The Press Box - The Horrors of NFL Free Agency, Michelle Obama and Gavin Newsom Pivot to Podcasts, and Remembering John Feinstein

Episode Date: March 13, 2025

Hello media consumers! "Bryan and Joel kick off the show with J-School during which they discuss Monday’s topics, including Stephen A. Smith vs. Tim Walz for the 2028 democratic nominee, sources calling after a Kendrick Perkins story, and more (1:24) They then get into the following headlines: Reflecting on John Feinstein’s legacy including his book, ‘A Season on the Brink’ (16:36) NFL free agency week in America (24:55) Michelle Obama and Gavin Newsom launching podcasts (43:38) Three pieces of audio that may make you smile, laugh, or furrow your brow (57:10) Hosts: Bryan Curtis and Joel Anderson Producer: Brian H. Waters Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hello there, friends of the program. It's Tate Frazier, and it's officially that special time of the year where we go on a March through madness together for the 85th edition of the NCAA tournament. What makes March so special, you ask? Well, it's the unknown. It's the fact that this is basically Survivor on a basketball court on CBS without Jeff Probes. And no matter how much you prepare, you can not predict this kind of chaos. And that is what we will be covering on this podcast, one shining podcast, all the madness, all the David versus Goliath personified. It's the best show in town. The ball is tipped. And here you are with us. Come listen and join us wherever you get your podcast.

Media consumers. Welcome to Press Box. You got Brian Curtis. You've got Joe Anderson. You've got the best in the business. Producer Brian Waters. Coming up on a very big podcast, a farewell to John Feinstein,

and a few words about his great book, A Season on the Brink. We'll also talk about the horrors of NFL Free Agency Week. Michelle Obama and Gavin Newsom are pivoting to podcasting and some audio from Shaq, the Oval Office, and College Hoops. But first, let me take you to a place where there are millions of shining moments rather than just one. Ladies and gentlemen, it's time for J-School.

You know, yeah, just think of me of the Tyos Edney of podcasting, Brian. And let me ask you this. Are you more of a Luther Vandrums guy or a Teddy Pendergrass guy for the. one shining moment that's a good question i think luther is the answer there really see this is the one time i got to go with teddy over it man it's just the original that's the the song that drew us in so we might have to have a side by side when we get close to the tourney here yeah i think so i think so that is that is really it's not duke or north carolina no you know it's not it's it's teddy or luther what is your one shining moment exactly exactly not yukon versus villanova or something like

that or Creighton versus whoever they're playing on FS1 currently right now. Anyway, so, you know, what J-School is all about. I like to follow up on some of the things you guys talk about on Monday sometimes. And I just, this is probably not going to go very long, but you really got, you guys really think Stephen A would poll better than Tim Walls. There's no way you, you guys were just saying that, right? If it's a two of us and Bill and Cousin Sal, And I have to put a bet down. Remember, this is not just who I think is going to win, but where I get the better odds, right?

Where the money is, I think Stephen A. Smith over Tim Walls for the 28 Democratic nomination yet. Get out of here. I just think Tim Walz is a zero. I just don't think it's happening. And I don't dislike Tim Walls. I just don't think it's happening.

I think that even people that were disappointed with the Kamala campaign, I think a lot of people were disappointed that Tim Walls was, sort of sidelined. Like, you know, when he came out, there was a lot of fanfare. People were excited about him calling people weird. You know, there was the football coach thing, and he just really seemed like, it seemed like a breath of fresh air in democratic politics. And then they kind of sidelined him. And he was sort of neutered. And I think people would be willing to buy into him

again. I just think, I think this is a, I think this is a total Stephen A creation. And I don't, I don't, I don't think that has any real staying power. I think we, And when people really have to think about, am I actually going to vote for Stephen A. Smith? I don't think that's going to happen. I don't think so either. If I could place a bet, neither will get the nomination. Let's just make that clear. But you're right.

Walls got the nomination because he was good at cable news. And then the campaign was like, hey, I got an idea. Let's take you off cable news forever. Right, right. I don't think anybody holds, and maybe I'm wrong, I'm maybe overstating it a tad. I don't think a lot of people that support Democratic politicians hold what happened in November against him, so to speak. Let's look at the history, right? If you're a losing vice presidential candidate, there was no Tim Kane boomlet after 2016.

It was like, well, if we had just gotten a better look at Tim Kane, but this might have gone a different way. But was anybody ever excited about Tim Kane? No, that's true. John Edwards, that's kind of its own category. Joe Lieberman, also kind of its own. category. Okay, maybe I'm generalizing too much here. And we are living in unprecedented times, as you know. We are indeed. Anything is possible. Anything is possible. I wish I guess speaks for

Stephen A. Smith, it's like, I guess, too. I also wanted to talk to you a little bit about, so you mentioned that, or you talked about the LeBron Stephen A. kerfuffle, if you will, and about how an element of this story that is sort of, I don't think it's underplayed, but sort of understated, the idea that somebody is, a source is confronting a reporter or a journalist after a story has gone wrong, right? Like that is, if you just strip everything away, that's sort of what's going on there, right?

And I thought about this pretty hard, but I wanted to ask you this question first. What source has called you in a fit after the story? the most memorable fit, post-publication fit you've ever experienced from a source. I don't know if it was a phone call, but there was an email from George P. Bush, nephew of the former president, son of Jeb about a daily beast story. That was, I think, the most memorable one or the one that leaps to mine. What happened?

I think it was trying to remember the exact detail. It wasn't, it was one of those where I was, a lot of these happened this way where you're like, wait, you're mad at that. This is what we're upset about. Like I don't, you know, because people will read things and God forbid you and I will have something written about us at some point in our lifetime like that. Where you're like, oh, you probably would get sensitive about something that you wouldn't have, that the writer wouldn't have expected you to get sensitive about. Yes. Absolutely. Absolutely. You're tripping a wire that you didn't even know was there, right? Yeah, exactly. And I feel now the 2025 call from somebody is not you did something wrong. It's that

this got aggregated in a way that makes me upset. Strip of context. And I'm going to blame you for it because I can't blame, you know, whatever American eagle.net for doing it, right? Exactly. How about you? What was your math? us call. So I've had two that are notable and I can name one and I can't name well actually I can't name either of these people but I can tell you the circumstances. One, when I was a city hall

reporter in Shreveport, I was covering city council. It was the election season. The incumbent, I can say the incumbent's name. His name was Monty Walford. I haven't talked to him in many years. I wonder how he's doing. But anyway, he was locked in a tight runoff against a challenger

and it was a woman who I do not want to mentioned her name because it was pretty crazy. But anyway, she confronted me about, I guess the paper did not endorse her for this position. And so she took it out on me. And I said something to the effect of, you're tripping. And she was like, what does that even mean? And I was like, you know what tripping means. Anyway. And so after that, things sort of unraveled. But what I remember most about it is in the runoff. And I remember thinking, I was telling my editor, I was like, oh, my God, if this woman wins, we're going to have a terrible relationship.

