The Press Box - The Wooing of Donald Trump, USWNT Takery, and in Defense of Mark Jackson

Episode Date: August 7, 2023

Bryan and David begin this week by discussing the U.S. women’s national team’s loss to Sweden this weekend and how both current and former players responded to their elimination (0:41). Then, they weigh Fox News’ approach at encouraging Donald Trump to take the stage for GOP debates (12:00). Later, they state their case in defense of former NBA Finals team announcer Mark Jackson (30:00). Plus, another Not About Media segment, where they talk conference realignment. And, of course, the Overworked Twitter Joke of the Week and David Shoemaker Guesses the Strained-Pun Headline. Hosts: Bryan Curtis and David Shoemaker Producer: Erika Cervantes Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Subscribe to the Ringer NFL show on Spotify or wherever you get your podcast. And be sure to follow the Ringer NFL on Instagram, TikTok, and Twitter at Ringer NFL. Yes. The U.S. women's national team lost to Sweden yesterday. And there were a couple of stories that came out of the tournament that are really interesting. First off, that was an extremely complicated way to end a sporting event. Mm-hmm. Sweden takes a penalty kick.

the U.S. goalie Alyssa Neer blocks it, but the ball goes straight up into the air and she has to kind of pop it out of the goal. Turns out when we see the VAR replay that during that sequence, the ball barely crossed the line. Sweden wins and Neer says, we just lost the World Cup by a millimeter, which is even in sadness,

one of the all-time sports quotes, I think. If my timeline has ever been united, in anything. And this includes election nights. It was that Fox did not get a replay of that goal up on the screen quickly enough. Yeah. Or explain what happened to the uninitiated. Kind of a general rule of broadcasting.

If the audience isn't sure what's happening in a sporting event, that's a bad sign. Absolutely, yes. On the plus side, though, did you see any of those post-match interviews that Jenny Taft did for Fox? Yeah, I caught some of them, yeah. The losing locker room is a tough assignment. It is, you know, nobody in there is really eager to do the interview. And as an audience member, what do you want to know? What does it feel like to just have lost a huge game?

How much does it hurt right now? Yeah, and but as a reporter, you can't exactly ask that. I thought Jenny Taft did a great job. You watched those Alex Morgan and Julia. interviews, sometimes it's not even about the question or what they say, but just about their face and the way their voice is cracking a little bit and their whole demeanor in that moment. I thought that was incredible television. It really was. Yeah, totally agree. Sometimes the skill is in capturing the silence, capturing the expression, just sort of holding on long enough

and setting the tone for a reaction that's, you know, not necessarily going to make the printed page, but it captures the moment. And really being a reporter in that sense where you're sympathetic, but you don't lose your mind either. I remember Super Bowl a couple years ago when the Panthers lost to the Broncos

and the CBS reporter who went in to talk to Ron Rivera looks sadder than Ron Rivera. when he was asking the questions. You don't want to be that either. Did you follow the controversy about Fox's Carly Lloyd? Yeah, a little bit. So Carly Lloyd on the Deaths for Fox, of course, a four-time World Cup veteran herself.

Before the Sweden match, the U.S. needed to beat or tie Portugal to even advance to that round. The game turned out to be a zero-zero-zero or nil-tie with the Portuguese, with a Portuguese shot going off the puck. post in stoppage time. The U.S. did the least possible that they possibly could to advance the next round.

When Fox showed the U.S. team dancing and smiling and signing autographs postgame, Lloyd went in. I appreciate them taking care of the fans, but let me tell you, Carly Lloyd's butt would be back in the locker room kicking things, throwing things. I have never witnessed. And just seeing these images for the first time right now on the desk, I've never witnessed something like that. There's a difference between being respectful of the fans and saying hello to your family, but to be dancing, to be smiling.

I mean, the player of the match was that post. You were lucky to not be going home right now. What did you make of that take? I thought it was a fantastic take. I mean, in the realm of takes, and when you have Carly Lloyd on your broadcast, when you have anybody who's that closely removed from competition, and everything else. I mean, I think that's what you have them there for, right?

I mean, we always talk about how we wish, you know, Tony Romo would go in on the quarterbacks more, you know, that the ex-players who are playing would have more of a real slant to their commentary. I mean, what's the argument? That it's her, you know, she should be celebrating along with them or that she should be just reverent of, you know, the success such as it is that they garners. that she shouldn't be that sort of antagonistic in her tone.

Well, I think the magic word is Romo because in the age of Romo, we don't hear TV commentators who are calling the game or in the pregame and post game studio talk like that very much anymore. Sure. And people kind of rear up when they hear a take like that. Wait, what? Yeah. And I think part of the response from Twitter was you just don't, you're just not

used to that anymore. There was a time when broadcasting had a lot of that. And again, I'm talking about games. I'm not talking about the first take kind of broadcasting. But the games and the pregame post game had a lot of that. That was the way you earned your spurs. Yeah. It really doesn't anymore.

