The Press Box - The NFL Press Conference Heard ’Round the World, the Tony Romo Problem, and the New California Vulture

Episode Date: January 14, 2026

Hello, media consumers! Bryan and David discuss the controversy coming out of Jacksonville Jaguars coach Liam Coen’s press conference following their elimination from the playoffs (10:28). They acknowledge both sides of this conversation, examine the reactions from beat writers, and break down what role humanity plays in a postgame press conference (20:32). Next, the guys dive into audio from this past weekend’s NFL wild-card playoff games, including what Tony Romo did wrong (35:06) and what Tom Brady did right (45:29). The show wraps up with a look at the new publication raiding the L.A. Times (57:31), and a quick look at Trump’s interactions with the media lately (1:02:40). Plus, the Overworked Twitter Joke of the Week, and David Shoemaker Guesses the Strained-Pun Headline! Hosts: Bryan Curtis and David Shoemaker Producer: Bruce Baldwin Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

David? Yes. Happy 2026. You too, man. This is going to be the best year ever. Well, are you sure about that? What's the over under on newspaper closings in 2020? I'm going to say, this is a media podcast, sir.

There's no happy news here. No, I'm sorry for opening things on a sour note. I want to wish you a belated happy birthday. Thank you. Also a belated Merry Christmas and happy Yolo Bococke. Flood. The most charming new holiday to us ever. Most charming holiday that we borrowed from another country.

Yeah, absolutely true. I got to thank you for a couple of gifts that came in the mail since we last spoke. That's right. You hadn't received your YOL of Local Flood get books on the air. I haven't. And folks, David and I have known each other since we were 14. So David knows me as intimately as any person in my life. probably more than 99% of people.

And he found this book called Sports Extra, which I will hold up to the camera here, Sports Extra. This is a collection of great sports writing published in 1944. With bylines from Jack London and Granny Rice and others. How did you know, David, that this is exactly what I wanted. Thank you very much. I mean, that's one of those books that's just undeniable.

Like that would have come home with me regardless, but I found it in Yolo Blokafled season. That's just like a, like in the old days when I would just buy like every O. Henry collection that they popped up in a used bookstore. That was just a given. But I'm glad that it's perfect for you. And this was another treasure.

It is a book by W.H.P. Fife. Don't you love the triple initials? Yes. We don't have nearly enough of those anymore. W.H.P. Fife. And it is called 12. thousand words often mispronounced

the books what year is that from it looks like it's from like it's from like 1900 i mean it is an old looking book it is literally 1908 published in 1908 and what made me so happy is that it is billed as a revised and enlarged

edition of 10,000 words often mispronounced oh mr or miss fife added 2,000 words and then got another edition of this book. That's so great. Isn't it so archaic to think of a pronunciation book being on paper now? Like the first place you would, you have a pronunciation is always those like YouTube videos or something now, right?

Like it's always, you would feel like you were doing it incorrectly to not have an audio component to a pronunciation guide. 100%. I mean, I Google words all the time right before the podcast. Mm-hmm. So I will sound slightly less. like a moron when we talk and it's that moving mouth that comes up on Google that pronounces it

for you. The face has no features, but there is a mouth that moves. It does you how to pronounce a word. I was also paging through this and I realized there are many, many words I don't know how to pronounce. I want to ask you about this one. How do you pronounce the word that you spell like this? T-E-M-P-S. Just contra-tempts, right? Okay, that's how I, until getting this lovely gift from you had pronounced it. That word is not contratempts, it is contra-tom. Wow.

You learn something every day. You said like a real jerk if you pronounce it like that, don't you? I got to tell you about some home news here. I had a few days where I was by myself because Christine and the kids were at her mom's place. And there's a certain age you reach when being home alone is just like the most amazing. Sure. A couple of days in the world. And I'm watching football and I'm reading Capote.

And at some point, I had a moment where I was like, you know what? I should be a good partner, a good husband. and I should do something other than just indulge myself and eat whatever I want and watch whatever I want. And so I went and cleaned the garage. This sounds like the material for a Tim Allen sitcom, but it is absolutely true. I cleaned the garage and I hurt my back really, really bad.

And this week or last week for the first time, I went to a physical therapy session. And let me tell you something. I have never felt more middle-aged. Yeah. than going to physical therapy and being handed like a barbell to do a stretch with. Yeah. Jesus,

Cramity. So I also hurt my back, or at least the back pain intensified to a point where I needed to do something about it. I don't know if it was a specific thing, but, you know, your kids are older than my youngest. There's a point where you just like realize you're still trying to pick them up all the time. And, you know,

you're doing all kinds of unfortunate bins to get them up that. when it's not entirely necessary. Somehow I messed up my back. But when physical therapy became the next option, I didn't do it, partly because of the embarrassment. I talked myself out of it, though,

by saying just like, I'm not taking good enough care of myself to be worthy of physical therapy. That was my internal logic. Like, I'll go to physical therapy if, like, you know, I actually do some yoga,

do some stretching, you know, just like take care of. rest my back, do all these things that I'm never actually going to do. So I just put it off forever. But yeah, yeah, I know that. I know that feeling. You and I miss the whole stretching era of American life.

Yeah. I swear every year, I'm like, yeah, you know, maybe investigate yoga this year. That hot new trend. Yeah. Maybe that would be nice. Maybe you'd be the next coach of LSU. He's in great shape, by the way. Every time I see him, although you are a slender and fit gentleman.

Mm-hmm. covered in sweat from your pregame yoga session. We got to keep track of middle-aged moments here. I mean, I had one the other day where there's... Wait, can I ask Elaine Kiffin questions on the subject? Oh, yeah, please. Just between me and you. College, just, you know,

confidential. I think back on our college days often. Like, I get the argument. I feel like this is an argument that no one's really making. I get the case that, like, LSU is a bigger program, bigger donors, there's more money involved, the bigger chance of the historical legacy winning more big games. You know, apparently the old football coach told him it was time to move up and he took the deal.

And he's like, okay, I want to do it. And obviously he's a little bit of an itinerant, you know, Lane Kiffin in general. Or it's kind of counting down the days until his next move. With no, without insulting, without any real, okay, I'm going to be insulting here. How has nobody mentioned how crazy a person would. have to be to move from Oxford to Shreveport. Wait, Baton Rouge, you mean? I mean Baton Rouge.

Oxford to Shreveport, you'd have to be pretty crazy. Yes. Having been to both of those places. But even Baton Rouge is not great. I mean, Oxford is like idyllic. Yes, it really is. If you were picking one college town to live in in the south. I can, I understand every argument about, yeah, Shreveport would have been.

my my my good friend from there still calls it Sleesport but the do you like catfish that is the reason you would go to Shreveport go ahead I understand this case like whenever people are talking about these job offers I'm like dude if somebody offered me a 10x salary increase to move to wherever and like you know take over this job of course you would say yes like even if you don't want to even if you love what you're doing now it's like I'd be doing a disservice to my children to not take that job but like if you're just kind of getting paid like nominally more money, like 50% pay raise, maybe 100% pay raise when you're already making millions of dollars

to move to, like, there's no version of this world where I don't say it on. Maybe I'm just an Oxford, just too big of an Oxford fan, but like where else would you want to live? You and Joel and I should do SEC, school, city power rankings on a future edition of the press box. Maybe we'll do that where we do our three-man weave later this month. Oh, that's a good one.