She lost that runoff by six votes. Six votes. And I was, I mean, I know you're not really supposed to root. You're not supposed to take sides of this sort of stuff. But I was like, thank God Monty Walford won because I would not have been able to have a relationship with her. The other one is about a story I wrote about somebody we're going to talk about later in this episode is by Craig Robinson.

I went and did a story on Craig Robinson. He was the basketball, men's basketball coach at Oregon State. And it was basically near the end of his tenure. I think it was actually months before he ended up, you know, getting, they basically dismissed him. And the story was about how long can Oregon State let this go on? Like he had the profile. I think they were hoping to tap into the Obama connections and everything, and they

were still a fairly mediocre program. And so I was talking to a coach for the Compton Magic summer basketball program. And he said something. Oregon State is a school you go to when no one else wants you. A guy born and raised in L.A. doesn't want to talk about Oregon State. So he calls me after the story is published and he says, well, I didn't mean for you to print that. Well, he didn't tell me that that was off the record or anything. So he calls me in my BuzzFeed office in New York and we commenced to have a 20-minute yelling

match that I mean in retrospect probably it was unprofessional i probably should just let him have it and just gone with it but i don't know i felt a little saucy and he was you know i don't know i felt like he was because he felt he was from compton or something that he was going to kind of bully me or something so anyway it went back and forth so that was that was my example of that um but yeah it was it was you know i mean those are the two most notable which maybe are not all that notable at all so when you're right you're totally right if you strip it down that's this is what stephen a and LeBron is, it's a completely normal thing that happens and probably should happen between reporters in their subjects or even TV talking heads in their subjects.

There's going to be friction, right? Because sometimes you're going to write things about people, even if you're not quoting them, you're quoting people that are talking about them and they're not going to like the things that are published. And that's just kind of the way that it should work. Like you don't want to piss people off, but like inevitably you probably should at some point, right? Totally.

And Stephen A, who was still, by the way, reliant. reluctantly discussing this whole situation on Sean Hannity's show last night. Oh, man. So we're in like day five of reluctantly talking about the on court confrontation with LeBron James. He said this the whole time. Like he has the right to be mad. Like it doesn't mean I did anything wrong. It doesn't mean I would take anything back or change the way I said something.

But he has the right to be mad. People do when they get written about and talked about. Your 2028 leader for the Democratic nomination, Stephen A. Smith. of and so I also want to come back to this because you guys talked about Kendrick Perkins and Beaumont so I also want to talk a little bit about Beaumont because I was surprised at how dismissive you and David were about Beaumont and wait a second and the great golden triangle in the last and as a southeast Texas guy I'm a little bit offended first of all Beaumont is big enough to have a papadou okay so they've got that going for it right off of I-10 that is a measure

of your bigness and your your importance. Like you have Papadot, we're good, right? We've gotten to a level. If I'm not mistaken, Atlanta has one Papadot, Beaumont has one Papadot. So you can see, you know, it is a major, a major city. But a fun story I have about Beaumont is that I actually went there early in my career to do a profile on Beaumont-Ozen High School senior,

Kendrick Perkins. And big perk. And I interviewed him in his coach's office. Coach Bouté. It was me, Coach Bouté, Kendrick Perkins, in the coach's office. And I'll never forget, Coach Boutte sits there for a little bit. I interview him. And he walks out of the room.

And he says, I'm going to let Kendrick handle this because he's going to have to learn how to deal with this. And I was just really impressed. I was like, oh, wow. Like they really are preparing him for the future. But I don't remember much about what Kendrick said. He definitely said more than Cedric Ben. said when I went to Midland, Texas to go talk to him. But Kendrick didn't say that much, but I remember being, you know, impressed that he was willing to, you know, have a one-on-one

with a reporter. But this is one of the more embarrassing things that I've probably written in my career. And I just, I just wish somebody had kind of reeled me in a little bit because, look, you know, when you're writing about a high school athlete that's a superstar, They seem so much better than everybody else that it inspires some crazy comparisons, okay? Sure. So here is, here are two graphs from my story about Kendrick Perkins. What year is this? This is 2003, February 28, 2003 by Kendrick Perkins. With his powerful build and feathery touched around the basket, Perkins has found few challenges

in the rickety high school gyms throughout southeast Texas. Perkins has signed a national letter of intent to attend Memphis, but many NBA scouts and analysts say, quote, baby Shaq could be a lottery pick in this year's draft. And I did that twice. Like I did a follow-up story on Kendrick and called him, I compared him to Shaq again, which was maybe overstating it a little bit. He ended up being a very good, very solid NBA player, but he was not Shaq. And it's actually funny that we called him Shaq because, you know, his little. curf-I'm using curfuffle again. His little kerfuffle with Shaq's

co-worker Charles Barkley this past week. It's very funny. I got Beaumont splained myself after that segment. Okay. My friend and your friend, Dave Wilson of ESPN or the fine college

football writer. Dave. Reminded me that he was born in Beaumont. Yeah, man. So I do know somebody from Beaumont other than Kendrick Perkins. Yeah, man. And he also gave me Babe Diedrickson Zaharias. Of course. Yes.

Bubba Smith. Don't. That's the name I was just about to throw at you. Right. I could not believe you forgot about Bubba Smith. The intercontinental ballistic Bubba. I mean, that's that right there is Beaumont Sports Forever. And Billy Tubbs.

Yeah, man. Billy Tubbs, former TCU, former Oklahoma, former Lamar University. That's a pretty good weave right there. I mean, that kind of does it. Plus, Dave, of course. Yeah. Yeah, cool. Dave is that.

Larry Levias, I think he was the first African-American scholarship athlete in the Southwest Conference. Is that right? This all comes from, I got to UT when I was a freshman. I'm 18 years old. I'm like, man, I'm going to meet people from every corner of Texas. This is going to be unbelievable. And then the first 20 people I meet are like, I'm from the woodlands.

I'm going to be great. That again. I think, you know, we don't have time to get into this, but sort of like the geography and like where people go to schools in Texas. I feel like Southeast Texas kids and Beaumat kids go to A&M. They're more, I feel like they're more A&M focused. That's, you know, instead of going to UT. So that may have been how you missed it.

Anyway, maybe they had the wrong friends. I don't know. Salt of the Earth folks down there. Yeah, man. And also, you know, I have to name this one because this is a shout out to my son. Another great Beaumont legend, Clay Walker, country music artist who sings the song, I could make a living. I could make a living out of loving you.

