The Press Box - The WTF Luka Scoop, Super Bowl Scenes From New Orleans, and Trump’s Pentagon Switcheroo

Episode Date: February 3, 2025

Hello, media consumers! Bryan and David kick off the week by discussing the chaos surrounding the reporting on the blockbuster trade involving the Dallas Mavericks' decision to send Luka Doncic to the Los Angeles Lakers for Anthony Davis (0:30). Then Bryan, who is in New Orleans, shares the current temperature of radio row (19:16). Later, in the Notebook Dump, they discuss the following: Reports that Chuck Todd is leaving NBC (38:30) The new media switcheroo (42:16) In the Hall of Departed Journalists, they reflect on the life of Jules Feiffer (48:55). Plus, Bryan shares an update on his movie career (0:00).Finally, the Overworked Twitter Joke of the Week and David Shoemaker Guesses the Strained-Pun Headline. Hosts: Bryan Curtis and David Shoemaker Producers: Brian H. Waters and Carlos Chiriboga Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

A restaurant's best dishes tell stories. Their flavors embed themselves in our memory like song lyrics or lines from a movie. So much so that a little slice of a restaurant's story can become part of our own. I'm Danny Chow and this is ShiftMeal, a new video podcast from The Ringer where we're sharing a bite and chopping it up with chefs and restaurant people during their off hours. All episodes of Shift Meal are out now on Ringer food. Damn it! Yes. we got to start with the trade of Luca Dodgich.

Oh, God, do we? We do, because it was one of the craziest nights in the history of sports Twitter. Were you even awake when the news came down? No, I wasn't. I wasn't. The first thing I saw about it was a text from my 16-year-old, and I thought it was sad that he got tricked. But also, it was like, hey, good, he gets to get tricked. You know, this is a learning experience for him.

He needs to know about fake news. Yeah, but no, it was real. And this is a harmless thing, yeah. Did you go through the, I mean, I think everybody went through the same two-step process. One, that this was a fake account that was one letter off of Shom Sharanis real account. And then when we figured that that was not the case, we're like, oh, Shams got hacked. Yeah. But he didn't get hacked.

No, it didn't. I mean, yeah, none of it seemed real. I mean, I think that's obviously the legacy of the trade. It was one of the craziest trades, probably the craziest trade in NBA history, but it was the one trade that literally nobody could believe, right? I mean, it just, nobody saw that and said, yeah, okay, that makes sense. It's like it didn't pass anybody's smell test. So if you were not locked into NBA news on Sunday morning, 12 minutes after midnight Eastern time, ESPN, Sharm Sharania tweets that the Mavericks have

traded Luca Dachich to the Lakers for Anthony Davis. Sharani's follow-up tweet about the trade, which is four minutes later, began, yes, this is real, which is not typically how a. reporter preface a scoop. And then all of Twitter at once let out this collective, what? Yeah. It could be heard from here to Slovenia.

NBA players like Joelle and Bede and Jalen Brunson weighing in within minutes. Noted Mavs fan Patrick Mahomes, David, who's kind of busy this week, tweeted, wait, what? And then I'm sick right now. Stephen A posted that incredible gif where he and Wilbon were watching a D'Andre Aiton game winner and then the camera spins around to them and they look completely shocked. That was fantastic. Congrats to whoever's handling Stephen A's social media these days.

Yeah, incredible stuff. And then on ESPN, Gonzaga was playing St. Mary's in hoops. And here's how Dave Fleming and Sean Farnham broke the news. Dave, we're just receiving word of a massive trade in the NBA. The Lakers have traded Anthony Davis to the Dallas Mavericks in exchange for Luca Donchage in a three-team deal. Kevin Clark texted me right after that and said that language, we're just getting word. Sounded like Howard CoSell announcing that John Lennon had been shot. And that kind of tone to it.

Yeah. So of course, in the middle of the night, the media. goes to battle stations. Bill and Rosillo and Rob Mahoney record a pod. Brian Winhorst in an unbelievable show of media professionalism gets in front of a camera. And he doesn't just get in front of a camera. He's wearing a suit. Very nice looking blue suit with an orange tie. I mean, his analysis was excellent as usual, but really in that case, he's being like Tom Brokaw. You know, the authority figure is here. Yeah. He doesn't have all the the answers, but he at least knows what the questions are. Yes, exactly. Yeah. I mean,

I've never, they ever thought of Brian as kind of our national father in that particular context, but it really worked. It did. It did. Him and Shams, I mean, obviously, he Shams was on camera too shortly after that. I mean, for all of the emergency potting that was done that night, shouts to the guys that had to go find like iron shirts to put on, you know, dry clean clothes to put on at one in the morning on a Saturday night just to get ready for, just to do a TV spot. But yeah, it was, it was absolutely unbelievable. And not to say, I mean, I listen, I listened to Bill and in his podcast, the moment that it, you know, it published and listen to everything that I could, including some of a, you know, three-hour, three-and-a-half-hour Dallas Mavericks podcast that was just basically a call-in show of fans expressing their sadness.

