The Press Box - Super Bowl Reaction Pod on the Announcers, the Ads, the Penalty, and Much More

Episode Date: February 13, 2023

Bryan and David react to the 57th Super Bowl, which ended with the Kansas City Chiefs taking home the championship win against the Philadelphia Eagles. They begin with thoughts on the controversial fourth-quarter holding call, discuss Greg Olsen and Kevin Burkhardt's analysis, and touch on all the celebrity commercials and Rihanna’s halftime performance before wrapping things up with some pregame notes. Plus, the Overworked Twitter Joke of the Week and David Shoemaker Guesses the Strained-Pun Headline. Hosts: Bryan Curtis and David Shoemaker Associate Producer: Erika Cervantes Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

When you're lost in the darkness, look for the pod. Specifically, the Prestige TV podcast on the Ringer Podcast Network, where we're breaking down every new episode of HBO's The Last of Us. On Sunday nights, grab your battery and join Van Lathen and Charles Holmes for an instant reaction to the latest episode. Then head back to the QZ on Tuesdays for a deep dive with Joanna Robinson and Mallory Rubin. From character arcs to video game adaptation choices, story themes to needle drops, we'll parse every inch of this cordyceps-coded universe.

Watch out for mouth tendrils and follow along on Spotify or wherever you get your podcast. Yes. I just got one thing to say. The old coach is still got it. Hello, media consumers. Welcome to the press box live Super Bowl reaction pod. Brian Curtis, David Shoemaker, producer Erica Servantes here.

The final score. Chiefs 38, Eagles 35. Andy Reid, David Cullen plays like a wizard in a loose-fitting team jacket there in the fourth quarter. Patrick Mahomes playing on a bum ankle, playing his heart out. You hit me up with a text when the Eagles tied it at 35 in the fourth quarter. We'd reached a certain level of game Twitter-wise, had we not? Oh, yeah.

There's a point in just about every big game, but especially a, you know, a good close game where you'd go on Twitter, look around. And literally every single journalist in talking head has tweeted something in the direction of what a game. Or maybe even more commonly what period, a period, game period, you know, just to really read some emotion into a three-word sentence. It feels like the Tom Brady praise where everyone has to tweet something when Tom Brady retires. Yes. Whether you're actually moved by his retirement or not. not. Yeah, there's fourth stringers that are just like tweeting out just like farewell to the goat,

you know, with the goat emoji. Yeah, it's, it's necessary. As Fox's, uh, Terry Bradshaw puts his arm around Andy Reid, who is somewhat confusingly taken off his glasses right now. We got to start with one thing, which is not my notes here at all. That's a great old coach. Old coach is so got to move. Andy Reed is it is an old, Andy Reid is from the generation where football coach, coaches reportly and where you took off your glasses to make a good impression. You know, it's a, it's, it's, it's, just need them to read the play sheet. That's all I need it. We got to start with one thing, which is not in my notes. I got, we got, we got to talk about announcers, we got commercials, we got pregame, we got everything. But dude, since you are in

the Philadelphia part of the United States, there are going to be some Eagles fans who have an opinion about that call, a defensive cold holding call on third down. when it looked like the Eagles had stopped the Chiefs late in the fourth quarter, they were going to get a field goal and have a chance to drive down the field and tire win the game. Give us a report from Eagles Country on how everybody is feeling about that call. If you hear any glass breaking in the next 30 minutes, you'll know there's a problem. So far, I'm far enough away. I was actually going to be intimately situated in Eagles Country tonight, and I didn't, probably for the best.

Also, there were some apparent cable outages in the region. I saw that. But, yeah, that was a terrible call. There was part of me, Greg Olson, who did a great job tonight, did a particularly great job of, you know, lightly protesting the result of that, or that call. There was part of me that thought, after the first viewing, you know, the first viewing looked a little bit more legit than all the subsequent viewings. And there's part of me that wondered if there's,

you know, if the NFL ever like, you know, push it, leans on the network to just be like, why don't we just, why don't we just, you know, pull a provda here? Why don't we just, no more replays, just everybody act like it was a good call and let's march forward. Because, I guess, you know, it's good content still, but I think the content they want is yay Patma Holmes. Well, it's interesting, isn't it?

Because it's one of those brain teasers where if you look at it, it is probably a penalty. But Greg Olson's argument is, it shouldn't be a penalty because it's happening on a very key play with less than two minutes left on the Super Bowl. It is, quote, unquote, deciding a game. Yeah. So there should be some GM of common sense, as our boss likes to say, that comes down as like, you just can't call that penalty. I'm sorry.

It was a pretty weak, I mean, even as a penalty, you know, these things happen on every play. And I think that's kind of where Olson was coming from. So recently removed from the field, sort of like the Pat Riley, you know, saying, right, we'd commit five fouls every time we get to go down the court and they can only call one. Yeah, no, I don't think anything that happened on that play was particularly shocking. It's just, you know, if you want to call it, I guess you can call it and whatever. But it's just a just terrible timing to be making a sort of piddly call. Did you like the whole Greg Olson, Mike Pereira dynamic where they often disson. agree about a penalty call?

Yeah, I think it's first of all a great, just a great gimmick for Greg Olson because nobody is pro Mike Pereira, right? There's no viewer who's just like, yay, that referee really explaining stuff to us. I really wanted some level-headed referee point of view and, you know, it's a good, it's a good corner to be on. And it also makes sure, you know, somewhat dynamic television. Yeah, it's funny because I feel when the referees just started appearing in the booths. there was this wild amount of deference given to the booth referee,

especially that guy at CBS who was always wrong for a while and eventually they moved on from him. But it's fine to just be like, you know what? You're the expert here, but you're wrong, dude. That's not a penalty. I'm sorry, that's bullshit. Don't call it there. Again, it's funny because he's able to do it and it doesn't hijack the entire game.

Yeah. It's not like Bill Walton would get in an argument with whoever his co-analyst was in the middle of the game. Be like, Yeah, let's watch the basketball here. Or more recently, Van Gundy and Mark Jackson, you know, they started arguing. No, no, no, no. Game on the foot.

Somehow he was able to do it. It sort of works. You had a little bit more air. I mean, do you want to talk about the announced team in general or save that for later? No, I want to do it right now. Let's start with Olson. Mm-hmm. I was pretty pleased with his work tonight.

I thought that was how you do smart. and super enthusiastic, happy to be there, but you let the game breathe. You don't take over the game with your own emotions and your own voice. What did you think? You know, we've talked about Burkart and Olson throughout the season,

but all things considered, especially compared to some of their competition. We've talked about them relatively little. I was watching the first quarter of the game, trying to sort of gather my thoughts about them and was jotting down a couple of notes and put some sort of ironic exclamation points after some stuff that I said.

