The Press Box - The Joe Rogan Presidential Debate? Plus: Adam Amin on the Return of Football.

Episode Date: September 14, 2020

Bryan Curtis and David Shoemaker break down what the upcoming presidential debates could look like with moderator Chris Wallace—or perhaps Joe Rogan, who recently expressed interest in moderating on a recent episode of his podcast (3:08). They then discuss the return of the NFL (19:00) and its broadcasting as Fox sportscaster Adam Amin joins to discuss his first game back in the booth (30:40). Plus, the Overworked Twitter Joke of the Week and David Shoemaker Guesses the Strained-Pun Headline. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

David, Mike Bloomberg has finally pledged to spend $100 million to help Joe Biden win Florida. What I want to know is, what took him so long? Well, you know, he had to make sure they were going to really let him speak at the convention. I'm sure he had some doubt in his mind about that. I'm sure he was probably waiting for, you know, a couple of invoices to clear before he had the whole 100 million available. to be able to get the money out? I like the idea. I think I heard this floated on NPR today.

I mean, I don't think it's that outrageous. That it's not just spending money to win Florida, but it's spending money to make the Trump campaign spend in Florida, that if they're not all the way, if their cash funds are not actually depleted as people are, you know, trying to report this week or hinting at that $100 million, having to spend another 50 or 100 in Florida is just going to totally, you know, it's going to be so out of whack.

I mean, I think that the big win for Blooming, is just rubbing it in Trump's face that he has $100 million to spend on making, unlike just pissing Trump off in one state, right? I mean, isn't that it? Yeah, Trump had a lousy fundraising month too. So it actually makes it even worse, right? Not only am I richer than you, but I just have more cash on hand than you do. Your campaign's a little short right now.

Yeah. So I can throw this $100 million out. I mean, the real F you would be to drop like $50 million. or $100 million in like Arizona, you know, or somewhere where it's a lot more. Well, yeah, I mean, we don't have that much time left, but hopefully this is the setup for all that stuff. But man, making Trump campaign write checks and otherwise safe states or safeish states, that could be a big, big move. What percentage of the campaign of the remaining days do you think Trump will spend tweeting about

Mike Bloomberg? Here's the thing. There's a lot of jokes to be made about. how like, you know, all these, like, the vague specter of a liberal, you know, is pro, like, public funding of campaigns, but you don't hear him complaining now, though Mike Bloomberg. It's like, no, you don't hear him complaining now because it's $100 million. And you don't even hear that many conservatives making that joke now because it's $100 million. Like, it's just like, more power to you, dude.

You're just going to, you're going to try to, like, buy an election. All right. You earned it. I guess what capitalism is all about. I mean, I'm sure Trump will make some tweets, but he's got to spend more time, like, trying to win at some point. There you go. It's time for the press box, a part of the ringer podcast network. Hello media consumers, Brian Curtis and David Shoemaker here with a big show for you today. We'll share some media notes on the return of the NFL and NFL broadcasting.

Plus Fox play-by-play announcer Adam Amin stops by to talk about calling football this weekend. What's it like to announce a game in an empty stadium? All that plus David guesses a strain pun headline and the overworked Twitter joke of the week. But first, David, we knew Fox's Chris Wallace was moderating a presidential debate. How about Joe Rogan? You be the control mechanism to the candidates, like a Biden-Trump debate with Joe Rogan hosting. Your questions. I would want that.

First of all, I'd want no one else in the room. Just the people? Cameras, so we can. record the yeah, just the three of us. And you would have to stream it live

so no one can edit it. And I would want them in there for hours. That was from the September 11th edition of the Joe Rogan experience, which is of course part of our Spotify family.

David, are we up for an hours long Rogan moderated presidential debate? I mean, sadly, I think the answer is yes. Now, before I get in trouble, uh,

I think there is a, There's an aspect of this that is very seductive. I mean, we've talked about Rogan before on the show. Not ashamed to say that I've had stretches of my life where Joe Rogan's podcast was a regular part of my routine. Joe, there's a reason why he's successful. There's a reason why people like to listen to him

bullshitting with bright minds of various sorts and dimmer minds too. I think it's actually totally safe to say that he would probably get, I mean, four hours or not, he would probably get some answers out of these candidates that we'll never get any other way and that would probably affect our perception of them. But there's a million arguments to the other side,

to the point where you don't even need to make the argument, right? I mean, just like ignoring this conversation is totally justifiable. Well, as the allure here, part of the allure of the Rogan podcast, right, is that it's lack of structure. You're putting people in this environment that's not pre-packaged like normal TV that's not sound bite driven like normal TV. And is the allure here that you're taking presidential candidates out of that world and putting them in a world that's more free form that's more where maybe you'll be surprised by what they say?

Yeah. And again, I say this with all with sincerely with all due respect to Joe. Rogan. I mean, he, I don't think he takes himself too, too seriously in the way that maybe some people think he does, but I definitely think that he would, that he takes seriously the idea that he could be a successful debate moderator. But the answer to your question is that the allure, the allure is not Joe, Joe Rogan, nail, pinning them down on, uh, questions of substance so much is like, I mean, the allure is basically these contestants going on fear factor, right, to take another Joe Rogan property. I mean, it's just to put them in such a bizarre situation that something

absolutely unsettling or mind-blowing might happen. I mean, I feel we need a Chris Wallace debate, right? That should be part of this presidential election. But we probably also need kind of a weird one. And we've seen time and time again, when you put presidential candidates with an unconventional, shall we say interviewer, it's usually really interesting. Every time a candidate was interviewed by Charlemagne the God during this cycle,

something interesting came out of that exchange. Sometimes bad, like for Joe Biden, but something interesting came out of that exchange just because they were pushed in a different way. And this to me, this idea, I mean, let it let's,

we can be clear right now. The candidates are not going to go on Joe Rogan, though Donald Trump might, but the candidates will not do. debate on the Joe Rogan experience is a reminder that there is something fairly unsatisfying about having three presidential debates that are pretty much exactly the same. I am personally shocked. Like, we've talked before about how, like, there are things that professional sports,

