The Press Box - The Cowboys Coaching Content Machine, More on Big Cat, and Zuck’s Inauguration Plan

Episode Date: January 16, 2025

Hello, media consumers! Bryan and Joel kick off the show with this week’s class in J-School. Joel discusses ways he is looking to assist those affected by the L.A. fires, feeling bad about Bryan’s Longhorns losing, and more (2:05). Then they get into some headlines, including: Tom Brady continuing his broadcast career (16:20) The Dallas Cowboys' coaching search (21:36) Mike Tomlin is the most coveted would-be announcer (37:28) Mark Zuckerberg is attending the inauguration with Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos (51:54) They close the show by remembering Bob Uecker, who has passed away at the age of 90 (57:10). Hosts: Bryan Curtis and Joel Anderson Producer: Brian H. Waters Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hey there, humanoids. It's the Maskman David Shoemaker. It's a new era in professional wrestling, and that means a new era here at the Ringer Wrestling show. Kaz here, every Monday and Thursday hang out with me and my guys' shoes on the Masked Show. And Ben Cruz here. Come kick it with me, Cal and Brian on Tuesdays for Ringer Wrestling Worldwide, where we hit on the most interesting headlines and even react to some of Maskedmans and even your hottest takes. Don't tap out. Tap in to the Ringer Wrestling show feed now on Spotify. or wherever you get your podcasts. Worldwide. Media consumers, welcome to press box. You got Brian Curtis,

Joel Anderson, and producer Brian Waters. Coming up on the podcast, more on Tom Brady and the search for Big Cat's Roots. The Cowboys coaching search takes its place in the A block. What is Mark Zuckerberg doing with Donald Trump and Joe Rogan? Plus a farewell to Bob Yucker and the New Yorker writer who did a J-Crew ad. But we always start the Thursday pod with Joel's take on the week that was, this isn't Columbia.

We have standards here. Welcome, everyone, to J-School. I feel like more of a brown kind of guy anyway. I see more of a Brown or Dartmouth, one of the lesser ivies. I shouldn't say lesser ivies. You guys know what I, but you guys know what I mean when I say it. I'm not an Ivy League guy,

but you guys know what I mean when I say with Brown and Dartmouth and Cornell are compared to the other ones. I mean, no disrespect to the ivies. No disrespect. No disrespect. Anyway, yeah, I would love to start out J-School talking about something that Brian and David talked about on Monday, which is, look, they read this really moving Instagram caption from one of our coworkers, Yassie Select, and she's a host of Bansplain. And I mean, this is stuck with me all week. And I'm just going to read a quick portion of it here. It says, I do know it's just stuff. I really do. It was also thousands of people. of me, outward expressions of my passions and taste in all past versions of myself. And man, like, if you sit around, like, no matter where you've lived, because actually,

sometimes I think, because I've had to move quite a bit in my life, like, there was a time and I counted, I moved like 11 times in like 19 years in my career. And I remember, like, you bring all this stuff with you. And it's like the house almost barely even matters at a certain way. certain points, like all the things that you surround yourself with. And I'm just imagining trying to replace my book collection, uh, my collection of Dave Campbell, Texas football magazines. You know, maybe I could rebuy those again, but like they're dog geared in a way that is particular to me. Um, I have a five slamma jam a pennant, uh, in, in my house, Brian. So things like that. So anyway,

it was very moving. And I've also just been sort of overwhelmed, um, even as the week is going on, like it has stayed with me. And it's hard to run away from if you go on Instagram or any social media app. And you see this immense need in Southern California. Like people who just have the most gutting stories of losing their homes, losing their family members, not having anywhere else to go. And I found it all moving. And so I've actually been inspired by a couple of friends and my wife,

my wife, Jene, who, Sarah Petitius, Like since we're taking care of two kids, we don't get to see each other much during the day. But all of a sudden one night I look on Instagram and she's raised money from like a hundred of her followers to go to somebody's GoFund me. And I was really, I found all of this moving. And I want to do something like that too. So I was just saying here, Brian, I'm stating an intention. Like I don't know how it's going to turn out or whatever. But I want to think about that what I would like to do to help raise some money.

And then I will share my plans on Monday. which basically means I'm trying to give myself a little bit more mental bandwidth because right now we're in the process of getting ready to travel to Atlanta. So maybe a chance to sit and be left alone on an airplane for a few hours will let me come up with something. That sounds great. We can workshop it together this weekend too. Yeah. Yeah, please. I would love to do something like that.

And Brian, you know, man, because Brian's right there in the middle of it, man. But we already did your little block of fun. So I don't know if you want me to, you know, would you like me to raise a little bit of money for you too? No, no, I am not. And I'll just second what you said about losing homes and family members and also people losing jobs. It's a really good piece in the LA Times about people who clean houses. And all of a sudden, all the houses they cleaned are burned down, hence they don't have a way to work anymore. So there's just so many people affected by the fires.

And I'm so glad you're doing something and hatching a plan to help out. Yeah, man. I mean, this is really reverberated all around the country. and you can just see the losses stacking on top of each other. So I've been inspired by the people that are willing to help, and I want to become one of them. We'll talk more about it on Monday, and we'll figure out where we go from there.

Another thing, and you mentioned this, Brian, and I just, actually, I'm going to step back for a second. So Jack Sawyer is running down the sideline. God. Okay. And so, yeah, picture this. And I texted you, Brian. And I said, well, at least you're not going to, what did I say?

Are you going to be, you're not going to be emotionally infested when we go to Atlanta on Monday? Something along those lines. I was like, at least not you can just enjoy the game. I was trying to find the bright. Well, I'm going to pose it as if I was trying to find the bright spot. But actually, I'm a bad friend. And if I think your favorite football team is going down in flames, I actually get a little delighted to text my friends as it's happening just to let them know that I'm paying attention.

I've never, I don't know about you, Brian. I've never been made happier by my friend's teams winning. Have you, has that ever happened with you? Have you been like, man, I have a friend who rooted for this team. Yes.

And they won a championship. Especially when it's a long time coming. Yeah. Oh, really? You have? Yeah. You're saying get happy for friends when it's a long time coming when they've been in there for 20 years waiting and suddenly they get,

yeah. Really? A little bit. So I do the first one, but then if there's any continued success, then I just go back to being a bad friend. Okay. Okay.

Well, I don't want my friends to fill any. in sports. And I delight in their misery. And I mean, I have friends that like a, you know, played ball at Wake Forest. And I'm just like, man, you guys are terrible. Like, when are you know, when is it, when are you ever going to have your day? But anyway, so, but on the other hand, right here, I, for a moment, Brian, I felt really sorry as I saw Jack Sawyer going up that sideline.

And, but the bright side is that Monday, clear conscience. anxiety you'll be able to walk into Mercedes Ben Stadium and we'll be able to enjoy that game right like you won't be thinking about what happened that the ugliness at the cotton bowl will you it would have it would have been journalistically untenable for me to be sitting in a press box with you on monday if texas was playing in the game and just uncomfortable for all parties because one i would worry about you just saying things to me rather than sliding into my text at a bad moment i would have my guard up and i'd also be the thinking about like the one or two friends I knew who I've gone to national championship games with before.

