The Press Box - NBA Playoffs Notes, the Horror of the Replay Review, and the USFL’s “Why” Problem

Episode Date: April 18, 2022

Bryan and David react to the first round of the NBA playoffs and discuss the Kyrie Irving drama, buzzer-beaters and replay reviews, and the play-in tournament’s impact on the sport (7:47). Then, they break down the USFL’s return, highlight another Media Piss Test, and weigh in on the Announcer Voice (35:42). 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

This is Dave Chang and Chris Ying. We are the hosts of Recipe Club. You may have listened to it before, but we are now back on the air, new and improved, with the same host that lose every week. I still don't know what the rules are because they've changed as well. Chris, can you give a quick rundown? Every week, we debate the best way to cook the things you want to eat. We take a user, listener submitted recipe, and we all cook it with our friends,

Priya Krishna, Rachel Kong, Brian Ford, and John DeBerry. and then we talk about what went right and what went wrong. No, I actually really don't want to do this podcast. And they are hardly our friends. They are enemies. They are enemies. It's Dave's civil disobedience. If you want to see Dave Chang in an act of civil disobedience,

tune in to Recipe Club where he will not follow the recipe. I'm contractually obligated to make this podcast. But I'm here to have a good time. So listen to Recipe Club every week on the Ringer Podcast Network. David, what's on your mind today? So yesterday was Easter. This is not an Easter-related statement or anecdote or anything like that, except that had some of my family over yesterday to celebrate the holiday to have lunch to that whole thing.

This is like this is a media podcast. Movies and music count as media. They do. Sure. Sure. So we need an opening. They certainly do. So we're listening to just some, I'm sure it was Spotify, playlist of, you know,

old songs and just general festive music. And the beginning of, well, I'm not going to even tease it, the beginning of Ray Charles' song, The Mess Around came on. And somebody at the table said, well, what song is this? And three other people at the table said, this is the mess around. And it was almost as amazing to the people who knew it, that we all knew it than it was to the person who was asking the question, right? And so we're all sitting there thinking,

How do we all know this? I mean, it's a classic song. It's a great song. It has a sort of legendary, identifiable riff. So, I mean, it's not like shocking that one of us would know that we all knew. And so we're like, well, this must have been in a movie from our childhood, right? So I opened up my phone and I Googled it. And that led me to this, which is a new edition of legendary press box segment.

Google has questions. You know, when you type in a question into Google, and that has suggested questions that pop up right underneath and you kind of get an idea of what the world is asking along these lines, right? So I searched for, I think I just typed in Mess Around Song, right? I'm just going in, I'm using my phone. I'm going very, very, like, surface here.

Okay. And one of the first suggested questions that comes up is what movie was the song Mess Around In? So I'm like, okay, here we have the answer. And the answer was planes, trains, and automobiles. which is a great movie. If you remember that scene, it's when Steve Martin's asleep in the car

and John Candy's driving and smoking a cigarette and the Messeron comes on. It's John Hughes magic, right? You're going the wrong way. Yeah, exactly. It's a fantastic scene. I mean, but yet it felt insufficient, right? I said, oh, it's from plane, trains, and automobiles

and the other two people that knew it were just like, no, that's not. That's not the movie. We don't know that movie. So that led me down the rabbit hole. It was also, that scene from planes, trains, and automobiles was parodied on Family Guy. And I believe also in TED2.

So there's obviously a connection. There's a big, big, planes, trains, an automobile slash mess around fandom in the background there. But what's more interesting is the questions that followed, right? It was this not about the mess around anymore. It immediately starts suggesting, how did Ray Charles go blind?

Which I didn't know that there was, there's not that much of a story there, but a lot of people are apparently asking this. then who is the most famous blind person, which I would read the list, but it's the three or four people that you're familiar with and a bunch of people that you're not. It's very confusing,

but I'm glad that people are asking this question too. And then it goes to can Ray Charles see? And I know that there's this whole Stevie Wonder conspiracy theory, right? That Stevie Wonder can secretly see? Can Ray Charles see? I decided not to go down that rabbit hole. It felt like a dangerous place to go. But then the question just started getting more and more general and just sort of like, I'll just read them because I don't really have any commentary.

Why do blind people wear sunglasses? Okay. Can a blind person stare at the sun? This is something I'm guessing a lot of children have asked over the years. And then it gets sort of specific and not just about blind people. What happens if you look at the sun for 10 seconds? The question immediately after that is what happens if you look at the sun for 30 seconds? then can your eyes heal from sun damage?

And the question after that was, how can I get my vision back? So I'm guessing there's probably the same people are typing these in a really misbegotten sequence here. So I did 10 seconds. Now, can I go 30? And now, uh-oh, what do I do now? Yeah, back to the questions about blind people dig, which is obviously a little bit sketchy. but someone's asked, can the blind shed tears, which should not be a question,

but apparently a lot of people are asking it. It certainly shouldn't be a question, if you're familiar with the Uber of Ray Charles, who had great songs like, you know, no-use crying, or I guess you could misunderstand that one. And Cry in Time, which is one of the greatest country in Western songs of all time, although that's a Buck Owen song, I believe.

