The Press Box - NFL Wild-Card Weekend Fun, How the Networks Botched Iowa, and ESPN’s Year From Hell

Episode Date: January 16, 2024

Bryan and David kick off the show by discussing how 2024 can rival 2017 as ESPN's year from hell. From fake names, to Stephen A. Smith’s spat with Jason Whitlock, to Pat McAfee … and we're only days into January (00:30). Then they get into NFL wild-card weekend, from streaming on Peacock to the Cowboys' and Eagles' meltdowns (18:10). Later, they discuss the Iowa caucus and some interesting sound from Donald Trump (46:44). Plus, the Overworked Twitter Joke of the Week and David Shoemaker Guesses the Strained-Pun Headline. Hosts: Bryan Curtis and David Shoemaker Producer: Brian H. Waters Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Learn more about the albums you love would Dissect, a music analysis podcast hosted by me, Cole Kushna, a lifelong musician. Each season of Dysect dives deep into one album, examining the music, lyrics, and meaning of one song per episode. We've covered albums by Kendrick Lamar, Tyler the creator, Frank Ocean, just to name a few, and our brand new season just launched all about Radiohead's 2007 masterpiece in rainbows. Listen to Dysect on Spotify or wherever you get your podcast, because a great art deserves more than a swipe. David? Yeah. When I was marinating in all the ESPN news about Pat McAfee and Stephen A. Smith, it struck me that ESPN is having a year from hell. That's catchy.

Indeed. And you might think it's a little hook to write a column for the ringer.com with that title, which indeed I did. You can check it out there. But I take the responsibility of declaring a year from hell very seriously. It's like determining whether a place qualifies to be a UNESCO heritage site. There's only been two years from hell in recent ESPN history. One was 2017. If you remember 2017, that was the year of Barstool Van Talk on ESPN,

which in retrospect really feels like the proto-Macophie. Oh, sure. chase after those guys who aren't watching ESPN move, doesn't it? It was also the year that the new president of the United States, Donald Trump, attacked both ESPN and Jamel Hill. Yep. It was the year that ESPN had an announcer named Robert Lee. Oh, yeah. Assigned to call a University of Virginia game, but after the white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, they pulled him off the game.

which became a controversy in and of itself. It was the year, David, and this is real. Please look this up if you don't believe me. ESPN had a fantasy football draft on TV that reminded some viewers of a human slave auction and had to apologize for the fantasy draft. That year ended with John Skipper,

who was the president of ESPN resigning and later admitting that he had used cocaine and that someone he bought cocaine from was trying to extort him. So that's a year from hell. Sure. It meets the Curtis and Shoemaker Bar. Here's the case for 2024 being a year from hell.

One, it's only January. And we've got a lot of data points that we've talked about here. Since you and I last talked, Aaron Rogers was both ushered off the Pat McAfee show with a big announcement and then brought back on the next day.

Yeah. It's just kind of an obvious flex of guess who gets to do the rundown of this show. Mm-hmm. Not you at ESPN, you guys in the executive suite, it's me.

Then there was this story in the athletic. I don't know if you saw this about the sports Emmys. The sports Emmys are, not something that most carbon-based life forms pay attention to. Yeah. Me, like you, I, you know, delight in having a nerdy interest in the thing I cover. I could not tell you who won a sports Emmy win or ever.

But ESPN concocted a scheme, according to the athletic to screw around with the sports Emmys. To rig the sports Emmys. Well, kind of. essentially what they did is let's say like college game day won an Emmy for best studio show. People behind the scenes could literally get the physical Emmy statuette. But the broadcasters on the show could not because the Emmy said, and this is according to Katie String and the athletic, you guys are fighting for your own awards, right? You're up for best host and best analyst and that and so forth.

Yeah. So it's almost like the Oscar for Best Picture. The producers get the award. producer gets it. Right. But what ESPN did is, again, according to Strang, submit these fake names. And then they would get a statuette and then they would change the plaque on the statue and give it to a person who was on the, who was actually on the broadcast, one of the broadcasters. So when they submitted here are the people who are working behind the scenes. They would put Kirk Henry, but then they would change the plaque to Kirk Herb Street so that they could apparently give.

give an award to Herbie. Right. I don't know that there are any actual victims in this scandal, but this is the stupidest and most penny-any thing I have ever heard of my life. Yeah, well, I mean, the sports emies probably exist mostly to decorate offices. So it doesn't seem like this is that damnable a sin. You're just decorating more offices. And presumably you're paying for them, right?

I didn't read the details of the story, but generally when you get those multi-em-e group, you know, when a group people gets an Emmy, you're paying for your statuettes. Do you have to go to like one of those trophy places we used to go to in Fort Worth when you needed a Little League baseball trophy? You got to have like a six-digit number

so they can identify your group and then confirm that you have the Emmy. Yeah. As part of the year from hell, there was also Stephen A in his non-ESPN podcast dunking on Jason Whitlock. Yeah. with some really, really unprintable and unspeakable insults.

And then yesterday, David, as our friends at awful announcing noted, Pat McAfee had a stirring message about Martin Luther King. Take a listen. A discussion, obviously, is Martin Luther King Jr. Yeah, he had a dream. And I think Lank was one of the closest we have had to potentially that dream coming to fruition. So let's realize that as we look around that we're maybe more close than we've ever been.

And there's an election about to take place next year where we need to remember that we are more close than we've ever been. And people could potentially try to drive us apart from the outside looking in. Now, as somebody who was canceled by both parties last week, both of them, cancel me. Thank you.

Two. Two political parties canceled me last week. We are still alive. Let's remember we don't need all the outside noise. All we need is a little bit of love. Which is what we have for all of the people. that have good intentions every single day whenever they wake up just like us.

