The Press Box - Tiger and the Masters, Instant Obits, and Luring Reporters Back to Work

Episode Date: April 11, 2022

Bryan and David break down Tiger Woods’s return to golf, the discourse surrounding his career, and interesting TV moments from the 2022 Masters (10:46). Later, they discuss the awful death of Dwayne Haskins, former NFL quarterback, and weigh in on Adam Schefter’s tweets that broke the news (30:44). Plus, the Overworked Twitter Joke of the Week and David Shoemaker Guesses the Strained-Pun Headline. Hosts: Bryan Curtis and David Shoemaker Associate Producer: Erika Cervantes Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Listen now. David, since I'm still in Texas, do you mind if I start this podcast by spending a few minutes talking about barbecue? God, I can join on this conversation too. I had a little barbecue and I was down there last week, but go ahead. Well, my wife and I, being down and forward, had to do a trip to the new mecca of Texas barbecue. Oh, what's that? Goldies. Where's goldies?

Yeah. My thoughts exactly. So Texas Monthly back in October picked Goldies as the number one barbecue place in the whole state of Texas. Goldies from Fort Worth. I had the same reaction. I also thought I said,

what is Goldies? Turns out it's in Fort Worth, but kind of out there, you know, down a small road. You actually had, we had in our case, had to park in somebody's backyard

next to a couple of trailers. Wow, okay. And of course, Nowadays, when you talk about like, you know, the mecas of Texas barbecue, you're talking about standing in line for several hours to eat barbecue. That is absolutely mandatory. I don't know if Franklin invented that in Austin, but that has become the way that we consume barbecue now. It's like if you could figure out a way to do it more quickly. If Goldie's barbecue could innovate like the Chick-fil-A, we have two drive-through lines going side by side, if they could do it, they would.

wouldn't do it because that would that would ruin the experience it's become part of the romance yeah and the story right i stood in line for two hours to eat barbecue now you and i should state we come at barbecue from a slightly different angle because we grew up here in texas yeah and when we grew up in the 90s barbecue was not a fine food it was a it was a a delicious food. No. But it was not the subject of something that future eater.com

essays that were reaching for the metaphorical heights would be written about. No. If anybody from our generation, I would say 90% of our classmates in high school had it do it all over again, I bet they would take, I bet they would just go down to Austin and start off working in the pit at one of these barbecue places.

because you could be a millionaire by now. The number of, like, guys who came up through the pits in, you know, around Austin and the hill country and stuff and, like, ended up running kitchens in New York and other major cities is incredible. Yes. This is the Texas version of why didn't I just become a blogger, you know, in 1999. Why didn't I get on the whole internet thing? So, yeah, and barbecue back in those days was like, it was pretty good.

and there was a lot of it, right? Some was better than others, but its value was it would be something that you would just eat a ton of. And nobody was using terms like bark and stuff like that. No, no, no. And also, I mean, from the other half

of my growing experience, you know, my family's all from North Carolina, and when we would be driving around out there on holidays, you know, every summer my dad would have some place he wanted to pull over, some roadside spot he wanted to pull over at. And obviously North Carolina barbecue is a different thing than Texas barbecue.

but we would get, you know, a tub full of pulled pork and some just real basic hamburger buns to put it on. And it was good. It was a real good experience. And it wasn't, but there's nothing gourmet about it. The way that barbecue worked is you would, like, have your barbecue sandwich, and you'd put some barbecue sauce on it at the place if you were there.

And then you'd bring the leftovers home, and the next day you would pull them out of the refrigerator and put ketchup on it and eat your barbecue sandwich that way. And it was just the way, you know, there was no, there were no cloth napkins involved. No. Remember the old joke. If you didn't see flies in a barbecue joint, you'd go, what do the flies know that I don't?

Yes, exactly. That was kind of, that was kind of it. So that, anyway, that is the viewpoint. You come at it with and I come at it with. We go to Goldies. My wife and I, we bring lawn chairs because we're prepared. Open at 11 o'clock. We got there about 10 o'clock in the morning.

and I bet we were in line for about two hours and 15 minutes, maybe two and a half hours. In the Texas sun, thank goodness we brought sunscreen. We were talking to people in line. And it's always funny to talk to people on the barbecue line because there's a lot of people that are really doing this. I mean, they are doing pilgrimages or they are local and they have been to this place a lot of times. So they're turning to you and saying things like, you know, I'm kind of here for the

turkey. You're like, wait a second. You're not here for the brisket or the ribs. You're all the way down the list of the turkey. Because that's what you... That's where we all want to get. Yeah, right? Because that's where you're the real expert. I don't even need the brisket this time. I may just go turkey this time after sitting in line for two and a half hours. Remember that time we had, we were at the upscale barbecue place in Brooklyn and we had those, we had some like barbecue duck. That was, and that was the highlight of the night. I felt a little uncomfortable, but it was absolutely delicious. I'm going to, I'm not going to lie. So, dude, we get through this two and a half hour line, we walk into Goldies, which is just a wonderful barbecue place looking structure.