People are really, really nice. They're nerdy, but they're nice. And I think when people heard that, there was a little bit of a, uh-oh. She, wait, this happens now? Yeah. people sort of go in on the team and you know look you and I have heard a lot of ex-baseball

players offer a version of that take you know when we run when we won by a fewer than three runs in my day we all beat each other up in the locker room yeah no it's well yeah I mean and that's silly in its way but there is a sort of implicit sexism to

you know getting mad at Carly Lloyd and I you know when you wouldn't necessarily get mad at a man for having that point of view and also I mean I I don't know. I mean, it just seems like, like, it's a weird take, I think, just to engage, to sort of abide the celebration. I mean, yes, there's something to celebrate. You get to move on, but it's not a win in and of itself. This is like, you know, if this, if this were a boxing video, a boxing meme of some like, you know, boxer tripping and knocking himself out and the other

guy just celebrating as if he'd conquered the world, we'd be making fun of the victor for celebrating, right? I mean, it's it's not, it's obviously not that cut and dried and it's not that much of a, you know, a win and losing or whatever, but, but whatever, it's a take. I mean, she's expressing her own opinion. I don't think she's necessarily forcing it on anybody else. And watch, you know, even be right, by the way. She may not be right. Like that, she may not be right. That's, I think that's sort of built in, that's baked into her comments. But, you know, as these things go, watch, watch them lose a game down the road and watch it and why and if the if the if the reporting or the feeling is that they're just not they weren't taking it seriously enough i think people are going to come

around to the carly lloyd point of view right they were they were you know celebrating when they should have been when they should have been you know getting back into the practice on the practice field the nation's dave zirin had a column and pointed out that that team has a dual burden because they're supposed to be bringing home every single world cup and at the same time growing the game, both in the United States and in the world. So you do understand, like, you have duties that are different, he points out, then the team that just lost the NBA finals or just lost an NBA finals game. They don't, they're not promote, they don't need to engage with the fans and perhaps same way. So I totally understand that. And I also want to distance myself and

yourself from the conservative commentary that then erupted, of course, right after the game, you know, Megan Rapino and Trump was in on this and your favorite or least favorite, conservative commentator was all in on the causing. I'm just talking about Carly Lloyd talking about the team. That's all I'm talking about. Of course. Last story for you, David, the New York Times company had an interesting press release

announcing a partnership between the athletic and state farm to cover the World Cup. So part of what was in the press release was, look, we have this partnership. We're using it to hire more freelancers to cover the cup, which is in Australia and New Zealand. We're going to engage in multi- platform storytelling, to use a phrase of our times.

But then there was also something in there that said this, two custom videos produced by the athletic four-state farm that take viewers on a thrilling journey to the front lines of the Women's World Cup through user-generated content from the on-site reporters. That's kind of a word salad. But if-user-generated content from the on-site reporters, I know. but if I'm reading that correctly, that says that

material that athletic reporters gather will be turned into a state farm commercial by the athletic? User generated almost sounds like it's fan footage that the reporters are then piecing together. Right. And it says user generated content from the on-site reporters. So you're saying like the on-site reporters.

saying like the on-site reporters are passing out phones and then gathering the material from the it could be it can mean a lot of different things not the first time not a lot of different things not not the first time that a that a that a company like state farm or hey even state farm has funded the production of video content certainly uh i'm pretty sure they've done it with the ringer but it did but it is a weird word salad and it is a weird thing to sort of tout you know that i'm not sure i'm not sure what the I'm not sure what the proclamation is really supposed to be. And I'm happy to be wrong here, but it feels fundamentally different than a press release that would be issued by the New York Times about New York Times reporters.

Yes. Getting user-generated content to- Is the point that these are freelancers, and so they're somehow categorically different than... I'm so perplexed by this. Yet another way that athletic writers are categorically different than New York Times Sportswriters? Yeah. Oh. I don't know, but that was a new one for me. Coming up on today's podcast, David,

can Fox News convince Donald Trump to star in its GOP debate this month and a fantasy political debate we never thought we'd get to see? Plus, in defense of Mark Jackson, Sports Illustrated, the restaurant, sports podcaster's serious voice, and in our new Not About Media segment, conference realignment and how we feel about it. All that and much more on the press box. A part of the ringer.

Podcast Network. Hello media consumers, Brian Curtis, David Shoemaker and producer Erica Servantis here. David, our first big event on the 2024 political calendar is two weeks from Wednesday. This is the first Republican primary debate which is going to be on Fox News. Now, Donald Trump is not in the debate as of yet.

and per the New York Times, Fox executives are trying desperately to convince him to be in it. Can we talk about the courting of Donald Trump? Sure. So Fox and Donald Trump, shall we say, have a complicated relationship. It's not every ex-president that forced you to pay a $700 million settlement. But in this case, the debate is a TV show. And to some extent, they are casting for the TV show. Sure. I don't know what you would compare it to. Is this like the producers of the Oscars going to Harrison Ford and being like, can you give out the best picture award this year?

Can we get the no offense to Harrison Ford? But can we get you onto the broadcast in some way so that we make sure we have the biggest. No offense to Harrison Ford because you're comparing him to President Trump just to have this to be clear. Okay. I don't know. I just felt a need for a no offense in there. It's funny because if you don't have Donald Trump basically five. is running commercials that say, see which guy might one day crack double digits in a national poll. Sure. The debate on Fox News. Sounds like those old Simmons columns.

Trump's campaign has a cold-blooded political calculation here, which is something he's been saying over and over again. Why should I get on the stage again with these other people if I'm leading them by so many points. Mm-hmm. Is that the right way to think about this? If you're Trump? If you're Donald Trump?

Yeah. Yeah. I think at this point, it's, if, you know, if it's a toss-up, just go for the, just completely a historical, you know, unconventional sort of solipsistic pick, right? I mean, you just, just, just, you just, you just air on the side of, air on the side of like, you know, two, two middle fingers in the air. It seems to have worked for him so far. Like I said, last time we were talking,

it's like DeSantis' peak seemed to be at the point when Trump was actually engaging him and it's been sort of downhill since there. Trump's power is in his inevitability, you know? And listen, there's a problem.