And I started looking at all these other songs, Woke Up Crying, that's a Bert Baccarat in How David's song, I cried for you, drown in my own tears. You've got me crying again. There's a lot of crying that's going on. And Ray Charles' canon, although most of them, if not all of them, written by other people. Don't let the sun catch you crying.

Sort of brings all these ideas together. And again, a rabbit hole. I don't really want to go down. Kind of a weird sleep thematic there. Go ahead. But I started to bring this whole thing full circle, I finally went to YouTube. And I believe that the answer to the question, what movie do we all know this from? is that it's a great scene in Ray, the movie that's about Ray Charles.

And that's, I think, how we all know the song The Mess Around? That's sort of how we left it yesterday. Although, planes, trains, and automobiles would be good enough for me. I mean, I clearly remember it from then, and that's an incredible scene in the movie. And it's just absolutely magical. But if you listening to this, recall seeing the mess around or hearing the mess around in another piece of pop culture that I have somehow overlooked and that Google did not lead me to, when it was leading me down on these other rabbit holes, please tweet at us or something.

Let Brian know and he'll tell me because it's a great song. And this is a riddle that if it's indeed a riddle needs to be answered. Google Questions really is the pulse of America, isn't it? Yeah. And the world. Can we replace Frank Luntz with Google questions? Yes, please. Because if I really want to know what people are thinking, what people are too afraid to ask. Yeah. Google questions. Wow. Coming up on this show, David, we're going to do some notes from the NBA playoffs. We're going to check in on the nascent, only in journalism word, USFL, plus one member of this podcast team has been caught using announcer voice.

Which one of us will it be? Is the guy who always interviews announcers or is it the other guy? All that and more on the press box, a part of the ringer podcast network. Hello media consumers, Brian Curtis, David Shoemaker, producer Erica Servantis here. David, it is NBA playoff time, the highest of holidays here at the ringer.com. And I would like to break out some NBA playoffs notes for you, if I could. Please do. All right.

So did you watch that fantastic Boston Celtics Brooklyn Nets game yesterday? I caught up on it after the fact, but I ended up going back and watching a lot of it. It was a fantastic game. First of all, everybody started busting out that NBA basketball is great. The NBA playoffs are great. great tweets. Now, you know, I'm kind of a, I'm kind of a crabby guy. And I tend not to like those kind of tweets, but I will allow it after Celtics Nets. Yeah. Because it was awesome. It had great drama. You had the whole Kyrie Irving thing. The Kyrie Irving press conference after the fact

became must watch viewing, which is interesting. There's like there's a handful of games where you really just want to see what the player says after the game in this case because the player has done... Is it just in general or specifically about the middle finger incident? Or is this just the general villainy question? Look, if LeBron hits a game winning shot,

LeBron, not in the playoffs, but if LeBron hit a game winning shot, of course I want to see what LeBron says about the game winning shot. But in this case, there was an unanswered question is why are you giving the double bird to the Celtics fans

or can you tell us more about the double? By the way, that whole line of questioning was fantastic when Kyrie afterwards was saying, you know what, I want to talk about the basketball. And everybody's go, okay, you were awesome. We can talk about that, but we also want to talk about this too. I feel like I'm forgetting the other examples. The Miles Bridges throwing the mouthpiece, Kyrie, there have been a couple more recently that made me feel like we're in a sort of new era of, like, I feel like there can be a new

power ranking of how professional athletes deal with these sorts of situations, right? The sort of like the wide range of like the Miles Bridges was the full mea culpa. I shouldn't have done that thing. I apologize. I take whatever punishment. Let's just get that out of the way. You know, and just Kyrie's obviously a little bit more matter of fact answers.

Maybe like you or I might answer just like, well, I was responding in kind, you know. And then, you know, there's obviously like abject denial on the other. I didn't do that. I don't know what you're talking about. Some people go that route. It's fun to see that stuff play out in real time. Yes. And the Irving thing was interesting because there were a lot of people who are,

have very, let us say, big opinions about Kyrie Irving on Twitter. And they watched that. I'm talking about journalists here mostly. They watched his post game press conference. And he just said, look, there's booing and everything. And then people take it to this personal level. They start using a couple of words, which I won't repeat here on the press box. And that's when I do that.

You know, I am responding in kind, as you say. And I think he won some people over, actually. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I heard Bill and Rosillo talking about it. I mean, just the Kyrie storyline in general today about how, you know, he seemed a little bit put off by the fact that the story, the narrative that everybody wanted to talk about was sort of how he's hated by the Celtics fans and all that kind of stuff.

And I agree with that. I mean, it's to some extent, you have to kind of know what storyline you're playing into, right? Or I guess you don't have to, but it probably helps you as a human being to be a little bit self-aware. But yeah, I mean, but I think that despite his sort of ambivalence in that role, his response was, yeah, was human-humanizing. And for a guy that spent the better part of two years being talked about so much more than he's talked, you know, he's about the most, like, abstract professional athlete in the world for his relative to his fame. And I think just being a, giving a straightforward, like regular person answer to a question like that is hugely, you know, it's going to get a hugely positive response.

