The Press Box - NFL Playoff Sound, Trump’s Inauguration, and Covering the National Title Game in Atlanta

Episode Date: January 20, 2025

Hello, media consumers! Bryan and Joel are in Atlanta for the national championship game. They kick off the week with J-School. Joel discusses a question he didn’t get to ask Rece Davis during their interview Saturday, Snoop Dogg performing at the Crypto Ball, and more (1:38). Then they get into the NFL playoffs with lots of sound from Tom Brady, Mike Tirico, Jim Nantz, and Dan Campbell (13:13)Later, they discuss Donald Trump’s inauguration and the media climate fear (42:55). They close the show talking about what it has been like to cover the national title game (49:55). Hosts: Bryan Curtis and Joel Anderson Producer: Brian H. Waters Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

What's up everybody? Chris Vernon here and welcome to a new season of the NBA and the mismatch. And huge welcome as well to my new co-host, Dave Jacoby. I can't wait to link with you twice a week every Tuesday and Friday right here on the mismatch to break down everything that's happening in the league. Who's playing well, who we loved, who we loathed, trade rumors, team dysfunction. We've got you covered right here. So follow us, subscribe and hit us with those five-star ratings on Spotify or wherever you get your podcast. And also don't forget to follow us on social media. That's at Ringer NBA and check out

the full mismatch episodes with the two handsomest podcasters in the history of podcasting right on the Ringer NBA YouTube channel. Media consumers, welcome to press box from Atlanta at the college football national championship game. You got Brian Curtis. You got Joel Anderson. You got producer Brian Waters, who's nursing some hurt Ravens fan feelings back in Baltimore. Brian, we're thinking about you today. Coming up on a. a loaded podcast, tons of NFL sound from the divisional round of the playoffs, including Troy Aitman versus the refs and Tom Brady not explaining his raiders duties. Plus, Donald Trump is being inaugurated today.

Are reporters ready? And today's other big TV show is Ohio State Notre Dame. We talk about what it's like to cover it here in Atlanta. But we always start this pod with Joel's take on the week that was, don't you dare enter the transfer portal because you are enrolled in J-School. Also, just make sure that you got your graves in order when you come back because, you know, it's not sure that all these credits are going to transfer over to my J-School, okay? This is a top-flight institution here. Indeed.

Brian, we got to talk to our friend Reese Davis, as you've mentioned, and people heard that interview, presumably, if they're listening to our show today. We had a good time with him. Got a long time with him, I would say, for a busy man, right? And I have a little bit of a bone to pick with you. Uh-oh. Yeah. This is a fake bone to pick with, Brian. But we did a lightling round with Thrice at the end of the interview. I didn't tell you it was going to happen. We just kind of did. It just kind of rolled with it. It seemed like he was in a good move. And then right as I was about to get to my last question, you shut us down. Oh, man. So let me defend myself for just a second, even with a playful bone to pick. Yeah, okay. Which is your second to last question, your penult. question was about the immortal let a naysay or no clip. Yes.

And at that point, I was just pulling down the curtain. I was so happy. I was, I was celebrating. I was doing snow angels like Sequin Barclay yesterday. Yeah. Because I was like, we got it. We got the internet. I got everything I wanted out of this.

Yeah. No. And look, Brian was totally, he was unaware of what was going on. But I did have one more question on here. And it's probably for the best given how Reese responded, don't you think? yeah go ahead and tell people what the question was so basically i was going to ask him if he could get his partner friend kirk herb street to unblock me on twitter okay so this goes back to uh the day of the army navy game on december 15th 2019 i am not so recently i guess earlier that year i left

ESPN. So Kirk Karp Street and I no longer colleagues. I felt comfortable responding to him at this point. I want to read you his tweet and I'm going to try to recreate what I said because I can't find that tweet anymore. But Kirk tweeted at 946 in the morning, by the way, should be mandatory for all CFB players and coaches to watch and study the Army Navy game. Both teams play hard and with passion for 60 minutes, hitting each other as hard as they can every play. Then they go back to the huddle. No trash. No taunting. They play the game the right way. And he has an exclamation point. I think if people know me long enough, they know that that annoys me. I don't like that sentiment. All those kids are playing very hard and with passion for 60 minutes. And I might argue that a game

like Alabama and Georgia in terms of hitting each other as hard as they can every play, I would say it measures up pretty good to whatever was going on at the Army Navy game. Sounds like football the right way to me. Yeah, right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I imagine when Ohio State Notre Dame played a night, they'll be. Those be some right way football. Yeah, right way football.

Exactly. So what I said to Kirk Herb Street was something along the lives of these kids play hard all year long. This is their first Saturday off in month. and you want them to sit down and watch full bag dives for two and a half hours. It didn't take long and all of a sudden I was blocked. So I will admit, I did earn the block because I did antagonize Kirk, but I did not think it was blockworthy. And I don't need to see Kirk's tweets anymore.

That's fine. It's okay. He's even said recently that he's no longer on Twitter. But, but I still think that Reese, you know, he's right there. I thought we had a good rapport. I thought maybe he could step in and say a good word for you, boy. He's powerful in the world of college football, but there are limits to everybody's power.

Hey, look. I mean, I hear it directly from him himself that Kirk no longer, he doesn't want to see what I have to say. He doesn't want to hear what I have to say. Fine. But I thought I at least should make the effort given the audience I had it. There you go. And, you know, feel free to walk over to the TV booth tonight when we're at Mercedes-Burdy.

You know, I might just, look, his dog came up to my leg the other day at the media day. The dog was lucid media day. The dog was lucid media day. Absolutely. We mentioned it to each other too. Speaking of dogs, I'm looking at number two on your list. Yeah.

Some or many of you know by now, Snoop Dog performed at the Crypto Ball. It was an event in D.C. A couple of days before today's inauguration of Donald J. Trump. So before I get started, Brian, I just want to know what's your favorite Snoop Dog song?

Oh, man. I'm not sure I have a power ranking ready for you. Okay. Got to put me on the spot here. Okay, yeah, all right. I'm sorry. I mean, I usually think most people go to one song. Depending on era, age, demographic.

I think there's a song that everybody goes to with Snoop, but I don't want to. Gin and Juice. I think that's the, that feels like the default answer. Yeah, there you go. So, okay, but I don't know if USA Today is still got the pulse of the culture or anything going on, but they called him the drop it like it's hot rapper. It was a very popular song. I don't think that's the song I first associate with Snoop, but whatever.

So anyway, a little bit of media criticism before you. Yeah, just a little bit of media criticism. No, Snoop criticism. It goes back into a media recommendation. But let's go back to 2016. When Snoop looked into the camera and said, ain't nobody going to perform for Donald Trump, huh? Which one of you?

And he uses a slur that was used against me in a letter from A&M fan the other week. And he says, is going to be the first to do it. I'm going to roast the fuck out of you. I'll be the ones to perform for him, sir, you know, in a very, you know, minstrelsy sort of manner. He'd also been previously critical Trump in the past. He posted a snippet of the FDT, which stands for Fuck Donald Trump song in 2016. Snoop, what do you think Nipsey Hustle would think of you now? But he also released a video for his Nightfall remix of Bad Bad, Bad, Not Goods, Lavender in which he shoots a toy gun and a Donald Trump impersonator.

