The Press Box - ‘The Press Box’ — Picture Me Trollin' (Ep. 360)

Episode Date: October 5, 2017

The Ringer's Bryan Curtis and David Shoemaker banter about ESPN's reported development of a 'Pardon My Take' TV show (02:30), the Overworked Twitter Joke of the Week (17:30), Cam Newtown's butt-headed fumble (20:00), and what Tucker Carlson and Clay Travis have in common (33:45). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hey, it's Bill Simmons. I wanted to tell you about Black on the Air. Hosted by the one and only, the great one. Larry Wilmore, even though he's a Lakers fan, I still like him. I think he's talented. But he has all kinds of guests on, from Neil deGrasse Tyson to Al Franken to Bernie Sanders.

You name it. They're coming on. Pop culture, politics, newsmakers. And then at the beginning of every podcast, Larry does a little riff about whatever is either sticking in his car or things that he's enjoying. Although he has been enjoying much lately. the way the world's going.

But Larry will riff on anything. And then he has guests on, it's great. If you liked everything else that he's done, comedy-wise, if you love this Comedy Central show, you will love this podcast. It is a medium that he has built for. It's called Black on the Air, hosted by Larry Wilmore.

Get it wherever you subscribe to your podcasts. David, ESPN gave the pardon-my-take-guise a late-night TV show. What would it be like if ESPN gave us a late-night show? Are we positing that you and I are awake as the cameras are rolling? Yes, most nights anyway. And the answer cannot be we're both checking our phones to see if our significant others have put the kids to bed. We're watching wrestling or footballing. Exactly.

Leaving the parenting to someone else? It's a really hard proposition, right? Because it's just there's nothing about modern media that really conveys adequately to television. But forget the struggle here. Forget the meta media take. Who do we want as the band leader? Like, we need a musician who has a name, but would be past prime enough to do it.

Do you think we could get Rascal Flats? No. Oh, no. They're still selling out football stadiums, man. I honestly, who would be the, I mean, you know, the joke would have been Hootie and the Blowfish five years ago, except now Darius Ruckers, a mega star. I was going to say, speaking of selling out stadiums. Yeah.

I think we'd love the animal segments with Jack Hanna. I think we'd both really genuinely enjoy that. Absolutely true. I think we'd have tons of wrestlers on like Arsenio did back in the 90s. Oh, man, there was nothing better than that. The most life-affirming thing for me was to see the ultimate warrior on the Arsenio Hall show. And you know what we both really want to do? I think share the responsibility is give teary monologues about the necessity of keeping the Affordable Care Act.

This is the press box on the Ringer podcast network. Howdy. I'm Brian Curtis, editor at Arlarge at the Ringer. He's David Shoemaker, Ringer, our director, and host of the Masked Man show. On the press box, we do hardcore media analysis, David. Now we actually don't. Today's show, we're going to tackle three topics. First, we'll talk about how ESPN has staked its future on two men, Big Cat and PFT commenter.

Second, Cam Newton talks to a beatwriter like it's 1950 or perhaps some other year in the prehistoric past. And finally, what do Clay Travis and Tucker Carlson have in common hint? They've trolled their way to the top of the media food chain. Absolutely. And we also have an overworked Twitter joke of the week. I can't wait. We have a segment. I don't even know what it is.

This is great. This is going to be amazing. Number one, David, ESPN's pivot to podcasting. On Wednesday, a young up-and-comer here at the ringer. Let me see if I get his name right. Brain Curtis. Cortis, I think. Cortis, there we go.

Reported that to the stars of the podcast, pardon my take from the Barstool Sports Empire, developing a late-night TV show for ESPN 2. And this follows the official announcement this week. finally the ESPN assigned Katie Nolan herself a digital sports star. So what play is ESPN making here? What's happening? That's a really good question. They, I mean, they clearly see value in this new media.

I hope you're making air quotes when you say new media. You can see me and you can see that I can't. And though in these kind of new media phenomena, right? I mean, there's, you can, setting aside their respective gifts and everyone that you've mentioned has many. I think what's pertinent to ESPN's conversation is that Katie Nolan had like viral videos that would break out when she, during her time doing garbage time at Fox, right? And, uh, I think in the case of pardon my take, I mean, it's just like you can just see, I mean, these, this podcast exists as much in the ether of Twitter as it does actually on the podcast.

They get incredible guests to come sit in a tiny room and just sort of take the piss out of themselves, you know? I mean, it's, it's what they've been able to do on that podcast, um, is pretty incredible, but I don't think that, like I said, it's not about how they're going to be on TV. It's about taking a thing that keeps coming up in board meetings and dragging it onto the TV screen. I think that's a good way to put it. And I do think, like, when I think of that podcast,

I think of like a picture of them sitting with Jim Harbaugh that appears on Twitter is as big as anything that happens on the podcast. Because you're like, oh, my God, that happened? Yeah, and again, not to take anything away, but it sort of encapsulates it more, you know, like when when our boss Bill Simmons is a podcast with a famous person and post an Instagram photo, it's just sort of a teaser for the podcast or in some ways sort of diminutive. It's just a, hey, look, here's a photo of me and a famous person.

But there's something about those photos with, you know, famous sports writers, with famous, you know, with football players sitting in a dingy room with just like a bad iPhone photo that just sort of like it just speaks to exactly what the show is in a way. And I mean that is the greatest possible compliment. Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. Peter King. I mean, Peter King, you know, is it like that's, it just seeing.