That is for two weeks. That was my son's favorite song in the world. And so we listened to that. I remember when my wife was in the hospital with the baby because we split in time. And one night, he fell asleep. I played that YouTube video probably about 20 times in a row to help him go to sleep. So Clay Walker, who actually was born in Beaumont, but lived in Vider, Texas. So we don't have to get in, you know, divider history here.

but that's a whole another hour a whole another thing yeah absolutely one of our media friends by the way texting me this week he's like I like how you and Joel always have Texas Corner somewhere in the podcast and I'm like that's true and our mistake has been not calling at that and getting a sponsor you know

this edition of Texas Corner is brought to you by Buckees is brought to you by Waterberger where you can get you so see we need to work on that come on somebody holler at us come on let's do some headlines and we need to say a word right off about here, Joel, about John Feinstein. Yeah, man. We do.

John Feinstein has died suddenly at age 69, according to the Washington Post. The newspaper he was associated with for more than 50 years. He's known for his post writings about college basketball and other sports. He was working at ESPN in those years when they were hiring print reporters like Peter Gammon's and Chris Mortensen. But maybe especially John Feinstein is known for two books. A Good Walk Spoiled. Yep.

And the book, I think you and I most remember, or remember most fondly, A Season on the Brink. Man, it's funny. I was talking with our friend and editor, Connard Evans, earlier this week, and we were talking about people we want to talk to for 25 for 25. Feinstein came up, and it was because we were like, a season on the brink fathered the style of so many books just like it. It inspired so many books to do what Feinstein did.

in season on the brink. It did. And it was funny how this book was written, if you don't know, about the 1985, 86 Indiana Hoosiers. So Feinstein goes to Bloomington. He embeds with Bobby Knight

and the team. He is inside. I mean, he is inside. He's in the locker room. He's in coaches meetings. He's in the facility all the time. And of course,

what happens after that is the world changes. The garage door goes down between the media and the players, the college level and the professional level. So you have season inside books for years and years after, but they're never quite a season on the brink. No. They can never recapture that. No. I mean, also, if you think about it in retrospect, Bobby Knight, who has no regard for the media whatsoever. ever threw open his locker room to a journalist, right?

I mean, that is a testament to, like, the era that they were in and, like, how knew all of that was because, yeah, I mean, he would have, I mean, by the time, you know, Bobby Knight was at the end of his career, he would have been about the last coach you would have expected to allow that sort of access. No, totally. And Feinstein said later that he had written a column where he did not come down on night as hard as he could have for throwing the chair. this was one of the famous Bobby Knight moments of the 80s onto the court.

And that's part of what got him welcomed into the fold. That's what gets him inside. I haven't read a season on the brink last year because for some reason I wanted to go back and read basketball books. Not sure why. And I wanted to bring that in Larry Bird's memoirs. And then I tapped out and was like, okay, I'm good with basketball books for a while or I got too much going out of my life.

Yeah. But let me tell you, a season on the brink, if you've read it before, go, read it again. It holds up. If you haven't read it before, you were in for an enormous treat because it's one of those books where for a couple of chapters, you're like, I can't believe the stuff he is getting and writing down, the words that are coming out of Bobby Knight's mouth. And then after a while, it just becomes normal. Yeah. And the shot goes away and you're like, oh my gosh, this is the whole book. We really are inside. This is not, you know, something with recreated scenes later on. And you can't tell which person.

personality is telling the writer because they want to paint this to their own advantage from their own perspective. It's just everything from inside that locker room. What a slice of time, because also it's like when college basketball held a really different place than American culture, right? And it's, I mean, I read a book of fine scenes later that was called The Last Amateurs and it was about the Patriot League.

You know, it's one of those times you're at a bookstore and you see something on a book, and it's like, I think I'm a, I could get lost in something like that. It was a really good book. But I would say, and you tell me if you agree or don't, it's arguable that maybe financing was maybe the most famous sports writer in the country for a time. I think so. Yeah.

Yeah, I mean, he was on sports reporters. From that 80s to the 90s to the early 90s and then he's on ESPN. If you're talking about sports writers. Sports writers, absolutely, yes. I think he would certainly be in the conversation for that period. Absolutely. Because everybody knew that book. I mean, it's like, well, I still have my copy I had when I was a kid.

I mean, everybody loved that book. I mean, it had it so that we had Brian Denny he as Bobby Knight. Like, if only for that, it was quite a contribution to the canon. Also, I was really shocked that John Feinstein was only 69 years old. Like, I don't know. I really thought he was older than that for whatever reason. So he did an awful lot at a really young age. He did.

He's been around with us for a very long time. I'll tell you one other thing about the book that really hit me. And you talk about a different era of college sports. He does this thing in the book where he quotes almost nobody except Bobby Knight. So you're reading this book and it feels like a book-length soliloquy from somebody. And so it reminds you that back in this age, way before NIL, way before player empowerment of any discernible kind, the coach was the guy, right? And he does it almost in a literary way by just having Knight talking and talking and talking like, oh my gosh, there's nobody in the state of Indiana.

Maybe in the whole Midwest that's getting a word in edgewise because this is Bobby Knight's place in the world. It's a testament to, I mean, I'm sure this book helped in a lot with the myth making of Bobby Knight. But it's sort of a testament to Bobby Knight's, that era and the way people regard to coaches that people kind of forget that Isaiah Thomas won an answer championship. with that. You know what I mean? It's like, you kind of don't remember. It's like,

oh yeah, Isaiah Thomas is there, you know, Kent Bint and all those guys. But anyway, so yeah, it's, yeah.

Did you say myth making that's funny because this is one of the myth stripping off exercises that what happens is the years go by and it sort of in the aggregate increases the myth

anyway. Right. Things have a way of doing, a weird way of doing that, right? The thing that's so, that paints him and all of his just naked glory

and, you know, cussing and, you know, storming around all that stuff, then weirdly it later on, it gets, years later, becomes part of the mythos. If Bobby Knight had held on another few years, I think he would have had a rebirth, like, in American culture. Like, I think that, like, he, you know, he had this one place there where he was the coach, he was the guy that everybody sort of aspired to be. Then people, he was sort of an embarrassment. He had to go to Texas Tech and everything else and just kind of faded away.

You know, he worked on ESPN a little bit. And even that didn't work out. Like, he could not control. his anger. But I think if he had held on another few years, he might have, you know, he may have been a source of inspiration for a lot of other people if he had been able to make it. He was a Trump guy, first time around at least. So, you know, he got in there with Lou Holtz and a couple of others. By the way, last note on this, this book is edited by a guy named Jeff Newman who worked at Simon & Schuster. And trust me when I say that if you picked up

any book about sports in the 80s or 90s, it was edited by Jeff Newman, any of the great ones, I should say. Okay. Season on the brink, loose balls, all these Skip Bayless books, about the Cowboys, the Jordan rules. I mean, everything from that era that was great. He did Jordan rules. Wow.

Jeff Newman was the editor. And I'd send him a note when I read a season on the brink class year, reread season on the break, which is talking about it with him. And he said there was this cliche almost, this idea in book publishing that people would not buy books about basketball, right? They'd buy books about football. and maybe especially baseball at that time, but they would not buy books about basketball.