It was also a really interesting example of the postgame interview and something that is very, very fraught, often in professional sports, especially after a team loses a heartbreaking game like the Nets did. I believe this was Nick Fidel and forgive me if I'm getting this wrong. But basically, Kyrie didn't want to answer the question. So the questioner just kept rephrasing it until Kyrie gave an answer and got a terrific answer and a really interesting answer after it. And this is, again, something that has happened for decades and decades and decades in locker rooms. It just wasn't on TV. Then we started seeing it on TV and everybody flipped out because heaven forbid reporters and players would have a tense moment after a game. It happens all the time.

oh, look, this is uncomfortable because now I am watching this exchange. But it was just a very patient effort to get an answer to that question. Do you feel like that's become a big thing now? I feel like it happened with Russell Westbrook, although that was a sort of interesting one, but I think I was traveling.

Was I out for Russell? I mean, anyway, I felt like I was in a hotel room and watched that thing like that clip 45 times, you know, over the span of a relatively short time doing other stuff. But that's not the only example either. I feel like the athlete, maybe they just got great buzz off of that. And someone just decided that athletes and reporters going at it is good content. Well, it used to be celebrated when the reporters would shut down,

excuse me, when the athletes would shut down the reporters. We had that kind of moment probably like five, seven years ago. Where it's like, aha, that how dare that reporter ask a tough question, which, of course, we want reporters to do. And now I feel like it's balanced out a little bit, that you can appreciate the whole exchange. Yeah, and Russ, the one you're talking about the Russell Westbrook was when Dan Wojke,

was on the podcast last week, asked him about, you know, when you're, when you're not hitting your shot and when you go cold for like such long stretches, how do you, how do you stay in the game,

right? How do you then keep shooting? And he said, I have 23,000 points. That was his answer. To which Wojke said, good answer. That was,

that was the exchange. Interesting moment, David at the end of Celtics nets. So if you didn't watch, the nets are up one, the Celtics get a stop on the defensive end. They bring the ball down the court. Marcus Smart throws this pretty miraculous pass to Jason Tatum, considering the clock is winding down. Tatum spins left, puts a ball off the glass with plenty of time, or just enough time,

shot goes in. Celtics win. And Mike Breen of ESPN, who's calling the game, who is a game. just nails, as always, drills the call. Here's what he said. Kicks it out. Smart fakes.

Inside, Taitam, Span. So that's really, really good. But then an issue came up, which I and Eagle talked about in these parts the other day, which is that with every buzzer-beater, David, now we now have to wait for the official review. So Mike Breen,

with his very, very well-trained NBA eyes sitting court side knows that that shot counted. He knows exactly what happened. He called it

perfectly. But then his eyes have to go from the shot and the celebration Celtics going crazy to the refs. And he's reading

their body language. And he says, I think the refs are going to wave this off. You're like, oh my God. We had this fantastic game

in with this game winning shot. They're going to wave it off and the nets are going to win the game, then it turns out the refs were just calling for a review. They didn't wave it off. And the Celtics win the game. So instead of a picture perfect last second buzzer beating call, which Mike Breen delivers,

he like the rest of us, is now at the mercy of the refs and it turns into this big muddle. And this has been happening over and over, and this must absolutely drive a number. announcers nuts. Because that's their moment, right? What is your moment? And now you're like, oh my goodness, what a shot. And now we will wait for the official review to confirm my excitement. Oh, my gosh.

That would be, can you imagine all the great calls in sportscasting history if official review had been a part of it? Just like, do you believe in miracles? Let's see if the referees do. Do you believe it? Do they believe it? Oh, yeah. I think of Kirk Gibson hitting it.

hitting the shot out against the A's in 88 and Jack Buck going, I don't believe what I just saw. But I will believe it as soon as I see an official review. That's so good. When you have the legends on, this should be your new stick. Get them to call the game. Get them to call their biggest moment to repeat it,

but pretending they have to wait for the referees to review. Oh, this is great. Instant replay. That's what we're going to call. This is awesome. All right, we've got a new thing. But the funny one is, so there's a couple of things here. One is you have to temper your excitement somewhat because you don't know if it's going to stand up.

Yeah. The second thing is you have to like, and Eagle was talking about this, put a few seconds between the call and the acknowledgement that the refs are going to look at it so that when they rerun this. They replay it. Right. Yeah. And his Eagle was saying like he hates the phrase, no flags. Because just imagine this is replaying. Oh my God.

What a great. He returned the kick for a touchdown. touchdown, no flags. That sounds so stupid. Yeah. On a celebratory reel. So you got to do that. But then this is actually the third category,

which is that if you wait long enough, you can talk yourself out of something that you saw. Yeah. Like Tony Romo, I don't know if you remember this, Bill's Chiefs, when the Chiefs finally won the game in OT. Travis Kelsey catches a pass in the end zone. Tony Romo was like, I think they're going to

overturn this. And then Jim Danz is like, no, they're not the chiefs of win. It's like, oh my God, you just injected a moment of doubt into the end of one of the greatest NFL games of all time, just because you were sitting there long enough. Well, at least Nancy contradicted him. Maybe the solution here is the pro wrestling, the pro wrestling setup of having like the color, I mean, the play by play guy be a good guy and the color guy be a heel, right? So they could just say definitive things that are at odds with one another. You don't have to worry about the review. You don't have to be like, like, like, you know, down goes Frazier.

But did he have a loaded glove? That's the question, you know. So you're saying that just by, I'm going to argue that he didn't get the shot off in time because that's what I do. I'm the bad guy basketball announcer. And you can separate the audio for the future replays if need be. I see. Just don't step on me. Just come in.