I listened to a lot of this stuff, but you've never heard so many emergency podcasts that had so little to actually talk about. They were all just an hour or in some cases three and a half of what the hell just happened. because we were missing the key bit of data, which was why. We can all do holy shit over and over again. But then your mind starts to wander and you go, why did this happen? Yeah, you have to close the loop in your mind. And even when we got a little bit of a why from Tim McMahon, where he said, oh, they were just, they felt like they didn't want to be in the

Luca business long term in so many words. there is still another why, but still why, right? That's not an answer, you know. Can I read these Tim McMahon tweets? Because these are pretty fun. So this is 1226 Sunday morning. So we're just minutes after the trade is broken. McMahon tweets quoting Mavericks GM Nico Harrison.

I believe that defense wins championships. Quote straight out of the bottom drawer of coaching cliches. that's 1226. Here's Tim McMahon at 1231, five minutes later. The Mavs had major concerns about moving forward with Luca Danchich due to his constant conditioning issues and the looming commitment of another Supermax contract extension this summer,

sources told ESPN. So impressive the way he was able to get off the phone with Mavs GM, Nico Harrison, and find surely different sources. Different sources, yeah. Who told him there was some conditioning. issues about Luke about Luke

and he had been he was on the Hoop Collective podcast and said that he had been hearing that for some time now I don't know if that was a thing that he just then had enough sources to report out or why that mattered right then

what's our favorite what's our favorite phrase I know when this is your bag sometime it's the now they tell us oh my god an official now they tell us right through yet though well that's the thing this should be the mother of all now they tell us

unless they're really is no great explanation for the trade, which that could be the case, right? There could be a very unsatisfying Nico Harrison is not a good general manager and was not feeling Luca Dodgage. So the now they tell us then just become scenes, right? LeBron looking at his phone,

realizing that he has a new teammate, Jason Kidd getting the news, Lucas Mavericks teammates, learning that the most untradable guy in the franchise, in fact, has been traded. isn't it that could be it in some ways the most likely answer is the one that you just suggested right that nico just is bad at his job or nico made a huge mistake here a huge a huge unenforced error which is being bad at your job yeah but but i mean i'm just saying not that he is bad at his job

he has been good at his job at times in the past you know but like this was a huge so so maybe the maybe the issue is he decides he wants to get rid of luka then sets its sights on AD for any number of reasons and eventually it gets sort of like lightly conned by Rob Polenko on the way through this by saying, well, you know, if you're not opening up the bidding, then all of a sudden you give the other person the power to be like, well, if you don't want them,

then why should I be giving you all of this stuff, right? I mean, I think the big question mark more than anything else is just the 31 draft pick, right? It's just like, why did you not get all of LA's draft capital as part of this at a bare minimum, you know? is it even if there even if you wanted AD that bad one would think that that would be on the table unless Rob Polinca was like okay we'll give that in and then at the last minute was like you know what you don't want him there's something you're not telling me here I'm not going to give you both my

you know like there's a there's a little it work it's you know he gets kind of screwed by the big by keeping it quiet all of that is to say that may be the most likely answer to this but that is not an answer that will ever suffice for anyone right that's why this is why this is why in all walks of life, politics, everything, religion, everything else. This is why conspiracy theories pop up because the truth is not, is not emotionally satisfying. And if that is, that turns out to be the truth, we will never hear the end of, you know, the league's trying to give L.A. a new superstar or, you know, I mean, Nico and Rob Polinka, like, what I mean, we're working behind the scenes on this. Like, it's, it was, it was.

there's there's just it's not enough to make sense. And who could believe, you know, who could blame somebody for embracing a conspiracy theory if in fact the truth is as bad? Yeah. I mean, I can't, you know, I'm not a big sports conspiracy or a theory guy, but just like, who could blame somebody? If you're a Dallas Mavericks fan?

And I'm just going to play this out in my, just play this completely like fantasy booking the future. If this, if there's nothing, else here. And if the, unless the Mavs like do put it together and win a title this year or something like that, unless NICO is proven to be 100% right and smarter than everybody else, it'll still be ridiculous that he didn't get at least one more pick and probably more for this whole thing. But assuming that they don't win a championship, assuming that the new Mavericks owners see this as the error that all the fans right now see it as, assuming they're affected by the, you know,

protests and comical coffin drops outside of the, you know, outside of the stadium. That was amazing. Assuming if Nico Harrison were to get fired, right? Let's say he takes a couple years off. Maybe he goes back to Nike. Maybe he decides he wants to stay in the NBA. Who do you think he would go to for a job? Maybe his old friend Rob Polinka.