So a season on the brink becomes a huge bestseller and someone had a T-shirt printed out for Jeff Newman that said basketball books don't sell. I love that. I love that. I love that. The book coming out. All right, Joel, elsewhere in sports news,

it's NFL Free Agency Week in America. Oh, man, can't wait. And I woke up this morning to some major transaction news. No, not that. that Trump was pulling the nomination of David Weldon for director of the CDC. The news is that the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, and here I'm quoting Adam Schaefter directly, have reached agreement on a one-year deal with cornerback Kindle Vildor, per his agents, Kevin Connor and Robert Brown.

Kendall Vildor, huh? I got to look that up. I don't even know how to spell it. Okay. Oh, Kendall. Not how I expected to be spelled, by the way. No, like Kindle, like the platform you used to read books. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. It was funny because I did a little search on Twitter. I was like, oh, wow, none of the other insiders who are competing for scoops even followed up on this one. They didn't know like confirming Adam Schaefter on Kendall Vilder.

I was like, no, no, you got that one. We'll get out of your way. So we got Adam, we got Ian, we got Diana, we got Tom, we got Josina. I guess that guy, Jordan, maybe two. They're all breaking news on Twitter about players being signed and or released. Journalistically speaking, this has got to be one of the weirdest weeks in American culture, no.

Yeah. I mean, this is agate. Like in the day, this is just agate, wasn't it? Have you ever, did you ever, did you ever, I'm sure we talked about this. Do you ever have to do an agate? Do you ever put together an agate page? I did not, but let's define that for young people in the audience. The agate page is the pages of the back of the sports section.

Right. Name for the size of type. Yes. And this is where you had the tiny little transactions that in those days, the sports said, this stuff is less meaningful to people reading the newspaper than say some news about the Oilers or the Cowboys, which were run on the front of the sports section. Absolutely. I put together the agate page for the Fort Worth Star Telegram from like 98 to 99 on weekend nights. It's it wasn't a job that was held in a lot of regard, I would say. But it was important. Like it was a

it was a staple of your your newspaper, but now you can get that stuff on Twitter or blue sky, if you will. So yeah. It's actually a competitive beat. Absolutely. I mean, I was looking, so I'm following Cowboys news. And I should say,

I think this is, this week is weird. I have lots of criticisms of what's going on. But you better believe I've been, oh, did the Cowboys sign anybody? Jerry Jones finally wake up. What are we doing here?

And one of the things I saw, so the Dallas Cowboys, and I'm quoting Schefter again, Dallas gets cornerback, Kair Elam, and a 2025, six-round pick in trade, Buffalo gets a 2025 fifth round and a 2026 seventh round pick.

So again, just imagine this is 20, 30 years ago. The Cowboys Berider at the Star Telegram or maybe the Dallas Morning News, that fact is at the bottom of their sidebar, maybe. Maybe if they're doing a roundup of here's what the Cowboys did in Free Agency today. That's probably the last paragraph. This is Adam Schaefter is tweeting that out to 11. And Brian, the odds that you know what they get paid during that and printing that transaction at the time is very, very low.

Like, nobody even cares, right? You assume it's the league minimum or somewhere on the lower end of the salary scale. Nobody cares about the details of what these, a player of that level is getting paid at that time. So we don't even put it in. Don't even put it in. We don't even in the tweet. Everything else is in the tweet, but that's not in the tweet. The agent's name is in the tweet.

I mean, man. Yeah, I mean. A woein. Is that not a woe innovation putting the agent in the tweet? I think that's where I first saw it. Yeah. And now I've noticed the insiders

not only tagged the agents, sometimes they just retweet the agent's tweet about the signing. Yeah, man. I mean, that's reporting. There was some real interesting ticks I saw on Twitter this week. In terms of free agent signings. One is so-and-so-co-co-co.

or GM gets his man, gets his quarterback. That's a real kind of neutral statement without saying whether the man was any good or not. It's, I mean, it's, it is technically true. They do get a man and that is a man that that coach presumably or the GM presumably wants, right? But yeah, I think that they mean it, they intended differently than the most literal interpretation of it, awesome. another favorite O-line help for the Jets

and this is when a guy named Josh Myers signed a one year $3.5 million deal. Not Josh Myers. Oh, okay. The former Packer Center, that guy, yeah, okay. Four years. Is that real help for the Jets? One year 3.5 million?

Is that going to, what are we helping here? Yeah, I mean, do we have to, is that what sort of thing where you got a kind of consult? PFF and look at the scores and be like, okay, I guess he's good or don't know. I guess he's alive. Yeah, he's a man. And they got him. He's on the roster.

One of those men on the roster. Also ways that insiders have of being accidentally damning to the players they're talking about calling a player a former number one pick. Now, if you were a number one pick in 2022 and you are a free agent now, things didn't go so well with team number one. It did not, but you stayed long enough to collect a pension, at least. You did. Yeah.

So you do have that going for you. You're around. Also saying that a player who got a tiny contract got, quote, multiple offers. I saw that with Mason Rudolph. Speaking of former quarterbacks who had a run, he had agreed to a two-year $8 million deal, but he had multiple offers. From NFL teams, presumably. I mean, could that also mean, like, we had a deal to go play in the UFO or something like that? or AFL-2.

Yeah. Just a nice, you know, corporate job somewhere. Yeah. Face of the company. Yeah. I go work in private equity. You make some rude offers like, I was this? So I could go work.

He had multiple offers. I just want you to know. But he took the one for two years, $8 million, even though he's a quarterback. Yeah. Yeah. That's thing. Mm-hmm. Our friend Bob Stern, the excellent radio host down in Dallas, found this one.

The ticket. Yeah. The ticket, yes. And this is, this was a tweet about Jonathan Allen. who was a Washington defensive tackle going to the Vikings. Here's a tweet from two different insiders. Two-time Pro Bowl defensive tackle Jonathan Allen has reached an agreement with the Vikings on a three-year $60 million contract.

The deal was negotiated by at Blake Baratz of at-team IFA. Language was completely identical. One of the insiders did hashtag Vikings. Do people used to eat hashtags like that? Is that? That's kind of news to me. That might be the news break here. Yeah.

But wait a second. They both came up with the exact same language. Even the punctuation is the same. Yeah. And, you know, Jonathan Allen was kind of a, is or was kind of a badass. But we all fastened on the fact that two-time pro-ball defensive tackle Jonathan Allen. That's his, you know, the entree. That's why we care about Jonathan Allen, right?

He had to make the Pro Bowl twice for us to care, although the Pro Bowl of, you know, declining importance in the NFL now, but yeah, sure. FS1's Nick Wright also took a moment to lodge another complaint about Free Agent Week. This last week, I've gotten a ton of as negotiated by, as negotiated by, as negotiated by. And what I haven't gotten a ton of is, wait, how much money did he actually get? Not what it's not worth up to. could be the highest ever and new money of

can I just please as a guy who does like to scour us Excel spreadsheet or two and figure out what's the dead money attached to this if this doesn't work out? I don't know. But I do know great job by Nicole Lynn and Tori Dandy and athletes

first, all this. And who are we working for here? The media ombudsman, our friend of the show. I don't even get that worked up about insiders. That's fantastic stuff from Nick right. Yeah, man. I mean, I'm glad that he had the verve and the energy to attack it like that. Because, yeah, you're right. This is sort of thing, I mean, on either side that you care so much about this stuff is just sort of, okay, if that's what you're into, you know?