there are things that, like, the corporate world, there are things that all of us are going to take from what we've been forced to do during this time of quarantine and actually improve because of it in a broader sense. I was so sure that the quarantine was going to totally just destroy the debate format, the formula, the schedule,

and that we were all going to be happier in four years when we didn't have to adhere to it anymore. I don't know how we got to this place that we're just having three regular debates. I'm stunned that this is the case. Three plus the Vib, so four regular debates essentially, right? Yes, I mean, there's nothing. I mean, listen,

everyone's just so hidebound. And I think the real intrigue in the debates, if you really want to get America interested in this stuff, it's whatever, it's the behind the scenes negotiations, right? It's like the Sabre metrics of the, of the, it's, you know, the front office, you know, the front office showdown between the two parties. What happens on the screen is just so just obvious

and almost never significant. But yeah, I mean, we do need the weird, I think the problem is the weird debates that we usually, I mean, they've tried different formats in the debates. they've tried some sort of quote unquote unusual, you know, unconventional hosts. It's, it barely moves the needle. And by not, and when you move the needle like, you know, 1%, 2%, it's almost worse than just keeping it exactly the same and the way we, you know, the way we know it. You're right.

Charlotte Manor interviews are good. I wouldn't. I mean, I would, if both these people went on Rogan individually, I think it would probably add some value. I think it's the, I think it's the front office, the front office chess match that would just be totally thrown for a loop by this. Like, how do the parties, how do the two. campaigns negotiate terms. Like what happens on a Joe Rogan debate if somebody goes over their time?

You know, what happens on the Joe Rogan debate if like, you know, whatever. If someone like directly insult somebody to their face. Like there's, no one knows what's going to happen. And that's why it'll never happen. Well, I think I know exactly how Donald Trump would do in that environment. How would Joe Biden do in that environment?

Um, I really thought that question was going to turn rhetorical by the end. Uh, the, I think I mean frankly I think that Biden would be fine I mean four hours is like And I'm not even That's a long time

No commentary on whatever The conspiracy theory is about their Either candidate's health are I don't think any either of them Would be super excited about four hours Only Trump might be Trump likes I don't know yeah It sounds like a Trump speech

Yeah Yeah I just I do think there's a different psychologically between getting up For an hour and going four hours Then like prepping for four hours Right I mean that's just a lot more work. But anyway, I think Biden would be fine, frankly. I mean, I think that he's probably him then a lot by his handlers and by his many years and, you know, frontline politics and everything

else. I think that he's handled that. He seems to handle that better than some people. I'm thinking of like Al Gore, who seemed to be like totally crippled by whatever like personality management he got over his career. But, but I think, I frankly think that Biden would, would relish in that, I mean, assuming that, I mean, the wildguard is just the interaction between the two candidates and all, and how much kind of free space that would, that would allow them, both literal and physically and figuratively. But I think Biden would actually be great. Maybe I'm crazy. No, it's, it's certainly interesting to think about. I think if we're, if we're going to not quite give the candidates over to Rogan, I would like the moderators of these debates to be given a lot more latitude to be more

interesting, right, and to push it off script. Like I said, one conventional Chris Wallace moderated debate where we do taxes and we do the handling of the coronavirus and we do everything we need to know. And then a debate where somebody and even can be a conventional news anchor

just gets to push a little bit differently. Yeah. Gets to ask questions in maybe a ruder or more direct way. Gets to just kind of go off a little bit. Did you watch any of Jake Tapper's interview with Joe Biden the other day? No, I haven't seen it.

I was talking about Biden, about NAFTA and everything like that. I just felt like there's somebody like that who could actually probably do this and doesn't have to play newsman or newswoman on TV role, if just given a little latitude. And the four hours thing is obviously fanciful for all the reasons we've discussed. But pushing, you're right, we need someone who can push and can give them time. Because, you know, you can, I mean, we're talking about Biden versus Trump. I mean, Trump has proven that he can kind of bullshit for extremely long periods of time. But it's different when someone's directly asking you questions and when you're directly responding to someone else.

And I mean, between those two candidates, Biden certainly has the wealth of knowledge and experience that could fill up that, I mean, that could fill up four hours. You know, he can he can come with, you know, data broadly defined in the way that most Joe Rogan guests can. I mean, it would be, it would be very interesting just to hear either of them, just have to talk. on any number of subjects at that length. Trump has already chimed it on Twitter. He's in. He is in to the hypothetical Rogan debate. Trump responded like a book publicist,

we should have would have responded to Joe Rogan mentioning their, mentioning their author on a podcast. He was so eager waving his hand. It's like, me, me, me. Like, he's been waiting to go on Joe Rogan his old life or something. I don't know. Book publicists take a longer to get back to me than Donald Trump did to Joe Rogan.

what do you think would be worse 18 interviews with bob woodward or 18 podcasts with joe rogan what would be worse for trump um we're more news come out of honestly i think i mean i i really i have there's a real answer to this and it's the joe rogan because it's just he has he has more of an opportunity to turn off people who would might really vote for him yeah but would we i mean how many people would get to like hour three and a half and be like really parsing what what what Donald Trump says at that point. I don't know. I mean, he might just just bowl us over with words and we might just be completely thrown off. I mean, listen, if if after 18 interviews, Joe Rogan's general position was, well, you know, good for him for doing that, but man, that guy's

dim. I mean, I don't think there's much that could affect the Trump campaign worse than just a kind of eye-roly Joe Rogan reaction to the president. We'll see. We won't see, but we would see. Speaking of Trump on Sunday, he had an indoor rally in Henderson, Nevada that attracted thousands of people despite the limit for indoor gatherings in the state being 50 people. Governor Steve Sizzle-like tweeted President Donald Trump is taking reckless and selfish actions that are putting countless lives in danger here in Nevada. This is an insult to every Nevada who has followed the directives. Trump in return called Sissalike a hack and said if the governor comes after you,

which he shouldn't be doing, I'll be with you all the way. Okay. A couple of other more inflammatory lines from Trump. He is now saying that he has saved millions of lives with his COVID response. Listen to this. He saved millions of lives because I hated to do it, but we had to close it up, understand this disease, and then open up again. And we opened, but we would have had two million, two and a half or three million people. Think of it.

