The Press Box - Tom Brady’s Week 1 Report Card, the Harris-Trump Debate Is Here, and NFL TV Notes

Episode Date: September 9, 2024

Hello, media consumers! Bryan and David kick off the show by previewing this Tuesday’s long-awaited debate between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump (00:36). Then they discuss Tom Brady’s first day on his new job (17:35). Later, in the notebook, they react to the following: Tenet Media got covert funding from Russian state media employees (35:33), Joe Tessitore debuted on 'Raw' (38:54), and Shannon Sharpe called out his producers (49:47) Plus, the Overworked Twitter Joke of the Week and David Shoemaker Guesses the Strained-Pun Headline. Hosts: Bryan Curtis and David Shoemaker Producer: Brian H. Waters Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

What's up everybody? Syriot Sohey from the Ringer here. And I wanted to let you know about a new show that I'm hosting, the Ringer WNBA show. We're breaking down and analyzing the latest happenings in the W, the personalities, the people who make the league as fascinating as it is. And we're going to be featuring some of the best guests and experts from around the league. Tap in with us every Friday through the end of the season over on the Ringer NBA show feed on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.

Yes. We are in the middle of an F5. content tornado. We are. Yes, that's right. We've got a five-day NFL kickoff weekend that wraps up tonight. Mm-hmm. And then tomorrow we have the first Kamala Harris-Donald Trump debate.

Which just a perfect bow on the football apocalypse. That's great. They were already sort of melding together for me this weekend when I had the YouTube multi-view where I could watch four NFL games at one time. Oh, no. And Harris was running so many ads during football that, at least one quarter to the screen, I could see her talking about the opportunity economy at all times.

Yes. Yeah. No, the Philly broadcast of all the wrestling shows has been very ad-heavy, which makes you feel good, you know, paying attention to people like me. Speaking of two parts of American culture joining into one,

it turns out journalists write the same story before a debate that they write before a big football game. Go on. The same curtain razor, if you will. You assess both sides' strengths and weaknesses. You have a nugget or two about pregame prep. Yeah, the pregame prep's great. And reporters sometimes even use the same language.

The New York Times said of Harris, who hasn't had a debate since 2020, she must try to shake off the rust. Yeah. Which number of quarterbacks were doing in week one of the NFL season. The debate is going to be 9 p.m. Eastern Time on Tuesday. It's on ABC. If you prefer the Philip K. Dick inspired reality that our current debate system has given us, you can watch it once again as the ABC debate on Fox. Yes.

Or the ABC debate on CNN. It's going to go 90 minutes, moderated by David Muir and Lindsay Davis. And dude, do you love debate expectations? setting. Yeah, was it during football or doing something else I was watching? Fox was going really hard on promoting the ABC debate on Fox. They were. They were. This is content. It doesn't belong to us.

We would never in a million years dream of promoting ABC News. But contractually, we have to say it's the ABC debate on Fox. Yeah. Well, you know, this is TV. They run shows that are produced by the competition in very, ways for forever. So yeah, maybe it makes sense. I'm sorry, did you have a question?

I had a question about expectation setting. Yeah. Both sides trying to convince you that their candidate is actually going to lose the debate. Yeah. So that when they win the debate or don't lose the debate by all that much, everybody goes, wow, they really exceeded expectations. Yeah, this is the sort of opposite of a football game, right? It's okay after the game to be like, that was a moral victory. But before the game, no, the coaches aren't going out. out there saying, like, listen, we've got our third-string quarterback and a bunch of banged-up linemen. It'll be a miracle if we can keep this within three touchdowns.

Or you're just going out there to fight the good fight. And yet, in political journalism, you read this all the time. I was reading Politico's West Wing newsletter. This is Harris Advisor David Pluff, former Obama guy. Quote, no one in American history will have done more general election presidential debates than Donald Trump. This will be his seventh. Kamala Harris rightly says she's an underdog in this race.

I think she'll be an underdog in this debate. There is no way in hell that David Pluff thinks Kamala Harris is an underdog in the debate tomorrow. No. I mean, the irony, too, is that when they talk about managing expectations, they're talking about managing them for the news media, right? Like the vast majority of people watching are not going to be equipped with the pregame lower, lower, of expectations ceremony that's been going on right now. This is, this is literally messaging to the media to try to control the way that they cover the debate being, and this messaging is being put out there by the media, mostly into an echo chamber that only consists of people like

us, right? No offense to West Wing Playbook, but yes, that is correct. People like us. So, so it is, it's very strange. It's almost like, it's almost like, they, We know that our reaction pieces to the debate won't have the bandwidth to cover the expectation, or to cover all of the parameters, everything that goes into the way that we are watching this debate. So we're just getting the preamble out now. These are the terms on which the debate will be judged. Didn't the whole bit about the muted mics also feel like expectation setting? Yeah.