Imagine a world in which Nico Harrison was like an EVP for the Lakers in three years. Would this not be the greatest conspiracy theory of all time? That would be right up. That is delivered you, Luke on a silver platter, and then you set me up for life? That might be beyond the cold envelope in 1985. I'm seriously. I don't think that's what's happening for the record,

but I can definitely see that play out. Or I have one more conspiracy theory for you. Please. Did you see the press conference with Nico and Jason Kidd where Nico said, Jason didn't know anything about this as it was happening, but we're on the same page, but we're in lockstep or whatever? Look at Nico Harrison. Look at Jason Kidd.

I don't even know how old these guys are. Late 40s, early 50s for Nico Harrison, somewhere in that range. Two guys that are in immaculate physical condition doing everything they can to stay young forever. As we get older, is there anything that grinds your gears more? than seeing a young person who doesn't take care of themselves who spends like one one one hundredth of the time that you do working out just to

just to maintain it just like you're wasting your life look what we go through just to be able to be employable at this level and you're not I think it there might have been there might have been some there might have been some some envy and reverse body shaming going on there I just don't I think that

these guys care about it too much in weird ways that's a fascinating theory it makes me worried about my own future because I don't think Bill's going to give me the Supermax in my current condition. I really worry. Rissillo made a great point on the emergency pod where he said mega, mega trades like this usually happen in stages. Yeah. And the media is, for lack of a better word, the medium through which trades are negotiated.

Yeah. Yeah. The stations of the cross. I mean, we get the same procession every time where there's rumors, rumor and innuendo. and then sometimes there's an official trade demand or there's an official statement that the team, not a semi-official statement, the team is actually shopping somebody.

And then what would another team potentially offer? Exactly. That goes out there. What are they considering? What are the potential trades? And what's so interesting about that is everybody eats in that scenario. So imagine if like yesterday or if Sunday morning's news from Shams had just been that Luca was on the blog.

not that he had in fact been traded. Okay, there's probably still an emergency ringer podcast that night with the same people going over Luca trade scenarios. Oh yeah. And by the way, it's a better podcast too because there's actually like substance

or even though it's not real, there's like substantial, I mean, substantive things you can discuss. Totally. And there would have been like 19 columns. What player is it? What is the trade? How many picks?

Yeah. Oh my God. And in every little news bite over the course of the next two weeks would have gotten its own podcast. or its own little article or tweet or whatever. There would have been this just unbelievable media Caesar's Palace buffet of content.

But in fact, we just fast forwarded right to the end. And that's why it felt like I think for all of us, you know, who are in this business, we're like, wait a second. We were deprived of all those steps that we would normally get in a situation like this. A couple other notes for you. I'm sitting here on Radio Row in New Orleans right behind the Dallas radio guys at the ticket

and I went up to Donovan Lewis is one of my favorite hosts over there before we started I was like this has got to be the greatest day in the history of Dallas Sports Radio yeah

because not only is there one topic one topic but there's one take like you don't have to you don't have to be clever today today is the bloodletting yeah

today you are driving down the center of the road If we want to be clever and think about other stuff, we can do that Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday. There's one topic. And it feels like today's not a hard day to do Dallas Sports Radio. It's actually a wonderful, easy day to do Dallas Sports Radio. Because you just let it rip.

Another observation was, did you find... But isn't that terrible for content, though, by the way? Like how long... No, because I think people want to grieve if you're Maverick said. Those people who were... You're doing the thing outside the dirt statue. You just want to let people on the air and grieve. I don't know what he was thinking.

I don't know what he was thinking. Right, that's it over and over again. I think yeah. But there's so little information now. There's so little information. I know we all want to hurry forward now and do like take number two, take number three, semi-contrary and take number four. But somebody just got to do take number one.

Like this sucks. This is horrible. This is a terrible day for Dallas sports. Did you notice a weird undercurrent of people missing Woge on Sunday morning? Yes. So you mentioned Shams. and Shams getting on television eventually. I feel that I'm not running down Shams here at all,

but I feel that Shams being the new guy, relatively speaking, that kind of threw everybody because there was some Woj would have never allowed this. Yeah. I don't know if that meant like Woj would have had the trade nixed. I don't think that's really in Woj's power, but Woj may have sniffed out that this was happening early and reported this and then that would have nixed the trade.

But there was kind of a weird, we are missing Woge undercurrent. Yeah, for sure. Yeah, there wasn't, he definitely mentioned, you said that, that Windhorst was had like, it was sort of like our, you know, collective father figure earlier. And I think Woge certainly had that in a way that Shams doesn't, right? You needed the one-two punch of Shams and Winhorse to sort of get, to get to get the full effect of Woge.

Another weird part of the trade is nobody could figure out what a comp would be, either in basketball or any other sport. Yeah. Adam Schaefter tweeted this, an NFL equivalent, the Ravens trading Lamar Jackson plus to the Bengals in exchange for Joe Burrow plus in the middle of the season. That's not a comp at all,

folks. That just does not do this justice at all. It doesn't work. And I think people just not having anything they could turn to and be like, this is like the time that other crazy thing happened, that just really derailed everybody as they were trying to discuss this thing. Last note here for you. Actually, I got two more.