We're at like around 180,000. One is too many. One, too many. But we would have had two and a half, three, three and a half million people. It would not have been acceptable, would not have been sustainable. We've done an incredible job. And these people that have done it with me, the ventilators, the vaccines, the therapeutics, these people, I mean, the hospitals, the beds that we built, the ships that we sent to New York.

We've gone from, it is what it is, to one is too many. right those those are very different responses from Donald Trump to the death toll from the coronavirus i'm glad to see he's finally come back around on ventilators wasn't he like he was just like snarkly shit-talking ventilators on twitter for the last time i remember yeah trump coming out here to california on monday so we also made the point of insisting the wildfires which have consumed the west coast and killed 22 people are not about climate change in fact he didn't even use the words climate change in this denial. Tonight our hearts are with all of the communities and the West battling devastating wildfires.

I'm going there the day after tomorrow. I'm staying in your state tonight. But I'm going to be going to California. Spoke to the folks in Oregon, Washington. They're really having, they never had anything like this. But you know, it is about forest management. Please remember the words. Very simple.

Forest management, please remember. It's about forest management. Can we make note of how weird the cheering is at a Trump rally? Whereas it's about forest management, everybody just starts cheering. Like, that's an applause line. I think you sort of intuit the applause lines from just the timbre of Trump's voice. It's not really what he says so much. It's just like the pause that he takes and the depth of his voice, the shift of his shoulders to the other, towards the other teleprompter.

Yeah, I think it means it's more about mood than words. Yeah, I just don't know that anybody in the audience understands Trump admittedly fake a point about forest management. By the way, forest management. He's been on this for a while. I know. I know. It's so great, though.

It's like, I mean, this is, he should just take this tack with everything. Rather than just, I mean, listen, saying that he saves two million lives for coronavirus is a great, great fake argument if you're going to take one. But it would be more, it would be a lot more fun of all of his. all of his failures and denials were just like, you know, we're about management problems. You know, it's just about, it's about, it's about sanitizer management, you know, and other things, too. But, you know, remember those words, sanitizer management. And it would be a Trump rally if he didn't play the hits.

So he played this one. And 52 days from now, we're going to win Nevada. And we're going to win four more years in the White House. And then after that, we'll negotiate. right? Because we're probably, based on the way we were treated, we're probably entitled to another four after that. And it should never happen to another president. It's just a dishonest group of people. But here we are. Another four years, David. And speaking of becoming a dictator, I don't know if you saw the Roger Stone thing. The recently pardoned Roger Stone was on the Alex Jones show, apparently on some kind of heat check.

he said the ballots in Nevada on election night should be seized by federal marshals and taken from the state because, quote, they are completely corrupted. The state is, quote, flooded with illegals. He also called on Trump to arrest Harry Reid, Mark Zuckerberg, Tim Cook, and the Clintons if he lost the election by declaring martial law invoking the Insurrection Act of 1807. Fact check, that lives. Oh, my God. That's fan. I think that runs counter to what the beliefs of QAnon, but that certainly. it feels like it's catering towards that that audience. That's that is a that is a that's bold, bold stuff

there. First presidential debate, actual presidential debate is September 29th, two weeks from tomorrow, instant postgame coverage here at the press box. All right, David, time for the overworked Twitter joke of the week where we celebrate a gag that was so obvious that all of media Twitter made it at exactly the same time. Send your nominees to at the press box pod where they are always gratefully received. First up this week, listener Derek Ash, brought up an important point. If Trump loses on November 3rd, are we ready for the avalanche of your fired

tweets? Because that will be the overworked Twitter joke of the century. You got six weeks people to prepare. Get your drafts ready right now. You're fired Donald Trump, November 3rd. Can we just, can we just preemptively filter that out? If Twitter's, if Twitter can, can, you know, mark things that are untrue or like, you know, cancel accounts for, for peddling lies. Maybe we should just, maybe they should put in a macro where just nobody can tweet you're fired

the day after. I would like that. If they call me, I'll definitely suggest that. David, the renamed Washington football team took the field for the first time on Sunday with no fans. It was an overwork Twitter joke to write. Attendance looks no different than if there wasn't a pandemic. so I appreciate the consistency, thanks to snarky ginger. I feel like we're on like the 19th rotation of this joke.

Remember we had the chargers and the jaguars and like every mediocre college team? Yes. Did you see the Associated Press lead by Rob Motty after Washington beat the Eagles on Sunday? No. You're going to love this. The Washington football team played like a group of guys determined to make a name for themselves. Not bad. about bad rob,

Mottie. And finally, speaking to Trump, David, he made an odd boast at a campaign stop in Nevada this weekend. Listen to this.

And as you know, a little while ago, I received the Bay of Pigs Award from the Cuban Americans in Miami. And that's a big honor and they don't give it out easily. The Bay of Pigs Award.

This did not exactly exist. It turned out to be endorsement from an association of Bay of Pigs veterans, which I guess gave him some kind of plaque or metal or something, but is not the Bay of Pigs Award. It was an overworked Twitter joke to write. I also have a Bay of Pigs Award, which I keep next to my little big horn medallion, my Titanic Prize, my Hindenburg commendation, and my Trump COVID-19 truff. That's fantastic. If you would have added the Battle of Endor Imperial Medallion, congrats, you made the overworked Twitter joke of the week.

All right, in the notebook, David, thought we'd do some media notes on the return of the NFL this weekend. First up, there's a lot of talk about the players not having a preseason. Well, the announcers didn't either. They would have usually done a couple games, but they were trotting out there in front of the world for the first time this weekend. which brings us to the very weird moment during the Fox late afternoon game Sunday

Joe Buck and Troy Ackman calling Tampa Bay New Orleans Tom Brady in a buck's uniform for the first time and Fox was doing a boost shot of Joe and Troy. Joe's locked in and Troy is kind of standing up gesturing at something and this happens. Offense and the come back Troy and the two quarterbacks

It's been really more impressive play by these defenses so far. Yes, it has. It's been a great job. I'm missing some likes. I think we can all associate with Troy Eggman's face as he was, as he, you know, is every stage of that. I'm actually really impressed that he responded not negatively to come back Troy from his broadcasting partner.

