The Press Box - New Media Invades the White House, Chiefs Conspiracy Theories, and When Ex-Quarterbacks Attack

Episode Date: January 30, 2025

Hello, media consumers! Bryan and Joel fire up the mics to close out the week here at The Press Box. Joel takes you to “J-School,” where he discusses Donald Trump’s first press briefing since returning to the White House, the tragic plane crash in Washington, and giving props to The New Yorker, and he revisits an interview he had with the late Cedric Benson (1:53). Then they get into the following headlines: The White House embracing new media (14:45) Whether the Chiefs really are the villains (23:00) Ryan Fitzpatrick with an edition of ‘when ex-quarterbacks attack’ (37:25) Paul Krugman’s exit from The New York Times (47:037) Nick Saban on the media (59:24) Hosts: Bryan Curtis and Joel Anderson Producer: Brian H. Waters Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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

and get ready for the McShay show on the ringer, Spotify, and wherever you watch or listen to podcasts. Media consumers, welcome to press box. You've got Brian Curtis. You've got Joel Anderson. You've got producer and 30th entrant into the Royal Rumble Brian Waters. Coming up on a loaded podcast today, the White House briefing room is being invaded by new media. Is that such a bad thing? Plus, the Kansas City Chiefs, the referees, and conspiracy theories when ex-quarterbacks attack our pal Ben Solac, editing columnist Paul Krugman and Nick Saban tells all to Ryan Clark. But first, the Philadelphia Eagles may be in the Super Bowl, but we start this pot at a place where they hit harder than Clyde Simmons

ever did. Ladies and gentlemen, we're going to J-School. So look, I know it's, we're getting into Eagles' chief week at school, but look, Brian, I'm an Oilers fan. And when we're talking about hard-hitting around these parts. We're talking about Bubba McDowell. We're talking about H-Town legend Lamar Lathen, okay? It's not, none of that, Clyde Simmons, you know, Seth Joyner nonsense around here. Choose your early 90s fighter. Yeah, right.

Al Smith, what's up? But no. So look, I, you know, obviously I think we should start here. And it's awkward to transition into this sort of stuff, but we'll try. And I think I can say that I speak for Brian, both Bryans, and a lot of of other people when I say that my thoughts are with the people and other, the families of the people involved in last night's, I mean, first major commercial airline crash in the U.S. since 2009. The news, as we currently know it, there were 60 passengers and four crew members aboard

American Airlines flight 53, 42, which had departed Wichita, Kansas last evening and was headed to Reagan National Airport, which for most people, they know, is just outside of Washington, D.C., sometime around 9 p.m. Eastern, that flight collided in midair with an army helicopter carrying three U.S. service members. So we're recording this episode Thursday morning Pacific Time, and that's a few hours after local officials have said they believe all passengers and crew on board the flight were killed and that the search and rescue teams have already pivoted to recovery operations. That tragedy led to President Trump's first press briefing since his returned to the White House, where he, of course, wasted little time laying into former

Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg. He also predictably leaned into, like, the right-wing boogeyman of the moment, DEI and diversity objectives. Here's a clip. On DEI and the claims that you've made, are you saying this crash was somehow caused and the result of diversity hiring? And what evidence have you seen to support these claims? It just could have been. We have a high standard. We've had a much higher standard than anybody else. and there are things where you have to go by brain power, you have to go by psychological quality, and psychological quality is a very important element of it. These are various, very powerful tests that we put to use, and they were terminated by Biden,

and Biden went by a standard that's the exact opposite. So we don't know. So Peter Baker of the New York Times said on the New York Times live blog, the inference here is that diversity by definition, means incompetent. So, look, we can focus on those baseless accusations as part of the media coverage, but it's also worth mentioning that a week ago, the Trump administration issued a press release stating that, quote, President Donald J. Trump ends DEI madness and restores excellence and safety within the federal aviation administration, which was meant to announce his executive

order ending DEI programs across the federal government. We don't know much yet about those folks who are on the plane, but this much we do know. U.S. figure skating has said that on that flight, there were skaters returning from a developmental camp that followed the U.S. figure skating championships over the weekend in Wichita. As many as 14 members of the figure skating community were passengers. So look, the investigation into what happened last night, as everyone might imagine, still ongoing, still developing. So, Brian, just like you, it has changed a lot of what we plan to do this. morning but it obviously you know there's not much what we can say right now then this really sucks right indeed and our thoughts are with anybody affected you know it's funny

joe i was looking at twitter last night when the details of this were still coming out and i had this whole thing it was killing my mind about can we just sit this out you know could people on twitter just you know wait a moment before having a big take on something like this and then this morning the president steps to the podium and there we go. I'll just leave it right there because there will be plenty of time to talk about this stuff when we're not hours away from a tragedy like this one. Absolutely. I echo you there.

And yeah, again, we'll try to awkwardly pivot one more time. But, you know, J-School is about looking back at some of the episodes when I wasn't there. And I haven't been here for the last two episodes, Brian. So I just kind of wanted to have a moment, if you don't mind here, to give you. give David's analogizing the New Yorker to the Trilby hat, the props it deserved. Also, because

did you know what a Trilby hat was when he said it? I did. It took me a second. Okay. That whole thing was like me jumping out of a plane and pushing parachute open. Yeah. And the parachute didn't open for like 30 seconds,

maybe a couple of minutes, but then it parachute open and I had the softest landing imaginable. I was like, man, he definitely had to have written that down. Because I was like, to get to connect it all the way back, I was like, man, what a brilliant analogy. So I just wanted to get the shine in head. I also wanted to send my own regard to the New Yorker for its 100 years.

I mean, what an incredible accomplishment. And it's, you know, we talk about this all the time sort of, you know, away from the mic or whatever, Brian, about the places that at a distance still seem like a dream to work for, right? And the New Yorker, I feel like it's still in that class of publication. wouldn't you say that? It has retained that, absolutely, as well as almost anything has. Yeah.

And for like, I mean, I don't mean to include you among the old heads, but I'm going to do it, because I'm going to call myself an old head. But, you know, us old heads, we revere print. That's a big deal. And the New Yorkers seems to care about that. They still have resources. And as you mentioned, they still prioritize the BNC stories. And that is a real tough sell at a lot of media outlets now.

The people willing to spend the money to send you places to kind of pull it, thread and do stories that are sort of off the news cycle. I think that's really important, and that's some of the journalism I enjoy the most, and that they're still willing to do it. Like, that is great. I'm glad that there's a place like there that's, there are places out there that still do that and that they still exist because it gives us hope that maybe one day that everybody else can come back to it, right? The success they have, maybe it will speak to other people that own media organizations. I completely agree. I just remember those boozy conversations when, you know, I was not an old head, a younger,

journalist with friends that we were planning on, you know, how we were going to take over the world. And we would periodically have one of those where you would take a revered publication and be like, that's not the dream anymore. That used to be the dream, but the world changed and that's not the dream anymore. And I think it's a credit to the New Yorker that it is still, you know, if not, if the mountain looks different, it's still a pretty high peak just like it used to be. Yeah. Do you know what, do you know where my dream publication was to work, even as recently as a decade ago. What's that?