Overwork Twitter joke was Luca part of the trade war Trump was talking about? Thanks to Bezo for bringing that to our attention. And this is my true last note. You and I have a little award we'd like to give out here on the podcast called America's Softest Target. Oh, yeah. This is someone or something that our media friends can bludgeon without, worrying about losing their sources or pissing off readers or listeners. Congrats to the Dallas Mavericks.

You are America's softest target on steroids. You have no defenders. You got it. You're in the Biden zone. Yeah. Yeah. By the way, just shout out to Mark Cuban,

who is trending immediately when this trade was made. Just like, what is Mark Cuban thinking? And then he finally had to, he called into Dallas Sports Radio, basically to say, I had nothing to do with this. And I think it's the only official statement

beyond that was go Mavs. Brad Townsend, the Dallas Morning News, Mavs writer, contacted him. He just wrote back MFFL, which means Mavs fan for life. It's like, dude, not a great day for Mavs fan mantra. No, not at all.

All right, coming up on the podcast, David, I am on Super Bowl Radio Row in New Orleans. We'll get you ready for a week of hype from Tom Brady to Greg Olson to Bill Belichick's By-U adventure. Plus the Chuck Todd scoop that explains how media is broken.

Donald Trump, I regret to inform you, is added again a correction about the New Yorker and a media piss test for the ages. All that much more on the press box. A part of the ringer! Podcast Network. Hello media consumers, Brian Curtis, David Shoemaker,

and producers Brian Waters and Carlos Chirovoga. See, we have more producers when we're on Radio Row. we are staffed up to the gills here in New Orleans David a few notes for you from the Super Bowl here first of all I step on a radio row one of my favorite places on earth

this morning the first thing I see is Kevin Clark talking to Robert Mays wow and I rush up to him and I go hey guys it's like ringer 2016 huh no laughs no smiles I thought that'd be a

kind of a fun thing to remember but apparently not for everybody. You know my theory of Radio Row, which I've written about many times. We've got Monday guys. We got Tuesday guys. If you're a better guest, you show up later in the week.

Monday guys who have been cited so far, Ryan Leaf. Kind of wanted to pull him aside and say, hey, Ryan, I got a young football writer I'd love to introduce you to. If I can just find him somewhere around here. Also, former Falcons general manager,

Thomas Demetriov. I hope this means we're just getting started because that's not even really a bumper crop of Monday guys Yeah, that's not even great for a Monday crowd I'm always impressed at the tonnage Of Radio Row I'll give you a little example here There's a website

That is on the ground in New Orleans I'm not going to say which one it is But there's a just call them a sports adjacent website here Uh-huh This website or a representative of the website asked me three different times, three times if I wanted to interview someone from the website.

Okay, they reached out three different times that would you like to interview any of our people? Right. Then they reached out separately and said, would you like to be interviewed by the website? So first I'm asked three different times if I want to interview someone, then they asked to interview me

and then they invited me to a party. Okay. So that's just the kind of tonnage we're getting. The party invitation was not contingent on A or B in this situation? All three of these things were completely separate. That's just how we're working the room here in New Orleans. Okay. Every angle.

I wanted to ask you about the media's go-to bit here in 2025. The what go-to-b? You might remember that the media's go-to-bit. Okay. so writers descend on New Orleans and you might remember in previous years like 2018 when the Super Bowl was in Minneapolis every sports writer and content creator went ice fishing

that was the thing and it was so bad that when Deadspin old Deadspin posted their own ice fishing content later in the week ahead do it very sheepishly like yes we also went ice fishing in Minneapolis what do you think the go-to bit for New Orleans is going to be New Orleans you don't have to

have to get that creative, right? I mean, I was, I'm trying, I mean, you could, you can go to Bourbon Street. You can go to get some bignets at Cafe Dumondo, though those aren't the best in town. Any cabby will tell you. But like, um, I'm trying to think when I was there, we took a, we took like an airboat tour of the swamp and saw, and, and got to see some, some, uh, some gaiters and some, the craziest part of it all was feral raccoons. I could not recommend the raccoons. I could not recommend the wild raccoons better more to anyone in the world than that. They're the greatest wild animal.

I'm sorry. And the difference between feral raccoon and semi-domesticated raccoon is what? Raccoons, not trash-eating raccoons. Not urban raccoons. Like, woodland raccoons. Like, the raccoons that just, that live out, they don't have any contact with people except on airboats. These are the real raccoons.

