The Press Box - Prince Harry's 'Spare' Is Good. Really. Plus: Tom Brady, Mike Tirico, and Netflix's New Tennis Doc.

Episode Date: January 17, 2023

Bryan is joined by author and Wall Street Journal columnist Jason Gay to discuss Prince Harry’s new memoir, ‘Spare.’ They weigh in on the American interest in the royals and highlight a few disclosures that stood out in the memoir (1:44). Later, they recap the wild-card playoff round and touch on what could have been Brady’s last game as a player and his potential future at Fox (27:40) before diving into Netflix’s newest documentary series on tennis, ‘Break Point,’ and discussing the possible impact it could have on the sport (48:38). Plus, the Overworked Twitter Joke of the Week and Jason Gay Guesses the Strained-Pun Headline. Host: Bryan Curtis Guest: Jason Gay Associate Producer: Erika Cervantes Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Hello, media consumers. Welcome to the press box. Brian Curtis of the Ringer here, along with producer Erica Servantes. Sitting in for David today is one of our pals. He is a Wall Street Journal columnist. He is the author of the new book called I Wouldn't Do That If I Were Me. He is Jason Gay.

Jason, how are you? I'm just fine, Brian. Very happy for you and your cowboys. You must be just tickled. Separately is a pesky extra points. Relieved is another word for it. It's quite a night. We'll get to that in a second because coming up on the show,

we have TV notes from the first round of the NFL playoffs on Mike Tariko, Al Michaels, Tom Brady, who might already be working for Fox as we record this, and a very, very, very long football season. Plus, tennis is getting a glow up from Netflix. Can a documentary series help a sport that has some major faults? See what I did there? Let's start Jason with the biggest media story in the world.

Whether or not people are sick of Prince Harry. Prince Harry has a new memoir. It's called Spare. And it's selling like crazy. Nearly 1.5 million copies sold on its first day. according to Guinness World Records. It's not aware that Guinness is still the world's record keeper, but okay. Were we relying on book scan now or now it's just the same guy who's measuring fingernails

is doing books? Yeah. I guess Guinness comes out of the bullpen when you got a big record going. I would like to state my credentials here or my anti-credentials maybe. I'm not a Royals guy. I have not watched much of the crown When somebody says Princess Margaret I have to ask wait

Who was Princess Margaret again? She was whose sister? Right. None of that. But I went out and bought spare Last Tuesday. Yeah. I opened it to page one.

I am enjoying the hell out of this book, Jason. Yeah. Wow. I'm impressed. It looks big. Can you account it? is a doorstopper? It's about 400 pages.

Okay. 3.350-ish, of which I've read 200. Okay. But, and we'll talk about the writing of it in a second, it is divided up into very short, numbered chapters. Okay. Sort of like a pulp novel. So chapter one, and maybe that goes half a page.

And then chapter two on the same page, and that goes two pages, right four five six right so it feels like you're almost absorbing harry by his thoughts like thought by thoughts seen by scene through his life and that really hits brian curtis in the elmore leonard jimmy canton sweet spot right just those quick thoughts right it's hit yeah harry's either a pulp writer or sports writer i can't quite tell which one an old dot dash writer Some thoughts. And another thing, why it doesn't spark the Anderson have a job? I got to tell you, though, the book is really, really good. And part of the reason it's really good and part of the reason the backlash has been surprising to me is, let's just go back to first

principles here. We have a British prince who married an American actress, defected from the monarchy and then is writing a tell-all book about his cringy family. I'm in. I don't have to know anymore. I don't have to be particularly interested in the royals. Like, that's amazing.

And to get then this level of detail about his life and what it's like to be around his family, yeah, it's good. It's wildly interesting. page to page. I can't, you know, it's like, it's funny. It's like one of those things. I don't, I, I, I, I, this is not me being ironic or, you know, trying to be my first take,

counterintuitive, uh, self here. It's just a really good book. Right. And I defy anyone to read it rather than reading the aggregated lists of the revelations from the book and say any differently. Well, isn't this the world we live in now where Brian, people don't read the article. People don't read beyond the headline, you know, just kind of reacting to the reaction and kind of raising our hand to weigh in here.

I think part of this also has to be that it's a little unusual for a major, quote, unquote, tell-all book to come on the heels of a, what, six-part Netflix television show. I don't think anybody was feeling especially underserved Harry when this book hit shelves. I wish David were here to also ask about the weird dynamic of the early January release. you know, not exactly socking stuff for material to put it out there, but it definitely has like grabbed everybody. Those sales

figures, you know, are incredible, you know? So January was the horror movie Megan and then Prince Harry's memoir? That's like January counter-programming? I guess so. I guess so. I mean, as the publishing industry found a new sweet spot for the major book, I see

Bonaise Smith's got a book coming out next week. I don't know if you know that, Brian. It's only been advertised on ESPN every 90 seconds or so. But the thing about the hairy thing, I also feel like is that, you know, there's just naturally American skepticism toward the royals. It is our job.

It is our role in this, you know, musical called the royal family to react negatively to royals and royal disclosure and royal scandal and sort of, you know, roll our eyes at the whole thing. And so when you're talking about reading the book and actually going through it and finding it,

you know, the quality pretty good, you're taking a step much farther than the average person. You're saying this is good old fashion American chauvinism. We don't have a king here. We don't have princes. That's right. That's right. We got Troy Aikman and Joe Buck.

We don't have royals. I was interested in the boom times and American interest in the royal family. Sure. So when you and I were much younger, there was the princess Diana period. her marriage, her marital troubles, her death. And then it felt like it got very quiet for a while. And this is the second great royal boom time of our life, which is powered by Harry and Megan and by the crown on Netflix.