You come in five seconds later and say, you know, actually didn't hit that shot. They're going to take this off because I'm the bad guy and I argue. But the true, but yeah, one part, the true believer is already out there yelling, just announcing it as if it's true. The play in game we had the other night between the Minnesota Timberwolves and the LA Clippers was interesting because the T-wolves were going absolutely crazy after the game, in particular Patrick Beverly, going nuts that they won a play in game and were going to be part of the playoffs. and I guess the Turner crew afterwards gave them the business for celebrating too much because it wasn't a series, David, it wasn't an actual playoff game. It was a play in game. And that got bad reviews. I heard Rosillo talking about this the other day saying, you know, look, you know the last time the Timberwolves won any kind of postseason game.

Yeah. Are we going to just cut them some slack? But it got me to thinking, like, is the athletes are celebrating too much? Has that ever been a successful take for anybody on television or in print? I don't think so. I mean, because we've had like the football version, right? These end zone dances are out of control. We've had the baseball one like you're showing up the pitcher because you hit the home run.

And it never goes. First of all, it's just wrong anyway. Like, yeah, don't you the people at home want to see the athletes excited and celebrating? I mean. But I think it's a successful take. I don't know that it gets a lot, I don't think people push back on it a lot because it all comes from the sort of, you know, what's the adage? Like, act like you've been here before, right? That's something that we all have ingrained in us, you know, that sort of, you don't, don't over celebrate winning game one of a playoff series because, you know, Jordan and the Bulls, they didn't celebrate until they were popping champagne at the end of the finals, right?

But it's not, I don't think there's a lot of concrete examples, people that have, like, over celebrated and they come back to haunt them. them. I'm sure there are. I'm sure there are. But it does, but it's not a terribly effective take. I mean, who cares? Who cares if you're, I mean, you should be excited about winning a big game, you know? I mean, it's a big, big moment. And what if in fact, like the timber wolves, you have never been here before? Yes, exactly. Or it's been a really, really, really long time since you've been successful in the postseason at all. And then they went out and won their first game against the Grizzlies. Yeah. And it doesn't even have to be like, explicable and that sort of, I mean, it could be like, what if you just, you know, what if

everybody, what if the coach was having a hard time at home and the team promised him they would get him a win and that's why they're celebrating? I mean, there could be a million reasons besides just like whatever you're seeing on the surface that the team is that excited. Speaking of the play in tournament, can we get it on the play in tournament discourse? Sure. Because I'm interested in this. So if people don't know, for a long time, eight teams in each conference made the NBA playoffs, one through eight. And then it was decided two years ago. that that was not enough teams to make the play to make the NBA playoffs. So now we're going to have the ninth team and the 10th team be part of this

play in tournament. And we're still going to get to the playoffs with eight teams, but we're going to introduce extra games so that the 10th team and the ninth team are not left out. Now this year in the Eastern Conference, the two extra teams were actually pretty decent. Cavs and Hornets both over 500. But in the Western Conference, David, the Pelicans who did actually make the playoffs were 10 games under 500. So they were not a good basketball team. Right.

The Spurs, who also made the play in tournament, were 14 games under 500. They were really a bad basketball team. Yeah. So I always find the reasoning here gets a little tortured when we talk about expanding the playoffs. but what is the best reason to do this, do you think, that you've heard? Well, I mean, it's fun. It's exciting. It gets some energy, some, you know, March Madness-style energy into the front end of the NBA

playoffs, which sometimes take a little while to get rolling, because it's not just the ninth and tenth seeds that are potentially, you know, lousy or, you know, unworthy in whatever sense of being in the playoffs. there's always the seventh and eight seeds often feel the same way. Sometimes it's more teams than that. You know, there's a lot of inevitability baked in to the NBA playoffs. And, you know,

we remember the upsets, but there's a reason why we do, right? So it's nice to have this exciting thing and to have some spotlight on the sort of lesser team, you know, the lower ranked teams and to potentially start telling the story of these underdog teams come, you know, trying to fight their way up through the playoffs,

you know, from the very beginning without having to, you know, just hash that out during the first few games of the first round. I mean, I think it's great. I think that, I think that, you know, when you're talking about the number of games that some of these teams are below 500, yeah, I think that that point is valid.

But any time that you expand playoffs, that's going to be a point you can make, right? I mean, when they created the NCAA football playoffs, like the I mean almost immediately there's there's going to be teams involved that are by any metric less deserving of a national championship than the top two teams right and sometimes sometimes sort of gallingly so right because you get to factor in like you know who the who have you lost to and teams that have lost to other teams that are in the playoff but that's why they're in the playoff but it all seems very it's all very foggy right the logic behind it sometimes times. I mean, that's always going to be a problem. I don't have as much of a problem with it here. I'd much rather have a, you know, sub 500 Spurs team, like shock the world and become an interesting storyline for the first round of the playoffs potentially further than, you know, just to go in sort of plottingly in the way that the regular season always kind of seems to end.