There will be a problem in it for him if it is conveyed that he's weak for skipping it. But that doesn't seem to be how anyone's going to read it at this point, especially with Fox openly courting him. I mean, I don't know who they, you know, like who the public face of Fox News would be in doing this,

but if somehow you could just be like, yeah, I mean, obviously he's not up to snuff. That's why he's not showing up. If you could put that out there, then maybe that would probably be a more compelling catnet for him to come try to prove something. But why, I mean, why should he be on stage? I mean, like, in terms of democracy,

and in terms of what's best for our country, it would probably be great for him to show up. But for the Trump campaign's point of view, just, well, why would you? Chris Christie, by the way, did try to put that out there. I was born ready, he tweeted. If Trump doesn't show up to the debates, he's a coward. Not sure that's going to do it.

I do like when you say the solipsistic option, in this case is for Donald Trump not to appear on television. Before we've read that as always Donald Trump being on television. You're right. I guess that's usually possible. I think the question, too, is the inevitability is exactly right. And I guess we could go further into that by asking how inevitable Donald Trump is. We see those national polls where he has a huge 30, 40 point lead.

New York Times, Sienna had a poll of Iowa last week, which is probably the key poll here. Because if Donald Trump wins Iowa, it gets really hard for anybody else to win the nomination. If he loses Iowa, maybe it gets interested. or at least theoretically interesting. But their poll was Trump 43, DeSantis 20 in Iowa, which is a bit more strength that DeSantis had some national polls. So you're up 23 points in a state that potentially would shut down any of your rivals if they were to lose it.

So I guess that's the calculation. Then there is, David, the hot-blooded non-political calculation for the Trump campaign, which is, I'm the master debater. I cannot be topped in such an encounter. Right. So how could I possibly skip the chance to show the world how good I am? And by the way, this is exactly the pitch, according to the New York Times Fox executives are making. They're telling, quote, the former president that he excels on the center stage and that it presents an opportunity for him to show off his debate skills.

Yeah, but the debate skills, well, I mean, whatever. he is he doesn't seem to at least pull well after debates and perform well you know he gets he kind of sets his own rules right so he does what he intends to do for the most part and um uh you know a sniffle here there aside i think that's that's that's probably true but i mean i just think with his with his lead right now and even like he said that iowa poll is is narrower than one would expect I mean, I think any other candidate, no, other candidates wouldn't necessarily skip the debate, almost certainly wouldn't skip a debate, but there's no real historical precedent for Donald Trump, both in terms of his political style and his place in history. He's former president trying to run again. I don't know. I mean, I just feel like any other candidate in his polling position would just be trying to walk the narrowest path. possible from here to Iowa and eke out a victory there when we're the other and then just say it's over, right? I mean, that might not, again, that might not mean skipping the debate in some other,

in another, in another contest. But I think that, you know, the broad strokes would be the same for anybody. And if he's really playing it smart. And listen, once you decide it's okay to skip a debate, why are you showing up to a debate? All they're going to do is talk about, I mean, we saw desantis come out today and say, or yesterday, today, whatever day it was, and say, that Trump definitely lost the last election. Chris Christie is just like going to be guns blazing on all this stuff. We know that. I mean, they're just going to air all the dirty laundry that Trump doesn't want people to talk about, right?

I mean, he can campaign on the government being out to get him. But it's much less effective to have that stuff brought up in a debate situation. And I think he should just avoid it at all costs. Glad you mentioned DeSantis. Let's listen to this clip. But this was from Sunday with NBC's Dasha Burns, DeSantis now on the Mike Pence, do every interview I can plan. Here's what he said to NBC.

Yes or no, did Donald Trump lose the 2020 election? Whoever puts their hand on the Bible on January 20th every four years is the winner. Okay, but respectfully, you did not clearly answer that question. And if you can't give a yes or no on whether or not Trump lost, then how do you? Of course, no, of course he lost. Trump lost a 2020 election. Of course. Joe Biden's the president.

But the issue is, I think what people in the media and elsewhere, they want to act like somehow this was just like the perfect election. First of all, I love the newscaster tick that whenever you follow up with a question with a politician, you must say respectfully. You didn't answer my question at all. Respectfully, let me ask it again. in a slightly different way. I always love that. I'll listen to that. It feels like DeSantis is making news, sort of.

He's also defining Donald Trump lost the election in the narrowest way possible. It's like, I don't know. I watch the news and Joe Biden lives in the White House now. Yeah, but he's also like test marketing it, right? He's kind of going to see how that gets picked up and how people respond to it. And then he can obviously say in a week or in a month, I'm the one who said that he lost. I was the first voice out there saying it.

And at some point it's got... It was not Chris Christie. Yeah, well, I mean, you can just pretend that never happened. But as with every, you know, failure of a campaign once they peter out. But I... But yeah, I mean, Chris Christie's... I don't think Chris Christie's, you know, showing some sort of genius here. Chris Christie's going to do what he's going to do.