ESPN the magazine. My first year at ESPN, they shudder it. I was like, oh, well, so much for that. Yeah, got to recalibrate. Yeah, to recalibrate. And, like, I could give props to all the writers on that roster. And I kind of want to because some of them are my friends, you know, the Jessica Winters, the Vincent Cunningham, and Helen Rossners,

Louisa Thomas, Doreen St. Felix, Isaac Hotner. There's so many great writers there. And I'm so happy that they get a lot of. a place to thrive like that. So I also wanted just for a second, give the New Yorker the props it deserved because there's an article that ran in there in August of 2003 by the writer Catherine Boo that has inspired me in my work ever since I read it. The story is called the marriage gear. And please look it up if you come across it. It's a look at how the Bush White House's $300 million plan to help raise the marriage rate among the poor was working out.

And the reason it was, it really resonated with me because for all the obvious reasons, but I happened to live in Oklahoma City when the story dropped. And that story was based in Oklahoma City at the time. So it actually helped give me a sense of the place and the people there at the time. So anyway, I can't recommend that story more. It still, I was revisited again this morning when I was putting this together. And I was like, oh, I've got to read this again. Like it really, all the same feelings I had when I read it in a two, 2003 was still here in 2025. So, kudos to the New Yorker. Great peace, yes, absolutely. And the last thing for J-School today,

and so I know we're soliciting war stories, and I hope we get more. I hope we get a lot of them, because I think this is one of the most fun. We talked about war stories when we were in Atlanta, right? Didn't we do some of that kind of back and forth? We did. A name that you brought up while we were in Atlanta,

and I wanted to tell you the story, but it kind of slipped my mind, because we had a lot going on down there. You mentioned the name Cedric Benson when we were in Atlanta. And for people that don't remember, Cedric Benson was a University of Texas great. I think he was the fourth overall draft pick in the 2005 NFL draft or something like that.

And he died a few years ago, unfortunate motorcycle accident, right? But I'm going to just briefly try to tell my war story involving Cedric Benson. Picture it. It's the summer of 2000. And in Midland Lee High School Senior running back, Cedric Benson, at the time,

the first high school football player to make the cover of the esteemed Texas football magazine. It was a huge deal that they put a high school kid on the front of this magazine. So that summer, I was working as an intern at the Associated Press. I was in Houston. My editor, Jamie Aaron, knew that I'd played a little college football,

followed it, wanted to be a sports writer. So he assigns me a profile on Cedric Benson. And so I'm going to fly from Houston to West Texas and also to sort of make it worth my while. He gave me another profile on the new head coach at Odessa Permian at the time. And Permian is the school for which Friday night,

the Friday night lights, you know, series is based upon, right? But this is definitely a Southwest Airlines flight from Houston to Midland. Oh, my God, absolutely. I can't even tell you like what the Midland Airport was like. It was, but it was nicer than you would think. Okay. Oh, money.

Yeah, yeah. That's what I'm saying. I ended up like in Midland and Odessa a lot more than I had the right to, but we can talk about that some other time. But anyway, so I get out there to do this story. And what's going to happen is that Cedric Benson is going to meet me out front of his school and we're going to talk. It's just me and him. So I get there early, you know, just kind of looking around outside of the field house. and Cedric Benson pulls up in his car,

stereo just blasting, man. Just, you know, just cool-ass 17-year-old. We get out, we, I'm looking for a place to sit down, and I kind of notice, man, this dude's really quiet. You know, whatever. I'm just going to figure it out. And we sit on some bleachers, and I promise you, Brian. I got maybe, I didn't, I don't think I got a usable sentence

out of the interview. Like, he may have said a total of 70 words to me. And I was just like, I have failed. Like, I mean, they've, the SAP has spent this money for me to go to, spent all this money for me to go to Midland, Texas, and I've got nothing. And if I, I've got to look up the old story, but my recollection is that I did not have anything from him in the story. I had to talk to other coaches about Cedric Benson and his brilliance.

I'm not blaming that on him. I was a younger before. You interviewed him and then did a write around anyway? I interviewed him and did a write around anyway. I didn't even like get color. Like he just sat down and he just got right back in his car and drove off. And I mean, again, I think it was more of me. Like, I don't, I was a young reporter.

I did not know how to, like, get a guy, warm a guy up and talk to him or anything. I was still very nervous, even though he was a high school kids are. Then they are. You've got to, like, know how to kind of warm them up and get them going. So that was my, that was my, the story on the Odessa Permian story turned out a little bit better. That made it a little bit more worthwhile. but the Cedricin Benson profile, to my recollection, didn't really do the job. I love it so much.

All right. More war stories about failed profiles, profiles that you had to write around even when you talk to the subject. Brian. Curtis, the ringer.com or hit us up at the press box pod on either blue sky or Twitter. We want to hear those. We're going to get some more because we need Joel. We need more tales of journalistic failure.

There's too much. Absolutely. There's too much success in the world. This is not what this podcast is for. I've got some headlines for you. Okay. Number one, new media invades the White House press room. And let's put some big air quotes around new media, as you'll see in just one second.

Because we got our first non-Trump White House briefing this week. It was from the new press secretary, Caroline Levitt, who is 27 years old. There has never been a press secretary younger than Caroline Levitt. After throwing out a few broadsides, only in journalism, against legacy media. Caroline Levitt said this. We're also opening up this briefing room to new media voices, who produced news-related content and whose outlet is not already represented by one of the seats in this room.

We welcome independent journalists, podcasters, social media influencers, and content creators to apply for credentials to cover this White House. So, news-related content. Is that news? Is that news? White House said it has gotten 7,000 requests from those producers of news-related or news-adjacent content so far. I mean, I think we're going to do this a lot over the next four years, which is take an idea that Donald Trump and the Trump administration has done for nefarious reasons.

In this case, because they'd love to fill the briefing room with people that say, Mr. Trump, you, sir, are a god among men. but if I may ask one question. That is clearly what they want, right? They want to pack the house. They want sycophants, yeah. I mean, that would be their preference. And I'm imagining that if anybody was willing to sort of bend the norms in the way that the Trump administration would,

that any administration would love to have like a friendly audience staring back at them in the press room, right? But he's got the wherewithal to want to do this and open it up. So he's going to be the one to reap the benefit, I suppose. So let's stipulate that. But the idea here that you would mix traditional journalist, New York Times, Washington Post Politico, with people who are outside the old media traditional realm. That's not the wrong impulse, right? No.

I'll even take a story back from our coverage at CFP. there's a great independent journalist Matt Brown. He does the Extra Points Newsletter. He did not get credentialed for parts of the weekend there. And I'm just like, why not? Like, he's as important as essential as a lot of legacy media. He does a lot of stuff. So there is a good reason behind this.