Even if the spurs were significantly worse than the eighth seed in the Western Conference over the course of the season, right? Because that's the contradictory value here. is like what's the best way to pick a champion? Or at least what's the best way to pick the teams in the playoffs? And if you're saying, well, you were way worse over what we say are 82 important basketball games. Why do you get a chance to knock out somebody who was better than you because you can win a couple of games? I mean, it's kind of hard to make the kind of moralistic argument for 82 important basketball games when like half of the stars of the league are taking significant numbers of those games off just to sort of save themselves

the playoffs, right? No, true. But, I mean, I think you can, I, I, it's, I agree. If it were an issue where, if it were a situation where every year that there were, you know, two or four or all four of the, you know, the teams in the play in were, were just, had just dramatically sub 500 records and this is just, or just they were just a huge step below, then they might have to reconsider just based on the appearances of it all. But, you know, as long as it's not like that all the time, I mean, I've heard some people argue

that, obviously for, for. for seating the playoffs, like without the, you know, without the conferences or divisions in mind. I do think that there's some logic to that. But, again, that would be more of an upheaval. Although I think the big thing that the play in has shown us is that, I mean, my biggest hang up with it when it was being discussed was that it just seemed like so unlikely. It just seemed like such an upheaval, right? It seemed to NBA playoff tradition and just to how, like, how are we going to make this work?

and what it's shown us is that they can just make it work. You know, you just sort of push it through and it's fine. And like, does that count as a playoff game or a regular season game? It's all like it's, it all exists in this sort of nether world. And that seems like a big problem. But it's also just sort of not a problem because it just now it's done, you know? So I don't know. I think that more than anything is interesting to me just because it has opened up the doors

to potentially allow all of these changes that just seems sort of oddly impractical from, you know, and that being the main reason they couldn't take place. now they can. Well, if the standard is, it's fun. And I agree it's fun. Like some of the game, some of the playing games were awesome, including that T. Wolves Clippers game

that we mentioned a second ago. Isn't everything fun? I mean, basketball is fun, right? So shouldn't we allow 24 teams to compete somehow in the playoffs? I think that the way the plays you're going is shouldn't we allow like rock and jock style basketball rules, right?

Wouldn't it be more fun if there was a 20 point shot? Yeah. Yeah. No, I mean, I was thinking like, let's say like last year, the Bucks beat the Sons in the NBA finals. I think we should have then an extra game.

And if the Sons win that extra game even after they've been eliminated, they have to start the whole finals over. Like that would be because that's fun. That's a very fun way to do the play. Who wouldn't want that? Well, I think that all of this sort of quietly hinges on the fact that none of these teams are going to win the title. And if there were a time where a play-in team won the title and especially where a

playing team won the title in a situation where. where the team that would have been the eighth seed had some sort of quantifiable leg up on them. Like they would have won that game had their star been healthy or they beat them every time and they're right, whatever. And we're like every team along the way can point and say, well, there's a reason

why that team beat us and they shouldn't have been here to begin with. I think that people might reconsider. Because it's fun, but it's also a harmless kind of fun. Yes. The Pelicans are not going to win the NBA title. Right. And if they did win the NBA title, then I think people would, you know, have more of a, you know, justifiable issue with it. So I think you, I think you've actually hit on the safety check system here because, remember the NFL did this two years ago. They allowed an extra playoff team. And I think you and I, you know, looking at the NFL would say, oh, that team's probably going to be pretty decent, you know, not not terrible, but pretty decent.

It turns out the team is not really good at all. Like this year, it would. was the Steelers, remember that Steelers team and what they were like at the end of the season playing Casey in the playoffs. That was the extra team. And the Eagles, remember that Eagles team that went to Tampa Bay and about five minutes in the game? You're like, all good. We're all good with that. So it does give you that extra morsel of postseason content. But there is very, very little chance that team is actually.

That team might win a game or win a series in the NBA, I guess, under certain super. circumstances. The Mavericks were the first seat and Luca got hurt. Could they lose to, you know, whoever was the new eight seat? Yeah, probably. But you're right. They're probably not going to win the title. So maybe then it's all good fun. I always, it's funny to me, Bill was talking about like it stops teams from tanking. They have less incentive to tank. Yeah. You know that you can finish. I agree with that. And I think that tanking is such a thing now that that's a good check. It's just funny. Like you're present for not tanking. The gift we're giving you is that you get to get into the playoffs. Just by not trying

extravagantly to lose all of your games, we're going to make you one of the best teams in the, in the, in the whole league. It feels like there's just no middle ground anymore. It's like, what happened to mediocre? There's the best teams in the league. There's the abject worst teams in the league. Mediocre then just kind of got gerrymandered into the best. Yeah. In all these leagues. By the way, same thing for the NCAA tournament. At some point, the NCAA tournament said, you know what? Sixty-four teams, we don't think that's enough. We don't think we're effectively choosing the champion the right way here. How about 68? We need four. We're leaving some very deserving mediocre teams out. So how about 68 teams to compete for the national championship?