And he's sort of being Chris Christie, except when that Chris Christie is, you know, is tiptoeing on the stage with Donald Trump. four years ago to endorse him. But regardless, I think, you know, it's got to trickle down to these campaigns that there's no way through Trump except through, there's no way past Trump except through him, right? So they got, I mean, that's an advantage to actually doing media to actually be able to get out there and test market this stuff, but also just like get your reps in just to know what the, what sounds normal convincing coming out of your mouth with a camera in front of you, you know? And DeSantis is a little bit late because of the way he's,

run his campaign, he's got to figure this stuff out. But I think that this is just step one. And, you know, this is the first iteration of what will probably become an increasingly pointed argument. Obviously, he's got to pander to Trump voters. And that will continue to be an issue finding the right vocabulary for doing that while still running against Trump. But it's, he's got to, he's got to take him on a little bit more directly. And part of taking him on, and part of taking him on, And just to be clear, is is contesting his, his, you know, fantastical versions of events, you know, like you did not actually lose that election. And if we keep thinking we lost that election, this party is going to lose forever.

Yeah. Or if you keep thinking you lost the election, then we have nothing, we can conclude nothing else but that you should be, you should win this election, that you are the rightful president of United States. I mean, that's why Trump was so successful in the first several rounds of this thing. because if you neutralize every argument against you, well, he lost to Joe Biden. Oh, but I didn't lose.

Okay, he didn't lose to Joe Biden. You sort of run out of arguments pretty quick. He got indicted three times. Well, the indictments were the deep state and Democrats. And okay, well, he didn't get indicted. But eventually you run out of issues on which to try to win the Republican primary. Yes. Now, David, I can't guarantee you a Trump-Dissantus debate,

but I can't guarantee you a Gavin NeuSus. DeSantis debate. Gavin Newsom has been on this kind of win-resistance Twitter run where he debated Sean Hannity. I've got any of that. He's been taunting DeSantis about a debate. Well, Desantis has accepted Newsom's invitation. Did it last week.

The debate will be November 8th in Georgia, be moderated by that very same Sean Hannity. It will go 90 minutes. Some real Elon Musk. versus Mark Zuckerberg boxing match vibes here. But this is our mandatory wrestling reference of the day.

What do you call it when the promotion can't give you the match you really want to see but it gives you another very enticing match instead? You can't have like good guy versus bad guy

because you're trying to hold off on it or because there's contractuality. So you got like bad guy versus good guy's younger brother. brother or do you mean or do you mean like we can't get you know

we can't get dusty roads in here so we're going to put a guy in a wig and call him dirty roads and have him be all right maybe the wrestling reference wasn't the best idea

there's a lot of iterations of this yeah but you're right Newsom healer face gets a little complicated too but we're giving another matchup other than the big matchup that we were from actually perfect for this role

because he's not he because he's not you know the the biggest star he's not the he's not the you know the rick flair of the democratic party but he's got but but weirdly the the republicans with a conservative base have turned him into a much bigger uh again heel baby he's a much bigger foil than he than he actually is right i mean he he's just he along with aOC and a few other people are just these just you know bizarre obsessions of the right um and so he's got you know you know the wrestling parlance, he's got a lot of heat coming into this debate. I'm sure that it'll be exciting to watch the showdown.

And the positioning for 2028 is just something that's amazing to watch. Oh, yeah. Between Newsom and J.B. Pritzker, I look at Twitter every day and it's like, I am not running for president against Joe Biden, but I may be running for president. Yeah. At some point. And I guess this Minnesota representative Dean Phillips may also be running for president against Joe Biden in the Democratic primary. This time, yeah. Yeah.

So you think if there's a calculation right too, if you're Newsome, part of its positioning for four years down the line, five years down the line. But part of also it is like there's a non-zero chance that somehow Joe Biden is not the Democratic nominee next year for health reasons, for whatever it might be. But I'm just saying putting up a hand every once in one and saying, you know, I'm here. No, yeah, we talk about this, well, we talked about this a lot four years ago with Joe Biden, but there's, I feel like, like, there's this huge majority of politicians that want to be drafted into the presidency, right? And some of them make a show of, like, turning their campaign slash the DNC, I mean, you know, the convention into this sort of, like, you know, stage for them to write in on their white horse. And, oh, the people demanded it. And, you know, I wasn't going to run

otherwise. But there are very few politicians that one have the have the the stomach or will or wisdom or whatever to actually wait until they get you know until enough people insist on them too. I mean it's never, it very rarely would ever actually happen, you know, so it's also sort of an irrational dream. But it's it's incredibly rare for a politician to actually have the stomach to do it to just be like, you know what? I'm good if I don't get it this year. But if I act, but if I play the role of someone who's like, you know, there to be, there to be brought in, I got my white horse all saddled up, you guys just let me know, uh, that's, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a pretty compelling place to be. And I think that, I think that Newsom will

will certainly benefit from it. I think, you know, the only downside or the, you know, the biggest downside is to put yourself too much out there four years, uh, before you would even be, before you be potentially running is a you know there could be some some some some voter exhaustion right i mean you might be old news by the time you actually run but nuisance in such a high profile role and like i said so like constantly um made a public national figure by his own actions but also by the right i don't think there's much to be lost here i think he's i think it's great for for him as a politician the story brought us yet another edition of media piss test this is where we We chronicle media members describing someone or something as being on steroids.

This was Al Sharpton on Morning Joe, David, offering his perspective on the latest Trump indictment. We're looking at American history and how it will play out is going to be very important. The sad part about this to me is that this is not a man that is facing all this because he bleed in a political position or political policy or cause. I've seen people go down the wrong side for a cause. This is all about him. This is narcissism with steroids. Narcissism with steroids. So the with makes it just sound so old man colloquial. I love it. Coming up at 30 seconds, in defense of Mark Jackson. Really? But first, let's do the overworked Twitter joke of the week where we celebrate a gag that was so obvious that all of media

Twitter made it at exactly the same time. Send your nominees to at the press box pod where they were always gratefully received. A lot of runners up this week from the realignment saga in the PAC 12. A lot of only Arizona can stop the steel. Pence is the only one who can step in, et cetera, et cetera. But this week's winner, David, involves news from the state of Maine. Oh, it's a ton of purple vapor that was emitted emitted by a smokestack in Maine, alarming residents. It was an overworked Twitter joke to write.