It looks like a place you're going to get some great food. We walk in, and of course, you go to the counter where everything is cut fresh. And they did the thing that they do at Katz's Deli in New York where they give you the little sample when you start off with. And of course, I want to meet the person who eats the sample and then walks out and goes, eh, not what I was expecting. It walks out after standing in life for two and a half hours. But it gives us a little sample, and it's kind of like a little burn end. And I put it in my mouth. And again, this is Mr. enthusiastic but unromantic about barbecue saying this.

So you know this comes from a good place. If I had just eaten that little piece of meat, it would have probably been the best barbecue meal I had ever eaten in my life. If I had been called away on a family emergency at that point, I would have been happy. because it was so good. Oh, wow. The brisket was so good. The pork ribs were so good.

The sides, always an iffy proposition with barbecue, or at least it was in the old days, were so good. I mean, especially the beans, potato salad as well. We had sausage. We had the fabled turkey,

which turned out to be fantastic. Wow. I'm not sure I'm forsaking the brisket ever for that turkey, but man, was it good? Dude, it was amazing. Now, I've been to Franklin. It's been a few years, so I can't quite do a one-to-one comparison.

But those in some order are my 1A and 1B. And it tasted almost like a different food category than what I grew up knowing as barbecue. Yeah. How so? Well, you know when you went to Brooklyn and had like the really good pizza? Yeah.

and you could see the relationship between that pizza and the Cece's buffet pizza. Like, this is the same thing. This is just way better. This just almost... You might need to take CeC's out of that point in comparison. But okay, we'll move on. Pizza Hut buffet. Sure.

This just felt, I don't know, man. It just felt it was so good. And my wife, who is a very enthusiastic, let's go anywhere, let's try anything person, but is not a Texan and is not a... barbecue person at all, was just, we were just like, that's one of the best meals we've ever eaten, period.

Wow. That could have been just served in any, in any way at any restaurant, and it was so good. I mean that bite for bite. Wow. Yeah. Now I'm sad that I didn't go.

By the way, I did see a straight fly. You did? Tell that old joke to my son. You know, I was like, you come to the right place. Oh man

God that sounds good I'm gonna be hungry for the rest of the day I just spent some time in Texas obviously myself So you know Did you get your get your barbecue feedback on I got some barbecue You know what the highlight of my

My eating experience in Fort Worth Texas though Was I went to Risky's in the stockyards And got a steak Not Risky's barbecue I got I just went all in got just a big old T-bone steak.

And it was, I mean, I have spent a lot of money on steaks over the past five years. And this might have been the best one. Did you feel almost comically Texan sitting in the Fort Worth stockyards eating a steak? Yeah, and both my kids were like really feeling the stockyards vibe. So they had both acquired like various pieces of cowboy flair, you know, by the time we sat down. So yeah, but it was just great. The best thing about the stockyards, I highly recommend it to anybody that wants to go.

The best thing about the stockyards is that it's both like cowboy Disneyland and also thoroughly authentic at the same time. If you have kids that want to see a rodeo, want to see horses, want to do whatever. Want to see a $1,200 pair of boots over at Lettys. Come on by. You can go right down the street and find that same pair.

Well, find a look-alike pair of boots for much less than that. All right, partners. coming up on today's podcast, David and I are going to talk about Tiger and the Masters. We're going to talk about the problem of instant obituaries on Twitter, especially those regarding sports. And we're going to talk about what it's going to take to get journalists to come back to the newsroom after two years of working at home during the pandemic. All that more on the press box, a part of the ringer podcast network. Hello media consumers, Brian Curtis, David Shoemaker, producer Erica Servantes here. David, we got to start with Tiger Woods and the Masters.

Yes. Because Woods goes out there on Thursday, first day of the tournament, David. Less than 14 months after he got in a car accident and almost had his leg amputated. And not only does he play in the Masters, he puts on this incredibly magenta Nike golf shirt and Tiger Woods shoots one under par.