Because there is Austin still in the mix. I mean, Oxford feels like an obvious candidate for number one, but we could probably find a few others. I've only been to Athens, Georgia, very briefly. Well, we also got to stipulate if we're talking about as a coach or as just a regular human being. Because Austin might have passed the point. I mean, Austin's still so great.

But Austin's certainly a kind of place where, like, it's like New York. It's like it's a whole different thing when you're rich. You know, there's a whole lot more opportunity there. But yeah, yeah, that would be great. We had to do that. All right. Coming up on this here edition of the press box, the NFL press conference heard around the world.

We got a whole bunch of football audio from a dreary Tony Romo game to Tom Brady's physics lesson. Plus, a new vulture has been cited in California. What's it like when you and your friends interviewed Donald Trump and a specimen of only in journalism? That's also a war crime. All that much more on the press box. the Ringer podcast at work.

Hello Media Consumers. It's Brian Curtis. It's David Shoemaker. It's producer Bruce Baldwin with you. David, no highlight from the first round of the NFL playoffs got replayed and dissected. As much as, wait for it, something that was said in the Jacksonville Jaguars coaches postgame presser. That's so great. It's not Caleb Williams on Fort Down. It was not Josh. Josh Allen making a big throw. Brandon Cooks late in that game against the Jaguars.

No, it was after the Jaguars had lost to the bills. Jags coach Liam Cohen had his press conference, and there a reporter named Lynn Jones with the Jacksonville Free Press said this. I just want to tell you, congratulations on your success, young man. You hold your head up, all right? You guys have had a most magnificent season. Thank you. He did a great job out there today.

Appreciate it. So you just hold your head up, okay? And ladies and gentlemen, Duval, you the one. All right. You keep it going. We got another season, okay? I appreciate it. Take care of much continued success to you and the entire team.

Thank you, ma'am. Before we dive off the high dive here, I just want to say I was shocked at how big this got. Mm-hmm. I don't know if the Twitter AI has gotten 1,000% smarter, but all I could find yesterday. were tweets about this press conference and about the reaction to this press conference from all the parties involved. I'm like, is everybody looking for a lead item

on their media podcast? Are we actually this interested in 19 seconds of audio? I think it's a combination of the two things. I mean, just to take the technical aspect of it, I think the algorithm and just has definitely shifted at the same time where people are looking for mass cultural moments

in a much more sort of specific way, that it does seem like things like this. Just they, by the time you even notice them, they've picked up just some irrational amount of steam. And yes. And you're reading the response to the response by the time you get in. Anything like this,

I find if I like, I toggle over to like the four you column, they do like once a day just to, you know, break my brain. And there's always, like third degree responses to it that I then have to track down, which should be its own segment on this podcast, probably.

But like, yeah, it's, but, but yeah, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, like, at the same time, it's, like, it's, like, it felt like people were really kind of irrationally kind of upset about this, or just sort of whatever, like, uh, but I guess by the time you get to that second or third degree, it's like, what's left, but just, irrational. anger, you know, and so maybe that's why we feel like it was, maybe that's why so much of what you see feels like over the top. But there was definitely an element of just like, how dare you let like regular humanity invade my, my like, you know, my soulless cyberspace to the whole thing,

right? From both sides, I think too, weirdly, even though one side was arguing for humanity. Yes. And the other side was arguing for journalism. Yeah. It's important to about the vector here because Adam Schaefter tweeted this out pretty early in the process and he said this is an awesome postgame exchange between a reporter and the Jaguars head coach. Adam Schaefter who has not been, I'm guessing, in a ton of post game press conferences since he covered the Broncos for the Denver Post and Rocky Mountain News. Adam Schaefter, who this time of year is doing coach transactions, reporting on awesome things happening to other coaches.

By the way, he was on get up the other day, and this might be a regular thing that I've just been oblivious to in the past. But he was at the table giving, I mean, reporting news, but also doing takes, right? I mean, just being a part of the crew, fielding calls in real time, just getting up and pacing four or five steps away from the table to do so, which was just an incredible contrivance. I mean, it was real. But just to see them carrying on with him pacing in the background on his cell phone. checking messages in real time and just doing, I don't know if he's moving into a new phase or if just ESPN sports journalism has entered a new phase,

but it was like a pretty incredible performance by the man. Like he was, he's very good. Like he's, his, his, his, it's for some reason his presentation on a sports center level when they just do a cutaway, he just seems a little bit hammy. Like he has that old school sportscaster voice and whatever. But like, I know,

He does podcasts. He does McAfee. He does like whatever. Like there's something just more natural about him when he's just sitting at a table around people. He's very good. Like he's just very good at this stuff. Which is weird, right? Because the insider was never very good at this stuff. No. No. And there's no need for him to be good. Like he's, I mean, maybe in the modern ESPN, maybe that's exactly what it is. It's just like you can be the best draft analyst in the world. We'll let you go if you don't have like, if you're not doing a bit. You know, like what, you know, but if we can't put you on 30 shows. But he's, he's, he is, he is, uh, he is, uh, He's a man who's good at his job.

In the debit column. Jobs. Jobs. He did have the Sharon Moore bit last year that we talked about on the podcast so well. Not great at every segment. That starts with Schefter, I think. And then you begin to hear from actual beatwriters who say, no, no, this is not awesome. I saw Brooke Pryor who covers the Steelers for ESPN and say, look, it's a kind sentiment,

but it's not the job of a reporter to console a coach in a post-game press conference. Pressors are to ask questions to gain a better. understanding of what happened or figure out what's next and to do it in a limited amount of time. So I broke this down a couple of ways. One is what irritated people who aren't reporters about this episode. And I think it is that Lynn Jones decided to be a human in what was a tough moment for a coach and for a team. yeah she didn't ask a question she didn't ask you know a sympathetic question at all she just made a statement and so it's not just like the form was different from what we're used to hearing in a coach's press

conference it was the the sentiment was very different you know it wasn't just the beat writers being nice hey coach tough lost out there today what about this it was actually no no no you hold your head up, sir. I've got your back. And I just think that was just very jarring to a lot of people. But to people who aren't journalists, they're like, why wouldn't you say that to somebody like that? Like, if you ran into Liam Cohen in the hallway after the press conference, you'd say exactly

that. If you're not at your journal, if you were anybody who's a civilian, let's say. Yeah. I mean, I get the argument. The journalist's argument that it's like taking up time. We're talking about the regular people. I mean, I would even take exception to the fact that, like, this isn't a normal journalism,

journalistic question. We hear stuff like this in a lot of big press conferences. The differences you, like, couch your, your personal opinion in the form of a question that really leaves no question to be answered, right? I mean, it would have gotten no response if she had just been, you know, there's a lot of people out there saying that you guys have done an incredible job this season, that, like, you have nothing to be ashamed of

what's your take on that? You know, like whatever. Like that would have been substantively no different. And would have got no attention at all. Yeah. Except for people like us who are like,

what a weird question to ask. Yeah. Would a leading, I agree. I agree. And I also think, you know, I heard people saying like,

hey, you don't, this is a sentiment you say to a coach off camera. Like when you see him the first time after a big loss, you know, in the hallway, something like that. And there is, you know, journalists do say things like this to their subjects.

Sure. I don't know if it's quite in this way. But hey, tough one out there today. That kind of thing. I mean, that happens. From a journalistic integrity standpoint, it seems even more problematic to do it off the air, right? That you're doing one thing when the cameras are rolled or the microphone or when the tape or grows are rolling and then backstage you're just like glad handing. You know, I mean, that seems just a little bit weird too.

