The Press Box - The Spoiler-Free Shohei Sweepstakes, Person(s) of the Year, and an Oscar Contender That’s Really a Journalism Movie

Episode Date: December 9, 2023

For the Press Box: Final Edition, Bryan is joined by Wall Street Journal columnist Jason Gay. They discuss the Person of the Year awards from both Time magazine and Sports Illustrated, with Time selecting Taylor Swift and SI selecting Deion Sanders (2:21). Then they dive into the coverage of the Shohei Ohtani sweepstakes and how this is projected to be the biggest free-agent signing in MLB history (39:15). Last, they close the show with a spoiler-free conversation about the Netflix movie 'May December' and how this could be the next movie being shown in journalism classes (47:22). Hosts: Bryan Curtis Guest: Jason Gay Producer: Brian H. Waters Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hey, everyone. This is Craig Horlebeck from the Ringer Fantasy Football Show. Join me, Danny Hifitz and Danny Kelly every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday to help you win your draft, win your league, and most importantly, avoid that last place punishment. Follow the Ringer fantasy football show on Spotify. Hello, media consumers. Welcome to Press Box. Final edition, Brian Curtis of the Ringer here, along with producer Brian Waters. Let me first apologize for my voice. I've had non-COVID illness all week. On Wednesday, my voice sounded like Harvey Firesteins. By Thursday, I had upgraded myself to Vern Lundquist voice, and today I sound like a two-pack-a-day smoker.

That's what we're going to roll with. Coming up on today's show, we peer at two magazines' Person of the Year awards. We also take a close look at, and here I am quoting from a Florida State message board, the crooked corrupt system that picked the college football playoff. what does it mean if Texas is really back? Plus, is this Oscar contender really a journalism movie? Joining me to ponder those topics is a Wall Street Journal columnist whose voice sounds just as sweet as it did the day FS1 launched.

He is Jason Gay. Jason, welcome back to the press box. I think I established a little more gravitas in the last 10 years since the heyday of FS1, year one. Brian. I feel out Brian today. Hi to Brian Waters. I will also say, Brian, you do sound like a two pack a day smoker when the reality is, everyone knows you're a three pack a day smoker. I believe you're a Winston 100s guy. Is that right? I find you outside the press box, just wailing away on a heater. You know, I love old sports writers. And at some point, I had to go full method.

I really did. I am old enough, Brian, that the first newsroom that I worked in, you could smoke in. And it was not an unfamiliar thing to have an editor come over and read copy over your shoulder and ash on top of you. If people think they have space issues in cubicle 21st century, imagine being ashed upon in a newsroom. It really happened. The first topic, Jason, I wanted to croak with you about is the Person of the Year award.

Yes, it's that time of year. Person of the Year comes earlier every year. And so far this year we've gotten two of them. You walk into Walgreens and you're like, wait a second. Person of the year. It's mid-August. I mean, it really is kind of always person of the year in the age of magazine that's just about like a famous person or famous TV show.

Yeah. But we gotten two semi-timely ones this year. Sports Illustrated gave us Dion Sanders, a. Oh, yes. Coach Prime. And then Time Magazine followed with Taylor Swift. Yeah.

So for the uninitiated, I think we should start here. What is the real point of picking a person of the year? Let me put it to you straightforward. Selling magazines, I believe, is the idea. Getting people to talk about your publication in lieu of them actually purchasing the title. I mean, we can get into that aspect of it. But I think principally, you are trying to make a selection that gets people talking and gets people hopefully buying and subscribing to your August publication.

And I don't think that has changed since they began handing this one out. And I think in a secondary front, maybe trying to get an interview with somebody who would not normally give you the time of day. But could be persuaded to meet with your reporter if you were giving them a prestigious cover of the magazine type award. Yeah. I mean, okay, let's walk that back. a minute. You know, there's definitely been awards creep. I would say that the sports person of the year and the person of the year are, you know, long time grandfathered in magazine awards. But like,

we have seen an explosion of magazine awards in the last number of years. And going back a couple decades now, I think it's a way to like eventize the thing, sell advertising off of it. There's all this stuff that happens. I don't know if it's necessarily we really want to Thomas Pynchon on the cover of, you know, whatever. So we're going to offer him a man of the year. I don't think it's a way of like luring hard to get subjects out. However, in the case of Taylor Swift, it actually did amount to the first print, quote, unquote, interview she's done, I believe, in a handful of years.

Do you think when they pitch Taylor Swift on it, they listed some of the time people of year in years past, a highly select list. So we're going to leave Charles Lindbergh off maybe. But, you know, FDR was on this list. The computer was on this list. I mean, and we think of you as being in league with these people or things. Of course. You're talking about somebody who has a standing offer to appear on the cover of every magazine on planet Earth. So like, you have to appeal to her sense of vanity and, you know, thrill and once in a lifetime aspect of this. And I'm sure they pulled out every possible legacy cover to try to establish to her what a significant honor this is. Because let's face it, I don't think time would disagree here that though time continues to be vital in the digital era, you know, the idea of the on newsstand Time magazine publication is probably lost on younger generations now.

Maybe not on Taylor Swift, but, you know, there are just fewer. newsstands than there once were, Brian. You and I know this. We go around hunting for him. There's another way of saying this is that Time and Sports Illustrated are better at picking persons of the year than they are at being a magazine at this stage in media time. Yeah, but in fairness, everything is, every magazine is once better at, you know, being a magazine than it is today. I mean, it is just a completely changed business. It is funny, though, when you see a vestige of another moment in media time just still continuing a pace like nothing happened.