And we had a monster version. of everyone's favorite sport story. The old guy still got it. Oh, yeah. That was something else. But I don't know how much of golf you watch this weekend. But it was a really interesting

old guy still got it experience. Because on the one hand, wow, miraculous. Coming back, you know, a testament to endurance, to wanting this, to being just Tiger Woods and being one of the most miraculous athletes of our life.

lifetime, right? On the other hand, it was his first tournament back. He was obviously having trouble walking. His leg got worse as the weekend went on. And there was this eerie quality to it, dude, where it was one of those sporting events where you're watching an athlete and hoping he does not physically break down in front of your eyes. So on the one hand, feelings of rousing sports movie comeback. This is incredible. And on the other hand, eerie, maybe even a little guilty feelings of, I hope this person isn't doing this and then this is going to result in something really, really bad that is going to mess everything up for them, you know, for the next couple of months. Yeah. It was, it was an interesting one psychologically. I hear what you're saying.

And I agree. I do think that there's a degree to which Tiger Woods's entire life has become such fodder for, you know, so proper storytelling and what over the past, well, I don't even know. Two decades? I mean, that the masters just felt to me like pure positive redemption. I mean, not like more redemption or anything like that. But like, even though there was a sort of, you know, can't look. way sort of, you know, exploitative aspect to the way,

to the way that I think we were all watching it, that still felt like a step in the positive direction to me. You know, it did, I felt like the conversation, well, I can't really judge the whole conversation, but I certainly felt like that was a much more comfortable, much healthier way of sort of viewing, or, you know, taking on the Tiger Woods narrative than, you know, maybe if it hadn't been for what his past decade or so looked like.

but yeah i mean it was a really unique experience i mean i was out and about some yesterday and um i can't tell you the last time i honestly can't tell you the last time i remember seeing multiple times seeing people stop cold to catch a tv tv screen you know through a window through a doorway as they were passing the bar you know i mean people were just like just just kind of frozen you know just just to catch a glimpse of the whole thing to make sure they could you know just lay eyes on it in real time. I mean, the 2019 Masters might be the answer to that question? Sure.

Right? Yeah. But I do think that there's something kind of even more profound about what happened this weekend. And yeah, I mean, the way you described it, probably plays a big part in that. But it was just, I mean, really, really, just indescribable almost. When you talk about narratives and kind of collective feelings of the public, to the best we can judge them. Has any athlete in our lifetime had more of a journey,

as they say online with that? I mean, I was thinking about that on Sunday. You had everybody rooting for Tiger Woods because, of course, we're all rooting for Tiger Woods, right? We want him to play golf again. We want him to be healthy after that horrible car wreck. But I'm just like, man, this guy's trip not only through his own life, but just through the way through just the discourse, for lack of a better word, has been unbelievable. And who, like, who is second on the list among athletes in our lifetime? I don't know. I mean, for as much as, you know, golf sort of moves in and out of the spotlight, there is just something eternally profound about the, you know, very basic, you know, Joseph Campbell,

man versus nature aspect, or man versus self aspect to the whole thing, right? Because, I mean, you could only imagine, and we do imagine, we speculate a lot about what ifs about, you know, if Michael Jordan hadn't taken those three years off, or if Michael Jordan hadn't messed up his knee or leg or whatever when he made his comeback. And, you know, Ali, I mean, there's so, all of the greats we wonder these things about, right?

Mm-hmm. But that's all, you know, so many of those are dependent on it being a team game, you know, or even, you know, even in boxing, you know, I mean, there's a certain implausibility to it after a certain point, although we do see guys just trotting themselves back out there time and time again. To see Tiger Woods just sort of take on the very concept of implausibility, you know, I mean, just taking on the, it's not just the doubters, the haters out there. there, right? It's like, this is actually, like, this is actually implausible. This is actually probably impossible. And that's what he's battling. It's not the other people who are out

there playing golf. Yeah. There was some, there were genuine doubters in this case. Yeah. If we just, if we just sampled sports radio, I mean, you know, the month after that accident, there were, I mean, certainly, I mean, hundreds of people saying Tiger Woods never going to play golf again or never going to play at a competitive level again. And it's not as simple as, does he still have it, right? I mean, it's not like, no. That's not it. Honestly, as this is sort of a joke but sort of real like the closest basketball example would be like Craig Hodges without a basketball team trying to defend his three point title against Larry Bird that year after he won and then no longer had a job and they let him into the NBA jersey yeah

I mean because it's like one man you know trying to stave off retirement no obsolescence or whatever but but you know with Tiger it's it's it's just it's impossible to I mean God it's just it's it's so amazing and it's something that we all sort of of have a vested interest in, right? I mean, just to see even if you, even if you, you know, have been a tiger doubter or hater over the years. I mean, this is a story that's really just sort of baseline. It's very universal. And it's on, and it's being told on this kind of very huge, you know, metaphorical scale. It was an amazing day for a la carte TV. We've been told the future, right, is not television as presented to you by a network or cable network.

