The Press Box - 'The Press Box': Let The Past Die (Ep. 404)

Episode Date: December 22, 2017

The Ringer's Bryan Curtis and David Shoemaker discuss John Skipper’s resignation as ESPN president and the future of the company (03:00), the backlash to the mainstream acceptance of 'Star Wars' (24:00), and objectivity in sports journalism (38:20). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

David, we're going to talk about the split between Star Wars critics and fanboys, but tell me, what was your greatest fanboy moment? I think the fan boys, the fan boy shine has worn off steadily over the years. I think the most excited I've ever been. I'm not sure I believe you, by the way. Did you just tell me you got a British Bulldog T-shirt for Christmas? All right. So the most recent fan boy moment was Dominique buying me a wonderful vintage British Bulldog T-shirt, along with one of those great vintage. vintage WWF glass drinking mugs with junkyard dog, one of my all-time favorites on it.

Really worn off that shine, yeah. My dad taking me back in the day, my dad taking me to the first Tim Burton Batman movie, I think. I absolutely, my buddy Andrew was there. We were both, you know, geeks of various varieties, both in the comic books. I probably more so than him. And I wasn't even the world's biggest Batman fan, but just the idea of one of our little comic book icons, making it onto the big screen in a sort of serious way was, I mean, I melted. My list would be going to Star Trek First Contact.

Remember that one? Yeah. Wasn't me, but seeing a fan in the front row in full Star Trek uniform when the pre-show entertainment broke down standing up and holding a tricorder up to the screen to see what was wrong. Also, using hard-won interview time with George Lucas to ask how Indy had survived in the fridge after the nuclear explosion. But I think the greatest,

actually our greatest, showing up at a slumber party in high school, we're like 14 years old. I brought the Royal Rumble Super Nintendo cartridge. You looked at me and said, are you a wrestling fan? One of the seminal moments of my life. From that fan boy moment was born the Press Box

on the Ringer podcast network. This box is the media podcast where you're not allowed to use the phrase, follow the money. We are Brian Curtis and David Shoemaker. David, got three topics for your inspection and amusement. First, we're

going to talk about ESPN after the resignation of President John Skipper, what it was and what it will be. We're going to go another round on what we talk about when we talk about Star Wars, The Last Jedi. And finally, should you cheer in the press box, the actual physical

press box, not the ringer podcast with a minuscule audience. plus David a new feature. This is a bit of a surprise to even you. Random message board poster makes a good point. Well, let's start with number one, which I call the Skipper 2. That's a Gilligan's Island theme song reference for anyone under the age of 100. I appreciate that.

Monday was one of those amazing days in sports media. This person has created everything that exists here at ESPN. for us. And he did it because of how he cares about minorities and their causes. That was Dan Lebitart on ESPN Radio on Monday getting emotional about Skipper's exit from the company. I'm going to guess that a lot of people who read the ringer and who watch ESPN could not have named John Skipper for you if you'd ask them, if you'd ask them to identify who that was. And yet he had a profound impact, maybe the biggest impact on the next. that everybody watches. He resigned citing substance addiction problems. And I think the first thing I wanted you to talk to you about is just how weird this whole story is because, and I don't

mean that in any sinister way, but just when something that surprising happens that abruptly, we're all sort of left groping around in the dark to try to understand it. Yeah. What did you think? I think your last point was dead on. I think we see that with a lot of the topics that we've discussed from NFL rules to, well, we're going to talk about, you know, Star Wars fan reactions later on. I think that, you know, in so much of the world that we live in, the hardest part in wrapping your mind around something is the inability to fully wrap your mind around something, right? To have, to have, to be in a, you know, media world where we feel,

having an immediate take is so urgent. But to not have the context, not have the full breadth of information to make that take, almost ends with even more extreme reactions in both directions. You know what I mean? Totally.

It's just really, you know, we just need a context. I was talking about this in my wrestling podcast the other day. You need a context to, you know, to really form an opinion of something in this day. And I think that's necessary. It's not a knock. I mean, I think you really have to know,

you have to have realistic or, you know, expectations to be able to form an opinion on something. But you also have to have a context. And, you know, Skipper's resignation for all of these, you know, all of these resignations for various reasons over the past year, just came as like such a weird shock. Absolutely. And people say, you know, you know, how dare you let your mind drift to an unsavory place? Yeah. That's sort of journalist's job. Yes. Is to let your mind drift there, even if you wind up finding, you know, facts that can lead you to completely the opposite conclusion, which listening to Jim Miller and John Aaron on the Deich podcast seems to be the case, at least as we talk here on Thursday

afternoon. And also, you know, him leaving, there's just a lot of, there's just a lot of questions you wonder about, just purely from not only journalistic interest, but just human interest, which is, you know, what is the nature of this struggle? How long has it been going on? what was the moment that he felt it affected his job so much or somebody else felt it affected his job that you just couldn't do what is, by all accounts,

a dream job anymore? Yeah, and, you know, I mean, not to jump too far ahead, but the very notion of it being a dream job, I mean, if this had happened, I mean, it has happened in the past, but if we were talking about this story even a couple years ago, we'd be talking about who's going to replace him and the, you know, thousands of executives lining up for this job because it is for so many people a dream job.

We're obviously in a different landscape now, not that a million people won't still want this job and take it eagerly. But that said, I mean, to reference the title that you gave this segment, I mean, my experience growing up with Gilligan's Island was that I watched a lot of it because it was the only thing on TV, right?