And then I was just like, I wonder if anyone has ever made any comment about this announced team and use an exclamation point. I'm not sure that they have. I think that there's, I think that there's an incredible competence to them. And I mean that not just,

I don't mean that as a slight. I just think that they're like incredibly competent. They're almost like, you know, Greg Olson, doesn't sound like Troy Aikman, but he, he is, he's sort of the modern, he's sort of like the, like, if they created a former player to go in the booth in a laboratory, it would be Greg Olson, he's smart, he's insightful, he's folksy, he's, you know, he's got, he's, he's, he's appealing. And then, you know, Burkhart's just the pro's pro. I mean, even there's probably, you could probably,

he's probably more, you know, laboratory in himself, you know, he's just like an announcer's announcer. But I thought they did a really good job tonight. In some ways, they're the sort of perfect team for a game, a perfect announced team for a game like this where the show is on the field, you know, and they can add exactly enough. And there was never a moment where it felt like there was an absence of narration.

There was never a moment where it felt like anything that, you know, they could have done a thing particularly better. And I, and honestly, I thought by the end, I thought Olson was one of the real stars of the night. I agree. It's interesting. Somebody inside of Fox told me before the season started. They said, what's a number one announced team? Is it people of a certain skill and a certain fame, a certain stature from their playing days or from their announcing days like you're Al Michaels, you, Troy, you're Joe Buck?

Or is a number one announcing team who we tell the audience a number one announcing team is? Yeah. Meaning we can take two guys who, as you say, have never had the benefit of the exclamation point. And we can roll them out there for all these big games, culminating in the biggest game, the Super Bowl. And have the audience accept that. And I think tonight was a pretty good argument that that works, as long as the guys are really, really good. I agree. And like I said, I think they did a fine, a really good job tonight.

But it's sort of like... I could sort of parallel like Greg Olson and Jalen Hertz. Because like Jalen Hertz had a fantastic season, right? I mean, he was MVP contender. They went on that huge run at the beginning of the season. I mean, he had a breakout year. He was a star in the football world by any definition going into tonight. But it's those like, it's those like video packages that opened up the game, you know,

like the Jalen Hertz as a kid, you know, over. coming the odds things. It's just the interviews that introduce him to a much broader audience. It's seeing him play and succeed in such a great level and the Super Bowl that really makes his star arrive. And I think for Olson, I think for Burkart and Olson, they're a number one announced team now, you know? I mean, and certainly the next time they get a chance to call a game of this magnitude,

the next time they're calling a big game in the middle of next season. It's going to really, yes, at that point, Fox will be proven. your unnamed Fox source will be proven right. I think for tonight's purposes, they did all that could possibly be asked of him. Next Fox Super Bowl, by the way, two years from now. Oh. We'll almost certainly involve Kevin Burkart.

Might involve Craig Olson. Might involve Tom Brady. How is Tom Brady going to fit into this? He's officially done. Is he, I mean, my wife came in talking about his Fox salary today, so I presume there's been news out that he, about him beginning that job at some point? well he came out during

Super Bowl week and said I'm starting the job but I'm not starting it until fall of 2024 which is interesting because so now you got at least one more year of Olson doing the number one all the way to the NFC championship game and dude like saying

2024 to me means I have a whole year to figure out if this is what I really want to do or if there's some wildly high paying thing that I can go find to do or play or or or be an owner of a team right or do something right there's don brady has lots of options and this to me is a way of also just kind of pushing that back and you know giving himself some given himself some room which i think is important to him at this point he doesn't he doesn't want to be gearing up right now to announce games in september yeah so but it makes the

whole brady olson thing that much weirder because not only is gregg olson have hey gregg olson had one good gear with the number one team. He called the Super Bowl. He was good tonight. You know, but okay, it's Tom Brady. It's like, no, no, he's going to do one additional season when he will presumably be good again. Yeah.

And then we're going to have this conversation one more time. Well, maybe they can let Tom Brady do the Mike Pereira job. Maybe just put him in a random crow's nest somewhere to go to for certain thing. BoogerMobile on the sidelines. Vincent Orlik in the chat, one of the listeners right now, said that he had multiple friends who watch NFL text him tonight to ask where Buck and Akeman were.

It does sort of feel like the institution. A couple more notes on Olson for you. His hair was more tamed during this game than I have seen it all season. When I was hanging out with the Fox crew a couple weeks ago in San Francisco, he was asking for hair product outside the truck.

Just like, you know, I got to get some product in here. It's gone wild today. got look like he got the haircut right before the game started i thought he was just really good all night at just jumping on things really quickly yeah whether it was a conventional time and analyst talks like here's a replay i'm going to tell you exactly what happened and that last the second two last chief score their last touchdown he just showed how the eagle's cornerback thought the receiver was going to do this on the motion the receiver did that just i'm going to make one point i'm going to be really good on that he had another really good one where he shows how patrick mahomes

makes decisions on RPO's was not always right tonight. I think you're going to get a lot of Chiefs fans are going to be bristling at that analysis about the hold on the Eagles at the end. He had this thing where it's like, Nick Seriani doesn't take timeouts for a false start.

He doesn't believe it. And then Nick Serriani used a timeout on a false start proved interesting later in the game. But he was really, really good. Kevin Burkhart also very, very good tonight. I loved how when we had that very, very long, pregame he comes on the air and goes, well, we might as well kick this thing off. That had some old school Bob Costas, just a little, just a little edge to it for those out

there paying attention. Also had a moment, I don't know if you saw this where it looked like a flag had been thrown and it was actually somebody's mouthpiece that was exactly the color of the flag. Yeah. He's like, can we just change the color of the mouthpiece? Tell me what you think of this. Kevin Burkhardt's superpower to me is likeability. Yeah. Calls the action really well, all that stuff, but he's very likable. Yeah. This is my favorite thing about him. Whenever they put a camera on him, he just smiles. Have you noticed that? He'll be doing the two shot with Olson in the booth and they're looking at it. And he looks over at the camera and he goes, and his smile just spreads across his face like, hello, it's me, Kevin Burkart. Yeah. Even when he has like a big call,

it'll be like, and he's all the way down to the five. And you can just hear. He's just, he's, hear him through the television smiling as he makes the big call. Yeah. Yeah, it's true. We'll see how long that likability lasts now that he's the top voice in football. You know, we'll all have to turn on him sooner or later, and now it might be sooner. He's 48 years old, called his first Super Bowl. He's only the 12th play-by-play announcer I learned today to call a Super Bowl on national TV.

That's via the Twitter account announcer schedules. to me, the interesting thing he's going to do from here is go on the journey that Joe Buck did that you and I've talked about. Remember when Joe Buck started? He was like, this guy's really good at calling football. Yeah. He knows how to call a football game. But then over the course of time, he got more comfortable. He got more comfortable with the fact that he was doing this huge job for 100 million people.