Is that right? Right, but also powered by social media, which I think is the ingredient that didn't exist in the prior generations, right? I feel like royal obsession is a thing that, you know, it's like, have you ever been told, like, you know, like 10% of the population is just completely horsey, all horses all the time, or like golf, you know, like 7% of the population just can't get enough of golf. There's just a segment of the population that is crazed about the royals. And now you're able to be fed it, not just from traditional outlets like newspapers and sit-down

interviews and so on. They serve it to themselves. You get the social media feed. You get all that. And I think that also accounts for some of the fray that exists now. It's like, does anyone feel, again, underserved the Harry's story? You know, even if you're not going and hunting down the book to read it, you do feel like you're part of the, you know, maelstrom. Yeah.

There was always that longtime British journal called the Royals Watcher. Yes. It's really one of the funniest jobs in journalism. Right. But now the Royals Watcher is inside Buckingham Palace or was inside Buckingham Palace. Yes. Yes. We're not getting it from the outside.

We're getting it from our man on the inside. He's telling us what's going on. I mean, are you halfway into this, a third of the way? 200 pages. So where does it fall on your like Spicer meter? You know, if like full disclosure book, you know, where you're just like, wow, I can't believe he said that. Where is it, you know, on a scale of like he's holding a lot back to like 10, he's given a lot.

Where is it? So this is where I think the aggregated lists lose a little something because they're focusing on some very discreet disclosures like the fact that when Harry went on an expedition to the North Pole, he came back in his nether regions. Yes. We're slightly frozen. Yes. Which sounds like a certain level of disclosure. And let's be honest, it is. but I think the much bigger level of disclosure that starts on page one and goes from there,

two things. One is the death of his mother and how that sort of haunts his entire life. He talks about as a kid and really even into early adulthood just feeling like she's not dead and that she's going to come back at some point because her death to him is so unimaginable, which is something a lot of people who lost a parent earlier in their lives cope with. And there's this moment where he insists on seeing the crash scene photos from her accident, insists on driving through the tunnel just almost to try to convince himself, like she really is gone. She's not going to go back.

Yeah. And then beyond that, it's just tied into that too is the, you know, just the level of disclosure with what it's, what he feels about his family. Yeah. Yeah.

And his dad and his brother whom he's in this weird competition with, right? That's the air and the spare of the title. Sure, sure. And not to mention a usual brother-on-brother competition. So, yeah, I would say I didn't get 8.5. I'm curious also there, and what you described there, I mean, you know, the facts of the story are truly tragic and unimaginable and, you know, incredibly painful, I'm sure. But the thing that I was struck by with some of the early reporting on the book was, doesn't it get into a little bit of the techniques under the hood of the press relationship with the palace? you know, we're sort of like, you know, raised to assume there's the media over here and there's

the royal family over here and the media is just trying to like, you know, get out of the covers and figure out what's going on. But in fact, there are much more intertwined organism than previously assumed. And he gets into some of that, I believe. Absolutely. Like that's, and that's another part of the book that's so interesting because he knows that everything he does is going to be reported in the British tablets. Yeah. And the question is, are the British, British tabloids going to basically be guessing and or making it up, which is about half the stories he reads about himself where he's like, none of that happened. I can tell you none of those things happened at all. That's just complete hogwash. Or there are also times when he reads the paper and goes, oh my God, all of that happened exactly like it is being reported in the paper.

and somebody very, very close to me gave all that to the tablons. So it's this weird existence where everything he reads about himself is like either completely wrong or completely right. And when it's completely right, then he's worried about phone hacking or he's worried that, you know, there are people in the palace who are serving themselves by throwing out a little dish. Yeah. On all Prince Harry, who was known as the quote unquote naughty one of the family, sometimes rightfully so, sometimes. wrongfully was also known as the one who was not smart I think Prince Thicko was one of the terms used about him because he was not a university guy but yeah I mean talk about a weird

existence with the media I'm not sure anything in the world is quite like that did he ever do a trick where he like blows out like bad information just sees what comes out the other end and you know try to source hunt that way set the trap the trap He really should have. He also talks about doing these interviews because he would be like down in Africa, you know, fighting AIDS. And he would have to, you know, he would want to get a reporter down there to publicize that, to talk about that because he was interested in the cause. And he seemed to have a genuine interest in that cause. And then, of course, the reporter would ask three questions about that and then start asking about his family and things the reporter wanted to know about.

That's also funny. Right. Can we talk about the writer of this book for a second? Yeah. J.R. Moringer, master ghost writer, the ghost with the most. Did a book with Andre Agassi, which I suspect you and I are both fans of. Sure, yes. Did a book with Phil Knight, which I have not gotten around to reading maybe someday.

Shoot a dog, yeah. And now this one. Yeah. Spare. Yeah. he is one of the most fascinating people to me because there's a whole army of ghost writers out there in the world, including people that double as journalists and then work on famous people's memoirs. But Jeremy Oringer is also just a really great writer on his own. Right.

And could be writing his own great stuff, but clearly has an interest in also helping somebody like Prince Harry figure himself out on the page. He's an accidental ghostwriter, I believe, right? I mean, he kind of fell into this because Agassiz read the Tender Bar, which is Moringer's own memoir of his childhood and Uprey. And Agassi was so drawn to that, that that was sort of the genesis of the conversation and Agassi being like, I want to do that, how do I do that? And so it wasn't like this guy like said about this as,

because most of the times that people who are doing ghostwriting, it's a business proposition. And this comes from a little bit of a different place. Yeah, it's a fascinating dynamic. You know, obviously we've heard a little bit about what their relationship was. The morning yours is not the kind of guy who's like doing like 45 minute phoneers. And like, you know, he's a little bit more invested than that, to say the least. But I mean, I just imagined that for him, even coming off of, you know, the Agassie book was huge.

