The Press Box - The Twitter Edit Button, Chuck Todd, and The Athletic’s Jourdan Rodrigue

Episode Date: September 6, 2022

Bryan and David weigh in on the new edit feature on Twitter (4:41) and then break down NBC’s ‘Meet the Press’ ratings and the future of Chuck Todd (11:49). Later, The Athletic's Jourdan Rodrigue joins to discuss the infamous fight that broke out at the Rams-Bengals joint practice, touch on the return of open locker rooms, and reminisce about covering a super bowl (31:59). Plus, the Overworked Twitter Joke of the Week and David Shoemaker Guesses the Strained-Pun Headline. Hosts: Bryan Curtis and David Shoemaker Guest: Jourdan Rodrigue Associate Producer: Erika Cervantes Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

It's the NFL preseason. Check out the Ringer Fantasy Football Show on Spotify or wherever get your podcast. And if you need fantasy football rankings, we've got our rankings, we've got our sleepers at fantasy football. So come listen to Danny Kelly, Greg Coralbeck, and me, Danny Hyfitz on the Ringer fantasy football show. David? Yes. Going on a little trip this weekend. Oh, where are you going?

I'm going on a trip I call the Texas Double. Oh. This is not a cheeseburger. you get at Wendy's for 99 cents. Does the world know that Texas fast food restaurants have regional fair? I'm sure they do. We all have our regional fair. I'm not sure they do.

I'm not sure they know that it's a basic cheeseburger that just includes the name Texas in the title. Maybe Wendy says that everywhere. Activates that Texas patriotism. Yeah, I want a Texas double cheeseburger. Yeah, well, we'll get you, Texas double cheeseburger when they secede from the union. My Texas double involves two football games.

Oh. Saturday in Austin, the University of Texas Longhorns, versus the Alabama Crimson Tide. Wow. In what might be an absolute throttling. But it's a big game because you've got two name programs. You're going to have both college football pregame shows on site. Wow. Not just game day, but the Fox Big Noon kickoff.

So I'm going to head down there. in the press box. And normally I would never do that for a Texas game. Because I feel I couldn't you know, wear a Vince Young jersey or scream and yell and be really goofy in the press box. But when you're 20 point underdogs to Alabama, the press box seems like a damn good place to be. What if there's no cheering? You get AC and a buffet. I mean, what more could you ask for? That's game number one. Game number two is going to be Sunday night in Arlington, Texas. Yeah. Dallas Cowboys, your Dallas Cowboys versus the Tampa Bay Buccaneers

on Sunday night football. For that one, I am sitting in the stands and I'm bringing a special companion, my son Owen. I was going to ask. Age nine is going to be going to his first NFL game. Has he been to a college game? Is this his first sporting event?

This is first football. We did a baseball game at the Angels. Oh, yeah, sure. When he was much younger. And I remember going there, playing the Texas Rangers. I had planned it all out. The Rangers hit a home run on the first at bat.

It's like, oh my gosh, you got to see a home run in your first at bat. This is incredible. I'm sitting there in making memories dad mode. And he just turned to me and he's like, is the game over yet? We've been through one at bat.

Yeah. So then it commenced a dad mode that you know very well where you just start buying popcorn and hot dogs and just hope that lasts for three innings. Baseball is the best sport to bring kids to, but you certainly can. not expect to sit through a whole game. You got a game plan it out really well.

Maybe get there in the third or the fourth. Just so when inevitably the kid is demanding to leave by like the bottom of the seventh, at that point you can make the cause of whether or not to be a jerk and say, no, we're saying for the end. But yeah, it's, but it is for the, for those like three and a half innings that the kid is enjoying being there, like we're at a, you know, county fair or a picnic or something. thing that there's no better sport. And in fairness to kids,

how many of us want to sit through an entire baseball game, even as adults? Yeah. We get beer. Kids don't have that luxury. If you and I went to an Angels game, especially an angel's game, after three innings, would we not be looking at each other like, what do you want to

do now? Get out of here, find a bar, you know, continue with our evening. Let's continue with this podcast. Coming up today, David, Twitter is testing an edit button. Do your tweets need and or deserve one? Plus, the end of the Chuck Todd era at Meet the Press might be nigh. Might be nigh. Is that the way to say it? We discuss both Todd and the entire genre of Sunday morning political affairs shows. Plus, the athletic NFL writer, Jordan Rodry gets us ready for the season by talking about open locker rooms,

training camp fights, and covering the Super Bowl. All that more on the press box. A part of the Ringer podcast network. Hello, media consumer Brian Curtis, David Shoemaker, producer Erica Cervantes here. On Thursday, David, there was an interesting tweet

from Twitter's Twitter account. It read, if you see an edited tweet, it's because we're testing the edit button. This is happening and you'll be okay. The edit feature will initially be handed

to Twitter blue subscribers. Axios reports that in its current iteration, the edit feature allows customers to change their tweets a few times, quote unquote a few times, within 30 minutes of posting. An edited tweet will appear with an icon, timestamp, and label to make it clear it's been modified, and tapping the icon will take viewers to a history link,

which will include past versions of the tweet. Where does your red pencil come down on the Twitter edit button? does that's it still doesn't i mean listen you can see the past versions you can see that it's been edited but it still doesn't entirely prevent somebody from just doing like retweet if you like dogs and then 10 minutes later changing it to like retweet if you're if you like hitler and then everybody can see you all the it's still possible um uh it's it's a really weird thing i mean it it seems all the problems are going to arise from it coming at this point so kind of so late into Twitter's existence, right?