In the past, you'd be sitting out in the crowd and be like, don't, don't I rightfully belong with them? Wouldn't that be more fun to be sitting there wearing like a James Brown jersey in which I really do have? Out in the stands, having fun, cheering for Texas, not worrying about, you know, upsetting the lords of college football or doing it's like saying something wrong. That would have been, I think I would have, I would have, you know, ejected myself and put my myself in the stands that were the case. I think it is also better for our friendship and working relationship that that didn't happen because I think anybody that follows me and knows, I would say that I'm not at University of Texas. What?

Yeah, right. I don't know if people know, but yeah, I've got a little bit of a beef with you. Let's play the breaking news horn here. I had absolutely no idea. Yes, I know. Yeah, so some people may not know. I'm really low-key about it. I don't talk about it much, but it comes up from time to time.

Let's settle this while we're talking about Atlanta because we have had a number of people write to us and say, hey, are you guys doing some kind of event because I live in Atlanta and I'd like to come say hi to you guys. And we're not doing a formal event. We're not even doing a formal meet and greet. But I was like, well, you know, there are some bars in Atlanta. There are some breweries in Atlanta that we could potentially, you and I, if we have a few minutes between professional assignments, go camp out at, maybe during an NFL game. And you and I'd have a beer, have some lunch,

watch some football. And if people wanted to come out, they could be welcome during that window to come out and say hi to us. Would you be down for that? Man, that's really cool. You know, that sounds amazing and also sort of terrifying.

Because are you not worried about people not showing up? I'm a person that would never throw myself a birthday party because I was like, I just don't want to, I don't want to, you know, run into the risk I'm sitting there with a cake by myself. You know what I was terrified at the DNC this year. I really was.

Because we did a formal event. It was at a bar downtown. I'm like, I think this is the kind of place. Big City, Chicago, the kind of place where press box people will be, you know, around and into it.

And it was, it was shocking. It was the opposite. It was shocking how many people came out. Really? Okay. Well, look, I mean,

I would be in, I mean, you know, Fox Brothers Barbecue or, does that still exist? Yeah, burger. I'm just naming places that I like.

We can come up with something better in the interim. There we go. So anyway, check our social media feeds if Joel and Brian will be making an appearance, either alone or with our friends in the press box audio. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. We're going to figure it out. We're going to figure it out.

The last thing here for Jay School is so this fall, it will be 10 years since Missouri's football team threatened to sit out a game as part of a campus-wide protest against recent incidents on campus. And at the time, I was a reporter for BuzzFeed News, and I went to Columbia to cover the fallout. It was my first time going to Columbia because I wasn't, you know, good enough to get into the Columbia, you know, the journalism school at Mizzou. So it was my time to go hang out. And I see my old professor, Dr. Ernest Perry.

What's up? So anyway, I spent time with administrators, academic staff, student leaders, and I was really inspired by the movement. Like, I was like, wow, they really are doing something here. And so I wrote something about how former Mizzou players and even top-rated black recruits across the state had only recently warmed to the school and how that incident had threatened that. And as part of that story, I came across, you know, these talk radio DJs in St. Louis, one Richard Onion Horton and Charlie Tuna Edwards. And they were in the mold of old black media, which is in addition to reporters. the news. They were also sort of activists in some ways, right? Like, they were organizers. And part of their organizing was organizing black athletes not to go to

Missou. But they worked really hard at it. And it worked really well for a long time. On St. Louis Radio. On St. Louis Radio. Absolutely. On St. Louis. And this is actually, like, there's a tradition of this. Like, for people that don't know, the SEC schools, man, the reason LSU got good recently, like within the span of your lifetime or a lot of these SEC schools. They only recently started recruiting everybody within their footprint, right? Like a lot of black players went north or they went to the Florida schools first because those were some of the ones that took them in. But anyway, neither here nor there. So to center it in today's news, Texas A&M was in the news because of Greg Abbott, the governor of the state,

threatened to fire the Texas A&M University president, Mark Welsh, over these claims that they broke the state ban on DEI programs. And, you know, the A&M president insists that they did not. And he says, we don't support, we don't support any organization conference process or activity that excludes people based on race, creed, gender age, or any other discriminating factor. Essentially, there was a conference that some people at A&M were going to go to that sort of catered to some of these, you know, groups or whatever.

And they invited some staffers and PhD students to attend a conference. that limited participation to people who are black, Hispanic, or Native American. Obviously, that flies on the face of the state's anti-D-E. I ban. So I brought up, and, you know, Brian, I've been talking about this now for three, four years publicly. I'm just really surprised there's not been a counter-protest movement to this stuff. I think that this is going to happen eventually and that it's building, but it is not happen yet. And so I'm talking about that and tweeting about it. And I got to say, I got to say, I got to.

email the other day that makes me wonder, I was like, oh, man, it might be time for me to get off of Twitter. And I posted it on there, on Twitter. But I'll just give you a little bit of, I'll give you the second paragraph, and we can go from there. Don't know if you're aware of the school's history. Sexas A&M was founded in 1871 as the Agriculture and Mechanical College of Texas. It is possible you thought the A&M stood for animal. and monkeys. Or maybe you thought it stood for Africans and Moolies. I assure you it does not. I'm actually from Texas. My uncle, one of my favorite uncle's Uncle Donnie graduated from A&M in the early 80s. I knew that it didn't stand for Africans and Moolies. I mean, I saw my uncle's a diploma.

So I was familiar with what the A&M part stood for. But I actually have to say, sir, Donovan Lane, who sent me that message. that's what it says in the email. The email is Donovan Lane here at gmail.com. You only inspired me. Like I really, I really, I feel like, I feel like that message. It was funny to me, like it didn't really hurt my feelings. But also I found it, Brian, inspiring.

And I hope that people of conscience and people of justice hear and see that sort of stuff and are inspired by it, too. because I do think that, like, you know, you only send that sort of thing if you're a little bit concerned. And so I would like to say, you know, I have to admit, I would like to see a little bit of action in that direction. And maybe we will get there. It's been 10 years since we've seen one of these. I wonder if maybe time is due now. You mentioned LSU.

I mean, all of us who grew up in the great state of Texas have that same, you know, staying on the college football programs, including my alma mater. And to me, it's been always been about getting your mind around all. all the aspects of the program's history, all the aspects of your favorite team's history, not just the ones that you prefer to remember or a certain way you prefer to remember it. Well, you know what? And I always say this, Brian, because, again, obviously I didn't root for the University of Texas. And the big thing in Texas growing up was that Texas had the last all-white national championship football program, right?

Like, that was, you know, a thing. And it really didn't come around until, like, I felt like Vince Young. Do you feel like Vince Young was sort of an inflection point? Yes. It's the University of Texas, right? Yeah, yeah. I even rooted for Vince Young. I rooted for University of Texas

and Vince Young and that championship. It's the one exception Joel made, folks. I love Vince Young and T.J. Ford. That was a real era for the University of Texas. And then I defaulted back to how it was before. No offense, of course. Let's do some headlines. And if you'll indulge me, Joel,

I want to say one more thing about Tom Brady and his work post football at Fox. because I talked about this a little bit with Shoemaker the other day. And I'm just like sometimes you just, in journalism, you say something and then you say something different. Sometimes it's okay just to repeat yourself. I'd like to repeat myself. And I'd like to say, I think Tom Brady is coming back to Fox for year two. I don't think Tom Brady is one and done.

But you don't think this. You know this, don't. Well, you're being coy. No, no, no is something I think you do. for a debate show. Let me guarantee right now. Tom Brady is coming. Like, I don't know.

I don't, I'm not friends with Tom Brady. I don't know Tom Brady. So I don't know. And you know what? Human, human nature is weird. People decide different things.