Oh, listen, you and I go back and forth on this on text message every once in a while. It is still completely hilarious to me when people will get up on the internet all the time and pronounce print as being dead. And look, the case can be made. I am not denying that. However, when news happens and significant news especially happens, what do they put up online to signify that significant news has happened? front pages, magazine covers.

When athletes leave town, do they send off a TikTok, Brian? No, what do they do? They take out a full page ad and a print newspaper to thank the community for being so kind to them over the years. It's hilarious to me that there are these, you know, sort of iconic totems of print past that still have value and especially still have value to a generation that is completely abandoned print for pay. And the kind of value they have is fascinating because we've heard this whenever these magazines are negotiating with celebrities for the cover. In the old days, of course, you saw it in the newsstand and then, oh, I got more famous or got some cool attention because I'm on the cover of a magazine. Now it is something that the celebrity can put on their Instagram. Oh, sure.

Sure. Like buying an old postcard on eBay and being like, look at this. But they can tweet it out to people that as you say, will never hold it in their hands and may not even know, Frank, let's be honest, that this magazine exists at all. So you're saying that... So you're saying that...

I'm on the cover of time. Mm. Getting on the cover of time is the equivalent now of getting your name written on a tiny grain of rice on the Santa Monica pier. Like, is that what you're saying? Yeah, I'm a slight, maybe a slightly bigger scale.

But yeah, you know, general idea. No, I mean, there's a kitchiness to it. It's undenial, but, but look, mission accomplished. They got the most famous person in the world and in arguably the most important cultural figure of 2023 to be on the cover of their magazine and they got her for a full access interview. So well done. I mean, they really did the thing. I didn't think it was going to happen in full disclosure. I guess they released sort of like a short list at some point.

And someone said it to me and said, like, do you think they're going to pick her? And I said, I just think in such a serious moment, you know, with, you know, multiple wars going on. and so much grave news in the world, how do you pick a pop star? Is that going to look somehow glib? And then I saw it the next morning, I was like, you gotta be crazy. Of course they picked her.

I mean, it's what people want to see and read and hear about. And clearly that was the case because, you know, it was quite a story for a 24-hour cycle. If she goes to time and says, I have nothing but respect for time. We were always a time household growing up,

not a Newsweek household. But I just can't give you an interview for the person of the year. Do we think they look elsewhere for the person of the year? Yes. Yes. I don't think they want to do the person of the year as a write-around unless it's somebody who is like

a far away world leader dictator who getting an interview a sit-down with is quite impossible or somebody who is being picked for notorious reasons, Brian, which we know has happened in the past as well. This was not that case. I think, yes, it was absolutely

I'm almost certain contingent. on getting access. And to their credit, Team Swift gave them access, no doubt about it. Did you read the piece? I did. Fascinating piece of journalism

because it definitely had high period of celebrity magazine journalism vibes to it in a way that very few pieces do nowadays, partly because of what you say, they got Taylor Swift. They had Taylor Swift talking about all the things you want Taylor Swift

to talk about from her career to travel to travel. Kelsey to everything else. They also had to have the graph in there that explained why Time Magazine made her person of the year and not a leader of a country, say. And I enjoyed this paragraph very much. It said, to discuss her movements felt like discussing politics or the weather, a language spoken so widely, it needed no context.

She became the main character of the world. We could snicker at that, but I think that's actually correct in 2023. Like I don't think that's wrong. We may look at that in, you know, later years when some ghastly thing happens. Why were we talking about Taylor Swift in the summer and fall of 2023? But it's true. I mean, I'm with you. I think it had, it hit all those, those sort of touchdown moments of classic magazine writing. This piece was written by Sam Lansky, who I believe was also the ghost or the, the public co-writer of Britney Spee. Beers' recent bestseller. It's a really nice piece of writing. You can't deny it. It's a complicated

piece to write in a strange way because it's going to be parsed like some ruin from thousands of years ago. It's going to be broken apart and taken apart and everyone's going to have their opinion. And I haven't even gotten to what Taylor's most obsessive fans think about it. I mean, everyone's going to be looking at this thing. So a high wire to walk, and I thought he did it really, really well. And to her credit, you know, she came kind of ready to play, too. She said a lot of, maybe not, you know, dramatic things, but certainly quoteworthy, newsworthy, fun kinds of things about her life. And, you know, it didn't scamper away from some of the more public aspects of it now, like Travis Kelsey and whatnot. I mean, she delivered the goods, as they say. And it was

satisfying that way. And I should also point out, Brian, as a former magazine snob, and as in Veneuve took the photographs, and they are an incredibly accomplished tandem, a couple that does these together. And I think she's photographed with them in the past. But, you know, so they hit all the marks. as with any magazine profile of a super famous person who decides to play ball like Taylor Swift did, I was fascinated to see what these secondary interviews would be in the piece. Yes, yes. Because if you've got Taylor, then you're taking your Trader Joe's shopping bag and you are going,

I am going for the biggest names to talk about her. And that can be tricky because. absolutely it is a door opener to get major league secondary quotes. And there was a moment I'm reading this piece and I feel like Barack Obama is right around the corner to talk about Taylor Swift. It did not happen, but there were some major names in there. And, you know, that can be distractive. You know, I don't think of this space. I think he pulled it off. But I think like, yeah, like, ultimately you do want people who know the person and are able to say something that you don't know about the person and be able to give you some insight into it.