Like that's usually the point in most situations where I just blow up even further. Like, don't you dare point out the fact that I'm about to go off. the rails. It makes me go off the rails even harder. At the press box, we take those kind of things a lot harder, you know? Don't tell me to look at the Google dog.

Yeah. I got this. I don't be ordered around. But yeah, no, everybody, everybody sort of handled it at that point, you know,

as smoothly as it could be handled. But again, it seemed like it was a lighting issue because you have to, I've been fast, I wrote about this today, but I'm just always fascinated. There's just a ton of people

in a NFL broadcast booth. like when we see it on TV, it's Joe and Troy. But there's in fact like 10 or 12 people in there running around. You know, telling them things, putting the lights on. There's a runner. There's makeup. There's all these things. And you never know it until there's a moment like that where the lights don't come on.

Yeah. Wait, who's Troy talking to? Well, that's that whole staff back there that makes these things go on. That was funny. The fact that you don't hear them directly addressing the people standing just, off stage right or whatever more frequently is pretty stunning. We knew the protests are going to be a big subject this weekend. And right away on the kickoff game Thursday night, Chiefs Texans,

Chris Collinsworth comes out pregame and says, I'm in. I feel like I have to start off by saying, I stand behind these players 100%. 100%. What they're trying to do is create positive change in this country that frankly is long, long overdue. So let's just get that out of the way and go call football. Were you amazed as I was just how present the protests were from lift every voice and sing

to, you know, the stuff on the pregame show to some of the announcers talking about it to during the games? Yeah, but the presentation I felt in some ways made it, I mean, so there was a great amount of uplift to it. But it wasn't the overwhelming feeling that just like, man, how easy it is, how easy it would have been for the NFL to just embrace this positivity from the start? Absolutely. Absolutely. Like in 2017. Yeah, you felt right from where like Roger Goodellan. I mean, not to put it all on him, but I mean, the owner is everybody else. But why not? I mean, honestly, I mean, he could have made a bigger difference. But you get the impression. You got the impression he was sitting there with just like these like, you know, gigantic scales where he was just weighing the pros and cons and like there were a certain peril on either side. It's like, or you could just be like, yeah, hell yeah, we support this guy. We support all of our. players. We support the cause of social justice. Totally. Or just, yeah, exactly. Or just their right to kneel during the anthra, just a right to do whatever they want, you know? It's shocking that you still hear people to this day and more power to them, but you still hear people to this day coming around to like the linguistic twist of like

Black Lives Matter because all lives can't matter until Black Lives Matter, right? I mean, you see people are actually still being converted by this like A, B logic that has been the entire the entire thing from the start, right? But that's great. I'm glad people are still coming around. It just goes to show, though, that a little bit of effort, all you have to do is just like

give the bare minimum effort to try to explain something to someone, like why something is a good thing and the vast majority of people will come around. Letting it drag on this long, that's what creates the toxicity. I was watching the Green Bay,

Minnesota game, which was the early game. So Fox comes in five minutes for it starts because you have to cover the anthem now, right? That is a genuine news story. And it was so funny because they put all this production into the anthem instead of just kind of a static shot and then showing the players who were kneeling who chose to kneel. They did this incredibly dynamic thing where they're cutting to the singers and then they're cutting to some of the players who are kneeling. They're cutting some of the players who are not kneeling. And the effect it has, it just made kneeling feel like a piece of the anthem. which is what the players had been arguing all along, right?

This is my way of being patriotic, right? This is, this is, don't tell me what is patriotic and what is not patriotic. This is, this is absolutely my right as an American to do this. And it was funny that it conveyed that sense. And I'm not sure that's exactly what Fox was trying to do, but it certainly felt that way. And it did not feel, it just felt of a piece. It was really interesting. There were Joe Biden commercials everywhere.

I don't know if you notice this during the Thursday kickoff game. during the Big Fox game Sunday afternoon during the Rams Cowboys game Sunday night on NBC Biden spending some of that $364 million he raised in August he was everywhere with big 60 second commercials

I thought the design of the booths themselves were interesting. Did you notice how every announcer had the plexiglass in the middle between them and the analysts just like their NBA counterparts did? Kind of was weird because like there's a broadcast booth and then it felt like you were

kind of in a booth within the booth, like kind of a phone booth or like one of those quiz shows from the 50s, you know, where you're in the isolation chamber within the booth? Not for nothing. What a great example of people in a position of influence setting themselves up. It's being examples, right? Being good examples. I mean, like, I'm sure the police would not have come in if the announcer is on the Fox B game didn't have plexiglass in front of them, you know?

I think it would have been, despite what Rush Limbaugh I was running about today, like, I'm sure that would have been fine. No, they chose to like, you know, have to make, to take the positive, intelligent medical steps on a national broadcast instead of just making everything look as normal as possible. Yeah, they don't want their announcers to get sick. Imagine that. Yeah.

You know, that's just, what a crazy thing. There was no Chris Collins were slide. I know if you noticed that that slide in he does with Al Michaels. That has been put on. hiatus. NBC told me they even removed the food platter from the broadcast booth. This is a whole new era, David. A couple of other things were a lot of people on remote. Jimmy Johnson was on remote for the Fox pregame show and had a bookshelf behind him. I don't know if I'd ever contemplated the Jimmy Johnson bookcase credibility as we have some other people. What was there? Did he notice

anything big? Jimmy's own bio. There looked like there was a book about Jimmy Johnson coaching the Miami Dolphins that was there. Like the Margaritaville cookbook. Bill Walsh's coaching book, which is I think every, I think every, every, yeah,

that's it. Yeah, it's kind of a combination of like how to manage your tropical aquarium and, you know, Jimmy Johnson coaches the Cowboys. And finally, you sent me this line from the Hollywood reporter.