Maybe I don't love the NFL enough. It could be that. Like, maybe the problem is with me. I can admit that. Here's what I find so weird. And this gets me into the Nick Wright zone in terms of of emotion. This beat has become so streamlined that we have people whose sole job it is is to tell us that somebody got signed.

Tell us Kindle Vildor is headed this way or that way, but they don't have to know anything about team building or the scheme that Kindle Vildor is going to play in or even if the players they're tweeting about are any good. Yeah. Which seems like a pretty essential thing to know or to ask if you are

breaking one of these signings. It's almost so, do you remember when taxi cabs first got the TVs in them? Oh, yeah, absolutely. And you'd be like riding around New York, this is before the Uber era, you'd be riding around New York and they would have this headline that said, man falls off building.

It would come across your TV screen. And he'd be like, there's nothing to click. Like, I don't know if that building is next door to me or if that building is in Toledo. Like, what happened? And then it would just be like, you know, dog shot on train tracks. Like, wait, what? That's what free agency tweeting has become. And it's funny that this all happens just months after Woj.

You know, the Wojbom himself, who has, you know, reported some of the biggest news and updates and breaking transactions in sports history called all this stuff vapor. Like he dismissed it. They said, this is not really worth my time or anybody's time. But yet it is like the fuel of offseason reporting in the NFL now, right? It is the Rainmaker Week of this absolutely is. And I'm just like, if you don't have anybody asking you, an editor say, hey, is this, is this player any good? Was this a good deal that this team made? Yeah.

For this player who's 28 years old, 31 years old, like, is this a bad deal that they made? if you're if you're not even interested in asking that question, all you have is vapor. Yeah. There are so many ways to get, maybe I shouldn't say so many, but there, it's just different in how you become an NFL reporter now. Like remember, and we're going to sound, I'm sure we're going to sound musty and fusty and old and whatever else, but, you know, it's such a stark shift from the era of the Peter Kings and the Rick Gosselins.

And I know people had the critiques of those guys, but what they were into was storytelling, right? And talking about, oh, the Steelers have signed this guy. Here's the story behind how they signed him. Here's how they think he's going to fit into the team in the year and all that other stuff. And not just they signed this backup cornerback or nickel cornerback for two years at the league minimum. Right. And that's sort of the NFL coverage that I grew up with and idolized and follow. and I don't can you build a lot of fans can you get a lot of interest in this sort of stuff is this

is it like is it is it more important to people that care about football via fantasy football or gambling or something like that because maybe that's what we're just missing right because that is a huge part of all this now absolutely yeah I think that I think that fuels a lot of this right yeah it's what it feels draft coverage too right you're thinking about fantasy team down the road absolutely so really what you want is just the one line transaction tweet. Yeah, who's this guy? I might get him, you know, take a flyer on him in the eighth round of my fantasy football

draft or something like that. Yeah. And I think, you know, the argument I guess you could make about the Peter King, Ray Goslin here, which I enjoyed quite a bit as a fan, is it they were one-man bands in a lot of ways at their particular publications. And now the jobs are sort of divvied up and more specialized. So you have somebody doing that and then Shield Capati is going to come through on the ringer and be like, actually here's what sightings were good. Here's the ones that are bad.

Here's the teams and how they fix themselves or further broke themselves for next season. Right. I totally understand that. But I'm just like, man, if your job only is to try to break this 10 seconds ahead of somebody else. And the signings we're talking about aren't even like Sam Darnel level. They're like just guys. what is that? At the end of the day, are you going to have this woge-like epiphany at the

end of the end? We're like, wow, that was a lot of vapor goodbye and just vanishing a puff of smoke? How is that interesting? Well, it also is just sort of as a media entity, how are you able to build an audience out of that? I'm sort of curious about that because where do you, okay, you've said it, how do I get you interested in my other content that, you know, you might actually stick around for? that might require more than a cursory read, right? Yeah.

I mean, I don't know. It seems like the audience is pretty well, though, through just being transactions person. We named a few of them that are sort of at the top of the heap. And then there's all these kind of other people trying to get into the pantheon. Yeah. I mean, there's a lot of money there, right?

It's like ESPN's built their business around this model. Yahoo Sports did. The athletic did. The NFL.com, NFL media did. like we're sort of saying like hey you know this is a way if you want in this is a way to go make the big money right and i mean again it does give you entree i mean i guess so this is the game you play the agent feeds you these little bit transactions whatever for the day that they can trade in the big fish right when you know when erin rogers signed somewhere or whatever or

whatever else and then that's what that's what you're actually hoping for so it's like the I think everybody knows these guys, and I don't mean it that way because they're NFL players. They're the elite of the elite, but they don't matter to like the scoreboard ultimately. And so you're waiting for the day that you get those guys, the real superstars and not the two-time pro bowl players, right? It wouldn't be the first time that's happened in journalism. Right. And, you know, most of this is fun. Like I said, I'm on there texting my uncle about the Cowboys, you know, hey, Rico Daudo, what do we?

think running back second round third round like i totally understand that just as entertainment my bigger issue with all this is like i just think we have slowly rewired the audience's brains and our reader's brains to think that the most important thing a person can do is change jobs ooh and it's not just in the nfl it's on the media beat right it's on the you know television news beat it's on everything Like we're not going to write about them when they're playing football or hosting a television show or whatever it is. We're only going to write about them when they change jobs. Right. And then we'll forget about them until their contract comes up again.

Right. And I think, you know, I told you, I was complaining to David about this the other day. Like when I got a news alert from New York Times about Chuck Todd leaves NBC News. And I'm like, Chuck Todd hadn't hosted meet the press in a year. Like he was just kind of there. But the important thing was that he was leaving NBC News. I wonder how many people knew that. I wonder how many people knew he was supposed to meet the press.

Maybe that's what they were counting on. Yeah, they're like, what? Sometimes is that meet the press still on? Yeah, I think you're right. And it also maybe is just a reflection of the way that fandom has changed, right? Which is a sort of another media story that increasingly in the younger generation, they're fans of players, their fans of their gambling accounts, they're fans of their fantasy football teams.

they're maybe not as necessarily a fan of the Washington commanders. Right. She's all fine, I think. You know, like that's not the way I do it, but I don't think there's anything wrong with that. I don't think there's anything wrong with it either. Like I said, I think that this is a generational divide. Not all of it, because, I mean, I do think that there's something to the idea that, like, elevating vapor over stories is, I think in the long term, maybe the wrong play for media outlets.