But you're right. It's a normal thing to say. That's the, that's, I think, the crux here. Right? Is that it's a normal human thing to say in the, but it's in the context of a journalism press conference where the rules are a little bit archaic or just a little bit just different, right? And we're and we're trying to define what those should be. Norms, I would say, rather than rules. Because there are no rules, right? Right.

Now, if you said something really nasty to them, if you got up and made a nasty statement rather than a positive statement, you probably wouldn't be in the press conference anymore. the team would probably say actually that, you know, you go out, if like you stood up and read the riot act and like, hey, coach, you choked today. Your team was terrible. What a terrible format sit down. I don't think you'd be back the next day. I think that would be it. Yeah, but it wouldn't even be like about how he performed poorly.

It was about how he offended. Like he did something to offend your own. Like, like you really let me down. Me and all of these fans that paid to come here to watch this game. You guys have ruined the week, you know, ruined the year for us. You know, like that that would be the equivalent. And yes, you would probably be escorted out. One of the Packers Beach and tried that with Matt LaFleuror after the lost of the bearer.

Now you're speaking for the people. Here we go. So it's kind of a backlash to the backlash, right? Journalists say, hey, this is not the appropriate place for this. People come in and speaking to the journalist say, what's your problem with sentiment? What's your problem with being human in a moment like this? Then enter Pat McAfee. because of course we needed to hear from him about this.

McAfee tweeted love seeing these sports quote unquote journalists getting absolutely buried for being curmudgeon bums. Obviously not all of them, but a large percentage of these things, I believe he means reporters, hate sports. They hate what sports are for people, perin, happiness. They hate what sports are for society, perin, unified. They're political journalists by nature who prayed on sports because they saw it as an easier path to quote unquote make it. Their days are numbered. My show being broadcasted on ESPN 10 hours a week with zero creative say from any journalism school puppets is living proof of that. That's why they attack me as much as possible.

David, I'd like to speak directly to Pat McAvey here. Pat, I'm sorry Andrew Marchand hurt you. I really am. But sports writers don't hate sports. No. They really don't. Well, it's reductive. Yeah, it's silly.

I've never met someone like that, ever. I've met a lot of sports writers in my life. Certainly not in this generation. There's no upside. Do they get crusty? Let's even take the last generation. Do they get crusty? Do they grumble about going to a game?

Do they take what's a cool job and make it seem kind of, of like a chore. Absolutely they do. But people show love in different ways. Sometimes they show their love for sports because they want to get to the bottom of something. Figure out why a team lost. Why a coach blew it.

All those kinds of things. This idea that they don't love sports just silly. This is another one from Randy Scott, who's a sports center anchor. Somehow he was in on this too. Like I said, everybody was in on this in somewhere or another. Randy Scott tweets respectfully, this was a 19. second wait. Deadlines for NFL games are a bygone era of print journalism where getting a tangible

newspaper out to the public was vital. Randy Scott. Reporters still have deadlines, even if they're not worried about a physical paper. The Jaguar season just ended. Your editor doesn't say, hey, get the piece in whenever you want. Yep. You know what? Sports Center is from a bygone era of television.

But that doesn't mean you just get in the makeup chair whenever you feel like it. You have to be there at a certain time. Yep. What are we talking about here? Yeah. That's when the backlash to the backlash gets a little much for me. Yeah. But.

Totally agree. It's a lot. Listen, there's some things that just don't need this much deconstruction, right? It was, it was like undeniably. unusual to hear that sort of statement at a press conference. Was it out of line? I don't know. I mean, I guess it depends on what you think your job description is, you know?

But like, it's just it's like there's not that much you can really read into it. The responses, like you said, and the responses to the responses are much more interesting than the thing itself. Here's another thing that irritated Don reporters, the gatekeeping aspect of some of the tweets. Oh, yeah. Mark Long of the AP tweets nothing awesome about fans slash fake media doing stuff like that. Jamel Hill tweets

that can't be a reporter because if so, I would not have used the term awesome. Well, Lynn Jones turns out to be a reporter and an associate editor for the Jacksonville Free Press, a weekly that describes itself as providing informative news for African Americans about African Americans

by African Americans. Here's what Jones told Jacksonville's WJXT. Listen, I've been in this business more than 25 years. I've interviewed from Barack Obama to Terry Bradshaw to, what's my guy named Tiger Woods? So he can say whatever you want about fake news. I am a member of the Black Press, NNPA, the National Newspaper Association that's been around more than 100 years. I'm the associate editor of the Jacksonville Free Press, one of the more than 230 African-American newspapers still printing in this country to do.

day. In Jacksonville, you had the Florida Star since 1955. We've been around since 1986. In Philadelphia, the Tribune, the Philly Tribune has been printing since 1884. We hear you live. Yeah, yeah. The Michigan Chronicle has been printing since 1935. So support the Black Press. So he can call me fake all you want to, honey. I've been doing this for a long time. Let me tell you something to. People know me. It's a great tip. If you see something online and you want to comment on somebody and you are not sure who you are commenting on, maybe find out first. Yeah.

Just a good tip before you decide to deny them. Say somebody's not a journalist? Folks, there are a lot of journalists out there who do things a lot of different ways. Yeah. So that's why non-journalists were upset. Here's why journalists were upset about this whole episode. As we said, it was a time waste in their eyes. Liam Cohen appeared before the press for six minutes and 13.

seconds. Yeah. You have a very, very finite amount of time to get information from him. I'm going to guess the beat riders were going to see him one more time, probably yesterday, Monday, as a kind of season closeout press conference. And then they weren't going to see him for a while. Yeah. So if you're, you know, working for the Florida Times Union, man, this is a big press

conference. You got to get it in and get out because you are done with your beat essentially right now until the draft. also you have a deadline no matter what Randy Scott says okay yeah there's that um I think when I talk to sports writers these days they're often worried about who's surrounding them at press conferences like what the competition is yeah and competition meaning it's people who work for the team's website oh yeah yeah it's bloggers and not what we would say the bloggers who are really into it but just kind of fanny people that kind of wander into these things I hear a lot of

about they're credentialing all these people that aren't like me. A reporter who does things a certain way. Kind of broadly defined state media of pro sports now. Yeah. There's a lot of that. And at least when they first heard this press conference, I think that activated that sort of just, you know, kind of fear in reporters.

But I think the most important thing here is reporters think, or think once again, people don't understand what we do. or why we do it the way we do. So, you know, you think about this, right? Why are they up there asking him questions? Why are they the beat writers covering the jaguars in this particular way? Mostly unemotional.

Yeah. Highly analytical. After information, they're not fans, or at least fans in the conventional sense that we know them. Yeah. Why are they doing it that way? Well, back in the newspaper era, we just all kind of accepted that. That was really the only place to get information. So now you never really asked, well, why would you cover it this way?

And people just didn't have the idea of asking that. But now here we are in the post-newspaper era or the almost post-newspos newspaper era. Yeah. People are like, I look at all these tweets. Everything they write in the Florida Times Union just gets tweeted right away. So I never even interact with the newspaper or the reporters. I listen to podcasts. I have my own, you know, my own sort of little media club here.

I just think that's completely baffling to most of humanity. And I think journalists are very aware of that. Because they're like, we're playing within these lines, these journalism school boundaries of how to do this job, the way you're supposed to be a sports reporter. It hasn't changed all that much. No, it's not. At least the ethics and rules part of it hasn't changed all that much. But should it have changed? It's the question to me.