I mean, I had like an eight-channel TV in the kitchen, so when I was sitting at the table, Gilligan's Island was on like three quarters of the time, and I watched a lot of it, not by choice, but sort of by necessity. and ESPN has sort of gone from a place where it was the only game in town, you know, and it's this towering behemoth to a place where, like,

everybody on Twitter is taking pot shots at their programming decisions. Absolutely. And that's why it's so hard to compare presidents of ESPN, presidents of the United States. Yeah. Boy, it's like, is there a difference when one inherited an economy that was in the shitter? Yeah. And one inherited a recovering economy.

Yeah. I mean, just to name a very recent example, but, like, it's very hard to compare what you. you were doing when ESPN was just printing money. Uh-huh. As opposed to what you have to do now when you are, you know, I think fighting for survival may be overstating, but fighting for your place in the media landscape certainly is not. Yeah, and fighting for legitimacy within the, you know, Disney power structure too.

You know, I mean, it's absolutely. There is certainly, you know, Disney is for many people, we're going to talk about Star Wars in a bit, and there's a lot of other examples. Disney is for a lot of companies the most wonderful place to be you know and but I think that for you know

for ESPN that you could imagine a more benevolent ownership situation for them where they're not where they're not put under pressure to cut salaries and to make you know make X number of dollars profit every year

partly because of their own success yeah you were floating us for years how dare your profit margins be reduced it's funny I always think I always, I find myself of the weird position a lot of time, again, mostly in conversation rather than in print, kind of defending ESPN because some of the criticism of them is so ludicrous. Absolutely. And or just comes from such a terrible dark place. Yeah.

But this was one of those years where I thought, I just don't understand what the thinking is here. They're not making a mistake that I can wrap my mind around. They're making often contradictory mistakes. Yeah. That I'm just like, what? Like the Robert Lee thing. The barstool thing, the way the barstool thing was handled before and after the fact, it was, I found myself this year a lot of times going, I just don't get what's going on here.

I don't know what the, I don't know what the plan is. Sure. I mean, there was definitely, I mean, just a cloud of confusion around a lot of that stuff, not just getting to the details of the various stories as you often do in your writing. But yeah, trying to piece it all together in one kind of coherent whole. it was incredibly difficult. One other aspect of making this story hard to talk about beyond not knowing a lot of information

is that this is a big legacy, right? It's like when someone leaves a job like this, you're often sort of trying to get your arms around, oh my gosh. This guy did so many things, so much of the way we talk about sports and watch sports was influenced by this guy, which we should also include our boss, Bill Simmons here, right?

which he talked about on his pod the other day. With you? Yeah. A couple of notes I think that are interesting to me about the Skipper era, especially as we kind of see it now in 2017. One is there's this real literary quality to ESPN. You know, it's like I mentioned, I remember thinking about this when I was writing about Jamel Hill, which is that ESPN is in, you know, a fight, as we said, to kind of keep their

place and expand their place in this world. And they have turned largely or maybe even mostly. to print journalists. Yeah. Or is Jamel called herself a former journalist? To do this. When you think of Tony and Mike Wilbon, Michael and Jamel, Stephen A and Skip previously. Yeah.

Pablo, Mina, Lebitard. Yeah. Right? It's like all people who came from print. And that struck me as a very skippery thing, being a print guy himself, working with ESPN MAG, working with Rolling Stone, that those kinds of people, rather than pure broadcast. were really attractive to him. Sure.

I think that, I mean, I think that speaks to the way that, you know, the media landscape has evolved to some extent. I mean, you have people coming out of college now with the dream of being, you know, Bill Simmons, to name one, you know, or to be, and the on-screen version of, whatever, be Michael Wilbon or to be Skip. Lord knows, there's a lot of wannabe skips around the Twitterverse right now. But yeah, I mean, it is. It's, you know, I think that there's, for,

for all of the things that Skipper will be lauded for, demonized for for his time there. I honestly don't, I mean, I have so much respect for that, for the way that he took writers and evolved them into the modern media world. Because those are the people, you know, who thought most deeply about the product. It's not just entertainment. It's also, there's an intellectual side of the whole thing. Yeah. And I think there's also a literary quality to the literature that comes out of ESPN. Sure.

good writers. Yeah. Remember when ESP in the magazine like 10 plus years ago wasn't very good. Yeah. It looked really hot and it did all these like

wild design things and then you read the pieces and went yeah. Yeah. You know, a lot of the pieces were real duds. Yeah. And something kind of amazing happened

which is they got a lot of new great writers and the old writers that they had got a lot better. Mm-hmm. I mean, really like Wright Thompson is like five orders of magnitude.

Right. Then he, as a magazine writer, then he was 10 years ago. Sure. I mean, it's not even close. And I say that with no disrespect to him. He's just, he is just on a different planet. Uh-huh. And I feel, and then you look at the web, you know, and you look at Barnwell, and you look at

Zach Lowe, and you look at all those guys, a lot of the NBA writers and stuff like that. It's like, there's just another, they are very good at words. Yeah. And they don't necessarily, as we saw it Fox Sports, you don't necessarily have to be good at words. But they have decided they wanted not only do that, but be good at it. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I think part of that just comes from the younger generation of writers, too. I mean, speaking specifically of our former co-workers, Barnwell and Zach Lowe, you know, we've talked before about sort of fans becoming journalists, fans becoming experts.

And I think that there's, I think that, you know, being fully, you know, coming up in this, you know, internet world of bloggers and serious journalists, but also hot take, you know, thinkers on Twitter and stuff like that. I'll take thinkers. I like that. Yeah. I mean, it's just to, I mean, to care enough to offer those guys contracts, you know, I mean, when they didn't have to. It says a lot about ESPN. I think another thing is we talked about, you know, the old ESPN, we were just printing money, where money is like, I just imagine an ATM machine where you put your card in money, just flying out like a slot machine. I imagine that a lot, yeah.