But my informed opinion is that Tom Brady's coming back for year two at Fox. And I would just like this. You know how Bill always says, don't aggregate this? I'm like, why hasn't this been aggregated?

because I look over at one of my favorite websites awful announcing. We aggregated David Sampson, the Marlins guy, when he was like, well, he's not coming back. And we aggregated Dan Patrick, when he's like, well, he's not coming back. It's like, wait a second. What about people who have informed opinions about Tom Brady and Fox? What about us? Why are we been left out of the Aggregation Olympics? I hope awful announcing is listening.

I hope somebody from awful announcements listening is and is prepared to put this together because, I mean, it is very interesting. I mean, I think that you have sources that are helping you here. I know that you, I know that you, again, I feel like you're being coy. I, as one has to be. And you know, it might distaste generally for the whole, you know, here's a scoop about something that we're going to learn about anyway stuff. But right, I just think, it's my informed opinion that Tom Brady's coming back. I think it's other people's perhaps uninformed opinion that he's not coming back. And for some reason, that has gotten a lot of attention

and become the talking point of this whole news cycle, such as it is. Brian, explain to me why would he give that job up, though, in first place? Especially, like, if there's nobody pressing him to do it, like, why? Because there's no, is there, you know, you can tell me internal push. There's no internal push to get him out of that role. Not that I know of.

I can't adjust the opposite. They love it. They want him there. There was a reason that they wanted them to be not just calling games, but a kind of, you know, face of the network at Fox. And I think this is, does, there is one like interesting like meta media part of this, which is a lot of times when you read stories about announcers, they are, shall we say, very well sourced about what that announcer is going to do with their career, what they want to do with their career. I think Tom Brady is kind of a just zone of, let's just say, like, I think that, I think he, I don't think he, I don't think people are talking to him in the same way, that people are perhaps talking to other people in the business. So I think what happens is there's this lack of information. And then people start theorizing, well, you know, he's really, hey, I read somewhere that he's really involved in this Raiders coaching search. Maybe he wants to go spend his time with the Raiders. or maybe he wants to just go be Tom Brady in a lucrative way that you and I could never imagine. Okay.

That's my theory. And that's fine. There's nothing wrong with that. But I don't think that's the same thing as having an informed take about what Tom Brady's going to do next year. That's all. Absolutely. When look, man, I mean, if I were Tom Brady, I don't know how hard he has to work on this job. I can't imagine Tom Brady approaching anything half-ass, right?

Zero chance. doesn't zero chance of that. So if you're working hard, but it's still like a good job, you know, and it keeps you important and keeps you in front. Like, it's hard to do anything else if you're not in front of the public. Like, if you become Tom Brady and you become Raiders executive, that doesn't have quite, that doesn't get you into the same rooms. It doesn't, you know, you don't retain sort of the same fame. But this allows him to still have access to do all sorts of things. So yeah, like I don't, just thinking like, you know, like you said, like trying to use a little informed speculation, it kind of seems like, why would he give that up?

Yes. I get paid. I get to be famous. It's a cool job. He keeps them in football, which is what all football guys want to do. It pays $35 million plus a year. So if we're just, if we're, if we're just like creating theories, we could create lots of theories the other way. Right. of why of course he should keep doing this and we'll keep doing this for more than one year. I mean, the options to keep making that kind of money, which you probably can't do much of anything else. I mean, like he can't play quarterback anymore, so he's not going to get 35 million for that. So there's not a lot of places where you can continue to make that kind of money. I imagine that I would be in for the long haul on that one, but that's just me.

I want to talk to you about the Dallas Cowboys, Joel. Yeah. Because the team announced on Monday, conveniently after the wild, weekend that they were not a part of, that they were parting ways with their coach, their head coach, Mike McCarthy. It's one of those decisions that's built as a mutual decision, partly because McCarthy's contract was up, so it wasn't like an outright firing or, you know, again, people just, language gets so workshop that you stare at it for like 10 seconds, like, what actually happened here? but I would like to propose to you that there is no more perfect sports content generator

besides the Dallas Cowboys actually being good than the Dallas Cowboys being bad and the Cowboys shopping for a new head coach. Oh man. It's so funny because actually, and you learned this early on in journalism, it's like you can cover a great team, but you also covering a bad team is equally. is good sometimes, and if they're bad in a particular way. And if it happens to be a franchise like the Cowboys, like that might be the best of all things, right?

Because it depends on the kind of journalist you want to be. If you're, like, really into the game, you want to see good football. Well, then unfortunately, the Cowboys are not delivering on it right now. No, they did not. But the drama around that franchise, I mean, like, think about the Stephen A. Smith of it. Oh, like, like, how much more fun does a guy like that have

when the Cowboys are bad and he can, you know, spike the, spike the football on those guys. Like, I think, like, he's probably the most notable Cowboys hater in media. Um,

I think they definitely prefer it when they're bad and there seem to be flailing. Like, that's the, that's the thing. And it gets back to like the Jerry Jones of it all. Like, what are you guys doing? You don't really appear to have a plan because if you were going to get,

go of Mike McCarthy, like maybe you could have done it when Bill Billiuchick was available, right? Like, Wasn't that shocking to you? Did you not hear that they said, well, Bill Belichick didn't even know that the Cowboys may have been interested, and that's why he went on to do the North Carolina thing. And I'm like, Bill Belichick was unemployed all year. You probably knew that you were or were not going to bring, like, bringing back Mike McCarthy

was a question from the beginning of the year. You didn't reach out to Bill Belichick at all at any point during the season, seriously? Yeah, and that almost, you know, spins us off into another conversation just about what's going on in the Dallas Cowboys front office. And I hate to just, you know, cross into the Biden White House zone here because then you just open up all kinds of things. But this is a guy who was a coach for the Cowboys,

Mike McCarthy for five years. And it took them a week after the season ended to figure out whether they wanted to bring it back or not. So like, wait a second. So we're doing this a week. They had very, very long and strange contract negotiations with both Dak Prescott and C.D. Lamb. They just went on and on.

And there was no upside to it. for the team. They just gave him the same contract after waiting forever. So it's just his whole very disorganized kind of what is going on inside the franchise feel. And I don't know if that story is getable for anybody of like really understand it because it basically is Jerry Jones and his family, you know, who are making the decisions at the top of the franchise and those kind of, I feel those stories we don't often hear right from the NFL, the tippy top level.

know, sometimes we hear when the owners, you know, walk around the office making comments or doing whatever, but those kind of like, who is making the decisions and how are these decisions being made? That's a fascinating story for me. Oh, absolutely. And I mean, I think the thing is it's pretty clear who's making the decisions, right? Like, I mean, I know that I don't know that there's that much in-house,

that there's that much intrigue. It's Jerry Jones. Jerry Jones. So it's more how are they being made? And then what is, how are they? What is the process here? I guess like the thing is there's nobody, I guess there's probably not anybody in his orbit, I guess his kids, that can say, hey, you're not doing a good job. You're not serving the franchise well, because by waiting so long on deck, waiting so long on CD Lamb, you know, waiting until always the last worst possible moment to extend contracts or to let people off. Like that is hamstringing our franchise. But did you ever, did you see that clearly? that was going around on Instagram or the other day about him in Landfall.