He really has set himself apart is one of these guys that was sort of anti-Donald Trump or openly anti-Trump celebrity. They're not a lot of those, right? You know, not like there used to be anyway. But slowly but surely you sort of see him moving in the other direction. Because I'm going to end the hypocrisy rap sheet here. Because it was last year when Snoop telegraphed that he was in a different place when he said, quote, he had nothing but love and respect for Trump.

And he said, he ain't done nothing wrong to me. He's done only great things for me. So it's kind of telegraping the switching of allegiance. The turn. Right. So I don't need to do the obvious thing here. I'm going to recommend, and this is a little self-referential here. I wrote a piece about Ice Cube at my former employer, which ran August 3rd, right, a week before I get laid off.

but it talks about rappers and they're placing in the political in a political arena right now and just sort of like how these guys have either evolved or maybe they have been evolved and we're just finally getting a real look at what they actually believe, right?

So I'll recommend that, but also I really wanted to recommend Jason England's piece of The Defector. It ran in 2023 and it's about hip-hop at 50 and it was an inspiration for my ice cube profile. I just kind of want to read the last couple graphs of that story That piece here is just so people can get a sense of what's going on.

So let's blow out the candles. Hip-hop is 50 and leaning more Andrew Tate than Greg Tate. The popular music has sounded for a long, long time like prosperity gospel, and too many of the rappers are sounding more like megachurch pastors than artists are insightful street reporters. Hip-hop has aged, but hasn't necessarily matured. Like a lot of people I know, one of the things that has lost over the years is its ability, or maybe its willingness, to self-assess.

you can go to DeFector, get your subscription, pay it's a good website, read that piece. And I think it will kind of get into what I'm, what I could probably say about Snoop here, but I don't want to waste our breath on it too much, right? It's a little bit heartbreaking. It's almost like Snoop Ours and owns a media organization or something. Yeah, right.

I mean, do you think, he probably sitting next to the TikTok guy and like Bezos, you know, they're all probably there to go? This is happening while we're recording today. So we haven't quite gotten what the tableau is like inside the Capitol. Right. Whoa. Yeah. Would you be surprised if Snoop was there still? No, I wouldn't be surprised if anybody was there. Yeah. I mean, we knew we know about the, you know, the lords of tech we're going to be there.

But would you be surprised if anybody was sitting next to J.D. Vance today? Trump likes famous people, man. And he'll put the, he'll put them in his cabinet. And he'll just show. Mike Tyson? I mean, I could believe anybody would be there, yeah. Herschow Walker, right? There you go. And I'm going to circle back to something that I talked about in Jason last week. I haven't, I haven't had as much time to think about the, the way. I want to help people affected by the fires in LA, but I just want to say a couple quick things. People should not have to do this. In a functioning society, people wouldn't have to crowdfund disaster recovery. Insurance would deliver on their premium payments and the promises they make the people when you make those payments.

The government would have enough resources to fight the fires and save these homes and repair people when they've lost their homes. And also, people wouldn't have to put all their wealth into their home, like in a functioning society. Like, it would not be such an essential part of what you need to survive. And another thing that it sort of occurred to me is I was looking through all these different fundraising websites, GoFundMe's whatever. You should need to be good at telling your story or a sympathetic person to get the money that you need to recover from a fire. Right. And that's ultimately what happens. If you look at some of these spreadsheets and other stuff, you're looking at people that are, you know, if they're really good at tell in their store, if they're a sympathetic person, they get a lot of money. Or somebody steps forward and does the GoFundMe for them and writes it in a certain way and tweets it and has a Twitter following or social media. Exactly. Exactly. It's really uncomfortable. But I said if we lived in a functioning society. We don't. Yeah, we don't. And I don't know if we ever will again. But given all of that, I've come up with at least three different.

funds that I'm going to cede some money to and that I would recommend and maybe I'll tweet them out either later today or tomorrow when it's not a football day and not an inauguration day and it can stand alone on its own right um mutual aid L.A. Network is working to compile an extensive list of organizations offering assistance and accepting donations and they've got a spreadsheet that um I'll I'll tweet out a link to you tweet it out and we'll tweet it out from the press box links to the people can find it too there you go perfect perfect I would also like to help some of the incarcerated firefighters. And there's a website, anti-recidivism.org, where you can help and give money there. And also there is the Black Music Action Coalition, which is raising money

for fire relief there as well. So that is the way, at least right now, that I think that I can help and would like to help. I don't want to have to do this. I don't think people should have to do this. But if it's going to be this way, then this is the best way that I know how to do it. There you go. Look for those on our social media feeds. Thank you very much for looking that up. Should we do some headlines? Yeah. Why not? We had a big weekend of football before our Monday of football.

Man, a huge weekend of football. A huge weekend of football. It was a great weekend of football. I got a lot of sound for you. Okay. These clips are from our friends at awful announcing. Okay. And I love their work.

Oh, they're great. They're great. They're great. Even when they're not tweeting the truth about Tom Brady that only this podcast had the gut stuff put out. I mean, that's, I mean, Brian, yeah. I mean, they owe you one. Also, have you ever met anybody from awful announcing, though? I don't think in person.

Yeah, me neither. I feel like I know them because Twitter and I read them all the time. Anyway, it's a great website. So thank you for those clips. Let's start on Saturday with the Chiefs Texans game. I thought this was going to be the cold game of the weekend and then we got snow all day yesterday. I love the way this game started because the Chiefs begin with a huge kick return. Chris Boyd.

Texans DB and Longhorn's legend saves a touchdown by making a tackle. And then we get this just completely almost out of context. clip of him taking his helmet off on the field and throwing it, which gets a flag, and then walking over to the sidelines and just shoving his special teams coach. Did you think that it was actually like at first, I was like, maybe this is a joke or not a joke, but just sort of like theater that they're hyping each other up. I didn't. Something we just don't understand. Yeah, right? Because I was like, surely he's not pushing him in anger. What was so funny was like, it was so inexplicable. Yes. Under normal, non-theatrical terms or even

theatrical terms. Everybody just moved on. Yeah. Like we just didn't know what to do with it. I would see a few tweets like a quarter later that you like, hey, remember that Chris Boyd thing? How many times have you ever actually seen a player land a blow on a coach before? Yeah, like that's, if you think about it in retrospect, it's shocking. Totally shocking. That's what that was just one of those moments where you felt like you saw something crazy. And I understand like in the grand scheme of Chiefs Texans, Chris Boyd is not a huge story. line and that turn only turned into a field goal. But still, it was just like, what?

Just a strange moment on television. Big story from the game, at least on Twitter, was two really bogus personal foul calls on the Texans for hits on Patrick Mahomes. One penalty on Will Anderson in the first quarter that kept a chief scoring drive alive. It was third down. Then we get another one in the third quarter when Mahomes slides right in front of two defenders. Here's Joe and Troy on the call for. ABC ESPN.

The Holmes dropped it. Able to get it and take off to his right. And then slide down. They're going to throw a flag on that. I mean, it was a late slide. But they'd throw the flag and it was Clay Martin who threw it.