Now, with that being said, football is awesome. I had a friend text me and said, my favorite part of this is the McAfee gang clapping for Martin Luther King. Yeah. At the beginning of the clip. Also, did you think the Reese Davis thing we played the other day was part of what Martin Luther King

was talking about? Is it the concept of length? like separate from that incident or the fact that that moment of television occurred is the fulfillment of Martin Luther King's dream? My answer to that question is I don't care. Okay. I don't care what he meant by that.

I also like how we got around to Pat being canceled by both political parties. I missed those press releases. Yeah, not sure there was a lot of way in from actual politicians about the events of the last two weeks. Take away, David, from ESPN's year from hell is that Jimmy Bataro, the president of ESPN, is not doing a lot of presidenting.

I don't know if I missed an out of office message from Jimmy Petaro, but you look at all of these things and you look at the relative silence from him and the other people who presumably run the company and you just go, what? Yeah. I saw somebody say on Twitter, you know, he's got bigger fish to fry. than whatever the controversy of the week with McAfee is. What are those fish? Well, there's the whole seals and.

Yeah, the whole survival of ESPN thing, which I get, right? But your job is kind of all of the above, right? Yes. Yeah. I mean, I do. The survival of ESPN is obviously the headline. I mean, obviously the number one thing you have to worry about, but I find it hard to imagine that that's 10 or 12 hours a day

of his life just kind of just like piecing it out and having meetings about potential future options. That just seems really implausible. The things that appear on ESPN, the TV network would also seem to merit a few hours a day. Because it is still a television channel or a streaming outlet or whatever you want to call it. Well, when you look at just the amount of fiscal investment, you know, anything McAfee does has got to be, and not just him, any of the, superstars of the network, anything that they do is has got to be a important, you know, a top line issue for Petara. Absolutely.

It totally is. And I, and I always, you always see this disclaimer and I think I put it in the ringer piece I mentioned where McAfee produces his own show. And then ESPN runs the show. But that is such a cop out. Like if you don't have, if you don't have control over what's being said on your air, then what's the point? And you guys are the ones who set up this agreement.

You created this environment where they could do anything they wanted. Yeah. And now it's your job to make it stop happening. Because dude, for the last two weeks, this TV, this sucks. As a message to the public about what ESPN is. Yeah. or what ESPN stands for, it also sucks. Yeah.

To me, it's much bigger than like, I'm a media person. And Mr. Bataro, I demand a comment on this latest outrage from the Macapagos show. You're right. The content is really what matters. Yeah, it's a content company. Last I checked. And from, again, all outward signs and inward signs and whatever signs you want to read, there is not somebody who has their hand on the content steering wheel.

not doing anything about this. And wherever that MLK thing, I don't know that that lands super high on the outrage meter. It's mostly just really weird. No, it's the thing that everybody notices because everybody's watching. Exactly. And it's the data point that tells us

something else is about to happen. Because it can happen. Because it's, and nobody is stopping it from happening. Other ESPN news, Andrew Marcian had a piece on Friday. He writes, ESPN and the NFL are in advanced talks that could result in the league taking an equity stake in ESPN. Oh, yeah.

The post has learned. As part of the potential agreement, Disney owned ESPN would take control of NFL media, which includes the NFL network, and the league would receive equity in ESPN. Now, as Marciaan points out, there's a lot of things to work out there, notably the CBA, you know, the players and the owners share revenue. in a particular way. So if revenue was coming in through a network

you partially owned, how would that revenue then filter out to the players? Mm-hmm. There's also a lot of this I just don't understand. Like if the NFL owned part of ESPN and ESPN is paying the NBA

a ton of money for media rights, which they are trying to do right now. Yeah. How does that work with the NFL paying a nominal competitor tons of money for media rights? through this network that it partly owns? Yeah, I mean, you imagine that any sort of counter programming measure would be shot down.

It's, you know, if you're, if you are, wait, so the NFL is a part owner in the NBA's, one of the NBA's main broadcast partners. Yeah, the main one right now. Yeah. Yeah, that's interesting, especially when it comes to just competition. I mean, it's one thing for ESPN to go to the negotiating table and say, you know, we're not paying a cent over whatever number of millions of dollars to the NBA because, you know, we're ESPN.

We can make our own content or we can air the seat. We can air, you know, Euro League basketball or, you know, like, whatever. We can, we can do this. But now they can actively say, oh, no, we'll just, you know, we'll just move the NFL draft to 10 days and just swallow the playoffs. Like, what are you going to do? Yeah, and just, you know, beyond like stuff like that, just like the NBA thinking, we're going to get a fair shake in all the shoulder programming, right?

Sports center, your pregame shows. You know, will that balance, can we be guaranteed that that balance wouldn't change at all? Yeah. And become more NFL friendly. It almost certainly would, right, if the NFL was an equity partner in the league. Mm-hmm. And this isn't to mention the journalists who work. ESPN.

There's still a lot of people who do not have any interest in working for a network that is owned by a league or partially owned by a league. I mean, you and I have read how many times Don Van Nat and Seth Wickersham pulling down Roger Goodell's pants? Is that going to happen if the NFL has an equity stake in ESPN? Can that happen? It can't happen at the NFL network. Are they really going to set up this firewall?

I believe that's the only in journalism word I'm supposed to invoke here. It is indeed, yeah. I mean, one would presume that they, that yes, that prior to this being announced, that firewall was, if not erected, it was, you know, it was agreed upon. But that doesn't really say anything about practicality. We've seen too many instances, especially in recent years of stories that disappeared because a major sponsor didn't like them or because some corporate partner objected.

And now it's not like you have to wait for the phone call. I mean, this, you know, this is someone that you're in touch with every day. You'll probably hear from Roger Goodell before you hear from, you know, before people start going in the comment section. I mean, it is definitely problematic. Yeah. And speaking of firewalls, how high was the firewall that was supposed to keep stuff, like Aaron Rogers is making untrue comments about Jimmy Kimmel and Jeffrey Epstein off TV.