These are the real ones. They're like monkeys. They're skinny. They're like, it's, they're, they're there's they come in bunches you like turn a corner and by the way these are lightly domesticated because they know every time they hear an airboat they're going to get like a marshmallow or whatever but as soon as you like turn into this one thing all the sudden you're looking around and all these eyes it's like a movie all these eyes sort of peering between

the leaves and then they start climbing out onto branches like it's it's wild it's wild all right so airboat swamp tour sounds like your number one seed I'm trying to think what else it would be it's it's that's got to be up there only other one I had besides Benet's at Cafe Dumont, and you know that that will be in somebody's video this week, is getting your fortune told in the French quarter. Yeah. Yeah, you can do that. You know, wizened fortune teller.

That feels like a New Orleans bit. There's also, it would be probably bad for content unless it's video content. Even then, I don't know what you do, but they have, they have, like, museums, like the people that make the floats for all the parades. you can go to their place and like and like go and see the giant like paper machine ninja turtles that were used in years past and all these cool like decorations and stuff. They're like that's a that's a pretty cool like thing to do. But yeah, you're right. Being in a parade.

Yeah. Being in a parade. Ooh. That might take the cake with a with an umbrella walking down the street. Somebody possibly from Metal Arc Media will be doing that bit this week. There's a political angle. to the Super Bowl? Mm-hmm.

Because does any 2028 presidential contender have more to gain from an Eagles victory than Pennsylvania governor Josh Shapiro? Oh, no. He's had a hell of a week,

man. Did you see him defending the groundhog in Pucks a tawny from, was it Pita that wanted to replace the groundhog?

I did not see that. People were tweeting like, this is Josh Shapiro's sister soldier moment. It's like, I think we're kind of mixing our historical metaphors here, but okay, cool.

This was a video that Governor Shapiro put up on Twitter about the Eagles. Yep. Now, I'm on it. I got it. I understand. No problem. No worries. We got it.

Taking care of. All right, done. You know, we've been celebrating so many birds wins. Two trips to the Super Bowl in just the last three years. We actually had to upgrade our system. So. And you see the whole capital light up in Kelly Green. Pretty amazing stuff.

So if that's the political angle, David, there's also an old guy still got it angle. Athletic wrote about this. 66-year-old Eagles defensive coordinator Vic Fangio and 65-year-old Chiefs defensive coordinator Steve Spagnullo. And this is in addition to 66-year-old Andy Reid, which is, I guess, old by coaching standards. Andy Reid's only 66 is my reaction to that.

That's kind of a. He's been in our lives for so long. Yeah, I would have gone higher myself. I would have put a seven in front of Andy Reid. He does a little rate though. He does. The media man of the hour, Tom Brady. Oh, yeah.

I will have a video about Tom Brady coming out on the ringer.com this week. Oh, good. Just a warning to anybody who's like, wait a second. Why did the ringer get Woj to host? a video about Tom Brady. No, that's me actually in the video. And I was doing some research dude and I cannot believe that

the Tom Brady roast happened last year. I went back and watched a whole bunch of that including the whole Nikki Glazer set and the Jeff Ross set where he came out dressed as OJ. I'm like, this is unbelievable that this happened. And it's also fascinating

that we had the Brady roast and then Tom Brady started announcing games and then we were doing the Brady roast. online every week. Yeah. Absolutely true. You know, we've talked a lot about Tom Brady on this show.

I didn't realize it was such a widespread conversation. I think until this week, where it just seems like when everybody was doing the Brady on the cusp of the Super Bowl pieces and it was like after an up and down year of commentary or after a difficult year behind the microphone, it was every headline seemed to be loaded in a way that I wasn't expecting.

It was really weird. I know, I thought, especially by the end, I think because he started slow and he also started games slowly, if you notice that. Yeah. Like he would always be bad in that opening on camera. And then through the first quarter, he'd be kind of bland. And then by the second, third quarter, he'd get better. And so people, I think, would be like, something's wrong with Tom Brady because you start slow. And if you started fast like Tony Romo did back in 2017.

I just think it says a lot about the way the state of media criticism, the same way. that we talked about, you know, we've discussed how basketball and, I mean, all sports media is not as very little about what's on the field. We've kind of reached this meta level. It just didn't occur to me that the average reader would be interested at all or have any thoughts at all on Tom Brady's, like the quality of Tom Brady's color commentary, right? That like, that after an up and down season as a, as the, as the preamble to your headline would get more of more clicks than Tom Brady on the cusp of calling the first Super Bowl just straight up will, right?

Like it wouldn't have occurred to me that the average reader would care, but I guess we all care at this point. So here's my theory. It goes back to the roast. We like to see the golden boy brought down the peg. That's why the roast is funny.

Somebody who had a perfect life, who's done everything, who has scoreboard on the entire world, then gets humiliated with jokes about his ex-wife, sex life for three hours. And the announcing, well,

it did not include Giselle jokes, had the same feeling. Ah, he's not great at this. He's not perfect. He looks perfect, but he's not perfect

when it comes to calling a game. And I just think that are satisfying to people in a way. I don't think they necessarily like the world at large wishes Tom Brady ill or wants him to be mediocre. Yeah. But I think there's a little

bit of a smile everybody has. Okay. He wasn't great at that, too. At least right away. I think you're right. I think it does go to our feeling specifically about Tom Brady. But, you know, he's used to performing under these circumstances. He's big Super Bowl spotlight. So we'll see if he comes through on commentary too. I mean, I think that probably it'll, he'll walk away the victor one way or the other.