Landman, I think it is. Yeah. Landman, landman. Yeah, landman. Look at me. I'm a big TV guy. This is my first experience with the show as well. So, and there's this clip of Jerry Jones talking to somebody in a hospital in their bed. And he's explaining. The somebody, by the way, is John Hamm and the other somebody's Billy Bob Thornton in that scene. But Bill's going to do you. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And he's explaining to him like, hey, well, you know the reason.

when I got the Cowboys, I decided that I wanted to work with my kids. And when, I don't know how much of that was actually acting, right? But he goes on into a very emotional and just sort of a beautiful rendering of nepotism. And I was like, oh, I can totally understand why you might want to be with your kids every day. He gets to see his kids every day and they get to build something together or maybe not build something together. And it really for me clarified a lot. Like I don't know if, I'm sure a lot of other people have sort of drawn those conclusions from that, but I was like, okay, seeing through that lens, it almost doesn't even matter. I'm sure Jerry Jones would like to win a Super Bowl, but it seems like he's more into the, we're just doing this as a family thing. And the timing of the front office moves are sort of irrelevant, right? Yes. And I think when we look at his legacy, you know, decades down the line, after the initial success with his old college roommate, Jimmy Johnson, what we're going to look at is, A, the ability to just turn the franchise into a cash machine, a franchise that was not exactly that in the 80s, despite now seeming like, well,

course the Dallas Cowboys, of course, it's one of the biggest sports franchises on earth, but also just having this unbelievable instinct to get attention. Yeah. And to figure out how to make himself the A block no matter what is happening with the Cowboys. Absolutely. And you saw that this week, it's like, you know, like first take to their immense credit on Tuesday did lead with the football game that actually happened between the Vikings and the Rams on Monday night.

Now that was an ESPN game. I don't know if there was a little, there was something there. But then we got to Will Jerry Jones hired Dion Sanders as a second story. Right. Right. I mean, so that is an interesting story. And I'm kind of curious about what you mentioned earlier about like, you know, the Dallas Cowboys content machine and the coaching.

search because the funny thing about this is that the cowboys under Jerry Jones, with the exception of once, have hired some of the most low wattage names that you have ever heard of. So the coaches, the people that were the head coaches of the cowboys in the time that I lived in Texas, Barry Switzer. And Barry Switzer was a big name once upon a time. Like that was still sort of a thing, but it's not, but he was a diminished Barry Switzer by that point. High wattage, but diminished. High watch but diminished. Chan. Gaylee, Dave Campo. Then, of course, it was interrupted by Bill Parcells.

Wade Phillips, Jason Garrett. You know what I mean? Like, these are not, these were not people that are ringing it up. Mike McCarley. On Madison Avenue. Yeah, Mike McCarthy. You know, like, these are not famous people. He didn't, he didn't, those guy, Jerry Jones made them famous and not the other way around.

They got, we just got to know their names because they happened to be coaching the Cowboys. So it shows to me that Jerry Jones doesn't actually care about, like, you know, or you know, that kind of stuff. He wants to bring in somebody that he can work with, right? And he wants to be famous. Like, you're doing those cameos and you're, you know, talking to the press after every game outside the locker room because you want to be famous. And again, that's part of what I'm talking about.

Like you're making the Cowboys the A Block and you're also making Jerry Jones the A Block. And it's just one of the most amazing things I've ever seen. We almost, I think, now take it for granted because, you know, when something like this happens, everybody eats, right? First take, the insiders, Adam Schaefter, who gets this message from Dion saying it was intriguing that Jerry Jones reached out to him. All the people breaking the little mini scoops like, oh, Robert Sal is going to interview the Cowboys. What does this mean? I don't know that it means very much, but okay, let's talk about that, right?

Leslie Frazier, you got a call from the Cowboys. There's just so many, so many things that just light up the whole pinball machine of sports. And there's another dimension of it, which is you have all these former cowboys who have, become big, either because the Cowboys were actually good when they played, or because they're just were Cowboys that are in the media now. So on Monday after this news comes down,

Scott Van Pelt turns to Troy Aikman, who's having kind of a weird voice night during that Monday night playoff game and says, do you think the Cowboys, or he says, you know, the Cowboys, the Coveted Job, what do you think should happen? Here is Troy before the Monday night playoff game.

And as far as the coveted job, I don't know that that's accurate. I mean, I do think that I do think the cowboys are obviously a high profile team whoever is covering or whoever is head coach of that team is certainly going to draw a lot of attention but I think most football people that take over as a head coach they they want to do it on their terms and that's hard to do and it's you know if you take a Dan Campbell for instance is Dan Campbell Dan Campbell if he's with the Dallas Cowboys that's hard to imagine that he is it's hard to imagine that a lot of these coaches might be. So I, you know, I love the Dallas Cowboys. I played there for 12 years. I wish them well. But

to say that it's a coveted job, I'm not sure I would necessarily agree with that. Maybe it's semantics. It's hard to disagree with that, right? I mean, if you're a guy that, I mean, coaches are famously control freaks. You know, it's really hard to get to that part of your career without, I mean, just think about Dion for a second, who probably doesn't even have the leverage to demand that much at that level. But just think about like the operation he runs of Colorado. Like, his family's all the way around at the shooting video. I mean, obviously he's played a hand in like the redesign of the uniforms and

from everything else, man. And then you're going to tell that guy that he has to take a backseat to the only owner who has a radio segment every week. You know what I mean? It does with Jerry and Dionne's a guy who became sportsman of the year, sportsperson of the year after going four and eight at Colorado. This is the same instinct, right? Cowboys don't make the playoffs.

they're in the B block on first take because they're looking for a coach. Dion Sanders, we were 4 and 8, had some exciting games. But like, and I'm sports person of the year. Okay. Right. Like this feels like, and even if it doesn't actually happen,

which I guess people don't think it is because Jerry wouldn't want to pay his buyout at Colorado, the idea that they could just kind of gaze at each other across the media, that they can share a Chiron on ESPN, enriches them both. Absolutely. Absolutely. It makes, I mean, it makes Dion look good at Colorado and beyond, right, as he's trying to enter sort of a recruiting transfer portal window time. Although, you know, you would think that that's not great for recruiting, but like Dion clearly is operating on another level. And for Jerry Jones, it makes him seem like, okay, well, first of all, like, you know, he's looking for somebody that is a very popular with Cowboys fans. He reminds them of a really good time when it felt good to be a Cowboys fan. And so actually, who do you want? Who would you like that?

to see is the next head coach of the Dallas Cowboys. I mean, I could, I could, you know, throw out an O.C. or two, but I actually kind of have talked myself into, I want the guy who has enough sway, enough personality in the locker room to be kind of a creator of culture that is separate from Jerry culture. Like, that's what I could talk myself into the Aaron Glenn type of hire because, like, you come in and it's like, here we go. Like people will listen to him and not buy into the strange, not winning is not that important culture that Jerry Jones has created. I can almost talk myself into that. I like that. You know what I, what I'm kind of surprised that's not happened. And I would assume Cowboys

fans, Jerry Jones, if you listen to the press box, I hope you do. You're a nice guy. I met you a few, you know, many years ago. I mean, I don't think Bill Belichick, what is Bill? What is Bill? What was Bill Billiichick famous for before he won all those Super Bowls? He was a guy that spent a day as the coach of the New York Chess. He had no problem accepting a job and being like, you know what, I don't think this works. I mean, if Bill Belichick was seriously interested, I can't imagine he's no longer not interested in coaching the Cowboys and being in the NFL. Seems like maybe that would be a call worth making, but I guess, you know, we'll see. It's another buyout.