Because I find myself sitting here thinking there's two things should happen. One is, and this doesn't just apply to Jaguars Beatwriters, it's comply to almost everybody who covers anything. We should explain to people why we're doing things a certain way with a goal of convincing them that this is the right way to do it or a right way to do it. Yeah. Or we should do things a different way.

Because you got to do one or the other at this point in history. You know what I mean? I mean, it's just like, I'm just like, it's, I don't think like, look, when I read, when I read beat writers, I totally understand it. That makes sense to me. I might say, why are we writing somebody gamers? Why are you writing pieces like this? But just their approach, that makes perfect sense to me.

There are a lot of people in the world doesn't make any sense to it all. Yeah. Yeah. I think that's right. I'm not sure, though, that we're really at, like, should have got off the pot, mama with it. There's something that's sort of comforting about its sameness, though, right? I feel like if it changed, it would inevitably go to something worse,

something less useful. And, you know, you say you read all these tweets anyway. I mean, the, you know, Twitter comments. or whatever, the quote commerce that comes out of it is only really possible because of the same, the sameness, because of the way that they've been doing this for so long, you know? And it's sort of, there's something sort of lovely about how that's just sort of evolved itself into the modern era. But I do take your point.

I mean, it is very just, it's hard to know how to talk about moments like this, because it does just seem like so archaic. They're like, who are you really defending if you're defending something? Right. And, you know, I'm with you, man. I love the sameness of it. Yeah. I love the way old-fashioned newspaper stories, athletic stars, I love the way they read. It's come. It is comforting to me. I get, we get, you know, a physical paper here at the house every day, at least one and three on the weekend. So the idea that like, that is happy to me, but I just think we're now at a point where you just can't have to just explain this. Because there's so many other options in the world. And again, people read, you know, read bloggers. they read Twitter accounts, they didn't know where the information came from. So, you know,

you can make an argument, hey, the reason that, like, Jaguar's super fan account is really well informed is because of me and because the way I do things.

And if we did things the way they do things, they wouldn't have any of this information. Mm-hmm. No offense to Pat McAfee, but this is how the information is getting the world, but you have to be. Well, yeah,

I mean, listen, that's like the very baseline, like, you know, irony, like whatever attack on all the people that just, you're talking about,

complain about the legacy. media, you know, I mean, even from like the earliest days of like the judge report, like talking shit about the institutional media and then just like his entire, the entire website was just reposting links there, you know, with like different headlines. I mean, that's the entire conservative other publications. Yeah. I mean, the entire conservative sort of political and the infrastructure is like the New York Times is the devil.

By the way, look, here's the New York Times actually saying something we agree with, you know, like, or not. It's mean, it's just. it's kind of ridiculous. Yeah. There would be no, yeah, there would be no modern media without that legacy media component. I just think for beat writers today, look, it's an awesome job. But it is increasingly a thankless job.

Yeah. You know, you're writing in a way that's different than the masses are reading on Twitter. Your newspaper, your outlet does not have the juice it once did. Yeah. It probably has a paywall that few people under the age of 40 are willing to pay for. you're working 24 hours a day. Yeah. And you are again doing a job that may seem in a way that may seem inhuman to other people.

And they don't understand why you're doing it that way. Yeah. You know, it's like, hey, I'm a beat writer. I took all these priestly vows. Meanwhile, everyone's over there on social media having a great time. And they're actually making fun of me for taking the priestly vows. Yeah. That sounds like a nightmare.

I got some football audio for you. Oh, let's do it. National Championship game for college football is set Indiana versus Miami on Monday. On ESPN, Nick Sabin was talking about his colleague, Pete Thammel. Pete Thamel, the woge of college football. Yeah. Now, I want you to listen closely to Sabin as he tries to say Pete Thammel but comes up with the name of a very different journalist.

I mean, I have a question now. Does Pete Hamill know how many sins I committed telling him fibs about who we're going to play? Has Nick Saban read the work of the late Pete Hamill? One of the greats of all time, yeah. Does Nick Saban know who Pete Hamill is, do anything? I don't know. I mean, he got the names mixed up. Maybe he was.

Yeah, is Nick Saban have a copy of the drinking life there on his bookshelf and Tuscaloosa? Got some NFL stuff for you too. I always love the playoffs because all of a sudden these announcers are under the microscope. Not only of those of us who are paid to do such things, paid to operate that microscope, but normies who are coming in watching a playoff game, paying attention to the announcers in a way they might not during. in the regular season. Yeah.

And they got Red Zone on. Dude, Jim Nance and Tony Romo picked the wrong weekend to have the nation's eyes upon them. I was texting somebody during the game. I was like, Romo sounds like he has been drugged. Yeah. And I went over to Twitter and Ali Connolly tweeted,

did Romo take a gummy at halftime? I was like, yeah, man, that's exactly what I was thinking. Yeah. He was so low energy, so downbeat. repeating the same thing over and over again about how physical Jacksonville's defense was and how they did a good job of flying to the ball.

That's the opposite of the usual complaint about Role mode, which is that he's too hyper. Yeah. It's just, again, like, I know we love to bag him on Tony Roe, but let's just note this is we're bagging on him for a different reason this time. Yes. This is a completely different argument. Usually it's, whoa, Jim, playoffs, here we go. And this time it was, hey, Jim. They're just, they're just rallying to the ball.

It's incredible. Tough. Tough to. But Nance wasn't really on his game either. I mean, you'd think that would be the opportunity for Nance to pick up the slack or to sort of steer him into the right pockets or whatever. But he didn't like, Nancy, Nance wasn't doing any better. Lance wasn't on his game. You were right.

There's a play early on where Josh Allen, Bill's QB, just gets absolutely throttled. He has to take his helmet off on the field, which is a bad sign if you're a quarterback. They don't notice. They start doing. nuggets about the kicker who's about to come out and kick a field goal. And I'm like, uh, and then they don't notice until Josh Allen is going to the injury tent. And this despite the fact that the truck gave them a replay and showed them what happened,

which they ignored. Then there was this, the Jaguar stole a field goal or tried to steal a field goal right at the end of the first half. Nance is making a big deal about Jacksonville's kicker Cam Little. Yeah. Cam Little, David. Now listen to who Nance has actually kicking this.

field goal. Washington to set it up. Here it is. 54 York. Washington's kick. After all that, it's no good. Washington. Is he the catcher? Was he the holder? He was not the holder.

There is a wide receiver for the Jags. Park of Washington who was having a huge day, who also got injured kind of mysteriously early on. God. We started to do all the Romo J.J. Watt replacement talk. Oh, yeah.

What's the word? I haven't been keeping up with it. They think JJ Watts is going to be JJ watch with Nance? J.J. Watt's already better than Tony Romo. So yes, J.J. Watt with Nance would be awesome. Contractually, I don't know how you would do it,

nor do I really think you could do it. I don't think you can demote Tony Romo. You either have, by some contrivance, have like, you know, like, you do the J. Lin-O. Conan O'Brien thing. where it's like we have two number ones, you know, like, uh, or you can you just like sell them off to Amazon or something, just make it look like a like a win-win. Do the, you know, do the do the, do the, do the, do the, do the, do the, do the,

heart goes to WCW trick with Tony Romo. Uh, or, yeah, I mean, there's got to be some way out of this or, or you let him just, like, walk away, right? I'm going to take a couple years off. Time to spend some, you know, whatever. He's made a ton of money. He's been at times the best there is at what he does. The best there was, the best ever will be.