Did he do a Tom Brady photo when he did that big pod with Brady after the Super Bowl? I think they did. I think they did a pick. Yeah, it just looks like on a snowy road, I seem to remember. Yeah. They have their brand down so well. It's funny thinking about sports television and where we are in 2017. So one thing ESPN has done is like we're in this existential moment for sports TV.

Like, what is sports TV going to be, if anything? And who do we put on it? Like, who's going to save us? Who's going to lead us into this rocky cord-cutting future? Yeah. And what was so funny to me is the first wave of ESPN people that they tapped to do this were not TV people. They were all print journalists who they then turned into TV people like Jamel Hill or Michael

Smith or Skip Aylist or Stephen A or we could just go on and on. Like the vast majority of them. From the very beginning. From the very beginning. And this is like their crew, Pablo Tori, and now there's another kind of generation of those people coming up. And this feels like the second. wave. Weirdly belated, I think, because I think like Comedy Central and places like that have

already figured this out. Like get funny internet person on television. But sports TV has weirdly been sort of slow to do that. Well, I mean, I mean, Nolan's been on Fox for a while, sort of, sort of. But who else? Like, who else could we even put in that category? Yeah, I mean, it's sports TV in general, obviously, I think that there's a sort of territoriality, right? I mean, and not to knock the television industry or to try to take on that gigantic subject. But I think you can look at the ESPN and Fox Sports Podcast feeds and see that that's not a priority for them necessarily.

I mean, ESPN is, I mean, their biggest stuff is radio shows turn into podcast or PTI or 30 for 30 most recently doing some really good, you know, like high-level podcasting. Yes. But it's sort of like reappropriating existing properties because there is there is podcast space in a very vague, vaguely defined way out there for us to occupy. It's the other, it's people outside of the mainstream. They're doing this really well.

And, you know, part of my take is, I think, you know, probably the best example of that. Whether or not they're going to be able to harness it is, is the real question. And Katie Nolan's even more interesting because she was doing a regular TV show on the competition for a long time. But nobody really knows if she's going to be doing like garbage time redux or if it's going to be, if she's just going to be hosting, you know, sports nation or something in six months, you know, anything is possible. And I think what they choose to do with her will say a lot about how well they understand, you know, the media landscape out there.

The press release was super vague from ESPN, projects upcoming, which she made fun of. I heard that she's going to do a weekly digital show perhaps on ESPN, digital. That's the new media category you keep talking about. And then be, make guest appearances. across ESPN on actual TV shows. But I think you're hitting on one of the challenges here, right, which is dragging, and you mentioned dragging them from the digital realm onto TV. And we know that that's weird.

And that doesn't always work. And these shouldn't be vastly different media at this point in history, but they sort of are. And you're taking somebody who's really, really good at something and saying do something totally different. Well, I mean, listen, this is, I mean, you know, we talked previously about Jamel Ho. and Michael Smith, who you profiled Jamel really wonderfully for the ringer not too long ago. I mean, their show, his and hers, which predates the six, started off as a podcast. In some ways, it's a good training ground to see not just if these, you know, if the personalities can hack it,

but also if there's, you know, the chemistry there or the, you know, the material there to fill out a show. So, you know, there's a track record there. I think what, I think the distinction between the hosts of the six. and these new hires is really interesting to me because this is the biggest moment, the announcement of hiring these people or when you broke the story about the part of my take I is possibly getting a show

and hiring Katie Nolan, that's like the biggest moment on Twitter that ESPN's going to have for this year, probably, right? I mean, the, you know, outside of a story that might break, but as far as it... Not my story, but yes, that, getting those guys is a big deal for them. Yeah, it's a giant moment.

And yet we're talking about a 1 a.m. show on ESPN, too. That's once a week. Yeah, and in Katie Nolan's case, yeah, right, a digital show and maybe making occasional appearances, you know, making occasional appearances on other existing shows. I'm not sure. I mean, sure, you have to give them a chance to see if they have their sea legs when they get on ESPN. But it is, you know, it's interesting that they don't have a, they don't have a firm plan. in place, or in the case of, you know,

pardon my take, a better pit plan in place for really marshalling this talent. And they might. I think it's like when I heard when I was reporting this, that the show is coming together really quickly. Those guys can do bargain basement, we know. They also do like three shows a week, which is a lot of shows.

So they're probably pretty nimble at like let's be funny on short notice. We also have characters we inhabit. Another funny layer of this is it ESPN, if you watch it during the day, when you and I don't do all that anymore because we're actually working and stuff is really about Twitter. Yeah.

Like the TV shows are about Twitter. Like here is a funny thing that happened on Twitter and I'm going to make like a light joke about it. Yeah. And that happens on basically just about every ESPN daytime show to one extent or another. Sure. Yeah. I mean, the crawl used to be, you know, slightly stale injury reports, you know, back in our back in the day. And now like I was watching this morning and it was, you know, Dan and yogurt, like breaking Dan and Yogurt drops Cam Newton as a

sponsor. You know, I mean, that's what's the, that's the most urgent, the most immediate, the most reactive thing is the, is, is what ESPN television is based on, which makes it even weirder that you could, you can't figure out exactly how to convey a successful podcast or a successful video show, digital show, sorry, onto, you know, your daytime programming block. Sure. But it's just like we figured out that highlights don't work anymore. They don't have currency past like 10 minutes.