It's all the range right now. Just, you know, let a few more teams in. I think that all those, I mean, football to me is sort of the most problematic because it's one game. I mean, a plan for some teams is a one game situation too. But these football, I mean, football games can, you know, rise and fall based on an injury or two or whatever. I mean, it could go. And every game could spell an injury for one of the most important players on a team, right? So that makes it a little bit more difficult thing from a conceptual point of view. But still, yeah, I mean, it's like, you know, the more teams, the mayor,

right? I mean, who cares? We're just moving towards just permanent playoffs, right? It's like, despite reference college football before, I know your whole argument against the football playoff was we already have a football playoff. It starts in week one. And if you lose a game, you're out, you know. And you're remembering, yeah. But yeah, I mean, permanent playoffs. Isn't that the direction we're all headed? Just like everything's exciting all the time. Well, yeah, because those are, those are the money games, right? Like, you know, you can tune out the regular season, not the NFL, But in other sports, you can kind of keep one eye on the regular season.

But if you start to be postseason, even Netherworld postseason, but not playoffs, baseball clearly has made this decision numerous times, numerous different times to keep doing it. And to me, that's what's always an interesting part of the playoff discussion that I think gets left out is once you hit the button on these, you can never go back. no one will ever say we're going to shrink the postseason because you'd almost certainly be giving money away. And if anybody can find an instance for me, I'm sure it's happened somewhere that the postseason of any sport has shrunk after being enlarged.

I don't think that's ever happened or it's happened so seldomly. So once you do it, you're in. Like it's never going back. Well, I mean, there might so be changes. You know, there's rumors that the NBA is going to keep expanding at least to a couple more cities. And this maybe opens the door for a more equitable number of teams sort of being nominally in the playoffs, even as the league expands. And maybe this opens the door to continued sort of rejiggering of the playoff system if there's more teams, you know, I mean, do it now when it's just fun and meaningless, as opposed to some big overhaul at some point when it's more necessary and more difficult. I don't know.

I mean, you're absolutely right. I can imagine them going backwards, though. I mean, if the spurs somehow ran the table and won the title, I feel like there would be, you know, 16 owners who would go into the next owner's meeting and be like, we got to get rid of that thing. That felt suspiciously like a sports segment, David. So let's do the overworked Twitter joke of the week where we celebrate a gag that was so obvious that all of media Twitter made it at exactly the same time.

Send your nominees to at the press box pod where they are always gratefully received. Speaking of the playing tournament, late in the second quarter of the T. Wolves Clippers game, David, a protester got on the court. First, everybody was a little confused. Then we got this report from Turner's Allie LaForce. What was going on? It's worse than graffiti. I was just told by security that she apparently had glue and she glued herself to the floor. And she refused to lift her wrist up. And I don't mean to laugh, but this really happened. She glued her wrist to the floor. And they were trying to pull her off. She was resisting trying to keep her wrist glued down.

So that was later upgraded to super glue. She was attempting to super glue herself to the floor there in Minnesota. It was a protest about Glenn Taylor, who is the Timberwolves owner, killing chickens at a farm he owns after an outbreak of influenza. Pretty sure I've got that right. But do you want to hear some of the best tweets about the person who tried to glue themselves to the floor in Minnesota. Oh, God, okay.

All right, does Gloo Lady get a statue outside the target center if the wolves win the game? That was one of them, because the momentum didn't really appear to change after that. Major League Baseball sent out a memo asking pitchers to please stop contacting the glue lady. If you got stuck on Glue Lady, congrats. You made the overwork Twitter joke of the week. All right, David, in other sports news, Saturday night was the debut of the

USFL. Yes, we're trying spring football again, and by we, I mean, the networks. The game was simulcast on Fox and NBC, one of those rare double network treatments. First question I had watching the football, which was not terrible because

it's fun, just like playing basketball is fun, was who is this for? Because if you have teams that no one has ever heard of because it didn't exist 10 minutes ago. And the quality of play is bad. And if you saw Paxton Lynch running out there, you throw on the ball to the other team, you can testify that a lot of it was really bad.

What brings people back for week two and week three to watch something like this? Is that a question? Yeah. Well, I don't know. I mean, you know, the question, right? If the original XFL is any, is the Rosetta Stone here.

What brings people back is, you know, WWF announcers and cheerleader cams. I don't know, but nobody came back for that either. No, they didn't. It's a great question. I mean, there's a novelty, people talk about the novelty wearing off. I mean, the novelty is kind of all they have, right? I mean, it's hard to talk somebody into a sport that doesn't matter, right?

I mean, we've convinced ourselves that the sports that we care about matter in some sort of deep, intrinsic sort of way. But how do you do? I mean, it seems to me like it would be easier to talk somebody into, talk viewers into, I don't know, what's this? Like, cornhole, like one of these sports that comes on ESPN2 in some bizarre weekend show or something because you can at least say, or like an world arm wrestling league or whatever, you can at least say these are the best in the world. Like we've gone through everybody. Everybody wants to do this. These are the best. That's F1.

Yeah, exactly. You don't know anything about this, but these are the best race car drivers or at least Formula One drivers in the world. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's not football is not, football is just not, I mean, at least with basketball, if you're like, you know, you can watch like a, well, I mean, I was going to say you could watch like a, you know, high school travel team sort of situation, but those are some of the

best players in their age group. But you could definitely like, you know, watch some dudes dunking over other dudes and you could just be like, okay, that's fun. You know, you can go to the rodeo and just be like, I appreciate it. Other dudes now on ESPN2. You could watch a lot of different sports and sporting type things. Like it's a barrel racing or something and be like, this is great. I don't know why I'm here.