He certainly can count on the dollars that he's gotten. his pocket if he's even if the results aren't great we talking about the announcer who stayed home sure because gregg olson kind of had a weird pre-radio row media tour last week oh yeah i believe he was doing a charity dinner but he wound up giving lots of interviews and if people don't remember greg olson was elevated temporarily to fox's number one seat because tom brady played one more year of football and then had a gap year where he was apparently studying broadcasting. So Greg Olson got to be a number one guy for two years. And he was really, really good. And he called a Super Bowl and everybody was really happy. So Tom Brady's calling

the game here in New Orleans. Greg Olson's not. How do you think Greg Olson played that? We love hearing you in the booth. A lot of fans want to know, do you think there's a path for you to be in the booth for championship weekend, Super Bowl again in the near future? I hope so. I'll be honest. It's hard sitting home on the couch watching the games. And, you know, you're sitting there and you're living and dying with every broadcast, and you're sitting there and you're dissecting everything that's said and done, and what would you have said and what would you have done? So, yeah, listen, I've been very honest.

My goal getting into this was the not just call regional 1 o'clock games and just be happy to be there. I've called the highest games. We've called some of the biggest games in NFL history, some of the biggest audiences in NFL history, Super Bowls. To not do it anymore is hard. It's not ideal. but listen, wherever it is, whatever network it's on,

whatever opportunities there, my goal is still to just continue to show that I'm as good, if not better than anybody in this industry, and I just need a chair. I'm sure that he really feels that way. I'm sure that he seemed pretty unguarded there, but also it seems like, doesn't it seem like the most important thing for Greg Wilson at this point is just to continue to remind everybody

that he is the top color commentator in the NFL world that is not not currently the top guy on one of the three channels you know like he needs to be there for when whatever streaming service next grabs a few NFL gets their NFL games or whatever

like he just needs to be in the conversation he also needs to be in the conversation when if Tom Brady decides not to come back you know sure it's a big headache for Fox every time he gives an interview like that and he gave three or four them last week because of course that's everybody's first question right does it feel like to be sitting at home

when you could be calling the Super Bowl. I can tell you, it's so refreshing when people in public life actually just say what they think. Yeah. I mean, there's a polite answer there. You know, Tom's done a great job this year and just rooting for Tom and all that stuff. And like, it's so nice not to just have people BS you like that and just talk about it. Again, it's not something that's done all that much because it seems weird. I'm sure it seems weird for Tom Brady to have the backup quarterback talking about how much he would like to have your job.

Yeah. But as a reporter, I love it. Seven and a half hours of Fox pregame, David, which are going to air from 11 to 6.30 Eastern time on Sunday. This one caught my eye, and this is real. The Madden Cruiser, a Bayou Adventure with Bill Belichick. No, that is not the rethemed version of Splash Mountain or Bill Belichick taking an airboat tour in the style of the shoe.

maker family. This is a one-hour special Fox says in which Belichick hops aboard the iconic Madden Cruiser for an unforgettable road trip. Special guests include Tom Brady, Michael Strahan, and Kurt Minifie, Probe Football Hall of Famers Ed Reed and Tyla

New Orleans Legends Archie Manning and Tyron Matthew. Okay. Wait, the Madden Cruiser is the bus that he used to ride from game to game on? Yep. Bill Bill Bill DeLichick will be in the bus having a Bayou adventure. like hop on the tour bus with me and let's talk that's okay uh got one eating story from

new orleans for you so i got in last night and i went to the camealia grill which is one of these old line new orleans places our friend josh levin used to go to it growing up and it's like 830 by this point they close at 10 this is i got to tell you this is a a Curtis and Shoemaker kind of place. Uh-huh. Open late. Breakfast is served all the way up until close. To call it comfort food would be to do a great disservice to the food of the

Camellia Grill. So I get in and I order a roast beef and gravy po-boy. Fully dressed. And they dip into the vat to just pull out the roast beef and put it on the bread. And I get this wonderful. sandwich in front of me and I just start murdering the sandwich. The only verb I can possibly use here.

There's a Dallas sports radio host that coined the term fajita pants to describe what happens to your pants when you're tucking into some sizzling fajitas and you look down on all the grease and cheese and grime has gotten all over you. That's not the direction I thought fajita pants is going to go, but keep going.

I would like to confirm that there is also such a thing as po-boy pants. I mean, I've been on the ground in New Orleans 25 minutes. I looked down. I was like, damn it. There's one pair of pants that will not be worn on Radio Row this week. That po-boy is exceptional. I'm going to go out with Pelicans beatwriting legend, Scott Kushner this week to get some muffletters.