That when they were in that position, they spent on a lot of money on what TV people call quality. I love that word in television because it just correctly implies that everything else is crap. But spending money on things like 30 for 30, spending money however briefly on things like Grantland. Yeah. You know, like that was, if you have a lot of money, how are we going to spend it? Sure. Or are we going to spend it? Yeah.

And I think there is something to be said for spending it on and stuff like that. Yeah, no, I mean, you look at, I mean, I guess I can look right around and we can speak, you know, about The Ringer. But there's a lot of other sites like the Ringer, like Grantland was, where. where, you know, if you're starting small in this world of these, like, new media behemoths, like BuzzFeed or whoever else, there's a lot of people who will make the case, fewer and fewer, but people make the case that quality wins out. You know, if you don't have the biggest bankroll, you don't have whatever, then, you know, you go with good writing, with, like, quality video.

Quality is going to win, quality is going to be our voice. Right, that's a catchphrase of this new world. But it's impressive that ESPN is sort of staking their claim on, quality winning out when they are also the behemoth, right? I mean, for so long, they didn't have so much direct competition. But even in the face of it, you know, in the new media landscape, they're, they still largely, you know, put their bet on quality. I remember when they had the, maybe it was the first round of layoffs at Sierra, me as

somebody like Jeff Perlman was like, you know, they've staked their future on Stephen A. And I'm like, I just don't actually think that's true. Because if you just look at everything on there, there's kind of one, Steve, Stephen A and one Stephen A style show. Yeah. And really, like Dan Lumbertart is like Stephen A. Maybe around the horn, if you really want to be like everything else. Nothing else exists in that, in that aesthetic, right?

I mean, that's just like that's not, that's actually not the way they went. They purposely went the other way. And whether every show, you know, is Masterpiece Theater or not is not what I'm saying. Sure. But it was not chasing that particular, particular rating point or whatever you want to call it. Sure. I mean, there were, there have been many articles over the years on the sort of, pardon the, PTIization of ESPN and sports and news television in general. But, you know, I mean, at the heart of PTI is two very thoughtful writers coming together to, you know, be a sort of outsized version of themselves for 30 minutes on TV every day. I feel PTI is one of those things that sound like Siskel and Ebert.

If that had come along in the early 80s, people would have been saying, oh, my God, sports writing's dead. It's reduced to two guys arguing on television instead of writing their columns. Right. And now we think of that as like, oh, thank God, a literate, smart sports show that doesn't take itself too seriously.

Yeah. You know, it's like, it was all about timing because it came along when we thought the world was going to go in. It's like, oh, there's this new model. I think the other thing, and to that point, I think the other thing is his reign, especially the later years, is going to be this real end of the quote unquote old ESPN.

Yeah. Just so much of that, Network's identity, for better or worse, has gone away and has kind of been rebooted. You know, they're stuff like Berman. But even, you know, going away, their biggest star, the oldest star. Sure. But then even, look at ESPN radio. Just a radio.

One of the mics left. Uh-huh. Colin Coward left. Yeah. executives leaving. It's this time of incredible change. Well, and there's also the acquisition of the Fox Sports Regional affiliates, right? So we have no idea where that's going to go. But that feels both sort of like a step back into the past and a step forward for them. I'm very interested to see how that whole thing shows up. It feels like it's doubling down on old media to an extent. And the question is whether you can translate old media into an OTT thing and redo those contracts and stuff. I just feel I said it's on Bill's Pod the other day too, but I just feel ESPN is just haunted by nostalgia right now. Every time Scott Van Pelt, every time the cameras come on, somebody goes, not Dan and Keith. Yeah. Not the sports center I grew up with.

Yeah. And they say that with everything. And of course, it's not fair at all. It doesn't make any sense. Of course, ESPN does not want to be, and cannot be 1995 ESPN. But it's a testament to how much people loved and loved that network. And we're so connected to that network, like almost nothing else on TV that they just, every time something changes, they're like, oh, part of me has died, you know? I mean, nostalgia is a tricky thing, right?

I mean, people, every time somebody wants to criticize a certain cast of Saturday Night Live, they always go back to the early casts, right? And who knows if you've even watched that? SportsCnery is Saturday Night Live. It is. I thought about that in my piece the other day. The nicest compliment you have is to say you're not as funny as the guys that came before. Yeah, but SNL, I mean, this isn't even a measure of credit or anything.

SNL can recover from that perception by putting together a solid season, right? Sure. ESPN can't put, I mean, there's not even a concept of a, solid season of 24-hour broadcasting nonstop with no weeks off, no days off for an entire year, right? If ESPN got 50% better overnight, would anybody even notice? They'd still be stuck in the nostalgia. Yeah.

It's not Dana Keith. Yeah. Where's Boomer? Where's boomer's catchphrases? I think the final thing, too, but his legacy, and again, this is a very partial look at a giant, body of work. But I think he leaves, by leaving when he does, and even if he left in three years, he leaves the key question on the table, which is, what are we in 2017 and what do we do now? Like, how are we

going to make money? You know, if these cable subs are going away, or at least a lot of them are going away, what the hell do we do now? And that to me is why his departure, especially under these circumstances, was so both shocking and sort of heart-rending. We're just like, oh, my gosh, right? We're in the balance. You know, he was standing at that forum with his, you know, all his employees the other day going, you know, the future's not scary. It's going to be great. We're in this together. And now he's gone. And the question, though, is not gone. And it's actually the key question going forward. Well, who knows how many more layoffs or how much more budget cutting they'll be in the future for whoever takes his place. You know, if there's not a ton, then Skipper obviously played

a role unwittingly or not of just sort of the hatchet man for whoever follows him. But if you had to make a bet on Skipper's replacement, would you, would you think, Do you think we're going to see a giant rollout of just huge modal changes in ESPN over the next year, the first year of the new reign? Or is it just going to be sort of, you know, polite applause and whoever it is takes that mantle and then just continuing down the same road until the media world figures itself out? I think the changes will be more subtle than crazy and dramatic. Right. Still a profitable company. Yeah.