Sure. But so what we're pivoting to, to use that word again, is to, you know, to, you know, Let's talk about something that's on Twitter, which is what we're actually doing all day, not on ESPN, right? We're looking at Twitter like, oh, look at everybody making jokes about this, you know? Yeah. I mean, it is a weird way to think about like, this is how we embrace the digital world. What they really should be pivoting to, if I, to take your argument and run with it are YouTube reaction videos, right? I mean, we should find the best people in the world at watching Twitter memes and, you know, and just laughing or crying or just reacting hilariously in whatever way.

We need to find the perfect person to watch the Cam Newton press conference and just break down. I would watch that. You're right about the guys getting reps, I think, on podcast. Podcasts is the new reps, as I say in football. This is how we get good together. Sure. This is how we get our chemistry. By the way, you and I will never be promoted to a television show.

Let's just get that out of the way right now. The other thing about this, I thought was so fascinating was ESPN is hiring its critics. Part of my take is so big now. Yeah. We forget that the title was just a gag on ESPN. Then they sent a cease and desist to. They sent a cease and desist, a very, you know, very unfunny cease and desist letter, which, of course, then, by the way, the best thing you can do to a fledgling podcast is get mad at it if you're the big media company because they just post the letter. Yes.

Which PFT commenter did. But so ESPN is doing this thing of like, okay, here is our critic. Here's the critic. And these guys are pretty jolly critics, these two, by the way. Here, and they interview Adam Schaefter and they do all that stuff. But here are our critics. Let's just hire them and put them on our network. Yeah.

That's funny. I mean, that's weird, right? Yes. I mean, but there's a long tradition of it, right? I mean, it's not the best way, I think, when you actually look at the, you know, at any big business like ESPN, if you want to get the attention of the person who actually has hiring power, the ultimate hiring power, the top of the food chain, you do something that gets their attention.

And usually that's a negative thing. Drop an handful on their head. Exactly. You do a big takedown of their biggest product and people have to pay attention. Simmons did this with the SBs. Yes. Back in his old Boston site gets hired after that. Yeah. It's fun.

This is sort of like Colbert when he first started, if Fox had just hired him and put him after O'Reilly. Here's real angry take guy. And here's funny, here's like parody of angry take guy. Yeah. And they just follow each other. Imagine the handoff. It probably would have been pretty seamless. I'm not sure that there's that much of a distinction.

I think Colbert's would have been better. Yeah. Kevin, I've been funny. I just, it's sort of like that thing people post on Twitter with Spider-Man pointing at Spider-Man. Yes. But I would have kind of liked to have seen that in real time.

Because now I feel like everybody's in on the joke. But there was it, you know, now, especially part of my take, they have Schaefftera on. He knows, you know, to poke fun at himself. And it's like, okay, these guys are, you know, this is all part of a game. But there's a sort of raw moment where you can, your own parody and you don't really like it. I remember O'Reilly was sort of uncomfortable with at the beginning. That's the moment I want to see captured on television.

That's really interesting. And the part of my take crew is, I mean, not to veer off into another direction, but I think that it's safe to say that they are the most self-aware aspect of the Barstool Sports Empire. That's very fair. And separating them out, I think, it'll be interesting to see how that affects the flagship. I know, and not that they're going to stop doing their podcast, but just drawing a more distinct line. I mean, I could see a world in which ESPN just outright buys Barstool Sports within six months or something like that. Whoa. But I could also see a world in which, you know, barstool sports does something that is separate from the podcast that tanks the part of my take show within six months.

Ooh, those are all amazing scenarios. I think that there's a lot of, there's a lot of, there's a lot of potential for Twitter excitement in our future. There's got to be some low grade to high grade fear within Bristol that, okay, what are these guys going to say? even if these two that they hired in particular are the sort of the safest elements of barstool, somebody suggested me they're doing this through Embassy Row, the production company. Yeah. Who did garbage time, by the way. Right. Who did garbage time, men and blazers. That adds a little layer of insulation for ESPN because then if anything happens, like it's just, it's an outside thing. You know, it's an outside the house. I'm sure this is

going to be, these shows will be taped and heavily vetted. Yeah. You know, before seeing air, I don't think it's just going to be live mics. Here we go. Yeah. I don't think. But that's kind of a funny layer to this, too. You know, another show that we didn't mention the start as a podcast was Jalen and Jacoby. And then went to radio and then has some TV presence.

Also occupies a late-night time slot. But the reason why I bring it up is because, you know, these shows that air at 1 a.m. are rarely live, you know? And I think it's fair to say, like, people are going to have to approve this before it goes on. And so another interesting thing to watch is just like how reactive and how creative they can be, if they have to tape eight hours before the show goes on. Yeah. How wacky can you be on tape as opposed to live, right?

Because that's part of the charm. You have to lean a lot more on humor and a lot less on, you know, actual reactions. Speaking of leaning on humor, how's that for a transition? You were a professional. By the way, I realized I've also said layer on this podcast, another layer to this. Just throw me out of the studio if I say that again one more time. Anyway, David, it's time for our overworked Twitter joke of the week. Oh, my gosh.

I can't wait. I do not know what this is. We did last time every so often a joke. joke is just out there about the news that's just so obvious that all of media does this dog pile. Every single person on Twitter. And how can the monoculture truly be dead, right, if we're all making the same jokes? Well, you remember last week, David, when Tom Price, Donald Trump's secretary of health

and human services was found to have indulged in some private plane travel at taxpayer expense broken by Politico. We don't always know what constitutes a scandal in the Trump administration, safe to say, but this actually constituted a scandal? It's mind-boggling that this was set aside as something so dastardly. Trump reportedly berated Price for two hours. That was kind of a funny New York Times detail before Price resigned, so to speak, quote-unquote, resigned. Well, David, if you tweeted at any time during this saga, the price is wrong.