By the way, some numbers for you. The highest rated or most watched NFL game of the season. To this point, including playoffs, is the Cowboys Giants game on Thanksgiving Day. Jesus. I mean, you NFL fans are sickos. I attended that game with my son, and I can't imagine people watching that. That is horrible. Was Daniel Jones playing in that game?

Who was the quarterback for the Giants that day? It was not Daniel Jones and not Tommy DeVito. And now I'm blanking on like what Giants quarterback we got thrown out there. 38.8 million viewers for that game. Just for some comparison, the Packers Eagles playoff game this weekend had 3 million fewer viewers. Then Cowboys Giants, another terrible team this year on Thanksgiving Day. That is just unbelievable to me.

And that's via John Lewis over on Sports Media Watch, who does a really great job with numbers. As I got older and moved further away from Texas, I kind of understood the allure of liking to watch Cowboys games. You know, so I get it. But, I mean, to stick in this late in the year and it gets a giant's game. I mean, that's like being like, hey, man, I really like watched an Air Force versus Navy. You know what I mean? Like, you really, again, no offense to our military people. You are brave men of them.

But I mean, we don't, yeah, we're not the service academies, but we're not in it for the football with you guys, man. So that's some football-like substance stuff. Speaking of coaches, there was a idea out there that Mike Tomlin maybe at the end of the road with the Steelers. Have we talked about the fact that Mike Tomlin is the most coveted, would-be announcer who still has a job in football? We have not, and I am fascinated by that idea.

Tell me more because I mean, it makes sense because he is. is just, he gives just enough personality that you're like, oh, Mike Tomlin is a fun guy, right? I mean, he puts this as a hard ass face, but beneath it is a fun guy. Is that what people are seeing there? Yeah, because both hard ass and hard ass, but funny work on television. Absolutely. We've seen that before.

And I think a lot of it, maybe most of it with this stuff comes out of those production meetings. Oh, that's right, because they spent all that time talking over the game. has anybody ever talked about that as sort of an audition almost that's what it is it's like the aAU showcase for future announcers yeah i didn't think but that's a really good thing because you think about it right you're getting them in a relaxed setting it's either on the record or quasi you know on background sometimes and whenever i've talked to producers about it the guys they love are the people who sit there and actually tell them what's about to happen in the game because not every coaching quarterback does.

You know, some of them give me, and you know, with the thing, don't say anything about this, but when this happens, you'll have some understanding of it, right?

What our game plan is, what we're going to try to run against his team. Gotcha. And that's like a whole tier of player. Like Tom Brady was a great production meeting guy back in the day. Oh, man.

And certain QBs and coaches, I think, sit there and they just don't get them anything. They're like, it's like they're in front of a microphone at a press conference. And, you know, of course,

the TV people are like, no, no, no, we're actually in business. with you. We need a little bit more. Man, it's really, that's really smart for the guys that instinctively know, like, okay, like, I don't know when we might get me down this road again, but it'd be nice if we all liked each other, right? We all liked each other and my friends in the media, right? Hey, if I haven't won a playoff game and how is it, we're Mike Tomlin now eight

years? Like, yeah, I have a lot of friends who are going on shows and talking about what a great coach I am. And, you know, it's not my fault that we didn't find a quarterback. That kind of stuff. I mean, you know, the one thing, I mean, the one thing I think about with Mike Tomlin, I mean, How old is Mike Tomlin now? He's got to be closing in on, I mean, he's got to be in his 50s at this point, correct? He's 52. You know what I'm reminded of? And this is like the easiest analog.

I just remember that Bill Cowr retired. He stopped coaching the Steelers. He stepped down when he was 49 years old. He was young. Like people thought that Real Carre was going to coach again. Because he was a very good coach when he did it. He coached in, I think, a couple of Super Bowls. And he, yeah, he had a lot of credibility.

He had the, people. Now he looks like an old man on TV. But like when he was younger, you know, the hard jaw thing. And he just really screamed football coach. And then he never did it again once he got that TV job, man. He was all good. Yeah, he was like, you know what? I mean, yeah, I'm assuming.

He's like, this is a lot more fun than standing on the sideline in 22-degree weather, you know, watching Neil O'Donnell put my career in danger. You know what I mean? I'm not sure I can tell you one thing Bill Cowher said on television in the last decade plus, but as somebody who is, again, performing that hard ass, kind of like, this is the coach, this is the authority figure on the set. Brian, one day, we also, I mean, I'm not really shifting, but kind of shifting here. We have got to talk about the Fox sports, the Fox NFL team.

I was shocked. And I mean, I'm not trying, this, I'm not trying to be ages, but I was shocked at how old the show was. I mean, it's the same cast almost since 1994. Nothing has changed. Nothing has changed. And you know why? Because it's a cash machine.

Like people want to watch it. And they like, and that's the thing about these shows, I think. And maybe it goes to Tomlin or the sort of larger subject. But what they like is relationships between people. Right. If you and I, if Joel and Brian's smartest football show ever where we go and pick, I'm not talking about us, but we go and pick people who are like the smartest people on TV and put them all together, people would be like, well, that's interesting.

But Howie and Terry are friends. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I mean, it's the same. the dynamic with Kirk and Lee in a college game day. Like that stuff, those relationships,

people want to see people together that either really like each other or maybe they like subtly hate each other. They really like those relationships. But there's like no relationship whatsoever. It's kind of harder to get invested in those shows. That's not what people watch TV for. I just think that's like one of the great misconceptions

that we've all gotten so much smarter about this stuff. People watch TV because they want somebody has really great bright opinions. Like, you know, maybe. But what they like is relationships between people. Well, look, man, Mike, if you want to step down and do this TV, I would love to see you on TV for a little bit. I mean, I'm sure I would love it, you know, probably for a couple of episodes and then I'll move on. What an endorsement.

Yeah, well, you know, I don't stick around. I don't stick around on most things for after a while. You're busy. I would like to see this. Yeah, small kids, man. Would you like to add anything to the Big Cat discussion that Shoemaker and I started on Monday? Man, you know, so I didn't know anything about this. Like, I got to be honest. Like, I'm not a, well, I shouldn't say I didn't know anything about this.

I'm not a bar stool guy. So I did not know that this controversy was bubbling up. Obviously, I'd heard a big cat and, you know, PFT commenter and all those guys. And, you know, my thing that I think about, like the origin story for this is that the guy before him, Neil, was a great guy. But he lived in Chicago, but wasn't from there. And he caught so much shit that he looked at it. like, oh, hell no, that is not going to be my story. What does it say about your audience, bro?

Like, what do you guys think of the audience that you all have cultivated there that a guy who was a good guy who still liked the teams? And still, they ran his ass out of there and made it miserable. And it seems like maybe that might happen to you a little bit too. I just think about the audience that they've cultivated over there at Barstool. That's what I thought about. Because, Brian, like, we like our fans enough that we're thinking of meeting with them in Atlanta. And I know that this happens at Barsool or whatever like that, but I've never really gotten like hate mail like that.

And I'm just thinking about like, man, they're already, they're moving in a way that anticipates hate. And I just, I wonder if like if in addition to like the self-reflection here, like the introspection that you need about why I did what I did and what, you know, and why I held onto that story for so long, I would also be like, wait, I'm doing this for these people. people that I know that hate me are looking for a reason to hate me? I don't know. That would be sort of sobering to me. Same here. And let me just catch people up in case you just have no idea

what Joel and I are talking about. Oh, yeah, sorry. Yeah. Big Cat is part of the part of my take podcast. He is Dan Katz. He grew up in suburban Boston, rooting for the local teams, and there's a whole essay he wrote on Barstool about this. And then after college, he moves to Chicago. And for the last 13 years, he has been a Chicago sports fan.

