herself, was going to.

to be performing with him. So he had a concert that featured Clint Black, the great Clint Black songs, and his wife. What was Clint Black's strain pun concert tour name? This is the name of the tour? Yes. Heart to Heart, Hartman, uh, Heart, Hartman, uh, black.

Now we're playing, we're playing the big song, so we're playing the hits. And okay, that's the start. and then we've got Lisa Hartman Black there. So it's the hits and... The hits and the heart... My wife. My wife. My wife.

The hits and... Hits and hers? The hits and the... Not Mr. Clint Black, but... The hits and the misses. Oh, okay, that's great. I love that. That's fantastic.

And weirdly, the tour, by the way, is called mostly hits and the misses. didn't know if we needed that final little thing in there. Oh my God, David Shoemaker. I'm Brian Curtis. Production Magic by Erica Servantus. Coming up this week on the press box,

big one for me, being a good Fort Worth boy that I am, Michael Irvin, the former Dallas Cowboys wide receiver is going to come on, David, and talk about the 30th anniversary of the 1992 world champion Dallas Cowboys. If you'll remember,

that was our freshman year in high school. Do you think I'm going to enjoy that interview? Plus more lukewarm takes about the media. See you later, David. See you later, Ryan.