Still a company that is the leader in its field. Absolutely. You know, it's not, it is not dying. Yeah. Or it is dying in the same way I'm dying because I'm middle aged. Right. It is not going to go away. And I think, I think you're likely to see smaller things rather than big things with the next person, whoever he or she is.

David, it's time for our next segment. Normally at this time, I'd be giving you an overworked Twitter joke of the week. This week I want to try something. different. It's ESPN related. Let's go. I call this random message board guy

makes a good point. Okay. So we talked about Ryan Rissillo. He announced this week that he's leaving ESPN radio. He's going to do a podcast while he plays out his contract.

He's going to move out here to L.A. and write screenplays. It's kind of exciting. Orangebloods.com my favorite source of information about Texas Longhorns football and the latest news on Waterberger had a thread on this

in which a lot of people said, that's it. That's the last thing I'll ever listen. He's gone. That's the last thing I'll ever listen to on ESPN. A poster named Pied, P-I-E-D, like the Pied Piper, I guess, all lowercase, by the way. He said, these threads always interest me because it seems that everyone says they never listen to ESPN until one of them, anyone personality leaves. And then it's, that's it. He or she is the only one I listen to. And I think that's so true because people are always quitting ESPN

or rather they're always announcing they're quitting ESPN? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I don't watch that network anymore. And then Rosilla leaves, that's it. I'm officially not watching, but wait, you said you were out on ESPN. Yeah. And now another beloved anchor has left. Yeah.

And you're actually really out on ESPN? Yeah. Which kind of makes me doubt that anyone has actually quit ESPN. I like to complain about it. They like to sort of dramatically announce that they've quit ESPN. Mm-hmm. But I don't believe they actually have. And I believe they're sort of hanging around.

And by the way, the other way you kind of fake quit ESPN is all I watch are live games anymore. No, you don't. No, you don't. Bullshit. No, you don't. Yeah, if the only thing you're only interaction with ESPN, I find it, I struggle to believe that your only interaction with the entire megalith of ESPN is Ryan Rusillo's radio show. That's the only thing I come in contact with, terrestrial radio. Yeah, if that's true, then you, why would you even bring it up? Anyway, all right, so thanks to Pide of Orangebloods.com, you are this week's random message board guy who makes a good point. Before we move on, David, to Star Wars and talking about the critical reaction, let's pause for a quick break.

Podcast fans, we stepped up the ringers video production in 2017 with weekly videos like Cousin Sal's Best Bet, Slow Newsday, NBA desktop, no BS, table reads, director's commentary, and Captain Morgan's Makebelief Casino, as well as our video podcast. in many movies like Take Hunter, Ringer 360, and Claytheism. Coming in 2018, we got new stuff. A weekly video mailbag from Mills Simmons, Mallory out of a hat. I'm very intrigued about what that could be, and a slew of other new digital shows. Don't miss anything.

Just go to the ringer.com slash video or even better, please subscribe to our channel at YouTube.com slash the ringer. All right, David, topic number two, and I call this episode two, the rift between critics and fanboys, Awakens. Did I get the agreement there right?

I'm not sure that I did. So we talked a little bit about Star Wars reacts last week. We were, when we talked just at the beginning of this rift between critics giving an incredibly high score and fanboys saying, or at least fan boys who'd bother to vote on Rotten Tomatoes saying that, which may have been fake. I feel we entered this weird sort of third realm since that conversation. took place where people are saying, I like Star Wars because it made the fanboys mad. Yeah.

Like everything, not only do I like the movie, but the specific complaints fanboys had that it blasphemed Luke Skywalker. By the way, minimal spoilers in the segment. I think almost no spoilers. That it blasphemed Luke Skywalker, that it threw away all the mythology I loved from the original trilogy from my childhood. This is why I like the movie.

And I'm going to kind of retcon my opinion about the movie to respond directly to the things you don't like about the movie. Did you notice this? Am I imagining this? Yeah. I mean, I think all of the reaction post the actual release of the film has been reactionary in its way. Yeah.

It's reviews talking to other reviews. Sure. I mean, I think that there was an initial wave of, of fans, fanboys, diehards, whatever you want to call them. And I use none of those terms in any sort of derogatory way.

Just to clarify. Two fan boys. This is a safe space here. But it's fan boys rebelling against... Ooh, good Star Wars reference. Yeah, fan boys rebelling against the the acceptance of Star Wars into the mainstream via these national reviews, right?

Ooh, I like it. Keep going. Your favorite indie band just had a number one single. so now you have to have to have a take on how they've let you down. And then, yeah, I think that there's absolutely a sort of low-key reaction to those. That's what you're speaking of. It's the sort of, in some ways, it's like the rejection of the movie by certain set of Star Wars fans is evidence or is taken as evidence that the Last Jedi was deeper or more artistic in a way that maybe wasn't clear on first, at first blush because art is hard, right?

Art is difficult. Art is difficult to process. And the difficulty that people have in processing the movie or their dislike for it can be seen as that difficulty. Yeah, it makes certain critics, make people in the critical sphere think, oh, this movie is actually, it's just, it's art, it's complex, it's difficult.