So the Harris team wanted to change what the Biden team had agreed on, which was that the other candidates, Mike, would be muted when you're talking. Yeah. And the Harris team said, no, no, we want to unmute the mics at all times. And that was explained as being this very complicated bank shot where Donald Trump would be a bully and try to talk over Harris. And then people at home would be mad at Trump for doing that and therefore Harris would win the debate. Yeah. That feels very complicated to me, and it feels much more, much simpler to understand that they are asking for something. And then when she does well at the debate tomorrow night, and say, hey, you know, we didn't even, we wanted the mics unmuted.

Yeah. So there will be no excuse for Donald Trump. You know, he says, well, you know, I would have won, but they wouldn't let me talk. The evil MSM kept cutting me off. Yeah. She will then be able to diffuse an argument. I just read it as that way, no matter what anybody says. Yeah, I mean, I think there's probably an element, too, where it was just, there,

There's a perceived value in getting the Trump campaign on their heels a little bit. Just like, no, no, no, you don't know what to expect from us. We're changing the rules. We're changing the demands, you know. And making them talk about that. I think it was, you know, Trump did everybody, did the Harris campaign a favor by acting like he didn't know what his campaign had requested and what are things they had agreed on. Yeah, where do we leave that? Yeah.

He was definitely really animated about the time. That's his memory. I was definitely really mad about it and really happy with the result, but I'm not sure which side I was on. So yeah, no, but I think, I mean,

obviously you're right to some extent, right? I mean, this is, it's all about, it's all about managing expectations. It's almost like whoever wins the manage expectations battle. We're going to keep going football.

It's almost like who wins the, who wins the, the, the week on the, on the training field is who's going to win the week on the, in the actual game, right? It's like whoever, however, whoever, whoever spins it the most heading in,

has just an outsized advantage in the reaction. I still remember that with George W. Bush and Al Gore. George W. Bush's team did a fantastic job of winning the week. And then Al Gore went in and then sighed during the debate and be able to, oh, you know, George W. Bush completed a sentence. Yeah. I mean, you remember Trump did a bad job of this. with Biden in 2020?

Because he was talking up, Joe Biden is old. Joe Biden is out of touch. Can't do it even then. And then Joe Biden went in and was a human during the 2020 to debates and you win. Yep. You have won because Trump lost the pregame show.

This is all part to me of a new language of losing in politics where you constantly tell people that your campaign is in dire straits. Yeah. somehow I'm on the Kamala Harris email list. I don't know why. I don't know how they got my email, but I enjoy reading the subject titles when I get them. One came in the other day that was called Not Great.

Not great. Another one said re-Nate Silver's forecast. Oh. Related a particularly gloomy Nate Silver forecast. Yeah. And am I the only one that every time I get on Twitter, I'm served up ads where John Tester or Ruben Gallego are telling me how bad the polls look in their respective Senate races.

Yes. Yeah. They localize that really well. But yeah, whatever, I think that befalls all of us. Yeah, the political text messages and emails have just gotten to, I don't know if they've gotten to a new level or we just lived in such a blissful, like, you know, parallel universe with the first decade of iPhones where none of them could get to us. So as seamlessly as they got to our parents before and got you on landlines and now they've figured it all out. It just seems like it's been a monsoon. But it is incredibly funny when it's just like 1130 and you're lying in bed with your wife and your phone goes off.

And she's like, work again. And you're just like, no, I don't think anybody's messaging me. And you're like, oh, look, it's Barack Obama. He sent me a text message. And he's concerned. Yeah. He's very concerned. Yeah.

It seems like he really needs my attention. I don't know if it's because fundraising went online that the language of politics changed to our candidate is in big trouble. Yeah, I was going to say that. I think that has to be a lot of it, right? It's just the sort of like the constant dire outlook. Like, holy shit, things are looking bad. I need your $20 right now. Like push this button and donate.

I think that became such a, that became such the language of the political donation machine and such a sort of. or a public one, right? Because in this era, it's so much easier just to do a screen grab of whatever you just got and to post it on the Twitter. But I think there was probably, I mean, I don't know idea. My guess is the rest of it's just run off from that, right? It's like, oh, wait, it really works to paint yourself as the underdog. And then you see all the, all the various other ways in which, you know, that that goes, that carries through. By the way, if we're, if we're being honest here, Donald Trump has lost all six general election debates. He's been. in except the one where Joe Biden Airlines blew up on the runway.