The Phil Knight book was huge. but this is just, you know, exponentially a bigger thing. And I'm curious what the blowback and the feeling and just sort of being in the center of that must feel like to him. Because, you know, when you're going after the book or you're going after Harry, you know, you can't help but maybe feel like you're sort of part of that package too. Totally. And I hope we know that story someday. Mooringer's not exactly taking a victory lap right now. In fact, there was a whole story in the New York Times about ghostwriting that was pegged to him.

but he was not in. Yeah. Clearly. He's been like tweeting quotes from the book on this Twitter account, which is kind of a way of saying. Right. That's part of this. Well, isn't the idea, too, the ghost is really not to be heard from.

It would not be great if, like, Jara was out on the speaking circuit right now doing interviews about the book, right? I mean, this is effectively, I mean, and I always wonder also, like, with all of these books, and I know that the authors are involved. And I assume Harry was involved in every, you know, shape and shift of this book and line editing and so on. But you always come to think it's like, wait a second. What? I said what?

Like, you know, like there's a part of the process where the subject just, you know, for whatever reason was checked out of the process and doesn't remember actually contributing that story or that, you know, presenting it that way. Was it at Berkeley who sort of famously claimed to be misquoted in its own autobiography? Mm-hmm. Yeah. And also the thing is like, do famous people really want good books? Yes. I don't think they do. I think they want something that serves their interests.

They want like basically, you know, a sanitized version of their lives. Right. And then they want like a book link acknowledgment section where they thank everybody. Remember even Obama's last book. Obama's fantastic writer, but it would be like, and I got to give it up for my team in Iowa. And then it would be a paragraph of just list of names. I'm like, this is not a written book. This is you sending a thank you note belatedly to people help you one in 2008.

And I just think like for, I mean, again, Moringer is one of those guys with like either, I'm sure, it's like, we're going to do it my way or we're not going to do this together. You can go find somebody else. But the buy-in it must take to get a famous person, not only to submit to hours and hours and months and months of interviews, not only to get to something. like close at least a high score on the truthometer out there but then to write it in a writerly way right to to assent to all that has got to be so hard and such a mountain to climb has anybody done the sort of background story of like how i believe it's random house came to

acquire the book and like you know was there the i mean harry so big he probably didn't have to but like was there the meeting where like certain information is proffered, you know, to sort of like goose the auction possibilities here. And it's like, he will talk about his family. He will talk about his brother. There was a fight. There was a trip to the North Pole. You know, like does this kind of stuff, you know, get disclosed at a sort of very high

level as this thing works up? And like this leads to another dynamic here, Brian, which is something kind of important to this, is that this is part of a immediate deal. deal. This book is part of a media, you know, an array, like, I believe it's four books or more that he's signed on to do. And Netflix, the same. Like the Netflix is not a one and done thing. They are going to do other things for Netflix. And presumably, if you are the publisher or you're the, you know, producer, you know, as a Netflix as a documentary, you want the serious, like, you know, 100%, you know, version right away.

You don't want to start with the one about Antarctica. You know, like, you want, like, the tell all first. Then we'll let you do Antarctica. You know, like, I don't think that, like, that's the way that these arrangements typically work. You get the big one out of the way first.

And the fact that they sort of, again, corresponded in time is awfully strange, I think. Prince Harry's second book is actually going to be a collection of magazine pieces. how these things usually work. Yeah. It's like, and another thought.

I will say this too. I think part of the backlash that we're seeing, you know, when people say, this guy seems like a privileged, sheltered whiner of a guy, is the fact that Mooringer got that on the page. Like,

when you're reading this book, there's a lot of noble things about Prince Harry. This guy served in Afghanistan, you know, put himself in harm's way. He was not reporting for stars and stripes. Like he was out there, you know, in, in harm's way and all this stuff. There are many noble things.

But he also is a prince who grew up with lots and lots of things given to him. And I think, I think what Moringer did is get the real guy on the page in many respects, which is an accomplishment. But it is also something that then stirs the backlash because it's all the things people don't like, as you said, about the British royals. And some people are like, well, listen to this guy. It sounds like he's whining. He sounds like he's doing all this.

Like, yeah, that's him. That is, that is, that's the guy. Sure. I mean, but this is sort of like the modern condition now, Brian. It's like this, the price of disclosure. It's like the days of like a person living a very private life where they did not divulge the most interesting things that happened in their lives where they did not like try to, you know, monetize disclosure and horrible things that happen.

That's becoming rarer and rarer. And I think that that's part of also what the reaction to this is. too. It's like, is anything kept private anymore? Like, are people, like, are the artists just everything, you know, eventually for sale and, and commodification? I think that's part of this too. A couple of choice bits from the book that I would like to give you. One is he is at Eaton, and Prince Harry has to perform in a play in order to graduate. Apparently, everyone has to at least dip a toe into the theater department. Yeah.

And he winds up either playing in or considering a role in Hamlet, which he realizes is all about talking about your dead parents. And that kind of hits in a weird way for the prince. Again, just like one of those moments

where you're like, oh my God. He has dinner with the queen mom and teaches her Ali G's catchphrases. So that several gin and tonics in, the queen mom is saying, Boi, sheka! Allie G. Kind of a dated reference at this point,

is it not? Yeah, but it doesn't it feel like the perfect Prince Harry? No, it's hitting you in the Brian Curris sweet spot because those are your, like, HBO and the coach salad days, yeah.

He's playing Halo against somebody from America under an alias. So there's somebody out some American out there playing Halo who did not realize he was playing against Prince Harry. I like the T.J. Max story. I don't think I've gotten to T.J. Max. Oh, sorry. He occasionally snuck out the shop at T.J. Max. And make some mention in this, I'm paraphrasing here, of course, that that, you know,

they had tremendous sales and, you know, for 20 quid, you could walk out, you know, a well-dressed man. And then there was this, like, internet truth, T.J. Max, truth wave that came over. said, T.J. Max does not have sales. And then there was a counterwave of people saying, no, no, no. In fact, I have proof here. T.J. Max had sales. T.J. Max weighed in, saying that their discounts are 24 hours, 365 days a year, but they appreciate having Harry as a customer. It was great stuff. Every celebrity memoir should include a scene where you go to a box store. That would be great. Went over to Mervyn's and J.C. Penny. Got a nice outfit. How old is Harry? Harry is, let me look this up. How would you guess?