This was just, what an amazing just keyword cramming. This was. NFL season kickoff ratings drop from 2019 is Kansas City thrashes Houston at COVID-19 socially distant stadium. It's amazing. If you put all those words in a shoebox and you shake them up and dump them out,

they always come out in an order that makes sense. It's really wild. It's like a magic trick. You just change the chief's opponent because they're going to be beating everybody this year and change the date, right? Everything else is the same. It's incredible. You know me, David.

I can't get enough sports announcing. So we called up Fox's Adam Amin, who did a game with Mark Schlerath this weekend. Here's Adam on what that experience was like. Adam Amin is an announcer with Fox Sports. He was at Mercedes Ben Stadium in Atlanta yesterday to call Falcon Seahawks. Adam, let's consider this your postgame interview. You've shaken hands with the opposing team. You traded jerseys.

Now I'm siling up to you like Lindsay Zarniak. Thank you for coming on the press box. I appreciate it, man. This is, yeah, very much feels like a post-mortem right now, so it's good. I want to ask you about calling an NFL game without a crowd, but first you had a big story yesterday on the very first play. Seahawks have the opening kickoff, and here's how you called it. Kickers away. It's out of the back of the end zone, and we had a feeling that this may be something that took place before the game today. Both teams are taking a knee after the kickoff.

So for people who didn't see that, all 22 players took a knee on the field. How much, Adam, did you know about that going in? We knew there was a chance for it. And we had to at least have contingencies in mind in terms of the actual mechanics of how it worked. Okay, is it going to be a kick and it's going to be a touchback? And then both teams take a knee. Is it going to be a procedure penalty that's going to get declined? And if that's the case, all right, what are the shots we need?

what kind of order are we going to do, are we going to have? And for me, I knew that Lindsay was going to have far better information than I was going to. And then obviously in her report, she told us that it was an idea that both the quarterbacks had come up with. So I knew that Lindsay was going to have far better information. So my job was to make sure we set up the context, just a little, you know, a little bit without diving too deep into it because I wanted to make sure that we got the better information from the person that had the best information. And that was Lindsay. So my job was to make sure we said we had a, you know, at least in my head, I felt like informing an audience of, we were told that this may be a possibility, that it is something

that both teams have agreed on mutually if it were going to take place. And I wanted to leave it at that and make sure I laid out as much as possible and got out of the way because I think the pictures are the most important part. You know, these players are obviously putting something on the line in front of a large audience to show something that they care about. So my job was to make sure we set it up and then got out of the way. And I knew that we would have the second and third layer of context from Lindsay when she jumped in for her report. Someone who watches a lot of network sports, I was struck by how present a subject

that protests were this weekend, starting Thursday night when Chris Collins were said in the booth there that he supported the players. You're doing a game. How much do you want to bring in that? subject over the course of three hours. I think it's it's tough. It's a tough balance and that's what everybody's trying to battle with right now. And I have my personal feelings on it and I don't think anybody would be shocked by them. So, you know, for me, it's about making sure I don't inject those into a portion of a broadcast because again, I'm, I'm fairly outspoken. I'm

pretty passionate about these things too, just like everybody seems to be, maybe more so than ever before in human history or at least in our history, at the very least. That's not self-aggrandized too much. There we go. But I feel like for a lot of us and a lot of the people that we're close with, this is the first time that they're looking at something like this head on. So to start to inject your own personal feelings or your own personal opinions into it doesn't seem right for me. It's an uncomfortable place for me to be, especially on television, because if it's my Twitter or I'm writing something that's personal to me, that's me. I have to to serve a lot of people when I walk into a broadcast booth. Not only am I serving, you know,

obviously an employer of some sort, but that's not even at the forefront of my head. And I'm sure it's not in the head of a lot of people that do this job. It's, I'm serving an audience. And I need to allow that audience and give that audience the freedom to draw their own conclusions. But my job and our job as a crew is to give the best information and most pressing information possible. And I think that's what all of us are navigating through without injecting our own sense of how we feel about these things. We have to let these players let their message be given. Like our job is to cover these players and these teams and these coaches. And when they feel strongly about something and they're given that platform, we're not necessarily being mouthpieces

for them, but it's their stage. This is their stage. And they get to do with that stage what they wish to do. And if that's something they wish to do, our job is to make sure we have the best and most pressure information possible. And I think that's all, that's the best way we can go into this and try to navigate through this. Let's talk about the lack of a crowd. You've done some pandemic baseball for Fox. No fans in Atlanta yesterday. How does that affect your call of a football game in particular? You know, it's interesting because football has such a distinct rhythm to it. It is a rhythmic sport. You know, basketball is a fluid. sport. Hockey's a fluid sport. Baseball is a rhythmic sport. But in football in particular, it is so

defined, first down, second down, third down, fourth down comes up, you know, here are your next options. It's very rhythmic. It is a very distinct cadence. So for me, calling a 30-yard, you know, Julio Jones catch, that's going to have its proper level of excitement. I don't have a problem generating excitement for this, whether it was sitting in a studio in Chicago doing major league baseball, I don't have a problem generating excitement. I love doing this. I'm very happy to be doing this. And I think a lot of us are. So, you know, I didn't have much of an issue actually, you know, generating that excitement for things that we're used to generating it for. But on like a third down in three and Jamal Adams gets a sack to bring up fourth down. And I probably,

you know, I said did see a highlight of it. And I'm like, man, that's where I on a normal day when there are fans going nuts or when there are fans booing after a play or something like that, the reactions are so immediate that we react to that. That builds as part as a supplement of the call that we have. And when you don't have that, that's when you lose a little bit of the context necessary to match the play itself because the crowd is giving you a little bit of that, a little bit of that compliment. So not having that on those types of very specific plays, it's a little strange to try to generate that excitement or it doesn't feel natural.