And he's like, now I'm going to be Joe Buck while I'm calling the football game. Yeah. I'm going to find more moments like that. We might as well kick this thing off. And to me, that's where Kevin Burckhardt goes from here. He can do all the mechanics of announcing. But now he inserts Kevin Burckhardt,

the person a little bit into this. So you don't just have that moment where it's like, hey, where's Buck and Eggman? You're like, I don't know. I know who's calling this game. He's putting just enough of himself around there on the edges. And to me, that's the natural,

maturation and probably what he does over the next 10, 20 years, if he has the job that long. Yeah, I think that's right, to borrow a phrase for myself. I think that he's, I think that, you know, you can keep making the comparisons to players in this game, but I think that

coming out of the Super Bowl, I think that the, I think this booth will have a new flavor going into the next season, even if it's just sort of around the margins, even if it's just sort of both of them getting comfortable, with each other, in their seats, in their blazers and whatever turn or phrase you want to use. I totally agree about Burkhart because it's clear that there's, that, I mean, he is, he is such a

announcer's announcer, like I said, that you can tell that there's a lot bubbling beneath the surface. So as that sort of becomes part of the delivery, part of the package, yeah, it'll be fun to watch. he can get better. That's the nicest thing I can say about him. Is it like I think he can be a lot better than this? Maybe not at like being on top of the calls, all that kind of stuff. But I just think there's there's room for him to grow here. Be interesting to watch that.

Some general game notes for you. Dude, the Fox crew got a really horrible deal of the cards in the NFC championship game when Brock Purdy got hurt in the first quarter. And we went back to 1930s football for one of the teams on the, field when it looked like Mahomes was injured right before the half. I was like, oh my God. Did these guys just get another non-competitive football game? Yep. That they had to call turned out to be an absolutely awesome Super Bowl going all the way

down to the final seconds of the game. What did you think of this? No Andy Reid interview at halftime, Aaron Andrews explained, because the chiefs were trailing and his policy is he doesn't talk when the chiefs. are trailing. Did you catch that? No, I totally miss that. So there's like a moral distinction between

I talk to the press if we're winning, but I don't talk to the press if we're behind. Yeah, well, I guess he's got more important things to worry about, right? That's so funny. The NFL staged this game really well, David, with one very, very, very notable exception. The playing field.

Oh, my gosh. What a mess that turned out to be. I mean, I don't understand precisely how fields are laid, laid, put down, constructed, grown. Sotted. But I feel like we hear stories frequently enough of, you know, we put down the turf and it was so bad, we had to put, we had to spend X number of dollars to pull it all off and put it right back down again and it barely got it in time for the game. Like, how did they not? how was this the one problem in the execution of this big game? And at least nobody published articles absolutely, you know, honoring the NFL's long time field guy, known as the God of Saad, but right before the game.

They wouldn't do that, would they? Oh, wait, here's the New York Times, David. Oh, my gosh. George Toma is the guy I'm talking about. Here's the headline, All hail the God of Sond. sod groundskeeper for all 57 Super Bowls. Oh, my God. Oh, wait.

And ESPN has a piece on, what is this called? Oklahoma State turf grass and the, the multi-year process that came to bring this into fruition. Oh, my gosh. Yeah. Yeah. Well, didn't hold up so good. So is this a terrible night for Philadelphia sports fans or between the playing surface and that late penalty

an absolutely like horribly magnificent night for Philadelphia sports fans? Because they have tons to complain about. Angelo Gataldi is going to just combust on the air tomorrow. How much longer does he have left? Days. Well, it's enough to keep him going for a couple months. You got a good show in him tomorrow morning anyway. It's sort of perfect for him.

He has one last grievance to exit on. I mean, the field, the turf affected both teams. That call is just ridiculous. I mean, it's just like what, like, it doesn't matter if it's real or not to a Philly fan. It doesn't matter if it was a good call or not, but it really was, I think, demonstrably a bad call. So, you know, there'll be, I don't know if that makes it a good thing, though.

I mean, Philadelphia was anxious, was nervous the past two weeks, the past couple of months leading up to tonight. This is nobody's nobody's just excited to be able to complain. I wrote about the Fox guys who do the broadcast, the producer, especially, Richie Zions.

And watching the game tonight, I'm just amazed at how on it they are about so many things. Remember that very first Eagles drive the game where they scored a touchdown and the running back, Kenneth Gainwell, gets stopped on like the one inch line

because his arm, looks like he's going to do an arm wrestling hold right on the goal line and that's where the ball is. And they had the perfect shot. They had every shot tonight. We just got through talking about games where the shot was missing. They had every shot in like triplicate tonight.

Cameras coming out of left field. I mean, it was, that part of it was just flawless. It's another time when the chiefs had illegal hands to the face. And the referee makes the call and like a second later, there is the camera angle, finding way off the ball. Yeah. a defender using illegal hands to the face. And you're like, oh, right, there is the penalty.

And again, I just sound, it always sounds like, oh, TV production, people's eyes glaze over. But sitting in the truck, all this happens in three to five seconds. Yeah. Staring at a bank of monitors, listening to voices in your ear and going, that's a shot. Go, go, go, go, go right now. Do they have like a triple long truck for a night like tonight? They have extra sets of eyes. They must, right?

They do. They do. But it's still the same people making. the call. One guy, the director, doing the live shots. Yeah. And one guy the producer doing the replays. And they are the ones picking what goes on television again every couple of seconds. Yeah. And getting it right over and over again. Yeah. I thought it was really, I mean, listen, it wasn't just the camera angles, the camera, I mean, the, and the replays and everything else, that was absolutely spectacular. I thought that, I think I texted you this early on. I mean,

there was a sort of just seamlessness to this whole broadcast I mean from the pregame show all the way to the end that I don't know everybody get in the chat and tell me what was terrible about it but I would find it really hard to complain about

just about anything if any if I want to if I want to if I want to fabricate a complaint it's that that's what we're here for when something's that smooth it gets a little dull at some point, a little monotonous?

I don't know. And I think that that's, that's sort of the, I think Foxes somehow, in some levels, reached its pinnacle with this absolutely flawless performance. I think this is what they're shooting for. I think this is what you, I mean, I think that, listen, when you put together a new announced team, you want to have the next, like, legendary announce team. But everything about their choices, their presentation is just like, we're going to, we are going to we're going to have the most like solid like a performance out of everything but with like

absolutely no no errors no room for points of interest you know no no i mean i don't mean that sounds overly negative you know we're we're we're not going to cast a color guy who's going to like whose voice is going to crack in a big moment because he's so excited you know i mean it's just it was so smooth um but i would definitely choose smooth over probably any alternative so kudos to them. One thing they did roll out tonight, which got some people talking on Twitter, was a new scorebug at the bottom of the screen. For some reason, the networks like to unveil the new one during the Super Bowl. Yeah.

Just so people are looking at something they've never seen before. Now, you know I'm a nerdy sports media guy. Go on. There's no intricacy of the business that I won't stick my little nose into. but scorebug gazing is just almost beyond me. I'm like, I think it looks fine. I think it's okay. I'll forget about it by the next game.

I won't even notice that it changed. Can we talk a little bit about the commercials? Yeah, as I'm watching right now, I believe this is live. We have a dueling Fox TV promo of Gordon Ramsey and Animal Control. They're on screen, they're eating a burger together. The Fox stuff, the Fox started came on, the Fox programming came on strong late, it felt like, although it was spread throughout. I saw Gordon Ramsey was on the field in the pregame or on the sideline. But yeah, let's talk about some of the more interesting commercials.