I was going to say, 38. Right. So 38, you're really, that's, I think, you know, you're, you really can't, like, do a memoir any younger than that. That's, that's the minimum. That's the age minimum for a memoir, I believe. And this is one where you were famous from the moment you were born, which allows you to back up that minimum memoir age just a little bit. Now, Brian, in the interest of disclosure, shouldn't we point out that Harry is a colleague of yours with the Spotify Megopolis?

And your boss has made quite a point of noting his dissatisfaction with the Harry media of the moment. I confronted Bill about this in the office of the day. Harry was not there. F.A. You and Harry confronted Bill. Spotify HQ and Bill was talking about some of the stuff he said on the podcast with Sal and I said, Bill, you and I grew up reading the same sports books from the 90s, which were like the unauthorized look at Notre Dame. Right. Nasty as they want to be. Under the Tarnished Dome, Richard is keenness.

I was like, I know what kind of books you like because they're the kind of books. I like, Bill, you would like this book. If you like Dennis Rodman in a wedding dress, then you'll have. like this book. I told him. Just trust me. Do you think it'll secretly go back and read it? Oh. Secret read, secret summer read for Bill Simmons? I could see it. I could totally see it. You can put the power broker like slapjacket over it. Let's read it at the beach. I'm going to put it behind me here in the in the Zoom thing so people can say, no, but I think, I think it is possible to hold a, let us say, mixed opinion about Prince Harry in your head and enjoy the, hell out of spare.

Sure. Because that's where I am. Coming up in 30 seconds, is Tom Brady coming to a broadcast booth near you? And is he going to jinx other quarterbacks like ESPN did to him last night? 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 at the Pressbox pod where they are always, always gratefully received. Jason, I know this news item came across your personal wire.

Cliff Kingsbury fired as head coach of the Arizona Cardinals. Yeah. There was some interest in getting Cliff to be the OC of various NFL teams, but our pal Peter Schroger reported on Fox that Cliff had bought a one-way ticket to Thailand. Speaking to TJ Max, there were some fact-checking that you cannot get into Thailand with a one-way. way ticket, so I'm not sure how metaphorical my his one-way ticket to Thailand was. We'll do some more reporting on that. Would you like to hear some of the best jokes about Cliff Kingsbury going to Thailand? Absolutely not. No, yes. Of course I would. Of course I would. Number one, Cliff Kingsbury

and Brandon Staley are discussing the dollar to bot conversion rate. Brandon Staley, another big loser from the playoffs. Number two, if Cliff is spending a year in Thailand, I would like to house sit. reference to that awesome house we saw during the draft and my favorite Cliff Kingsbury really just said fouquet because it's spelled like

you know yeah yeah yeah you think NFL coaches finally found their way to hike the Appalachian Trail congrats you made the overword

Twitter joke of the week all right in the notebook dump let us do some NFL playoff TV notes Tom Brady lost last night. A lot of excitement in the Dallas Cowboys fan wing of the press box podcast, a.k.a. me and Erica. We heard over and over again during the broadcast that this might be Tom Brady's last NFL game.

Oh, yeah. It was a very funny moment. We said that might have been his last pass. And then he came out for the two-point conversion. And then they got the on-side kick. So we had a lot of last Tom Brady passes there. Yes. Is it funny to you we're talking about not only the retirement of a great athlete,

best NFL quarterback ever, best NFL player ever maybe, but we're talking about him and he could be announcing NFL games in like five minutes. Yes, I feel like this is also, though, we are all, you know, out on the whole Tom Brady mania. Last year kind of just exhausted everybody, I believe. And I don't think that there's going to be incredible excitement or whatever his next destination is, as a player at least, because, you know, the other part of it

is didn't have a terribly great season. That's, you know, a huge part of this as well. And there are other more interesting quarterbacks potentially on the market than Tom Brady. The Fox component of it is probably the most intriguing because I still have to see it to believe it, just the whole idea of Tom Brady. you know, getting to town on a Friday and going to practice and doing the sit downs.

And like, I mean, I'm sure he's going to have that deal tailored to whatever expectations he has of it. But it's still three and a half hours in a booth, still grinding away there. And whether or not he's built for it is going to be a very interesting situation. What's the last truly giant star we saw go directly from the, field or the court into the broadcast booth. Because Tony Romo is somewhere on the podium, but Tony Romo is not Tom Brady. Tony Romo is like half of Tom Brady. Right.

Of course. Of course. That's a good question. I mean, someone will immediately jump out and say like a name that we should have known. And like I don't remember if Barclay went like straight from the, from playing into the booth or he was an analyst first or like he did a little bit of booth before that. I don't ever remember.

Also, Barclay was just broadcasting for half of his career. I mean, that's the thing, right? We've heard Barclay unplugged for as long as we've known Charles Barkley. Yeah. But what's exciting or maybe harrowing if you're Fox is we haven't heard Tom Brady talk in an uncontrolled non-Tom versus time environment all that much. We've seen a little bit of it. I think there definitely have been more sort of like closer to the

authentic Brady in the last two and a half seasons then definitely we've gotten 20 years in New England. But, you know, absolutely. He's not in the sort of, you know, area, arena of like the Dremont Green type who you're like, oh, man, this person, give him a microphone. This is going be great. I'll sign me up for 10 years of this. Absolutely. Tom Brady last night in his press conference after the game, the very short press conference. He thanked all the Bucks beatwriters. It's kind of an interesting moment of either saying goodbye to Tampa or I'm about to be one of you guys. Oh, yeah, right. Everybody gets friendly with the media right before they retire. He's like, guys, can you help me out with this Marriott sign up form here? You know, I want to,

should I do courtyard or Springfield Suites? No, what's the difference between residents in and the courtyard? That's how you tell a difference, you know? That's how you tell a sports If they can give you a 20-minute answer to that question, they're a sports writer. I also love the moment last night where ESPN was talking about how Tom Brady not throwing a red zone interception since 2019 and then Tom Brady throws it to the Cowboys. Yeah. No, it's like the field goal, you know, free throw jinks. We're so accustomed to that.