Rebelling against the mainstream of acceptance of Star Wars is an amazing idea. Yeah. I love that. The whole journey of fanboy is fascinating to me, Remember that classic S&L sketch where William Shatner was on the dais and all the Star Trek nerds were asking like really complicated questions and he didn't know the answers to it? I sort of think movie making has now flipped where the guy, the nerd in the audience is now the guy on the dais. Oh, yeah.

That guy had right. That guy now controls the means of production in a weird way. That's like Ryan Johnson. That's certainly J.J. Abrams. Yeah. That happened. But specifically, I remember with the prequels, fans, even. Even fans who hated the prequels were mad at the critics because they were defending this whole idea that Star Wars movies were important.

Even if they'd messed it up this time, this is an important mythology to us. And you're sneering at something that's really important to us. And now you're saying that the opposite thing happened is you're hailing these. And critics are like both of the last two movies, all three, if you want to throw in Rogue One. Yeah. You guys are saying this great, but what do you know? No, no, no, no, no. you're wrong, you know, because you like it, then we're going to, we're going to bristle at it.

I think that's a really interesting idea. Yeah, no, I mean, I think it's, I mean, I can't help but think of our co-workers, Andy Greenwald and Chris Ryan, who saw the movie a few days before the release, recorded an episode of their podcast before the movie came out, and they were both, and they are both real fanboys for the Star Wars movies. And they were everything else. Yeah, and they were both over the moon about it. but the news cycle

sort of lapped them in a certain way because they had no idea that fans were going to react the way they did by the time the podcast came out it felt like they were defending the movie against all of its detractors right and they had no idea these detractors existed when they were when they and then they find themselves

in the position of having to defend their point of view you know in a way that they I'm sure you know I'm sure they wouldn't have if they had known it was coming they would have been more prepared they would have couched their praise in a different way. Andy had to record this disclaimer.

Yeah. This podcast was recorded before fans freak the fuck out about this movie. Also, by the way, I would love to blame Andy Greenwald for part of my reaction to this movie. I remember an episode of The Watch

before The Force Awakens where he's like, guys, let's all remember that Mark Hamill can't act. As it turns out, Mark Hamill was not a huge part of the Force Awakens, shall we say?

And the whole time I'm watching Mark Hamill with his hands sort of clutched behind his back. Like this guy doing regional Shakespeare. I love Mark Campbell, by the way, too. I dearly love Mark Campbell, but this guy and kind of brooding like he's in his, you know, guys playing Hamlet for the first time in his life or whatever. I was like, oh, my God, all I could think about was Andy.

Yeah. That's all I could think about. I totally colored my reaction to this movie. Anyway. Yeah, no, I think that's definitely true. I think that what's really at stake. You could also tell me that's totally irrational, by the way. No, I mean, I think that we're all, I mean, to a certain extent, we're all, we're all deeply

affected more so than ever in the past by the things that we read, the things that we listen to, and that affects often in an inverse way, the way that we consume movies like Star Wars, The Last Jedi. I think that in it's the volume of writing and of podcasting and of YouTube videos about the movie before it came out. I mean, someone tweeted, many people tweeted, I'm sure, but I saw one tweet that really hit home, which is like, it turns out it's really hard to make a movie that's better than the thing you have been imagining for the past two years, right?

And I relate to this very, very strongly as a wrestling fan. And this is, pardon me for this brief diversion. No, please. But pro wrestling is live every week on TV. So fans complain about it all the time because they, because it's being literally being written in real time, right? Some of it's being improvised on the screen in front of you, but you know that after every episode, they go back and they write the next week,

and you feel like if you scream loud enough online, then you can affect what's going to happen on TV. And it never lives up to your expectations because in wrestling, in the wrestling world, we call this fantasy booking. The things that you imagine that you want to happen on the next show are never going to happen, right? You can always imagine something better than what they pull off, or just different than what they pull off and you're wedded to your own ideas, right? But I think that we saw this in, I saw this happening in the most recent season of Game of Thrones

where the time between the two halves allowed fans to engage with this. Again, it wasn't being written literally in real time, but it felt much more immediate. And fans feel this stake in authorship. And we're seeing this now in the Star Wars movies where there's so much media surrounding it. And one movie comes out and then the clock starts for the next movie. And fans with so much background that know everything, the nerd on the dais, as you were, you know, described it earlier, they feel such a stake in the authorship that they are almost necessarily going to be disappointed by the product. A slightly related point to that.

So I sort of feel fanboys and critics have switched places in our culture now. Part of this is just the generational thing. Like our peers are now people that write about culture and think about culture. But when I see those people talk about Star Wars or Game of Thrones, like you say, their tone is. is I love what they did with the Luke Skywalker storyline, or I felt this storyline was totally unfair to Aria Stark, right? Yeah. That's a way a fanboy would think.

Yes. That is not a way a critic would think. But then when I actually hear the bona fide fanboys in the Ain't It Cool Message Board, their reaction is the movie was great or the movie sucked, which sounds like the way a critic would think of a movie. Well, the other shift in that, I mean, in a similar direction is the fan boy used to be, you know, this movie is awesome or not awesome, right? I mean, that was sort of the defining line on message boards and that kind of thing.

The thing that you saw a lot during Game of Thrones and now during Star Wars and, like, I see a lot during wrestling, is the sort of scourge of, quote, unquote, bad writing? Like, when, is there any Star Wars movie in the past where, like, you would, just an average fan would have been like, yeah, it was okay, but it was just, there was a lot of bad writing? No. No, I mean, it's just this weird. It's such a weird meta way to think about. Yeah. And it goes to what you're talking about, that we all think. there's this story that we're all in on this story.