There will be people who are just clowning with it and trying to do stuff like I just said. Hopefully I'm not giving anybody any ideas. It seems like you'd be in a better situation if you sort of started here and worked and tried to find whatever fix you thought was necessary as the eventual change, right? It seems like for such a public, almost utility

that Twitter has become, it's mind-boggling that it hasn't already happened. And not just from a practicality standpoint. From a practicality standpoint, it is mind-boggling on its own. But it's even more mind-boggling when you think about the fact that, like, there are massive corporations that I'm sure have leaned on Twitter numerous times over the years have been like, can we just get a function to change? We just put up an ad for a show, basically.

It misspelled the title. Can we just get a fix? You know, I mean, and that's the sort of power that, I guess, is admirably, Twitter has been, has just shrugged your shoulders add up to this point. It's nice. It's got to be, you know, I have a handful of really funny jokes over the years that would have been saved by an edit button. That's kind of where my mind goes. I don't know. What about you? Well, the typo tweet is the most enticing fix for me personally. Because how many times have you just tweeted something and been kind of proud of yourself for two or three seconds

and then it happened to look at the tweet. Oh, when you're proud of yourself, it's not happened. But when you're proud of yourself, you're checking those replies. Exactly. And then you start to look at this. Look at some engagement here. And then you realize there's like a big fat typo right in the tweet. And it's especially bad when you, if you're like me,

you go with the snarky tweet about something someone said on TV, someone miss speaking on TV. And then you couldn't even get the tweet right. which sort of undermines your point a little bit. So on those very narrow grounds, I'm looking forward to it, because I would like that 30-minute window to be like, whoa, whoa, little edit here.

Excuse me. I think the irony of Twitter you and I have noted before is that Twitter is at once the most disposable medium imaginable, but has also become the media stone tablets, where as soon as it's on Twitter, it becomes a quasi official proclamation. You and I can announce something in this podcast. Okay, it's out there.

It's out in the world. But if you or I tweeted it and said some personal news, that's when it would become real. Yeah. And if it is, if it has stone tablet status, it does feel that, again,

we're talking about benign actors here rather than bad actors, who will inevitably pop up. But if you're a benign actor, you're like, this is the thing. this is, I want to tweet this and this is important for posterity, then you do want the ability to change that if it's so important. Yeah. But it does sort of like, as much as I'm going to be happy to see it there for selfish reasons, it does sort of, I don't know, does it, does it, does it, does it,

I mean, Twitter is, Twitter, I mean, that's, I think the crux of the whole Twitter issue. I mean, the place that Twitter finds itself in our national discourse is that it is like absolutely intrinsic. I called the utility. You described it in a similar way, how significant it is. But it's also like, like it was sort of supposed to be a gimmick at the start, right? I mean, it was, this is not everything to everyone. That was not the purpose of the platform.

And they created or gave platform to the creation of this sort of new language, this new Linguifranca in our modern internet culture and, you know, not being able to edit your tweets is part of that, you know, I mean, that's kind of, we were stuck with it. It was a, this was a form for perfectionists or, or people who really don't care. And, and, yeah, I mean, it's, it's interesting just symbolically and how far they will sort of, well, moderate has too many connotations here. but how many little changes they'll make to sort of be a little bit more functional in the face of

you know, a sort of singular, I mean, sort of having a personality, that identity that made Twitter what it is. Would it be heartbreaking to see that a drill tweet had been edited? The joke massaged a little bit. Yeah. Well, the editing button too is getting, I mean,

I think talking about people like drill, I think there'll be a lot of ironic non-edits too, right? Just like proclamate. Like, if you tweet something and then you, like, go into edit to like delete and, and re, you know, replace a period or something just to get people to say, I wonder what they changed. They click on it. Does that count towards your, like, engagement numbers? If the ringer just like, if the ringer just fake edited all of its tweets just to get people to click through and see just in the hopes that they would see some catastrophic misspelling, would that help us? I don't know.

That'll definitely be a bit. That will be a bit. I mean, and I think that's sort of like the real downside to all this. That this thing is the defense of it, and I think it's defensible, the defense of it is that it's necessary, right? I mean, it's like a really, like this is an important, just very baseline thing that a platform like Twitter should have. However, because it's coming along now, it's only going to be a bit. So it kind of flies in the face of that defense. David, a headline in the Daily Beast caught my eye. NBC's Meet the Press shakeup puts Chuck Todd in jeopardy.

It's an article by Lachlan Cartwright who notes that Meet the press is, quote, down 21% in total viewership and 24% in the key advertising demographic compared to last year. It's a lot. The executive producer of the show was shifted over to streaming, now a new executive producer is deciding Todd's fate. Cartwright writes, despite recently signing a two-year extension, Todd has baffled many at NBC with how long he's remained atop the struggling show. What do we think about Chuck Todd possibly being in jeopardy? I mean, I can't say it's too shocking.

Anytime you're making changes, this is the sorts of things you look at. I think, you know, if you were coming in fresh, I don't think you'd have that much difficulty finding, you know, critiques of Chuck Todd online. I think I said last week, this sort of running gag is not just what Chuck Todd does on Meet the Press, but that he manages to trend for some perceived, you know, lack of follow-up question or whatever, every single week. But yeah, I mean, you can, it's hard to, I mean, it's frankly, I love Chuck Todd sometimes or I like him a great deal. I think he's a real asset to NBC News. Doesn't surprise me that he got an extension. But in terms of just Meet the Press, particularly the weekly show, I'm not talking, just Meet the Press daily still exist. I think it's. It also got shifted to streaming in a sign of potentially Chuck Todd's falling fortunes. But I mean, it's, it's really, it's impossible to watch him.