And if you included the scene from Happy Gilmore where Adam Sandler says to Bob Barker, beloved host of The Price is right, you won this week's award, joke of the week. Congratulations. Really, really great work, everyone that did that. By the way, and speaking in which, I actually have a nominee, U.S. Congressman Jamie Raskin, Democrat from Maryland. Here's his tweet, if you spend more than a million dollars on illegitimate private

and military flights and offer to repay less than 60 grand, the price is wrong. I thought that was going to be a congressman. I thought that was going to be a you might be a cabinet member joke. Yeah, he's going to join the blue collar. comedy tour. But isn't that great? I think you like that a congressman just went there. Our pal Rim Brown also tweeted, update, your favorite and least

favorite political writer both tweeted. The Price is wrong. That's true. It was just so big. Hey, it's Bill Simmons. I want to tell about the ringers gambling podcast. It is called Against All Odds with Cousin' Sal, and you're not going to believe this, but it is hosted by Cousin Sal. The biggest degenerate gambler that I know.

He's such a degenerate. He has three other degenerates that he calls the degenerate trifecta, and they break down every conceivable gambling thing you would ever want to gamble on. They even take you to Captain Morgan's Make Believe Casino, where Sal makes up props on all kinds of things, sports, pop culture, you name it. You are going to want to get your gambling advice from these guys. Cousin Sal, he's been a staple on the BS podcast for the last 10 years. So good that we gave him his own podcast. Check it out against all odds with Cousin Sal.

Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. topic number two, David, and I'm going to call this Cam Newton's butt head fumble, not butt fumble. See what we did there? That's good word.

Jordan Rodriguez of the Charlotte Observer Ask Cam Newton a question about Devin Funches. Poor Devin Funches, his name is now wrapped up in this for eternity. And the routes he's running, and this was Cam's response. It's funny to hear female talk about

routes. It's funny. Charlotte is one of your hometowns. And the Panthers are one of your 18 favorite teams in professional sports. Semi-accurate, yes. So what was your first reaction

when you heard all this nonsense? Oh, man. As a sports connoisseur of a certain age, I when something like this happens, I think I find it difficult to gin up the outrage

that I think is necessary to engage in the Twitter conversation or whatever, you know, whatever the current. means of communication is. I do feel sad. Like it's just kind of like dull sadness

when something like this happens. Now, I think in a lot of these situations, just like, you know, moments of media outrage broadly defined, it's worthwhile to sort of like establish what the least problematic version of events is, and I think in this one it's that like, Cam didn't want to be there. and shocking for her present.

And he made, he thought he was making a joke that everybody in the room would laugh at. Yeah. And he was very wrong and said something really offensive. And it got gobbled up by the, you know, by the media in a, you know, just, but in a just way that, but maybe in a way that wouldn't have happened 10 years ago. That's the, that's the, that's the, that's the nicest possible reading for Cam. I think he thought, yeah, that he was, that he was making a really immature joke. I mean, the way that the words came out of his mouth looked like he was, I mean, he grinned after he said.

It was one of those like, he was entertaining himself. He almost like grabbed his collar and tugged. It was just, it was a very, it was like bad, it was just a bad joke from another decade. But he was a joke that, I mean, but it was, I don't, I think he was, I think that it was just, just, just being dumb. It wasn't like him. It wasn't that he was, you know, deliberately out. to assail this particular writer.

Right. So that actually is what he did. Yes. Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah, yeah, yeah. If not all women who are sports writers and who dare to try to understand the game of football. Yes.

For him to think that that was an appropriate joke or whatever, subconsciously. That's the deeper problem. It's just incredible. I mean, this is, we always have the, oh, my God, it's 2017 and this is happening moment. Jeez. This is another one. There was a couple months ago, a woman wrote. a piece for her college newspaper, which is a sports writer, doing some sports writing and her college

newspaper, and wrote a piece about going to like a tennis match. And the tennis, the official at the tennis match would just turn over and call her sweetie. Like, it was just, again, talk about something that just does not seem to be of this time and place on earth. And that people at these sporting events just couldn't understand that she was a sports writer. Sure. Just could not process, like the frame, whatever frame they thought of. It's like, you can not look at her or go, sports writer, person with notepad and digital recorder is writing about sports. And I tweeted this out and it's so many responses from people who now have prominent jobs in media going, oh yeah, that happens to me all the time. That sounds very familiar.

Yeah. So I think the thing about one thing to say about this is just this is probably stuff that happens all the time. And in this case, it happened with, you know, maybe not so clumsily. But this is time that happens with the giant quarterback who's played in the Super Bowl. in an NFL press conference when everyone's paying attention. Yeah. And so it becomes an even bigger deal.

Yeah, I mean, and I think you know, word has since come out that our story, I mean, the Charlotte Observer reported it. And it's worth mentioning that the Charlotte Observer, football, I mean, you know, football cover, Panthers coverage unit is

not that far from being an appendage of the Panthers organization. So the fact that he was seemingly unfamiliar with her was just sort of mind-boggling. Appendage in terms of its presence, constant presence in the locker. Not doing the PR of the Panthers.

Well, not directly, but they're not writing hit pieces on Cam Newton. I mean, they're part of the PR machines broadly defined. Mostly dispassionately reporting the happenings of the Carolina Panthers. And allowing charlatans to be excited about their team. Yes, this is the heart of sports writing is promotion, right? For everyone, for all of us. But this writer, Jordan Rodriguez, approached Cam after the press conference. But apparently within the full view of all of the, you know, the whole media that was gathered there and, you know, said that she didn't appreciate it.