There are some people in independent journalists and outlets doing some great work that probably do deserve a spot in that room now. And like, if you think about it more broadly, reimagining who should be in that room, it probably is necessary. But, you know, there's obvious skepticism with the Trump administration overseeing that, right? Sure. But it just feels like there's reimagining what the media is. Like, so podcasters, right?

Yeah. I mean, we just got through this campaign. I noticed the other day after the first day or two of the big fires out here in L.A. that one of the first major interviews Gavin Newsom gave was to wait for it, Pod Save America. Yeah, that's right. Yeah. So it's happening. We know it's happening.

We know people are listening to those outlets. Yeah. So, you know, I wouldn't want to take out the New York Times as White House correspondents or the APs or Politicos. But if we're talking about those seats in the, you know, in that room, the other seats in that room, I'm like, okay, you may, you may have different. new media preferences that I do and I definitely think the Trump White House does but I don't think the impulse is completely wrong.

Adding, adding isn't a problem. It would be subtracting would be the problem. But adding is probably fine because also I think we'll find anybody that has been in that sort of situation asking questions like it's actually more intimidating than you think like to ask a question of somebody

standing up there even if you perceive them as being a friendly audience, I don't think as many people they get invited in there are going to be willing to ask questions in front of the American people as they think. It's also more boring than you think.

Yes. Because it's the White House briefing room. Oh, my God. Can you imagine how many people are playing like Solitaire or something or whatever game on their computer while that's all going on? We know this from sports writing.

The two things can be true. It's absolutely vital. The journalists have a spot there and the ability to ask questions of those in power. A and B, that often there's no news at all. Yeah, absolutely. Nothing happens.

I will say, I do think the news content is going to be a little bit higher, though, right? Like, I mean, I imagine these briefings are going to be a lot more interesting. Than Biden? What? I can't imagine that. Yeah, yeah. I think people are going to be a lot more interested in this one for sure. So Levin announced as part of this press conference that there was going to be a new media seat

right up front right where Helen Thomas used to ask those questions right up front it's going to be called the new media seat and who pray tell will be our first

new media pioneers to get a question in questions and we will begin with our new media members Mike Allen from Axios Matt Boyle from Breitbart Mike why don't you go ahead Thank you very much

Caroline does the presidency Mike Allen excuse me I just I okay maybe I mean

I guess it is kind of new media like don't you kind of think of Axiosis sort of I guess Mike Allen isn't new media Mike Allen is Politico Washington Post Time magazine

Yeah I know he's I mean he's old head That's a dude that's Died in the Wool Old School legacy media right Yes But there was a whole piece in the New York Times magazine by Mark Liebovich

about what an establishment figure Mike Allen is. I know, right? This is beyond parody that he would be the first question. I think the thing that we're all just going to have to deal with without being too leading is it doesn't have to make sense, right? I mean, you can say one thing and it doesn't have,

it doesn't have to make sense. It won't. It won't. Yeah, no. By the way, there's an extra layer of funding here because AxiO CEO and co-fell founder, Jim Van de Haidtie, was quoted in Vanity Fair, not that long ago saying this, we beg our reporters never to never go to a White House press briefing dot, dot, dot.

That's a good chunk of your day lost. What a great fine. When did that, when did that quote run? I believe it's about a week old. It's a week old. Okay. I mean, Mike Allen asking the first question. They can't help.

I mean, it's going to be hard for media. to help themselves, right? We've talked about what covering Trump is going to look like and what it's going to be like. And it's just probably going to be really hard to not go to those things because they are making news in their, like even their response to news events is news and of itself, right? Absolutely. Absolutely.

I mean, that was the old Ashley Parker thing back in Trump won, you know, where she's like making faces because it's going like, what the hell is happening in this briefing room? And that's, you become part of the show. You become a character, and we know that our fellow journalists do not mind becoming characters, no matter what they say. You know, I was going to say, like, there are some ancillary benefits from becoming a star in the press room, right? Like, it can pay off for you if you show up and either you get picked on or you become sort of friendly with the administration. Like, there's benefits either way. So, yeah, I mean, those aren't, that should not beat the incentive for a news event, but, like, we can't deny that it.

that's out there, right? All right. Headline number two, the chiefs, the refs, and the conspiracy beat. On Sunday, Joel, Adam Schefter wrote a story for ESPN.com, saying that next year, the NFL's replay assist, and that's those hidden refs in the sky that swoop down to fix an obvious error on the field during a football game, the NFL's replay assist could help with plays where quarterbacks slide.

And this was the first sentence of Schefter's article. For all those complaining that Kansas City Chief's quarterback Patrick Mahomes gets too many calls, relief soon could be on the way. Now, FS1's Nick Wright jumped right on this. He tweeted, writing this piece, framing it around Mahomes exclusively, and not including the fact that the league says both calls were correct and replay wouldn't have changed either, is simply ludicrous. and poor journalism. Nick had more to say on his podcast, What's right? The morning up conference championship games

from the single biggest microphone in all of sports social media, Adam Schefter's Twitter account. For all those complaining that Patrick Mullins gets too many calls, relief could soon be on the way. replay assists is expected to expand this offseason into plays that can include the quarterback slide,

league sources told ESPN. Relief is on the way, which lends real credit. credibility to the it's rigged stuff. That's terrible, terrible journalism. Can I tell you how much it tickled me to see the word framing come up with it, Adam Schaefter's story? Because

that's the word we hear every time someone is mad at a Trump story in the New York Times. Yeah, yeah. But man, Nick is that in the world. So I am a big Nick Wright fan. I I listened to First Things First, the podcast. I listened to which right. And I knew that he's been sort of beating the drum on this.

And I think he's got a point, right? There's a guy, and I used to work with Josh Dubot, is AP sports right out here in the Bay Area. And he's been tweeting throughout the playoffs about sort of this narrative that the chiefs get all these undeserved calls. And really, like, if you look at it, if you take a representative sample size, it really breaks even,

or even sometimes you might say that the chiefs get the worst into these calls. But when you, if you, if you're trying to prove that Mahomes and the chiefs benefit from officiating calls, there are ways you can sort of manipulate the data that make it look like that. And so I can understand why, like, you know,

Nick as a Kansas City Chiefs fan is like bent out of shape about this. So can we talk about why Chief's conspiracy theories are such a thing right now. Yeah. Because I think it sort of begs the question. If the data is what the data is, then why has this become such a go-to?

Because I think every sports radio show in America, probably every debate show in America, including Nick's own, has done segments about this. Right. Are the refs in the chief's pocket? Are the chiefs getting all the calls? And I look at this and I just laugh every time,

time because I'm like, as you say, there are big moments like that second personal foul call against the Texans, whereas you knew as soon as Troy Aitman went off on it, it's like, this is going to be a thing. Right. This is what everybody needed now because we have an official moment and something that might lead to a rule change. So what do you think to just the, what is it about a conspiracy theory story that makes it so enticing?