It's going to be I pick what I want to watch when I want to watch it. And sports has been kind of the one holdout to that because sports is something we watch live. Well, ESPN Plus wonderfully has this featured groups cast you can watch. And so on Thursday, when the story of the tournament is Tiger Woods, for a lot of us anyway, you could just watch Tiger Woods. Yeah. and it was kind of awesome. Shane Bacon and Colton Nost were doing the commentary there.

And I found they were, by the way, also about 20% more pointed the normal golf commentators. So even when Tiger would play sloppily, they would talk about it. Oh, yeah. And just give you a little bit more edge, perhaps, than your average golf commentating crew. But it was amazing.

It was like, here is, I am watching what is effectively the Tiger cast. because this is what I want to watch. And you could roll with that all the way on Thursday. And then, by the way, he makes the cut. On Saturday, he double bogies five. And there's this amazing pivot. Because all the people covering the Masters and CBS,

which is doing Saturday, Sunday on television, have to be like, oh, right, somebody is going to win the Masters. That is not Tiger Woods. And we're going to turn the battleship here. We're not going to forget about Tiger. We're going to keep showing into you. Certainly show him going up the back nine on Sunday,

getting those standing ovation, that big smile he had when he was finished with 18 on Sunday because he was so relieved. It looked like to be done. But now we've got to figure out, we got to cover Scotty Sheffler, right? We got to give you the masters, which is, it was just a very funny kind of split screen

of reporting and, covering an event, which is golf to a point anyway. But of course, that's kind of the whole thing in the extreme. I got some funny golf TV notes for you. Go for it. We have made fun of the way golf announcers talk since the beginning of time. But it struck me watching golf all weekend that one of the funny things that is sort of buried in there is that golf on TV has more disembodied.

to announce her voice than any other sport. Go on. And what I mean by that is they do not show you the commentators. So CBS comes on on Sunday. It's almost a cold open. They just start calling golf shots. And after a few minutes, you get Jim Nance and Nick Faldo sitting there. I have a hello friends.

And they showed the two of them. But all those other people talking to you, as far as I know, they were never shown on television. never saw Vern Lundquist's face is it you never saw Ian Baker Finch they're just just speaking to you funny you know you know how when you go to well here's it like

when I go to a wrestling event see the same thing in any boxing at UFC anything like that the announcers are usually at ringside in this very traditional like announced table situation UFC they're sitting at tables that are directly abutting the octagon but they all have like multiple TV

screens in front of them, right? And part of that so you can get the view. But for the most part, if you watch these guys, they're just watching the screen, and they happen to be at ringside, right? Is it important for... And this is obviously true for every sport, right? You're up in the box, you have the bird's eye view, whatever,

but you're watching TV. Is it important to give the impression that the announcers are watching with their own eyes at a close... Closely, even if it's not true? In golf? Because in golf, So you can whisper.

Why am I whispering if I'm not actually next to the golfers? And also, isn't, if you just watch them when they do show the announcers, you kind of be forgiven if you mistakenly thought they were in some sort of like, you know, observation tower above the entire, above the entire golf course and they can just look out with binoculars and see

each thing, right? Instead of the reality, which is probably there in a clubhouse adjacent to the field, just watching everything on TV, like us. Well, you've got some of them that are in observation towers next to particular holes. Right. Right. So you got like at the tower at 16. Yes. And then you always have a person on the ground, in this case, Dotty Pepper. Yeah. So they can be like walking with the golfers.

Yes. So that you have ground intelligence. Right. Just like in a football game or something. There's like, you know, sideline reporters. But you're right, there does feel when you're watching a tournament, unlike almost any other sport, it does feel like there is something very intimate about the distance between announcer and athlete. When in reality, the main voices are probably about as far away as you could get for half of the holes, right?

Yeah, maybe boxing would be the other one where it really feels like they're right there. Sure. And they're describing punches that they are seeing land very close to them. And it takes an incredible eye just to discern those punches on TV or in real life, whichever one, right?

I mean, you're telling it. But you're, again, the similar thing is you're telling the story, right? You are in real time telling the story of what's happening in a slightly subjective way. Right, right. Another one I wanted to talk to you about was weather is always part of sports television. But I don't think any event has so much invested in being bucolic and sunny and beautiful as the masters. so which is most of the time fine, but something funny happened on Saturday,

which is that it was freaking cold at the Masters. Mm-hmm. And windy. Mm-hmm. Temperatures were in the 40s, and the golfers were wearing those neck warmers. Like, what is Dustin Johnson wearing? It was just a big neck warmer.