And he seemed apparently was rather dismissive of her. Now, you know, Panthers actual PR department has taken exception to that and said that wasn't exactly how it went. But, you know, honestly, I give, there's part of me that would like to give Cam or anybody in his position a pass for just like, a really terrible moment, right? It's the second moment, the follow-up when he's not aware enough to apologize for it. We're dismissive. And again, she's introduced himself to her.

I mean, to him, she's been covering the team. The fact that he didn't know who she was is sort of bizarre. But whatever, he sees a lot of people every day, but to not apologize, to not immediately, it's been, as we record this, it's been 24 hours. It could be a flash in the pan. It could be a minor story with the right, for whatever reason.

As we record this, that apology hasn't come out yet. Yeah. And that second conversation, so she winds up asking him, do you know actually who I, what my name is? Yeah. And he didn't. And according to her version of events, she said it and then then walked away. That's a whole other, I dare use the word layer again to this.

There's two things here, right? There's a sort of misogyny part of it. Yes. And then there's this part of it where. There are a lot of athletes who just don't regard sports writers as people to get to know even on a casual level. There are these just kind of faceless, semi-annoying people who are asking me questions all the time. You know, I thought of like the Russell Westbrook, you know, famously stuff, you know, when I thought of this. Because it's not, I mean, at the heart of good sports writing should be pretty antagonistic.

It should be like, you're going to ask me questions that I don't want to answer. Yes. You're going to write stuff that makes. in the paper, wherever you write, that's going to make me really mad from time to time. But that's actually not what this is and not what a lot of it is these days. It is, it's just like, you're not a human. You're just like a mosquito. Like, oh, get away, annoying mosquito.

Get out of here. You know, I don't know who you are or anything about you and I don't want to talk to you. And that's just depressing. It's funny that you mention that because in Scott Fowler's retelling of the conversation, that Rodriguez and Newton had after the press conference. It seems like one of Newton's only sort of concessions was that he should have just said reporters instead of a reporter instead of a female. Yeah, he was going to disparage the entire sports writing class, not just a particular sports right. I mean, I guess the point that he wanted to make was that like normally when he gets these questions, people don't are not.

I mean, they're asking in good faith, but they don't know what they're talking about, right? That would be, that would be Cam's point of view. That when they say, I think the quote was when he said, when they say, routes, they're really just talking about open receivers. But the point is that she did know what she was talking about. And you should assume, in good faith, that she would know what she was talking about when she asks a solid question. It sounded like she'd talk to Funchus about it.

If it wasn't an observation she made from watching the game, either way, it would be totally legitimate. Yeah. It was a totally normal press conference question. Yes. And parsing it, and as I just did it, I mean, I will say this with, you know, a little bit of self-awareness, parsing out the question. almost demeans the reporter even more.

I was watching first take this morning, and they were fully in her defense and saying all the right things. But the more that you get into the conversation, the more it's like you find yourself saying things like, like, I mean, listen, it was a really well-worded, thoughtful question that evoked something, you know, and you end up becoming the demon that you're criticizing in a certain way. Let's just, yeah, let's just lay off that.

Let's not overanalyze any question ever asked at any press conference. That's the point. They do not hold up to textual analysis. Yes, separate from all, separate from Cam's like ridiculous, terrible, you know, answer to the question. I think there's a secondary question of just like, why are we paying attention to an hour of Cam Newton's press conferences every day? So I did want to talk about that because 20 years ago, we would not have seen this. Yeah. You know, maybe we would have seen it later if a local news station had been rolling.

But one of the sort of weird sort of parts of life now in sports. media is that every press conference in every professional league is televised. Yeah. Or put online pretty immediately. Mm-hmm. Even bad ones. And like sports writing, I don't pretend to have lived in the locker rooms for decades. But sports writing is sports training interviews are really awkward.

Yeah. A lot of the time, even if they're not like terrible like this one, they're often awkward and weird and people don't want to answer questions. Mm-hmm. And now those little moments, which would have been adjudicated. Privated privately or not adjudicated at all because the athlete just walked away. Now become these huge media stories. Oh, yeah.

They're giant now. When we were growing up, this, yeah, like you said, there would have been footage of this press conference and it would have gone back to the, you know, the local NBC nightly or the NBC News sports editor. And he would look at everything and just be like, wow, Cam said that thing, but we only have 30 seconds. So let's go to the part about him talking about his opponent for next week. Let's use that, right? Yeah. Let's talk about how proud he is of his teammates. Exactly.

You only have one soundbite. You only have so much room. So it's, it's, you know, you have to make that call. And the call is usually in the other direction. But now those decisions are made by people on Twitter reacting in real time to these press conferences. Yeah. I don't think it's necessarily bad that more attention is being paid to stuff like this. I mean, certainly in this case.

No. Because it's a bigger issue than just Cam Newton. But like, I think what we're seeing is. is not something, some new tension between athlete and reporter necessarily. It's the old tension. It's just on TV. That's like, that's a difference. Sure.