Well, I mean, I think everybody. sort of is skeptical of referees, right? Like, no matter of the NBA, it's an ongoing thing. I remember World Series that have totally hinged on complaints about an umpires view of the strike box. You know what I mean? And so I think that it's just, it's a common refrain for people to just feel like, you know what?

You know, it's one area where there's not, there's nothing definitive. You do have the data of the calls, but so many officiating calls and judgment calls, and if you want to be uncharitable, if you want to be ungenerous, you can always sort of blame it on them. And it's like, and then here comes the chiefs who seem to on the margins. Like they don't overwhelm their opponents. They win in the margins like every game. Like there's just some call or some, you know, moment in which they're able to win a game. And so like if you are one of the people that are inclined to believe, but you were grooved by. the Patriots to think that

great winning is a company by great cheating, then you might look at the chiefs and say, oh, are you guys getting the benefit of the same thing? I don't know. It's a loose theory. I mean, is that,

is any of that resonate with you at all? I absolutely co-sign on that, especially the unprovability part. Because you and I could do undisputed with Joel and Brian. And, you know, I could say, the reps are in the chief's pocket.

And you could say, no, they're not. And it would seem really edgy. Like we were saying something kind of dangerous, but in fact, we could both just pull out data and then that would be the end of it. I mean, I remember when Simmons was writing about the Patrick Ewing cold envelope theory at the 1985 draft 20 years ago, and that was like, oh, my God, he's writing about that.

Yeah. But there are so many conspiracy theories now in the world, and Twitter is like this every day. It's like, this is not edgy to talk about. No. This is in a way, like, such a generic conversation. It's lazy, right? And it just prevents you from having to talk about the game. Like, you don't have to watch the game to engage in this sort of conspiracy

theorizing, right? Like, it didn't require you to look at how Somaget P. Ryan got open on that play. It doesn't require you to be like, hey, you know the bills? They ran that tush push in the exact same way every way, every time they did it this season. And maybe that's why the chief stopped them, right? The chief scouted that out. It didn't require you don't have to pay attention to the game to blame the refs. You don't have to anything interesting to say about football and you can have that conversation.

Absolutely. Absolutely. Here's another related theory I have. Okay. This has become a data point in the media's attempt to turn the chiefs into the villains. Ooh. Because I keep reading this. And let me tell you something, Joel.

I do not think the chiefs are really villains. Okay. On the villain scale. New England Patriots, check. Yankees of the 1990s and beyond, absolutely. The White House Dallas Cowboys, and I don't mean Washington. Ah, yeah. Triple, triple check, whatever you want.

I don't think the Kansas City chiefs have gotten there yet. Really? I don't. I mean, I saw it's Mike Jones in the Athletic. The chiefs have officially taken over as football's evil empire. I don't think people by and large think the chiefs are evil. I don't think that they think they're evil and they definitely are not the Patriots, but maybe they're villains because they've beaten everybody.

Right? You know, and if you're an NFL, if you're a fan of a particular NFL team, I don't have this because anymore because the Oilers no longer exist. Shout out Lamar Lathin and Bubbin McDowell. Lamar and Al Smith. Minister of Defense. No, actually, that was Sean Jones, too. Anyway.

But I think the thing is, like, you were waiting for the Patriots and the Brady, that dynasty to end, right? It was like, all right, now it's opening up for everybody. Oh, no, wait. Actually, Patrick Mahomes has stolen my hope. If you were a Buffalo fan, if you're a Baltimore fan, sorry, Brian. And you kind of thought that things might open up for you now. And Mahomes and Chiefs are kind of closed the door on that.

I don't know this necessarily make you a villain. but I could understand why people might come to resent your success. I feel resentment. I feel that people are getting a little tired of it. You can absolutely tell me that people are tired of watching television and watching Travis Kelsey commercials and Andy and Patrick Mahomes commercials and even Andy Reed commercials, which are getting a little oppressive for being totally honest. I can believe there are some people that are mad at Taylor Swift and mad at Travis

Kelsey and mad that that's happening and that that's liberal or pro comala or whatever they're upset about. But I just don't feel like people hate them like they've hated other teams. I mean, do you think that the Warriors were villains? Because I feel like that you don't think the Warriors were. Draymond, maybe, but I don't feel like Steph and Clay were villains and Steve Kerr. You don't think like when they teamed up when they got KD and it was like, oh my God. KD has a little wrestling here. Yeah, right. Yeah, okay.

You're talking me into it. Elements of the Warriors, but by the time they won their last championship, everyone was like, oh, this is cool. One more ring. They beat the Celtics. By the way, Celtics are always villains. You never have to talk me into that one. I mean, look, I'll, you know, they've even had players I liked and I don't, I don't like

the franchise. So that's fine. No, I'm sorry. Am I allowed to say that at the ringer? Am I like to say, I'm like the Celtics? You are. We'll delete this. Trust me.

I won't make sure Bill doesn't hear this part. No, but I feel like, part of what we do sometimes as writers is we want to turn them into the villains because that makes the storylines for a week from Sunday more interesting. Right. Absolutely. I mean, the NFL would benefit from having a villain. And if you can somehow just, you know, it doesn't, it wouldn't, it doesn't take that much to sort of nudge the chiefs in that direction. Right. And then by showing the Taylor Swift stuff, like, it helps to create like the villainy around them, right? And all, like, that does raise interest.

Like, having a team that everybody hates or shoots towards, like, that is, that is a, that is very important for all media properties. Like, you got to have somebody to rally around and people, appointment viewing, correct? And villainy is mutually beneficial because it's good for us sports writers. And it's also good for the chiefs. Mm-hmm. Because if you're the chiefs, what is your edge at this point? Right. One, two Super Bowls in a row.

we're really good at football but if we can talk ourselves into this idea that people think we're the bad guys everybody hates us all the doubters everyone is against us it's us against the world chiefs against everybody I want you to listen to this clip this is from New Heights Travis Kelsey talking about being a villain

after he got done plugging some new merch you gotta mix it up regardless do you guys enjoy the villains of the NFL? I love it. Yeah. I love it. At one point in time, you know, it wasn't that.

Yeah, you were the cinder. You guys were the darling in the NFL. Yeah, I was the, do you feel bad for him, guys? And you're now the heel. I'm just, I'm enjoying, I'm enjoying doing this with the guys together, the guys that we have in there because it's like it just makes us even more of a family. You just circle the wagons. When shit, you know, people are saying whatever they want and you just,

band it together and it just makes you more appreciate more of what you have because people want what you have. Do you think that Travis is conflating the some of the feedback he's gotten on social media, you know, the Taylor Swift stuff of it and the getting into it with Aaron Rogers over vaccines and everything? Maybe he's conflating how a lot of people feel about him with the way they feel about his team because I can't imagine that a lot of people have thoughts about George Carloftus, right? I don't think so. I don't know that there was a lot of circling of wagons after your team started 15 and

one. Yeah. I mean, if anything, I was like, they're one of the more, the quieter, sneaky,

or great teams. And then, like, they had, they just had a 15 and two regular season. And really, they probably, they threw the last game of the year.