I got to do. This is an obligation of mine, but it's heartfelt. I know that when you're in New Orleans, there's lots of quote-unquote New Orleans food that you got to get a taste of. But if you want to have, for my money, the best pizza in the United States of America. Okay. And here comes the conflict of interest.

Go to my brother-in-law's restaurant, Saint Pizza. St. Pizza. Look it up. It is worth the trip. I'm not even joking when I tell you, they have chicken parm. They have pasta. It's like your New York dream.

You walk in, it's like a pizza by the sliced place with a hidden, like a hidden dark, wood restaurant behind a curtain. And it is the greatest, literally the best pizza you've ever had in your life. All of you New Orleans, all of you sports writers out there in New Orleans, go check it out. I may go tonight. That sounds fantastic. Go. I'll call him for you. Next week I'm going to be doing the pod from Duke University, the same clinic where Yoko Zune and Vader were sent to lose weight. So that'll also be a great bit of content for our listeners. Coming up in 30 seconds,

Chuck Todd shows us what's broken about the media and for once it's not his fault. 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 Pressbox pod where they are always gratefully received. There was a story last week from W.A.F.B.

A station in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. About a man, David, in Georgia. His name is Sylvester Franklin. he ordered a drill online and he didn't receive it. He received a printed photograph of a drill instead. It was an overworked Twitter joke to write, this is not a drill. Repeat, this is not a drill.

If you look at online purchases sometimes and wish you'd only gotten a picture of them, congrats. You made the overwork Twitter joke. of the week. All right, the notebook, David, when people say the media is broken,

you know my response is always, eh, just because you're mad at something you saw in the New York Times. You may be right on the merits, but the media is not broken. Let me tell you the way it is broken. Friday,

I'm in my office, and I got a New York Times news alert saying that Chuck Todd is leaving NBC. Yeah. Tweets of this news followed from the main accounts of the New York Times. where it was labeled breaking news from the New York Times' deal book account.

CNN, CNN Breaking News, Axios, Variety. Now that sounds like big news, except for the fact that Chuck Todd last hosted Meet the Press in September 2023. Yeah. So if you were going to do your big piece about the Chuck Todd era, that was probably the time you were going to do it. And aside from his very righteous explosion

about NBC hiring Ronna McDaniel last year. Do you know what Chuck Todd has been doing since September 2023? You know, I don't. He doesn't host me the Bresdaily anymore, right?

So is he still the politics director at NBC News? Does he still have it? What does he do? He hosts the Chuck Toddcast. Oh. The Chuck Toddcast.

Also, Max Stani over at Semaphorehead reported his departure back in January. Now, you might say, why is the media broken because it reported Chuck Todd's departure from NBC, which is the story that is true and seems not to be pernicious. David, this goes back to my thing about insiderdom. Yeah. We keep telling readers that the most important thing that can possibly happen is someone

leaving or joining an organization. Yeah. Or signing a new contract. This is not the Luca trade, folks. I just think it goes back to like I saw it the other day it was the Jaguars got rid of their general manager Trent Balke and I was like if 1991 Brian had been reading the Dallas Morning News

the story of Trent Balkees departure a general manager living far far away for a team that nobody in town cares about would have been on like page 14 to the sports section in tiny type yeah somehow it's a national story and this is the same thing And I'm like, do you know how much time reporters are spending chasing these things because news organizations have decided that they're important? That they bring traffic?

And do you realize how we have rewired the audience's minds to think that this stuff is the most important thing in the world? Yeah, that is meaningful. Yeah. It's not. It doesn't matter. And like I was reading all the stories about Chuck Todd. None of them were like, here's why Chuck Todd leaving NBC. see, here's what that says about the future of network news.

Here's what that says about the future of holding politicians to account. There's pieces to be written about Chuck Todd. Yeah. They didn't say that. They just reported the news like it was important. Mm-hmm. It's not. It doesn't matter.

Yeah. Elsewhere in Washington, there was a little switcheroo at the Pentagon. I mostly say that because I like switcheroo as a word. But the Pentagon, like other governmental departments, has a workspace for journalists who were assigned there. Uh-huh. NBC has this old school booth where they can do radio and TV reports.

Well, Donald Trump, as part of his lust for new media, by which he means media that's friendlier to him, has decided to make some changes. These are via Brian Stelter at CNN. NBC, David, out of the workspace. One American News is in in its place. NPR out of the workspace. Breitbart is in. The New York Times out. New York Post in.

the only one that was a little weird was Politico was shuffled out and Huffpost was thrown in. Kind of weird to be Huffposts. We're like, yeah, we got our bow. We're the one data point that actually complicates this story. Yeah. This was not done for good reasons. It kind of reminds me of like when a coach freezes out of sports writers, like, I'm not answering your clickbait questions. All right, Mr. Shoemaker, what do you got?

and you're like, oh, did I just get the Disney fast pass here? Should I not ask a question? Because I got bumped to the front of the line for a bad reason. Department of Amplification, David. Last Monday, we wished a happy 100th birthday to the New Yorker, which I described on the podcast as the night defender of the umlout. Well, Matthew Felling, a valued Capitol Hill listener sent this. he says, I have never quibbled with you over minutia

but your Monday conversation about the New Yorker elicited my inner editor. You mentioned the publication's proclivity for umlouts when I believe the accurate term would be diarysis. Diaresis. Diaresis. Diarritic? Diarrises.