Did that, did that hold? And when it didn't hold, did anything happen for days and days? Like that's just like, ooh, that's really interesting. That's a different shaped firewall, to be fair. I mean, you know, you can. Yeah, the Home Depot, those shit, those firewalls are a little farther in the back of the store. Yeah. Then the league firewall.

I mean, you mentioned Van Nata. I mean, I think that the thing to do now is to watch the reporters, right? Watch the journalists. I think that they'll, like I said, I am confident that the firewall exists right now, at least in some sort of gestural form. So watch how they try, watch how they test it out, right? Watch, this is the flip side. This is the inverse of McAfee bringing, you know, like saying he was not going to have Rogers on

and bring him on the next day, just pushing a little bit, right? Let's see, let's see if these, if our admired journalists push, see how, see how far they can get right now while things are still, you know, new and happy. The talk stage. Yeah. Yeah. And so early on, right, these are still talks with an announcement. But this is, yes, this is an interesting time to drop your big piece.

And by the way, you know who I want to read on the NFL maybe buying an equity stake in one of its media partners? I want to read Don Van Nett and Seth Wickersham. Yeah, for sure. I want to read the call that came in from Jerry Jones. Yeah. On that one. Absolutely. All right.

Coming up on today's show, David, tons of observations, sound clips and good old fun from the NFL's wildcard weekend. We asked, did Tony Romo manage to out McAfee the master? Plus another batch of sound and notes from last night's Iowa caucuses. Did the networks jump the gun on calling the election for Trump? We talk about the fall of a TV sports talker and the death of a great TV critic. All that and much more on the press box. A part of the ringer. Podcast Network.

Hello, media consumers. Brian Curtis, David Shoemaker and producer Brian Waters here. got a lot of great stuff for you, David, from the NFL's Wild Card Weekend. I was planted on the couch with a laptop on my knees. Just taking notes. Let's start Saturday with the Houston Cleveland game. You literally had the laptop underneath taking notes,

or was that an illusion? Was it? Oh, okay. I thought some sort of metaphorical day. Everything for the pod, man. I mean, that's like we can't let an utterance go by. that we could possibly laugh about. If you're eating like your wings,

did you eat them over your laptop keyboard, or do you put down the laptop so that you can, you know, keep it clean? My wife made some nuts that had like cayenne pepper and other spices on it. So I would take like three or four handfuls of notes and then have to run back to the kitchen to wash my hands. Yeah. So that I could type on the keys. These are Spotify laptops here.

It wouldn't take good care of them. Houston Cleveland game was the first one Saturday afternoon. I heard Noah Eagle use the phrase, the moment isn't too big for him to describe Houston rookie quarterback C.J. Straub. I feel that's a whole category of player who shows up in the postseason. The player who the moment, whom, for whom the moment isn't too big for, to get that, you have to be a rookie. Yeah. Or somebody who's new to the postseason, maybe a young player's 23, 24 would work. I heard it used for Chiefs

rookie receiver Rishi Rice. Jordan Love, the Packers, I'm pretty sure. Got a moment isn't too big for him. Yeah. Brock Purdy last year must have gotten one before he got hurt against the Eagles. Yeah. Moment isn't too big for him.

Keep an eye out. For any future invocations of that phrase. Do they ever use the inverse of that? The moment was too big for him? Yeah, somebody just falls apart in the playoffs. And it's not just they fell apart. It's that will clearly there is a certain moment

that they're big enough for but this is beyond that mark. See any phone conversation I had about Dag Prescott members of my family this weekend. Moment was a tad too big. By the way, that Houston Cleveland game was the

not Al Michaels game. Remember we heard Al Michaels got taken off or they went a different drought and they got taken off. They probably decided the moment was too big for him. No,

it was never too big for Uncle Al. But I was thinking watching that game was like, no eagle was really good. Yeah. And no offense to Al, but I'd be really surprised if anybody watched that game and said, you know who I miss right now is Al Michaels? Mm-hmm. Which is a big, big credit to no Eagle.

Can I just say that in the, especially, it's always been amazing to me when great announcers can flip between sports. But especially in the modern era, it's amazing to me because the expectations of knowledge are so

much higher than they were 10, 20, 30 years ago. It's even more impressive when someone like Ian Eagle comes in and just, I mean, Noah Eagle comes in and just kills it. Or Ion, in this case, because she does the same thing. Yeah. It is, isn't it?

And also just the rhythms of those two sports are very, very different. I can almost, like, like, I've put the rhythms argument to bed a little bit because I'm like, this is just a gift, right? But just the information. Maybe that's internalized, right? But you're saying the information, that's you having to study.

And as you say, you're right, normal TV football fan knows so much more about football now. Yeah. Than they did 20 years ago. The Saturday night game, David, was Chiefs Dolphins. You might have heard that it was the peacock game.

We were all of us as Americans, as football fans, crossing this bridge from the world of television into the world of streaming. Yeah. I saw a great tweet from our pal Kazim saying, by the way, all of us wrestling fans,

we already subscribe to Peacog. Yeah. We're good. We paid the 599. I remember the big kind of, you know, issue with Peacogs when it launched is they were expecting to have the Olympics, right? And it was during COVID,

they didn't get the Olympics or the Winter Olympics, whatever. And so they're, but they, when they started up there, like, we got the office. we got the like and we have pro wrestling and I was just like you're just take is there a 20 year plan I can pay like buying a car right let me in this for the next 10 years I'm all good the office yeah between the all the comedy the same whatever the office and parks and rec and 30 rock this just

that that probably plays in my house more than any more even than the wrestling because we just sleep to it I mean it's just it's on all the time so yeah peacock's doing fine by this residence it was not that big of a deal and the nice thing about if listen, I understand all the issues, right? I understand everybody not having the platform, not understanding what a platform is. That I'm particularly sympathetic to. But if you do have it and you're nominally aware,