And then sometimes you're just showing off. But I think it sort of walked that line carefully and well. And yeah, no, no question about it. I thought we were getting there. The two that I would be shocked if emails and phone calls were not placed hunting for, Paul McCartney. Yeah. Because there's this whole little story in there about McCartney sending her a letter with

some Beatles lyrics on it at some point. 100% you reach out to Paul McCartney to see if you. get the email. The email comes in from the publicist two weeks after you sent it. It's a Sir Paul will speak on this. He will give you these five minutes. What did you want again? Can you remind me? Can you remind me? What's your deadline? The other one was Beyonce. I have a feeling because there's a whole theme and the piece about this summer of Taylor Swift plus Beyonce plus Barbie. And Greta Gerwig is one of the secondary industry. The sort of economic might, right, the sort of economic might of the, of which. women over this summer and over this year.

Absolutely. Getting Beyonce, another person. I mean, a part of this, Brian, also is that we're talking now about pop stars. Somebody definitely in Taylor Swift's category are post media. They do not need to do this. They do not need to do interviews. They do not do you do not do you need to do any kind of traditional broadcast. Taylor Swift, of all people, prove that this year, that she does not need Time magazine or anything else. She sold out a tour worldwide.

and could have done it many, many, many times over without doing a single interview of any kind. And yet, a few things still hold some kind of sentimental appeal, cultural appeal. And, you know, again, credited time for trying it, making it happen. Because I can assure you, many, many, many publications have reached out to Camp Swift in the last number of years unsuccessfully. Would you make of S-I-picking Dion this person in the year? I mean, this is workplace hazard stuff, right? This is a great idea in September.

You know, if you're having those sort of like four-month-out meetings and you say Dion Sanders, sportsperson in the year, that's a no-brainer. It sounds great. They're a three-and-o. They're the talk of sports. Forget about college sports. He's incredibly charismatic.

It'd be a great piece. Pat 40 out in Boulder, what's not, love. Let's do this. The risk, of course, is like, okay, you know, we don't expect they're going to go 12 and 0 and, you know, win a national championship here, but, you know, we think they're going to be competitive. They've shown enough in these, you know, what is the worst thing that can happen here from a competitive standpoint? And that's effectively what did happen, the worst thing, which was that they just sort of really played themselves out of contention. And, you know, they went four and eight if people don't know. They went, they went four and eight. Four and eight.

They are not poll eligible, Brian. And look, there is no doubt in my mind. And the piece does a good job of this, that you can make a compelling case that Dion Sanders, you know, thumbprint on the sport and those first few weeks was a significant moment and may not have been matched by really anything over the course of the year. I think that that argument is valid. does it turn into a cultural punchline to put a four and eight coach

on the cover of the sportsman of the year issue? Absolutely. No doubt about it. There's no doubt that they knew that that they were going to get a lot of grief when they put it out there. I think they can stand by the decision and mount an intellectual case for it.

But yeah, I mean, would they like a mulligan on it? Probably. What was funny is it came right on the heels of Sports Illustrated's AI scandal when everyone on Twitter was saying, look at these fools who are ruining what's left of SI. Right. And then S.I picked Dion and everyone said, okay, now we're also pissed at what's left of S.I. You're additionally angry at the good people who are left at S.I. I mean, you know, as a magazine veteran, again, having been in some of these rooms when these decisions are being made,

and they have to be made, you know, you can't decide this December 1st, right? You know, you have to like, you know, take a little bit about... Does Taylor have 20 minutes next week for sit down? Can you get on the phone for a quick five minute phoneer for a person of the year? No, these decisions are made far out. I think in the Taylor Swift piece, it was pretty clear that this was made.

This is just, decision was made. He was following around at the movie premiere and, you know, earlier in the, in the season. But, yeah, it's, there's risk, you know, and, and, and when you, don't take risk, you often end up with boring material. You know, you pick something that's just sort of safe and everyone will agree, you know, is not going to cost you any kind of, or cause you any kind of, you know, agita at the last minute. And safe is not a great recipe for magazines

other. I am certain there are people at Sports Illustrated who will argue mission accomplished here. Everybody talked about our sportsman of the year cover. Our clicks were through the roof. Like, in terms of actually having a moment, like if you went out and onto the street and said to people, like, who is SI sportsperson of the year for 2023? I bet you had pretty good penetration on that one. You know, I don't know who 2022 was. I think it was Steph Curry.

But that's, Curry's actually an example of sort of the more conservative approach. I'm like, Steph Curry could be sports per the year almost every year. Is it exciting? Does it get people talking? I don't know. If you can create tons of chatter about an award that has absolutely no consequence, mission accomplished as a magazine.

I mean, that's what all awards are, by the way. That's every top 10 list of the end of the year. These are not actually meaningful, folks. Like, no one, no one cares. But, but people get mad, people get upset. And you're right. People will remember that. Donald Trump cared.

Donald Trump cared. He was very, very interested in how many magazine. Nobody cared more about time man in the year, perhaps. By the way, Sports Illustrated, if they had made the sportspersons of the year Taylor Swift and Travis Kelsey, would that not have been more of a hit magnet than even Coach Prime? Oh, I would be shocked if that conversation didn't happen. I mean, I think they probably had a conversation about Travis alone. that ended up being the Wall Street Journal magazine, in fact. And that was sort of a very unusual cover for the Wall Street Journal's fashion magazine to have Travis Kelsey. And that thing was Gangbusters, a huge, huge hit for the magazine.