They have chosen a new grimace. Thanks to Mike Roussack. If you can't wait for his first papal McDLT, congrats. You made the overwork Twitter joke of the week. All right, in the notebook dump, let me be a contrarian for just a second. I never am that on this podcast. And offer a partial defense of Mark Jackson. This is a very interesting territory to stake out.

Let's go for it. Boy, you staked it out with Carly Lloyd. I'm back. Two segments later, Mark Jackson, as people know, got demoted from ESPN's NBA finals team last week that he left the network. There were not a lot of tributes to Mark Jackson's broadcasting work to be found out there in Twitter land. I saw more tributes to the old Pac-12

that I did to the guy who did 15 NBA finals, 15 for ESPN and ABC. I will say this. Jeff Van Gundy, you and I've talked about on this podcast, did an awesome job. Yeah. Awesome, awesome job.

I think Mark Jackson facilitated that a little bit because him being there as JV. G's foil. Yeah. As a guy who was making jokes with him, who was picking on him in a comical way, I think brought Van Gundy a little bit out of basketball savant mode. Yeah. And basketball nerd mode and guy who was bagging on the refs and offense and substitutions mode

and made him into a little bit more of an analyst that everybody can enjoy. Mm-hmm. Whenever I see NBA Twitter saying, I love this guy on TV, that's what I'm like, uh-oh, we got a problem because the audience for those big games is not NBA Twitter. It's everybody. To me, one of the lesser appreciated roles that Mark Jackson played on that broadcast was making Van Gandhi into more of a mainstream figure. sure uh i mean if if van gundy felt more comfortable with his friend mark jackson in the next chair then then that helped van gundy then i think that it's a worthy tradeoff um and that's not you know i mean i think that's a relatively unusual concept in a announcing booth because the seats are

so limited uh but you know that's not unheard of in every other walk of life and yeah they did have they did have good chemistry i mean the the mark jackson commentary is just i mean and even the version of it that goes on in my head is just so sort of like overheated and and uh kind of unnecessarily anti jackson i just don't know um i mean i think that the world was just nobody's a huge mark jackson fan on his own um you know and and there's the the coaching stuff, just sort of, this sort of amorphous outside,

you know, outside of the broadcast booths, both aspects of him in his history and his character that I think turn a lot of people off. But yeah, I think that, I mean, but obviously it was a huge,

a huge piece of it was the notion that they were going to get rid of Jeff Van Gundy and keep Mark Jackson just seems so wrongheaded. It's not Mark Jackson's fault. It wouldn't have been if that were the case, presumably. But yeah, if he, I mean, he had a role in what was a very entertaining broadcast, for sure. I'm not a huge fan of three-person announced booths, especially in the NBA,

where things just move so fast that it's hard enough to find time for one analyst to talk. Yep. Much less two. But when they cast those things, you know, whether it's making somebody comfortable or not, it's about, I think, just looking for different notes. So you don't want Jeff Van Gundy and Jeff Van Gundy or Jeff Van Gundy and Stan Van Gundy. or Jeff Van Gundy and Stan Van Gundy. Right.

That just wouldn't work because it's the same note being played over and over again. And their repartee could get to me, there were times. Unless it's the Manning cast, I guess, right? Unless it's the Manning. But they're different if you watch those two guys. They're very different. Also, they're only two guys on television unless they have a guest on. I'm like, you know, I remember the 2016 NBA finals where it was the fourth quarter of Game 7 and Van Gundy and Mark Jackson were like wishing happy Father's Day to their dads.

There are times where I just be like, what are we doing right now? Yeah. Can we just do game seven, fourth quarter? Tight game here. Maybe we'll do a little Father's Day tribute later on SportsCenter if we have a moment. There were times when that repartee felt a little strange and a little forced maybe. But I don't know. Mama there goes that somewhat underrated man.

There you go. Farewell, Mark Jackson. By the way, the death of also one of the great Twitter joke templates of modern times. I don't hang around. You think so? You think it still works? Yeah, I mean, if they're not on television. We'll see how fast these things evolve these days.

I don't know. Maybe it'll be gone tomorrow. You still think we can quote Mark Jackson wondering about Alf and like whether there was a human or a puppet inside the Alf costume? He's not on television. He'll be back doing something, right? What's he going to do next? Podcast. I don't know.

I just threw that out there. Probably will have a podcast, is the answer. Speaking of which, we got a note after Brony James went into cardiac arrest last month from Chris Morgan. Chris Morgan writes this, the Brony News has me thinking about the ubiquity of sports podcaster serious voice. People without hard news experience trying to convey solemnity, pulling from memories of newscasts, words like, it's just a game. are inevitable. Ever discuss this on press box? You have any thoughts for our friend Chris on

sports podcaster serious voice? I probably talked about more tragedy and death on my podcast than anybody else than the world. Your beat has some darker overtones to it. I don't know if I'm the perfect person to talk to about this or the worst person to talk to about this. Yeah, I mean, listen, it's not just podcasting, right? I mean, this is life.

this is you know if you're having a conversation with some friends and you found out some crazy tragedy before one of them you immediately I mean I think a lot of us know the feeling of searching for the mode to be in at that point right you're just and you are

like on some level searching out like instances of this happening before you know I mean that's how we that's how we learn to communicate we associate with each other by example I think it happens on podcasts a lot too. I mean, I can speak from experience.