you know, there's something, there's something incredibly gratifying about going to a platform where you can sometimes spend half an hour scrolling around to find the thing you want to watch, right? I mean, just finding a thing to watch, but you go to it at game time or, you know, pro wrestling event time,

and it's just giant right there on the home screen. All you got to do is push the button one more time and you're in the football game. It somehow seems simpler than finding a thing on television these days. So yeah, yeah. Arguably it is, which is a weird outcome here. But it benefited because everybody kept referring to it as the peacock game. You didn't have to sit down and think,

now which app am I going to right now to look for this thing? The story was peacock. And I got to say, I found that the whole coverage of the Peacock game to be a tad strange. It's really interesting because the NFL, first of all, the NFL got $100 million plus reportedly for the Peacock game. Yeah. So they did it because there's a lot of money at stake.

But they also did it because the NFL is the king of television. And the NFL very much wants to also be the king of streaming. You don't want to surrender something just because the medium change. and the, you know, the pinball machine looks slightly different right when you get into a streamer. They want to be the big dog on boat. But people were covering it like there was a pro peacock and anti-pecock faction in America.

Yeah. Like this was the GOP caucuses or something. They kept playing this clip from Mike Franceses' podcast. As the anti-pecock point of view. and it was playing on news channels with no explanation of like, you know, Mike Francesa has ranted about many things. I don't know if this is really emblematic. Yeah, they should play it in tandem with the New York Giants like, you know,

coaching staff rant. And then we'll see. Yeah. We'll see. We'll see. We can gauge the level of volume, the level of ire in his voice. Yeah. Now,

now how do you feel about this data point you're being fed in the story about Peacock? Yeah. I mean, I was very aware of the conversation leading up to the game, even the day of the game. There was a lot of joking going around. Where there people throughout and afterwards saying, damn, I wish I could be watching this game, but I'm unable to watch this game. Or was it just the build and then everything was fine. So that's a great question. Usually first round playoff games, or I'd say I wouldn't say usually, sometimes first round playoff games can hit the 30 million viewer mark, which is just again. Pick your job off the floor. 30 million people. A gigantic audience in television these days is watching a first round NFL playoff game a lot of the time. The Peacock game got 23 million, even with you having to pay and download the app or figure out how to watch the app. Chargers, Jags, if you remember that very wheels off playoff game last year, that got fewer viewers than that on NBC. So a pretty good number for the NFL given Mike Frances's warnings to the American public about what the NFL was doing. Also, it didn't break. I mean, this is, again, you and I talked about this when Amazon first got the NFL.

Sure. The big thing is, does it work? There were no catastrophic technical failures on Sunday night or Saturday night, excuse me. So that worked. Yeah. As someone who's, again, been, I mean, not just the WWU content on Peacog, but prior to that, WWU had their own app where they were streaming all these major events. So I've been staring at this for a long time.

I was also a relatively early adopter to streaming cable, right? I mean, just like of the Hulu TV, you know, YouTube TV variety. And I was, I remember the early days of the Ringer. I remember saying more and more people are doing the streaming cable. And the Super Bowl is going to be a catastrophe because it's one of the few times where it's second by second, every lag matters, right? And it never really added up to much,

even though there certainly were giant lags, depending on where you're watching it. The flip side of that is, and I saw this mostly through wrestling, that everybody blames that platform for any normal lagging experience, right? I mean, like, we're recording this podcast and you're blurry to me right now, and you weren't blurry to me 30 seconds ago.

You know, like this is, Well, your internet connection, my internet connection, whatever. But like, if you're watching a game, you blame the big dog. You blame, you blame Peacock. If there's a lag, you blame Amazon, whatever, even though it's probably, or not necessarily the case. And to get off Scott Free, even on that front, is, is pretty, pretty impressive. Totally agree.

Did you find it funny that Jason Garrett was calling the game? Yeah. I kept expecting them to cut back to the row color commentators. or the real studio guys. I mean, the real booth guys. But yeah, he was doing it.

We crossed this bridge into the future and Jason Garrett was waiting for us on the other side. Yeah. It was strange, like putting out your B team for this huge event. Yeah.

Yeah. So that was great. And I got to say, I did, I was like Francesa before the game. I was warning the American public about Jason Garrett, not the peacock part of the equation.

I was like, folks, buckle up. He wasn't that bad. His voice is kind of boring and kind of medium to low power the whole game. But as I started to listen to him and I got used to it a little bit, and that was also a really boring game. Yeah. He kind of met the moment, you might say.

But if you listen to him, he was making good points. I've heard worse. I've heard worse than a playoff game. It's true. I'm old enough to remember Drew Breeze. We've talked a lot about these, you know, when you're Amazon now and your peacock, the big thing is to make it feel as normal as possible for a football game because there's so many legacy viewers you don't want you want everyone to feel like they're right at home it would

be hilarious you're talking about taking a bridge to the future it would be hilarious if they had just gone the opposite direction and had like ironic robot voices calling the game or you know or the whole thing yeah it's all picture and picture and picture with just like data scrolling up aside just to anger all the old grandpothers in the audience, that would be fantastic stuff. But I think if you did it, you'd have to really pitch it toward the grandfather, like what their idea of a robot is. So it'd be like C3POs standing next to Cletus. I spend a lot of time after being driven insane by cable news and cable sports news, lately I've been watching a lot of the pride. There is a there is a, on Sling TV, there is a

price is right, a classic Price's Right channel. All prices. right all the time. So I just put that on the background a lot of the time when I'm working. I totally forgotten that at some point in like the late 70s or 80s, they had a robot. And the robot's entire job is just to bring out the prize that like the panel would bid on at the very beginning. And Bob Barker refers to him as robot. Very occasionally, the announcer, I believe, will do the robot voice if it's necessary for the gag or whatever. But like it's no, no, all it is is just a, it looks like the Jetson's robot, it is sedentary.