But on like a big touchdown interception, if there is a sack right off the edge on a hit on the quarterback, that feels normal. That felt normal. We're very engaged in what's happening. So that doesn't seem to be an issue. But on those other very specific circumstances where the crowd would play a major role in the actual call itself, not just they're excited and you lay out for it. Those are the little nuanced circumstances where it seemed a little bit more,

a little stranger. I was talking with someone who was with your colleagues, Joe Buck and Troy Eggman yesterday for Saints Bucks, and they said Joe turns around the second quarter and says, this is a good game, isn't it? And what he was saying was he didn't have those subliminal cues, you know, that a crowd would give an announcer to kind of provide you with the vibe of a game. Did that, did you find that affecting you yesterday at all? I think so. And again, in very specific circumstances, but it's those nuanced moments,

those specific circumstances that give you, that they kind of smooth out the edges of how you're perceiving and contextualizing a game. Like, that's all part of the atmosphere of it. So when there has been a constant level of excited noise coming from a crowd, you feel that in a Ooh, like that will absolutely permeate and that will affect your your feelings. That'll affect your blood pressure. That'll affect your adrenaline. Like, that's going to affect you physiologically. And when you don't have that, when you're in that static environment, you do lose out on, on, again, very specific but very important moments. And it's our job now as we navigate through this, in particular, if we're going to, you know, a majority, I think it's, what, 24 of, uh,

the stadiums or 24 of the teams are saying, hey, no fans for a month or indefinite, whatever it is. So a lot of the places that we go are going to be like that. And it's a new set of circumstances that we're now trying to incorporate into how we call these games. That fake crowd noise we heard yesterday. I understand that was being done by the teams of the NFL, not Fox. Is that correct? I think it's NFL films, if I'm not mistaken. Everything I read had it as NFL films had had their own sound palette. They were kind of a constructive. it and then implementing it during the games. And is that in your ears as you're calling the game?

Can you hear that sound? I think we have the ability to. I didn't have it yesterday. And I think for me, I kind of wish I would have had it a little bit more, but I'm fine with not having it. The one thing that affected me on right out of the gate was I felt like I was talking a little bit too much in the first half,

like just, you know, or talking more than maybe I wanted to. I think what it is, though, too, it's the first game of the year, no matter what. First game of the season, no matter what. In particular, when you're working with new people, you're trying to give them the best sense of your rhythm and cadence. And you're trying to get the best sense of their rhythm and cadence as well.

And that happens day one, game one, no matter what. So I'm trying to remember that and think, all right, you know, don't beat yourself up over it, especially in the first quarter of the first game of a new season at a new place with a new crew. But I did notice that a little bit. I was like, man, if it were louder or if the crowd were, you know, if there was a crowd and there are, you know, 70,000 people there, they're filling gaps. They're filling your own gaps. So if I'm like, hey, I could tell you about Dante Fowler's three-year contract right now and or tell you about Darquez-Denard's deal in Jacksonville falling through and finding a deal in Atlanta, I can give you those details in the first quarter on the first play

that they make, but oftentimes the crowd's going to fill in a lot of that because they're excited or the player just made a big play and they want to react naturally to that. And you go, you know what, let's enjoy the crowd instead of giving you all these details that I'm sure the fans watching at home either already know or don't necessarily need right out of the gate. So without that crowd, without that fill to shape out the edges of the broadcast, I'm sure I was affected a little bit in that sense where I was probably talking a little bit too much early. And then once we settle in, naturally you're going to find that rhythm. You're going to be a little bit more economical or whatever it may be that you're focused on for your own mechanics in that game.

Are you the kind of an answer who will pop this game in and listen to yourself right away to see how you did? I usually give it a little bit of time, but I'll try at least listen. I got to go, man, please. Because I know myself and I know that I get, I take things personally. I take things hard. I and it's a it's a stupid habit that I just got to get rid of at some point as an adult and I don't know if it'll ever go away completely. But I did listen to the highlights yesterday, you know, when I got to the airport. I was like, all right, let's see how this went.

And it sounded, I mean, first thing's first, Fox's audio is phenomenal. Like they're really like they're just the mix that they have and the engineers that they have and our audio man is great. like it's it just sounds really good like it sounds like full you know mark sounds great lindsay sounds great uh you know so that sound is is nice to listen to uh so once you get past that you go all right it didn't sound terrible it like the just just you know physically didn't sound terrible uh you kind of listen for a little uh you know little nuances and you know and for me a big thing is economy uh and brevity which clearly in this interview is is a major issue for me, as you can tell. But like those are the things I'm working on personally. So that's where

my ear goes to right out of the gate. And then obviously, all right, did I identify the people correctly? Is that a good excitement level for a moment? Like I said, there was a Jamal Adams sack that I didn't give enough to. There were probably moments that I gave too much to. And then, and that's all part of getting back into a rhythm of it. There was no preseason for us, you know, like I would typically have a couple of Bears games and things like that before, you know, my first TV call. but, you know, we're all dealing with that in some way, shape, or form anyway. See, when I read something, I write, I have the exact same feeling. My biggest critique, number one, is that was too many words to say something that needed like

three quarters of that, you know, every editor, every editor you've ever had is going, yep, yeah, exactly, exactly. Like, every editor thinks about it. Absolutely. And that's, that's kind of how I'm, I've got Pat Summerall shadow, you know, like over, over all of us where we're like, hey, we can all be a little bit more economic. can all be a little bit more minimalistic if we really put the effort into it. I love that. Pat Summer all sitting on one shoulder and like Roy Firestone on the other.

It's like economical and then just kind of let it breathe, you know? Which part of you wants to wax philosophical and which part of you is telling you to shut the hell up? I'm not really sure which part is which, but we're working on it. I was fascinated by how Fox and the other networks spent the last few weeks constructing a socially distanced broadcast booth for you guys to sit in. Can you give me a tour of what you're and Schleris booth looked like on Sunday? Sure. I mean, the NFL booths are so, you know, so great to begin with.