Yeah. He lost the debates to Hillary. He lost the debates to Joe Biden and one who got canceled because Trump had COVID. So as long as we're talking about underdogs and language of losing, I think that's funny. The New York Times did a big curtain razor about the debate. It had four authors. And that's how you know the New York Times means business, David. Jonathan Swan, Maggie Haberman, Katie Rogers.

and read J. Epstein. Some amazing nuggets here. This is Kamala Harris's debate prep, which is happening in a Pittsburgh hotel room, turned prep room. Sounds like the start of a noir dime novel there. There's a stage in replica TV lighting, the Times writes,

and an advisor in full Lee Strausberg method acting mode. Not just playing Donald J. Trump, but inhabiting him, wearing a boxy suit and long tie. do they say who it was? They don't, right? They do. It's Philippe Rains, who was the Clinton advisor who played him with Hillary.

Yes. And has the dubious honor of being the guy that most reminds everyone of Donald Trump. Yeah. Has he been working on his impression ever since then? Is this just saying he's like, I might get called back into duty. And then when Trump gets voted out, he's like, finally I can stop. But then Trump starts injuring towards another run. He's like, shit.

He gets back in front of the mirror. starts like putting the grill cream in his hair just like thinking his way into this role it's weird to be the Frank Kellyendo of Democratic operatives

isn't it? Yeah. Yeah. That's right. It's just what a what a job that is. It's so it's just, it's such a,

so bizarre. But you know, this is politics. One of the British papers did an obvious aggregation of this very nuggety times article and messed up and had Lee Strasbourg

actually playing Donald Trump for this debate prep and someone on Twitter had to break it that Lee Strasberg is no longer with us not available for Kamala's Pittsburgh debate prep elsewhere in this article there's an insistence that Trump does not do debate prep he does something called policy time

quote unquote which sounds like when you and I have to convince our kids that they need to clean their room but we just have to rename it Yeah, you got to rebrand it into something fun. Yeah, or something can, yeah, that's exactly what that sounds like, policy time. Another sports writing campaign writing crossover. When you do a preview piece of a big football game, you get one of the opposing coaches that played this team during the season on the phone to give you some inside intel where the Times got Hillary Clinton on the phone. Because she debated Donald Trump in 2016. Who would understand better? Who would understand better? Donald Trump haunted by Kamala Harris putting Mike Pence in his place with her big I'm speaking line in 2020.

Yeah. It's a big moment during that VEEP debate, which Kamala Harris also won over Mike Pence. Also, this is a funny sentence from the Times. The former president's allies and advisors have urged him to be, quote, happy Trump in the debate rather than, quote, mean bully Trump, as one ally put it. Do you think they use the words being bullied Trump? that's what I want to imagine it is. Don't be mean bully Trump. I can imagine them you're like speaking in similar terms,

but don't anything with him, it's probably like, let's do cool Trump instead of like super Trump or like, you know, whatever they have like more again, the kind of names you do with your kids. Worth noting this could be the last

presidential debate of this cycle. Most sides have made noises about scheduling another one. It's not on the schedule right now. I could totally see either campaign taking their ball and going home after this. Yeah. Either after a victory or a loss, you know, Donald Trump is sort of sort of threatened not to show up at this debate. He might not show up it anymore. Kamala Harris might get a victory.

And with the way they are really running their campaign conservatively, let's not put her out there if we don't have to. Let's not take a real big, meaty policy stance if we don't have to. They could be like, we're all. And so much of the debate, yeah, I mean, in a world in which debates are seemingly negotiable, so much of it just seems to be like, you know, from the hold me back school, you know, it's just like the, like, oh yeah, you're going to act like you want to get in this fight, but you're actually doing everything you can to avoid getting in the fight, you know, and it's just, it, it's, it seems like it has more value as a talking point about whether or not we're having a debate than the actual

content of the debate. And frankly, they're kind of right. I mean, you said Trump lost some debates. I think some people would probably take exception to that and at least one. or two cases, the looming over Hillary was a great example because, you know, the things that like get scored one way with Trump get scored the other way amongst a different audience, you know, and, and for sure. Whether or not he pays attention during policy time, his, his, you know, victory for him is always a little bit less tangible, a little bit more, you know, a little bit more ephemeral. So, but he can certainly win.

He can certainly, you know, exert value. And I don't think that there's anything, there's no obvious. choice for either side. It certainly seems like Trump is reluctant to debate or would just rather be doing something else at that time of night, you know? And I think for the Harris campaign, there's just, there's probably too many variables, it's too unpredictable. Now, there'll be a vice presidential debate. Yeah, October 1st on CBS. So we will have Tim Walls and J.D. Vance squaring off. That's going to be such a weird debate.

vice presidential ones are always weird even when a fly doesn't land on Mike Pence's head but but dance walls just feels like a classic contrast of styles as the wrestling announcer used to say yeah i don't quite know what to make of that all right we're going to have a reaction show up wednesday morning with the press box's official politics reactor benjy sarlane of semifor that'll be up early wednesday morning after debate Tuesday night but coming up on today's pod david how Bideny was Tom Brady calling his first game as an NFL announcer. We will have an update on Russia and the media. Joe Tess is calling wrestling matches now.