He took his allegiances from Boston, his childhood allegiances, and then he became a Chicago sports fan. And this is all happening right around the time that he starts blogging about Chicago sports and then blogging about Chicago Sports for Barstool and then podcasting. And he takes his other step into Chicago sports fandom when he does that. And he writes in this piece that he and Dave Portnoy, quote, agreed the best course of action was not to mention my child or that I used to root for Boston teams and to just throw everything I had into Chicago, covering their teams, everything going on in the city and blogging about everything on the internet, etc.

It continues, Joel, I cold turkey stopped rooting for any Boston teams. Oh, man. Super Bowl's meant real story of recovery. Super Bowl's meant absolutely nothing to me. I basically shut off that entire part of my life and rooted my dick off for all things, Chicago as much as they sucked at basically everything. And he says, I know at the end of the day, it's not like I was hiding a murder or crime or something horrific.

It's hiding that I switched teams. Some people would care, but most would still like the content I was producing. Dot, dot, dot. So you talk about it in terms of the audience hating you. And I would say one slight way to turn that 45 degrees would be to say that for people at Barstool, the piece of real estate that you are standing on

and that you are blogging and podcasting, from is saying, hey, I might not be respectable media. I might not be one of these, you know, the people that are getting into the media newsletters, but I am giving you the real thing here. I'm saying what I think and not censoring myself like those other people in the media. I'm the real deal. Whether that's to the extent that that's true or not, right? That is part of it.

And that's been the pose of sports radio hosts, podcasters, Howard Sternstrata of media people. right, we could, you know, find the whole family tree there. So then when something like this comes in, you're like, oh, wait, that's the one thing, right? Like whether, you know, whether it's forgivable, not forgivable, true, whatever it is, that's the one thing, is that I was always saying that I'm saying the thing. I'm the real deal unlike these other people. You mentioned this on Monday, too, talking about like the performing as a sicko fan and like how much of it is performative or whatever.

And, man, I actually, so much of fandom is performative. Who actually likes going to a game in Buffalo where it's three degrees of wearing their shit? And being shirt off and watching a football game, right? I mean, you're doing that for somebody else. It cannot be for your own enjoyment, right? The removal of your shirt, at least, is performative. Yeah, the removal of your shirt. And so, I mean, the thing is, and I did read his piece, it's just, it's not really a great story of the origin story of his fandom here either.

I liked Michael Jordan. I had a rich uncle who happened to know somebody. You know, what did he say? He was friends with Phil Jackson or new Phil Jackson. Yeah, worked in real estate downtown and through his business dealings became friends. Like, this is not like the, if what you were looking for is a certain, a particular kind of authentic Chicago sports fan, that doesn't really, I don't, like, it certainly doesn't speak to them.

So I can understand why you came up with the story. And obviously, it worked out for you, but it doesn't a certain way. feel like a content arranged marriage. I'm thinking about the sort of damage that would wreak on your brain and on your psyche to like pretend that the first 18 years of your life did not exist and be terrified that it was going to come up in a public way. And he talked about how fans would DM him and talk about it or whatever. And he just said, I told them to please stop.

And I was just like, man, you were living like that for this, for that long. I mean, the money must be really good. I mean, obviously he's done very well for himself. But that does not seem like a very fun. The whole reason to do this stuff is because it's fun. Like obviously we need to get paid. Like that is, you know, we got to make money for our families or whatever. But like this is supposed to be fun.

And it sounds like what he's telling me is that none of this could have been fun if he had this sort of thing in his background the whole time. He was always worried that somebody was going to bring it out. Oh, on the most, on a podcast, it seems like the most fun thing to do in the world. Yeah. Talking about football and making jokes with celebrities and media people and all that. stuff like yeah that's like a level of misery that i had not just that i wouldn't have guessed at yeah i mean i got obviously the boston of uh media fan space is sort of crowded but i am very

much like you too it's i don't know how fans couldn't tell that like this is all bullshit because i'm i'm sort of like you like i did not if you grew up someplace that had a team and you don't root for that team i thought something was wrong with you Right. Unless they had done something personal or like it was like, you know, I guess if like you grew up in the D.C. area and you did not like their old mascot, right? And you're like, I'm not rooting for that team. Fine. But like to grow up in Tampa and say, well, I'm a huge dolphins fan. Like that just wouldn't that wouldn't that wouldn't work for me. So I'm surprised fans bought it in the first place. Yeah. I mean, I like to say that like I moved to Chicago when I was 22 and I was like this is this is my happy place. This is where my life is, I'm going to start rooting for those teams. That is, again, that wouldn't be what I would do. I could suppose somebody would do that, that there's a way to do that and be totally into it. Because I know people who moved L.A. and start rooting for the Dodgers, like, or start rooting for whoever.

But it's not what I would do. And I could also understand why a big chunk of your fan base would be like, wait, I thought I knew you. You know, like I thought. And that goes to the whole nature of podcasting and the relationship that podcasters have with their listeners. Absolutely. Because if somebody reads one of your pieces, they may admire you. But if somebody listens to your podcast, they feel like they know you. Absolutely.

Absolutely. We've gotten enough emails that it really is a more intimate relationship. Can I tell you, though, I did just kind of hate on, you know, move into a city and like trying to come up with a new team or whatever. But, you know, I tried to do that once in Tampa. What? Did ever tell you about this? Well, so, you know, I don't, the Houston Oilers don't exist. anymore.

Yeah, you've got a weird one with the NFL. Yeah, and so I'd rooted for the Tennessee Titans through the Rams Super Bowl when they lost at the one-yard line. Because I was a huge Steve McNair fan, and Eddie George was like my favorite running back for a lot of time. Like, I even tried to run, the thing where he would get up

after getting tackled and kind of, you know, jog back to the huddle, and I kind of even, like, adopted that in high school. Anyway, but, but so when I moved to Tampa and ended 2007, Rahim Morris was their coach, And they had Josh Friedman as their quarterback. And I was like, oh, this is a young, exciting team. They're going to be pretty good for a few years now.

I'm getting it on the ground floor. And, you know, I think we all know that that didn't quite happen. So I tried it, but it just not worked because it wasn't authentic. You know what I mean? Like, that's not, I don't know, you know, more power to you, big cat. Because for you to, you did a pretty good acting job, obviously. But I don't know how you had it in you to do this for those fans for that long. it just seems

really miserable. I want to talk to you about Mark Zuckerberg because he's had an interesting couple of months he went on Rogan he did

as people do he announced some changes at meta including dumping fact checking doing what the New York Times calls loosening restrictions

on how people can talk about contentious social issues such as immigration, gender and sexuality also the Times has ended meta's work on

diversity, equity, and inclusion. He made his second visit to Donald Trump since November per semaphore. He is hosting an inaugural ball, one with a number of sports team owners. More on that later. And he's going to be at the inauguration with Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk sitting among cabinet nominees. That's according to NBC. So my question for you is, what is Zuck doing and why is he doing it?

Do you think he, Elon and Bezos have a group chat? They have to have a group chat, right? Probably. I would think so. From what we know about Musk, he was communicative for a long time with people. I feel we've read some of those messages. Yeah, yeah. Like he has his friends out there.