I mean, since they debuted, since, I mean, no matter what your opinion of him of, of him and not say that he's a slightly unconventional choice for that seat. He's not like some sort of like, you know, like manicured, pompadored, you know, TV, like, you know, TV host from a movie, news host from a movie. I mean, it's, so, yeah, I mean, it's almost, I don't know, I mean, like, you could make a lot of critique. It's easy to have a critique of Chuck Todd. I think the sort of ironic, interesting thing about this is.

that like if Chuck Todd does get the boot, it will almost certainly not be for the reasons that people complain about Chuck Todd. Does that make sense? Okay. Keep going. Just that like I think that you know, you get, you know, new people in charge, you get new producers, you whatever. And I think that you'll probably go for a more conventional choice, you know, more like they'll probably go for the pompadour. And that's not what people would, when we, when we hear people talk about Chuck Todd, it to some extent sort of takes for granted his intelligence and his sort of nimbleness of thought and critiques him based on that. Well, why didn't you do a better job knowing what you're able to do, right? Okay. So I'm glad you went there because if we do a little short history

of Meet the Press here, Tim Russert, whatever people thought of Tim Russert's questioning style at the time, that was a high period of Meet the Press. He dies in 2008. David Gregory, who I believe did in fact have a pompadour took over for Tim Russard and that show was seen as being a little too TV correspondent smooth not being not engaging with politics in the way the internet was starting to engage with politics

yes so then Chuck Todd comes along in 2014 and he's seen as a guy who actually knows stuff formerly at the hotline the kind of Mr. Politics of NBC, and for whatever lack of pompadour he might have had, he was seen as, okay, this is now we're getting to it. We have somebody who is engaging with politics much more than your average television persona.

So it's interesting to me that that has phased out a little bit and that the critique of Chuck Todd, whatever it is, is something like, oh, he's actually now this backbreakingly fair, who's not asking the right questions or is trying to be back-breakingly fair to Republicans or whatever, you know, under

the in the Trump era, whatever it is. But that he has phased out of what people say they want from that job. But I think there's this another question, which is, do we think the Sunday show works at all anymore? Or is that simply phased out of its useful period? I mean, you and I both remember the days

where you would like be flipping channels like you're watching you know Monday Night Wars wrestling trying to see which Monday which Sunday news show was was going to grab your attention or who is doing a better job making sure you got them all in it's not the same it's really insignificant there's really hard with them to find things to cover when there's 24 hour news on multiple channels right I mean a week the weekly I mean it was a wrap-up show I guess or a forward-looking show but weekly was still you know in its heyday pretty rapid response You know, I mean, it's, now it's a, I mean, if before it was like, you know, a newspaper or at best, just like a weekly column in the newspaper, now it's a quarterly, you know, it feels like it's just so, it's like, it's lagging to such an extent. And even to the extent that it's forward looking, it's, it's got to be so zoomed out that it almost, it's difficult to find the relevance. And guests and everything, too. I mean, just from a very insidery perspective.

you know, it's a almost weekly occurrence that the inability to book so and so or, you know, whoever is making themselves available becomes part of the story. But even from a more general point of view, if you're in charge of talent booking for Meet the Press, you're not just competing with the other Sunday shows. You're sort of have to keep an eye on the fact that like everybody you want a book has already been on TV 10 times this week, right? And like, are you giving, are you going to give the audience anything new or they, you know, it's a whole, it's a it's a it's a it's a difficult template to be working off of right now for sure has already been on 10 times this week or is a republican and just says i don't do tv interviews with non-fox

outlets because i'm reaching everybody i need to reach or that's my theory of the case anyway through fox and through or through you know conservative podcasts or radio or whatever it is i i i do think there's a guest problem. And Chuck Todd's talked about this. I can't get Republicans to come on my show. And but, you know, the other thing is I don't think they can get Joe Biden to come on their show either or as easily as they once did. And if you have a world, again, just because the world's changed so much where politicians are like, I don't need to do this. I don't need to be available to do this once a year or in the case of a John McCain type couple of times a year. it's just not that important for me to subject myself to that kind of grilling, then there is a question of should it be a different kind of show?

Should it exist at all? Should they try to raise their game in the political analysis they do? We've talked about those roundtables I do at the end of the show where they bring the journalists on. Those are not nearly at the level that you could find on any crooked media podcast. For sure. Whatever your preferred podcast is. You have people speaking more openly on just about every podcast, right? There's a point at which you're talking about politics on television in such a different way than people are talking about politics in any other spot.

That it feels like why are people going to watch that? Well, I think that sort of gets to the crux of a lot of the critique of Chuck Todd. You were talking about some of this before. I mean, Chuck Todd was, you know, we'll speak in mostly serious, absolutely, you know, lavishing praise on guys like Steve. Cornycki Chuck Todd was sort of the er Steve Cornycki right? I mean he and it was a real novelty when he got to when he got the job to host meet the press because he was just sort of the you know stats guy or like whatever you know what he would pop up on on the TV screen largely to that to that point

and you're right he was different than David Gregory right I mean who has seemed to be a little bit perceived to be a little bit too polished or whatever else but I think what's What really, I mean, what people really have, take issue with, Chuck Todd is the perception that he's like just too inside the beltway, right? That he's just like too much a part of the machine, no matter what his other positive attributes are. And that's what you, basically, what you just said in a different way. When you're talking about politics in a way that the rest of the world,

or at least the rest of the conversation is discussing politics, if you're so different than them, then it's easy to perceive someone. as being too beholden to the machine, to, you know, tied into it. Even if that's not really the case. I mean, I have no doubt in the world that Chuck Dodd shows up to work every day trying to do the best possible job, the best possible way he knows how, right? And he's probably on the terms that they've said for themselves, feels like he's probably being successful most of the time.