It's just out there. Yeah. Interviews are awkward. If they're, if they're, if they're, if they're, if they're, if they're, if they're, if they're getting anywhere, they're probably a little bit awkward. Yeah. And for, and for, you know, any writer's career, let alone a female sports reporter, female, I feel like weird and dirty saying. I was what I'd say. You know, if you're a reporter's, you know, if you're a reporter's, you know, you know,

reporting a story, you don't want to make the story about yourself. You're not going to, you're not going to get some career advancement for being a martyr to that cause, right? I mean, if you're just doing a profile in the Charlotte Observer, you're going to do the profile about Cam Newton. You're not going to... Right, without knowing her, I think she would have preferred Cam to just answer her question. Yes. About Devin Funches. So she could write the notebook item or whatever she was going to write about. Yeah, she's doing all right for herself. There was this like in the old pre-televised press conference days, there's this like legendary tape of Tom Ilis Sorta. Have you ever heard this? Yeah. Somebody asked him about Kurt Bavacua, wonderfully named Old Padre, and he just went completely nuts. I have never, ever, since I've managed, ever told a pitcher to throw anybody, nor will I ever. And if I ever did, I certainly wouldn't make a throw at a fucking 130 hitter like a Faye

or fucking Bavacwa who could hit water if he fell out of a fucking boat. And it became like on sports radio, heavily bleeped versions played for like decades. Right. Because it was just so awesome, and Tommy Lassorta was kind of weirdly lovable and, you know, advertising like slim fast or Nutris system on TV. And there was just this thing of him just screaming guesswords. It was just like this whole, it was like this whole tape trading. Yes. That actually happens in locker rooms versus at that point in history, the, and still, I guess, the very sanitized version that you actually consume.

Yeah. I mean, that was just, yeah, I'm sure Tommy Lassorta broke into expletive-filled rants on a pretty regular basis. Sure. This is the one that existed. Earl Weaver. Yeah. This is the one that was saved for history. Yeah.

Reporters kicked out of manager's offices, told never to come back. You know, I mean, these are, you know, sports writing. Again, done well when it's not, as you say, an appendage of the organization should be, you know, should be fairly confrontational. That should happen. So what is the takeaway from this? What do we learn besides, I mean, the world can learn something from, you know, the inappropriateness of Cam Newton. joke or comment or whatever. I just think if one is to understand that when you,

that Jordan Roderieg, her job is very complicated for reasons that aren't obvious, you know, that just like breaking news and trying to get scoops and stay ahead of competitors, right? There's this level of shittiness there that we probably don't always observe, you know, from afar. And this is one of those things, like I said, this is like the public version of that, brings it out. That's my takeaway. Anyway, number three, David, topic number three, call this, picture me trolling.

Can you believe that we really got the bad puns down today? I'm going to ask you to do a little synthesis, David. I give you Tucker Carlson, a Fox News, whose TV career has been reinvigorated, and he's now one of the top-rated hosts in Cable, as Stephen Roderick's recent piece in GQ explained. And I also give you Clay Travis, who has become, according to a recent piece profile by Ben Strauss in Politico magazine, a darker. A darling in Republican media circles in a reliable source of ammunition in an increasingly bitter and polarizing national culture war. What do these two guys have in common? Well, they picked their sides, right? Yeah.

I think that they saw an opportunity. I think, yeah, that's exactly what I was going to say. I mean, you'd like to give them a little bit of benefit of the doubt that they're not, like them. Do we have to? No, no, that they're not just totally, it's not a totally craven. decision to get attention to cash checks to, you know, stake out a spot for yourself in the media landscape by being the loudest conservative voice in the room.

But reading these two profiles, I think even if you want to give them all the benefit of the doubt, it's pretty clear that they are, you know, to bring it back to self-awareness, it's pretty clear that they are both to some degree self-aware about what they're doing, and it's that. Oh, absolutely. I don't think you could accuse either one of them of not being self-aware. I think they're so aware.

What do we think of not self-aware? It's like Sean Hannity not self-aware. He's even self-aware. Is anybody not self-aware at this moment in media history? Is anybody like, I actually have all these takes? I don't know how they're playing. Like I'm just saying this stuff and it just happens to be. I think that there's probably some commentators on Fox News

that they roll out there who, you know, are not, don't think that they're acting. I think, I think, I think, I think, I think, I think is probably, you know, I mean, it's clearly a true believer, right? But, you know, this is a, we're in a different media world right now, where it used to be you'd put on your persona to do your show, but you wouldn't necessarily put on a new set of beliefs or, you know, a new set of morals.

I think, I think that, you know, where I believe that Tucker Carlson is a true conservative, you know, at, at his core. I believe that Clay Travis believes a lot of the things that he says, but I don't think that is even remotely germane to the conversation of how they're succeeding. I think that they would, I think that both of them would be saying the things they're saying even if they didn't believe them. I like this idea of like a cable host putting on their set of morals before the show, like looking in the mirror going, I'm a favor of tax reform.

Yeah. I'm a favorite tax reform. Tax reform. You're just kind of just siking yourself up for it. Right. I think it's kind of fun to sort of admire the way these guys operate. So here's Tucker. This was a notorious example in August.

He's talking about the Confederate statues controversy. I think this was before Charlottesville. How do we defend the Confederate, the presence of Confederate statues? I know, says Tucker. This is a just, this graphic actually appeared. Plato, Mohammed, Muhammad, Aztecs all own slaves. That was where he went. Did you know?

Like what, we don't talk of and talk about what aboutism, right? Yes. Just when something happens, you say, well, what about? But like,

this is like, you know, world history 101, what aboutism? Yeah. I mean, there's something just so, like,

comical about that. It's over like, Wikipedia. What aboutism? It's not even Wikipedia. Did you know that the Aztex, you know, had slaves?