So there is already, for the most part, in just about all 32 stadiums, there's a pretty decent amount of space in general. So that didn't change, and that obviously makes it significantly easier for all of us. The table is the same, you know, the length of it going, you know, across the window. It's about the same. But now all of a sudden, are, they're trying to space it out a little bit more on the table where there'd typically be maybe four of us, statistician, spotter, myself, Mark. Now there's only three. So I had my

spotter to my left beyond one set of plexiglass. And then to my right was another plexiglass window. And then Mark was on the other side of it. So, you know, it's where we're spacing enough. And then the plexiglass just adds a little bit of that element to feel comfortable to feel like, all right, you know, we're not. And again, we've all been tested, you know, we're, we're screened. So, you know, we're all good to go. So I'm not concerned in that regard, but we have all the proper separators. We've kept space. Usually my statistician would be very close to me. He, Scott Lightman, was a little bit further away from me to my left and a little behind my spotter. So what I don't like in a booth, and I imagine a lot of play-by-play announcers are the same, I don't want to have

to look left and right in a lot of with a large degree, right? I don't want to have to look 270 degrees around me. If I can maintain it to just the field in front of me, mark to my right, maybe a spotter to, you know, this angle and then the statistician right over here, then I don't have to maneuver a lot and it's harder for me to get off track. In this case, the only, and again, I know this is a lot of inside baseball, but I feel like this is what, what you're kind of alluding to. It's when the statistician is back behind me a little bit to my left, and he's holding up a grease board. And he, again, we, we all figured out the rhythm and the timing of it as the day went on. But now I'm looking back, you know, if it is a big gain, I want to know exactly as soon as possible, hey, that's 27 yards. That's 41 yard penalty.

That's whatever it may be. So I want to look. And that number's out there for me to absorb. So I got used to it. Everybody gets used to it. But in ideal circumstances, I don't want to have to look in six different directions to try to get all the information possible and to set up the things I need to set up and the people I need to set up. So that's the only, that's the major difference in the mechanics of it. And it's not ideal, but it's not impossible to navigate at all. Like you just figure it out. You figure out, you know, that's your job. Like we've all been dealing with a lot of different things over the course of our careers.

And, you know, I remember setting up my own equipment 10 years ago. and getting ready for minor league baseball broadcast or high school football games on the roof of a press box. Like, we've all had to do things to make it work. And that's all that this is, you know, at the highest possible level,

certainly. But that's all any of this is, is just trying to figure out the machinations to make it work. Yeah, well, just set this up for people as like, when you watch Fox, you just imagine it's Adam and an analyst sitting in a booth,

right? That's kind of what TV shows you. In fact, there are a bunch of people packed in there. And as you're saying, it's almost like your head angle, has to just change a little bit with social distancing, right? Normally, everybody's packed together fairly closely. And so what you're saying is when there's a spotter who helps you pick out,

like who made a tackle, right, or who caught a ball or something like that in a statistician who's giving you nuggets that you may use or may not. Right. You're just having to swivel your head to the left at a little bit of a greater angle than normal in pandemic broadcasting. Yes. And again, I know that sounds like such a, well, who cares if you got to turn your head this way or that? The big thing for us is trying to keep eyes on the field or on the monitor in front of us at all times because that's where the most urgency is, right? Anything happening in front of us, that's where the most urgency is going to be. So if I see a guy get heard, I can identify that right away. But if I'm looking somewhere left or right or behind me, and I lose, you know, I don't want to lose that is all. So again, it's a very,

very nuanced thing that, you know, a casual viewer doesn't need to know about. Like, they probably don't know about that. And frankly, it's not their job to know. It's my job to know. It's my job to worry about that. And our job is a crew to worry about that. But it does affect us in ways that hopefully you can't tell. Hopefully, you'd never even notice it. But I notice it because I'm trying to do this at the most optimal level possible. We're all trying to do this at our highest possible level. We're trying to do this with the best level of engagement with the game itself and what's happening in front of us. So those are the little things that we're all trying to navigate through that through right now in terms of the real nuanced inside imagination of it.

Let's talk a little bit about your career. I find everybody who grows up to be a broadcaster has that announcer who is their guy or gal when they were growing up. Who was your lodestar when you were growing up? You know, it's hard because I, I'm convinced I have little pieces of every announcer I heard growing up, but I didn't know I wanted to do this when I was growing up. You know, like, I, I, and Eagle is one of my biggest mentors in this business, and he told me he knew he wanted to do this, like, when he was five. I've had plenty of my friends tell me, yeah, when I was a kid, I did. And I, listen, I stood up in front of my third grade classroom, third grade music class with Sarah Strzinski, and we gave a Blackhawks report. Absolutely, we did that. And my, my teacher was kind enough to let us do that. But I wasn't thinking at the time when we were talking, you know, about Jeremy Ronick and stuff like that, that I was. you know, now, you know, steering this thing towards a career in this. I didn't know I wanted to do this until I was like 17, 18 years old.

So growing up, it was Pat Foley, the voice of the Blackhawks to this day. Pat Hughes, I have a Ron Santo Cubs legend CD actually sitting there. Oh, look at that. Pat and Ron on the radio, you know, and Harry Carey on TV with Steve Stone, which is hilarious to me now that, you know, Steve and I are, you know, we worked at the same network in NBC sports in Chicago. Jim Durham on the radio and then Neil Funk, who another strange circumstance, like, ended ending up succeeding him. So all the local Chicago guys were like major influences on me growing up, Wayne Larravee and

eventually Jeff Joniak, the radio guys for the Bears. Jeff was the one that I listened to a lot, you know, in my older years. and then Wayne is still, I think, one of the three best radio football play-by-play guys ever, still does the Green Bay Packers. So those are the guys that I listened to in particular that I absorbed. And then once I got into it and became a student of it, it was a lot more of the national guys. When I got to college, it was I in. It was a lot of Mike Torrico, it was a lot of Dan Shulman, Gary Thorne. These are the voices that I was really, you know, my antenna would perk up if I heard those voices when I really started.

become a student of this. You got hired by ESPN two years after you graduated college. And I saw you told Forbes the other day that you suffered from imposter syndrome almost during those first few years. I understand that syndrome. What form did it take with you? I'm assuming a lot of self-loathing and telling and telling myself that you suck at this man. Like what you should get out of this business? Like a lot of that I think was how that manifested itself. When you show up on when I got hired at ESPN, you know, you have a little college football seminar. And I went to that first seminar in 2011. And I was the, you really want to get the imposter syndrome going and feel like you're the new kid in school and the dorky new kid in school, like straight out of some kind of 1980s teen movie.