Yeah. Finish the Brethardt thought. I think there's some way out of it. I don't know. I saw JJ Watt on McAfee the other day. And he was talking about how he never wanted to be a color commentator. And I think that there's an element of that where that's probably why he's so good at it, right? I mean, it's not some real deliberate thing he set out to do, although he does obviously put in the work.

And he talked about that, too, having this huge support team. around him and everything else. But it did make me wonder if he's either like going to be the best ever or if he's going to if he, if he, what, meaning what, if he's just kind of kind of be done with it in two years, three years anyway, either. Yeah. Like he's like he might just get bored or want to do some other stuff or, you know, whatever.

But I think that the thing we keep seeing over and over again is that with the exception of a few great two, as we've discussed a million times, lean on the sort of folks, you know, this lean on the sort of the the the the the tenor of their voice more than the actual content i'm speaking of guys like troy eggman obviously but he's actually done so much work over the past couple of years to have the content i shouldn't even make it that that dismissive with i'll just say with the exception of a few very notable people like romo like collinsworth and a lot of and some names in the past there's just a there's a time limit on color commentators and it has to do with you're removed from the game.

You know, there's a, that first year, everybody loved Tony Romo because he was like accurately calling all these defenses like, yeah, he'd been playing against them nine months prior, you know? Exactly. And there's, and there's just, there's a point to which you're not, even as much work as you can put in, you're not in the same position to dissect something, you know, to predict something. And at some point, the game moves past you, at least as a, you know, if you're, I mean, in that very specific way of calling it. and on the one hand it's like oh i guess that's unfortunate but on the other hand it's like i think

we should kind of like have come to terms with this by now like it's not it's it's it's it's it's it's not unfortunate you know it's not or it shouldn't be a sad day to acknowledge like yeah you've given five great years to this now you got to either reinvent yourself or figure out something else to do you're not going to be the best anymore you know yes i agree and just think like for chris collinsworth to stay on football like he did he had to run pff Yeah. That was the level of commitment required. Yep.

I'm running a massive football website. Mm-hmm. That's grading every player for every performance during every game. Yeah. Um, yeah. I mean, I just think that here's the problem with Romo. He's, he was the highest paid commentator in pro football. So we're going to say, hey, we're just going to eat $17 million.

Mm-hmm. For him to go do something else or put him on the pregame show and let him make 17 million bucks to do the pre-game show and let him make 17 million bucks to do the pre-fodels. game. Yeah, but it's sunk money. Like, what are you going to do? Like, it's, like, that can't be the way you decide. I think you can either say, and maybe use that as a motivational tool. Like, Tony, we need you back.

We need you on your A game next season or you'll be on the pregame show, you know, like whatever, you know, but, but it's not, I mean, what are you going to do? If you think you have a better option, why would you not go with that option? And CBS is like the least wacky network in terms of like big personnel. moves. When Sean McManus was running CBS sports, hiring Tony Romo and demoting Phil Sims was the craziest thing he ever did.

They got the CBS jackets. Talk about like buttoned up, you know? I mean, they're the most traditional. Absolutely. Very upright. And it works, by the way, at least in the short term. It worked. Like it did. Now, David Burson's running CBS sports now. Would he come in and just be like, you know what? We have to

make it change here. Yeah, it's true. And again, I think the quality thing is fascinating because like you and I know this. The people that watch a lot of football know this. People tweeting know this. Does America know this? America's like, you know what, Tony Romo really just leveled out after that first couple

big years. Do people care? I would say it for the, I listen, I mean, Tony Romo is obviously just like an icon for so many reasons. But I don't think that the average, I think to the extent that there are people out there who don't know this,

I don't think they care that much about Tony Romo. I would guess. I'm not basing this off of anything, but he's got kind of a forgettable voice. And if his content's not great, his name is significant. But like, if you, if you found the, if you found a, you know, a pollable group of people who, A, didn't care or didn't notice that Tony Romo had gotten worse, I bet like 201, they'd be like, unaware that Tony Romo is the lead play by, or lead color commentator. You know what I mean? I feel like if they were none of those people would even notice if JJ what took those games next season. Yeah.

You know? I find that all the time. I have some friends out here are huge like sports fans. And I remember a couple years ago I was like, yeah, Tom Brady, you know, calling games for Fox. I was like, Brady doing television? I mean, you know, it's just this doesn't matter to people in the same way. And I don't know if that helps or hurts. I said this question for you.

What was worse? Romo on Sunday or Phil Sims in his final season in the same chair? I think I'm going to go with Phil Sims because Tony Romo sounded drug but Phil Sims did not sound clinically alive in his last. No, not at all. When I was reading the rundown before we started this segment,

I thought that you were implying that Phil Sims was going to take Tony Romo's job. And I was just like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Not that bad. Yeah. Phil Sims is of that generation of ex-player commentators who we only ever knew as a commentator. Like the sort of, right?

I mean, he played in our lifetime. But I never like. We're on Super Bowls in our lifetime. But I don't, but maybe because I didn't start watching football until high school. I only ever knew him. Like I only ever had my only image of him in my head was in the jacket. You know, it was like, do. And he was like a lot of those guys back then.

I was a little bit perplexed by his, by his status because he was, because I didn't know him as a, as a great player. And he wasn't never a great. commentator, you know. But then there's a whole other category of the dudes like Ron Jawarski who like, you can't imagine them ever having been a player because you only, not only do you only know them in this in a suit, but like they don't look like ex players either by the year from your entire lifetime.

No. But yeah, yeah, Phil Sims, um, Phil Sims, you know, he, he made it to the end. He made it to the finish line. He did. He did. And I still see clips of him every once in a while, always makes me smile. Let's talk about Tom Brady. He was calling Eagles, Eagles, Eagles 49ers on Sunday.

Sometimes, David, the schedule is your friend. Right after Tony Romo had depressed America, here comes Tom Brady. And boy, does he look good by comparison. Yeah. It was a windy day. The offenses sucked for most of that game. So Fox goes to Brady and Kevin Burkart in the booth. And Brady is holding a football.

Always awesome to have a football available for your announcers. And he's giving a physics lesson on how to hold the ball on a windy day. Would you see it? And I talk about the point of the ball a lot. You see it from, well, I'll start this angle. This is kind of like a neutral plane. This is when the point is slightly down. When you're throwing into the wind, it has to be neutral.

If the point of the ball is up, any wind friction is going to push that ball up over the top. So as a quarterback, you don't really like that you throw underneath because naturally, That's going to point the tip of the ball up. You'd like more of a C or an inverse or a reverse C. That's how you kind of control the point of the ball. And then you can kind of just snap it off as you throw it. I was watching that. And I was like, that was so fascinating.

Yes. And we had just gotten video of Purdy pointing the ball the wrong way on a windy day. I'm reliably informed that that was not planned before the game. That was an idea that came up during the game. Yeah. Brady had about a minute to prepare for that. Yeah. Well, you can tell because he wasn't trying.

He didn't have time to dumb it down. You know, like the you throw. I mean, it makes sense more when you're seeing the video than the people listening to this. Just talking about season use. It's just the shape of the hand. But like, but yeah, he was in jargon. He was. But it was like physics professor jargon.