He saw some of this on Twitter, yeah. Yeah. I don't know if this is humble bragging, but the people who were there complaining about the weather was just really great. Oh, my God. Was that sports writer, sports fan humble brag? Damn, it's cold here at the Masters. Wink, wink, wink.

I love that. I love that. That's the new dateline. Scotty Shelfler, by the way, was also doing the thing where he would hit the drive and then put the jacket on. Like, I don't want to wear this while I'm swinging the club. But as soon as I'm finished, I'm going to put on the jacket. Kind of a funny move. But it was so funny because then they would go to the B-roll for like the sponsors or whatever.

And Jim Nanz would go to CBS Sports, proudly presents the masters. And it'd be going over this patch of flowers on a sunny day. But it was the frozen tundra masters happening in real time. It was gray. It was dark. I thought that was funny. Oh, this was also good, David.

We had a golf announcer offering a spoiler. Oh, wow. So golf on TV is unusual because it's not all live. A lot of it is live, but of course, so many things are happening that some stuff CBS has got to record and show you a few minutes later. Of course, yeah. You know this transition. Just moments ago, here's Tiger Woods on 15, right?

That meaning that's the wink-wing for this happened a second ago. But the trick is you just let those moments play out, even though as an announcer, you know what has just happened. You don't want to telegraph it because the public has no idea, most of the public anyway, at least the public that's watching the main CBS broadcast. Well, Rory McElroy was making this crazy charge on Sunday up the leaderboard, wound up finishing second, and he was chipping out of the bunker on 18. And he chips out and he chips out the bunker and he makes the shot.

Fantastic way to end a fantastic round. CBS is not showing this live. So they queue up the tape and I want you to listen to how CBS's Nick Faldo is going to spoil the surprise. that Rory McElroyd did something amazing on 18. I'm sorry, but wait, you see this. I've got goosebumps. I'm shaking. You just saw what Rory did.

Bunker's a bunker. This is impossible. Anything's possible. I love how Nance tried to bail him out there at the end. Anything's possible. But you know, the voice he adopted was the voice when you're watching sports and something crazy happens and you have to call in somebody

from the other room and rewind it. Oh, yeah. And you're like, you got to see this. The most amazing thing happened here. Watch, watch this, watch this. Okay, watch what, what he's going to do?

Watch what he's going to do. It's like, no, no, that's not the voice that golf announcers usually use on television. Right. You're not like, you've got to see this. You just play the thing. And by the way, this is one of these absolute, if you want, if you're, what if you're looking at Twitter at all this weekend, one of the absolute things that makes everybody mad is why isn't CBS showing more of this live? Because now, thanks to the app, thanks to those other dedicated streams, you know what's happened.

But they on the main broadcasts have not told you what has happened yet. Very funny. Last one for you, David. Scotty Sheffler, who won the tournament. Dallas is very owner, I should say Highland Parks, very young, 25 years old, very, very young man to win the Masters. Mm-hmm. And there is a great TV sports take and general sports take that goes like this.

You know what? I think he's just getting started. I think he's just getting started. Well, I mean, he's probably going for a little while, but yeah, that would be the presumption, right? Don't you like how that's always kind of offered like you're walking out on a limb a little bit? Yeah. Like the rest of the world thinks that this is some terrible fluke that has happened? Between you and me, Brian, I think this is your quintessential fluke win and we'll never hear from again.

See, that would be what I want to hear on the term. That would be interesting. Yeah. Because it's not just a, it's not just a commentary on the usual arc of a career, but it's also the commentary on the way we're going to treat this career, right? Scotty Sheffler has now won the Masters. He might never win again, and they will still talk him up as a threat for the next 20 years, right? Because he's now a character.

Scottie Shephler on Sunday. You don't know, you know. Always got to watch that guy. Yeah. But yeah, that's what I want. You know, it's like, let's face it. This is very unlikely to ever happen again. This just, you know, this feels like it was out of the blue.

I'd like to stake out that position on television. All right, David, I want to talk to you about the perils of the instant Twitter obituary. But first, let's do the overword 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 nominees to at the press box pod where they are always gratefully received. It was baseball opening day. So of course, we were

once again treated to the, hey, we're on pace to go 162 and O jokes. Folks, it gets better with every passing year. Thanks to Will Wackland for pointing that out. But this week's winner, David, comes from the Balls podcast. No relation to Ballsack Sports. I do not believe.

Yahoo tweeted out one of those very cool videos where a fan makes a half court shot to win free season tickets. This case, Philadelphia 76ers fan. Here are some of the best lines off that video. Geez, now the poor guys got to watch free throws. That's a 76ers joke. Nuggets fans want to talk about the fans VORP.