Personal foul. Unnecessary roughness. Defense number 39. Oh, come on. 15-yard turn. Here's the end of it. Yeah, I mean, he's a runner. I could not disagree with that one more, and he barely gets hit.

That's the second penalty now that's been called against the Texans. Troy, I agree with you. There's no forceable contact to the headneck area of him. The two Houston players hit each other. That should not have been a foul. And if you, hey, they've got to address it in the off season. You can as a quarterback, run around and play games with defenders, and then be able to draw a penalty.

Troy has really turned into the layout the refs announcer. Yeah, man. I mean, actually, I mean, given the way Troy Aitman's career basically ended on a hit, you're sort of surprised to see him saying, taking the, hey, man, they're really overprotecting these quarterbacks thing now, right? Because I look, I'm from Houston. I'm not a Texans fan. Mahomes was into his slide.

I think what they're trying to discourage his players even launching themselves at a guy, even if they don't hit him, they're trying to discourage players from hitting a guy that's sliding. Right. Which makes sense. And it was a little bit of a weird play because if you're watching it live, you hear this helmet to helmet crack. Yep. And in the moment, it's like, oh my God, they got him. But it turns out it was two different Texans players who's how much ramming into each other. Right. So understand the mistake. Then you watch that. You're like, oh, my God. By the way, you don't hear announcer say, come on. Yeah. And the ref is talking all that much, especially during a playoff game. Yeah. Yeah. I feel Troy Eggman is getting a ton of credit on Twitter, rightfully so for being vocal about. a bad call. Sometimes announcers very differential. I think the other thing that Joe Buck and he captured yesterday is just when you can talk on television about something that people are talking about at home, when those two things line up because they often don't. How many times you looked at Twitter and be like, well, here's something really interesting that the announcers aren't talking about it all. They're totally ignoring it. Right. Yeah. So when somehow those two

wavelengths come together or you're in the right place on television, that doesn't sound like much, but that's actually a trick because there's a lot going on during a game. Oh, absolutely. I mean, Troy really captured the spirit of what everybody was saying, I guess, except presumably Chiefs fans. But yeah, and it really, it's totally in keeping with who Troy is now. Like, I mean, he talked about the, you remember it was last week when they asked them about if the Dallas Cowboys job was a coveted job,

and he was like, I don't know about that. It's just really his, he's like in his contrarian era, and I like it. Maybe, or maybe he's already been, he's always been a contrary. No, I don't think. So that's a thing. Yeah. I think he's, I think he's changed. You think so?

Okay. And there was an awful announcing piece about this. I'm so glad it noted this because when Troy even started as an announcer, he was not this guy. He was in his first couple of years in the number one booth of Fox in a booth with Joe Buck and Chris Collinsworth sort of forgotten out. Chris Collinsworth was the hot take guy. Troy was Troy. Yeah. And it took, I think, a decade.

I think it took more than a decade. and then all of a sudden it's like, he was really comfortable in his own skin. Do you know? I got this. Do you know who that sounds like? It's like our old friend Kirk Herb Street. I don't,

Kirk has become a lot more opinion. I just, maybe it's something about being in that job amassing a lot of influence, reps, everything else. And you feel more like, hey,

if I don't agree with this and it runs a foul of like even, you know, our on screen, you know, rules guy, then I'm fine doing it because I'm Troyikman.

I've been doing this for a long time. Totally true. And it's totally natural thing. You don't even have to be an announcer. Yeah. I think most of us in our jobs, you're like, wait, I know this. Once you get a little bit more familiarity with something, it's like, I feel comfortable saying this.

I don't need Russell Yirk, the ref in the booth to correct me. I mean, I say what I think. You could be like Reese Davis. You'd be like, I'm comfortable enough. I'll try to lobby the committee, you know? From Delavitch. Yeah. It's funny with the first hit because the first of the penalties I'm talking about, because

ESPN goes to a replay. The first replay they show of Mahomes getting hit. by Will Anderson is from behind. And you can't tell anything. And then they said a second replay, it's also from behind. And then a third replay, and it's also from behind. And we're sitting there going, well, was it, did he hit him in the head? Wasn't an illegal hit.

And sometimes, you know, I talk about TV production on this podcast. And I feel everybody just goes to sleep when they hear that word. Here's what TV production is it's having the thing you want to watch at home on the screen at the right time. Absolutely. And then have it. They couldn't find it in the truck. That's the producer who's looking for that replay and people feed

him replays. They couldn't find it. And I feel like it was actually a weird moment of the game. Finally they get to it, but then the plays already moved on. Right. And it's just like, do you really go back and is it time to Yeah, and then it gets a little bit lost and only because it comes back another time that there's another personal foul that I think it really

becomes a storyline. Yeah. But it's just one of those things like it's really hard to do that job. To find the replay in like five seconds. Have you ever thought like, do they need to have a cut out for a moment and stuff like that for games? Like that happens in basketball a lot too. It's like, there was something that happened on the other end of the floor or somebody gets hurt or they don't get up in time and then play keeps going.

You know, we're 46 seconds down the line and you can't really go back to it because something else has happened, right? No, and of course there's a rule thing here, right? Where can we, when we're reversing calls from the booth, can we reverse things like that, right? That's all clearly going to be on the table. And that's one thing I thought about the Trojeman little sort of monologue there was like that's the kind of thing that gets rules changed in the NFL. Not just because it happens. We know a lot of stuff happens because it gets called out on national TV during the playoff. Yep, right, right.

A lot of eyes. And it's like, we might have to do something to address that. Saturday night, Lions Commanders, Kevin Burkhardt and Tom Brady on the call for Fox, watching Jane Daniels here in my room in Atlanta. And I'm like, this is one of those games where all the cliches we say about a quarterback on a national stage of true announces his arrival coming out party. Sorry, I can't improve on the cliches. Yeah, right. No.

It was all those things. Can I just say, I miss this, the whole game. I was at a split zone duo, shut down, forecast, live podcast show. And so the game is showing in the background in another room. And then I come out and I'm like, what the hell happened? So before the game, over on ESPN, they brought in Kirk Cousins for some pregame analysis. Oh. You and I have had a lot of Kirk Cousins.

our life now for the last 10 years plus. Yeah, man. Maybe more than he's been a lot more famous than I would have expected when he got drafted out of Michigan State. But yeah. Same here. I didn't necessarily think that he would have an obvious television career. Man.

Other than that there's a conveyor belt that every quarterback eventually gets on TV. So let's just get this straight. RG3 had the job, the quarterback job. And then Kirk Cousins were placed in him. RG3 was at ESPN. No longer is an ESPN. And now Kirk Creson starts working ESPN. Okay.

If you want to hate Kirk Cousins, I totally understand, okay? All we know is that Michael Pinnock's will then get that job from Kirk Tesson the line, so that will be okay. Yeah, I'm always like, whenever I see like the Kirk Cousins, Matt Ryan to your quarterback, so I'm like, okay, I understand the Tom Brady, like we're going to try that if he wants to do it. Right. We have to try everybody. Was Bruce Greikowski, man.