Some of these things you prep a lot for, and this isn't just tragedies. This is all parts of podcast. Sometimes you prep a lot. Sometimes you just sort of make a note, and then you're reading it live on tape, and you're just like, oh, shit, what did I mean to do here?

What's the mode to be in? What's the voice to be using? And you find yourself sort of flailing. Yeah, I would prefer, though, flailing to a put-on of, you know, sort of acted, you know, fake sincerity. But I find it generally hard to critique anybody's, the way anybody deals with tragedy. You know, maybe it is a thing you can just skip. But, yeah, yeah, this is where we miss in the podcast world.

This is where we miss news readers, right? This is where we miss the people that pop in at the top of every hour and just go through the hard news bulletin so you can then just, you know, rank your favorite Eagles quarterbacks or whatever. The Charles McCord or the Robin Quivers of Yes, exactly. Sports news of the day and then

then the funny guys come on. I mean, look, the medium is not one where you earn your merit badges most of the time by being serious guy. Yeah. The medium is one where you come on and having fun with your friends and cutting up and busting on each other. And when I do hear

serious voice, it reminds me of sports radio. Yeah. When they try to make the pivot, podcasting, no matter what we think, what we like to say here in podcast land is sports radio. Of course.

Just slightly differently. And I remember, you'd listen to sports radio segment, and they'd have to do like a big, a heavy segment on something and it would always be very, very jarring to watch them change their tone of voice. It's no different here. No.

I think also, too, at least in our generation of podcasters, you're talking about a lot of people that are print reporters, print writers who then got into podcasting. And there's a certain muscle memory in print where when you're dealt whatever hand you're dealt with that day, you know how to react to it. Yeah. You're comfortable.

And maybe in podcast land, you're still developing that muscle memory, developing that voice to talk about different kinds of subjects. So maybe it sounds a little awkward. Anyway, thank you, Chris, for the email. I got a dispatch, David, from the post-sports writing world. Posts like the Washington Post Sports Writing World or the after sports writing world?

I wish it was the Washington Post. They got a good section over there. No, this is the after sports writing world. Stephen Roderick sends in a picture or tweets a picture from Vancouver of the Sports Illustrated Bar and Grill. Oh. This is a real thing.

And then I read an article by Brendan Kogan who says that Sports Illustrated Eats was launched. as a media enterprise in 2017, creating content around food and sports. They've also just launched Sports Illustrated Resorts. The first branded resort opened in January, 2023 in the Dominican Republic. We heard this when new ownership took over there at Sports Illustrated,

new management. It reminds me a little bit of the old Spaceball's gag. Sports Illustrated, the Flamethrower. Like we're just going to put that brand on as many things as humanly possible. Yeah. Maybe more so than the idea of Sports Illustrated, the staff writer with benefits.

Yeah. I mean, it's one of those things where it just sounded so inane at the time, and it is still sort of crazy because Sports Illustrated, because no one was actually reading Sports Illustrated, but I guess if you get out there first, you know, it doesn't matter if you have like the fifth best idea for having a nationwide

buffalo wings chain. If you're first out of the gate, you have a huge advantage, right? So maybe that's just the, you know, maybe this is part of that. You know, maybe Sports Illustrated new owners are smart enough to say you know, sports cuts was a stupid

idea that seemed to work. Maybe we can be the sports cuts of everything, you know? Sport cuts? Sport cuts. I don't want to misname them. I've been to a sport cuts or two in my time. No offense to sports cuts. No, to potential sponsor sports cuts. Nor no, no, nor no any offense towards potential sponsor, you know,

Sports Illustrated resorts. It's, yeah. I mean, dude, somebody is sitting there with like, you know, just, just squatting on the sporting news trademark and copyright and all that kind of stuff. Just saying like, God damn it. Why didn't I open a casino and I have the chance? doesn't it remind you of the when you go to get a bag of checks mix

at the airport right before you get on the plane and you go to the branded newsstand slash convenience store? And sometimes it's branded after a publication that is not exactly in its glory years. You're like, wow, I mean I'm buying this from the

New York Daily News, the convenience store. Oh, yeah. The CNBC convenience store. What's going on? CNBC. Maybe it's glory days. for all I know. But it's like, why am I buying this year? What happened? Shouldn't we be focusing on the

actual thing? Is that just like branding rights? Is that when you like get the, put your company's name on a stadium and CNBC just gets that for the next decade? Yeah, it's probably slightly cheaper than the stadium naming rights. Got another entry into our running item only in journalism words. Oh, wow. These are words journalists use, but you never

much hear in actual human speech. This comes from Grover Anderson. He asks is tap in this context and only in journalism word. Oh. David Shoemaker tapped to lead ringer wrestling podcast push. Well, it meets most of the criteria, right? And I think that what a lot of these things get at is the functionality, right? Tap is three letters long.