I texted you this during the game and I got to say, the whole commercial apparatus of the Super Bowl had a very nature is healing kind of vibe. Yeah. big stars in the advertisements, trailers for big movies. We had John Hamm, Brie Larson, and Pete Davidson selling generic mayonnaise. We had Amy Schumer and Yanna selling Google phones. Google pixels. We had John Travolta, but he'll sell anything. I mean, come on at this point.

Got some takes on commercials. Are you looking forward to the upcoming adventures film, Indiana Jones on the curse of the horrible CGI. Oh my God. I know that one. That is a special place in your heart, that franchise. I was wondering what your take on that one would be. Jesus, that looked bad.

I didn't know that was coming. I didn't engage in any of the what, you know, the guessing about sooth saying out what the commercials might be or any of the previews. That was a surprise to me. I was kind of excited to see it. Sylvester Stallone was in a commercial for Paramount that was parroting cliffhanger? Yes.

A movie that is very, very long ago and that I had kind of forgotten about until I was watching that commercial? I'm so glad you brought up this commercial because it's one that I just crossed out on my list. I have so, I'm so far beyond my realm of comprehension. I don't really know what to say about it. Like,

I get it. I remember the commercials last, wasn't it just last year that we were sort of introducing the world to Paramount Plus? And they had like all the different characters like hiking a man. mountain or something like that. So this was like a spin-off of that one. And now Stallone is on Paramount Plus on his,

playing his Midwest mobster show, whatever that it's called. And, uh, and, and, and, and, yeah. So now, the cliffhanger thing was just sort of weird.

And that he also sort of had two roles in it as the mountain and the, I don't know, man. I just don't know. There was, there was, listen, there was, there was,

there was, surprisingly few, man, I just don't know commercials this year. I think I know on most all of them. Even if I didn't enjoy them. I think I got it. Yes.

Well, as Dan Miller points out, there was no crypto this year, which dominated the last couple of Super Bowls. So at least you and I understood what was being peddled. Yeah. What did you think of the Caddyshack parody? Speaking of old movies?

I thought it was good. You know, I mean, listen, there's a whole, you know, there's a bunch of different categories for these commercials. This is both the celebrity mashup category. um which also you know was i think draft kings amongst others did some work there uh and then there's the big nostalgia the throwback category we saw uh uh well share from clueless for rackerton and

breaking bad i guess it probably fits into the nostalgia category even though it makes me feel old to say so um but yeah the caddy shack one was really good i mean it had it was of a series right so you kind of feel like you get to know, you've gotten to know some of what's going on over the course of the night. And, and I don't know, I just felt like it was well cast and well considered.

I was a little bit perplexed by it being immediately followed up by the, by the full swing, Micoloblight crossover commercial, where it was like the same, like a, like a post script to the commercial that was advertising the new golf show on Netflix. I was trying to figure out how you decide who pays for,

what percentage of this commercial, but regardless, um, uh, I think the most befuddling thing for this, to me as a guy who just watches TV and drinks beer is I was just like, I think this is the first time I recognize that Mickalob and Mickalob Ultra was a bigger deal than Bud Light. Not just on TV because you better believe I was Googling this right immediately after,

but in the world, um, uh, Micalob in general, by the way, when I think of Mickelope, I think of when they tried to rebrand themselves as like fake Shinerbach when we were like, in like 97,

there was like different flavors of Mickelope that suddenly were every, or not everywhere in the bar that I worked at and sort of other places. But I do, according to Wikipedia, by the way, Mickelope Light, which is distinct from Mickelope Ultra,

Michelob Light had declined in sales so much by 2012 that an article in beer marketers' insights that was published in USA Today listed it as one of nine beers Americans no longer drink. So big comeback for Micolove. Now Mickelope is on a trajectory to supplant Bud Light as the country's top selling beer, also owned by the same. company is Bud Light. They're both Anheiser-Busch beers. Anheiser-Busch is apparently totally cool with the fact that Budlite's time is all they're trying to do is hang on a market chair. There's no growth opportunity. We're pushing Mikhailobleau-Oltra now. So I guess I should probably crack one open. Yeah, I think it's just you and I have not been spending enough time at bars. That's a headline here. Dude, I don't spend as much time as I used to, but I think

for a, certainly for an employee of the ringer, I spend more time drinking like, you know, basic tap beer than anybody else. By river standards, you drink more down the middle beer. My refrigerator right now has Budweiser and like Corona Light, which is which my wife purchased. But like it, yeah, I mean, it's pretty basic around here. You think all your colleagues are just stuffed to the gills with craft beers and their refrigerators?

That's the insinuation here. Oh, yeah. It's all, it's just all like the craft tallboys. You buy like Lucy's of. at the fancy beer stores. No, but I mean, I see people drinking Mickalobes or, you know, buds and Coors and Millers and whatever all the time.

I had no idea, Mickelope Ultra. Mickelope Ultra was had just taken over. I mean, I've seen people drink it. I didn't know that was that big of a deal. One thing I liked about the ad is they did caddy shake, but they recast the whole thing. Yeah. So we had Serena Williams.

We had Brian Cox. We had Tony Romo in the old Bill Murray role as the groundskeeper. That's what Tony Romo was doing when he should have been studying for those football games. He was playing the groundskeeper in a caddyshack. Riff.

Tony Rowe. Some more notes about the commercials for you. Ben Stiller is still not funny. I'm sorry, America. I'm sorry. You were all fooled for years. This is just a blanket Ben Stiller is not funny. Arumet that you're throwing in here?

And he was so not funny that he made Steve Martin in the other Pepsi commercial that was like Ben Stiller's commercial not funny. Was there a third commercial where they cross paths that, or did that, did I miss? Or did that not happen? I kind of blacked out on commercials in the fourth quarter because I was like, wow, I've been watching television, like every moment of television now for like three and a half hours. See, I saw the Steve Martin one. I just kind of have a moment to like look down at the couch during the commercials. I swear I saw them in a press photo together. So when I saw the Steve Martin one, I was like,

oh, yeah, there will be a third. This is going to be like the border trilogy. Oh, my two favorite. So I see the two stars with my two beloved commercials are finally together. I don't know. Maybe there was. Maybe I missed it. I agree.

I don't, I mean, I like Ben Stiller more than you, I guess. That, by the way, I categorize both those as, um,

self aware, self aware famous people. So, famous people who are aware that they're acting in a, or aware they're acting in a commercial category, which was those two, who else? Oh,

the Will Farrow commercial. And I guess you can put the ditty, the ditty, jingle situation is, I mean, the premise was self-aware and was that they're in a commercial. So you can shoehorn that in too. I have a note here about the one where Rob Gronkowski attempted a field goal. And I swear watching the commercial, I thought the field goal was good. But then they were saying it wasn't good.