I mean, man, they, that usually, ordinarily, isn't that a bigger story? Like, that's kind of one of the things I think.

I'm like, for a team, on the verge, they have a chance to do the first repeat NFL history. And I feel like the media attention. And this is the NFL has not really been commensurate with what the accomplishment is, right? I think that's the key because it's hard for us to create adversity. We want, we're so used to like a generic sport storyline where team goes through adversity. Ohio State loses to Michigan.

They band together. They have a player's only meeting. The coach makes an inspiring speech, whatever it is. and then they come around the other side. And you look at this chief saying, yeah, the offense hasn't worked as well as they would have liked. But,

you know, now Kelsey's there, they're playing him again. He's catching passes. Xavier worthy. I was, I knew we were going to bring him Xavier worthy. I didn't,

I knew that was going to come up. Okay. Steps up in the AFC championship game. And you're just like, oh, okay, well, there really isn't that much adversity.

So that's a hard story for us to write. It's hard for us to just write. They're great. Patrick Mahomes makes a few more plays. Chris Jones makes a few more plays than the other defense. They keep figuring it out. That's boring.

Right. So, hey, they're villains. By the way, I think you make a good point. You kind of need a villainous coach to be a truly villainous team. You need the Bill Belichick thing going on. Maybe Barry Switzer. I don't know if Jimmy Johnson quite was around long enough to become a true villain for the... The Red Aurobock, you know, smoking a cigar in a locker room.

There you go. Or the Pat Riley when he was showtime and he was kind of, you know, that slickster. You know, his hair slick back in our body suits. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And it's hard to hate Andy Reed. He's unhatable. He's absolutely unhatable. Yeah, it's hard to hate that guy.

Headline number three, win ex-quarterbacks attack. Ben Soak, ESPN NFL writer, former ringer colleague, Joel, he became the baby-faced main character on Twitter this week. Oh, no. Let me just say a few things about Ben first. Okay. Ben's a great guy. And I don't mean that in the journalistic sense of the term great guy.

Because reporters will say he's a great guy, which means he retweets a lot of my stories. Right. He's my professional ally who cares what he's like, but he helps me. No, no. Ben is genuinely a great guy in the human sense of the term. I would mostly see him at Super Bowls because we never lived in the same city. and the thing that always struck me about him beyond his great guineas was he would sit there with me off and on radio row when everybody else had disappeared and he would just ask questions about

craft like how do I become a better interviewer how can I do this part of my job better? And it was never like how do I become more popular? How do I get my ringer bosses to like me more and pay more attention to me? Which are totally valid questions, young or old. but he that's what ben was concerned about man he was just a very interesting guy which i think should inform all of this okay so sunday night bills lose to those villainous chiefs and ben made one of his signature twitter videos where he breaks down a play from the game and if people haven't seen these ben tweets you see the play in question and then there's a picture in

picture of ben with a microphone talking about the play he's such a This time was the Bill's last offensive play of the AFC championship game. We've seen this a bunch. Josh Allen had two rushers in his face. He throws incomplete. The game is virtually over, if not quite over. And Ben says, aha, Josh Allen shouldn't have thrown that desperation pass over the middle.

He should have thrown to Khalil Shakir, a receiver who had sort of run into the backfield and then got open on the lower portion of the screen. I will leave the football terminology to Ben, as I often do. And of course, because it's Ben and he has this incredible football brain, he remembers other instances when Alan threw to Shakir in similar situations that could actually produce those plays in this clip. It's pretty amazing stuff.

That Joel is when the ex-quarterbacks arrived. Starting with Ryan Leaf. Yes, that Ryan Leaf. I've not heard of Ryan Leaf in a long time until this popped up, by the way. He tweets, this right here is why in full transparency, you have to post. your address with these. Someone needs to put a boot in his ass. You work at ESPN.

Call Alex, call Dan, call Timmy H. That would be Smith, Orlovsky, and Hasselback for those, not up on ESPN's stable of ex-quarterbacks. Just call someone before you do this and lose whatever credibility you had.

I'm serious, though. Someone go rough this kid up. See if he throws the orbit. Orbit route is part of Ben's analysis of the play. And then Ryan Fitzpatrick, slightly more measured, or quite a lot more measured perhaps, comes on Twitter and says, sitting in your comfortable swivel chair with a heater on in the house and a clicker in your hand makes the game very easy.

Fitzpatrick writes, having two unblocked, unimpeded defenders, believe it or not, is pretty difficult to navigate. In the interest of credibility, please don't ever pause the tape again to talk about the space between the unblocked full-speed rushers and how the quarterback just needs to turn his hips and make the throw. And he had two Rions and it said Brian, Ben had two Rions in his face. He did. He had a little bit of a Josh Allen experience there. He did.

I had a friend text me and say this is like the Jim Rome, Jim Everett moment of 2025, except it would never happen in person now. It would just be a tweet. Oh, yeah. We're so far beyond that. Now you would just tweet something. I mean, Jim Everett coming to the studio to, get interviewed by Jim Bro.

I mean, just that whole, that whole thing. Yeah, that's probably not happening again. That itself is mind blowing. Yeah. So I had a couple of thoughts on this. One is like a player telling a reporter, you don't know anything because you never played the game. You put your hand in the dirt.

Yeah. That's as old as time. Yep. That's part of what's happening here. Yeah. At a smart person suggests to me that the additional layer is that football analyst jobs used to belong almost exclusively to X players. Yeah.

And the world's changed, though, that a civilian, like Ben Solag, can't just be a reporter or a host or a play-by-play announcer. They can actually be an analyst. Mm-hmm. And though Ben would not put it like this, this is Brian's words, not his, he, in a sense, is competing with those guys for, if not jobs, then airtime. Yeah. Absolutely. That's true. Yeah, I mean, you know, Mina Kimes has made a lot of her career on like becoming sort of a football savant. I've always thought that is a really scary road to go down.

Because that's actually why I don't want to deal with what Ben dealt with. And look, I played football. I've looked at complicated football playbooks before. And I don't talk about football analysis because one thing you learn from watching film and everything else, I have no idea what the coach has told a player to do on any given play. Like, it can look like something on tape or on film. And I still don't know the context for what is being told. You're not knowing, oh, is this guy kicking this other guy's ass? And so, you know, there's a hand in his face.