So for headlines and other instances in which you've got to say, save space. Tap is preferable to chosen or picked even. Yeah, I mean, I think the usage of the word is much more common in like the mixed martial arts sense in this day and age. You know, they got a,

I've had you know, 25 buffalo wings. I got to tap. That'd be a good headline. But I'm not sure how only in journalism where it is because it's the same functional usage as like on tap, right? Well, kind of. Or is it tapped like you're playing duck, duck,

goose? Is that the kind of tap we're talking about? Yeah. I mean, it's just, yes, I guess it is the duck, duck goose of government jobs. You've been tapped to be Labor Secretary. Yeah. No, I guess that is, that's mostly only in journalism. The weird part about this headline is that it does not actually involve a human being tapped for something.

it says California aims to tap beavers once viewed as a nuisance to help with water issues and wildfires. That's just confusing, all right? So the beaver has been tapped for a prominent job. Tapped is kind of the opposite of defenestrated. Only in journalism. We got a new segment here called Not About Media. Yes. or NOM may need to work on that acronym a little bit.

This is where we talk about things that don't have anything to do with our chosen beat. Why should all the other ringer podcasters have all the fun? I asked last week, what is the patient zero for the movies being too long? We got some good responses here. The film critic Scott Tobias says it is the MCU, as David suggested, that got us to our current place where every movie must be two hours and 45 minutes long. Yeah. Jamie sends love to your mothers,

a valued listener, nominates Titanic, Isaac Chotner. Yet another big byline appearing here. Nominates Michael Bay starting in 1998. Well, that's incredibly specific. What was 1998?

Was that independent? I mean, Armageddon? I think he said late 90s. I added 98. So Armageddon, two hours and 31 minutes. Yeah. It's a long movie.

Not just two hours and 31 minutes in Pearl Harbor, but Armageddon also had like a, a like seven minute sequence of flags being hung out the window of apartment buildings in slow motion. I mean, it was it was an extravagant. It was an extravagant waste of time. It was an indulgent two hours and 31 minutes. Pearl Harbor three hours, four minutes. This is the one that got me that Isaac mentioned,

Bad Boys 2, two hours and 27 minutes. Jeez Louise. How was that movie two and a half hours long? But now the second, the sequel is always two and a half. hours long. We got this from our friend, listener Simone, Simone. I thought this would be a good entry

for this segment. Reconference realignment, exploding recently in college sports, specifically football. It got me thinking as an Arkansas fan and press box head. By the way, it makes me smile so much

that we have the University of Arkansas fans that are also press box listeners. Thank you for filling both of those circles in the bend diagram. It's big for Arkansas, yeah. Do either of you have Any thoughts, memories, or general feelings about Texas and Arkansas back as a conference ongoing concern? I'll take this one on because Arkansas, in many ways, David, is the first team to start this whole thing.

When it left the Southwest Conference, it does not exist anymore. Which one of your uncles definitely has an Arkansas started at T-shirt somewhere in their closet. It wasn't about conference realignment, but go ahead. Yeah, it was probably true. I remember when that happened, it was just kind of like, wait a second, what? You can leave the conference to go play in the SEC. The time the SEC was not the SEC now, but you can just do that. And I didn't really feel betrayed in any way because I wasn't like a Southwest Conference homer,

though I like to watch Southwest Conference football. But I think the funny part of this is that on the one hand, yes, a lot of these things destroy historic rivalries. they destroy 100 years of unbroken history. All that stuff. All that stuff is true. But the other funny part is it kind of depends on when you came into this world,

doesn't it? Because I'm like, you know, the Big 12 was created our freshman year of college. I've said before, like the Big 12 being created was I thought the coolest thing in the world at the time. Yeah.

I was like, oh, wait, instead of playing like just Texas schools, Texas is going to be playing Nebraska. good. Like that sounds on Colorado, which was then still a great football program, I was like, this sounds awesome. Sign me up. I am going to the University of Texas so I can watch this. I wasn't care about like, you know, oh man, the end of the Southwest Conference. Like now, later I was like, okay, well, that was, that was kind of a cool time and everything.

But at the time I was like, this seems new and awesome. Yeah. Sign me up. Yeah. And you literally had to go to the University of Texas to watch it happen because there was there was no like television feeds that exited the state. Yeah, it did. I mean, and I mean, we are in a, I mean, this is just such a silly conversation in so many ways, but we are part of like the end of history in terms of, you know, our sports fandom or at least an a historical generation in sports fandom. There's the notion that you could root for a different team than your parents is unheard of

a generation ago, you know, the notion. that you could switch teams, switch allegiances, whatever, would have been unheard of for the most part. And that's just not the case anymore. So it just, the idea that you would be, I mean, when the Big 12 was formed, yeah, it was really exciting, but it was also, you know, the people that were complaining about it were largely the people that taught us how to watch sports, right?

It's a travesty to history. Now there's nobody really saying that. Those are the old men yelling at clouds in the Coliseum. People don't really pay attention to them anymore. And just the way that sports is covered, obviously it's much more intriguing as a sports business concept, right? So, and that's how most of the stuff gets talked about.

It is really weird. That that has become, that, I mean, that's such a huge story right now. But I think when you kind of turn the keys over to the executive suite, those things are going to happen in these sort of like, you know, cascading avalanches of,

news, right? Because one team leaves and then all the other teams are left to pick up the pieces or figure out what to do next, right? I mean, it's crazy that it happens that way, but certainly not as shocking as it felt like it was years and years ago. No, not after you've had a bunch of them. And I always thought it was cool at Texas to be part of this fan base that had been getting mad about losing to Oklahoma for generations. That was part of the fun part about being there, right. Oh, yeah. I'm, I'm elated and more often disappointed in the same way that somebody 40 years ago was elated or disappointed. Yeah. By losing to the same teams, damn, we lost O you, damn, we lost A&M. Like, that was, that was awesome. But it's not like, you know,

the other thing is like, we're all individual people here. You know, I don't like, nobody in my family had been to the University of Texas before me. So it wasn't like, yeah, you know, me and my dad, my grandpa and my great-grandfather. We've all, we're all longhorns. We've all had this experience. No, we didn't. We didn't have that experience at all. It wasn't anybody like, yeah, it's a Southwest conference, man.