Yeah. Did we have the officiating team from the game actually calling that field goal as well? Yeah. Yeah, I have no idea what the deal is what was with that. I spent the whole time I were preoccupied by is, is kick of destiny

at least like sonically a reference to tenacious D in the pick of destiny? Wasn't that the pick of destiny? Yeah, I don't know. And was that a reference to something else that I don't know?

I should have Googled that and so when I was spent like a half hour Googling Anheiser Bush. Anyway. You're doing all that beer research. You didn't have time. I got some overworked Twitter jokes for you before we cover the rest of tonight's action.

Folks, you know when it's time for the overworked Twitter joke of the week, this is where we celebrate a gag that was so obvious that all of media Twitter made it at exactly the same time. Send your nominees to at the Press Box Pod where they are always gratefully received. And tonight, David, people did, especially about Rihanna's halftime show. It was a very overworked Twitter joke to write, respect to Rihanna for performing in a Super Smash Brothers stage. That was a big one. Also, this sad update, Rihanna was just taken down over. Canadian airspace.

A lot of balloon stories that this reminded people of. You saw the shot that Fox had with Elon Musk sitting there in the luxury box with Rupert Murdoch. It's an overworked Twitter joke to write. Is Elon going to ban Fox Sports

for revealing his exact coordinates? Pretty good. Pretty good. Got some pregame notes for you. Wait, I got two more commercial notes before we get out of commercials. Oh, let's do commercials. Keep going.

Is it new or am I just going to be old man yells at clouds to say what does it deal with the trailers? I mean, with the commercials for movies that end with saying check out the trailer online. Like what did I just watch if not the trailer? I know no, it was two minutes long, but is it the whole purpose to drive views to the YouTube page or something? I don't know. That's a good one. Like shouldn't the commercial just be the commercial? I don't know.

And then maybe maybe that's, uh, what else do I have? a big night Adam Driver had it was weirdly in both a commercial for square space and a movie which I'd never heard of but now I want to see humans discovered Earth 65 million years ago or 67

million years ago what was the title 65 was I think it was just called 65 that was weird the cowboy dating show which I thought was a gag at first it was and literally was like that was my without even thinking about it my like my subconscious cue to go run to the kitchen

or whatever because I was like this is a commercial we won't be talking about. And then by like the sixth replay of it, I was like, oh, shit, I have to make a note. This cowboy dating show was actually a thing. And I guess Fox is going to make us watch it at some point. Also, Jesus had a Super Bowl ad, which was nice. So we did get a request to talk about that

because this is the He Gets Us campaign, which has been popping up during the playoffs. He had two ads tonight. with these very stark black and white photos that showed scenes from the pandemic and all the arguments about masking and things that evolved out of the pandemic. Yeah. What I was tweeting about was that he gets us had a booth on Radio Row before the Super Bowl. And my understanding was, was bringing players through Radio Row to talk about their campaign. So like the ringer had a table there and he gets us had a table.

at Radio Row. We're wild. Yeah. There's a CNN story that somebody tweeted at me where I can put that up on the old press box Twitter feed if you guys want that

to learn a little bit more about that campaign. The pregame, David, this is when you texted me that things were going on a smidge long. I did like that we had lots of anthems. Like of the national anthem variety?

Cheryl Lee Ralph did lift every voice and sing, which really was really good. Incredible. Babyface America the Beautiful. Then we had Chris Stapleton doing the national anthem. Best national anthem ever. Which produced that amazing shot of Nick Siriani crying,

which I know has not been repurposed at all on Twitter after the game. No way. The last thing I want to do is to besmirge the reputation of a person who is crying during the national anthem. Am I the only one that noticed that he visibly spit on the ground during America the Beautiful? Obviously, he wasn't spitting in reaction to America of the Beautiful, but he spit and realized he was caught on camera while he was just like hawking a lugie during America the Beautiful. I don't know if that is if there's an A to B correlation between that and him crying during the next song, but man, that was quite a, that was quite a cry. It was a big whiplash moment, even if it did not have an exact A to B reasoning. My wife pointed out the first one, and I was like, oh, that's really unfortunate during this nice moment that you're

seen spitting on the field like a football coach does. Yeah. But then the next shot of him was just absolutely dissolved into tears. Unbelievable. Crying Jordan for our times. I saw somebody tweet. We had a Bradley Cooper narrated open. Did you watch this?

Which was talking about how people had doubted all the players in the Super Bowl when they were kids. Yeah. And let me tell you why. Because they were kids. they weren't great at football yet maybe they had to get some coaching dude Travis Kelsey right after the game

is sitting out there with Aaron Andrews going nobody picked up nobody picked the Chiefs to win it all it's like are you crazy you guys are the number one scene the AFC your quarterback just won the MVP or you get out of here with this doubter stuff I think nobody on the Fox pregame show

picked them if that helps am I am I right that that's true they were one then they were like what a one and a half point underdog yeah ESPN says they were favored in 14 consecutive playoff games before the afc championship game this year when we thought their quarterback could barely walk yeah the doubters just nobody believed in those chiefs this year that'd be great if that bradley cooper voiceover segment instead of just being you know specifically about playing was just about mean parenting you know it's just like She's like, Jason, you'll never amount.

You don't know how to clean your room. You'll never amount to anything in life. It's like a voiceover. Yeah. You and your brother Travis, too. Nothing good will come of you. We had a lot of Eagles fans in the house. I noticed in the pregame.

Mm-hmm. Dak Prescott was booed when he won a humanitarian award. Mm-hmm. Which is a great Eagles fan moment, which you should add to the montage with Boo. suing Santa and all the other stuff that happened at the old vet. Now, is there going to be the revisionist history, like with Santa that they didn't actually boo Dak Prescott upon receiving the award?

They were booing something else related, but not the same, where they're not condemning him for his award-winning community service? They were, they were booing NFL awards in general. Yeah. We have too many postseason honors. There was also, they went to a shot where the new Hall of Famers, who were just a lot of elected a couple of days ago, we're on the field. And Kevin Burkhard said something like the crowd is, you know, recognizing the Hall of Famers. And you can hear people booing again for that.

And I'm like, are we booing Chuck Howley, you play for the Cowboys a million years ago? Ronde Barber, an enemy of the Eagles. What are we doing here? Also, when Jalen Hertz scored one of his touchdowns, there was an MVP champ. MVP was actually Patrick Mahomes is here, but Eagle fans, dude. That's okay. It's a good. What a night. Did you notice legendary quarterback Doug Williams? Yeah. Holding the Lombardi Trophy right before kickoff.

And did you notice he was wearing gloves when he was holding the Lombardi trophy? Oh, no. Like he was, you know, a historian or archivist. Like a museum, like a art camera. Yeah, like, handling the Declaration of Independence or something like that. I'm like, this will be held by lots of, do we not just want to get a smudge on it or a fingerprint? before we give it to the chiefs to throw around on the team playing all night. Maybe no one's allowed it.