So I don't do that. And I think the people, the non-players who do it, they're very brave. They're always really rigorous. And I think they're really smart. And there's a value to that coverage. because I think the difference here, Brian, is that like, so players sometimes have difficulty making it sound like English to fans. And so where Ben comes in is like I'm good at like explaining things to people

and also I understand this really complicated series of football players or whatever. And so like that's what the value is there. But like I would be afraid to do it because I just defer to players to probably too often on that stuff. But that's just where I come from. but like, yeah, you can, this is something that did not use to happen. Like usually people were more like me. Hey, uh, Booker, can you explain what happened here or whatever, right? Give us some analysis here.

Yeah, yeah. What happened on this play? I think when you start competing to explain what happened on this play, that's where things get weird. Yeah. Absolutely. And people get territorial. Like, how do you know that, you know?

No, no, no. I played quarterback. You couldn't have turned. you couldn't have turned around and thrown to Khalil Shakir. Right. Well, look, I mean, I tweeted something the other day, and I felt like an idiot. I was like, man, Dalton Kincaid dropped that pass. And I was like, well, you know, that was kind of a hard pass to catch.

Like, if you think about the context of everything. It was. It was. Yeah. But it's just like, it's, again, me levying judgment about what a football player should or should not do. I try to stay away from that, but I understand that there's a lot of hate to be made. And there's a lot of ground to cover there, right? You can do a lot of cool stuff with it.

And I like Ben's work. And I like Ben. I don't know him personally, but I know his work. And I found it valuable, same as I find me in the carbs and everybody else. But that is sort of the pair. Now, obviously, I don't think talking about putting a boot in somebody's ass as appropriate. That's probably not how you should respond to a- Probably.

To a disagreement over. Post your address. We should throw the orbit. But that is always sort of like one of my fears. I was just like, all right, I don't want, you know, Sequard Barkley coming here and being like, what the hell you mean? I missed the hole, you know? And Ryan Leif, if he didn't exactly apologize, he at least stood down in another post saying my attempt at Gallo's humor yesterday was stupid, worded inappropriately, and lacked awareness on my part. Come back to that Dalton Kincaid point, because I do think the one thing about this,

and this doesn't justify Ryan Leif and booting your ass and all that kind of stuff. But you do understand this is an emotional moment. Josh Allen bawled out in that game. He played really, really well. And moments after he fails to complete his final pass of the game, we're like, aha, you threw to the wrong person. And I can imagine as an ex-quarterback, you looking at that. And it's not just the point.

but it's the emotional quality of that response or lack of emotional quality of that response. You know, you're like, wait a second, man. This is like a devastating loss for this guy. Right. Right. And you know, like, people will make points and I'll be like, there's a lot of preface there, you know. Right, right, right, right. Yeah, I mean, look, you got to give, I mean, yeah, I think, you know, you got to give people this space.

And it's just, you know, the thing is, I'm just so surprised that the quarterbacks was so emotional. You know what I mean? Like, I guess like I just, but what I will say is this. Ryan Leif lives his raps. I don't know if people remember 20 years ago when he had that meltdown in the locker room at a journalist who was questioning him after that game. But it's, I mean, he will yell at you, you know? And that is something, you know, he's got a track record of it.

I'm not saying that he's a bad person or whatever, but like he obviously takes this shit really seriously. So it's not a surprise that he got a little worked up. with something like this happened. Headline number four, the editing of Paul Krugman. Paul Krugman, a mainstay of the New York Times

editorial op-ed page, left the paper in December, Joel, 25-year run that began during the Clinton administration. He had kind of a weird exit because the Times put out some statements,

but it became clear fairly quickly that this was not a super happy parting, at least on Krugman's part. Krugman now says, the nature of my relationship with the Times had degenerated to a point where I couldn't stay.

Man, that's tough, man. I mean, when you think of the New York Times opinion section, I mean, Paul Krugman is one of the guys like you think is sort of the foundational, you know, members of that role there. And yeah, I was, I'm always fascinated when a journalist leaves, which seems like a fairly cushy job.

You know what I mean? Like I'm in, I'm not saying that he took it, you know, that he wasn't very serious about his work. It was like, you can keep getting paid to do this for a long time. Why not keep doing it? So obviously there's a real rift there with him in the editorial staff. All right. Let's talk about that first because that is, I want to talk about that too. Nobody leaves a job like this.

Right. Maureen Dout hasn't left this job. Why? David Brooks hasn't left this job. Tom Friedman hasn't left this job. No. Because this is in a way, it's a little different now. because the world's changed so much,

but this is one of the all-time jobs in journalism. Absolutely. You're writing 800-ish words. Money, prestige, access, you get it all. Yes, you're writing 800-ish words. You may not be making a fortune from the Times, but you can write books. You can be Paul Krugman in a way, right?

You can give speeches. You can do all kinds of things. I was tickled by the Columbia Journalism Review article which was written by Charles Kaiser about this. He quoted Krugman. He said, Krugman told CJR in an hour-long telephone interview from St. Croix. So you're not living that badly. I mean, yeah. I mean, he does have another job too, right? He's an economist. He's got multiple side hustles. Yeah, he's got some stuff going on. One of which he won the Nobel Prize for. So there's that article by Kaiser and then Krugman wrote about this himself in The Contrarian,

which is the new substack from Jennifer Rubin and Norm Eisen. And he had some complaints, Joel, about his time at the paper of record. Complaint number one is that Paul Krugman turns out to be an editorial volume shooter. So much so that the Times gave him an economics blog, which he had until 2017. And then he created a substack because he still had more thoughts than fit in the paper. Times got angry, according to Krugman. him a newsletter and then he said they took away the newsletter because he was writing it too often yeah i mean that's imagine that right but it happens more often than you think in medium by the way

it happened at e s p.m when i was there too they don't need you writing as much so they said were you filing too much copy well they're just like you'd come up with an idea that's like we don't need that we don't need right they didn't need as much content as you would as you would think you'd think think they'd just work you to the bone. But in fact, they were just like, yeah, we just, they didn't want as much stuff on the website. So it's, it's fine. You know, but it happens sometimes.

Kroogman also complained that he got very, very little editing of his column for most of the period, including when he was railing against the Iraq war. And then that gave way at some point to heavy editing of his column. Yeah. Which he said made his columns dull and dull doesn't play in our new media world. I'm shocked at the. that level of editing. And I guess, like, I'll make a full disclosure here. My wife used to work in the opinion section as an editor there. Like, she edited some of the columnists that, you know,

people, you know, think of when they think of the New York Times. Without giving away to, it's surprising to hear that there's that level of editing going on at that. Sometimes some writers send in more thoughts and they want to put their piece put together. Some have a completed column and they don't want any editing. And so like you kind of navigate, but usually the people that don't want heavy editing, they don't have to get it. Put it that way. So maybe that has changed. Maybe that has changed in the last couple years, but that's not how it used to be. So that's an interesting question because the Times opinion editor is Kathleen Kingsbury. And there's a notion that editing got heavier when she took over because members she took over for James Bennett.