To inside the machine when everybody on Twitter and podcasts is outside of the machine. Yeah. too back-breakingly non-partisan, whatever that word means, when most people on Twitter and on podcasts don't care, right? They're just like, I'm going to talk about politics in a totally different way. And I'm not going to worry about that. It just feels like you're just out of phase at some point. And again, I'm not saying like, did you just cancel network news? But there's got to be a different way to do that show that isn't as reliant on politician interviews that is more about a discussion of politics for people. And even if it's happening weekly,

you can make it very, very newsy. You can come off Friday and Saturday. There's no lack of political news in our times. You can get a show ready together. So it's not just to digest. You know, and I think maybe try to make it, you got to give people something else. When it was David Brinkley and Sam Donaldson and Koki Roberts, there were a lot of people who were reading local newspapers and saying, wow, this is my glimpse of national politics for the week. This is my glimpse inside that machine. Now everybody's like staring inside the machine all week. What are you going to give them?

Right. That's going to be different. There's no curtain to pull back. It's almost like, and especially in the terms of when they're trying, I mean, when they are able to give platform to kind of big name politicians who don't do a lot of other media, just by default, it feels like instead of, of pulling the curtain back, they're sort of putting the curtain up, right? I mean, they're giving platform to people who have, you know, come with a certain set of expectations, you know,

and it's tough. I mean, it's a, it's an odd place they find yourselves in. Because you're right, we've said it a million times. People don't have to do meet the press, right? People don't have to do the Sunday show to get the word out. Joe Biden, I mean, his predecessor, you know, Barack Obama proved everybody that, you know, going on between two firms is probably more functional for getting message out and going on a Sunday news show. And then, you know, Trump obviously proved that you can get your message out with a couple of tweets much more effectively than you could if you went on TV. Really reminds me of the hand-wringing we've done in previous years about late night television or sports center where everybody focuses on, well, this person who is doing it now is not like David Letterman or is not. like Dan and Keith or whoever the person who did it during the golden age. And it just seems to me

that that can be true, but also you have to focus on, is that institution capable of being as great as it once was even if it were in the best possible hands? And that's something to think about here too. Okay, Chuck Todd, let's say Chuck Todd is no longer the host of Meet the Press. Who is the person that's going to deliver the best possible version of that show? well the i mean i have no idea i know that's sort of rhetorical but but the answer is has to be to make a choice that now feels as bold as chuck todd that at the time right i mean that you almost have to make you it has to be a choice there's never going to be anybody that is that that that rides into the meet the press hosting seat you know on the back of a white

horse with the crowd singing hosanas or whatever i mean there's never going to be a consensus pick for a job like this. And so it's got to be somebody who can make the most out of being, you know, an underdog or, you know, just sort of, like, you know, it's got to be, it's got to be somebody with a real angle, with a real, with a real point of view, who's going to make real decisions about it, you know, I mean, it's almost like when they had to pick John Stewart's replacement on the Daily Show, you know, I mean, it could, there were, everybody had a different horse in the race and they decided to go a little bit of left field with Trevor Noah. I mean, I think that there's probably, there's, I don't know if there has to be one person.

Obviously, that is a, that is a fairly obvious thing to say. And, you know, NBC News already has a lot of people under contract. I don't know if it has to be somebody new. You know, I don't think anybody would be like suffering heart palpitations of like Chris Hayes got the nod, the nod, or something, you know. But like- Kristen Welker was mentioned in this daily piece.

Sure. Um, it's a really good choice. But I think that it, I think that looking at the Chuck Dodd, kind of David Gregory debate at the time, is instructive because, um,

I think a lot of reporters are, for whatever reason, perceive to be a little bit lightweight for the job, even though there's a lot, there's a long tradition of it. And, um, you know, it's, and part of that is because the people who host regular programs,

nightly programs or whatever, we have a little bit more insight into their personalities, you know, into like what makes them tick. And I think that that gives somebody a little bit of a deeper humanity to the, to the potential audience. But I don't know. I mean, it's, it's an incredibly difficult rule to fill, especially because you're weighing against this perception of gravity, like the significance of this choice in a world where it's one of the most insignificant, and I'm one of the most insignificant, but it is much less significant than the press release, the volume of the press release would lead you to believe.

All right, David. Coming up, we're going to talk to the athletics, Jordan Rodriguez, about the NFL. But first let us do the overwork Twitter joke of the week where we celebrate a gag that was so obvious that all of media Twitter made it at exactly the same time. Send your nominees to at the press box pod where they are always gratefully received

speaking of college football, there was a big interception in the Penn State Purdue game by Boilermakers DB Chris Jefferson. Here's Fox's Gus Johnson with a call. 12 yards first down at the 48, Clifford, over the middle. High and picked. Jefferson with room. Can he get a block? Chris Jefferson, still on the move with the lane. Jefferson. After taking that interception back for a touchdown, Jefferson went to the sideline and with the Fox cameras trained on him, David. He threw up. And I mean, threw up a lot. It was an overworked Twitter joke to call the play Puk six.

Not Pukes six, Pukes. Jefferson said after the game, as soon as I threw up, I started laughing because I already knew I was going to be a meme. if you let a player puke his way into your heart, congrats. You made the overworked Twitter joke of the week. I don't know how much Penn State Purdue you watched, but did you hear Gus Johnson's call of the winning touchdown from that game? No, I didn't. Listen to this and see if you hear something kind of funny happened to Gus Johnson's voice mid-call.