Maybe there's some omen attached to it or some like, you know, bad, bad luck. No one's allowed to touch it until someone who's won a game. It's like the good Indiana Jones movie where if you touch it, the whole stadium crumbles. Exactly. We had players from both teams walking down a runway. It's going to be so bad, dude. Indie's going to suck. I hate it.

I wish it were good. It's just not going to be. We had players from both teams walking down runways or on stages in the Fox pregame. Did you see that whole thing? No, I missed that. I was watching most of it. I missed that part. Also, Tom Rinaldi was doing a very serious sideline report before the game.

The Eagle mascot noticed that he was on camera and just decided to come in and photo bomb the hell out of Tom Rinaldi. That was fun. Other stuff in the pregame. really cool to see Damar Hamlin on the field. Oh, yeah. With the medical personnel that helped save his life. Everything is so manufactured in the Super Bowl, as you say sometimes,

the slick manufacturing is actually really amazing. Like tonight, that was genuinely really cool. Yeah. I don't know how early you turn on the TV, but about 30 minutes before kickoff. We also had Fox had like a patriotism moment. Oh, yeah. Which Fox often does where they had Johnny Cash doing ragged old flag.

Mm-hmm. with just shots of a flag rippling in the wind and veterans and stuff like that. It was just two or three minutes of... Who was doing that voiceover? I felt like I knew it was and I couldn't put a finger on. It wasn't Johnny Cash. He's dead, right? Well, but his voice is still available.

Oh, okay. Better glance at our comments here. And somebody will set us right on whether that was actual Johnny Cash or not. Also, a surprise sports media hire, by the way. They had A-Rod. on the pregame show. And I was like, oh, no. Arod has now infiltrated the Super Bowl pregame show

in addition to every other part of media life here in 2023. But it turns out he was introducing Derek Jeter as the newest member of the Fox crew. Yeah. So Derek Jeter, his teammate and sort of, you know, what is he called? That is Derek Jeter get to negotiate based on

what Tom Brady is making. speaking from Fox? Does your agent go just like, look, this is Derek Jeter. He deserves Brady money. Or do we have to keep it within the baseball sphere? Yeah. Fox's answer to that was Derek, I got some sad news for you. It's baseball.

Yeah. So you will not be making the top Brady money. But it'd be interesting to know how much that is. God. It's not nothing. I feel those baseball guys on Fox just aren't on TV all that much. Yeah. because they don't do all that many regular season games.

I mean, their obligations are minimal, not that, like, they're just doing it and they're not being broadcast nationally. No, not.

We just, we just use this as a test. Yeah. You guys can go back home now. No, they just don't do their many games. Yeah. Um,

one thing, it might not be that big of a deal, but Fox is, I mean, it's, wow. I mean, Fox's,

Fox's celebrity, former athlete payroll is just going to be astronomical next season, or at least fall, starting in fall of 2020. agreed. And I feel exactly like I do about Tom Brady with Derek Jeter. Of course, you hire Derek Jeter. He may stink at broadcasting. He may be like he was as a player and really reluctant to say very much. It's super interesting on television. But it's Derek Jeter. So you should take the chance.

Because if Derek Jeter becomes really good at broadcasting, great. And also it's baseball. What do you have to lose? Yes. What? Can Derek Jeter just do the world series? Can we just not not the pregame but the actual booth? Let's just try that out. Yeah. Is he, I mean, yeah, I feel like Jeter's can be, I feel like Jeter's probably more of a real life jerk as it has a real, as someone who's been called a jerk many times.

I feel like Jeter's got a little jerk in him and he can probably, you know, make some money off of that. Also, is he still, he's no longer a minority owner of the Marlins, right? No, he's free. I know that he was, well, not that. matters. I mean, Magic Johnson was doing NBA studio work while he was a minority owner of the Lakers, but is it, it would be pretty awesome if Derek Jeter makes more money on TV than he did as a part owner of a professional baseball team. I mean, Brady's going to make more as an announcer than he was as a player. I mean, these are weird bars that we're setting here, but man. And would Brady make as a like a minority owner of the Dolphins, $37 million a year?

I don't know. I don't think so. One thing Fox did not have on the pregame show, David, was an interview with Joe Biden. Good. I'm glad we got here. That got fouled up somehow. So Fox went to Joe Biden and said, we would love you to do the traditional presidential Super Bowl pregame interview, which itself is a really funny tradition.

I don't hear a lot from the president. you know, not only this president, but really any president in that kind of setting. We don't hear nearly enough. How long has this tradition been going on? I feel like it became a tradition, a de facto tradition

when like people were complaining that Obama wasn't going to do O'Reilly or whatever. And he did O'Reilly like at least twice. Yeah. And I don't know how many Fox Super Bowls were in during the Obama's eight years, but he did a couple of O'Reilly and was willing to submit to that.

Mm-hmm. Fox, according to the reporting, was going to put Brett Bear out there. They said, okay, we understand. You might not like some of the Fox News personalities, but what about relatively even-handed Brett Bear? He can interview you. The Biden White House said no.

And then they had this really interesting thing where they said no and then said, okay, now we're going to give an interview to Fox Soul, which is a streaming service. Yeah. And then there was a tweet from a statement tweeted from people at Fox and said, okay, the Fox Soul team is on their way to Washington to do the interview. And then Biden canceled that too.

One of the members of that team was Vivica A. Fox, if I remember correctly. That is correct. Is she a regular Fox Soul contributor, or is that just for tonight? I cannot give you a solid answer on that one. Yeah, I feel like I should know more about Fox Soul. Do you want to talk about Greg Gutfelds since we're talking about Fox? That was an amazing ad tonight. There was a number of ads, right?

At least too. I watched a whole episode of that with my uncle over the Christmas break. Go on. Absolutely fascinating show. It was like the pacing. Did we talk about this? It's like the pacing of a late night show, but the jokes weren't very funny. And nobody in the live studio audience a lot of the time was laughing at the jokes.

You know how they're like? you know how they kind of sweeten the crowd on Letterman at the end where the crowd would just go wild whenever Letterman just said anything this crowd seemed to be like eh make me laugh and it was kind of a joke that Greg Gutfeld wasn't that funny a lot of the time just a fascinating television program were they calling him the new king of late night with irony that's the part I couldn't tell because it's on Fox they really they they tout him on Fox News constantly like I know his ratings are very good they're very good. They're very good. But is it like a King of All Media thing? Or is this just like a real? By the way, in a related story, I saw Brian Kilmead on Radio Row. He was a Friday guy. Oh. So, you know, Apex Mountain Radio Rose Thursday, slight dip for Friday. Brian Kilmead. And it was not totally clear to me of whether he was doing a bunch of interviews. There was somebody near him with a camera if he was like taping bits.

speaking of Howard Stern does he do like a stuttering John bit where he goes around just hits people up with stuff Was Brian Kilmead like promoting one of his books? There's a lot of Brian Kilmead in the Barnes & Noble these days

There's a lot of Brian Kilmead And he has had some At least one sports book But he did not have one in his hand I wanted to talk to him actually And I was pulled away by a fellow media member Not forcibly Just somebody wanted to talk to me

Oh yeah It's how you play the game the powerful sports moments that taught lasting values to America's finest. Oh, what? It took it. Wait, did this go military at the end? Wow. I don't know.