But you ask me, like, what is he doing? And who's he doing for? So I think, so everyone wants to be the one to carry the mantle for the media an American, right? And legacy media has, for whatever reason, tried and failed terribly at this, which I don't get, like, just as an aside, read your local newspaper, man. Like, there's a lot of good information in there. And, I mean, if you just read your, like, your basic news story and about the things that journalists are covering, like, it really would be, I really think people would be pleasantly surprised, but I think they focus too much on, like, the opinion pages or whatever

else or whatever it's on social media. But, but for whatever reason, legacy, media has failed at this. And billionaires have seen an opportunity to feel that role. And they feel that Trump is like represents that mainstream, you know, median American now. Like they, and he even, Zuckerberg said something to that effect on the, on the Rogan show. He was just like, well, after the election, I took a moment for reflection. And I'm seeing where the country is going and I'm reconsidering that movement. And so I really think that like this is his bid to see, the role of like, I'm protecting the median American and their freedom of expression and their freedom of speech, especially because it's so easy to do it now, man. Like, if you want to get

on that side of the aisle, like, there's no gatekeeping. If you just, if you do, if you do, and I was listening to the, to the, to the, to the, to the, to the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, conspiracy theorizing, right? And do, like, willing to publicly align yourself with Trump and the MAGO movement on a few key issues, not even all of them, you will be welcomed with open arms. This is Zuck's opportunity to reclaim the mantle of like, I'm a person that's fighting for people and their, you know, and their freedom of speech and all that other stuff. And so I think that that's a big part of this. I don't think it's going to work.

And I just have to be honest, like, the way that he looks is disconcerting. I think that's going to be one of the things that prevents him for fully being able to be accepted over there. but I think that that's some of what is going on. What do you think? Well, I was just going to ask you, do we think this is a business thing or we think there's a business thing

and a personal thing that's happening? I don't think that there's a separation for him. Business is personal for Zuckerberg, right? The man who created the Facebook. That's, that's... I mean, like, yeah, I mean, remember, this all started because he wanted to talk about

how ugly girls on his campus were, was. You know what I mean? It was rating about how hot they were or how hot they were not. And, like, we got here. So, I mean, that was a very... very personal cause when he started the state. Yeah, right?

Yeah. I'm being generous by just leaving it at that. But yeah, so I think it's both. I don't think you can divorce that. And from guys that rich that make that much money, like all of their motives are driven by the money, but the money is very important to them.

It is very personal of them. But what do you say? Yeah, and I suppose it's not that different from Elon because, you know, we hear like Elon, like there's different things going on here, right? These people have businesses that could be regulated by the government, the federal government under Trump.

they need contracts from the federal government, also under Trump. But then there's always things we can point at and go, oh, that's why Elon wanted to buy Twitter, turn it into a pro-Trump website, and then actually go out on the campaign trail and help Trump get reelected as president. And I think you say the same thing for Suck. The answer is, is it business or personal yes? Yes.

Yes, it is. And Zuckerberg can't hide. Like, that's the thing. can't be neutral. We're like with Trump Trump. Trump is going to draw somebody like Zuckerberg out into this. This is an old city councilman in Shreveport used to tell me this before he'd start a fight with somebody at a council meeting. He's going to drag them out into this water. Trump is going to drag you out into that water and make you have to take pick aside. You're going to have to do something publicly. And so yeah, even if it's a little bit of like, you know, posing, being a little bit of

opposer. Like, I think it aligns with his interest in all ways, but also, like, I'm sure the idea of getting tweeted at by Donald Trump, when he's now ascendant again, he's got power, and we don't know who or if anything can really restrain him. Like, this is all, we're all going to learn this over the next few months. So it just kind of makes sense for him to be like, you know what, before that dude's in office, let me do something that, you know, I'm going this way anyway. I might as well just go ahead and get some clarifies. before he's in office and he has the power to do whatever to me. Let's talk a little bit about Bob Euker before we go.

Because I actually want to talk about Bob Euker. Man. 80s kids and 90s kids. That was a big name. Yeah, man. Died at age 90 today. The cause, according to the New York Times, is small cell lung cancer. Where do we start with Bob Euker?

Oh, man. Do you know what I actually thought about? Man, so many of the main characters from Naked Gun are dead now. Yeah. And, well, I guess, well, there's more in majorly. He was also a major league. We still have Priscilla Presley. We still have Priscilla Presley.

So, yeah, but, man, he was a particular, back when baseball was occupied a much bigger place than the American mainstream. And he really was like a really representative for, you know, just kind of the goofiness of baseball to me. I don't know. Is that what you thought, like just the guy sitting in the booth on a boring, you know, a lazy Saturday afternoon? and the brewers and whoever are playing.

And he's just like, well, you know, he rounds around second. And he makes a joke about peanuts or something. Like Bob Yucre represents that to me. Totally. And I think also that sort of 70s, 80s ex joc who got famous by being an ex-joc and being funny and telling stories. Yeah. You know, I'd put like Joe Gersiola in that group.

I put Bubba Smith, Alex Karras. you know, there was just this whole like stratum of guys and they did, they would do movies occasionally. They would just kind of be themselves. Uker was like a great Johnny Carson guest who'd go on there and tell stories about being bad at baseball. Like,

yeah, that was, that was. When OJ kind of that guy? OJ, OJ was in that stratum. He was like a successful version, like the great player version of that good. Yeah, totally. Yeah. Uker hit 197 in six major league seasons

according to the times. Always a backup. And part of his comedy was he would talk about the fact that he was bad at baseball. That was the thing. I wasn't good. Here are these things that happened. And some of them were real. And most of them were probably jokes.

But he would do that. He starts calling Brewer's games, as you alluded to in 1971, and would do that until this year. So just think about that run doing play by play, I might add, not color. play-by-play for Milwaukee Brewers games. He winds up doing three World Series on television, 95, 97, and 99 with Bob Costas and Joe Morgan. Pause to remember that booth over there on NBC. Man, that, that, it just evoked, it evokes so many memories here and just those,

those two names, by the way. It does. And then there's this whole sort of pop culture career. You mentioned Major League in the Naked Gun, a very famous Miller-like commercial where he tries to sit down low and is told by an usher that he belongs. His seats are actually in the upper deck. I remember that. I do remember that.

And I cannot tell you how many times I would go to ball games with my family and they'd be like, oh, we got euchre seats, meaning we got bad seats. That was just a term that people instantly knew what you were talking about. He also was on a 1980s sitcom for the uninitiated called Mr. Belvedere. How can you say a sitcom? Like Mr. Belvedere was one of these sickos, man. I'm just thinking about people that are younger than age 30, Joel, here in the audience. Are we that old now?

Oh, my God. Okay. I mean, he was, and Mr. Belvedere, he was so, Mr. Belvedere was a show about an American family that hired an English butler, the eponymous Mr. Belvedere. And Bob Yucer was the dad on that sitcom. And the sitcom ran six seasons. So just think about this, right? Here's a guy who is calling Brewer's games. He's doing national television calling baseball.

he's a guest on Johnny Carson he's doing National Miller-like commercials which were huge and hugely funny in their day and he is the dad on a fairly long-running sitcom Yeah man I mean that I'm sitting here

in midlife and I'm hearing that and I'm like what a life that was that must have been it sounds so fun right oh all of that sounds fun all that sounds fun like that's kind of the dream that's a dream life actually that he kind of had that

I'll give you a little bit more hosted Saturday Night Live in 1984. I didn't think I knew. In 84, man, that was some heavy hitters on there, too. In 84? There was, I don't know if you ever, I'm sure you did, like on Saturday, Sunday mornings

would just turn on television before television was, let's watch every television show and movie ever made at our fingertips. And he would have these syndicated shows called like wacky world of sports. I seem to remember one where he was sitting at a desk on an empty

football field and he would just show bloopers that could have been filmed at any time in any place over the last 50 years. Oh, that's so funny. Yeah, that would be like a TikTok reel now, right? Or something like that. Yeah, he was just for us, like, are people who are those people?