Umlouts are the German tool, double dots over a single vowel to have it sound different. The New Yorker uses. diarices with gusto deploying them with any usage of double vowels. Okay. There we go. There we go. I learned something new today.

All right, quickly, some only in journalism for Super Bowl week, David, the chiefs are trying to win their unprecedented third straight Super Bowl. Yes. I'm not sure we ever say that out of the Super Bowl context. Also in the news this week, New Jersey Senator Robert Menendez got sentenced for his role in a brazen.

Last year, sorry, last year when the chiefs were going for number two, was it widely, it was just like they're going for their precedented second Super Bowl one? No, nobody used that. It's only when it's unprecedented. That's where we break that out. Bob Menendez was in a brazen bribery scheme. We also would have accepted audacious. Yeah.

And then our friend PPP punnet notes Donald Trump has been using his trade. threats. Well, now not just threats. There are actual tariffs as a cudgel. Oh, yeah. Cuddle means short, heavy club. How many real cudgels have you encountered in your lifetime versus partisan cudgels?

I only know what a cudgel is because I play Dungeons and Dragons as a youth. But it is certainly used in such a way that you almost think it's like some sort of blade, right? It's more of like a wedge tactic than just a hit over the head tactic. But sure.

Media piss test. This is where reporters say a thing is like another thing, except that it's on steroids. Well, Virginia Senator Mark Warner was on Face the Nation talking to the press box's very own Margaret Brennan. Listen to how Mark Warner described the first two weeks of Trump, too. All federal employees, my understanding went out to two million federal employees, this offer, which again, OPM does not have that authority to start with. That was who it came from. But it is, I can tell you, with lots of federal employees, we got. chaos on steroids going on. And we had heard from Trump's supporters, the OMB director, for example.

Chaos on steroids, David. You would think that chaos would come with kind of a steroidal quality. Yeah. This is chaos on steroids. It's extra special chaos. Thanks to Jose Lopez freshly snipes, what a name. Dennis Reichold and many others for that one. All right.

It's time for a feature. That is always chaos on steroids. It's time for David Shoemaker. Guess is the strained pun headline. Yeah. Monday's headline about public transit that was disabled when a truck hit some wires was a streetcar named the wire. Listener Doug Gullesie said it should have been a streetcar maimed the wire, which is pretty great. Yes.

Today's headline comes to us from a bunch of people, Zach Jones and Matt Heinz, among them. it's from Oliver Darcy's status newsletter. It's about Jim Acosta. Jim Acosta, David. Oliver Darcy reported that CNN management came to Acosta and said, hey, that 10 a.m. show you're hosting on our network, we'd love to move you to midnight to the graveyard shift. And Acosta said, you know what? I'm out. People often ask me if the highlight of my career at CNN was at the White House covering Donald Trump. Actually, no. that moment came here when I covered former president Barack Obama's trip to Cuba in 2016 and had the chance to question the dictator there, Raul Castro, about the island's political prisoners. As the son of a Cuban refugee, I took home this lesson.

It is never a good time to bow down to a tyrant. So Acosta is out. What was statuses strained upon headline? The cost of living, the cost of doing business. Oh, I thought you had it right away. Acosta. A costa. It's not a cost of living.

He's saying goodbye. He is gone. He is saying goodbye. He is perhaps saying goodbye like Arnold Schwarzenegger said it famously in a movie. I'll be back. When? Acosta. Why can't I think of this?

Put baby. Put baby. Oh, Acosta La Vista baby. Are there? Acosta la Vista. That's a great headline. Fantastic work from Oliver. He is David Shoemaker.

I'm Brian Kirklandxia magic by both Carlos Churaboga and Brian Waters here on Radio Row. Wednesday night, we got a bonus interview podcast from the Super Bowl. It's a big one. I'm too superstitious to talk about it, but please watch this space. Joel will be on the podcast Thursday. And then on Monday, next Monday, David, you and I get to do one of our favorite podcasts, the post Super Bowl show.

Talk about the announcers, the broadcast, the ads, the TV of it all. That's coming Monday. We get to cover either the unprecedented win of third Super Bowl win by the Kansas City Chiefs or the precedented non-win by then. And Josh Shapiro's coming primary campaign. Plus, of course, more lukewarm takes about the media. See you then, David. See you later, Brian.