Guess what? Kirk Couss turned out to be kind of good. Here's a little bit of his analysis of the Lions community. The Detroit Lions offense, I expect to have a great game, but they're going to have a great game because if the lion's defense gets a little leaky against a potentially generational quarterback, it could be back and forth up and down the field. That's pretty much what happened.

He called it. Good job, Kirk Coussons. You anticipated the way a defense would behave. Right. That's big. Tom Brady, who announced the game, of course, is a minority owner of the Raiders. Joel, the Raiders need a coach.

Still. They need a coach, still. And they had requested interviews with both Lions coordinators, Ben Johnson and Aaron Clint. So here's Tom Brady in a position to talk about two guys that his team is at least interested in talking to. There's a little bit of a conflict there. You can tell Fox set him up to talk about this fact. Here's how that went.

So for those who may not know, Tom, you know, you picked up a little side hustle a couple months ago. You know, just buying them to the minority share of the Raiders. So, you know, just normal type stuff. But with that, the cool thing is you get to be on these interviews and this head coaching search. And obviously we told you Glenn and Ben Johnson have done that. How have you evaluated them? Oh, it's just been a great learning experience. What you realize the league's full of great potential.

And what I believe is the resumes, the act of lades are all earned by what people do on the field. You earn your opportunities and you do your performance and let that all. What happened? Did he lose the plot? Did he forget that he was supposed to have been giving us a little bit more insight into like what they were doing and how they were doing it? Or did he remember he wasn't supposed to be giving us any insight? What happened? I mean, yeah, one of the other, right?

Right. Look, man, I mean, if you have, if you're going to have, first of all, let's just, we're in conflict-free America now. There's no such thing as conflict anymore, right? I guess. Look at Snoop. Yeah, look at Snoop. Look at Snoop. So I guess, I mean, given that, I'm just surprised that Tom Brady didn't just go ahead and come out and say, hey, we really like this person for this reason, that person. You can say that. And I'd say what we're going to do, right? If you're going to be there. I think you have to say. Yeah. I mean, I don't think you and I've gotten a chance to talk about this, but I'm one of those situations with the Raiders thing where it's not ideal, needless to say, calling games and also co-owning a team. I don't necessarily know that there are that many things Tom Brady can't do as an announcer

because you own a team. Yeah. It's kind of like, what are you really doing up there? Right. But the best way to not only head off criticism, but actually tell the audience things is to just give us some sense of what are you doing with the Raiders? How involved are you in this thing? Right. Just explain it a little bit.

And I listen to that. I was like, I didn't learn anything. You earn your opportunities. I mean, what? You're wasting our time. Like, you have the opportunity to give us, if we're, acknowledging that there's a conflict here, right? You said it up front. Like, you got your little side hustle, which is very cute way of putting it. At least say, did you like Aaron Glenn? Like, what did you, did he say something interesting? Like, would it be? Johnson, you know what I mean? Some insight into those guys. Yeah. And then, of course, the insiders could read the T-Lies about who the Raiders

is going to hire. Yeah. But I'm just-to-beast. But I'm listening to that. I'm just like, no, no, no, no, we do need some explanation. Yeah. Like, what are you doing with the Raiders? Because otherwise, it's just going to live in this world of conjecture.

Right. Like Don Brady's one and Donna Fox. Same world. This is Brady's best moment during the game. Fourth quarter, commanders are up by three. They've got a fourth down at the five-yard line of the Lions. Commanders were going forward on air. every fourth day out and seemingly making it every time.

And there were too many lions on the field. Time out. Talk on the field. Time out. Time out. Nope. Now we get a penalty to flag. What are they doing?

12 players on defense with the offense and full nation and the swap limit it. The penalty is half the distance to the goal. Yard is enough for our first half. What that reminded me of when they mic up the players for NFL films on the sideline. Yeah. And you hear them narrating the game. Oh, yeah. What the hell is he doing out there?

Yeah, that kind of stuff. Tom Brady sounded like he was talking about his own defense as quarterback of the Patriots. Yeah, yeah. Instead of calling the game, he's almost just narrating it. And he was exactly right. They should do more of that, right? Like, don't you think that they should let themselves go? I was kind of, you know, let your hands go.

It's a tournament boxing, whatever, it's basically. you know, you know, loose it up. I like that. I really like that. Then it feels like you, that feels like you're watching a game with Tom Brady. Absolutely. Yeah.

And I think that's it, right? Don't try to sound like a professional announcer man. Yeah. Just sound like interesting guy who's seeing things before somehow the lion's sideline sees. Yeah. And people want to know, like people think that you're the greatest football player in the history. There's some people to think that, right?

Any criticism you have, anything that you're any, inner monologue you've got going on, like, please share it with us. That's what we want. Yeah. Because that's why you hear it. We don't want workshops podium stuff. Yeah. We want inner monologue Tom Brady.

Absolutely. You don't have to be like these other guys because you're different from those guys. And like the thing that makes Tom Brady special is how he evaluates the game while it's happening. Like that was what made him stand out as a quarterback. If we could get a little bit of that, a centella of that more than like, this is a great higher. The other thing that was funny about this game is as soon as the commanders won, they advanced to the NFC championship game.

So all over Twitter, and I'm seriously, everybody who was on social media that night pointed out that now the Dallas Cowboys had the longest streak of not making the NFC championship game in the conference. And I'm like, great job Cowboys. Once again, this has nothing to do with you. And now the new cycle is about you. I don't even think people hate the Cowboys anymore. I just think it's like, if they're like anything like me, it's just making fun of the future. Like it's just like, ah, ha ha, ha, you got. I was like, did Jady Vance tweet this too?

Everybody in my timeline is tweeting this one fact. I'm like somehow tonight became about the Cowboys. Yeah, man. I mean, you know, how do, you know, you're a Cowboys friend. Does that feel good? Like, you know what they would say on Twitter, rent free? Yeah, I don't know if it didn't, it definitely didn't feel good, but I definitely did take the thought and then text it to my family members who aren't on social media.

Like, did you know this? They were going crazy. They just made them really mad. That was a nice little moment for me. Yeah, you started up a little. Sunday Eagles Rams, Mike Tarrico and Chris Collinsworth on the call for NBC. This is our first snow game at the day. And they started teasing the snow early in the game.

And I had that feeling when my mom from afar starts texting me or calling me and be like, did you know there's bad weather headed your way? And it's almost like she says it so many times. And then the weather doesn't show up. I'm like, it's not happening. And I'm hearing Toriko and Collinsworth says, well, the snow came. and it was an unbelievable tablo.

Yeah, man, it looks good. It looked great on TV. It was so cool. It also made that game just really, really weird. Yeah. And you're like,

oh my God, this is for a trip to the NFC championship game. Yeah. And this is a lot of turnovers, ball slippery. We don't know if we can like throw forward passes anymore.

Yeah. And football just got to that point. It's like, oh my God, some team is going to just sort of crawl out of this game. Yeah. And it may be the Rams. Man,

I mean, I mean, the Rams were out of it. with like five minutes ago, and then all of a sudden they were right back in it. It was a, I mean, yeah,

just a, a fascinating game. And the weather is, again, the backdrop of the weather just makes any good game great. I don't know how I explain it, it's like, I think Jalen Hertz said it in the post game interview.