This is great, you know, but football is not really made that way. Football is not like you can't, you're not going to watch somebody, you know, throw a great block on the O line and just be like, I'm so glad I got to see that. I mean, that's no one cares. Well, that's an interesting part of it, right? Because you're separating out like football. Americans love football. They love it, love it, love it. It's one of the only things they watch on live television. But do they love it if it's just the sport without the teams they care about, the colleges and universities they care about, or at least like a kind of, you know, defined pro prospect line where I can watch, sit down and watch a Georgia game because all these

guys are going to be number one picks here in a week and a half. Like if you just strip all that away and you're basically, to go back to the XFL, you're saying, you could find the next Tommy Maddox, an NFL backup quarterback who deserves a second chance here. that's what you're looking for or you know players that may maybe play a little more of a significant role but that's what you're looking for here with teams you don't know teams you don't care about teams you probably never will care about because they're going to change a lot i mean i just i just i think that's an interesting experiment at some level do we care about football or do we care about teams and coaches and players and universities we like.

And I think the answer is almost is mostly the latter. But I guess this is the experiment. Well, and also just to sort of, I mean, frankly, the contained set of like the teams in the NFL and the transaction. I mean, listen, we've always talked about how the transaction, the team rumors, signings and everything else is bigger than the game itself. Well, that's completely absent in any other league, right? I mean, you have no frame of reference at all to talk about,

to talk about free agency in the USFL or, you know, anything else is happening behind the scene. So that's absent too. There is already a weekly documentary series happening because you're not allowed to have a new sport now without the documentary experience explaining the sport and its players to you. This one, variety reports is called United by Football, a 13-episode documentary series produced by the League NFL films and Fox Sports.

So that's happening. Also, these new leagues are fun as laboratories for invention, for production. And there were a lot of drones going on at the NFL, or excuse me, with the USFL the other day, so much so that you could hear that weird drone noise that you hear when you take your family to the park, just constantly during the game that,

it was just going off. Some of the shots were cool. And it was, it honestly looked like what like a 50s or 60s idea of the future is. Like we'll play football and there'll be these flying cameras that will follow the players around the field. It was like tomorrow land football to me. Like all we needed was like the quarterback has a jetpack on, you know, and levitates 10, 10 yards above the field and throws the pass. Very, very funny. But, but pretty cool.

also new color commentator David in the USFL Jason Garrett you might remember his comedy stylings as the Dallas Cowboys head coach was not a bad commentator all things being equal I was watching the game and I was like are we sure he's worse than Drew Breeze

he was explaining snap counts he was doing see what he was not he was not being incisive or like funny despite hearing Jason Garrett has a great sense of humor. Can't tell you how many times I actually heard that one. But he was like super competent. Not bad. Jason Garrett. Welcome, welcome to the, welcome to sports media. Do you think we're past, I mean, I know that again, this is going to be a very obviously wrong as soon as I say it.

Do you think that we're past the point where an unsuccessful player, like an unsuccessful, someone of that profile who's not successful, can be a major announcement? because they come with too much baggage at this point. If like you can't just, if Jason Garrett was, if Jason Garrett was undeniably the best color guy, color football guy behind Tony Romo in the world. And Fox was like, well, Aikman's gone. We're bringing on Garrett.

Don't you think the backlash just because of his career? His coaching career would be too severe for that to happen? So the question needs to include the phrase, did this unsuccessful player or coach play for the Cowboys? Well, I don't think necessarily. I mean, there's always been people who, you know, you joke when you're watching a football game. It's like, that guy was a terrible GM or like, you know, whatever, you know, but it's, I don't know, it just seems like, it just seems like it would be a hard sell now that everything's so, like, media focused, you know, everybody, everything's, everything's about the pop that you get when you, when you sign somebody. Well, and you want to see the stars.

I mean, I always feel like that. I was like, if you ask me in the abstract, like, do you want to see like a huge famous football player calling the game? Or do you want to see a less famous football player who's really, really good at explaining an X's and O's? Of course, I would say the latter. But then I turn on the TV and I'm like, there's Terry Bradshaw. Exactly. There's Troy Aikman. Yeah.

You know, like, yeah, I want to see famous people calling the games. And I think the networks do too. got a new edition of media piss test for you. Great. This is where we catch the media or even public figures occasionally saying that something or someone is on steroids, quote unquote. Listener, intermodal motorists, sends this one along from Business Insider, talking about Elon Musk's attempted takeover of Twitter. This is a disaster.

And it's not only about Elon Musk, but he kind of puts it. on steroids. According to Shoshana Zuboff, that was a quote to the Washington Post. And here's another one, David, from the world of basketball. This came from our good friend Kyle Madsen. Before the Nuggets played the Golden State Warriors in game one, Denver coach Michael Malone was asked about the Warriors'

three-guard lineup. Listen to what he said. Yeah, it's a hell of a challenge. You know, I go back to last season, the first round matchup against Portland, you know, Dame, CJ, Norman Powell. And this, no disrespect to those guys, but this is like on steroids.