It's on wheels, I guess, and it rolls out. That is, that is the perfect, that is the ideal robot for a situation like this. The ideal color analyst for the Peacock game.

Yes. Andy reads Icy mustache. Best visual of the playoffs so far. Every time. Yeah. It's great stuff. Didn't it remind you of like NFL films footage

at the ice bowl? You should see when we were kids and you're like, how is it that cold? Mm-hmm. Also, of my question for people smarter about the human body than I am is, where is that moisture coming from? Like, was Andy Reed producing stuff from his nose and or body that was constantly

icing up? It's the stuff falling onto his nose, falling onto the mustache. It wasn't snowing. It was just cold. There's still condensation. I don't know, man. Any doctors in the house, Please let us know how Andy Reid's mustache was repeatedly freezing over during the game. All right, Sunday, David, the Cowboys versus the Green Bay Packers. Holy crap, that was awful. Kind of blacked out during this. I thought that was going to be the whole segment. I keep going.

You want to work through some of this? It's fine. Well, I got a couple of things. First of all, I did a live stream to my pals in Dallas. they were the former sports radio guys now have their podcast called The Dumb Zone. And they had this whole room of people watching the game. It was one of those watch us watch the game thing.

And I came in in the second quarter, which was when the Cowboys just really got smoked. Yeah. And it looked like the Ron DeSantis Iowa watch party in there. She's like, oh, God. Oh, my God. We're getting killed. Also, I love that Greg Olson was asked about Cowboys coach Mike McCarthy's future.

Mike McCarthy became an embattled coach during that game. And he was defending him and saying, you know, I think any NFL team would rush to hire this guy. I will take Greg Olson at his word that that's how he feels. I will also say that I have never heard an announcer be like, you know what, this guy's ass should be fired as soon as they get back to the locker room. Yeah. Like, that's just not going to happen in that moment.

Yep. So if you ever ask an announcer about coach. security or maybe quarterback job security, you're not going to get the Stephen A style layout in the middle of a game. No. No, but it is interesting because as we've talked about a million times, they try to push it a little bit more in the direction of the conversations that we are having. And we being fans, but also people on podcasts and stuff like that,

it's kind of amazing to just sort of shrug that aside. Shrug that aside? shrug it off, perhaps. Strug it off. I'm mixing metaphors, but you get the point. At least acknowledge there's going to be a lot of people calling for this guy's job, right? I mean, the odds of him coming back. If just say judging by NFL history, particularly reason NFL history, it would be a shocking move by Jerry Jones to bring this coach back.

Oh, my God. And I watched all week before the game is, and I think we did this here at the Ringer, as people were doing the, is Bill Belichick going to go work? for Jerry Jones. They had that discussion. And I was like, I totally am fine with this as a piece of podcast talk show fun. Yeah. But practically speaking, this has a 1% chance of happening.

When the Cowboys got down 27 to nothing and people started tweeting about Bill Belichick being the next coach of the Cowboys, I was like, oh my God. This hypothetical idea went from 1% to like 35% or 40% chance. have happening. Not sure. It's more likely because of how terribly the game went, you mean? Yes, because they got smoked. Yeah.

If they lost a close playoff game to the Packers, it's bad but different, I think. Certainly if they beat the Packers, but all of a sudden, it's like, you're down 27 and nothing in the first half of this game. Yeah. At home. Seven point favorite.

Our friend Corbin Dubois, or Du Bois, sorry, Corbin, pointed us to this tweet from Matt Schneidman. He's one of the Packer, beatwriters at the athletic. He says one of the funniest moments tonight was after Jordan Love's TD pass to go up 20 to nothing, the press box announcer, this is at AT&T Stadium in Arlington, reminded everyone no cheering in the press box.

I'm not sure the press box PA knew, but it was Brian Gutakunst and his staff going nuts. So there was the Packers assistant coaches who were cheering their ability to run up the on the Cowboys. Sure. Sure. Not the ad answers. It was not like me in the Sugar Bowl press box.

Also, by the way, great blood on the Walls Day of Dallas Sports Radio after the game. Yesterday, oh, my God. I was like setting an alarm so I could be up early. Because if you feel terrible,

at least your radio friends can express that rage for you. Oh, my God. Absolutely amazing. Who do you think was more irate? Dallas Sports Radio or Philly Sports Radio this weekend. Ooh. I think Dallas was more of a surprise because I think Phillies had six weeks to work this out.

Yeah, but I don't think, I mean, I listened to it a little bit. They weren't expecting it. You know, there's always the downbeat callers that phone it in. We're not going to the Super Bowl, but we're not losing to the bucks. That was kind of the expectation. I don't know. I feel like in terms, I mean, listen, it's, it's a, there's a lot of complaints. that's going on. There's a lot of irrational anger on Philly Sports Radio, but there's always

an incredible overconfidence that's built into it. Of course, last year they were exceptional, but, and so I was, you know, some of that overconfidence was warranted. The whole first half of the season, they were just like, you know, we're a D-back away from the Super Bowl, and I was just like, who is, who is seeing it like this? Only Philly Sports Radio. But so, yeah, We should compare and contrast. Night game Sunday night was the Rams versus the Lions. My only note here was, dude, is there ever been a NFL playoff game storyline

to use that awful word that arrived on your doorstep from Amazon like this one? Matt Stafford, former quarterback of the Lions, is going to Detroit to face off with Jared Goff, the former and discarded quarterback of the Rams. Yeah. They are playing each other. And Stafford, by the way, old guys still got it scenario,

just absolutely bawled out that night. But the Lions won. And everybody is happy for Lions fans. They had this Lions. Wait, is Stafford? Is Stafford old enough for Old Guys still got a territory? Well, has the quarterback old guy still got to been redefined by like Tom Brady? You just got to be.