When you play video games, like, man, wouldn't you add snow? For sure. Yeah. Yeah. And so it really,

like, gave it a whole extra, like, feel that, I don't know. Like, you just can't get that in it. There's very few other sports that you can see a scene like that.

And it's also impacting the game too. I totally agree. It feels like January football. Yeah, man. It just feels perfect in that way. Yeah. This is what got the Rams far behind in the fourth quarter. I'm going to call it the I see the future call of the week.

We gave this to Chris Fowler the week and a half ago because he called Trayette and Henderson. Sal's call right before the half against Texas. Here's Mike Tariko. Eagles. That's right. Before they were up by seven. and well, he called him. Eagles have the ball

at their own 22-yard lines. Barkley time? Oh, it has to be. No question. I mean, you may tell Jalen Hurst to keep one at some point, but only if it's wide open you keep running.

118 yards and adding to it. There goes Berkeley. He's hit a knock. Well, here's a one thing I didn't love is Barclays running through the end zone. You can see the snow celebration coming. Oh, yeah. From a million miles away.

and if you ever watch football on TV, you know what happens when somebody scores. They go into this thing where they're like, show the opposing coach who's sad, show the quarterback,

show fans just kind of going. They go through this like clip sequence and they went to the clip sequence right before he did the snow celebration. I was like, no, no, no. We didn't, it did not run on the actual live.

They had to replay it, right? Yeah. I didn't know that that when I saw was like, oh man, we missed that. We didn't get a chance to see that. That's pretty cool.

And he's just making the journey east-west across the end. You mentioned the Jalen Hurts post-game interview. Yeah. There was another funny part of that because his knee got stretched out in that game. Oh, yeah. And NBC's Melissa Stark was trying to get some answers on how healthy Jalen Hertz was for the playoffs going forward. Enjoy this one and move on to the next.

And I can't let you go. You and I were just talking about your knee. You went into the medical tank. You came out with a brace. How is this going to affect you next week? I'm sure I'll get asked about it later. I don't know if I can answer it right now. but we're going to go enjoy this win with my teammates.

Are you okay? I'll finish the game. Yes, you did. You finished and won the game. Congratulations, guys. Thank you. That's funny. I mean, Jay says a cool motherfucker man.

That's the best thing I could say it. He's just really cool. So he handled that about as cool as you can handle it. But it sounded ominous. And good for Melissa pressing him on it too. Yeah. By the way, let me just ask you this directly. Are you okay?

Yeah, yeah. Late game Sunday. Again, sorry, Brian. Ravens bills. Oh, man. Jim Nance and Tony Romo on the call for CBS. Excruciating loss for our good friends Ravens. They were down eight in the fourth quarter.

Isaiah likely scores a touchdown. And then the Ravens other tight end, Mark Andrews, just drops a two-point conversion. Yeah, man. Just drops it. I mean, what a, just a horror. This Jackie Smith Redux, right? My God, somebody posted a picture of Jackie Smith.

Mackie Smith. For the uninitiated, Cowboys tied in who dropped the big touchdown pass against the Steelers and Super Bowl. Yeah, man. Oh. Jim Nance with a very, very good call on CBS. The whole season essentially comes down to display for these two great teams. They'll roll, roll, flip it, got it. Oh, the ball was dropped.

He had the two-point conversion in his hands. Andrews did not hold on. But I love about that call as Nance initially thought. he caught it so you're almost like you didn't get ahead of the audience is that's what we all thought yeah it was on the bottom of your television it was a really bad angle it was a really bad angle but it was almost better than it was he got it no he didn't yeah yeah because that's what all of us at home were thinking yeah i mean you didn't have it in his hands so i mean it's almost like uh sort of an ongoing dialogue right he was like ongoing narrative you see the ball in his hands did catch it

he dropped it just like Jackie Smith. There was a lot of Lamar Jackson discourse on Twitter last month. A lot of Mark Andrews discourse too. I think we can go ahead and call that one settled. The Lamar Jackson stuff was fascinating. Nick Wright was going at it with seemingly every former Bill Simmons football writer, including both buddies and mine. I thought this was really fascinating because this is one of those things where you could look

at Lamar Jackson's game and you could find a statistical, you know, happy picture there. Then you could look at two turnovers in that game and be like, oh, wait, you guys lost narrowly in the playoffs and Lamar Jackson turned the ball over twice. Yeah. And this is one of those fascinating cases to me where it's like we as, you know, sports writer, sports podcasters are trying so hard not to be debate show guy. Right. We don't want to be the Kairon.

Is Lamar Jackson finished? Whatever it is. We don't want to be that guy. So we strenuously almost go too far the other way. And sometimes I just watch that. I'm like, guys, Mark Jackson didn't get it done. Yeah.

I don't know what to say. Do we need to overthink this? Do we need to police the discourse about Lamar Jackson? Right. Does Lamar Jackson think he had a great game? He didn't. Yeah. I think that's the thing.

And this is part of the discussion. Nick, I must say, I'm a fan of Nick. and I listened to his show. And he's been hammering this thing about Lamar Jackson, now being a great postseason performer since the beginning of the end. Some of it is in service of defending the honor of Patrick Mahomes, his guy. Shockingly, it turns out to be something he thought already. Yeah, right.

Whenever you see something on TV that proves what you were already saying. I don't know how well Lamar would have had to have played to make Nick feel like it just proves his narrative about Lamar. But I think we can all agree that he didn't play well enough to not make it an open question. right like he's not like he threw for 300 yards it's not like he ran for 100 he had a pretty good game and then that fumble which i think and i've been watched me in real time uh sorry brian uh brown waters i mean i mean it's i mean it's pretty much an unforgivable fumble like in a circumstances like that so it's just i mean i i get why people to look to make the statistical

case of lamar is great and that like he did not have a bad game yesterday but it's just kind of like I mean, I think people have to be more open to the idea that it's okay to criticize Lamar under these circumstances because like, yeah, he didn't get it done. And that's kind of the standard by which we judge all these great quarterbacks, right? I totally agree. And again, it just feels like you're kind of warding off like a bad TV conversation. Yeah. You're anticipating something bad happening somewhere else. Yeah.

So then you actually go contrary in the opposite way. Yeah. And it's like, no, I don't know what to say. Like if you watch Lamar's press conference, which was all over Twitter last night, he was not. Lamar Jackson did not want you to police the Lamar Jackson discourse. Yeah. He was good. He was all good with that.

I get what's going on here. And obviously the subtext is that because there's always been doubts about Lamar Jackson, some of it, it seems to be racially coded. Totally. That he's not, you know, that he's not a real dropback quarterback that you can't win from the pocket. All that other kind of stuff.

And so people have been very defensive of Lamar. Understandably so. It's an instinct that I had for, you know, most of my life. But now I just kind of feel like, you know, there's a lot of black-storted quarterbacks in NFL. Lamar is in arguably a great quarterback, but like totally, hey look man, my favorite, you know who my favorite

basketball player of recent finages? James Harden. Right? Like, I think James Harder did so much for the Rockets. He worked so hard. Where people say that he's a postseason choker, I just have to kind of grin and bears. Like, yeah, it kind of is what it is.