Great interview. And it was J.R. Marringer, your buddy. Spare. Super profiler. I'm not Prince Harry. But the point being that, yeah, I absolutely think that Kelsey was on S.I.'s Radar. Kelsey and, yeah, no doubt about it. And again, if you were just talking about hijacking the news cycle and being the most

interesting thing in sports for a period of weeks like Dion was at the beginning of the season, it is absolutely warranted. I'm curious. They kind of still are. I mean, you know, it was in Green Bay last Sunday night. They still were. Yeah, yeah. I would say I have no inside information on this. I would be curious. I'd love to ask somebody there, but like, there had to have been a conversation, do we dump the Dion cover? You know, like, they had to know, like early November that this was just going to go in a bad direction and they were going to look a little goofy. And maybe there was some, you know, plan B, Kelsey, you know, maybe there was some option here that made more sense.

And they had to have had some version of a conversation, I bet, in which, you know, you sort of take the pro and the con of it. Like, you know, if you burn that bridge with Dion, if you take him off sportsperson of the year, he's probably not going to talk to you for a very long time, if ever again. And can you really afford that about a guy who you can be pretty certain is going to be headline news for a number of years going forward and may in fact reach that mountain top in college football? We don't know. I, you know, those those variables come into play. I have no idea if they did on this particular instance, but yeah, I mean, all of it is a conversation, I think.

Dion, we got bad news. The sportsperson of the year has entered the transfer portal. That's perfect. I love it. I'm going to make you an editor of Sports Illustrian. Jason, you have been known to frequent a college football message board here and there. see what the fans are really thinking. I have been thinking about message boards all week

watching the fallout from Florida State not making the college football playoff despite a perfect 13 and no record. Dude, everything that is happening from Twitter to the halls of Congress right now is a message board writ large. It is.

We are living inrivals.com. We are living inrivals.com world because as you know, you and I both know this. If you're an NFL fan and your team gets screwed by the refs by Roger Goodell, that's it, right? It's over. But in college football, you feel like you have this agency because this is a beauty contest, as we were reminded on Sunday.

This is humans making a decision and saying this team, not this team. So when you get screwed like Florida State did, what are we going to do? Can we get a politician to make a law to put us, in the college football playoff, anything seems possible. But to take it back a little further, college football has also long been, and you know this better than I do, a sport in which non-journalist randos can oftentimes have incredible inside information about what's happening inside a program. And where does that information pop up on the message boards? And, you know, let's go back to the Michigan, Ohio State.

you know, Conor Stalions, everything happening over there. That is another, like, you know, that is a message board of message board type story. In fact, some things about this story were originally broached on message boards. It's a perfect platform for that sport. It goes down in all these kinds of rabbit holes and threads. And I actually think that for a lot of media, it's kind of unwieldy, you know, it's to actually render the Conner Stallion story in like a 700 word piece is gosh darn near impossible because of all the different like corners you can go down. And same with the Florida

state thing. I mean, the hilarious thing also about like, you know, there's such a repetition cycle in college sports. And this was the last hurrah of course of the 14 playoffs. So we probably aren't going to get this kind of, you know, freak out again. But, you know, folks, this has happened before. In fact, almost everything in college football has happened before. And you can be 60, 70, 30, 45, and you remember a team that got hosed. They were squeezed out of something, you know, and they're still mad about it. So as singular as that moment felt to Florida State fans, you know, this was just history repeating itself. That creates the-so go, please.

I'm sorry, 3-2-1. That creates the atmosphere we're talking about. a grand history of college football screw jobs. And then this idea that we, the fans, can do things. We can get a coach fired if we're noisy enough. We can create a scandal or we can push weird, you know, faux news to the top of the news cycle if we tweet about it enough or post about it enough.

That is what creates rivals.com. And also, Brian, adding the transfer portal to message boards, it's the crystal meth of message boards because that is sending people into a complete apoplectic rage, freak out always. And I mean, I love it as a topic. It is never short on the theater of the absurd,

which is my favorite thing. in sports. I will be sad if college sports ever actually gets its act together because that's a big amount of, you know, material for me. But, you know, there was a little part of me. You'll be fine. I'm long on college football being ridiculous. But, you know, there was a part of me watching the reaction on Sunday that felt, God, this is what we love

about it. And once we take the arguing away and once we go to some sort of uniform process in which, you know, success is generally rewarded and most people walk away happy, are we really going to enjoy it as much? Do we really want to enter a world of college athletics where there's no more arguing? Is arguing, in fact, the actual like lifeblood of the sport? I think it is in degrees. I think it historically, whether it's region to region, school to school, style to style, coach to coach, college football is nothing but a series of screaming matches. You know, most of them good natured. And, you know, if you sort of anesthetize the process and make it just sort of streamlined,

and like everything else, like the NHL playoffs or something, are you going to lose something? 100% agree. And I think that comes from something that's happened since basically 1998, if not slightly before then, is that we've taken a regional sport and tried to make it into a national sport. And it is a national sport in terms of big viewership and entertainment and pregame shows where we can lock in and hear the whole story of college football. But you're trying to settle these arguments that really cannot be effectively settled. You know, is football better in Seattle or is football better in Tuscaloosa? And by the way, those teams won't play each other all year and may not play each other in the playoffs. So you just, it is this argument generating machine.