That happens all the time. But seldom is it a different type of play where the thing just immediately devolves right in front of our eyes. So we know athletes are very sensitive to what's said about them in the media. do we think somebody like Tom Brady has watched enough TV copies of football games, not just all 22, but actual TV broadcasts to think, okay, if I'm an announcer, here's the thing that annoys me that I don't want to do. A thousand percent. Every single one of them does that, every single one.

And everyone will tell you, you know, that there is that no one's ever gotten it totally right. And there's only a fraction of the information that they know that's presented on television. And if they get there, they're going to do it totally differently. And then they get there. And then they realize all the reasons why television is the way that it is. And it doesn't look like the kind of thing that they say that they were going to deliver. You know, and, you know, it's not a detail-oriented profession television. It's painting pictures, is delivering crisp, succinct analysis is trying to be coherent for three hours, which is often hard. And, you know, people who have grand plans to rake open the machine, it seldom works. I mean, you can count

on one hand the people who are real paradigm shifters in it. And we thought we had one in Romo, but, you know, he's reverted to the mean, I think, a little bit in the last couple years. Quote, Eickman, you're absolutely right, Jason. You're absolutely right. a couple of other announcers on my radar this weekend. Mike Tarrico got to call that pretty amazing Ravens Bengals game. Oh, yeah. Including the 98-yard, you call that a fumble return. I guess it's kind of a...

Thick six, fumble six, whatever it was. It's funny thinking about Mike Tariko because he is certainly like a known quantity in broadcasting. Been on ESPN since forever. almost in the Chris Fowler zone of, wow, that guy got to ESPN when? Called Monday night football, you know, national broadcast. But it's funny, a Fox executive told me that this earlier this year, he was talking about Kevin Burkart.

He's like, what you almost have to do is have your announcer have a really big call in a really big game. Okay. That everybody's watching. Yeah. And that imprints that call on the announcer. and it imprints a kind of identity onto that announcer with the public who, you know, outside of people like you and me mostly, is like, oh, that guy announcing the game, okay. Yeah.

Yeah, they don't know the difference all the time. Now, with Mike Tariko, I think it might be like re-imprinting a kind of identity on him because, again, he's very much a known quantity. But I felt with that moment, when he called that play, you could see it on sports Twitter for whatever that's worth, people going, oh, Mike Tariko. Yes. Mike Tarrico. You've replaced the legend Al Michaels. Now we're thinking about Mike Tariko as his own guy. Yeah, and he was very much in the moment and realized what was going on in the moment.

And we saw enough over the weekend to know that that is something we can't necessarily take for granted in football games. And that, you know, it was a strange, wacky play. And this was a guy who was like, I get it. And I brought the proper level of enthusiasm to it. I don't know if, you know, wild. Card Brown Ravens at Bengals quite, you know, reaches the level of USA at USSR. I didn't say that. I'm not saying that, but I'm just saying like in terms of like an indelible moment,

I think you also need like scale, right? You need like just a major, major audience of people riveted into it. And like, look, every football audience at this day and age is pretty big. But yeah, no, this is, you know, he's moved into the first chair. This is the big, big job. and you do want those kind of, you know, big things to happen. And one did, and he absolutely delivered, for sure. It was interesting how the wackiness of the moment also played off the scale of the moment.

Yeah, it was wild card, but it was so weird. Yes. And it was such a game flip. Yes. And it found, in fact, wound up being the margin of the game. I mean, it's something that Mike Dicka realized very early on with Fridge Perry. And if you were too few, coaches recognize the potential. America loves nothing more than watching people who aren't

supposed to run, run. It is comedy 100% of the time. And the guy getting the oxygen mask and waving to the crowd afterwards, I mean, you couldn't have made it up. It was fantastic. It's been really interesting to watch Toriko replace Al Michaels, because Al Michaels is Al Michaels and has this just, you know, stature and meaning to all of us. And Torrico comes in and he's with Al's old partner, Chris Collinsworth. And he's a very different kind of announcer. Almost think like play-by-play announces are either past first point guards or point guards that also want to score.

And Mike Tariko comes in so prepped and wants to get that information into the broadcast, that he almost is a guy who wants to score as well as handoff to Chris. So they're just like their relationship on screen was totally different. And by the way, even if you watch Sam Hubbard taking the ball back, Mike Tariko in the middle of it is like, the Cincinnati kid. Like he knows where this guy's from. And he wants to get that into the exciting 98-yard fumble recovery return for a touchdown, scoop and score, whatever we're calling it.

So it's like it was just different, right? And you could almost feel them feeling each other out all. season long. When are you going to stop talking and when am I going to start talking? Right. But also think about it. It's a long play. You know, the average NFL play is what, Bing, Bing, Boom. Ben Solek was here. He could tell us. It's 0.8 seconds or whatever it is. This was a long action movie by contrast. He had a lot of time to sort of build this moment and speak about it and deliver biographical information mid-play. How often do you hear that, right? Because this guy's like trudging down the field.

You know, it really was a perfect setup for that kind of thing. Yeah, he could have read Spare by the time Sam Hubbard got to the end zone. At least one chapter of Spare, right? At least one chapter. Yeah. Also on everybody's radar, the aforementioned Al Michaels, who was calling the Chargers Jaguars game with Tony Dungee. Now, NBC's got kind of a weird deal in the playoffs.