You don't have a contrarian case that I don't have a contrary post-season player. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so like, that's like for Lamar, like Lamar has not had a great, postseason game. And so people should be able to just say that and it not be inferred that they're

referring to something else, right? There are people that are doing that. But I don't think the guys that Nick is arguing with like our buddy Ben and Bill Barwell, I don't think that, I don't think, you know, I think their hearts are in the right place here. But I don't, like Nick is not being that guy. Like I don't think

Nick is not being racist or trying to impugn him as a football player based on something that's not related to football. Mention Lamar's post-game press conference. This weekend, we had some really high-yield press conferences. Usually those are pretty useless after a game. Lions coach Dan Campbell. Yeah, man.

Choking back tears after his team lost. Here's a little bit of that. It hurts. It's hard. You know, when you lose these games, man, it's like the players, you know, what they put into it. A lot of people don't know, you know, what they go through. You have to get up.

Bodies beat the shit and, you know, mentally stay locked in and do those things. So long season. It's my fault. It's my fault. Okay, so much emotion there. Can I point out the reporter after that incredibly emotional 45 seconds? So pivoting to the 10 men on the field penalty, or the 12 men on the field penalty, excuse me. It's like, I do need to ask, I'm sorry.

And like, there's a professionalism there. Yeah, I'm not, I'm not making fun of it at all. But it's just amazing. It's like, you're in sports writer mode. It's like, I'm sorry, I do have to ask you about this huge. Well, yeah. I mean, so I'm of two minds of that. Don't you think that question is going to get asked eventually anyway?

Oh, absolutely. And also, like, as a reporter or a writer. And again, I don't, anybody who's ever been in one of those, it is very uncomfortable and very nerve-wracked. It takes a lot of courage to even ask a question under those circumstances. It's awful. Those are awful poises. loser losing coach post game yeah of a big game but this guy was given us something he was

given us a scene man and it was good for uh broadcast and it was good for writers and it was good for audio like every any any medium they had something to take out of that campbell post game press conference and so like i feel like he kind of got to let that moment reach its natural conclusion to the extent there will be one yeah it's almost like your follow-up is let's just do a little bit more on this yeah about how you're feeling because you're actually unlike most coaches telling us how you're feeling. Yeah, showing us how you.

Don't take us out of that moment. Let's let us steep in it a little bit. I just love when human emotion collides with sports writerly work ethic. Oh my God. Yeah. A sports writer deadline, probably too.

I got to get this. I'm right on the sidebar about the 12 men on the field. So I do need your answer. We're going to be doing that tonight. I'm going to be running quotes for me tonight. That's what I'm going to be. I'm going to be raising my hand with Marcus Freeman of Ryan Day after the game.

All right. another small news story besides all the football this weekend, Joel. Donald Trump is being inaugurated as president today. Yeah. Some news here, Joe Biden issuing pardons on his way out the door to General Mark Millie, Anthony Fauci,

police who testified before the Jan 6 committee and others. The swearing-in was moved inside the Capitol Rotunda due to the weather. I said Tim Walls making fun of Trump on Twitter or, you know, Josh and like, oh, there's me in the sounds like, thanks, thanks, Goff.

we're all good. Yeah, right. We'll need you for some cable news hits later. But thanks for that. You mentioned Snoop Dog. Carrie Underwood is seeing the anthem today. I would have kind of figured that anyway. I don't follow the Carrie Underwood stuff, but like has she been,

why would she not have been there? Would be unusual about Carrie. You know what I mean? I don't know. You think she's going to start her with waiting four years for Monday night? I had to do it. I want to talk to you about the media. here on the eve of a new Trump administration. There's a good story in the New York Times by

David Enrich and Katie Robertson. It notes how Donald Trump has sued media organizations. This is clearly part of his strategy. And they write, reporters and editors at national newspapers are increasing their reliance on encrypted communications to help shield themselves and their sources from potential federal leak investigations and subpoenas. Multiple media organizations are evaluating whether they have enough insurance coverage to absorb a potential. wave of libel and other litigation from officials who have already shown an inclination to file suits. What a grim climate of fear we find ourselves in in this profession right before the next Trump administration. Yeah, I mean, nobody knows. I mean, obviously the lawsuits are

another form of intimidation. And I mean, presumably they've got inexhaustible reserves and just the inclination to like make you suffer. Like even if even if even if they don't win. they've caused a dramatic problem, you know, they've caused a magic disruption in your organization by doing that. Oh, totally. If you're some more of this,

and just speaking of disruptions from that article, some large newsrooms have recently urged reporters not to store highly sensitive documents or notes in the digital cloud because companies like Apple, Google, and Amazon could be subpoenaed by federal authorities. Others have suggested disposing of notes and other documents more quickly after articles are published. So after your gamer tonight,

the Mercedes-Benz Stadium, I want you to just completely, you know, start a fire. Yeah, just get it. I just take burn your reporter's notebooks that I've seen. Oh, man. I've got, you don't have notebooks from like 2014. I mean, it's probably time for me to go ahead and start burning them, I guess. To just, yeah, start spinning about a little bit.

Also, there's a note in the New York Times story about a trickle-down effect. I'm not just talking about Donald Trump. We know that members of the Republican Party, politicians generally follow Donald Trump's lead. So let's say it's not just Donald Trump going to war with the national news organization. It could be a Republican governor going, hey, I like that strategy. Yeah. I'm going to do this too, a local official following the same gameplay. And you just think like, God, what are just terrible top to bottom, you know, sort of mood for the people in our business to be in.

Right. Well, I mean, you're not going to, the thing is no court, there's not a lot of certainty in the courts anymore, right? Because a lot of them are captured by Trump. Also, like if you find yourself before a civil jury, I mean, again, media organizations, not the most popular, you know, organizations in America right now. So there's no telling what might happen. So, yeah, I mean, they've got to protect themselves. And I hear a lot about like the normalization of Trump, man.

I'm just like, well, he's president again. Like, he's normalized. Like, that's what this day is. He's normalized in November. Yeah, he gets to be president again. So, like, this is the new reality, right? And we're just, I mean, we knew all. this could happen. Everybody said what might happen if he got it reelected. So we're just experiencing

like elections have consequences. This is one of the consequences. Today that question gets answered, starting today. Yeah. What happens? I mean, I also saw this know in the Wall Street Journal. It was an article by Jessica Tuncle and Drew Fitzgerald about CBS. Trump had been suing CBS over the 60 minutes Kamala Harris interview. And just to be clear, this is when Kamala Harris went on 60 minutes and Trump declined to go in 60 minutes. Yeah. And then 60 minutes showed a clip of the Kamala Harris interview. And Donald Trump is charging that somehow, because the clip was edited in a certain way, allegedly, that counted as election interference.

So it's a $10 billion lawsuit. And the general reports that CBS was discussing a settlement. Yeah. With Donald Trump. Because they've got their own merger stuff. They're worried about Donald Trump's in control. The government's like, oh, my goodness. I understand this is the corporate side of media versus the actual journalist news breaking side,

but you're just cutting the legs out from under your organization. Yeah. By doing this stuff, like Donald Trump is the most public figure in recent American history. Yeah. We were scared of losing a court because of the way in the clip was edited. Man, you know, essentially, I mean, like, who, I know we're not supposed to be rooting for anybody in this, but like, it's kind of like, well, that merger probably would have meant more layoffs, something else.