Because I think the way you keep people invested is through stories and, you know, the way people overcame something to get there and how they're going to help your team and how they get along with this guy, whatever. And, you know, but it might just be a reflection of the way that, you know, the kids, as they say, consume this stuff now and people are just sort of, you know, it's a dopamine, man, a little dopamine hit. I was like, all right, we got to keep it going, you know. That's what it has going for it. Absolutely.

How do you get off that hamster will? I don't even know how you get off that hamster will because everybody else is doing it, No, I don't think you can. And I think, you know, the way to sort of get off it, we've done this a little bit here at the ringer is you're the downstream thing. Yep, yep. So you're not chasing that rabbit. You're just reacting later on saying, okay, well, here's the real story.

Here's the winners. Here's the losers. That kind of thing. Right. Something with some context. Do you think anybody in the world ever grows up hoping to be woes or like shams? Like I did not. I do now.

They do now, right. Because I did, like, I thought when I was a journalist and I was like, oh, I'm not going to make it as a beat writer or whatever or whatever, because I don't like any of that stuff. Like, I don't care about that. I want to write the second day story or whatever. I don't, I have no interest in like beating you for, you know, we acquired this, this third wide receiver or whatever. Yeah.

Now it's funny, but I think there's enough, there's enough money out there now that people do want to be that guy or gal. And it's interesting. All right. Finally for you, Gavin Newsom and Michelle Obama are pivoting to podcasting. After that very, very long national conversation about podcasting and the 2024 election, which still may be going on on podcasts like this one, seemed inevitable that a few people would start their own podcast. We have Michelle Obama and the aforementioned Craig Robinson. Okay.

And how did you read this one? This seemed like a kind of advice, like the guy from the office, what he was doing during during the pandemic. Here's something to brighten your day a little bit. We're going to laugh. We're going to learn. I could imagine my mom, if she listened to podcasts, being really interested in this. Well, we can talk about this in a minute, but I struggle to figure out who's the audience for that other than like the Obama super fans to the extent that those people still

exist. Yeah. And that, that's probably a lot of people, does you think? You could capture, I'm sure you can capture a few thousand people that, that, you know, of that group that would be interested enough to not hear Barack, but hear Michelle and her brother weekly talking to Issa Rae. Sure, but I don't. I just, I actually think that group's bigger than you think.

I think there's a big group of not only Obama fans, but resistance democratic types who were like, I mean, having sat in the hall for Michelle Obama at the United Center last summer, that was the best speech of the entire convention. So like, you know, that brought the house down and the ovation before the speech also brought the house down. So I could totally imagine that being a big podcast. Can I read you a headline from the rap that came out today? Michelle Obama's new podcast is off to a soft start on YouTube after launching on Thursday. The former First Lady's new interview podcast had only 65,000 combined views across two episodes by Thursday morning. Oh, no. Yeah.

So that's like three United Centers. Yeah, man. I mean, you know, maybe people just are not aware that it exists yet. And maybe that will, you know, the news will filter out. But if you're like, hey, you know, this podcast with Michelle Obama, we just need to get the word out. That seems like a bad sign. I mean, man, her book tour did great. So you're right. There are a lot of people out there that want to hear from her. But maybe it's Craig. Is Craig drag in dragging down? Is this Oregon State of podcasting? This is Oregon State. Yeah, man. He's a third tier pack 12 team,

man. I don't know. Or is it the sort of question about Michelle Obama that's always been a part of the reaction to her? Do people want her talking about politics, something that she does not want to do full time. And she said over and over again, do they want her out there talking about Donald Trump rather than talk what this sounds like is more of a general, you know, let's have fun, let's talk, let's laugh and learn podcast. I think that's it. And maybe they're hoping that she will sort of subtly slip into that sort of talk that like your intentions are that I'm going to talk about friendship as she did with SRA the other day of their podcast, right? And look, I mean, I listened to that episode.

I think all three of those people are like generally nice, agreeable, you know, that's like good talkers. But would I make time out of my day every week to listen to that? I just, I don't think so, man. I don't think so. Gavin Newsom's podcast is called, wait for it. This is Gavin Newsom. Oh, okay. Are they going to continue to call that every episode? Because I know that you're Gavin Newsom now, right? Yeah, it is. But let me tell you, the episodes are titled like this. And this is Charlie Kirk.

And this is Steve Bannon. So he's had four episodes so far. The guests have been Kirk Bannon, Michael Savage. And then the fourth episode was an update on the Menendez brothers from Newsom, apparently, not the Menendez brothers as the guest. Yeah, I was going to say, well, he should have had the Menendez. anybody could get him, he could get him, right? I mean, you would think a secret sort of prison interview like SPF gave the other day. That would be interesting. Yeah, man. So I guess this is part of the Gavin News, I'll go debate Ron DeSantis on Fox News, with Sean Hannity as a moderator.

I'll show up in the spin room when there's a GOP debate in California, not spinning for any Republican, but spinning for the Democrats. But what do you think he gets at a hosting a podcast? I mean, it keeps him in the news. It keeps them in the news cycle in a way that you can't just by being governor, right? Because a lot of like governor work is sort of mundane stuff. At the end of the day, it's not the exciting. I'm working on a solution in Gaza. I'm not, you know, negotiating with President Zelensky. You know what I mean? So it at least keeps your name in the news. And, you know, he may be of the old school in that, any news is good news. As long as my name is in the mix, and for however long, I can always pivot to, you know,

running for president, which he clearly, he clearly wants, I mean, he's, yeah, like he's Stephen A about it. Like,

this is not, you know, this is what he really, really wants to do. So I think it's that, but is it that simple? I don't know. What do you think?

Yeah, I think the pivoting is definitely part of it. And that's why you see all these conservative guests. Right. And I, Oh, and I'm changing my position, you know, the kind of getting ready to run and compete in a presidential election. But I also think, or I suspect that he wants to become a media figure that's bigger than mere politics. That what 2024 showed all these Democrats is like there's this way that Donald Trump is just embedded in the world, you know, that it's, he's in our ears.

He's out there. He's all over the place. It goes to your point about just wanting to make news all the time. And if you're Gavin Newsom, you're like, how do I get some of that? How am I just always on? Well, I know I'll have a podcast, and instead of having the people you'd expect, I'll have like Charlie Kirk. Right.

And he'll tweet this out. So there's like clips of Charlie Kirk and me on every, you know, everybody's Twitter feed that are people that may have never want to vote for me. Right. But I'm out in the world. I guess in terms of strategy, maybe it's a little bit. bit more distinctive than having like Michael Steele on or like, you know, whatever milk toast, you know, former Republican.

Who you're going to agree with? Who you're going to agree with? I see what he's doing, but also don't you think this is sort of fundamentally as a misreading of the moment? I don't know. Maybe he has a reading of the moment. I mean, Charlie Kirk, Steve Bannon, Michael Savage. Man.