They have one game a week during the regular season. They have two playoff games. sometimes. So they have to create another analyst. Last year it was Drew Breeze who when asked what do you think the Raiders

should do on this final drive gave the immortal answer. I think they should try to get out of bounds and stop the clock. One of my favorite moments ever in broadcasting. This time they got Tony Dungey from the studio. And people really did not like this broadcast.

Yeah. And if I can guess what happened, here and I don't exactly know, but if I can guess what happened here, it's that play by play guys try to match the energy of the analyst because you don't want to be too out of whack. Okay. Right. I remember Nance once saying like, like, the reason I feel like I have all this new life under Romo is because Tony Romo's way up here and I got to be up here to stay with Romo.

Yes. As opposed to Phil Sims, it was like being Lewis Rukeizer's last couple of years on the air there at CBS. And then he was way down here. And I felt like Al had to come. First Lewis Rookizer Shadda. Look it up, kids. I felt Al had to sort of come down on Saturday night like eight notches because otherwise he would have just felt like he was way too separate from Tony Dungy. Do you buy that theory? Yeah, I think that Tony Dungy is the kind of person who I would love to like drive to Florida with Tony Dungy. But in terms of like, like getting action-packed three-and-a-half-hour football game.

Another part of this thing, Brian, is that this game was a complete bust after the first, you know, quarter and a half. People thought that, okay, this is it. The charges have rolled over the Jaguars. These guys are Googling what they're going to have for dinner tomorrow night. They're like on their way out mentally. They're not expecting this to turn into like some extraordinary NFL history-making comeback. And yeah, the energy wasn't mad.

I do like, I think Al was asked about it, the controversy around Al Michaels. And as exactly as he should, he has reached this legend status where he can basically give the double bird to the criticism and say like, you know what? These are people like howling on the internet. I got it all right. I don't necessarily agree, but I admire the gesture. Very, very funny. You sent me a note before we came on today asking a provocative question, is the NFL season too long?

Do you think the NFL season, which at this point is basically floating what's left of live television too long? Yeah, it's too long. I mean, the Super Bowl should not be on February 12th, as it is this year. It should be a weekend earlier. I feel like the 17th weekend felt like people were like, you know, it's like those days before, at the end of summer vacation where you can't really relax because, like, you know, you got too much stuff to do and you don't have clothes for school and all that kind of stuff.

It has that kind of energy to it. There are only a handful of games that have any kind of consequence. Even the ones that had consequence turned out sometimes to be terrible games. I do think that the product this year had a quality issue. I don't think the average NFL game was especially entertaining. We did have some unbelievably kooky games. The Vikings come back. Of course, the Jaguars come back the other night.

I do feel like, you know, pound for pound, the product was inferior. And I don't think the answer is ever more of it. And at the same time, there's no going back. I don't think the NFL is going to look around and say, you know what? Let's dial us all back and give back a little bit of money to the television partners while we're at it. I just, you know, that's obviously not going to happen. This is the problem when you increase the length of a season or increase the number of teams in the play. playoffs is you can never dabble with it and experiment with it and then say, you know what,

do we really need seven teams in each conference in the playoffs? Let's go back to six. That was a nice number. Yes. You don't need the Seahawks in the playoffs because, as you say, you just have to give back all the money. So playoffs will often grow, but they will never contract. I mean, look at baseball. Baseball is a perfect example of it that anybody in the sport has to acknowledge that a

100-game baseball season would be exponentially more entertaining than a 162 game season. It is just a plain fact. It would keep momentum. It would be more interesting. Obviously, you'd shake up your record book and make a hash of all that, but you're never going to give a situation to, you know, ownership is never going to take a situation where they're going to give money back to media partners. It's never, ever, ever going to happen. So it's going to just take some sort of hard action in order for it to ever work. A couple quick ones. for you. There's a note from CNN, which is undergoing a full renovation under new management. Changed around a lot of the hosts. They just unveiled a new daytime lineup. And this note from

Oliver Darcy, who also works for CNN, caught my eye. A key component of the new daytime format, a CNN spokesperson said, is that anchors will no longer sit behind desks. Instead, the spokesman The spokesperson explained they will be moving around and utilizing the full square footage of the network's various studios. Yeah, there we go. What do we think of cable news without desks? Didn't Fox do this with Shepard Smith walking around like these giant iPads for a while? There was that thing that show. Remember that? Yeah.

On the floor? All this is, we've heard versions of this in the past many, many times. It's the director saying like the way to get people engaged is to give them action. and motivation. It's no different than someone's staging a play. If someone's sitting at a chair versus moving upstage, downstage, all that kind of stuff, we're going to mix it up and, and, you know, I mean, it's just rearranging the furniture or taking the furniture away, I should say. I mean, they're also doing the thing with the comedy, which I think is hilarious. If you were like, can you believe this? CNN is thinking about putting a comic in its prime time lineup.

But Brian, you and I both know that this story, it's like an eclipse. It comes like every five and a half to six and a half years. CNN is considering putting a comic in late night. It always is a topic du jour. I mean, not a topic de jour, obviously. But it's always something that comes up. And it's not happen. It's not happen.

I guess the reason it might happen now is because of the way network TV is falling apart. and if somebody says, you know what, late night shows aren't what they used to be, but there's still an appetite for late night comedy, you know, there's still an appetite for Stephen Colbert's monologue. Could that go on to cable news? Is that the better place for it? Maybe. I laughed when I saw some quote saying, like, you know, they're looking for their John

Oliver. I'm like, oh, great, you want a John Oliver. So once a week for half of the year, you want this guy to like come on CNN and do this like intensive, you know, genuinely journalistic program. But that's going to be a solution for you. I mean, look, the secret has always been to do things, you know, quick and cheap and and try to find lightning in a bottle with a personality or host or something like that. I don't think like a genre shift is necessarily what CNN is looking for. I think what they probably also look at is the Gutfeld thing. I mean, the Gutfeld thing has worked for Fox.