It's kind of like, well, you know, whatever happens happens. Right. But yeah, like it obviously, it's a sign of cowardice, man. But I mean, it's not cowardice that is coming from nowhere. Like, there's a reason that this cowardice is coming up is because they really are exposed now. And there's no guarantee that anybody's going to be able to, the law can say what it is. But a frivolous lawsuit now going in that direction, it doesn't necessarily, it could still have very serious consequences. Oh, it totally could. And you know, and look, this, this, that one in particular, just look at the merits of it. It's like the way I, I, a quote of someone else talking was edited somehow harmed you. Like, what are the chances even in a kangaroo court of that, you know, winning, that case winning? Yeah. But actually, we're not even going to worry about that. We're just going to go ahead and talk about at least settling it beforehand.

Yeah, man. I just like, I mean, that is grim, grim stuff. My wife was an attorney in her former life. And she said, you know, most people, like, what they misunderstand about court is that they think it comes down to, like, facts or who's actually right or whatever. And like, that's not. the law and order episode. Yeah, that is not how court works. Let's solve the mystery. Yeah. No. Not. And then, we know these media organizations are so fearful too of getting bad judgments on the books because then

that becomes a judgment that perhaps other people have to abide by. Well, yeah. And also, I mean, like, again, there's also probably the part of it that like they want to be able to normalize relations with the president. Oh, yeah. I mean, that's the corporate science. That's top. That's the corporate part. Yeah. But the journalists, you're just like, you're looking at this. Oh, yeah. And ABC News, it was the same thing. I don't want to no, no, no. But like, here we go. We're just going to kind of roll over and go and settle because somebody filed a lawsuit. Yeah, man.

All right, before we go, we are here in Atlanta to cover the national championship. Yeah, man. And I wanted to talk to you a little bit about that experience. Okay. You and I are talking in the media hotel. Yeah. Which is kind of like Disneyland for sports writers. Yeah.

Maybe not's very far for sports writers. Let's not. I've never been to Disneyland. Never been to Disneyland. Yeah, I've been to Disney World. but never Disneyland. So just imagine like a theme park, three notches lower.

That's, yeah, Astrororo. There's, okay. I'll go with that. Okay. And it's so funny

because I'll be just walking to the elevator banks. Like, hey, there's the athletic, Stuart Mandel. Like, how are you?

David, I rode on the elevator with him right before. He's the one that got me onto the floor to get to your room. He's also a special tier of sports rider that you see on occasions like this because they're on the elevator at 6 a.m.

And that means they're going to work out. Oh. Okay. Well, you, that's very generous of you. I was thinking something else. Well, you think of just getting in? Just getting in? I think those days of sports riding, alas, are kind of behind us. You think so? I mean, definitely, there are definitely part of years among us. You and I have known a few.

Yeah. Atlanta's a party city. Once upon a time, you and I might have been out having a drink before we were old and had kids and just needed sleep. Yeah. But let me tell you, the people I see at 6 a.m., they're in the workout close. Man. Good for them. And I'm just going down to get coffee. I just want to be clear with the others. I'm not to mislead the audience. I am not working out.

That used to be me. You're waking up at 6 a.m. too. Man, it just can't sleep. It's 3.8. That's 3 a.m. our time. We're still, because we live on the Pacific Coast. We do. So, I mean, that's, I haven't really caught up yet, but yeah.

I don't want to just, you know, just miss, miss guide the audience to tell them this is work ethic. It's not. I just, I just couldn't sleep. Some coffee. We went to Media Day. You sure did. On Saturday. That was an interesting experience.

Yeah. I've been to the Super Bowl Media Day before. and the crowds there are bonkers. Like in a couple of weeks, like if you want to talk to Joe Thuny or God forbid James Cook, there will be like a hundred people around them from Action News, Phoenix, yelling questions.

Right. Here you could kind of walk up to Chip Kelly or Jeremiah Smith or Riley Leonard and maybe you'd have to wait like a minute, 30 seconds before you got your questions in. Yeah. Media Day is not a spectacle in college football. And the Super Bowl Media Day is a spectacle.

spectacle. Like they'll have people, you know, people walking around with an animal, not the Kirk Herb Street kind, but like, you know, something designed to get a response from people and to get players. But here, most of the people that go to media day, I mean, there's not a lot of outlets that are spending money to send people to this anymore. So if you're there, you got to kind of ask these guys questions. You do. And of course, it's college. The players are just more obscure than in the NFL. And there's a lot of backup linemen. And it's skill players, too, that you and I saw. And they were just kind of sitting on bleachers. I was really. shocked that Quinstein Jutkins didn't get his own booth a Trevi on on Henderson neither one of them got their own booth so there were like eight podium booze up there and essentially the stars were up there and they kind of switched out some of them did anyway after a while yeah so that but you figure that that that's college football playoff going there's like 12 guys including coaches and maybe a coordinator that people want to talk to yeah and then there's the rest of the college football roster yeah who are wearing the Ohio

state guys wearing the kind of white sweatsuits that had a number on it nice they're very nice had an old nice making swoosh on it. Yeah. They had their numbers so you could figure out who they were. Mm-hmm. And they were sitting with their position groups. But mostly they were kind of neglected.

Oh, man. I feel sorry sometimes, because it happens occasionally with even the stars at the college football, at the college football media day. I'm trying to remember if it was like Ty Leak, Tyleek, Ty Williams, I think, for Ohio State. And he like, he never got, he never got really an audience. They just never, never really been. So she's just kind of sitting there with this mic in the booth. And I was like, oh, man.

Did you go ask me a charity question? Of course not. It took me a lot. I actually used all my time. The whole, for each 30-minute segment of Media Day, and there were four of them, I needed every 30 minutes. Remember, I almost enlisted you to interview the aforementioned Quinn Sean Judkins. Yeah, I know. I was right, like I said, I'm ready to run quotes for you.

Yeah. I'm happy to do that any time. I appreciated that. One thing that threw me from Media Day was that I looked over and here are ESP and announcers like Sean McDonough who had legal pads and was writing down notes from Chip Kelly. And I thought, wait a say, I've just never seen announcers in a media day setting because they have their own production meetings. Yeah.

And Herbie was there with dog. Chris Fowler was there. Yeah. Greg McElroy was there. And I was just, Holly Roe. I was just-Espan had its own media, it's own media portion too, right, where they set in the booths. Well, that sort of solved the mystery.

So the high state players talk. Yeah. And then they left. and before the Notre Dame guys got, the ESP guys got into onto the podium booths and did their own interviews. People were asking them questions. Did Molly McGrath get her own booth to?

She did, pretty sure. Yeah. I mean, and by the way, it was great for me because I was like, here, oh, the holy moly, this is wonderful. You were the person you legitimately needed that availability. Oh, I was like, hello, Mr. McDonough. I actually had a whole list here that I've been waiting to ask you for months. Yeah.