Yeah. interviews. And I'm not listening to every minute of those, but the minutes I have listened to. it's not like a, you know, debate, you're wrong, how dare you say that kind of thing. It's a respectful hearing kind of interview. So to your point, I actually have a clip. Brian, can you play that real quick? Cal to go study North African lesbian poetry?

Yeah. Like, is that an actual degree there? You tell me, go. I don't know. I mean, we fucked in fun of that. That's one of the courses. You don't know. I don't know every single damn course.

It should be like, no way. But it's a may. If the fact it's a maybe, we got some problems. Well, the fact that a lot of people. have explored different disciplines. That's fine. It's just the taxpayer shouldn't have to fund it. Well, yeah, I mean, increase. You know, I mean,

that just does not seem like the sort of thing that the only people that he's going to appeal to are like progressives and liberals who are already inclined to agree with him. I don't think you're going to win very many right wingers doing that sort of stuff. And don't you turn off the progressives?

That's. make the crudest joke possible about California and its universities. Absolutely. And I'm going to kind of roll with it and not really push back on it. Absolutely. I mean, earlier in that interview, Charlie Kirk is talking about how Democrats and Republicans in recent years have sort of switched, like their orientation and how they believe in institutions that, you know, it used to be liberals that did not trust institutions.

And it was conservatives that did. And so, but in saying that, He said things have switched and he says, we're the ones who challenge the COVID vaccine. And Newsom just goes solid. He doesn't say, well, what do you mean? What do you mean? We challenged the COVID vaccine. He's kind of lets that go.

So, yeah, I mean, is somebody, Gavin Newsom was my governor up until a couple of weeks ago. And it would not motivate me to want to go vote for him. Put it that way. Yeah. It's an interesting because he's like one of those guys to me who has a lot of, a political skill. Yep. And in a national, in a primary, he's going to be, he's going to have to overcome his innate Gavin Newsomness. Oh my God. Just he. And is that what it's the compensating for? It's like I am like I am just the idea. I'm the Sean Hannity wet dream of a California governor,

liberal, my hair slick back. I had a controversy of French laundry. I mean, you can't, I mean, you can't make this stuff up. I know Charlie Kirk, Steve Bannon, here we go. I'm going the other direction. I'm going to surprise all of you. Lionel Hutz as a political figure. And look, I mean, just to kind of to thread the needle on this, I mean, he has on Charlie Kirk. And how you have an opportunity to talk to him about all, you're going over the course of his career and how he built himself up.

And they went through that. how do you not talk about his association with Jerry Falwell? Like one of the first things I heard about Charlie Kirk was he started the Fall Kirk Center at Liberty University. Like that was one of the ways he sort of got put into the mainstream of news. And like you don't talk about that? Fall Kirk Center. Yeah, they merged their names as Falwell Charlie Kirk. Yeah, the Fall Kirk Center.

They discontinued it in 2021 because as you may, people don't remember. Don't talk about Jerry Falwell Jr. anymore. But yeah, so like that kind of went away in times. But like how does that not, how do you not, how does that not come up if you're attempting to talk to this guy? And I mean, I guess maybe he just wants to totally have friendly conversations with these folks. And it's funny, right? Because it's a reversal of what he used to do, which is he would go on Hannity.

He would go into the right wing lion's den and be like, no, no, I can hang in here. Yeah. I can debate you. We have a, we had a presidential candidate. this is Gavin Newsom speaking who isn't coming out you're never seeing him at all but I'm wandering in here in the most dangerous place of all Pete Buttigieg has obviously made you know made some hey doing the same thing apparently run for president too in 2028 but this is the opposite it's like I'm going on a listening to her on my own podcast yeah by doing no pushback interviews

with the people whose podcast you would have could have imagined me going on right I mean the exact opposite. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, just like what the Charlie Kirk podcast and media vehicles already exist. But I think that it's just proof that there are too many podcasts. People think that just by talking into a microphone that people are going to come. And I think it's, I'm just trying to think like it used to be, you know, back in the day, like when NBA players would get drafted. This is like the 90s, early 2000s. They start a record label. It's just like, I got to do something. You know, this is a way to start a business or whatever. And it's like, yeah, I'm dabbling, right?

And so this is him. This is everybody's attempted dabbling and being in the public square. And it's, again, even if you push people off, people are reminded, oh, Gavin Newsom has a podcast. Maybe I should listen to it. Or it's just out there. You don't even have to listen to it. But it's just somehow gets into your life. Yeah.

Clips find their way into your feet, even if it's outraged liberals going, oh, Gavin Newsom had on today. Yeah. Yeah. And it also gives Gavin Newsom an opportunity to say, see, that is why. we lost the elections because you guys refused to listen and I'm I'm doing the hard work of bridging these partisan divides in America like you can see how like he can antagonize a base that he may be taking for granted but at base that he thinks that he's got and he can say hey look this is what we've got to do to expand our political base and so I assume that that's what the the ruse is here

but I don't know man I mean it's doing better than the Michelle Obama Craig robinson podcast Maybe they need to bring on Byron Donald's, you know, instead of that. I would listen to that. Yeah, why not? You know, if they do that, I want credit for it. So if you guys bring on Brian Donald's, I want credit for it, Michelle Obama. Let's credit, Joel Anderson at the Press Box podcast. Yeah.

I got three pieces of audio for you, Joel, to close us out here. Can't wait. Two weeks ago, you might remember Brian Glenn, the chief White House correspondent of real America's voice. Also, Marjorie Taylor Green's boyfriend. Oh, man. Brian Glenn asked the worst question in the history of the Oval Office.

I'm confident in saying that, even though I don't have a full list in front of me. I love that. When he asked Vladimir Zelensky why he wasn't wearing a suit. That is such a funny question. I mean, it is a funny, it's a terrible question, but it's a funny question, but it's a funny question. Because it's just something that you would hear if you

went to church. I feel like as a kid, if you went to church and you wore jeans, it was the kind of thing people would say, hey, why don't you have on a suit in here? And now they would say, thanks for coming. We love that Hawaiian shirt. Yeah, we're easy going in here, guys. Yeah. Well, Trump was back in the office with Irish leader Michael Martin sitting in that same seat that Zelensky sat in and Brian Glenn had a question for him to. Why in the world do you let Rosie O'Donnell move to Ireland? I think she's going to lower your happiness though. Thank you. I like that question.

Are you expecting? Do you know who she is? I'm joking. You better up on your door. President Trump on Jim Bay. Are you expecting to informant? Once again, that gets a huge laugh from J.D. Vance. He was sitting in the exact same spot.

Man, on the adjoining couch. Trump dog with a bone. He'll know. He's, I mean, he's back on the road. Didn't you think that he had moved on to bigger and better disputes? He's still on the Rosie O'Donnell thing all these years later, huh? Well, I think he can be called back to old disputes very easily. You just have to throw names like Rosie O'Donnell.