Clifford Sprints out. Lops it up. voice just kind of exploded there right in the middle of that touchdown call. But that's all, that's a day. Oh, boy, I pointed that on Twitter. I said, I don't think Gus is going to be putting this on his Emmy reel this year. And a lot of people said, well, you know, I like that he gets excited. I'm going to.

I think if he had to do it over again, his voice would have sounded slightly differently. How often can I ask you a question to early? Yeah, for nothing. Michael Cole, WW announcer who you've interviewed, has a, sometimes people post a fan video of him where during the biggest,

biggest moments, he will leave his seat. And just start, you wouldn't know it from listening to it. But he gets up and just starts, you know, you know, it's like lightly pumping his fists.

And, and I wonder, like, other announcers, do that? I mean, Pat McAfee, by the way, is the color commentator on that show. And Pat McAfee works from a standing position about 75% of the time. So I don't know how much he's influenced Michael Cole. I know he's had a great effect on it. But the mainstream sports announcers in a moment like that, like that call we just played ever just, are they jumping out of their seat,

fist pumping, just trying to get the energy from their body out into the microphone? So in my experience, football announcers stand up for the entire game. Oh, right. You see that on TV a lot. I kind of assumed that they sat down after the cutscenes or whatever. It seems like it. But when I've been in the booth standing behind them, they're almost always standing up for the entire game. But yes, I guarantee there's some, I would say it's probably 90% voice with most of them. But there's got to be 10% like physical in there.

Yeah. Especially play like that. It kind of makes sense for football because they're all standing on the side. All the former players and coaches and stuff have been standing on the sideline the whole time, right? So, like, that's how they're used to watching the games. Whereas some other sports, you have, you have, you have to bench, you know, you get, you spend some of your time in the chair. Yeah, basketball, you'd be in the chair.

But think about those videos you see when we get those, uh, videos they have now when there's a last second buzzer beater. I think it's usually a basketball game is when we see it most of the time. Sometimes we'll see it with John Sterling with the Yankees, but you see the video of the announcer, they're, they're almost always both going crazy vocally and going crazy physically. Mm-hmm. there's a big like, whoa of something they've just seen.

Yeah. Not a lot of stoicism there. It's an interesting question. We should do the podcast standing up. I used to always say I did a better job when I would do like radio hits that I was way better if I could just be pacing around my room than if I was sitting at a desk.

I've heard that. Somebody told me the other day that in fact that said you should stand up, your voice will sound better when you do the podcast. Hmm. I haven't taken them up on that yet. All right. I just got to figure out to get this microphone affixed to my chest like Bob Dylan harmonica or something.

Nathan Fielder with the laptop on his chest. Yeah, exactly. All right, David, NFL season begins Thursday with Rams Bills and let us bring someone in who can get us fired up. Journalistically speaking, Jordan Rodriguez is a Rams beatwriter for the athletic co-host of the 11 personnel podcast. Jordan, welcome to the press box.

Thank you guys so much for having me. As I had said off air and we'll probably repeat to the point of you guys being uncomfortable. Huge fan of the show. Thank you so much for having me. I know I'm not uncomfortable. David, how are you feeling about this?

I feel great about it. I really take praise very, very comfortably. I want to start, Jordan, by asking you about a fight you covered on August 25th. This was not the typical

things are getting a little chippy out there preseason fight. It was a fight at a joint practice between the Rams and Bengals where Aaron Donald allegedly was swinging a helmet. what was it like to cover that and what is it like to cover that in the two weeks since it happened? Great question.

First of all, you feel when you're on a beat, the way that I try to cover my beat, you're there for everything, right? You sort of float in and fade into the background, but you try to see everything. And you try to more importantly feel everything. Like you try to really open yourself up to catching whatever vibe is going on that day from a variety of people and just holding it all in that space and navigating that. And so you felt, after all the politeness of the first day, which was one of the most efficient joint practices I'd ever seen in my entire life between Sean McVay and Cincinnati Bengals and Zach Taylor.

And then the next day, you just sort of felt something is going to happen. You just sort of felt it brewing. There were a couple of skirmishes between the first team. defense along the defensive line and then the first team offense on the offensive line for the Bengals and you felt okay the tone has been set a helmet came off previously before the Aeronald incident and so you sort of felt like the players lock into this understanding that something would happen and I say that to mean you have to hold those feelings and navigate them because you are quite literally compartmentalized away from the situation you're sort of like held in a pen

essentially, you're behind a line. And that's your viewing area for where you can watch the practice. So as you feel that, you're sort of trying to accurately navigate that situation and see what the key players are and see how things are escalating, most importantly, instead of covering just the outburst itself, you want to see kind of what led to it, right? And so you file away these details. And then all of a sudden the big one comes, right? And that was chaotic. And like I will echo Sean McVey and Zach Taylor both to say that I think both teams were really lucky that nobody got hurt. I think that there were a lot of coaches who also felt that energy and were immediately ready to jump in. A lot of personnel people that immediately dove into the scrum and pulled guys away from each other.