But that's an identity politics thing. There's no comedian equivalent to Greg Gutfeld in the sort of, you know, late night universe. He's doing a different genre of comedy. I had the opportunity to watch that over the break because I was with one of my uncles, who's a big Fox News guy. Yeah. He was like, I love Gutfeld.

You ever watched this? I was like, not all the way through. So I sat there. watched it, you're right, it is an identity politics thing, but with the cadence of a late night show. Yeah. Yeah. Which is like a really interesting combination. I was like, oh, I get what this is. You're like doing a Jay Leno style monologue. It's just then like the punchline is, ha ha, identity politics. Aha. Yeah. Aha. The liberal thing that you've been seeing on the Hannity show. See? You know. Sure. Interesting combination. You're something of a Boston watcher,

Jason, kind of like a Royals watcher. Yeah. So this line from reporter Jessica Leahy of WWLP and Western Mass caught my eye. She tweeted out a clip of a stand-up she did with this. Sometimes that Boston accent slips out when you least expected. Check this out. Parts of this bill are similar to the executive orders that have already been put in place in New Hampshire. In New Hampshire?

You know what? that is the proper pronunciation of New Hampshire in Massachusetts, and I don't care what anybody says. I encourage this. I think that regionalism is a dying tradecraft in news. Brian, you know, we live in a realm now where, you know, news is so available to everybody that we're just kind of creating these cookie cutter type of personalities.

And, you know, I like to hear New Hampshire in its proper dialect. So kudos. Last thing before we get out of here, we know that Netflix, did a documentary about F1 documentary series called Drive to Survive. We know that Netflix has a golf show full swing coming out in February, February 15th.

Netflix has also done a tennis series. Yeah. Break Point, which came out on Friday. I watched an episode on your recommendation. Where are we on Netflix trying to juice up the tennis tour? Okay, so there are two parts of this that are fascinating to me. The first is that, you know, this thought not just that Netflix is doing a documentary series

about men's and women's professional tennis. It's this thought that somehow this is going to transform this sport in this country in the same way that Drive to Survive did for F1. You know, you literally can trace F1 fandom in this country to pre-netflix and post-netflix. had a profound effect, the series was extremely well done. And it created a whole new generation of people who are obsessed with the sport. And there's been this, I'm in these worlds, like tennis is a sport that I care about a great deal. Bike racing is another, you know, somewhat fringe, or fringe, I should say, bike races, case, that's getting this Netflix. Yeah, I mean, you know,

the Belgian stuff. They're also getting the Netflix treatment. And there's a lot of hope that, like, hey, this is going to change the thing. And all of a sudden, our, you know, cyclists are going to be as famous as Maxx Knappin. But I mean, I don't, I give that no mind. I have no thought as to whether or whether or not it's going to, I'm skeptical. There's also the whole element of like, wasn't tried to survive kind of like COVID theater. Like people were watching it like crazy because they were trapped at home and there was no sports and it was an incredible, you know, it was again, very well done. This is not that, obviously. Tennis is a real legacy sport. It's got an incredible amount of tradition to it. And it's just very far-flung. I guess he has F-1 as far-flung. But the other part of it

that I think is promising is that it's really well done. They did a nice job with it. They chose interesting people. They have some really cool sort of candid moments behind the scenes. You learn a great deal about, you know, they do some sort of very basic like explaining tennis, which I liked, you know, because tennis is, you know, it's like learning a foreign language, the scoring system and all that. very bizarre. I like that they sort of bring up the speed on like what these tournaments mean and where they are and who the big personalities are, but also kind of explain the tennis life, which for almost everybody who's not in the top 20 is a struggle and a half. You are, you know, eating what you kill and that's it. And you are on the road most of the year trying to make a

living and trying to raise your, you know, level. So you get to the point where you're hopefully one day ranked them on the top 10 and, you know, in the atmospherics of the, you know, Rafas and Novaks and so on. They do a great job with that, you know, and again, they found compelling personalities. The one thing that I found really neat about the show, I will just compliment that people put it together. They did an incredible job turning Raphael Nadal

into this unspoken sort of like arch. I don't know if an enemy is the right word because he's not an enemy type of person. This is sort of the nemesis of these players. Raphael Nadell is not part of Breakpoint. He is obviously not given over his. back, you know, his life and, you know, over to the cameras of Netflix. However, he looms as this constant marker of greatness and excellence. And there are these great sort of psychological

moments where Nadal's in the sort of sharing the airspace of some of these young up-and-comen players. And they just are almost cowed in real time watching Nadal. And I just, you know, again, as somebody who feels that tennis has come close, you know, is on the verge of blowing the opportunity of a lifetime and having these generational all-time players in Federer Nadal, Jocovic, Serena Williams, and not sort of building a next generation on the back of it, I feel like this is finally something you can point to and say like, okay, this is more of what tennis should be doing more of this. And also, these players should realize that the things that they're doing for these Netflix cameras, they should be doing all the time. They should be doing it on

social media. They should be doing it for the regular press. They should be doing it at tournaments and so on. Don't just do it because the Netflix, you know, glow is on. It's interesting what you say about the doll, because I'm pretty sure drive to survive the first season, Lewis Hamilton played a similar role. Not part. Not part of it, but everybody talking about it. Right, right.

And that's what made it so interesting. If you can't get the person, it's almost equally interesting to have other lesser people talking about the person. By the way, this is like a truism for, you know, written subjects oftentimes. Like, you know, you've seen many great stories where the main subject is either not interviewed at all or interviewed very shortly. And then all the great elaboration is done by outside voices. Who knew that Netflix would do a write-around?