And it's fantastic. And the more nationalized it gets, you know, we thought, okay, the BCS will settle this. We will never have this problem. Oh, no, that didn't work. Four team playoff will settle this. Nope, that didn't work either. And trust me, the good news is the 12th team playoff won't settle this either. there will be plenty to go crazy about if it's not if it's not the playoff it's the transfer portal

it's the heisman you know it's recruiting rankings by the way still something that just drives people to desperation this time of year why is my big recruit not a five star merely a high four star it's fantastic it will never ever end yeah i mean i hope you're right i think that they've already kind of devalued things i mean look no further than the bowl system you know the hilarious like, uh, act here of trying to stitch together a 12 team playoff on top of your zombie bowls that already don't make sense and haven't made sense for a very long time. I mean, like, what is the Rose Bowl now? What is the Fiesta Bowl? Does it mean anything? I'll answer that. No. Um, with all the respect to the great people who put on these great games,

they have thoroughly devalued the product as an actual like sort of like, I, you know, with, you know, giving it a specific identity. I don't know what it is. It's whatever it we say it is this year. That's what the Rose Bowl is. And yes, there's always going to be absurdity, personality. And we haven't even gotten to what I think is the biggest story of the week, if not one of the biggest stories of the year, which is the NCAA after decades and decades of denial and denial has finally come forth and said, hey, you know what? Would be a good idea? additional athlete compensation. The main, you know, hurdle to all of this, the NCAA, the people who said that amateurism was sacred and could not be disrupted by money have now come forward and put together their own money-making proposal, which, you know, frankly, is like they're trying to hop aboard a train that's going 175 miles an hour right now.

It doesn't need them. They have no say in this anymore. The courts are going to really dictate what's going to happen from here. But the point being that we're in an incredible period of disruption of something that people really, really love. And I think has generational perseverance. I think old people like it, middle age people like it. I think young people love it. But it's going to look quite a bit different 10, 15 years from now.

What do you make of the Texas Longhorns once again being a content generating item in college football? That's a great prompt, Brian, because I would like to turn the program over here to me as a host for a moment. and ask you as a member in good standing of Longhorn Nation. Let's just backtrack for our listeners under 70 and talk about the time when Longhorn football really was the talk of the football universe. There was a time, Brian, when 2023 used to happen every year.

You used to have teams. There were all these kinds of great rival Cavalry games, championships, bowl games. You saw a lot of that heyday. This used to be status quo. Can you explain? There was a Longhorn network before anybody had a network. Tell us a little bit about what that was like and then put it into context against the fallow period that you're just seeming to come out of here. Well, thank you, Jason, for that very insightful question. I just want to say that when I attended the University of Texas in the late 90s, and I did attend a the University of Texas. This is the time all of us state school people have to just make sure people

no, not a long time fan of the Texas Longhorns, not somebody whose parents and grandparents went there, but I wanted to go to a slyly, you know, Tony or college. No, no, I actually went to Texas. Thank you, guys. Just want to make sure that's very, very clear. State school boy here. I went when it was coming out of a fallow period. Texas had won a national championship in my lifetime. You know, all the stuff about what Matthew McConaughey is to the Longhorns now is the guy on the sidelines going nuts. It was Willie Nelson had been that guy, you know, and I saw that in old photographs and old videos. I mean, it was gone. And I remember the year Texas won the national championship with Vince Young, 2005, a buddy and I flew to Columbus

because Texas is playing Ohio State in the regular season at night, very similar to this year's Alabama game. So good. Yeah, Vince Young and company pull the upset over a very good Ohio state team that only lost one game that year. And first of all, I dressed completely neutrally to go to Ohio Stadium at night. It's a big 10 guy. You'll appreciate this. I was like in the gray striped shirt like I was opening a bank account. I mean, there was not a drop of burnt orange anywhere on my purse. You look like a scout. Oh, my God. And the Longhorns win the game in the fourth quarter of my buddy Daniel and I were so shocked that they won that we just wandered around Columbus. Like I seem to remember us going down a fraternity row just walking in the dark talking to each other.

Yeah. And then we went to the Waffle House that night, a very clear memory of that. And then I woke up the next morning in this hotel room and we turned on the sports reporters that was still on. God bless his personal players. And Lupica or somebody was like, you know, Texas won last night and it's been so long since Texas was good at football. And they were almost realizing the, you know, the content properties of the University of Frick in Texas being good at something

because it had been 30 years, 25 years at that point. And it was funny. And I feel like the same thing happened after the Bama game this year. But he's like, what if the longhorns are good? Wouldn't that be fun? Yeah. Like Notre Dame being good. And USC being good.

Right. The sports writers, we like to say, it's good for the sport when Texas is good. We say that to each other on the message boards all the time when we're not winning games. No, but we say stuff like that. It's good for the NBA when the Knicks are good. And it is.

Let's just face it. It is. Did I mention I actually went to Texas? Just want to repeat that just in case anybody didn't hear that. What was your first memory of Texas? Was it Bivo? As a kid? Yeah.

When did they first break your heart? That would probably be when I was there. I didn't grow up a fan. You know, I was, I didn't grow up a huge fan. I would say it took, you know, just kind of free agent college football fan all over the Southwest conference. By high school, I was into it. But they broke my heart as, of course, as soon as I went there.

Our very first game was, nationally ranked Notre Dame team. It was like the second game of my freshman year and I could walk from my dorm to the stadium. And I chose that dorm because it was close to the stadium because I was such an idiot. And I remember like sleeping until 20 minutes before game time and just having to run in and just running into the stadium

and then they lost them. That was pissed off. I mean, one thing that I think as a Yankee about Texas football is I imagine this, you know, thriving fan base, as you say, this sort of sleeping giant of people who attended the university for many, many decades and were never, you know, gifted a national championship. I think of the fan base. I think of all the people in the region, you know, Austin's such a great place, that people graduate and they stay. But I also think of money.

I also think of like guys with suitcases, wheelbarrels of money. This is a lavish program. This is not a program that is having to walk around with a tin cup to pay the football coach, Brian. Is that fair to say? No, and that was always the scoreboard on the message boards when they weren't actually winning games. Did you see how much money we made last year? You know how rich our donors are? Because you just pick anything when you can't actually be a little bit.