Oh, yeah. Okay. How does, what's the next? How do you even come back to that? That isn't even an argument. Yeah,

it's not even, it's not even Wikipedia. It's like, know your meme level. You know, I mean, it's just like, can I like put three things together and that'll get a bunch of likes and then that's, but I'm actually going to make that as a argument. Is it likes that you're after? Because you've got to know, when you see that graphic before the show, you got to know

that that that's going to be on Twitter in five seconds. But do you think that's going to be likes like people who are like, okay, I want to find a reason to defend Confederate statues? I need a reason. Like it's a difficult argument to make, right? Yeah. That I'm going to get behind this or is this just going to enrage my anime so much and I win either way.

I think there's two things. I think on the one hand, the viewers are interested in in listening to a semi-well thought-out or at least cogently argued defense of these things that they feel on a very intrinsic level, right? But I think more than that,

they're interested in seeing someone make that argument. It's not, you don't want to necessarily take the argument for yourself. You're not going to repeat Tucker Carlson's talking points you know, over dinner to your family that night. Honey, did you know that the slaves, the Aztecs own slaves? What you want is to see, especially in the 2017,

in this era of the internet, you want to see Tucker Carlson destroys critics of these monuments. You know, you want to see that headline online. You want to see this in practice. And it doesn't matter what he actually says. You want, yeah, you want to see Clay Travis eviscerates the NFL.

You know, these are ESPN. Or ESPN, right. I mean, you want to see, you want to see evidence that, these arguments are being made with great excitement. Here's a Clay Travis example that's near and dear to my heart. He wrote a column earlier this year when he tried to say the Disney's chairman and CEO, Bob Eager, was in the news this week, was going to run for president as a Democrat in 2020, okay? And the reason he had assembled various data points.

One of the reasons was that Bob Eger had followed a number of prominent African-American ESPN personalities on Twitter, as well as the undefeated Twitter account. And from that, he says, see, he's sending a message. Like Jamel Hill was the first person. He had just, Bob Beggar is fairly new to Twitter, right? I'm inclusive and I'm diverse and I'm going to, I'm going to win the Democratic nomination. This is my plan. Now, Simmons asked me about this on his podcast.

And I said, it's something like, it is utterly insane to think that following Jamel Hill is going to win you the Iowa caucus. Right. Like that is just like that is just not right. That is crackers. First of all, it's an incredibly distasteful piece. Yeah. And second of all, it's just that theory is bizarre and wrong and nuts. Okay. So that's what I said.

Yesterday, this goes to the whole trolling gambit. Yeah. Yesterday, Bob Becker says, I'm going to step down from Disney in 2019. Somebody on Twitter says, hey, I remember, I'm old enough to remember when Brian Curtis dismissed Clay Travis's theory. Clay tweets back, amazing how often left-wing sports media mocks men. theories. And then again and again, I'm proven correct. Now, let's just note the slipperiness there. I didn't say, I don't know what Bob Eager's going to do. I have no clue. Right. I'm pretty sure that Bob Eiger following Jamel Hill on Twitter would either, was either not part

of his plan to run for president or was not in fact a successful part of his plan. Sure. And I also thought that was really an awful weird thing to say. Yeah. But this is now I'm, he's right. Oh, he got me. There's so much. I'm right. I'm right again. There's so much to break. in here. First of all, liberal Curtis. Following, you know, these multiple Twitter accounts.

I mean, it's just like, you know, Clay Travis understands how Twitter works, right? That if you're like, you know, I think so, yes. Like somebody walks into your office for a meeting,

you're like, oh, I just realize I'm not following you on Twitter. You hit, you click follow and then they start recommending similar, they start recommending similar accounts, right? Before you know it, you've just followed everybody on your staff or every, you know, every,

every public facing person on your staff. But it is, it is funny, particularly that Clay would, Clay Travis would you know, take what you said as some sort of a front as some sort of attack on his argument.

The point is... I'm not sure he did. I think somebody probably just reminded him, you know. But that's exactly, but that's the entire MO, right? I mean, if anybody, for him to just look for grievance, you know, he is... Especially from the other team. Right, exactly. Left-wing sports media. That's what he and Tucker Carlson

have in common is that, is that any critique made of them, Not even a critique. Any comment made of them by someone that can be justifiably or unjustifiably branded as the left-wing media is bonus points for them, you know? And I mean, I don't want to get too, you know, we don't need to get into your biography. But as two guys who grew up in Texas, I think, you know, I haven't talked to you about this, but I've said this many times that, like, I felt like I was the most liberal person in the state of Texas. And then I moved to New York and felt like I was the most conservative person I'd ever, you know, anyone had ever seen. I can identify with that feeling, yeah.

Yeah, I mean, so to single you out as a member of the left wing media is just incredibly wrongheaded. Do you know I grew up eating chicken fried steak? You know what you were from? At Baylor University, we had chicken fried steak in the cafeteria. I ate so much of that stuff. Another thing these guys have in comment that I thought was sort of interesting was if you talk to people in Washington, D.C. about Tucker, the first thing they'll say is, you know, he really was a great magazine writer. Oh, yeah. The kind of more in sorrow than an anger thing.

And if we talk to people that we even we know in sports media about Clay, it's like, you know what, he's a really nice guy in person. He's nothing like his Twitter personality. You know, great dad, great husband, fun hang. Yeah. And I'm like, does that, is that supposed to make me feel better or worse about the media persona of these two guys that actually emerges? It's really tough.

It's really tough. I mean, that was the, you know, that was one of the ways that, you know, that was one of the ways people talked about Anne Coulter when she was rising, right? Is it like, oh, she can't really believe it, right? I mean, she's, she's, you know. It's just an act. It's just an act. She hangs out with Bill Maher on the weekends. She's not really like this.