Yeah, I'm still mad at her, sure. Can Michael Martin keep Rosie O'Donnell? I guess he probably could if he wouldn't. Michael Martin looks so confused when that question was asked. I don't know if it was uncomfortable, bulletver was who were we talking about here what is rosy o'donnell what was the last thing that she did that it would make him remember who she was she had a show talking about michael barton at trump here oh yeah michael martin yeah they would uh see like a league of their own damn not not at broadway

wait didn't rosy have a show or something she had a daytime talk show was that was that on in ireland was sure i doubt that yeah i don't think it was syndicated in ireland i was reminded that the irish leader or prime minister is called the Tisha. Really? Tisha. Tia O-I-S-E-A-C-H. I mean, the symmetry between black folks and the Irish, man, Tisha, man. There's a lot of...

We got more common than people think, man. I think I'll pronounce it that right. My friend Patrick Coran might correct me there. Okay. All right, audio number two, Shaquille O'Neal. He's got a new contract. His show is headed to ESPN next year where it will coexist with Beaumont legend Kendrick Perkins.

That's right. And the Big Aristotle got into a feel-good story recently, the six-seated Detroit Pistons. I will be interested. You said something very interesting about Kay Cunningham. Great player now at this stage. He plays at his own pace. Anybody that can consistently play at their own pace

and put up numbers, it's a great player. I like the way he's playing. I like what Chelsea is doing. Those guys play hard. My favorite player on that team is Isaiah Stewart. Big body, hard guy. I can't let this go.

Who's doing it? You said Chonzie? Choncy is the coach, right? Okay. Portland, no. He goes to go. Jamie Bigger's got. That's what I mean.

You know, first of all, I don't watch the trail. I about that, boo-boo. I don't watch them. I just couldn't let that go. I messed up. I made a mistake. I mean, this happens a weekend. after Barclay went after ESPN for you guys only talk about the Lakers and the Warriors.

Who's the coach of the Pistons again? Yeah, and Chauncey Billis beat Shaq in the 2004 finals with Detroit, but he has never coached the Pistons. Nope. As they pointed out, coaches the Blazers. Man, you know, but that's not why Shaq is on that show. No. Nobody has Shaq on TV.

because they went here as basketball knowledge. Like you have him on there for that, right? Like, Shaq and a fool is really just sort of like, it's a deflection. Isn't it? Like, I mean, this is, Shaq is comedic relief. Well, this is the funny part about the whole show, right? This is Barclay, too.

It's like the best sports studio show ever. They don't actually watch basketball that much. No. That will shame ESPN, as you said, for talking about the Lakers too much. Didn't you, when he first started, so many people were mad. because they thought Shaq was going to ruin the chemistry between Chuck and Kenny and Ernie. And actually, I think it worked out a lot better than anybody could have ever expected. And a lot of it is because the energy between Chuck and Shaq, right?

You know, the Chuck sort of elevated him in their little feuds and Shaq's sort of sensitivity has really, it hasn't taken anything away from the show. But if you are a person that is really into wanting basketball, NBA insider knowledge, it's probably not where you're going to go. No, which is, again, it's for the general audience. You know, it's not a basketball podcast. Ashley Nicole Moss had a good point on Twitter saying, look, if a woman had said this on television. Oh, my God.

I mean, just think of the backlash and the ridicule that would have happened. But Shaq and Barclay, too, just exist in the zone where it's like, oh, well, you know. The thing about it is that for all of their ignorance of the current NBA, Nobody is ever going to question their NBA Bonafidex. No. No. No. Absolutely not.

All right. Number three for you, Joel, before we get out of here, an actual feel good. Okay. This isn't a feel-good story like the Chauncey Billups coach Detroit Pistons. Okay. All right. Because reporters at my old college newspaper, The Daily Texan,

did something very cool. Two reporters, Zach Davis and Anna Ambrose covered the women's SEC championship game between Texas and South Carolina. Now you say, well, obviously they would. They're on the beat. These are two top five teams going at it.

Well, this took some effort because they drove 16 plus hours from Austin to Greenville, South Carolina. Okay. To cover the game. And the coach of the Texas Longhorns, Vic Schaefer, thanked them from the podium. So if I'm not mistaken, are y'all my three that drove 16 hours? Yes, sir?

No. You two, and who's the third one? I want you all to know when it comes time to get a job, you put me on your resume. That's really unique, and I'm proud that you guys are here, and I'm proud that you take enough pride in your job, that you would do that, because you don't have to do that. And I think people need to know that. So thank you for being here. That's lovely. What a lovely sentiment.

It was very nice. And Jeremy Rosenthal, who works in the comms office at Texas, emailed me and said that the coach Vic Schaefer had inquired about even helping maybe pay after the fact. He found out they are there, pay some of their expenses, was told, you know, that's not ethically okay in journalism. But I'll tell you what he did do. Vic Schaefer went on Twitter and tweeted out a link and said, support student journalism. And it was a link to the Daily Texan where you can give donations.

Can I can I can I litigate some long simmering beef? I hate the Daily Texan. Uh-oh. So this was supposed to be a feel good. No, no. It is always this kind of shit that the Daily Texan could do. The no other college. So, you know, I was the editor for the Daily Skiff, TCU student newspaper.

And I would, you know, you'd go to the Texas Intercollegiate Press Association. So they had the annual awards for the college newspapers. And the Daily Texan would just win everything. Like, I just, he, I don't know if he listens to this show, but Mike Finger and Jeff McDonald. Like, I mean, they just won every fucking award at that thing. And I was just like- Now professional sports writers themselves. Yeah, they were great. They were really good.

And I was sort of jealous of them. But I was like, man, well, man, of course the University of Texas gets there. They have all the money. They have all the resources. They can do all of that. And so it's just like, you know, yeah, man, of course they can go to South Carolina and, you know, do the 16-hour trip. And I'm not saying, they're very impressive. Those kids, I mean, I totally agree.

but it's just like, man, damn. You know, the daily text and always going above and beyond and having the resources and doing that kind of stuff, man. It just kind of burns my, burns the britches of a lot of us guys and the smaller Texas colleges that are trying to compete against you guys. All right. I just want to send a note to the, any of the UT students. And by the way, this includes Megan English and Lauren Hightower who drove to Nashville to cover

the men's side of the equation. Please write me if you need any advice on the phone, not Joel. I was still, look, on CC, Joel Anderson, in all your emails. He doesn't want to hear it. I respect the feel goods. I respect the hustle, but I'm just like, come on, man, you guys got it off. Listen, if you bring some daily skiff stuff on here,

we have the TCU coaches to waxing poetic, I'll play that. I would love to hear that. I don't know if the TCU women's basketball team, which did win the Big 12 tournament the other day. There we go. How friendly they are with the media right now, given a few stories that out there circulating. So probably not for the best.

He is Joel Anderson. I'm Brian Curtis. Productive Magic by Brian Waters, Shoemaker and I are back Monday. Joel, I cannot wait to talk to you next Thursday on the press box. Likewise, my brother.