He's 35. Yeah, I guess so. I guess so. Kind of a Ricky. I just don't, I don't feel like, I feel like he, I feel like he's not been in the

doesn't have it phase, doesn't quite have it phase long enough to then still have it. But you're right, maybe he's not, the rebound is not necessary. He needed as Joe Flacco or Mason Rudolph like layoff before we officially old guys.

Yeah, Flacco is definitely old guy still got it. It just, you know. Mason Rudolph is just young. He looks young and, Yeah, exactly. Monday, David, we had something funny happen. Bill Steelers was supposed to be the early Sunday game. It got postponed because of weather.

I love all the NFL weather theater, too, where you get reporters coming on television going, you know, it's minus four, but it actually feels like minus 20. Thank you. I have seen a weather report in my life. I understand. the difference between these two things.

A reporter always loves telling you that, you know? It's this, but it feels like this. CBS did a funny thing on Sunday where they didn't have the game anymore. The game had been postponed, but they went ahead and went with their pregame show on Sunday. It was a pregame show that led into nothing. Oh, yeah.

Find your own metaphor. there. Jim Nance and Tony Romo were on the call of the game. I did not have Tony Romo David pegged as an only in journalism word connoisseur. Oh, no. But Brian, can we roll Tony Romo using his word power? Well, I'm really impressed with the archetype of his career. You know, you expect him to be a career backup. And, you know, he had been very successful. And they put him in and they're riding the hot hand right now. But to me, he has developed. It's an archetype like Gino Smith in Seattle. He is for real, Jim.

He's led the NFL to last three weeks in multiple categories, and this will be the biggest test of his career today. He's got a second. So was he trying to say archetype? Yes. Or was he trying to say the arc type? Like this is the type of arc.

Oh, good question. Can I go for option C and say, I think he was trying to say archetype. But having heard the word thought that it meant the type of arc of his career. Which in this case, it's not totally wrong, right? No, no. It almost, it really, it really kind of works. He was the quarterback. He sat out for a while and then he became the quarterback again.

That's what Mason Rudolph did and that's what Gino Smith did. Yeah. Just a very funny to hear that 50 cent word in Tony's mouth. Also, not to let Pat McAfee be outdone, David. Romo had his own tribute to the late, great Martin Luther King, Jr. Oh, no. Change. To learn more, visit realize the dream.org.

What a day. Martin Luther King, Jr. deserves to have a day named after him. It's at the lowest effort tribute to Martin Luther King ever, deserves to have a day named after him. That was one of the most incredible. things I've ever heard. All right, Monday night football, it was Eagles Bucks.

As mentioned, Chris Ryan, our pal, noted that the now they tell us story dropped on ESPN before the game. You know, usually the journalist has that story ready to go about all the things that went wrong with Siriani and Jalen Hertz. And it's called it now they tell us because they always tell us after the fact. Well, in this case, ESPN put it up Monday morning. We don't even need to wait for the inevitable Eagles meltdown. Also, maybe I'm the only guy who cares about this,

but since Dom, the security guy, put his hands on a 49ers player, and the Fox crew was ready to- Don't blame Dom, Brian. What are you about to do? Oh, here we go. They were ready to build the statue of Dom next to Rocky. They were ready to name a sandwich after Dom. Eagles went one and six.

Yeah. Dom back on the sidelines yesterday, by the way. also and this will appeal to you David ESPN showed a shot of a special guest at the game Rick Flair game was in Tampa Rick Flair appeared to be standing on a balcony somewhere inside the stadium just

absorbing the majesty of it all I love the nature boy nothing but respect but maybe now well maybe a few things other than respect okay we're going on the record A lot of respect, but not total respect. For what he accomplish in the ring?

I admire the, yes, I admire the Nature Boys exploits in the ring. Let's put it that way. But if we got into a point where we only need to be alerted when Rick Flair is not at an event. Yeah. Yeah, it's also, it also violates one of like the cardinal rules of wrestling where it's like, if he's not about to run into the ring and hit somebody with the chair, don't tease us with his presence. If he's just there incidentally watching, no, you expect more pro wrestlers.

the reporter Haley Elwood tweeted back of me that he's trending into Snoop appearance territory that's exactly right. Yeah. We're just going to assume that they are present at every event in American life. And if not, just let us know.

Give us a heads up. All right, David, coming up in 30 seconds. Donald Trump won Bigley in Iowa last night. What did cable news do for the rest of the night? And did they call Trump's victory too soon? But first, let's do the overworked Twitter joke of the week where we celebrate a gag

that was so obvious that all of media Twitter made it at exactly the same time. Send your nominees to add the press box pod where they are always, always gratefully received. We had a lot of runners up from the wild card weekend, David.

As mentioned, the Steelers started former third stringer Mason Rudolph at quarterback. It was an overworked Twitter joke to write they should never let poor Rudolph join in any playoff games. Fantastic stuff, yeah. Thanks to Ryan Snyder.

the Patriots and their owner Bob Kraft replaced Bill Belichick with Jared Mayo a lot of Kraft Mayo jokes Yeah Son of a bitch it was right in front of our eyes the whole time Thanks to Andrew Poppice for that one The other big TV shot of the weekend was Taylor Swift

peeking out of those icy windows In the skybox at Arrowhead Stadium I saw her compared to a live action remake of Frozen to the movie The Revenant to Claude Monet's painting the red kerchief which I was not familiar with before seeing that tweet to the guy in the Sicko's Committee illustration and to what frozen pizzas see before they're bought

a lot of good stuff with Taylor Swift but this week's winner David Texas Senator Ted Cruz is back. He's a football guy. We couldn't keep him away from the big game, especially when it involves a Texas-based football team. So before the Cowboys and Packers faced off,