I talked to Chris Fowler and everything, but I just never seen that before, but it was actually handy. Oh, yeah. And if you know, college for a ball if you work for like you know whatever the rival side is you would love to get in questions about what do you think of oh house state's office oh yeah what do you think of riley winner like you love to hit the herbie types of those questions oh absolutely get a little video you need a little something like that it's good i mean it's especially the way that you know

content breaks out now may not always be a story i saw some actually one of the things that has really changed even from the last time that i did this people not taking notes and using doing the camera stuff like taking a video clip because I was, oh, yeah, like, that's the way people engage with a lot of this content now. Yeah, that really threw me because when I went up to the forementioned Sean McDonough, I started just videoing him and then I'm just like, why am I doing this? Yeah, right. Were you going to post it on your Twitter? Yeah, everybody, some news. Sean McDonough is talking about the comments he made about Indiana. I'm very self-conscious about pulling out my camera too and that kind of stuff. I don't know. I don't know what it is about me. I feel like it doesn't seem as serious when I do it.

No offense to people. I think so too. Now if you're beat writer, that's what you got to do. Absolutely. Here's a contingent for you. The college football press corps is the nicest press corps in America. Interesting.

I don't know all the other press corps. So that's tough. I mean, you don't think NBA is not. I feel like NBA guys are pretty nice. The NBA is nice. But let me tell you, when you do NBA NFL,

there's just a lot more just, you know, thorny, ambition on the surface. Even the feature guys. There's some sharp elbows. Yeah, that's true. College football is not a lot of sharp elbows.

In that one, they're very, I'm not saying they're not ambitious and competitive and all that stuff, but just person to person. It can be a lot more collaborative, by the way, too, because there's not as much head-to-head competition like they used to be, right? Like, it's not, you know, most people kind of like 24-7 on three, they're all sort in a different lane. We're not all competing for the same information in the way that we used to be. There are in that in your story. We'll get into that, of course. But it's not quite like it used to be like 20 years ago, right?

Yes. I think that's right. I think everybody has a lane. And that's part of what I was writing about. You mentioned the story I was working on just about what the college football beat is like in 2025. Yeah. And just what's amazing is how many little different parts of it there are. Oh, yeah. So there's the actual college football, you know, Jeremiah Smith running past Notre Dame DB's part of the equation. And then there's this whole administration. part. Yeah. And that dates back a while because when amateurism, as we know it, started fading away, you remember how many like stories that were about, there's a press conference, there's this, there's that. There's so much of that right now. Oh, man. And it covering

NIL portal, like, the portal is its own woge bomb factory. I mean, there's just, I've talked to a couple of the portal reporters that were here. And like, you know, that portal story on Quinn Ewers, you and I talked about in the pod, not long ago that he may go to another school, he went up going to the draft. That was like

maybe the biggest college football story of the post season. Man, see, that's crazy, man. But I mean, and then recruiting is going on right now. Are there, like, I, and I'm sure you cover this in the story, but I think what has happened to recruiting reporters? I mean, they're just, I think they're doing everything is the answer. Like, they're still doing recruiting. Right.

You got like, you know, days in January, right? Where the schools bring them in, junior days, that kind of stuff. But like, you have to do 50 things. Yeah, man. We went and did a stakeout because the college football playoff committee was having a meeting and it was a meeting to have another meeting. Yeah, man. Just about changing the playoff because it turns out they have to have unanimity in the room

to make any change to the playoff. Wow. That's only for one more year and then I think the SEC and the big team get more sway. But just imagine all these college football administrators and they're like, we have to all agree on something. I mean, so of course it takes like nine meetings. Well, these reporters and I was there with Nicole Arback, Heather Dinnich, Ross Dillinger,

we could do the whole list, beat Tamil. they're all at most of these meetings in hotels around the country waiting for somebody to walk out of a room and make news or more often not make news. Yeah. It is involved into a very, very interesting place. That's a lot different than just watching a little ball.

You know what I mean? It is. That part still exists. Yeah. I mean, like I think about somebody like Richard Johnson who's like, you know, the X's and O stuff. Like there's a guy that's based for that kind of stuff. It's just, yeah, there's a lot of different ways to get into it.

but if you're trying to do it all anymore, you are very ambitious, sir or madam. You do. And one thing people told me was, the old thing was you covered college football and in the spring you also covered college basketball. Oh.

You did both beats. That's become almost impossible now. Man. Because there's just college so much, there's 12 months of college football stuff. Yeah. You know, with the portal, with the NIL, with the lawsuits.

Look, I wrote over with Mark Schlaiba, my former colleague, him and Chuck Culpepper, and he was talking about, college basketball and I was like you are a sicko like how do you have to key how do you know basketball what's what best basketball season where you know how you have time to know all this but anyway I got a note on press box etiquette I've heard okay both here and at the rose bowl so I want to bring it up to you you know I'll be in the press box tonight so maybe we can

experience this firsthand play happens on the field the sports writer sitting in the press box during the game calls out the play names the play oh that was of this that was that Apparently this has become the most annoying thing in the world. Because there's maybe some X's and O's crushing tape show off going on there. And also everybody's just like, well, who care? Like, why do we all need to know that? Yeah. Maybe your internal monologue.

Man. Can tell you that was a triple option or an RPO without having to tell all of us. This is the new press box complaint. Man, is it real? So do reporters, I guess we'll find out tonight. They don't listen. They're not listening to the game on the radio. Somebody was asking me, like, are you, how are you going to watch the game?

And I was like, actually, do I watch it on TV or do I watch it live through, you know, through the glass? We'll watch it through the glass, won't we? Can look up to TV for replays? But sometimes it's kind of far, you know what I mean? So you're not really getting. You don't have a great view. You don't have a great view. But yeah.

So, but anyway, I'm usually too. I cannot. I don't. I'm usually in my own world when this is all happening. And if you hear a voice next to you after a play, it's going to be me saying he threw the ball. Right. That looked like a deep shot. Yeah. That looked like a post pattern. That's going to be my level of stuff. Anyway, Joel and I both have pieces going up.

Yep. On the ringer.com, me on the college football media crew, you on. What it means that Notre Dame is back here again. And what happens if they win? We're going to have to reckon with that next week. So we're going to have a lot of Notre Dame alums. I'm out of the woodwork. My favorite is always the media alums. I remember Michigan? Oh, my God. Oh, man. 50,000 people suddenly found out,

roped for that paper. You're like, good God. Yeah, I'm glad that. I'm glad they won so they can just get that out of the way. They're all annoying. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Ohio State, that's a smaller network, I think. Yeah.

There are people that pop up, but Notre Dame will unleash. There will be some serious. Yeah, I didn't, you know, somebody, I talked to somebody for the story I did on Notre Dame, and I was like, oh, Notre Dame has a journalism department? I didn't know. I think that's all right. Did you know that?

I mean, I guess I, could have assumed. I just didn't. Everybody had a journalism department. Everybody does. It's not like a med school or a law school. Yeah, that's true. That's true. But yeah, so congratulations to the Notre Dame Journalist Department. All right. He is Joe Landis. I'm Brian Curtis. Proxy Magic by Brian Waters.

Sorry, Brian. One more time. We are here in Atlanta. We are going to have another pod. You and I a week from Thursday. We're going to look for your story after the game tonight. More press box coming up. Got a lot to go.

Let's play some football.