Another question I had for you is what is your sort of resting heart rate opinion of Texas A&M? Do you ignore them? Do you despise them? Do you not pay any attention? Are you Don Draper in the elevator? What are you? The anger level was much higher when we were actually playing them every year.

Yeah, sure. That will restart next year and I think I will be back. My wife was with me when Texas won the last game against Texas A&M, but with a field goal at the end of the game. And she just said, I've never heard you breathe in that way. I was having nine coronary events at the same time. I mean, I know you've introduced your son to, you know,

Longhorn football. And like, is it one of those things that can go either way where you're like, this was either a good idea to take him to this or a terrible idea? Absolutely. It's really binary. Or both at the same time. Or both.

Yeah, depending on the half. That's what fandom is, especially college fandom. It's a good idea and it's a bad idea, as we're seeing with Florida State. this week. One more question. You get a national title. This is something that could happen. Texas, it would not be a shocker. I don't think were they to beat Washington, wind up in that national championship, and then who knows what they've already beat in Alabama, they could beat Michigan. Texas National Championship or Cowboys Super Bowl. I think I know the answer, but I want to hear it out of your mouth. It's Texas because it's harder and it's rare. It's only have once in my life.

It's only really come close twice in my lifetime. The college ones now, again, it's a little different because the other one came in the age when you actually had to win every one of your games, which was just this absolutely harrowing experience every year. But I just think, I think if I had to choose, and I hope I don't have to choose, but if I have to choose it, I'd take the college one.

A couple more quick topics for you before we get out of here. The spoiler-free, free agency of Shohei Otani has been fascinating to me. We are told this is the biggest free agency in MLB history. He's going to get a contract worth more than $500 million, maybe more than $600 billion.

And some of our baseball writer friends have gotten annoyed that Otani's team wants his free agency conducted in leak-free silence. He visited the Dodgers, which itself was news, because we're not even supposed to know who he's visiting.

And the manager over there, Dave Roberts said something Like, you know, we had a great meeting. Just your usual free agent. Right. No nutrient comment. And the Dodgers front office got upset apparently at Roberts for even saying that much. What do you make a free agency, Omerta, in the age of the inside?

Brian, the only thing journalists despise more than not getting credit on their scoops is silence. is a leak-free situation. We want that info. We crave that info. The idea of Team Otani actually holding it down and keeping a secret, it drives the media ecosystem insane. And so now we are in planet hypocrisy

where the same group of characters who frequently scold athletes who go on high-profile free agency tours, where they are lavished by teams and given future presentations about their Hall of Fame accomplishments. We mock them. We ridicule them for decisions or the decision most famously. We are now angry that someone is basically just doing a low-key, no fuss, no leaks, no gossip, listening to our. It's great. it's very emblematic of the state of sports media. I'm so tired of these don't look at me, athletes,

they're ruining sports. You know, in the olden times, Brian, he used to go to the Boys and Girls Club of Greenwich and you'd stand up there and tell America where you're going. And now this Otani, what does he think he is? I mean, the other part of it also is that Otani, you know, is, you know, obviously, epically a historic baseball player and in his own way, a very charismatic presence.

But he just doesn't play the game. And I think I enjoy that part of him. I wish he would not play the game in a place that was a little bit more high profile than Anaheim. But I admire the way he's conducted his career. It's pretty inarguable that it's worked for him. The vibe we're getting from baseball writers is exactly what you said. You welched on the deal.

We constructed this whole insider world where we get these little leaks. and we report these little leagues. And you get lots of publicity. Maybe you even get a bigger contract because of all the generated excitement and all the tweets and all the podcasts that come out of this. You welched on the deal, buddy.

You didn't give us those. So we lost our little chunk of the ecosystem too in the process. Listen, a significant ingredient in this process, Brian, has been, Scott Boris is not, Shohay Otani's agent. I mean, I asked a baseball writer that question this week.

I was like, what if Boris represented Otani? What would that be like? And I kind of stopped at like nationally televised press conferences on the half hour for a week. I don't know. I mean, he was, you know, is incredibly skillful about playing the media conversation and playing teams against each other in public and being very public about demands. and all that. And this has just been the opposite of that. And it's very funny to see

sports media people, particularly on television, freak out about it. Kenny Rosenthal, who is very much not a crank, made an interesting point the other day where he said, it's not about the free agency leakage so much. It's that baseball kind of needs Otani to be front and center as much as possible. Like, this is a thing for the sport, right? We've seen the sport slide a little bit off the national radar. Now you're saying the best player in the sport, the biggest free agent in the history of the sport, a guy who, you know, the sport is going to be on his shoulders to some degree.

We just sort of need his presence to help us out league wide in whatever way that is, maybe even after free agency. What do you make of that argument? I mean, first of all, I'll agree with you. Ken Rosenthal, not a crank, but also a man that has forgotten way more about baseball than I will ever, ever know. I would politely disagree with him on this because, Brian, it is December 8th, okay? This is, I know it's the hot stove season, but even the hot stove season is kind of an anachronism. We have NFL football.

We have college football playoffs. We have the NBA in-season tournament. We have a lot to distract us right now. I don't think that America would be like riveted to Otani kind of going on a walking, talking tour. I mean, what we're really talking about here is should he be like, should there be like video of him, you know, walking into Yankee Stadium and sitting down with Steve Cohen with the Mets and doing the whole sort of tour that we are accustomed to, the A-Rod style theatrics and all that

kind of stuff, is that, would that be good for the sport because it would kind of like show the casual fan or raise the profile of Otani with the casual fan. And my feeling is that, like, he's going to make the decision and then he's going to play baseball for whatever team it is that he chooses. And the stakes of that are far more significant. Were he to pick one of these high profile teams, big market teams, then he probably really checks that box that Ken's talking about in terms of the profile raise for both himself and the sport. if he chooses to remain with the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim, we don't do that anymore, right?