It was so good. Combined with like quarterback coach C arm angle and all that kind of stuff. Well, the problem is, though, if you plan that and when they certainly will next year think of different ways to sort of involve in that way, it just becomes ridiculous. Yeah. Yeah, and this is the thing. You don't, maybe, maybe Tom Brady, you know, when he first started out was too prepared. He certainly sounded like he was too prepared. But that's a sort of question that you would ask Tom Brady if you were watching a game with him, right?

If you were sitting next to him at a bar. Yeah. He's like, you know what? You just do this. You're like, ooh, just do that. Yeah. Sometimes it's better if you don't plan it, I think, with people. has to be. But I guarantee we're going to go back next season. They're going to find a way every

game to bring this in. It's just like, yeah, you see all like 94 out there with his shirt untucked. This is how you keep your shirt tucked in during a football game. They show him shoving his shirt down his pants. Yeah, but it's a, yeah, it was, it was really good. It was really good. You're right, but the spontaneous things are often the best things. It's the hardest, like, by definition. It's not a thing you can really plan for. Tom Brady's getting really good at television. Yeah. Among number one announces for me, he is right there behind

Tragman and Chris Collinsworth for who I want to call a game that I'm watching. Well, there's still enough sort of electricity to it. You don't know what you're going to get and that's part of the excitement. I always like, weirdly I always enjoy him

and maybe it feels a little bit, even as stage as it is, a little bit more engarded. I like enjoy him on the, when he pops into the studio show or whatever or ESPN or whatever right out. Does he do ESPN right after? But, like, he'll become lately.

I mean, Foxy, like, you'll see him, you'll see him in his, like, standing on the field in, like, sub-Arctic weather with his coat and the breath coming out and there, and there's always that, just kind of ridiculous dance of like, Troy, thanks so much for sticking around a few minutes to talk to us. He's like, guys, you're my, of course, I do this every week, but I like him in those moments, too.

There's something about the staged unguardedness that really suits him. But, yeah, he's very, he's gotten very good. We spent a lot of time, a lot of energy talking about his entire announcing career. And it'll be just sort of hilarious if he just sort of levels off into being one of the two best, you know, three or three best guys in the business for a long guy. It really is. I mean, look, he's done this for a couple of years now. Like, actually two years.

I looked this up this morning. Chris Collinsworth and Trayman have been calling games for a combined 59 years. Yeah. So he's made up a lot of ground very, very quickly. Mm-hmm. And I just struggle every time. Someday I'm going to spend like two hours actually thinking about this and come up with a better metaphor. The only one I can come up with is the classic overused actual quarterback on the field metaphor, which is the game is slowed down for him.

Yeah. Because if you compare him to last year and say, what is he doing better? He's doing everything better. It's all just flows so much more naturally. Like last year, he would watch a replay and he'd be like, now I will describe. the replay. And you're just like, that's fine in certain circumstances, but you don't have to do that every time with tons of detail.

And you see this year, like a replay will come up and he'll be like, you know what I'm going to do? I'm just going to kind of talk about something else. Change the subject. Pick out somebody who may not be the main character of this play and talk about them for a second. And he's not,

I don't believe up to the level of the tippy, tipy top yet. Yeah. But man, the change from. last year to this year, it's been enormous. I wonder if you asked him on a, you know, outside of the booth to describe calling an instant replay or some other like just single, you know, singular aspect of the job.

If he could describe it with the amount of detail, he could describe how to throw a ball in, in the wind, you know, like, you think he's learning the whole thing. It's just taking him a while to put it together because he learns in such a sort of mechanical way, you know, the perfectionist way. Yes, very much a perfectionist. And that's why I part bet on it. him because he's competitive. It's like he may just, he may, you know, we could have said last year, maybe he just won't

have the skills to do this at a high level. But the thing that, there are actually two things to me that argued that he would. One is that he's competitive. And he'll never say it, but like people saying, you know who's great at television? Troy Eggman. You know who's not so great, Tom Brady? That is not the kind of thing that he would accept. He just would read that and again, be like, damn it, I got to be better at this.

Yeah. He would, he would not Romo it. He would say, I got to get, I got to work on this. I got to get better at this. I wonder at some point if though, if we talk about Eggman, we talk about Collinsworth, if at some point you just, that kind of the background music is the thing with legs, you know, just having the voice more so than the, and those guys have the details too. We've talked over and over again about how it just, it sounds like a football game when,

when those two teams are on, you know? And is that vocal quality or is that just we live with them for long enough? Because Brady, I don't think has a classic TV voice. Absolutely. That would be my question about him, to be honest. I mean, he's so famous that maybe you just sort of, by the way, those pizza hot commercials are hilarious. I'm not just saying that. Like, it's just such a funny, like, dad joke that just is just perfectly executed.

Precision execution there, as usual by Tom Brady. I don't know, man. I've been thinking about this a lot. I know we talk about it all the time, but I was. watching the Manning cast during one of the wildcard games and, and, and, and, um,

I was thinking about, it somehow I had that and like, McAfee in my head and like, all this kind of stuff. And the one thing you notice about the Manning cast and Maccalfee both is that there's kind of a lot of dead air, you know, like even Maccavie,

which is like a radio show, which traditionally is just nonstop ratatat. That show will just have like, like, I'll put it on the background. Even in the background, it's like, there's times where you think that your TV's not working.

you know, or like, that it, like, your computer shut down or like whatever, you know, there's just odd silences. And I just wonder if that's just the sort of way that viewers, that were moving towards viewers working. You know what I mean? Like, it's just sort of, it's, it's all, the, the, the, the announced team is always, like, is never the primary thing you're paying attention to unless you're just a die hard X's and O's fan. And the more that you can just sort of be just a sort of subordinate element, just a just another piece. You're the manningast. You're the friend making jokes at the other end of the couch. You know, if you're Chris Collinsworth, you're, you know, watching the game with your grandpa, but you're not really paying attention all the time to what he's saying.

And then, you know, and that's not making a joke about his age, but that sort of comfort. And then, you know, it's just for some of these, it's just, it's just sort of you're doing something else. You're only tuning in so much. Don't overwhelm us. And that's what I think a lot of viewers are looking for. It's increasingly true, though during the playoffs, maybe it flips back. Oh, yeah. Yeah, I think that's true.

I mean, I think a huge part of the job in the playoffs, obviously to introduce the players, you know, and the teams to an audience. It hasn't watched a lot of games. And it just matters so much. I mean, it just, you know, again, there's a lot of regular season football. I love football so much, but there's a lot of regular season football that's just like, I'm just in front of the TV and I'm happy and I vaguely have an idea of what's going on what it all means, then you just feel like you lock in a little bit more. Like, I don't think the Eagles of the 49ers are going to win the Super Bowl, but that game

felt big and important. Yeah. And partly it is. So I said Brady's competitive. The other thing I was going to just tell you is like the Fox infrastructure, I think is part of this. Yes, for sure. That bet that they could just make this work.

Like, why did they let Troitman walk? Well, they figured that they could make Greg Olson into a number one announcer. They did. why did they put Olson on the number two team and then move Brady into the number one slot? Well, they thought they could make Tom Brady into a really good announcer. Like at some point, they've just done this over and over again. And again, I haven't talked to those guys for a really long time. There is just this absolute belief in there that they know how to do this, that they can figure this out.