And my favorite, the fan has immediately signed as a better option than James Hardin for the playoffs. If you combined an awesome moment with the troll of James Hardin, Delayed laugh. Congrats. You made the overworked Twitter joke of the week. All right, David, no book, time. And we had a horrific sport story on Saturday morning.

Pittsburgh Steelers quarterback Dwayne Haskins was killed in Florida when he got struck by a truck while walking on the interstate. He was just 24 years old. Adam Schaefter broke that news. And this is how he tweeted it. Dwayne Haskins, a standout at Ohio State before struggling to kill. catch on with Washington and Pittsburgh in the NFL died this morning when he got hit by a car in South Florida for his agent Cedric Saunders. Now, a lot of people said, wait a second, the guy just died.

And on Twitter for 9.4 million followers, you were highlighting the fact essentially that he was a bad draft pick, like in the first sentence of your tweet. Yeah. And when I say people got mad, it wasn't just like people on sports Twitter. It was Lamar Jackson, Jacoby Myers, Des Bryant,

Cardale Jones, Rashad Bateman. What did you make? And then quickly, Shefter deleted that tweet and replaced it with another that merely said he was a quarterback with Pittsburgh and Washington.

What did you make of the whole Twitter obituary situation? I mean, I thought it was a terrible tweet. It does, you know, it makes sense in the context of like every other tweet from Adam Schaefter and not saying they're all terrible, but they're all sort of the same, you know, have the same authorship. It feels like sometimes are these, you know, Twitter, high profile power Twitter users that are, you know, over the age of 40, you know, we're in the same category, that there's a little bit of like a journalism Tourette's that goes on when you're writing

these tweets that you feel obligated to like include the lead or, you know, include like the second sentence with the lead or whatever, you know, just put a little like a context sentence that doesn't really have any purpose there except that it feels like there's some weird J-school obligation that goes with the way that you're constructing these things. I don't know. It's hard to, it's hard to really put into words. But it's like, you know, sometimes you're allowed to just say the thing, you know.

Sometimes you're on Twitter especially. This is social media. There's an interactive aspect. There's a human element to the whole thing. You're allowed to just sort of take a minute to deal with the emotional aspect of it or to let silence, you know, do its job. You hit on something exactly what I thought when I read that. It felt like a sentence that was extracted from a longer. formal newspaper obituary.

That was what was so curious about it. I mean, there's the sentiment and the whole idea of highlighting that when a person has died. And then there's a whole thing of just like, where did that even come from to begin with? Because it does read so formally, as opposed to just horrible news and then sharing what the news is. Doug Farrar, football writer, wrote a column for USA Today's Touchdown Wire called

If we can't see athletes as human beings, why are we doing this? I'd recommend everybody read that. He has a line. He says it's likely that Schefter got caught up in an all too easy trap where we as reporters and analysts see the athletes we cover as widgets. I think that's part of it. And I certainly think that is part of the Schefter method,

which we've talked about on this podcast before. I also think there's just something about journalistic infrastructure happening here, where in the olden times, Adam Schaefter is writing a story and he is submitting it to his editor. And if his editor sees that bit in the first sentence, says, well, maybe we should include this, but probably not in the first couple of paragraphs.

Let's tell readers what happened. Let's get a quote in here from Mike Tomlin, his coach with the Steelers. Let's see if we have some material from people that knew him. And then we can talk about what happened in his NFL career. maybe further down the piece. In fact, the New York Times piece

by Emmanuel Morgan about this thing mentioned Haskin's struggles in the NFL in the sixth paragraph, right? But now that whole journalistic

interaction is Adam Schaefter writing a tweet. Yeah. Presumably with little or no assistance from anybody else. He's all that has been reduced

to one man sitting there and being like, I am about to type this out. And here's what happened when he typed it out. Right. I mean, it's just, it's funny. So to me, there's a story there about the whole kind of transaction brain that just turns these people into some players, you know, role playing in a role playing game, you know,

and you're just switching them around, sign contract, trade, you know, cut, available. We'll be highly sought after on the market. it right and doesn't actually delve into who these players are at all. But then there's just like to me a far more basic just problem of the way things are done now. And you're putting an enormous amount of when that again, when the Adam Schaefter tweet is effectively the New York Times obituary in full, you're putting an enormous amount of trust that that person's going to get it right. I couldn't say any better than that.