I can't believe it. Other thing that struck me about this and the magic trick with drive to survive, right, is that F1 is not very competitive a lot of the time, include, you know, somebody leads the race for the entire race and so what they did I'm going to be America's Net F1 troll I've already decided this what soccer was 20 years ago

so what they did was invest you in who finishes 7th 8th night like make it important to you to see that does this work with tennis too that we can you know again a lot of those men's finals we know we know how that movie ends So we're going to invest you in who gets to the quarters, that kind of thing?

I mean, it can. I mean, the other part of it is that you just film the heck out of everything and you hope you find some gold. They spent a lot of time profiling this American player named Taylor Fritz, who, you know, I assume most American sports fans are not terribly familiar with, although he's a top 10 player in the world right now. And they follow him around and Taylor Pritz is the kind of guy who, you know, at this point in his life could easily walk down the street without any kind of interruption, still probably can, and beats Nadal at Indian Wells in this epic final, which is, you know,

a major moment in his career, the biggest moment in his career, and they're on hand for all of it, and including this great trauma about, you know, whether or not he was going to play with a bad ankle. Yeah, I just, again, I look at it and I say, like, all these players have stories. All of them have come from sort of incredible, you know, backstories and have, you know, true challenges laid out in front of them. It is the opposite at that level. It is not the sort of like Gentile country club sport that people oftentimes assume it is. There are great stories to be told.

I just wish that tennis did a better job of telling them itself and the players themselves did it. And we didn't have to wait around for Netflix to come aboard and do this. So F1's problem when they got the Netflix series was nobody in America knew much about F1. Golf's problem was that people thought it was an elite sport that's not for me. Tennis's problem is what you just said, that people think it's an elite country club sport that doesn't have these interesting stories and interesting personalities? Yeah, and there's the kind of sameness. So there's like, you know, I hear this from fans,

and I don't know if I necessarily agree with it entirely, but like that players have been kind of stripped of personality that, you know, back of the old days, I knew who Nastassia and McEnroe and Potter's and Everett and, you know, Austin and Navratilova, they all were distinct personalities. I don't totally buy that. A lot of those, you know, there was some real regrettable behavior in those days too that I wouldn't care to repeat. However, personality helps. I mean, the first episode of this breakpoint is Nick Curios, who by far is, you know, one of the most, you know, charismatic players on tour, also incredibly, you know,

divisive and also somebody who is, you know, now out of tennis with a knee injury. So I just want to see more of this because obviously these stories are here and they're available And again, they did a nice job curating it, picking the athletes that they fought. Anjaubour is another person, Tunisian woman who is going to win a Grand Slam any minute now. Good stories. By the way, I love the language of documentary series, particularly Netflix sports documentary series. So at the Australian Open, we opened the episode with this giant forbidding shot of Melbourne, you know, like almost black. and white in the sunrise.

Right. Melbourne, the least forbidding city on the planet, I think. Yeah, yeah. I think this is partly, you know,

I was watching it over the weekend and like, everybody has these new, you know, these 8K high-depth cameras now, and everything just looks amazing. You know, every show. They just,

it looks incredible. You know, it just really does. You know, and it gives me high hopes for the bike racing one because that is by far the most photogenic sport

there is on Earth. And, they'll have amazing stuff, I'm sure. Dude, the talking heads look amazing. Chris Everett sitting there, by the way, high-quality talking heads on the Netflix tennis doc, they look amazing. Every part of it just looks so glossy and incredible.

One last tennis note, you know, you had Fowler on the week before, and that TCU, Georgia game, turned into such a one-sided route. Fowler's leaving that game and he's getting out of playing, and he's going to Melbourne for the Australian Open. And I'm just like, wouldn't it be great if Fowler just started previewing the Australian Open midgame here?

Let's see, Herbie. You got the men's draw. I think Tillerprits can do something here. All right. Hold that thought because it is time for you to slip into some very big shoes and play Jason Gay guesses the strained pun headline. Yeah. All right. last Thursday's headline about a fair for medieval reenactors was infinite joust.

Infinite joust. Today's headline comes from valued listener Dan Reichel. It's from Sports Illustrated, and it's about that college football national championship game, Georgia versus TCU, that turned in to such a blowout. S.I. Jason went with a reference to a hit song, pretty sure the only hit song by the group, the Baja men. You can turn your mental clock back to 2000.

What was S.I.'s strained pun headline? Well, it wasn't who shut the frogs out. That's pretty great. But it was not a shutout. It was not. And let me just tell you, this is a little bit

Stetson Bennett focused here, too. Okay. So I'm coming to heard from the wrong angle. I should be thinking. The Georgia D piece would be who shut the frogs out? Who, who, who, who? By the way, I will sell that headline to anyone next year for five bucks. Just Venmo me. We five, the big 12 schedule.

Yeah. Get in touch with Jason. It's good one. It's good one. So it's a Georgia thing. Like it's like a Stetson thing. Yeah. What's a Stetson Bennett thing?

He is the quarterback behind this blowout, Jason. He is... Oh, okay. He let the dogs out. No? Mm-hmm. What if I spotted you, dude is the first word. Dude.

This is a toughy. Yeah, okay. Deceptively tough. Dude led the dog's route. Dude led, like LED? Yes. Okay. dude led the dogs route.

Was this the main on a front page, sports page? Well, it's sports illustrates. It's kind of hard to tell at this point. What is a cover line and what is funny thing that exists on Twitter? But dude led the dogs route. He is Jason Gay. I'm Brian Curtis.

Production Magic by Erica Zervantes. A couple of pods floating out there for you to listen to right now. We had Michael Irvin on the 30th anniversary of the 1993 Super Bowl. And before last night, the Cowboys' last road win, January 1993, in fact, one year ago,

30 years ago today, we also had Joe Buck on Demar Hamlin, the Buck's Cowboys game from last night, and the dreams he has about his father, fascinating conversation there. I'm back later this week with Mike Sealski from the Philadelphia Inquirer on Eagles Mania. Oh, I know, Sealski, good, dude.

Plus more lukewarm takes about the media. See you soon.