Pick the right guys. And again, not to take anything away from the talent, but it keeps happening over there. big thank you to awful announcing for doing the Lord's work of documenting what happens every day on sports TV, playoffs or not. Coming up in 30 seconds, David, a new vulture has been cited in California. And it's tearing apart the carcass of a newspaper. But first, let's do the overworked Twitter joke of the week where we celebrate a gag that was so obvious that all of media Twitter made it at exactly the same time. Send your nominees to at the press box spot where they are always gratefully received. in the college football semi-final, David,

it was Mighty Indiana versus Oregon. But it was really an NFL draft pick game, at least for part of the audience. Raiders are picking number one, Jets are picking number two. Both those fan bases got to watch Fernando Mendoza, the Heisman winner versus Oregon's Dante Moore. Well,

Mendoza at halftime, had more touchdowns and incompletions. And Dante Moore had three turnovers. Yeah. It was an overworked Twitter joke right, Dante Moore already looks like a jet. Thanks to Kevin Clark, if you mentioned the Jets for hopefully the last time till April 23rd, congrats, you made the overworked Twitter joke of the week. All right, some quick ones for you.

There have been some free agent signings out here in Los Angeles. And the free agent sightings have come from a storied, storied sports department of the L.A. L.A. Times. Remember, storied is only used when your media organization is embattled. Yes. Yes, David, the L.A. Times Sports Department, once the home of Jim Murray, of Scott Osler, that's still the home of Bill Plashke, is being rated by Rupert Murdoch's new local newspaper. Mm-hmm. The awkwardly named California Post.

California Post is going to start publishing online and in print in less than two. weeks, January 26th. The California Post is definitely like, I guarantee that whoever owned that URL before they bought it was just like, it had like some mediocre news blog that was established in 1997 that they were trying to, they thought, this would be a good idea. I can make some noise, but I can make, maybe I'll go national someday. West Coast Drudge, let's do it. Yeah.

The reason there is a California Post is because, news corp smells blood LA Times has been hurt by all the usual things plus the management of Patrick Soonshong That's kind of an interesting question to ask like how much worse off or better off with the LA Times have been without Patrick Soonshan because all this stuff starts way back in the trunk here

Absolutely yeah So here comes the California Post what's the mix that we know from the New York Post? Scandal celebrities and gossip conservative politics And not least sports. Yeah. So the California Post came and took Dylan Hernandez,

columnist away from the Times, took Jack Harris, the Dodgers writer, took Ben Bolts, the UCLA writer. That was just announced. I've heard rumors that more people may leave that sports department to go work for the Murdoch paper. Mm-hmm. It's an interesting chance people from the LA Times are taking.

I mean, we've heard that the New York Post exists in its current form mostly because 94-year-old Rupert Murdoch wants it to. So what is the post-Murdoch plan or viability of the New York Post's West Coast appendage? It's funny. I mean, in so many cases that we talk about these like newspapers shutting down or being sold off, legacy media in general, it's like the best case scenario. I think I've said this a million times before, but the best case scenario is to be bought. by, if not

Rupert Murdoch, in a lot of ways, kind of a Rupert Murdoch, right? You just want a very rich person who sees this as sort of a fancy bangle or, you know, fancy trophy to put on the mantle and, like you just said, wants it to exist, right?

Because it's not going to turn into a cash cow, you know, like, whatever. You got to, it's got to, it's just sort of, it's got to be desired by the billionaire owner. As, as just, thing. But it's interesting when you, I mean,

obviously the LA Times could have much better ownership than they have, but it's interesting to think about what happens when there's competition now too, right? Like the best case in it over somebody's papers is a rich man sort of buy it and forget about it, but then, oh, shit, somebody's coming in and trying to beat us, you know? And, and, and, uh, that sort of changes the game altogether.

I mean, the idea of the LA Times having the second best sports in town, granted, has not happened yet. But that would be so a historical, so crazy that it blows the mind. Even again, even in the given what newspapers are now

and what all they're doing. Dude, the world that we live in now, it's like, I would be, I would be, I would not be shocked if they just like shuttered the sports page in a year, not because, I mean, it's such a legendary thing, but I'm just saying, like, would you be shocked if that's a way that they went? They lose a couple of people. They're like, I would still be shocked.

I mean, yes, it would be, it would be surprising. It's one of the things selling newspapers at this point. Okay, that's true. But in so much as like if you're owning, like, yeah, you're right. It depends on how invested in the bottom line ownership is, right? Because if you do own it as just like, I want to be the guy that owns the L.A. Times, all you got to do is publish the front page every day, you know? I mean, we've seen that sort of stuff like the Washington Post or like whatever.

It's just like it's the name is what matters and the content matters seems to matter. less. And yeah, I mean, I don't think, I don't think it'll happen. But like, you know, if those numbers tick, if you lose a handful of people and the numbers tick in the opposite direction for a year, nothing would surprise me. Yeah. I mean, I still think Bill Plashke is the most popular writer at the paper, the entire paper. So it's like, as long as Bill Plashke's there, you've got a, you've got a sports section. But man, it's just like, this is not like, you've lost people already. You know, you've lost, you know, a lot of people who've gone on to other jobs and now like, oh, I don't know, it's depressing. Anyway, good luck to the California Post.

I want to talk to you about a few Trump things. Dylan Byers reports that Tony DeCopal, who we've been talking so much about here at the press box, landed an interview with Donald Trump tonight. Jeremy Barr of The Guardian adds that Trump will be doing a pull aside. after touring a Ford plant, doesn't this kind of sound like the old sidel that... It's a sidel. That's what I was just thinking of. Tony DeCopal is doing a sidel with Trump.

Mm-hmm. I think walk and talk is the political term for this, but that made me smile. Yeah. Speaking to Trump interviews, last Wednesday, Trump brought four writers from the New York Times into the Oval Office for an interview. Yeah.

This is the same Donald Trump that doesn't, not like the New York Times and in fact just filed a $15 billion defamation suit against the Times. The Times said that the journalists were with the president for roughly four hours

which included a walkthrough of the official residence and parts of the West Wing with Mr. Trump. We saw him looking out the window at that at that meeting the other day to show where the entrance to the new ballroom was going to be. He just, it's, Trump likes to give tours. I think that much is a given.

There was also a, an off the record call with the president of what Columbia of Columbia that happened with and then Marco Rubio and somebody else came into like join and J.D. Vance I guess came in to join him on the call but then but all this was off the record. It's so weird. This is like ignoring the reality TV cameras and the journalism equivalent right where you just have to conduct that international business on a phone call where people who are in the room who are promised not to say anything about the contents of the call or whatever. It's unbelievable for like a for like a that kind of again, I would totally trust the New York Times reporters if they say this is off the record that's truly off the record.

And it was probably done for show to some extent to, you know, to show to give a little, you know, quote unquote background of Trump doing his job real well or whatever. But like. But a call with the head of state. Yeah. I mean. It's usually pretty delicate, especially a head of state that Trump's been insulting like he has Gustavo Petro. Yeah. It's true. You know what interested me about this? Tell me if I'm crazy because I'm just taking the outsider perspective. When I, when you look at the story, like the lead story that came out of this. Hold on. Let me pull it up real quick because I just totally failed to do that.

Did you see, by the way, how the time initially played it where they were like, we have interviewed the president, watch the space? Yes, I did see that. Let's use that. Sorry. Yes. I did see that. And then when it finally was compiled, the headline is, this is a rule of three, Brian. Two hours, comma, scores of questions, comma, 23,000 words, colon, our interview with President Trump.