I mean, it's just a, I think, you know, to call it, I think it's hard, it's tempting to over-diagnose whatever went into making this tweet. I do think the transactional thing, the widget thing, I mean, those are all real parts of it, right? I mean, but it's just more than anything else. It's the sort of vernacular of success, right? It's the vernacular of that's sort of specific to the way that Schafter and a few other of his own kind of do their jobs. And it's not, it sort of explicitly doesn't take into account how anyone's going to react to it, right, except for the retweets. You know, I mean, it's just a very, he wrote his tweet this way because this is how he's written 8,000, 8 million tweets before, you know, and this is just evidence for why it can't work like that all the time. And guess what?

He just resigned with ESPN. Yeah. So he's going to write 8 million more like that. I saw somebody online today was kind of equating, or not equating, but pairing this with the fact that Frank Vogel just learned that he was being let go by the Lakers because of a Adrian Woznarowski tweet. And obviously there's nothing problematic about Woj tweeting that. But just the two like, you know, should the human element be considered in that one? I mean, I think we, I think like my, you know. By the Lakers, yes.

Maybe you should tell your coach. Yeah. Maybe you should tell your coach. Tell your coach before it gets reported. Like, talk about the worst kept secret. They leaked it out mid-season. Yeah. They were thinking about firing him.

Come on. So that seemed like a bad way to start Saturday morning. Then we had something, David, that was arguably worse. In fact, I think it probably was worse. Gil Brandt, who is the 90-year-old architect of the 60s and 70s Dallas Cowboys. And for years has been kind of the draft guru in residence with NFL media. he gets on serious XM NFL radio. And he gets asked, well, you graded Dwayne Haskins as a prospect when he came out of Ohio State back in 2019.

Tell us about that. Tell us about what you made of him as a player. And this is what Brandt says. I hated anytime anybody is killed or anybody dies. But, now, first of all, really, really, really unpromising way to start the sentence. But Brand continues, he was a guy who was living to be dead, so to speak. They told him, don't under any circumstances leave school early.

You don't have the work habits. You don't have this. You don't have that. What did he do? He left school early. Dot, dot, dot. It's a tragic thing. Anytime anybody dies, it's tragic.

And especially when you're 24 years old and you've got your whole life ahead of you. but maybe if he stayed in school a year, he wouldn't do silly things. So earlier we talked about transactions brain. Then there is draft brain, which is related but I think distinct and important ways. Because here you're working backwards from a horrific event,

a person killed, and going back to the draft profile that you wrote about them, and including such data points as he came out of school too early because no NFL prospect has ever come out of school early. Now, Brand has since apologized on Twitter.

But it did get me thinking, like if we're worried, and this is something for our mentions intense column, if we're worried about treating players as widgets, not as human beings, we are creating right now,

we as in sports, writerdom, this absolutely huge draft industrial complex. I mean, it's probably safe to say that's the biggest growth part of sports writing right now. Because partly, because it's an easy point to entry, right? I can watch college football games. I can grade players. I can have opinions, and my opinions might be just as good as anybody else's

opinions. I can make mock drafts. I cannot tell you how many just hours of podcasts are devoted weekly, and daily to who the Dallas Cowboys are going to pick in the draft. All which are consumed by me, by the way, don't let me seem like I'm being high and mighty here. Now, I don't want to like ascribe the sentiments of Gilbrant to any of those people, because I bet most of them never say anything like that and don't even think anything like that.

But it is about 40 times. Cone drills, second round grades, third round grades. You know, it is a similar, it can, if you're not careful, it can devolve into a similar language, right? Mm-hmm. A similar widget-y language of thinking about people as, again, figures in this big game rather than actual human people. So to me, those are, you know, again, if we're, if we're worried about thing one,

we should probably also be worried about thing number two as well. Yeah. No, it's, I mean, you hate to, don't want to paint the two broad. a brush, but if you're interested in a draft industrial complex that doesn't risk turning players into dehumanized widgets or whatever else you want to say, I would probably say stay away from the architects of any 1970s football team. I mean, it's just such a different era in the way that players are discussed and talked about. And I mean, it's, it's, you know,

because the parts of the conversations at the bar around the dinner table with your grandparents or great uncles that you just sort of like wins at, you know? I mean, it's not okay, not okay. Yeah. And like I said, I don't want to impute his sentiments and the sentiments he expressed on the radio

to anybody who's doing this now. There's tons of awesome people who are riding tape and all this stuff. But I'm also like, I just think when we talk about the way we talk about athletes, right it just very very quickly even if we don't think that way ourselves it very quickly slips into this wiggity language it does it's really uncomfortable it's really uncomfortable i mean i think part of that is again the way you the way you i mean you have to moderate these conversations