Ted Cruz tweeted, let's go Dallas Cowboys. Hashtag, seize everything. It was an overworked Twitter joke to write. Ted Cruz now 0 for 2 in attempting to seize things in the month of January. Thanks to listener Aaron Bryan for that one. If you thought the pack took a dump in the Cowboys office,

congrats. You made the Overward Twitter joke of the week. All right, the notebook dump, David, let's do a little Iowa caucus TV theater here. All right. So the Bucks Eagles game and the Iowa caucuses

started right around the same time on Monday night. Uh-huh. I thought I'd be doing a lot of flipping back and forth. Turns out that was 707 left in the first quarter of the April. in the networks called Iowa for Donald Trump. There was a little bit of a controversy about whether they called it too fast because the AP has a rule that says don't call a race before the polls close. So you can do your exit polls and then the polls close at 7 o'clock you call the race

if you're pretty convinced who's going to win. You don't really need to see a lot of vote tall. Sure. Well, Iowa caucuses are weird because nobody shows up until 7 p.m. Yeah. And then you listen to speeches. I believe you can still caucus at a caucus. And the people don't actually vote for a while.

So essentially people in the caucuses last night could look at their phones and see that CNN and other outlets were calling the race for Trump before they hit even voted. Yeah. Then do we think that affected democracy in any important way? Did anybody like look at their phone and be like, I am leaving or voting different? differently because this race has already been called? I mean, I guess it depends on how the math works, right? I mean, if your, if your algorithm is based on the likely turnout of voters and you actively depress the number of voters.

But they've turned out, right, at this point. They're just having. They're in the hall. They haven't voted yet. That's what's weird about this. It's an entrance poll instead of an exit poll. Yeah. Like you'd have in a normal election.

did they explain why they decided to do it to violate the don't really you know to their own rule to not release the until everybody's voted so it's a great question and i think it boils down to they wanted to get it out there because all these news organizations like the people who bring you scoops about which NFL player is about to sign or which coach is about to get fired like to have news that will be announced anyway sooner than their competitors okay so they're racing to get it out in fact CNN told the New York Times that they were ready to announce this at 7 o'clock which makes sense right Trump was winning in a blowout

so you could just talking to people going in the caucuses you could figure out that Trump was going to win big but they delayed it till 730 I guess because they wanted some people to have a chance to vote but it's just this weird I mean again I don't think this like matters all that much but it does seem like one of those things the media does that just pisses people off. Yeah. For no reason.

And there's really very little upside in it. In fact, well, right. I mean, in Trump's the only candidate, you could have kind of plausibly done it for, right? I mean, if Haley or, you know, God forbid DeSantis had been winning by that kind of, had been that clear a victor at that point, wouldn't they have, don't you think they would have not announced it specifically to avoid this sort of criticism from the Trump campaign from Trump supporters? Maybe not.

And in fact, Donald and Don Jr. took a big picture with TV in the background last night as soon as the networks called it and put it up on social media. Because now they like early network calls. Yeah. Not such a fan when Fox News called Arizona for Biden back in 2020, but when they call it for Trump, no argument. Since CNN called the race 30 minutes in, you might ask, what did they do for the rest of the night? the answer turned out to be live vote counting from the Iowa caucuses.

I want you to listen to CNN Sarah Seidner. She was in Cedar Rapids telling America this is what democracy sounds like. Over here in Seattle Rapids, let's check in with Sarah right now. Sarah, what are you seeing where you are? The county is happening right now. The GOP chair of Lynn County is almost done with the count. And so I'm going to let you, they're checking in

every time he looks at one of the ballots. and pulls one out, so let's listen in a little bit. 06, Ramoswamy. 03, DeSantis. 03, DeSantis. 03, DeSantis. 07, with Donald Trump. They actually took that count for quite a while,

longer than the clip I included there. Uh-huh. And then they went to count. Blyffe's Iowa and had more votes being counted aloud. Yeah. You got to do something. A lot of this is what democracy looks like talk on CNN last night. Yeah.

I think that's important, right? Well, I... After the last Iowa caucus. That's true, not to mention the events of January 6th. Mm-hmm. But it is kind of weird that you're laying into or leaning into democracy talk and then the caucus is won by Donald Trump. And according to CNN's own entrance poll, only 28% of Republicans voting thought that Biden was a legitimate president.

A mixed night for democracy. Former president. That he had been elected legitimately, right? It's not a commentary on him as president. No, no, that his, the Trump case for Biden's legitimacy, you might say. Right. This was also former president, Donald Trump on Sunday, expressing his special commitment to democracy. You can't sit home.

If you're sick as a dog, you say, Donald, I've got to make it. Even if you vote and then pass away, it's worth it. If you're sick, if you're just so sick, you can't tell it. I don't think, get up. Get up. So feel free to vote for me and then die. Donald Trump's closing argument in Iowa.

A couple quick ones before we go, David. Emmanuel Atchow, former NFL play. former Texas Longhorn. He's on FS1. He's had kind of a very interesting and promising TV career that has morphed into a very standard talk show opinion guy career.

Yeah. This is from Sean Keely on awful announcing. There was a phony news item going around that Caleb Williams is going to be the number one pick in the draft would refuse to play for the Bears. Uh-huh. Atcho took that clip and went to TikTok and put it up there.

People started tweeting at him and saying, hey, that is not real. This item is not a legitimate news item. And someone tweeted at him, so you purposely post fake news for clout and money and he responded, no, in the event it was fake, I posted it to the least serious website

because no lives are being lost based on that post. Either way, real or fake, the video would go. garnered traction, which would increase followers. More followers equals larger brand deals. Understand? I've never told me. So the answer is yes?