And in the fallout of it, you know, we're there on site. But other than Sean McBae's comments at the podium, the Rams didn't want to comment on the situation. the league left it up to the club to determine, you know, how discipline, if any, would be doled out and what kinds of conversations that they would have internally. And because it was a practice and not a game, and the Rams had sort of released a statement to us. There were three of us reporters who were actually on site in Cincinnati

and the Rams sort of released a statement after we pressed them to do so. And then it sort of quiets for... And then it flares back up again when players are made available for the first time after that fight and Aaron was this week. So it's a it's a quick outburst with a lot of ripple effects and then subriple effects that happen afterward. And filing each of those away and placing each of those things within the context required, I think is always a challenge on a beat. But certainly in a situation like this that was, you know, there was a lot going on. And it was a lot of things happening at one time. How did you find Donald when you got your first crack at him yesterday?

He was good. You know, the situation had settled long ago in his mind, right? And it was a moment that happened at a practice. He and Sean McBay and Eric Henderson, their D-Line coach, Rahim Morris, their defensive coordinator. They had the conversation. And, you know, the nature of that conversation may never know on the record what that was, right? but at that point, you know, football players and football coaches are very good at compartmentalizing, right? You guys have seen this for years. We've all seen it for years. And they'd already moved into a new phase.

That being said, he did know and understand that the question would be asked because this was his first public facing appearance. And what I thought was interesting was he was open to talking about it in a way where he still wanted to continue the conversation. forward, focusing on the bills and all of that. But wasn't frustrated with the questions, wasn't irritated by the questions, understood that the questions would come. And at the same time, there was this very small moment of, he's very close to the vest, right? When you're around someone every day, you can see those tiny moments where that sort of shell around them cracks open just a little bit. And then you see maybe the way someone's brain is working and the way their heart is working too. And there was a moment a reporter in the room posed a question about, do you feel,

and I'm paraphrasing horribly, but the question was something like, do you feel like this adds anything different or extra to what you want to go out and accomplish Thursday night and the rest of this year, understanding that there are a lot of people that are being critical of you right now? And Aaron sort of paused for a moment and said, of me, almost like that realization where, yes, people are talking about this and talking about this in the context of his legacy. And I think there was that moment where that was a very real moment. And it was a very real understanding of, you know, first of all, thank God, no one got hurt. And then also a very real moment. He is that guy. Everybody is going to be watching him. They have been watching him. And probably now even more

so as he continues to build to this legacy one season after, you know, perhaps considering retirement. So this is, you're seeing these things happen in real time. And, you know, we talk a lot. I know you guys talk so much about journalism on this podcast. That's what beat writing is. That's a moment, right? You're there for the moments. You cover the moment.

You understand the complexity of that moment and how many things can be true and also evolving at the same time. You mentioned during the, the fight being physically compartmentalized. And obviously, as you just told us. No one of's like physically holding me back. Hold me back. I was not fighting. I should hope not. But, but you know, and also this whole story, it ends on the moment.

That is beat writing. But prior to that, there was the incident. And then there was this period of lack of availability. And this has been a kind of an ongoing conversation on this podcast and throughout various sports, especially in recent years that, you know, media access is a lot more managed or access to people like you is a lot more managed than it has been in the past. Is that, do you feel like it was more guarded over, in this case, than it is in general? Or do you deal with that sort of, I don't want to say frustration, but I'll just say frustration a lot.

And for the listeners, tell us what you do in the intervening period. Like, what is the process of trying to report out this story when the team is basically locked it up? Yeah, a good question. And it's interesting, right? Because again, constantly moving, constantly changing. And all you can do is ask, right? And so he was scheduled to do a press conference that day. I think there was a level of understanding why it didn't happen immediately after.

Like, they closed practice right after the fight. So I think there was a level of understanding on our part as beatwriters why that didn't happen on that day specifically. But, you know, we were all also in town. So there was that repeated effort to. does he want to comment? Do you want us to come to the team hotel? Does he want to address the situation? Does Sean want to say anything further? Because Sean got up to the lectern and, you know, discussed what had happened. And interestingly, he did so before I think anyone was aware that there was a video. And what people should remember about this too is that this was a closed practice. So there were some fans that were season ticket holders and media is not allowed to record any of the live periods.

So a fan had a video of the incident. And so everything's moving and happening so fast. And Sean and Zach Taylor, they meet and they sort of go over what everyone's going to say about this. And in the scrum, as we're maneuvering toward our media area to ask questions, we're also sort of keeping an eye on who's coming over. Who's going to, is anyone going to approach anyone and have a discussion with them before this? And then Sean comes over. and I don't think, I can't speak for him, but I don't think he realized or knew that there was a video of this situation or multiple videos of this floating around because they planned it purposefully to be a closed practice, a closed workout so that they could run some of their fuller manifested installs and all of those things.

And so this all is happening so fast. And then so because of the context of the video as well, of the helmet swinging specifically and of Aaron sort of falling backwards and has the helmet in his hand and the photos. as well that came out the still photos, that context required further follow-ups because there was no indication that he had seen the reaction and the commentary that was now starting to swell from this incident, Sean McBay, I mean,

there was no indication in the time of his initial comments. So you continue to follow up and you continue to see, you know, is there anything formal or informal that you're able to share about the situation? And you just keep that line of dialogue open. And I think we always knew that we were going to get Aaron at some point. And there was that understanding that this would be probably the time when we would address this with him.

And then I saw earlier, a couple of days earlier, you know, he had done some sponsored things with some marketing people. And the people on those calls had asked him about it. And that kind of got out there. So there was kind of these added ripple effects that I don't necessarily think. if I'm on the perspective of the player or if I'm on the perspective of, you know, the PR staff, that I don't know if that was ideal for them in terms of managing the situation. But there was this sense of when Aaron comes to the podium at the Rams facility, ahead of, you know, Rams bills, this is probably going to put the period at the end of the sentence.