Yeah. We kind of understand how the story was cobbled together. Sure. In a way that we probably actually don't understand. Yeah. I also read, by the way, the actual critics, this kind of critical Stockholm syndrome. Don't you think that like if you write about culture right now, a huge part of your life, professional life is going to be Star Wars universe, Marvel universe. Yeah.

And at some point, you start to, whether you mean to or not, to judge these things less as are they good movies, then are they acceptable entries into an endless series that are better than they might have had a right to be? Yeah. Don't you think? You know, I think that's absolutely true. My mind immediately goes to like what the previous status quo. And I don't know if like, you know, I mean,

does your average film, did your average film critic in, you know, the 70s or the 80s necessarily think that Robert Altman was a great director? Or did you just, you know, you were just obligated to engage with Nashville as a work of art? You know? I mean, there is certainly a lot of Stockholm syndrome. Don't get me wrong. And you want to find the best or you want to find the best examples in, you know, of what we are currently countenancing as art, you know. Yeah.

I found, so I did find a time capsule example, I think, rather accidentally the other day. I was just randomly reading Roger Ebert reviews of Pierce Brosnan movies. As one does. The Pierce Brosnan Bond movies particularly. And at this point, we're talking to late 90s early odds. Hebert has reviewed 10 plus James Bond movies. He's kind of stuck in the same cycle we're talking about over a longer period of time. And there was just this real weariness about it.

Like, this is a fine James Bond movie. There are some villains. There are some gadgets at three stars. Yeah. And you could see the weariness setting in. Yeah. On the one hand, you're reviewing such subtle differences, right? The raise of an eyebrow could affect your star rating.

It's like the Casino Royale. And then Casino Royale comes out. And you're like, this is amazing. And it's like, is it amazing or is it just better than all the James Bond movies you thought you were sentenced to review? Yeah, right. It's better than it's better than what came before. I also think, we talk about a third way of criticism. I have to think, I want to stump for her before we move on a fourth way, which is a fanboy, a Star Wars fanboy, who says, I thought this movie was mediocre, kind of me.

Not because it blasphemed Luke Skywalker. not because it took my childhood and flushed it down the toilet because it was kind of shoddy filmmaking because it was mediocre filmmaking. I want to be the fanboy who talks like the critic, right? Like, what if I didn't think the acting was that great? What if I thought Ryan Johnson had some great ideas

but they weren't always executed so perfectly? What if I had thought of having like an OJ-style low-speed chase in the middle of the movie was not really the best decision? Like, that was just kind of weird and didn't really make any sense. Aren't I entitled to think that and not like, oh, you must be mad about Luke Skywin. I'm not mad about that. I'm mad about

the filmmaking. I said, and I think, you know, it's funny because I think when you look at fanboy now, they know lots and lots about the grammar of movies and they understand moviemaking at this very deep level, right? And when I see their complaints, to me, they're more about filmmaking than they're about anything else. Yeah, I think that makes me feel better about myself. Yeah, I was going to say, you might have a vested interest in suggesting that point of view. I mean, I think that there's, I think that a lot of what we, a lot of what we read and what we interact with, both on the review side and the fan side and the, you know, double switcheroo review of the review or review of the fanboy.

Yeah, I mean, there's a lot of, there's a lot of confirmation bias in, in, you know, disliking the movie or liking the movie or presuming things about the reason why other people dislike the movie, right? you go on Star Wars Reddit and you can find a million people having various minor quibbles about the movie and they all come out of that message board even if they completely disagree with one another over the quibbles thinking that we all agree on this on why this movie was bad and also liking the movie less than when they started right and but you I think what you're saying is a similar thing people do read you know if you say I give that movie a solid B minus or something like that then people will just assume not necessarily

bad motives, but assume that you didn't like it for the same reason that everybody else online was perceived to have not liked it. I think that's right. I think that's totally right. Toping number three, David, I'd like to call yes cheering in the press box. Tim Layden of Sports Illustrated wrote a piece on Wednesday, December 20th, in which he talked about how sports writers and sports broadcasters both have become more partisan. You know who they're cheering for. He writes, the voice of sports media has changed. Increasingly sports journalism. journalists have abandoned neutrality in favor of writing or broadcasting or podcasting in the voice of the fan. Good time to remember that we work for Bill Simmons.

Yes. Who has done that for a long time. But can I start with what I'm sympathetic to in the story before? Please. Please do. Before listing some major and minor quibbles. Number one, I think fandom in the hands of a sports writer is pretty boring. After Bill became a star, we went through this whole period where you had to write a

mandatory 5,000 word piece about why you were an Ohio State fan and talk about dad and mom and grandpa. That was incredibly boring after a while. I was just like, knock it off. You know, few people are interesting talking about fandom. Number two is that fandom is as much a part of cynical Twitter self-promotion as anything else, I think. Hey, we're all together, fam watching this game. Yes. Here's my crazy reactions or whatever. Guilty is charged, by the way. And another thing that I thought Layden brought up that I thought was right was there is this sense that I think's kind of poisonous now that unless you've been following the Dallas Cowboys or San Jose Sharks or whatever since you were eight years old, you are somehow other people, especially national writers,

are not allowed to talk about them. I won't understand them. I've seen this on college message boards for 20 years. Like, what does that guy know? It's like, well, maybe he does know something. Yeah. Just because you're a fan doesn't give you anything. So anyway, that's the sympathetic part. Here's what I'm less sympathetic to. He says, Layden writes, The traditional voice of the sports journalist or any journalist is a neutral voice. Detached from a connection to the teams, players, and coaches here she covers. The buzzword here is objectivity. See, I just think that's an a historical claim.