It's just Los Angeles Angels. Yeah, I think that's right. The angels are kind of in a Bermuda triangle of people not even being sure what to call them. When they don't know what to call the name of the team, it's problem. But if he chooses a lower profile team, a team that might not be one of the,

the highest media markets, then I think that conversation is a fair conversation because you're talking about a player who, you know, may live out most of his career, you know, quote unquote, hiding in plain sight. But I even think that is not terribly fair. I feel like I, people need to remember, Brian, we're old, but people need to remember what it was like in the ALNL, no interleague play days, no like cable, you know, constant feed, no MLB network. growing up in Al town, the NL was a mystery to me, especially like a West Coast. I mean, I knew nothing about them. They would show up in July and I'd be like, whoa, that's Dave Parker?

Like, I mean, it was a whole thing. And now these people are in our lives in ways that we have incredible access to them. I am not an angel's nut. I do not stay up to watch West Coast games with great regularity. And yet, if Otani does anything, I am able to access that instantaneously, and I am not a techno whiz. So I think the problems are more sort of hardened about the audience than it is necessarily something about picking the right or wrong market. Last topic for you, which I want to call the journalist and the Oscar contender.

You have seen the new movie May December on Netflix. very fine movie starring Julianne Moore and Natalie Portman. You told me to watch it, so let's be clear. Let's be clear. I texted you and said, you need to watch this because I want to make a very tortured point about it. Well, and also like I feel like watching a movie in 2023, Brian, we've reached a point where like it's like a book. Like actually sitting and watching a two-hour piece of cinematic entertainment without disruption, I felt like I read a book. I was like very proud of myself.

I was like, it was kind of weird. I told me to watch this movie and I watched a whole movie. So if people haven't watched it, here is that a very, very non-spoilery setup, and Jason and I will not ruin anything about this movie. Julianne Moore plays a woman who was involved in a scandal. She had a sexual relationship with a 13-year-old. And her character, we find out, went to jail, got out of jail, and then married her now grown-up former Paramore.

They had a family, and they settled down together. That's Julianne Moore. Natalie Portman plays the other main character. is an actress who comes to embed with this woman's family because she's going to play the woman in a movie that is about those events in the woman's past. So the Natalie Portman character wants to immerse herself in this woman's life, to understand her,

to get her, to channel her in a way. As I'm watching this, I'm thinking, am I just the deranged host of a podcast called The Press Box? Yes. Or did the relationship between the two characters seem almost exactly like the relationship between a journalist and their subject? Well, first of all, both things can be true. You can be the deranged host of a podcast called The Press Box,

but you're also dead on about this opinion. I was dubious when you told me this was your take. And then I watched the film and I came away feeling, you know, with a few exceptions, you're exactly right because it, I mean, this is a film. This is directed by Todd Haynes, who's a terrific director and really specializes in sort of like awkward atmospheric, sort of making you feel what it feels like to be in the room of awkward interactions, uncomfortable interactions. This is not necessarily, this is not a plot-driven film. That's not a spoiler. And the relationship, yeah, as you said, between Natalie and

Portman's actor character who's sort of doing a life ride along with the Julianne Moore character to sort of figure out what makes her tick to be able to inhabit her character. I mean, these are sort of like tropey kinds of like things we've seen in films before, but the dynamic here is explored in a way that I had not seen before. And it is journalistic. And it's journalistic in the sense especially that Portman, and I'm saying this, you know, I mean Portman's character. But Portman is very interested in sort of the internal person that she is following. What is sort of in this person that made her do the thing that she did? And how did it shape the person that she became if it shaped her at all?

And that is something that when you spend a lot of time with a subject, when you have that luxury to be able to inhabit the life of somebody that you're writing about, that becomes sort of the most interesting part of the time. You can ask all the questions. You can sit there and say, like, where were you born? What did your parents do for a living? You know, what do you like to eat in the morning? Like, those are fact-based questions that can become details in a piece. But to really sort of understand the internals of somebody, you do kind of have to be in their presence. And oftentimes, be in their presence sort of as a observer that's not asking questions at all. Just kind of sort of watching them in the wild. And I think the film does a great job with that.

I mean, the one thing that I would say, the one dynamic, which is quite a bit different, is that, you know, they make clear that Natalie Portman's character is a pretty famous actress, you know, in this fictitious world and that she's recognized on the street. You know, she's somebody like, like, when this person shows up in a restaurant and a room, they're like, oh, wow, this famous person is here. I think that, like, you know, the world opens up for famous people and especially famous actors in a way that it seldom does for journalists. And I know there are famous journalists out there,

and I'm sure that when Michael Lewis walks into a boardroom, it's quite a bit different than if you're right to walk into it. But like, it's different for us. And I think the celebrity aspect of it is a different wrinkle than what we're ordinarily accustomed to. But yeah, you know, the case can be made that it is a tremendously journalistic movie. I thought that it had, it really had, something to say about that experience and also sort of the real time processing that happens of

the subjects. You see this confrontation happen and I am sure you have had it yourself where the subject will sort of turn and kind of say like, well, what's this going to be about, Brian? Like, how is this going to shake out? They're sort of doubting in real time their decision to let you into their life. And you have to sort of roll with it and come up with an answer. You know, sometimes on the fly as to rationalize why you're around them. And what Portman, I believe, says I'm paraphrasing is something like, you know, like, I just want to like render a fair portrayal of you, which is, I've said it. You've said it. It's kind of the stock answer in that kind of uncomfortable moment. That's when it really hit me. That's when it really hit me that this is a

journalism movie because they're trying to get answers, right? As much information as they can in a polite way. And you notice the Portman characters never saying anything like, no, this movie will make you look good. This will be, you know, I'm here to rescue your reputation, just as a journalist. Yes. Yes. We'll never make sweeping statements. They will just say something like,