I walked in with the, I was the only one wearing a suit because I had to bring a suit for photos. And you didn't have to wear the suit right away. And you, you know, you could just bring that and wear that. that, you know, a couple of days later when we actually take the photos, I wore the suit on the first day, ran, speaking of looking left and right and losing your field of vision, I was looking left and right and didn't realize I was running about to run right into the chest of Urban Meyer and ran square into the chest of Urban Meyer. And then went into the room and saw Sean McDonough and Brent Musburger having a chat with Kirk Herb Street and Aaron Andrew.

and thought, yeah, I don't belong here, man. I do not belong here at all. What the hell am I doing here? Because I am not remotely close to any of these people, like, in terms of stature, in terms of talent, in terms of anything, I don't belong here. And that probably carried on for a significant portion of time and still carries on a little bit to this time. Buck told me one time, he said, for years, I felt like I was younger than the players I was

covering. and then I looked up and realized I was a decade older than all of them. It was just, it's a part of that syndrome, right, that's in your head. But see, now you're 33, right? So you're in, like, the savvy veteran Richard Sherman phase of your career now. I hope so. I hope that's where I'm getting to because now I'm talking with Jamal, you know,

we were talking with Jamal Adams the other day. And I'm like, dude, this gets like 25, 26 years. So it's, it's, it's really, you're older than these guys now. All the rookies, like, they're going to be guys born in the year 2000 in a couple of years. playing in the NFL. That's going to be very weird to me. And I'm sure everybody who hits their 30s or 40s

or maybe more specifically like gets into this portion of their career. You've done this for, you know, eight, nine, ten years, whatever it is. I'm sure this is the time where it starts to really sink in that that's happening around you. You work nine years at ESPN

this summer it's announced. You're going to Fox. Why go to Fox? I think the feeling that I got from people at Fox always seem to be one of familiarity. And, you know, I know it does sound like a cliche, right? Like Brad Zager says it. A lot of

people at Fox say it, Fox is a family. Fox Sports is supposed to feel like a family. I wouldn't have left ESPN if I didn't believe that. Because the one thing I learned about myself, and you said, I got hired at 24. I spent my whatever your career equivalent to childhood is, that's what that was for me, at ESPN. I grew up as a, not only as a broadcaster, which is supposed to happen by sheer volume alone, you're supposed to get better at this, but I grew up significantly just as a human. So the people that I got close to, Caroloss and Rebecca Lobo, Holly Row, Amanda Scarborough, Laura Rutledge, Dusty, DeVorecheck, Molly McGrath, Matt Hassopek, Pat McAfee, MacBarrown, John Conjemy, all of these, and that's a small, small sampling of it.

Those people all made me feel like part of their lives, part of their fans, part of their fans. families. And I wasn't going to leave for a place that wasn't going to make me feel that way. Now, the one difference is, and this is understandable. This is not a criticism and it's not an indictment. It is strictly an observation from my perspective because of my personality. ESPN is such a massive, massive machine that it is almost impossible for you to feel directly connected to everybody there. The differences at Fox, I feel directly connected to just about everybody there. And I've officially worked here for three months. So the assumption that I had or the, or not even an assumption, the, the feeling that I got through my interactions with Brad Zager,

Jacob, Bolman, Judy Boyd over the course of, you know, a few years, because you run into the, run into executives, you run into people at meetings, at dinners, over the course of a season. And certainly when your contracts up and things like that, you meet with executives and you get, you know, you feel each other out and see what's available for you. I wouldn't have left if I didn't get that feeling and if I didn't believe that that's how it was going to feel if I went over. And then on top of that, you can put, hey, we might want to put you on the NFL. Yeah, okay, I'm sold. Like, at that point, I'm sold.

Like, it didn't really take, like, I can give you all the, all that stuff. But boilerplate, it was, hey, we think you're good enough to do the NFL and we're going to put you on it. All right, good. That's great. I'm sold. You can listen to Adam. I mean, call the NFL on Fox. He's going to be calling Chicago Bulls games whenever basketball season finishes and then restarts.

Next week on Fox is you doing Tom Brady? It might get out there right? You got it, man. Tom Brady, two of the next three games from what we understand, Carolina, Tampa, and then Tampa goes back on the road to Denver. So we'll get a little look at the Tampa Bay Buccaneers the next couple of weeks. He will be revisiting as Tom Brady highlights with an ounce of shame and self-scrutiny. Thank you so much, Adam, for being here. Thanks, BC. I appreciate it.

All right, it's time for David Shoemaker. Guesses the strained pun headline. Yeah. Thursday's pun headline about the Yankees losing in upstate New York was Buffalo Ill. Today's headline comes from our pal Dennis Schwarks. it's from the economist I'll give you the synopsis David a growing number of people

are organizing their love and sex lives via spreadsheets via spreadsheets I think that's all you need what was the economist's strained pun headline I mean it's got to be something with Excel right is it?

Well well chart graph uh I'll say this. Their tweet didn't include the sentence, is this really how to excel in relationships? But the keyword we're looking for is spreadsheets.

Oh, between the spreadsheets? Between the spreadsheets. Thank you. David was done with that one. That's not. That's a great headline. That's a great headline. I mean,

I was almost discussed it with myself. You gave it to me. It was right there. That's fine. He is David Shoemaker. I'm Brian Curtis. Research by Chris Almeida, production magic by Erica Servantes. We're back Thursday with listener mail and an interview with White House photographer Pete Sousa. We'll have more lukewarm takes about the media and a plan to seize absolute power. See you then, David. See you later, Brian.