I don't think sports writers have been what we'd call objective. Even most of them have been objective. I think there have been these varying levels of fandom for as long as there have been sports writers. Sure. And I mean, I remember when I was writing about Bob Ryan a few years, ago, and he was like, I wrote all my pieces from an overtly pro-Seltics point of view. I wasn't rooting for the story. I was rooting for the team to win.

Yeah. Right. It's Bob Ryan, the Boston Globe. Peter Gammon's was doing the same thing with Red Sox. Part of what has happened here is something that was covert and hidden behind newspaper ease or Sports Illustrated ease has now just is now overt. You just know a lot more about the people that are writing. and that to me is the interesting question. It's like, is it good that we now know all this stuff?

Right. When and before we didn't know all this stuff? Yeah, I mean, you could probably argue it either way, but what you're talking about is the sort of end of the editor in a lot of ways. You know, I mean, it's like that if there was an overt fandom in a column or a gamer, you know, 15 years ago, presumably that would be edited out. But it's not just that there's fewer editors and there, you know, maybe their motivations are skewing towards an embracement of fandom.

But it's also just the existence of every writer on Twitter and on social media. We know, and on podcasts, so we know these, we know our writers as humans in a way that we didn't in the past, you know. And it's, it's impossible to engage on Twitter, you know, watching a Sunday slate of football games and omit the fact that you're, you know, a diehard Bears fan or whatever. Absolutely. And that is another thing he misses, which is we are in this journalistic landscape where you just know a lot more about every writer of every stripe. Like my first job was at the New Republic. And the idea that there was this handful of political writers who said we are mostly sympathetic to liberal causes. Yeah.

If smart and, you know, you know, kick ass and all that other stuff too, right? Now, you pretty much know, like Chris Hayes is kind of the new model of a political person, right? Like, we know exactly what he thinks. We know who he's, quote, unquote, rooting for. but this is not just sports writing. This is the world of journalism. And I don't know how you talk about this question without considering that context. Sure.

Because it would just look really weird for sports writers to be the last quote-unquote objective journalists on planet Earth. Yeah, no. I mean, and I think that in some ways, I mean, this is obviously the piece we're discussing is written from the point of view of a journalist. I think from the point of view of a fan having your journalists in the trenches with you, whether or not it's for your team, but to kind of, this relates directly to the Star Wars conversation we just had. To self-identify as a fan gives you credibility with a huge section of your readership, right? You're not, you know, an alien, you know, force come down to just, like, cover the concept of American football or whatever it is, you know, whatever sport it may be. You are, you came up just like they did.

You have been watching forever. And you care deeply about the sport because that's your, you know, your origin story. is whatever team you were watching when you were a child. That's something Simmons figured out. Yeah. That objectivity was really weird. Yeah. And that in some cases it's great because somebody's just so brilliant.

But in other cases, it just seems like you're talking to someone who is somehow inhuman. Yeah. And doesn't feel the same things that everybody in a 65,000 seat stadium feels. Yeah. I mean, objectivity and impartiality are separate things, right? So, I mean, and certainly some of the things that Layton's talking about that you're talking about exhibit a lack of both of those. things. But it's possible to put your biases on the table and to still write an impartial piece covering whatever sport that you're writing about. So that's the thing he also doesn't distinguish between us. There's a fan and then there's a Homer.

Homer is a person who's apologizing for everything that the home team does. Homer is Fox News covering Trump and saying, oh, but look at Hillary Clinton's approval ratings. That's a Homer. The kind of people, the kind of quote unquote partisan people that get into sports. writing are more likely to say, I know how to construct this team better than the general manager of the team does. Yeah. Like, it'd be the equivalent of a Fox News guy going, Trump's fucking everything up. Yeah. I could go in there and fix it.

I could show him, I could show him how to do X, Y, and C. Mm-hmm. That's sports writers, right? Like, that's partisan sports writing. Yeah. People that more or less got into sports training because they just think they're smarter than smarter than the people running the team. Yeah.

I mean, that's, and that's sort of the nature of fandom. I mean, a lot of the sort of Halcyon glory days of sports writing, those writers were in a lot of ways instructing their readership about what had happened or about the, you know, when they had time and space, the intricacies of what the viewer was watching. Now we're in a world where writers are tasked with basically like keeping up with the fans because the fan base, you know, sports fan base is by and large, especially the ones that are most active and responsive on Twitter and places like that. are in many ways, they know more about the product than the people who are writing about it, or as much, you know? And it's important to, I mean, it becomes important to express your own fandom just as a means of, you know, kind of proving your merit.

Absolutely. I mean, that's the thing is everybody's got to have a schedig. Yeah. Well, I mean, I mentioned this to you before we started going, but just specifically to the press box. I mean, one of my, one of the most incredible moments I've ever had as a member of the media was at, I believe it was WrestleMania 31 at Levi's Stadium in Santa Clara. Okay. And I started off the event up in the press box.

It's a, you know, it's a really, you know, wonderful spot at most of these football stadiums. It's a, it, you get to hang out with people like you. You get to, you get an interesting bird's eye view. you get maybe a little buffet. But we were there, and it was just a room packed with wrestling writers, mostly online wrestling writers. And, you know, I was sitting among, I was sitting on the front row, just right overlooking the field.

And the first, I believe it was a battle royal, or a ladder match that started. It was a multi-person match that started everything off. And, oh, yeah, yeah, it was, yeah, the Intercontinental Title ladder match that Daniel Bryan won. And he's like the most beloved wrestler in all of wrestling nerddom or whatever. But right behind us where it was a wall and standing against the wall was the 49ers PR team. And they were, you know, just kind of standing back, watching, making sure our experience was going, okay, whatever.