I'm here to get the truth. I'm here to understand you. These very neutral yet seemingly sympathetic statements to their subjects. I mean, their banter back and forth is exactly that. I felt this funny pit in my stomach. There's a moment late in the film, not a spoiler alert,

where Julianne Moore's character turns to her husband and says, like, I just want her out of my life. I just, I'm sick of her. And I'm like, God, man, I've probably had a million subjects who are like that. Who are like, oh, I can't take this jerk anymore. Like, I just don't want them moping around my recording studio, whatever it is, like, anymore.

And I just think that. just by presence, you sort of alter the oxygen in any room. And this was a celebrity. They did want the famous actress out of their life. Gosh, help you if you were just a lowly newspaper reporter. Not to get Janet Malcolm down from the shelf. We try to avoid that at all costs on this podcast. But there's also a little bit of that relationship here. This is somebody, the Julianne Moore character, who needs a positive portrayal, who has something, you know, who is at her lowest point, right? Like reminding people of this terrible thing she's done in her past

will only bring these events back up to the surface. So Natalie Portman, as the actress and or the journalist in this case, is the person who has the power in this exchange, right? She can help her, perhaps, in a way, or she can further hurt somebody who's already in a very dismal place publicly. Right. And that, too, had the ring. This is not Sam Lansky and Taylor Swift here, right?

This is somebody who has been cast out by society, whose society has told you're a very, very bad person. And so she is relying to some extent or hoping she can rely on this person who sweeps into her life to in some way mitigate that, if not totally rescue her reputation. That also felt very journalistic to be. Or assemble a piece of a revisionist history. You know, I think that like that comes across, I mean, there are these scenes again, none of this is spoilers, where you sort of see the prior waves of journalism and even Hollywood treatment of this particular Julianne Miller story. And you're just, you know, you're presuming here that this Natalie Portman's version of it is going to be a different version of it. And historically what we've seen, you know, whether it's like I, Tanya or something like that, like, like, like you're trying to bring some humanity into a situation that was kind of rendered like a cartoon

when it was happening in real time. I mean, you don't, they never really get into, a lot of left unsaid in this film. You don't know the particulars about, I mean, you have to presume that like Julianne Moore is being paid for her story, right? The film company has made an arrangement with her to compensate her for life rights, right? Yes. I would find it hard to believe that like Natalie Portman would be graced. a week of time from this person without some sort of money changing hands. I also did all the math in my head about like how many cakes can you sell and how many x-rays can you look at to afford

waterfront property and Savannah like that, Brian. And in my head, I couldn't figure it out. So I had to figure in the past there's been some sale to American media or to the current affair or something like that to put the down payment on that nice pad. You know, that these people, people, I mean, another thing that I would just like to say about this that I felt very, that felt very familiar to me is being with a subject and having to pick at a topic, which they have already long put to bed. That is old news to them. That is something that they have moved on from long, long ago and probably are not. interest in revisiting. Now, look, the fix is in. They know this is why the life rights that this

movie are being sold. This is why they're making it. They actually refer to the fact that it's only covering a two-year window of time. So they have to get into the old bad stuff. But that process of sort of like, you know, working with a subject, sort of making them feel comfortable to get into the shit of what happened in the past is a really delicate dance. And I thought that Portman does it exquisitely. You know, she's a very smart actor. She's not some sort of like flaky actor who's just kind of like walking into this like uninterested in the details of it. I mean, she's really doing the work. I found all that really interesting. Yeah. And we also learned in the movie and this is a minor spoiler, but that she is a famous TV actress who,

perhaps sees a world for herself where she's going to become a serious film actress. That was the one thing that confused me. Sorry. But the careerism, right, of the journalist, too, they struck me, right? For me, this is a big career opportunity, right? Your place in the, your low place in the universe is a way to improve my place career-wise in the universe by coming and rendering the story in a certain way. And by the way, I mean, this person had been through a great deal of scandal, and the scandal was effectively her identity to the world.

But almost any person that you interview of high profile has had a bad moment of some kind, whether it was self-inflicted or something else. That is like a thing that they don't really want to revisit. And you do have to kind of go there almost always. And there are elements of that that became part of this. And then also, like, I mean, like, turning into an NYU lecture here. But, I mean, I feel like the elements of going around and doing the secondaries where she talks to the ex-husband of Julian Moore, she meets her very interesting son from a prior marriage. She talks to the children.

She sees them interact. All that stuff also builds. understanding and ultimately how you render a character. And you see all that. Brian, they're going to teach this in journalism schools. You've convinced me. I think it's right up there. It's going to be right there with what's the New Republic movie? Oh, Shattered Glass. Shattered Glass. It's going to be right there with Shattered Glass, all the president's men. Yeah. Fantastic. Broadcast News. This is your new journalist's Cinemat Tech. I love it. Yeah. Jason Gay, read him in the Wall Street Journal, his latest

book is, I wouldn't try that if I were me. And please respect his privacy as he conducts his business affairs. Jason, thank you as always for coming on the press box. Brian, thank you. I know you've gone about a solid hour here without a Winston 100. So smoke him if you got him. And just like Charlie Huff in the 80s, baby, I can't wait to get back to the dugout and take a long drag. Thanks, Jason.