Anyway, yes. There's a sports book. That's from 2008, though. There's got to be a more recent one. Awesome. We'll take some calls here just in a second. So if you have something you'd like to say to us about anything that happened on television tonight, any complaints, anything you loved. Please get ready to hit us up.

Yeah, raise your hand. Ask to speak. whatever the button is and we'll let you in. Somebody also mentioned there was a Fox Nation ad tonight, speaking of Fox streaming services and some of the featured programming on Fox Nation was Cops. But you remember kind of went away when cops were not having kind of a tough moment a little while back. Yeah. Now Cops is on the streaming service.

Rosanne Cancel This, which appeared to be a stand-up special. Oh, my God. and Duck Family Treasure with the Duck Dynasty guys. Yeah. Did not know any of that was happening. Is that like, did somebody hold, did somebody hold a sign the Duck Dynasty guys? Fox just signed to a giant just like development deal. They're like, well, there's no way we can lose on this.

And then just like 10 years later, duck family treasures finally like limps out. Yeah, I just, I think it's more like we just need one more duck show. Yeah. What do you got? It's like, I don't know. How about buried treasure? pleasure, sure. All right.

Let's see, let's see what we got here in this, in this app. See if anybody wants to talk. Hold on. Questions or opinions about the announcing about the game. It says someone's requesting to speak, but no one's showing up in my thing. All right. If you have any questions, get him in the chat or request. Let's see, what have we got in here?

Jordan Wilhelm. He says, Gutfeld's going to have stiff competition once Charles Barkley comes to CNN late night. I don't know if he saw that report this week. Is he really doing it? No, just CNN. That was their idea. We don't have any idea. So how about Live Golf's idea? We'll hire Charles Berkeley. Oh, my God. Yeah. Chris White says never heard of Foxhole before a day. What if this was all a viral Fox Soul marketing stunt? Hmm. Could be. I mean, it's like, it's really, it was really just unclear whether any interviews with Biden were actually scheduled or if it was just a really big misunderstanding on several points.

Yeah. I just, like, this is definitely a weird obligation and kind of, I mean, I know that like journalists that even, you know, journalists on quote unquote liberal platforms that spend so much time standing up for like the principles of journalism do feel sort of obligated to take some vague offense when something like this happens or whatever. But like, are we, does any. anyone actually think that Joe Biden has any obligation, like historical or moral or any other, to do an interview with Fox News just because Fox paid a bunch of money to have the Super Bowl on TV? Not on those grounds because they're the Super Bowl network. And, you know, you know what I think about Fox News and everybody listening to the show knows what I think about Fox News. But I think it's an interesting question of should Biden just do an interview with Brett Baer? Should we have more of Joe Biden talking to the media in interview settings.

Yeah. And I'm not opposed to that at all. And I think if you ask me like, you know, would you like to, you know, send a message, Biden to send a message for Fox News or to Fox News or for Biden to do an interview with Brett Bear that'll probably be skeptical and, you know, whatever, you know, within the framework of what you and I would consider to be a

reasonable interview. I think I probably would say, do it. Yes. I would like him to do that interview. But traditionally when they, like the end of, NBC host a Super Bowl, it's like the host of NBC Nightly News. You know, it's a show that NBC broadcast, not that went like an MSNBC host comes marching in, right? Right.

Well, it was going to, well, Trump blew off Lester Holt, I think, for the last NBC Super Bowl. I think I read that today. But it wasn't like, it wasn't, I mean, so like, if Chris was, I guess, I think it would be different if it was Shannon Bream, you know, coming in from, from. Greg Gutfeld. Yeah, wow. That would be totally different. I think Biden might have said yes to Greg Gutfeld. Biden also did a couple of big interviews this week, probably to take some of the sting off of this thing, right?

He'd sat for Telemundo and who was the CBS? He did another one. But yeah. Here's a good one from Doug Lindblom. Coming late, so maybe you covered it. Are we all ready for the what is the NFL going to do about a fishing off-season long media narrative? Oh, God. So our old pal Bill Barnwell had a good tweet the other day where he was like, I'm not defending NFL officiating.

but if you are going to say that officiating has gotten worse, please tell us when you thought officiating in the NFL was good. Yeah. Because you and I know it is like an absolutely solid gold sports radio take to get on there and be like, you know what sucks these days? NFL officiating. So was it, was it, did it used to be better? And can you show me that?

It used to, no, no, no, it was, it's really hard to blame it on the rest. The present, there are, there are certainly some ways in which, like, football was easier to enjoy before we had to know that the referees were fallible, right? When there was, like, only two camera angles and the plays just, you know, and the game just moved on no matter what they said, there's, you don't have any room to complain about the refs. And so it seems like they were better. It doesn't matter if they were better. But the game was more fun because we don't, or that piece of it of anxiety was removed from the game. You don't have to worry about trusting the refs. The reps are just the hand of God.

So, yeah, I mean, it does, it does feel like, though, we've spent the better part of two decades now, wondering why, you know, the robots can't just take over and just make sure everything, every, you know, every first down spot is exactly in the right place, right? Every, like, every single ball says a microchip and there's enough cameras and whatever else to figure it out. That, that, I think, is, is like a supplement to the conversation. But it does seem like football refereeing seems bad because now we have nine million cameras that show you that it's bad. Yeah, it's bad. Of course it's bad. We have an important update here. Lindsay Jones interviewed referee Carl Cheffers after the game.

She was the pool reporter sent in to talk to Carl Cheffers. And one of her questions was, was it a pretty clear case of it, meaning of holding from your vantage point, Cheffer said it was a clear case of a jersey grab that caused restriction. She asked how much debate was there amongst the crew when the flag was thrown. Was there a discussion amongst the crew? Sheffer said there was no debate, just making sure what he had. And once he told us what he had, we went about our business. Then she asked the restriction, did it happen at the top of the route or was it after the receiver had turned? Cheffer said he went to the inside.

He put his foot down to try to break to the outside. So it was right at the break to the outside where the defender grabbed his jersey and prevented his free release to the outside. It's their story and they're sticking to it. Good work by Lindsay, getting some answers. answer's there. Yeah, it was still a terrible call. This is from Jordan Will Helmy again. Eagles DB told media at his locker that it was a penalty. He held his jersey. Wonder how that impacts Philly Talk Radio tomorrow. Not a ton, Jordan, I think, is the answer. They had the perfect opportunity for a takeback. They could have just said, you thought we threw a flag. Really, that was just somebody's

mouthpiece. See, they like, they set it up in the first stanza, and now they could have just gone back to it. One thing we didn't talk about was a halftime show. Do you want to weigh in on the halftime show? Mm-hmm. You want me to weigh? Yeah, way away. I will say this. I like the sort of inherent gusto of having a person that's going to perform with no special guests, with no CGI. I mean, I guess the flying around platforms is pretty cool.