If you'd ask young Brian and Jell, like, who are the funniest people in America? We would have named like three or four movie stars and we probably would have gotten to Bob U. Before the end of the list. I mean, it's, it's funny to think about, but he probably was one of the biggest names in baseball for a good portion of my life.

Like, you know, I'm not saying that he was like on a Mount Rushmore or anything. I'm not saying it was Pete Rose or anything. But like if Bob Euchar showed up at your baseball stadium, it was a big deal, man. Like Bob Euker was a national star. Absolutely. Huge deal. I got some audio from him on Johnny Carson. This is 1971.

So just to put in perspective, he's just started to the beginning of his 54 year run calling Brewer's games. He goes on Carson. And again, the whole thing is about showing pictures of him playing baseball in the old days, He's talking about how he wasn't very good player, and he and Carson get onto a riff about these superstitions of baseball players. Here is Bob Uke. Or my, I know my dad many times had asked me. I'd be leaving the ballpark and he'd say,

where are you going to be sitting today? That destroys a man's pride. Well, right. I mean, you haven't even got there yet. Or if I'd see a bulldog running across the field with a cigar in his mouth, I just, I knew I wasn't going to be. get a hit that day or maybe my last time at bat, I'd look in the visitors dug out and see all the guys sitting there with their street clothes on. Dada's sense of humor, that incredibly dry deliberated, not remember him being quite that dry in later years.

Me either. That was Bob Euker. Amazing figure. Also, Johnny Carson, man. You just really, I mean, what a piece of childhood you just provided. What a piece of childhood. Absolutely watching those interviews. Last thing for you, do we have any opinions about New Yorker, ace writer, Patrick Raddenkeef doing an ad for Jay Crewe?

You know, I didn't know who that was when you sent that at first. But now that I look at him and I looked at his byline, I was like, oh, you're another, it was a big deal. And, man, there are a lot of handsome, you know, contrary to popular belief, there are a lot of handsome and beautiful people in newsrooms, man. You know, and I mean, wouldn't it be the New Yorker? Like, if it's not going to be the New Yorker, if you're thinking of like a sort of a stylish J-Crew guy, like, if it's not the New Yorker, it's got to be Esquire or something like that, right? Like a guy that steeped in that it would not be somebody that works at the Tulsa World. No, no offense to the Tulsa World.

No offense to the Tulsa World. Well, I think it's, I mean, first of all, the thing about men's magazines was you'd always find out that the nerdiest possible guys were working at men's magazines that were devoted to models and clothes and everything. They were not, they were not, you know, the best looking among us. But here you have Patrick Radden Keefe, who is a, has the look of that kind of handsome foreign correspondent. And then also this track record of great journalism. One of one of his books has been turned into a big television show.

So there's this kind of aura of just like intelligence and, and interesting stuff. I met him last year because he was at a book festival. And so I brought, I brought my. recorder and we did a big interview on crime writing and no access journalism. So one thing I always liked about him is like it was he would just not get an interview with the subject and then write the most incredible piece you'd imagine. Man, so first of all I need to go back and listen to that episode. Did you do you know he was 48 years old? I'd, I, you just, we're going to make, there's no conversation you could have about Patrick Radenkeef that just doesn't make all the participants feel

terrible about their own quiz. He's only 48. I mean, when you just, you just, you're going to make, you're going to make. When you line up that career and then this, it's just like, man, he's really living it, man. That is, he's having a good time. What is his, this is, I want to know more about his personal life. Do we, do we know anything about that? Like his life at home and stuff like that? Yeah, he has a son. He has children.

He obviously he's mentioned here. He does. He told me a very funny story, I believe, on that podcast when he was reporting on the Mexican drug cartels about getting a call about writing. let's just say a book, a memoir after he had reported on some stuff, which you can go back and let's do because I'll get it wrong if I try to retell it. But that dipped into his personal life just a little bit. Okay. All right. Well, I'm just thinking, I was like, man, what a good time. You know, I just feel like that's at that point. And like, you've accomplished all of this and now you get to be a model. It's just, that's, I'm, I'm proud of

him. The New York Times did a story about this in which my tweet was quoted, because I I had found this ad thanks to one of my little keyboard elves. And they said, The New Sign You've Really Made It Magazine Writing, read a tweet from a journalist colleague. I'm just very honored to be known as one of Patrick Redden-Keeffe's journalist colleagues. I mean, why not they give you your name? That's okay.

I don't worry about it too much. I do wonder if that tweet got this piece of signed, by the way. I've not seen a lot about this. There's a history of journalists being in ads. Joan Didion was apparently in a Gap ad, according to the piece. Andrew Sullivan when he was editor of the New Republic back in the day was in a gap ad, which is kind of amazing. Really? Yeah. Like what? Andrew Sullivan was in a gap ad? Okay, I've got to go find that one.

One thing, Joel, is I'm always so fascinated by just status markers among mega famous journalists. And to me, the ultimate, the absolute ultimate was one time Vanity Fair sent Michael Lewis to do a profile of Barack Obama when he was president. and the photographs in the magazine were of Michael Lewis and Barack Obama. They didn't just shoot Obama, they shot Michael Lewis and Obama together. And I was like, wow, so that's when you've really made it, right? You went to write about the president

and the photos were also of you. I don't know where to put the J. Crew ad quite in that power. I think it's probably still below that, but it's definitely a sign that you've made it. What about the Buzz Bissinger? leather addiction photo shoot. Where does that rank on that and that's Hodempo? Right.

So you've got, it's about your hobby. Yeah. And you write an article about it, then they shoot you. Yeah, that's probably in the top ten. I think so. Yeah, that's in there. Okay. Very memorable piece as well.

I have not forgotten it. He is Joel Anderson. I'm Brian Curtis. Productions Magic by Brian Waters. As you heard, Joel and I are going to get on airplanes tomorrow to fly to Atlanta. cover the college football national championship. We've switched slots with David. So Joel's going to do the Monday podcast with me,

which is going to be about covering the natty. It's going to be about another weekend of NFL playoff football. Hope to have some great sound from that. It's also going to be about Donald Trump's inauguration, which is on Monday. We'll have much more to say on that subject as well. If we do something this weekend, we'll put it on our social media feed.

So check that out if you want to come see. Joel and I in Atlanta. And what else we have to say, Joel? We've said a bunch today. Man, I'm just looking forward. I'm looking forward to hanging out in Atlanta, man. This is, you know, yeah, I think we're going to have a lot of fun. You know, yeah, I'm excited.

We're going to have some fans. I really, I'm going to push hard for Fox Brothers right now. It's Texas-style barbecue. Have you ever heard of Fox Brothers in Atlanta? I haven't, but I'm sold, so that sounds great. Okay, we'll figure it out. All right, more from Atlanta. We'll see you then, Joel.

All right, sounds like, too.