In terms of this specific situation and its direct context, again, a couple of weeks after it initially, happen. So you continue to keep that line open. You continue to understand this is the less than glamorous part of the job. But also, it's something that it's a thread that needs to be followed all the way through in order to completely and fully do the job the way that it's directed. On Sunday, Jordan, you tweeted that the Rams have kept an open locker for Odell Beckham Jr. In case they resign him at some point. That was news, but the other news to me was that you were standing in a locker room. Right.

After a couple years of not standing in a locker room because of COVID. How does your job change when you have an open locker room? Yeah, I could probably talk for several hours about that change because I started covering this team in 2020 and I covered them not only from a different time zone to start out because everything was locked down. But after I had driven across the country to get to Los Angeles, then I started covering them via Zoom, right? And via last partition, we would literally talk to Jared Goff through a partition and several

screens. You know, we were in a tent outside and we would look in and it'd be like kind of we're, you know, at a drive-through window ordering takeout from him or something. And it was odd. And then you got used to it, right? And, you know, unfortunately, we got used to it. And so then coming back in and the Rams opened their locker room for the first time, teams across the league did it differently,

but the Rams opened their locker room, really for the first time, their daily locker room on Sunday. So that was the very first time that any of us had been in there. And there's all of these things where there's how you feel about the situation, which is awesome.

I can finally have real human conversations with people while also making sure they're aware that I'm respecting their space because I'm now in their space for the first time. And there's not a computer screen separating us or anything like that. Or we'd been doing interviews outside, but they'd always been organized by a public relations official. So there was never that organic pitch. And I was just saying this in my group chat. I'm in a group chat with a bunch of women who also cover the NFL.

Shout out to the group chat. We all need those, I think. And I was saying to them, I forgot the adrenaline rush, just the joy of having a conversation organically with a player, talking through something that you'd been thinking about writing about them or their position group, in this case, one of the offensive linemen, and watching them not only understand the idea, but share the vision, watch them buy in, watch them say, hell yeah, let's do that. I mean, that's such a unique, as a storyteller, that's such a unique adrenaline rush that you didn't realize how much you missed it over the last couple of years. And doing so in an organic way, right? There's no third party telephone operator to sort of communicate that through. And I will say, like, I do commend the Rams. I think they did a great job in the COVID years of, you know, helping me to have conversations with people.

But again, it's over the phone, it's Zoom. it's at a distance outside and none of it feels natural. None of it feels like walking up to somebody who you want to share an idea with and organically striking up that conversation. And so it's the big moments like the O'Dell stuff, which to me, you know, it's funny what we find newsworthy and the players don't, right? Like that's been there. That's been there since the end of the season and they intentionally kept it open.

Not one time did anyone mention in an interview. or anything, hey, this thing's still there, right? They've all said how much they want them back and all this stuff. But we walk in and we're like, oh my God, shiny object, distraction, right? Like, we're all enamored by this. And then, and then you realize this isn't news to them. They're kind of probably all looking at us like we're insane. And then, and then as that sort of settles, then you start to explore some of the corners of places that you hadn't been before and, and explore some of the ideas and really talk to people and, and shake hands and ask people. how they are genuinely, not in a way where it's like, all right, the Zoom timer's on, you know,

just genuinely, how are you? And those types of things, the small details that you can get, that turn into huge things. I'll say one thing about this team, a small detail is absolutely going to be a huge freaking thing like two months from now, right? So it's, they just, that's just the way that they are. They live in those details. And that is something that has been, really entertaining and exhausting about covering them. But it's also something that in that space you can explore so much more about that, the context of it, how much it matters, why it matters. You mentioned driving across the country during the pandemic. As a former resident of Charlotte, North Carolina, I'm obligated to ask you how much worse is Los Angeles than Charlotte? No,

let me phrase that a different way. I was like, whoa, man. Have you had, I'm just kidding. I've lived in Los Angeles, too, love it. Have you had time in the post, you know, glass, the partition era to really think about how the Rams organization in your experience is different than the Panthers? Are there significant changes from team to team? Or is it all just sort of like the strip malls look the same no matter where you are? Significant changes, but I think that's what helps me cover the sport in this league better is recognizing those changes. everybody's going to build an ecosystem in a different way. And when you are on a beat, you are dropping yourself into that ecosystem.

And you're not really a part of it, but you watch how everything interconnects, right? And it's your job to pull it those threads and to study how not just things are constructed, but how they evolve after construction. So I caught the Panthers at a very different time in their build, quote unquote, or their rebuild, then I caught the Rams. I caught the Rams as they were ready to take this giant gulp of air and go full sprint towards the hurdles, right? And I caught the Panthers as they were sort of, okay, what's the answer to keep this feeling that we have alive as long as possible amid so much change? And I think understanding the differences in the decision makers and also the decision making at that time has for me, like I said, been a tremendous and fascinating study.

but you also, for me, it's like when you have it, when you come into different organizations and you recognize those changes, you don't necessarily weigh them in your mind as this is the right way to do it or this is the wrong way to do it. You kind of start to sort of expand back out and look at it as just these different galaxies that kind of exist and some of them are expanding and some of them are contracting and then you float to one and it's on this level. It's in this sort of arc of its story and then you float to another. And every small detail, about it matters in that regard. And so you almost don't compare them,

but you recognize the differences are what ebbs and flows this league as a whole, as a whole as it evolves and changes. But traffic's way worse here also. So last season was the first time you've had a team go all the way to the Super Bowl. What was surprising to you about the process of covering a Super Bowl? It's ridiculous what my mind immediately jumps to is that I, I should have gotten my haircut earlier. Like I should have gone to the dentist.