But like, you know, not a whole lot of flourish. Just like this, like, if you weren't sure of Rihanna was a bigger, half star to hold down the Super Bowl halftime show. They proved it to you by making sure there was absolutely nothing else to talk about in the halftime show except her performance. Wait a second. Are you doing a Travis Keltis city doubters about Rihanna's presence to hold down the Super Bowl half time show?

I don't think it was, it's not a commentary on Rihanna. It's a commentary on the expectations of that, the outsized expectations of what every house or halftime show could be, you know, like, I mean, how many special guests can you fit out there and whatever else? But yeah, I thought it was really good. I don't think there were any Rihanna doubters. I think that, yeah. It felt big.

I mean, that's part of the problem with the Super Bowl halftime show, I think, is the game is so steroidal, right? 100 million viewers, everything's torched up to 11 that even when we had the who a few years ago, I mean, the who are cool, right? But you had these two guys down there on stage just playing the guitar. And I was like, eh, you know, this just feels. And these guys feel big, but this just doesn't feel like the Super Bowl halftime show. That felt like the Super Bowl halftime show.

It felt big, but she started out on the swings, the platforms, and then came down. And then it was, I don't know, it just all, it didn't, it didn't, I kept thinking now she's going to do the thing. Now's when Jay-Z's going to come out or now's when something's going to explode and whatever. There was never, and there was one point where she, between songs walked, it seemed about 50 yards down the platform. for a sort of like set change, but then when the cameras pulled out, it looked exactly the same as it had 50 yards in the other direction.

I don't know. You're right. It felt really big. It was so big. It sort of all was the same. And you did see her rep confirm that she is pregnant, which may have led to some of her how that particular performance was staged.

It was a great performance even when I didn't know that. I mean, she was great. LeBron James, you're going to be shocked, has tweeted about the penalty, the end of game penalty on the Eagles. It's not. Now, LeBron does not,

often interject himself into big sports stories, not involving him. So we should always pay attention when he does. I am kidding, obviously. This is what LeBron says. His hand was on his back. His hand on his back had no effect on his route. This game was too damn good for that call to dictate the outcome at the end. Damn.

By the way, I have no horse in the race. Just by a professional opinion. All right. So I love this so much for so many reasons. One is it sounded like the Philly sports radio caller to the three quarter mark. And then LeBron was like, by the way, no horse in this race. LeBron, you don't have to be like Lester Holt here or, you know, or Brett Bear, right? Like, you can have an opinion.

It's okay. We understand. Yeah. If you want to come down one way or the other, no problem. Can I ask a question that what is, in what way is this a professional opinion? Just that he is an athlete that also deals with referees? Yeah. Like I've had bad calls on me before.

he's not a referee. He's not a football referee. He's not a football player. Not exactly a professional opinion. It's LeBron. It's a comment. But his comment's more of like a producer's comment, right? He's not a, I guess he is a producer.

He has a bunch of producer craft. No, no, he's a football fan watching the game. He said it's not a fan. He's a professional opinion. Well, he's an athlete watching a football game. That'd be like me tweeting about the Indiana Jones movie and being like, And he had a Jones trailer being like, sorry, just my professional opinion. Like, okay?

No, it's like Shannon Sharp having an opinion about who wants all the smoke. He's a Hall of Famer. I don't think you would call that professional opinion. My professional, we need to end everything. Just because you have a job. Doesn't mean that you have a professional opinion. Every segment on the press box from now it needs to end with. That's just my professional opinion.

Oh, my God. All right. We're going to wrap this up. Let me look at here. Anything interesting else at the copy. habits we need to address. I thought for sure Jay-Z would be a feature on umbrella since he was there anyway. Very interesting game, but the ending was frustrating.

I hear you. I feel you there. LeBron did put on a professional dramatic performance when he didn't get the foul call against the Celtic, so he knows officiating. Jordan Wilhelmie being the MVP of this chat. All right, David. We want to call it there before we get hit with any borderline. penalties on the way out of town here.

Oh, before, one thing before we go, we sang the praises of the Fox team. I do want to give them a special shout out for, and Kevin Burkhardt for his intro, for having the close up, the camera angle and the audio of the missed field goal early in the game. Yeah, the doink. When the chiefs, when the chiefs doink the field goal, and they just had, they said, hey, let's, let's take a little, let's listen to that doink. And they just showed it right from the upright.

It was fantastic. It is the best sound. They should just, there should just be a doink cam in every game. Oh my God. All right. On that note, it's time for David Shoemaker guesses, the strain pun headline. Oh, man. He didn't tell me we're doing this live.

All right, let's go. Just so you know, we don't do editing in this. This is David's live guessing of the pun headline. We can't edit out the noise of my frantic Google searches during the phone of friend. you call the headline desk. Dude, if I was cheating and responded the way

that I'd do, that would be so embarrassing. That'd be more embarrassing than getting it wrong all the time. Last Monday's headline about a new and surprisingly clean set of restrooms built by New York's

Metropolitan Transit Authority was peeing is believing. Today's headline comes from Zach Brooks and Greg Thompson. Wait, who did that one? Who was on the show? It was Jason. And he certainly did not do peeing as believe

I was going to say that was Jason, right? Let me tell you something that happened. I'm doing it from Radio Row. He's on Zoom with me. And young Ben Solac, who's sitting right across from me, he got it. Really? Just listening to me. And yeah, and he was Jason's phone and a friend.

See, these kids, these podcast kids, they're just too good now. We got to work twice as hard and twice as long just to keep up with them. Today's headline comes from Zach Brooks and Greg Thompson, David. It's from the AP. It's a Super Bowl theme story about chicken, wings. Something I know you like because you and I used to eat buckets full of them when we live together.

Oh, man. I mean, Princeton, New Jersey is not exactly the food capital of the world, but we do have a place called Chuck's here that is just some of the best chicken wings you've ever had. So there was a somewhat tongue-and-cheek AP investigation that revealed that boneless chicken wings, the new trend in chicken wings, boneless chicken wings aren't actually made with wing meat. It's just a slice of chicken breast that got rebranded as a wing. It's kind of a tongue and cheek investigation. So I want you to think of this as an investigation, as a mystery, as a detective who was putting these facts together. What was the AP's strained pun headline? And no looking

at the comments. These listeners are smart. Is it like a who done it? Like a like a like a like a There and there. Is it like a long title or it's just like a Wait, putting the pieces in the other? No, a detective, right? He's gotten a new clue. Hmm. A new and surprising clue and he says.

Uh-huh. Eureka. Mm. Oh, he says, He says this in the middle of a mystery. He says, something's a foot. Uh-huh, uh-huh, uh-huh, the, the, the plot.

Oh, the plot The plot thickens. Oh, the plot chickens. The plot chickens. That's great. The plot chickens. He is David Shoemaker. I'm Brian Curtis.

Production Magic by Erica Cervantes. Back one more time this week, where there will be surely more lukewarm takes about the media. See you later, David. See you later, man.