Subhead. Four New York Times reporters pressed Mr. Trump about a range of topics in a nearly two-hour interview. Here is a transcript of their conversation. Could there be a less. newsy way. I know they filled out the home page with stories about the specific things and use the quotes in context. But like, isn't it weird that they got all this access and the lead is we got an interview? It's like this is like Donald Trump, the Playboy interview instead of like, instead of like Donald Trump like has a has a cold or like that, you know, whatever. Like it's like it

just feels so just sort of unmoored, not from reality, but from like news. It's just the existence. It's just the existence of this interview is the news more so than... I thought it sounded very podcasty, to be honest. Yeah. We got so-and-so. It doesn't matter what they said, but we got so-and-so. And in the term, in podcast, I didn't think about that, but you're right. And in the podcast comparison, it's, you do that because, I mean, you're, you're preaching

to the choir, sort of, right? It's just like the people who care that you got, you know, that we got whoever on the press box are people that likes the press box, right? And you would, but you would only come to the press box new if we broke some sort of news in the interview and then put that that got out there on social media. You know, somebody cut a clip of it. It's just a very weird framing for the whole thing. It is very, by the way, the most interesting part of the interview may be that Trump sat for the interview. That is, that is arguably the most interesting part.

Though I did read the little bit of the transcript and David Sanger, veteran reporter. I just loved how he just kind of guided Trump and set him up. He's like, you know, Xi Jinping over in China must have been pretty impressed. Yeah. By what those operators did, getting Maduro. And he said, oh, yes, he was impressed. And then, well, what do you? Why wouldn't Xi Jinping do the same thing with Taiwan?

Or like, oh, boom. Yeah. Good question. No, you get, but that, I mean, listen, that's too any, that's an even smaller slice of the audience. People who were impressed by the, by like, their journalistic chops in this, there is a lot of that. And you, and that, that is very interesting. But it just seems strange that you would just be like, it is podcasty. It's very modern. We got Donald Trump two hours with the president.

Yeah, whatever. Coming up next. Speaking of the Times, a big story yesterday, six bylines on it about the Pentagon using a plane to bomb the alleged drugboats that was dressed up like a civilian plane. Mm-hmm. And there are laws. I'll read from the Times here. It says the laws of armed conflict prohibit combatants from feigning civilian status to fool adversaries into dropping their guard, than attacking and killing them. That is a war crime called Perfety.

Did you know that Perfety was not only in journalism term, but also a war crime? No, I had no idea until I saw this. I think I did was Perfety trending briefly yesterday? For the first time in history, Perfity was trending. Congratulations to Perfity. No, I was not aware that there was a war crime under that name. I didn't either. Got anything to say about Scott Adams, the Dilbert created?

who just died? God. Age 60. Why are all my heroes so problematic by the time they die? Scott Adams was, listen, I mean, Dilbert was a very, I think the great success of Dilbert and people who weren't part of our generation won't even understand. But it was a sort of, I think there was a lot of first to market in its success. You know, it was that it came, it jumped onto the, the, the, the,

the funny pages at a time when when there was very little interesting going on there and very little new going on there i mean listen there was a there was a very specific period of my life where like i opened the newspaper straight to the the comic strips specifically to read first calvin and hobbs and then delbert like that was they they were like the only two interesting things happening on that page at a time where like the comics page was like still a going concern by news like we like we would be if we had this podcast then we would be having segments about newspaper editors making decisions about the comics page you know it was like that was one of the things that brought people in people are mad that whatever Nancy

wait no Nancy is I was gonna say I was gonna say oh Kathy but what Nancy Drew is not at Nancy Drew was that was the my daughter's reading Nancy Drew books now oh that's great no but like that one of these apartment 3G like whatever comic strips is like like no long like we dropped it and people are outraged you know like but this this would be a thing that we talked about um also sort of at the i mean not he wasn't there's obviously millions of these of these compilation books of garfield and and peanuts and everything else out there but like the dilbert like compilation books were a big thing like the far side was a big thing that might be the other one of like interesting comic strips that i'm missing not a strip Calvin

and hobbs isn't that what i said Calvin and hobbs Calvin and Hobbs was the one Oh, but before that. It was Calvin and Hobbs, Calvin and Hobbes and Dilbert and then the far side, but the far side had been around for a long time. But those are the only things that were interesting. Dilbert's not like incredibly funny, but it was certainly like one of the,

like I said, first to market, as far as a new comic strip in that space, newish comic strip in that space, and also just that style of humor, you know, just sort of muted, irreverent office humor

that would come to be a much bigger phenomenon, obviously. Okay, so I was going to ask you about that. So he became a trash person. He was revealed as a trash person in the last act of his life. I was going to ask you about that because there's a lot of workplace television shows like The Office. Were there workplace comic strips? Hesides.

Humorous comic strips? I mean, you wouldn't count Dunesbury in that cat, put Dunesbury in that category. That's a good one. I mean, they're not like. shoe a workplace comic strip? I was actually thinking about that. Like, yeah, I mean, I don't know. Once they're animals, does it really count?

There's a lot of people who have absolutely no idea what we're talking about right now. There definitely were. Was Kathy at work sometimes? I think so. She wasn't? Maybe she went to work on occasion, but usually no. Did U.S. Acres count? Was that a million?

No, sorry, that was not a military. How about when Lucy put the psychiatrist is in? is that uh yes i think i think that does count all right it's time for everyone's favorite workplace comedy it's time for david shoemaker guess is a straight pun headline yeah our last pre-holiday headline or pre-shoemaker return headline i should say about the sacking of a premier league manager was that's a morin today's headline david comes to us from juan archela it's from the colin coward show aka the herd Do you remember the headline that I dubbed the most perfect headline ever?

In the history or that we did it on this show? The history of my personal headline reading. Is it headless man in top? Headless body in Topless Barre? Well, I was not around in the psycho 70s of New York. But when we lived in New York and Martha Stewart got convicted, I went about the daily news and the headline was curtains. Oh, yes. Just a certain, not the best headline, but the most perfect headline in its simplicity.

Well, Dolphins head coach Mike McDaniel got fired recently. I want you to think about dolphins, the animals, as you ponder. What was the herds strained pun headlock? God. Blowhole, uh, mantle, aquatic mammal. A feature of a dolphin is a fin. Huh? So.

Oh, finished? Well, yeah, it was actually just fiend. Oh, L fiend. Yeah, okay. That's great. That's perfect. We've shrunk it down to its smallest component size. Love that.

Good job people who write graphics for the herd. Mm-hmm. That's a tough one too because you don't read it necessarily as like the, you're reading it as Finn, right? You don't quite get why you're saying, but it's, it's brave. He's David Shoemaker on Brian Curtis, but it's a magic by Bruce Baldwin. Quick announcements.

I created a new email address because by email address overfloweth. Forgive me if you've gotten a response to an email from October the last two weeks. If you want to hit me up, hit us up, pressbox ringer at gmail.com. Oh, nice. To news source. Follow us on Instagram at the press box ringer at press box ringer, excuse me, where I have been tweeting out lots of Truman Capote vintage magazines that David and I will be using

for our January issue. We've even got a cover, which looks so cool. I'm still working on it. I know, but dude, it looks, again, David unfinished, you know, unfutts with cover looks better than most people's fudst with cover. So anyway, congratulations on that. That's going to be out in about a week and a half. We've also put in some future issues into, put some future issues into production. February issue is going to be with Amanda Dobbins.

April issue with Sean Fennessee. So much fun stuff coming up here at the press box. David, I cannot wait to see you next week with more Luke Warrant takes about the media. See you then, David. See you later, Brian.