I mean, that's it. Yeah, the gnaw at the beginning turned out to be kind of a false lead. I feel like we had this argument about McAfee, about Shannon Sharp, like, we're not expecting everybody to be Lawrence right. Mm-hmm. But probably it matters whether or not it's true. Yeah. I think everybody watching the stuff probably cares if the stuff is true.

We're even asking you to be a professional fact checker, but at the point that you know it's not true, then, you know, maybe do something better. Just announced yesterday, David, the Baltimore Sun newspaper, which was owned by Alden Global Capital, was bought by David Smith, who is the executive chairman of Sinclair Media.

We may have answered the question, what is worse for a newspaper than being owned by Alden Global Capital. Yeah. We need to have a prayer segment for our colleagues in the media for stories like this. I'm really not sure what to say otherwise. Finally for you, Tom Shales died over the weekend. If his byline is on your bookshelf, it's because he co-wrote those great oral histories of Saturday Night Live and ESPN with James Andrew Miller.

he was a TV critic at the Washington Post. And Tom Shales was an interesting TV critic for a couple of reasons. One is he could do everything. He could report. He could write, like really write. He could turn the screws on television executives. Yeah. And he could also watch television and tell you what was good on TV and what wasn't good on TV.

And when I was thinking about I'm reading the Obit in the Washington Post it's like those jobs have almost all been divided and given to different people in the world we live in today. If you're a person that breaks news about the NFL, I really don't trust you to go to the draft combine here in a couple of months and sit there and tell me

that that guy's going to be a good safety. I don't think you have both of those abilities. Yeah. But there's like a certain newspaper generation ethic about this. I mean, he was, he was an Illinois guy like Roger Ebert. You remember when you'd read Roger Ebert's reviews

and then you would stumble on one of Roger Ebert's features about Robert Mitchum or somebody like that? Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah, he's also actually the best at doing this. Mm-hmm. Most of his output was reviews, but he could actually do anything. He could redo it, yeah.

At a really high level. Mm-hmm. That's Tom Schales on television. the other thing that seems interesting to me in retrospect is a lot of his work and if you dip into it and I recommend you do it will strike you is really sarcastic and really mean about television some of that is because you know he's writing in 70s 80s 90s before the dawn of quality TV you know I don't know how you approach I have a job and it is to review elf yeah that's probably different than True Detective season four. But also just the tone of criticism has changed so much. I mean, if you're a TV critic now, just think of, and you watch, let's say, True Detective.

Did they review Alf? I'm sorry. Okay, I'm going to search for this while we talk. But let's say you're a TV critic now and you're watching True Detective. And I just thinking of this because I watched it last night. Even if you hate it, you're probably going to be, all right, don't look up by,

way, don't look up the Tom Shale's thing because we have a, we have a strain pun headline on the Tom Shale's Alph review. David, no typing. But if you're reviewing True Detective, you're going to be, even if you hate it, you're going to be like, I am open mind. What is this person trying to tell me, right? You're going to go in with a certain inquiry about what you're watching. Yeah. Criticism was not always like that every time out. There was a lot of the, this is, this sucks and I'm going to fun of it relentlessly for the next 800 work. No, no, I only asked about Alf because, like, I only ever remember reading one television review in my entire childhood.

And it was like a, it was like, it was like a, it was like a review of the upfronts or something where the critic was like going through and talking about all of the shows that was going to, where they were going to be on ABC in the fall, you know, in the coming weeks and which ones had a chance to do well. I don't know, maybe if they were reviewing Alph, then I I can't believe I didn't know about it. That probably would have been my career path if I knew you could just like sit around reviewing

Alv. Could you imagine could you imagine if we had any of our great modern reviewers just covering a sitcom from our childhood on a week by week basis and trying to treat it with that level of gravity? That's what's so funny because that's what TV was. A lot of it back then. And it was not like TV where you, you can come back in episode three and they'll be like,

oh, here's how the story changed. Here's, here are the clues about what's going to happen. He's like, no, Alf had another misadventure today. Yeah. There's no forward progress.

There's nothing happening. Anyway, RIP Tom Shales, check out his work if you're interested in such things. Only in journalism, David, alert listener, Daniel P.

Malloy since in this sentence from semaphore. It's about the Biden administration, not going to the Davos conference. heading into an election year semaphore reports senior white house officials who have previously made the trip to switzerland are eschewing the confab wow that's a double got a couple of beauties in there i should know by the way a listener really shocked me this weekend his name is danny to chito and he did an entire march madness style bracket of every only in journalism word. Oh, amazing.

That has come from the Pressbox universe. I tweeted it out. It is really amazing. I had completely forgotten all these because, of course, we forgot to write them down. But like, you can have a first round matchup between bravura and arrest. Like, W-R-E-S-D. Anyway, please enjoy that. It's time for David Chewmaker guesses the strained pun headline.

Yeah. Last Monday's headline about a Hamlet soliloquy interrupted by an audience member sending an email was to BCC or not to BCC. Today's headline comes to us from Brian Curtis. It's from the Washington Post. It's from what appears to be Tom Schiaels is not totally negative review of the beloved NBC sitcom Alf. All right, David, I want you to remember. what Alf stood for or perhaps still stands for. Yeah, I got it.

Yeah. While you ponder, what was the Washington Post strain pun headline? Alien life form. Alien laugh form? Alien laugh form is the word. Yes, sir. First guess.

Didn't even need any talking out. Alien laugh form. That's so good. Tom Schell's right. It's not as dumb as Dynasty. He did have that going for it. He is David Shoemaker. I'm Brian Curtis. Bruchin Magic by Brian Waters.

Come back here Thursday for Pressbox's final edition where the guest is going to be Claire Malone of the New York. Former ringer podcaster Claire Malone. We're going to get her back in the podcast game. And then Shoemaker and I return Monday with more lukewarm takes about the media. See you then, David. See you later, Brian.