On steroids. The Warriors are the Blazers on steroids. Great stuff. Finally, David, I got a call-out tweet here. Pressbox listeners usually don't do this kind of thing. Usually very enthusiastic about the show, but occasionally they have to raise a point. In this case, David Trattner did.

he is pointing out that one of the side effects of the podcast era of sports journalism, which you and I are both a part of, is that we all eventually fall prey to using announcer voice. Stop talking to each other like we normally do, and we start doing this thing of announcers, David. On to the new thing. Dun, dumb, dumb, dumb, dumb, dumb. Trattner writes,

winner Brian Curtis and David Shoemaker are going to break down the use of announcer voice and pregnant pauses in podcast promos. and here was his particular gripe There are certain moments and words that shaped a new era in pro wrestling I thought we were doing that Brepp screwed rep Die Rocky die

Introducing the book of wrestling 25 catchphrases that explain the attitude era Tune in as we relive one of the most exciting intense and over the top times with WWE with new interviews with the voices that you made the promos, calls, and catchphrases into history. Listen now.

Yeah, okay. Well, I thought that was coming. So I'm doing this new podcast called The Book of Wrestling. And yeah, dude, the promo part is so weird. The hardest part about doing a narrative podcast for me has been, like, I am, I've been doing this podcast thing for a long time, but doing, you did narrative stuff in the early days of the ringer. I just, I kind of expected to be.

be spin galleyed by somebody a lot more than I have been. You know, I thought there would be somebody who was just like, no, no, say it like this, you know, as I'm doing every line. And for the, for the trailer, I just, I would think I was doing it alone in a room with nobody in my ear. I just read it like five completely different ways. You try to be different from the one before. I'm like, yeah, use whatever one you guys like, you know.

So yeah, now I'll take the hit. I'll take the hit. I appreciate that they're paying attention. I will say that the first time I heard that promo, I was listening, I think to, I was listening either one of the wrestling podcasts or Bill's podcast, can't remember which. For like the first two and a half seconds, I did not know it was your voice. Yeah, no, that doesn't sound like me. Also, it didn't really sound like an announcer voice.

It sounded kind of like you were doing golf voice. Like, we have a new wrestling documentary here. It's 10 feet from the cup. And I am being very unnaturally quiet. The one that I did right before that was announcer voice. That's why it sounds like that. Because the one I did right. You were over correcting.

Yeah, I was just like, this week on 25 catchphrases. Then I'm just like, no, no, no, that doesn't sound. That sounds silly. So I just try to go like, how do I make myself take it the other way? Yeah. I never have more appreciation for professional announcers than when I try to do announcer voice. Yeah. Because it sounds like shit.

And you realize those guys are not doing a parody of an announcer. They are actually talking in that voice and sounding good. And the lesson to be learned by all of us. in any voice you want, David, it's time for David Schumaker guesses the strained pun headline. Yeah. Thursday's headline about a man who looked exactly like Bruce Willis

was yippy cayet doppelganger. Still one of the best ones we've had. After we did that last week, David, Travis Andrews, who wrote that piece, pointed out to me an email that it was Washington Post copy editor Doug Norwood who wrote that headline. Congratulations, Doug. Glad we can

and credit the artist. Today's headline, David, comes from listener, Chris Clark. It's from the Toronto Star, which really punches above its weight in this feature.

Real economist of Canada vibes. The story in question is about a new sport. It's called barn hunt. In this new sport, you place rats in a barn and have your dogs sniff them out. See, I would watch this over the USFL.

I think so. The best sniffing dogs is in the world. Are we getting the best sniffing dogs in the world? Yeah, we're not getting sniffing dogs. They're just going to be backups in the other league, are we? The sniffing dogs go find the rat, and they bring the rat back to its owner, back to the dog's owner, that is. The rat, though, is safe in a plastic tube.

So no rat is harmed here, according to the Star. The Star says Barn Hunt lets dogs hone their natural instincts and bond with their owners. So we're sniffing out rats, David. What was the Toronto Star's strained pun headline? Is it some like you stinking rat thing? Rat, uh, filthy rat, rat, smell. Okay. How, what if I tell you?

What if I tell you? What if I'm going to save that for the, uh, wrestling podcast? Uh, what if we thought of a, a 1992 Al Pacino vehicle? Whoa. Yeah, uh, sin of, oh, um, Scent of a... Scent of a rodent? Scent of a...

Not woman, but... Another word for rat and rat kind would be... Sen of a... I have no... Not a rodent? What is it? No, a little on the scientific side. Sin of a...

The... I have... Oh, no. What is it? I have no idea. Sent of a vermin. Oh, vermin. Jeez, that's great.

That's a good... That's a good headline. He is David Chewaker. I'm Brian Curtis. Production Magic by Erica Servantes. We are back Wednesday, David, with a very special guest. Speaking of the NBA and speaking even of that Timberwolves game, he is Kevin Harlan of Turner. Also calls the NFL for CBS talking about his approach to calling NBA games and telling some fantastic stories.

Can I tease one real quick? Yeah, go ahead. He was the Timberwolves announcer. Did you know this Kevin Harlan before he went national calling NBA games? No, but I believe it. And in 1990, he got sounded out. In fact, he got offered the job, he told me, of being the Chicago Bulls play-by-play announcer.

Do you know what run commences during the 1990-1991 season that might have been really fun to call as a play-by-play man? Yeah. Championship, yeah. Yeah. Turn it down. Save with the team. Wow.

fantastic. Plus, David and I are back with more lukewarm takes about the media and probably the NFL draft too, David. See you then. See you later, Brian.