When Daniel Bryan won, every single writer in the press box jumped up and started screaming with joy and high-fiving each other and hugging. And you could not, I mean, it was the most, because everybody writing about this, everybody has, task has taken on the mantle of wrestling writer is they're doing it because they're fans nobody's making millions of dollars off of this thing right um and the PR team was just aghast like you could they were stricken just the notion that that this group of writers was actively cheering on one side of this of this match was beyond their comprehension and uh which is insane because just to think that they i mean that they you know it's pro wrestling i mean that that that's that's says all you need to say, but they're not used to saying that at football games.

You know, I mean, that's their point of view. And it's funny to think that, you know, quote-unquote real sports have followed in the way of pro wrestling. I can't believe Ray Rado and Tim Kawakami weren't, you know, cheering and hugging each other after the 49ers scored a touchdown in the old days. I just never see that before. I think another thing that's missing from this discussion as the way Layden sort of laid it out is that talking to somebody who plays. holds this off well, right? So, you know, where in this piece is Mina Kimes talking about writing profiles of the Bennett brothers? Yeah.

And also writing and also covering being a Seahawks fan. Where is Robert Mays talking about being an NFL writer and also rooting for the bears? Yeah. We've seen that this example happens a lot. And when you sort of say, like, the people I'm going to talk to are Mike Wilbon and Jayadande and, you know, some professor guy. Like, I just think there is a very lived experience happening of the. this right now. Sure.

And people who, you know, are very conscious of it. Yeah. And think about these questions. And I also don't think that's in the piece. Like, I'd love to hear from them. Yeah. It's sort of like, you know. And David Chewaker is a Daniel Bryan fan.

Somehow managed to cover wrestling. It's like a middle-aged person who starts a new job and they walk into an office and everybody's wearing jeans and tennis shoes and T-shirts and they're wearing a suit. And then they're like, oh, shit. And the next day they try to come back and like the clothes the young kids are wearing or whatever, you know, with a skateboard over their shoulder or whatever. it's a whole different

it's just it's a different world now and everybody's kind of coming to kind of come in grips with it at the same time when I think about this new world of sports running I just want to kind of like think about like what's a story we haven't gotten because people are rooting too much you know what what's what's the news we've missed yeah as a sports writing commentariat you know and also related one would be what faith or trust has the audience

if they ever had any lost in sports writers Like, I'm not sure that I don't think there's any evidence of either one necessarily. No. It's just like, I think it's one of those things where it seems. And again, I'm probably more on the old world side of just in my personal, the way I personally write. But I don't know that there's been any evidence that the new way hasn't worked out just fine. And then anybody really cared at the end of the day. Yeah.

I'm not, I mean, I can't. I struggle to imagine that if, like, Grantlin Rice were writing today, that there would be a big audience for his writing regardless of whether or not he, he, you know, successfully pulled off the voice of God. And he was a biggest home where there was. Right. That's the other thing, right? I mean, he was, he had all his favorites and, you know, got him up as much as he possibly could. And I think that's funny, too.

It's like, it's funny. When I read just your random newspaper now, guy writing in old school newspaper voice, like half of beat writers have decided, okay, I'm going to kick ass. make break news, piss the team off. And the other half of decide I'm going to do that like 5% of the time. Most of the time I'm going to explain the decisions of the GM to you. Like he made this decision and my job is to because he talks to me off the record all the time. My job to you is explain him to you and defend him kind of subtly. And here's what you don't understand, dear reader, about what's going on.

That's even more insidious because it's not. To me it is, yeah. Yeah, because you're not laying your biases on the table. And that guy, I don't know if that guy's rooting for the team. or not, but he's certainly covering the team in the most homerific way possible. Sure. Yeah, I don't know. It's just one of those funny things because it drives old school sports writers up the wall.

It absolutely drives them up the wall. And by the way, I think that's the kind of secondary thing of this. And I will not put this thought in Tim Layton's head unless he claims it. When I've talked to veteran sports writers, one thing that makes them nuts about the new era is current sports writers are just afforded all these things they weren't afforded. Yeah. Feel free to cheer for the team you want. Feel free to write one billion words online. Yeah.

Feel free to not have, you know, to not have any cutoff point. Feel free to never go to the locker room. Feel free not to pay your dues for 10 years of going to 160 baseball games a year. Yeah. And, you know, when you and I are old men, if we're not already, that's going to drive me up the fucking wall too. Oh, yeah. I'm going to be so mad that some whippersnapper got to do something I didn't get to do. Yeah.

So, again, not put that thought in his. head, but I think a lot of people said when they react to Bill or where they react to the new world is, I didn't get to do that. Yeah. And why should you, I was playing under a different set of rules. Why should you get to play under this set, a new set of rules? Yeah. No, I think, I think that's totally true.

I mean, in a totally different way, it's a similar, it's a sort of, you know, sideshow mirror version of the Star Wars conversation we had because it's, in that case, it's fans looking at a fan like Ryan Johnson and saying, why do you get to do that? Why do you get to make this movie? In this case, it's a writer looking at the same way. But, you know, this is how we interact with the media now. That's it for this week's edition of the press box. David, we'll be back next week.

A special year-in press box. Yes. Where we will conspicuously not be handing out best-of and worst-toff awards. You say so. But we'll somehow be talking about all the things that happen to reporters and media members and podcasts and everyone else this year. For David Schuemaker, I'm Brian Curtis. See you next week.