She's just trying to sell books. She's just trying to get TV appearances. You're right. It's both a, it's, it both mollifies you and also just like scares the hell out of you. Because I, because it's, to think, to think that it's that easy, you know, to think that all you have to do is just like, just put on a mask. Just practice your scow in the mirror. It's like Bobby the Brain Heenan practicing

is like heel manager stick in the mirror. Yeah, I mean, it's crazy. There's a, you know, there's Will Leach, who we both know a little bit. Former editor of Dead Spend is quoted in the Clay Travis piece. And there's, you know, one of the poll quotes is that he is Will saying, I don't know if he realizes that he can't go down this road and then come back.

Which speaks to a couple of things. One, that, you know, Will Leach knows Clay Travis. You know, they have a long history together. Yeah. I think that I've never met Clay Travis. but I can say that Will Leach is a good hang. Yes. So, I mean, so by proxy, I guess I could, you know, assume that about Clay Travis as well.

But it is, it's interesting because it's, you know, for all the people that are like, you know, Clay Travis is good in person. Or like Tucker Carlson, he's a real good guy. You wonder if those people would even be willing to hang at this point? You know, I mean, it's, can you go too far? Is it possible to go too far and never come back? Yes. I mean, I think that's totally true.

I mean, I don't know what I think with Tucker, you know, when you look at what he said on Fox, the Daily Caller has done, including this last week. I don't, I don't think there's coming, I don't think there's, I don't know what coming back even would really mean. Yeah. But I don't think there's, you know, but you know what, I say that. I'm talking myself out of it, but, you know, could he be a right wing voice on a quote unquote mainstream network like CNN? Sure. You know, is that, is that nuts?

I think, no. Would there be a liberal who would say, well, you know, he's really popular. I wouldn't mind appearing next to him. my God, I don't think that's nuts. No, but I think that what's really interesting about this, about this, that supposition is that if you look at, you mentioned the Daily Caller. You know, there was a while where Tucker Carlson was a little bit in the wilderness, you know, he didn't have a regular TV gig. He was doing weekend Fox and Friends on occasion, but he was, he started this conservative media website. Clay Travis, we see a similar thing and then he's sort of living on in the, on the internet right now, right?

I mean, he does these like periscope videos and, you know, he's constant content. And you can kind of, and this isn't just a conservative thing, but you can sort of just radicalize yourself by living in that, in that morass, you know, in that like real time, internet, click, like, click driven journalism world. And sure, like, you know, if either Clay Travis or Tucker Carlson got a job on a liberal or just like neutral TV station, they would probably come back, you know, there'd be a little bit of helium light out of the balloon

over a period of time. Yeah. But it's easy to, you know, it's easy to, you know, get over-excited and to go deeper and deeper when you're just chasing the clicks, chasing attention. So Clay wrote a piece a couple months ago where he was writing about how journalists should be smarter about money.

True. How they should insist on owning their own stuff. Yeah. They shouldn't be tools of giant media companies and then, you know, insert nine paragraphs about what a success outkick the coverage spin, et cetera, et cetera. But that piece actually got passed around on Twitter by a lot of people that are like, oh, this is good, this is good Clay. Like, this is kind of inspiring. And, you know, and it's like, you can do it. Don't, you know, don't let some media company tell you can't do it.

Do it yourself, you know, be your own boss. All that stuff. Okay. But the downside of that is when you're your own boss, when you're not insulated by a media company that's promoting your work. Yeah. you have to be more and more and more and more outrageous to pay the bills. When it's you between the next outrageous thing you say is the thing that makes check come in, then yeah, then I think that turns you into certain kind of journalists.

Here's the question I want to ask you. What if we wanted to do this? What if we wanted to turn to media superheal today? Like you, you know, you're smart at least. I'm halfway smart. Could we just crack the code? We just set out today and just become super heel, have a Fox gig. If we can convince Jim to not release this podcast and we just like said it,

no one knows this is the plan. Edit this part out. Actually, I don't even know if that matters very much. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, because it would only be more attention when people found us plotting to do this. I don't think that would really, I don't think anybody would really care. Oh, sure, sure. I've joked before that if like, you know, if everything else bottoms out in my life,

I'm just going to like move back to North Carolina and run for Congress as a Republican. So I lived I lived in the belly of the beast, you know, in New York and Los Angeles. The He Schuller of his back. Yeah. No, no, no. I mean, and it's not even, again, like I said, I don't think that the people, I don't think that the majority of the fan bases for Clay Travis and Tucker Carlson really even care if they're being serious. If they're being honest. I think you want to see these voices, these opinions being expressed on a platform, you know, online,

in the mainstream, if not on mainstream media. And that's, you know, victory in and of itself. And you want to see this heroic journalist character standing up to whatever the quote unquote establishment, quote unquote, liberal media, quote unquote, whatever it is, right? They become this kind of like heroic figure. It's weird. It's like the same way that Woge in his world becomes this heroic figure. Same way Nikki Fink became, you know, kind of a heroic figure, right?

You're standing up for this and it, you know, it's kind of about drama. and little guy versus big guy as much as it is anything else. Yeah, absolutely. And both of them have, you know, have positioned themselves to be that character. That's it for the press box, David. Next week, we're going to return. We're going to do this every week.

And we'll be wearing our heel personas next week. It's an all-heel show. Yeah, the press box is finally standing up for the common man. Nowhere else in the media. Can you hear takes like this? is David Chewmaker. I'm Brian Curtis. Happy trails, everybody. See you next week.