You know, these things that you don't realize you're not doing or these life things that you don't realize they're not happening. Again, like everybody does the job differently. For me, I felt like, I don't know if I'm ever going to see this again, right? I don't, as I saw previously,

it's not guaranteed that you go back. It's not even guaranteed that you remain intact at that point. So what I need to do is sort of embody the ethos of what all these people in this building are doing, again, at a distance, and go full send, right? Try to meet the moment as well as you can and screw whatever else, you know, screw the fallout, screw the cavity, right? Screw the split ends. Screw the lack of sleep, probably a couple of years taken off my life at this point. really because you meet that moment in the best way you can. And that's something you can never tell someone what it's like.

You just have to live it. And you can never tell someone what you would do differently or how you would do things differently other than those small details that are inconsequential to the whole because, you know, I remember it in large feelings and large moments. And then the small details I remember are like hysterical. laughing, you know, at how unkempt my physical state had become by the end of it, you know. And I think that's the interesting part to me is you've sort of let the experience take you over and change you in so many ways, but you have to keep moving forward because the space you're

in has to keep moving forward. The space you're in does not slow down. It evolves constantly or it should. And so you, if you're going to cover it accurately, if you're going to tell the truth about what you're seeing, which is the base of our jobs, you also have to live in that change and in that state. So it's interesting, you know, people who are on teams that have got made deep playoff on former beat partner Joe Person, he tried to warn me about it as well. He was like, you won't even know what to say after it's done. You'll know what you feel, but you won't even know what to say. And then you sleep for a couple days and then you start all over. Jordan

in January, the Times bought the athletic. It's been a big topic conversation. I heard about that. It's been a big topic conversation on this show. I can imagine

in your life as well in the circles that you run in. How has your life, how was your job, how was your day-to-day change under new ownership? I actually almost wish

I had a more exciting answer for you. I think I'm getting a new computer soon. But in general, and I know I speak from a place of I'm in Los Angeles. I'm in a large market. I'm in a market. The team that I covered just won the Super Bowl.

The interest is there. The metrics are there. The things that people love about this sport and about a confluence of a large-scale events that are coming into this market, that's all here. So I speak from probably a place of privilege in that, of understanding that my day-to-day hasn't really changed and I can only speak for myself in that regard. But it's interesting because you know, when you're a kid, it's one of the first newspapers you probably hold in your hands, right? And other than you're local, but then you see the script at the top and the font, right? You

think, wow, this is. And so you have that emotional reaction when you first hear the news and then you you always wonder. You know, I've not been in this business for as many decades as some of my compatriots here, but I've also been around for layoffs at different places. I've worked at newspapers. I've seen, I sort of was in, I was in school when a lot of my professors were telling me, best of luck to you thoughts and prayers out there, like, it's going to suck. And you think, can I even do this? Can, is there going to be a space that's possible for me to exist in and the way that I feel I am meant to exist, which so many writers and so many journalists are going through right now.

So for me on a, like I said, an extreme place of privilege, my day-to-day personally has not changed. I'm still trying to do my best covering this team in the NFL as a whole. But I understand that with any sort of acquisition of this nature, especially the magnitude that it was and one that I think a lot of people probably, you know, could see as a natural escalation of how these companies would maybe exist or how these companies will exist into the future. I know that with that comes questions constantly and it comes

evolution in certain ways and it comes, I think, fairly anxiety about what does this look like? But where I'm at, I feel, like I said, lucky and certainly privileged because all I can control is what I put into how I do my job. And if it fits with the way that they want me to do my job, then I guess that's great. And so far it seems like it has. But I am also curious to see long term what this looks like and what kind of workplace it is and what the environment is like. And I think that's fair. I think that's always fair when something like this happens. You can read Jordan Roderick on a New York Times owned website, The Athletic,

and also hear her on the podcast 11 personnel. Jordan, thanks for coming on the press box. Thank you guys so much for having me. Hope I didn't ramble too much. I just got so excited there for a minute. All right, it's time for another edition of David Shoemaker guesses the strained pun headline. Yeah. Today's headline, David, comes from me.

I was reading Twitter the other night looking for House of the Dragon content. And I came across a Slate story by Susan Matthews. And this is really the perfect Slate story. Let's get out there and say, is this show really any good? That's the column I won from Slate. I really do.

Susan Matthews not only wondered whether the show was very good, but also wondered if the show wasn't a little boring. A little boring in those early episodes. I think you've got enough. What was Slate's strained pun headline?

Before I have to, halfway through your description, I get stuck on a headline that is definitely not the answer. But I wonder if anybody's used like HBO laser dragon egg with it for any of the big pans. Not bad. Okay, boring.

Dull. Long-winded, exhausting, tired. Doesn't move very fast, David. Slow motion. I remember the title of this. Yeah, I know. House of the Dragon, D-R-A-G-G-I-N, apostrophe. Close enough.

More like House of the Dragon. Oh, drag-on, all right. More like House of the Dragon. I want to go with Dragon. This column was really. This column was written before episode three. No spoilers. It wasn't as much dragon with the apostrophe end in episode three.

He is David Shoemaker. I'm Brian Curtis. Production Magic by Erica Servantes coming tomorrow on the press box. There's a new face, David, in NFL broadcasting, at least on the first teams. He is Kevin Burkhart of Fox, replacing Joe Buck, this Fox's number one team, and calling the Super Bowl in his first year. in that job. I went down to the Fox lot to talk with him the other day. Plus, more lukewarm takes about the media. See you then, David. See you later, Brian.