Right. And all the things that happened at the end of that. So maybe the columns need a little more editing. So we avoid some of the pitfalls of running something that either enrages our staff or winds up getting us taking to court. Right. So there is that. The other thing in here that I really sort of double clutched on was Krugman saying that the Times told him you've already. written about a particular subject.

So to write about something different now, if we're going to tell op-ed columnists that they've already written about something, they're all fired because that's what they do, right? They take their hobby horse and ride it into the sunset. You go back to the well. You know what I'm saying? Like, oh yeah, let me cue that, crank that back up again, right? But that's sort of what gives writers, I mean, they're the patina of expertise, right? right that like they revisit this topic over and over again and people come to think of them

when they write about something over and over again so it's kind of not a surprise that Paul Klobman would write about something a lot right it's a natural it's a natural thing let me tell you as working in the podcast world like Joel and I do first of all you see something like I want to talk about that because I've talked about it before and I understand the framework but more optimistically you want to talk about it multiple times because you think you're going to get it more right the second time than you did the first time. Yes. Yes.

There's more to say, right? I miss these three things. And I like, whenever, when you come to me and you're like, can we do another segment about Big Cat and his Chicago roots? I'm like, yeah, because I feel we just got that conversation started. Absolutely. And then somebody on Twitter goes like, they did two segments on Big Cat. You guys must have a lot going on.

It's like, no, like sometimes you just want a chance to like refine your argument, right? Don't we find it hilarious that Paul Krugman is leaving the New York Times for reasons that are not completely dissimilar to the reasons Taylor Lorenz left the Washington Post? I mean, it's kind of funny, man. I mean, if you're a star and you can monetize your name in journalism, like, it must be sort of alluring to not have a boss. I'm not built like that. I want a boss. I want editing. I don't want to have to make my, you know, I don't, but if you can do it, like Taylor Lorenz or.

All Krugman, which I can't believe they've mentioned in the same sentence. It makes sense that they're just like, all right, well, I can do the same amount of work and reap all the benefit. Now, they take on all the responsibility, but I get it, right? Yeah, and when it's the Times op-ed page, again, you know, one of those Volhalas, or Valhalla's the wrong word, right? That's after you die. One of those, I'll go back to the mountain analogy, one of those summits of journalism that people never leave. It's amazing you would walk away from that. But that happened in this case.

I mean, look, man, Tano Hussie Coats left the Atlantic. And again, I'm always like, you could work at the Atlantic and not do anything. You could write once a year for the rest of your life. But sometimes people just, I mean, usually it's because of conflict with management. I mean, at the end of the day. Right. Conflict that didn't exist before, but came up. And you're just like, I'm big enough that I don't have to work in a situation that I don't prefer anymore.

And that's Paul Krugman, to a T, I would think. Headline number five, Nick Saban tells all to Ryan Clark. All right. This is our official or semi-official conclusion to the college football season. Yeah, man. I would love to talk a little bit about the CFP thing because one thing as I was listening to the show of the other week, Brian, it occurred to me. Did I show you enough appreciation for the Chick-fil-A sandwich that you got in half-time? I don't know if I did.

I know I ate it and you said we ate the hell out of that thing. I don't know if I was really showed you enough gratitude. for that. People didn't hear this. They were giving out chick-fil-a sandwiches at half-time. And I was like, you know, a good sports right, I was going looking for free food at half-time of the national championship game. So I got two sandwiches and I was bringing it back to Joel. And I was like, I know Joel's going to be so happy. Oh, yeah. Because you remember what I said when we were going around looking for a place to go to lunch that day. Oh, yeah. I said, you pick what kind of food you like and that, trust me, that will be the kind of food that I like also. We're on

the same page on this kind of stuff. We will have the same taste. So I knew when I was bringing you that, I was like, yes, this is going to be a winner. Did you go to the frozen yogurt machine? Did you get anything there? You know, that was going to be my third and fourth quarter thing. And then we, you know, I had to write and the game got kind of exciting, more exciting than we thought it would. So I kind of lost track of the yogurt machine. It got away from us. I didn't get the cookies or anything. So I kind of missed out. But I mean, just again, without it. That was like Khalil Shakir, that yogurt machine is right there. It's right there. It's right there in front of you. We missed it. We missed it. But yeah, I mean, it was such a.

cool experience. And I just want to say, like, I attended the shutdown forecast split zone duo live show and even got to be part of their family feud segment. It was so cool. The whole thing, like you said, it's just seeing all your old friends. And I don't know about you, man, but Atlanta, to me, feels like the perfect city to host a college football championship. I don't know about a Super Bowl, but it's just like the perfect city. Like, if it's not New Orleans or the Rose Bowl, then I think it should always be in Atlanta. I could get behind. that. I give it a nine out of ten because it snowed on the day we left. That's a good point. You didn't get caught up though, did you? No, it was a little bit of plain de-icing, but, you know,

I slept through most of it. Same. I got, I had an hour delay on the runway for de-icing, but, you know, I got out of there in time. But yeah, I'm a big fan. So just revisiting that time. I had a lot of fun. And me and Brian, this was the first time we ever really got to hang out. And I really enjoyed it. We didn't get to go to the barbecue place I wanted to go to, but we found a decent backup. We did. I'm going to tell you the best story, and then we'll get to Nick Saban and Ryan Clark here. Best stories, we went to the barbecue place you speak of and we were waiting in line or contemplating whether we had time to wait in line. And this guy, his name was Jonathan, turns out. I'm glad you remember his name. Thank you for remembering it.

He's giving us the once over. And he's looking at me and he's looking at Joel. And Joel and I are having a running conversation about how much time do we have to devote to barbecue? Which, folks, if the national championship game weren't that night, the answer would be an infinite amount of time to devote to barbecue. And we're sitting there having this conversation. He's looking at you, looking at me, and I'm like, hmm. And then he comes up to us after a few minutes. He goes, do you guys host the press box? It's just crazy.

Yes, we do. It was, Jonathan, that was such a hugely flattering thing. Like, the whole weekend, it was amazing. It's kind of, it's not scary because I love that we have people that know our voices so well, but it's like, damn, I'm glad I wouldn't say anything crazy, you know? His first question was, are you? you woge but then his second question was to you host of press bikes all right let's talk about nick saving and ryan clark because you sent me this interview and i was i was like

was listening to this while i was walking around this morning getting coffee this was an unbelievable interview it's on the pivot which is ryan clark's podcast which i've heard clips of but i've never heard the whole thing and i love by the way podcasting this is what i love about podcasting is unlike tv shows you can just come in for an episode here and there you know, like slow horses. I'm like, I'm already four seasons behind. Now what do I do? Right.