too right i mean every you listen to sports radio enough every time that they have somebody on there to talk about their area of expertise and they always they pivot you know they have some out here in Philly. It's like there was somebody on to talk about the Eagles and they'll be like, while we have you, what do you think about James Hardin's doing so far? And you just like, whatever happens here is going to be a train wreck or something magical. I'm not sure. You know, it's, you got to not just know your audience, but know who you're having a conversation with and don't get in that kind of dicey territory. But you're right. It can be real messy. One last thing for you, David. This comes from a tweet from Katie Robertson,

who is a media reporter at the New York Times. She tweets, Wall Street Journal staff was told in an email today that while they're returned to the office is still voluntary, there will be bagels, fruit, and cold brew waiting for them if they come back to the office. Now, that made me chuckle like it made you chuckle, but it also got me to thinking about this problem of luring journalists back to the office after they've been gone for two years. Yeah. You know, all that stuff sounds really good, but it sounds really good if you have to be in the office. If you don't have to be in the office, I'm thinking, hmm, I think I can replicate fruit bagels cold brew at home. It's just like the incentives for this stuff and the

perks have just, to me, changed drastically in the last two years. Oh, yeah. Remember when you started working at the Daily Beast and you brought me and I got to tour the office in those early days? and the the IAC building in the York the IAC building just had a ridiculous Friday bagel spread situation

and I went and just looked with just my jaw on the floor like I cannot believe you get this for free like how where can I apply can I be a secretary or anything here it really just seemed like

the most amazing thing in the world now I mean you know Spotify has just legendary in office lunches and other food treats like that. And that's not really been on, I mean, that's not wooed me back to a full-time job position in the office yet.

It's just different, right? But yeah, yeah. I mean, I think, sir, I think for some people, I mean, it's really helpful to be at the office in person for a lot of things. And we talked about this a lot of times before. I do think there's a sort of, you know, some people, I mean, I mean, for a lot of people, who want to be in the office. You know, I mean, like, you know, a lot of younger staffers

want to be in the office for the social aspect of it, that sort of secondary to us now or tertiary to us now, and those they'll probably be head over heels for free bagels, free whatever's free if you're going to be there anyway, but that's the point that you're making. If you have to be there, right? If I'm expected at work every day, then all of a sudden stuff like that takes on in like an awesome thing.

But then if you send, if journalism, sends its entire workforce home for two years or just about. Some people certainly had to come to the office for various reasons over the last couple years. But if it sends almost everybody home, all of a sudden you say, here, you work from home, eat out of your refrigerator, go down the street and grab a coffee when you need something. Go to your local place. All that stuff just seems now totally different in retrospect.

It is. Well, it's like a week, you know, the old ringer office in New York used to be at a we work space. And we would all, people, people who works at, weworks and just, you know, because you can go to any we work if you work at one, right? So people would just send notes from various we works around the city, around

Brooklyn, in other cities, you know, whenever they would travel and just be like, check out the nitro coffee cold brew the setup they have over here. And we would all be very engaged in the conversation, jealous and, you know, comparing, contrasting the different things. But if someone was just like, I bolted this week and I'm working from a swim up bar at a, at some place

in Puerto Rico, you just be like, get the fuck out. of here. Like, it's a different conversation. You know, we have to be at work, so we're engaged in this perk conversation. But if you don't, then what's the point of talking about it? Would the swim up bar get you back to the office at this point? Swim up bar with a waterproof laptop? Maybe.

Maybe. Yeah. Now we're talking, right? Let's just start a conversation here. Yeah. What would get journalists back to the office? I hope Spotify's listening to this. Time for David Shuemaker guesses.

the strained pun headline. Yeah. Thursday's headline about the Donald Trump-Vladimir Putin alliance was, when you're a czar, they let you do it. Today's master's related headline comes from our old pal, Chris Almeida. He didn't send it to us, David, but it sits atop the story he wrote for Sports Illustrated last week

about golfer Rory McElroy. Oh, great. Okay. Rory McElroyd, dominated golf for a chunk of the 2000. tens. But what's happened to him in this decade? Chris asks. What was Sports Illustrated's

strained pun headline? He's faded away. Good golf reference. Huh? Fade. No. Yeah. Roar, like a dull roar. A dull roarie is funny, but not it. Roaring

God. You're getting there. Roar is definitely the pun here. Roaring drunk. Roaring a Oh God.

Big star in the 2010s. Oh, the Roary 20s? The Roary 20s. Yeah. The Rory 20s. I feel a certain pride whenever I see it. Chris Elm made a story with a straight pun headline atop it. Really do. He is David Schumaker. I'm Brian Curtis. Production Magic by Erica

Servantus. I'm back later this week. David and I are back Monday with more lukewarm takes about the media. See you then, David. See you later, Brian.