That's what it was like, no, it was my history. Yeah. And I think when you see so many obits that want to connect this all the way back to like the 50s and 60s. I understand that. Like that's interesting. But it also is very, very different than the experience of people who went to these schools.

And everybody's experience is very, very different. Yeah, I mean, the realignment stuff is I think it's that part of what makes it so hard to sort of wrap your head around is the conferences themselves are part of what's so archaic, you know? I can do a second wrestling reference for this podcast. I think I have the ability to call it in myself. But yeah, I mean, it was back in the territorial wrestling days before WWE and, you know, other wrestling companies went national and shattered the entire way it was built. you could survive pre-national cable before everybody was watching the same thing on the USA or Turner channels or whatever

you could survive because you basically could just tell your audience that you had the only wrestling company right or like there would be other ones but they didn't matter for the day-to-day operations unless the world champs travel to town. This is what's important right here. What's conducted right here is

And that's the way old Southwest Conference football worked and everything. It was just like this is all the football that matters you know until the national championship game. and even maybe in the absence of it. Yeah, there was no orchestrated championship game in those days. Yeah, just the bowl games or whatever. But yeah, I mean, and you could pull that off.

And now it's just everybody knows it's not true. And all the conferences do is just kind of serve, I mean, they serve a purpose because you can't, every football team can't play all the other football teams every year, right? There's just not enough games. And every universe, I mean, you know, some organization is obviously, is obviously necessary. but, you know, in terms of just like the football season making sense, don't you think if they just let like six guys in a room at ESPN headquarters figure out all the football, the entire football season, they could probably, they could probably draw a pretty straight path to getting it done rather than dealing with all, well, are you, are you? Yeah, sorry I covered this beat. I'm a little too close to home. All right, well, anyway. Tell me who the executives are first. No, I know. I'm not in talking about specific people. But, but.

But it's the conferences themselves that are just so confounding now to look at it, right? It's either you can leave or you can't leave, right? This is either a geographical determination or it's not. But it is a business too, obviously. And so all these things become really relevant. It's all pretty extraneous from football, though. Totally. And it's regionalism as part of what makes it cool, right, in a very different way than almost any other sport.

You know, this fact that the SEC is the championship of southern football, whether or not, you know, that is the only championship of. in the world to use your example is still fun. You know, like that's cool. Wouldn't it be so much cooler if it was, like the old wrestling days? Just like, this is the Southern Championship of football. They get, they're just, you know, and we'll put your own title belt. Yeah.

That's what they got. I would be way more into the SEC championship if they call it the Southern Championship. David Shoemaker will be in the room with those ESPN executives plotting the future of college football. Here's what we're going to do. Yeah. No, it's not going to. Speaking of plotting, it's time for David Shoemaker, guess is the strained pun head. Yeah.

Last Monday's headline about Metz pitcher Max Scher getting traded away was Sayonara. It's really good. Cy Young winner. Our friend Jason Gay suggested Cy Newhouse. It's really some of his best work. Today's headline, David, comes from Kessler and Afi Amadi. It's from K-A-R-K in Little Rock, Arkansas. I'll reach you some of the story here.

A truck-carrying nacho-chie. cheese crashed on an Arkansas highway Tuesday afternoon, leaving a cheesy mess across the roadway. Now, as far as nacho cheese related emergencies go, this is really bad. About as bad as it gets. What was K-A-R-K, the strain pun headline? Nach. Nach-it's as bad as it gets. Oh.

This is like the nachopocalypse or the... We're getting word. Moving that direction. Nacho. What if we used another word for cheese? Koso? There we go. Koso.

As bad as it gets, man. Koso the, no. We got Koso for K. Terminal Koso? Terminal Koso? The worst. The worst. Worst K.

No win. No. Worst K. Oh, worst Koso scenario. Worst Koso scenario. There we go. Worst Koso scenario. Good work.

K-A-R-K. He is David Chewaker. I'm Brian Curtis. Production Magic. As always, by Erica Servantes. Coming up, David, on Thursday, we had a fun podcast,

Mike Vakero, the longtime New York post sports columnist. is going to be on this program, talking about his career, talking about tabloid newspapers, talking about his adventures with young Adrian Woznarowski, who he went to college with, talking about loving and then falling out with Mike Lupica. He had a fantastic conversation in his house in New Jersey last week. We also tried something a little different on the second pot of the week.

Occasionally have people say, you know what? I love you and David chopping it up, but then I see an interview podcast, and I either listen to it or don't, depending on how interested I am in that person. Aha. Aha. Well, I came on last Thursday's pod, or Friday's pod, I think it was, and did some news headlines and some takes on the three big late week stories. I asked Erica, can we get kind of a broadcast news on steroids, action news theme song

for this new segment? And she said, absolutely. And she found one and it's fantastic. So speaking of being a gentle parody of Tom Brokaw when he's announcing a tragedy, catch me on second part of the week doing the headlines. Shoemaker and I return Monday with more lukewarm takes about the media. See you then, David. See you later, Brian.