But with the pivot, I can say, I can listen to this awesome interview that's over an hour long with Nick Sabin, and then I'll come back sometime for another great interview. And everybody's happy. Absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah, I listen to it sporadically. Like, it's one of the ones I listen to sometimes if there's an interesting guy. But there was a clip that got played at the top that I thought that you would find interesting

in particular. where they're going to judge you for almost everything that you do and that's the thing that i never wanted to affect the players you know what i mean if you're getting criticized because you missed a tackle or you didn't do you know something or the quarterback played bad i never wanted the players to get criticized and that affect who they were and their performance and that type of thing so that's what i meant by that oh yeah but it's but it's it's great when you're when you create interest and you talk about things and like I didn't criticize anybody all year and they want me to criticize people and I won't do it. I won't do it especially the coaches

or the players because when you mess up nobody feels worse about than the player right so why you got to beat him up on TV. Oh I do that coach I don't know why you look this was one of the most interesting themes of this interview was nick say been talking about the media in the way he uses the media. Because John Talti, one of those guys we saw down there in Atlanta, who's at On 3, has written about this. And it's fascinating to me too, because Nick Sabin is coach Nick Sabin to his players in practice.

That was very clear in this interview. But then with the media, he does different things. He will send them messages often through the local media there at Alabama. You know, the stuff about rap poison. There was several famous press conferences. I was at the Rat Poison Press conference. Were you really? I was.

It was a Texas A&M, believe it or not. It was a Kyle Field after they had a sort of middling performance against a not great Aggies team. He uses it that way. And then he talks too about in this interview about ESPN and him being one of the first coaches to understand the power of ESPN. Yeah. And understand that like even being Nick Sabin. in wanting to control so many things about your program. And by the way, often being very standoffish to the local media as he was there in Alabama.

I don't want to take those guys' experience away because they had to deal with those press conferences. But when the national media comes calling, you open the door. Oh, yeah, absolutely. You want to come with Ms. Terry to the boathouse? You want to watch practice? You want an interview from me? I don't know if you had this experience when you were writing about college football, but every time I contacted Nick Saban

about something that wasn't about Nick Saban that he would just like essentially a secondary quote for, he took the call every time. I don't, I never had cause to call Nick Saban because we had enough people at ESP that were willing to do that. But I will say that that dynamic is replicated at a lot of other programs around the country where it's like the local guys that coach got no time for.

But if you come saying if you're ESPN, I got to sit down in Lincoln Riley's beautiful kind of like log cabin coaches office in Oklahoma one time. And I'm like if I was at the, I mean, you know, the Oklahoma and a Tulsa world, I doubt that I'd be getting an hour with Lincoln Riley under these circumstances. Absolutely not. And I think Saban is one of those, you know, some of times that comes out of a coach's personality like Mac Brown at Texas.

Mac was just a nice guy. So everybody comes out, oh, let's, you know, bring him in. Nick Sabin wasn't necessarily that guy at all times. But he understood that the world was changing. He understood the power of Game Day. He understood the power of ESPN and that could help him with recruiting, being a coach, doing everything he needed to do. It put a lot of things in context for me, that interview when he talked about welcoming

in those cameras because I was like, oh, like, this is, it's, what happened here in Tuscaloosa was not an accident. Like he knew, like he's as good off the field at branding the program and putting things around putting the resources around his program is anybody else and he's great at the on-field stuff so it made a lot of like when i heard him say oh i brought these cameras in we were one of the first to do that i was like oh hell yeah of course you were other thing that really stuck out to me about that and really his whole season on game day this was his first year on college game day was we love it when somebody who's a hard ass is a little bit less of a hard ass on tv yeah yeah

here's nick saving and then he goes on there on television and he's just a little more approachable. Yeah. He's still recognizably Nick Sabin, but he's a little more approachable. We love that. We love when people are that guy. Oh, yeah. They let the guard drop.

They let the guard drop. Doing a little bit of the cursing, like, but fun cursing. You know, not cursing at a player. I always think of this too, like, Nick Sabin is a lot more savvy. Like, have you ever seen the video of Nick Sabin doing like the Cupid shuffle and the loop in the room? Yeah. And I'll just like, normally a coach doesn't probably want that.

stuff to get out. But I think that like Nick Saban is, you know, smart enough to know that it doesn't hurt for people to see me doing this sort of stuff out there. Was that early in the litany of coach dancing videos? Because now I feel like everybody's got a coach dancing video. Yeah, but, you know, his look dignified, I was saying. I saw dabbo do it was. I was like, man, this is not, this is not your bag, brother. Another thing Nick Saban said in this interview that really struck me is he was talking about celebrating when you've had success. Yeah. And not he's built in such a way or he's built himself in such a way that when you have

success, you don't celebrate. Yeah. You go looking for more success. And that was fascinating to me because he's like, we, you know, we've created this society where if you go sell 20 cars, you know, you go out and celebrate. I'm like, that sounds like a really natural thing to do to me. You had a good day at the office. I thought it was sort of a, not a joke, but it was sort of legendary, like apocryphal,

that Nick Saban, after he would win a national championship, would already start turning towards, well, I got a guy's recruiting now. We're going to lose a couple of defensive tackles. But he actually sort of confirmed that that is who he is, that that is not, that is not, you know, that's not the legend. That is actually who he is. It's part of that thing that comes through, whether it's Michael Jordan or Nick Sabin or people at the top of their fields. There are, there's a lot of complicated things, right? Nick Saban

knows a lot about football. He knows a lot about defense. He's a good recruiter. He had the resources the University of Alabama. He's also just built different than other people. Absolutely. Absolutely. I want to celebrate. Like the next day, I really wake up thinking about next year's national championship. Absolutely. Yeah. Don't you want a party? I would like to, if I sold 20 cars, I would find a pretty good reason to kind of to kick it, you know? You should see me at the day after we have a good podcast or I write a good podcast. I mean, I see it. I'm not always like, what's my next one? You know, just let yourself get the glow a little bit.

I'm like the mediocre version. I say, well, like, sometimes, like, the work isn't even that great. And then I'm still like, man, I got to get better the next time. I just, I don't, I, maybe Nick and I both need to learn how to live in the moment. Anyway, there's a million good anecdotes in this podcast, Ryan Clark and friends, because there's a lot of the guys chiming in here, Shannon Crowder. Taylor. Telling stories about Nick Saban on the pivot.

All right. He is Joel Anderson. I'm Brian Curtis. Productions Magic by Brian Waters. Let's tease ahead, Joel, because I'm going to be next week in New Orleans. Oh, man. That's so fun, man.

What? And let me tell you something. I really wish you were going to be there because we could do some damage in terms of journalism and in terms of food. Oh, my God. We would figure it out down there. Yeah, wouldn't we?

We would. There's going to be a bonus interview pod that I'm going to do when I'm on the ground there. It's a big one. It got locked in yesterday, but I'm so superstitious. I'm not going to talk about it. Okay. Just going to say, watch the space Wednesday night. Joel, I'll see you from Radio Row on Thursday with more lukewarm takes about the meeting.