What's that transition been like? All that and much more on the press box, a part of the ringer podcast network. Hello Media Consumers Brian Curtis, David Shoemaker, and producer Brian Waters here. Do you know Tom Brady was calling an NFL game this week, David? I heard about it, yeah. You maybe saw some of those commercials that Fox was running. where he was talking to himself wearing a Patriots jersey and a Bucks jersey and even young Tom Brady wearing a 49ers jersey. Real attention to detail from Fox there since he grew up in

Northern California. I was trying to think if I ever seen an announcer be part of pregame advertising like Tom Brady was this week. I mean, it would have to have just been like when Madden and somewhere all went to Fox or something, but I don't remember. I don't remember. And I'm sure they were in the TV ads and the print ads in 94. Yeah. But Fox was also getting football. Yeah. So that was a big deal and even bigger deal than Pat and John. Well, they were definitely, you know, they would, I think we just live in such a different world, right? It's like we're, where, you know, the, the, the, the, the trailers that come out at Comic Con are now just like fodder for the entire world instead of being for a select audience. It's like,

The shit that used to happen only at the upfronts is now just the commercial before the game, right? The stuff that used to be for the people in the know where the select few is now everybody's thing. Absolutely right. All right. So Tom Brady and Kevin Burkart were calling Browns, Cowboys, and Cleveland Sunday afternoon. And this is how they kick things up. It is America's Game of the Week on a gorgeous Sunday afternoon from Cleveland and a beauty in this week. The NFL on Fox is back with the Cowboys taking off.

on the Browns and we say welcome to the broadcast booth. He's Tom Brady and I'm Kevin Burkart and you're a broadcaster. How about that? We're here. It's been quite a journey but I love being your partner. I'm excited as well. You're a broadcaster. Tom Brady. This is not the story that you're a broadcaster. Well, I mean, look, I had the same reaction. You're sitting there and he's in the suit. He's in the broadcast. He's holding a microphone. There's something a little jarring about that. I guess you're right.

I guess what I heard him say, I was thinking like a lot of people, like they were going to say a lot of people didn't think you would make it here after, you know, for the past two years. That too. A little bit more insidery.

But you're right. I guess it's like, we're used to seeing you down there, not up here. Just like, you know, I hope the seat's comfortable. This was definitely the B story of the day,

but it stood out to me on Sunday afternoon. That was an all-time Kevin Berkhardt game. Mm-hmm. If you watch college football on Saturday, you saw NBC's Paul Burmeister calling a game with Colt McCoy who is new to the booth, Colorado, Nebraska. And he was doing a lot of work because Colt was in a new environment. And let me tell you, Kevin Burkart was pulling a double shift, man.

Yeah. I mean, he was announcing the game. Yeah. He was turning to Brady and setting him up. He was trying to pull stuff out of him. When Brady didn't bring up a topic, he had a topic to bring up to him. Yeah. I mean, you know, Mike Tarrico and comatose, Drew Breeze was the high watermark of this.

Burkhard didn't have to do that because Brady was not like that. Yeah. But that was one of those games where you realize how good Kevin Burckhard has gotten at this. How, yeah. The guy who's the Metz-Steild reporter 10 years ago. Yeah, how important that job is. I mean, I guess for a lot of people, for most it probably goes without saying. But we do pay so much attention to the color commentators traditionally.

and it's just what they do is impossible without the lead announcer. Making it look easy. Esser Brady, I think the football cliches are apt here. He sounded to me like a rookie quarterback who's trying to adjust to the speed of the game. Yeah. It's pretty choppy at the beginning. There were some Biden-esque moments of silence where he just stopped in the middle of a thought. Yeah.

I read that as him getting adjusted to announcing. which is not talking about football, but talking in 10-second bursts about football and then shutting up. Yep. Colin Coward had a line the other day when he was interviewing Brady, and he said,

you've got to be brilliant in 10 seconds 200 times a game. Yeah. And to me, you could almost feel him being so cognizant of that fact. Yeah. That he was cutting himself off.

Yep. Am I going on too long? Yeah. Do I need a hand-to-one? back to KB here. Finally, maybe like the Cowboys' third drive, he settled down a little bit.

And from there on, I didn't think he called a great game, but I thought he was calling the game. He was relaxed a little bit. He was working within this very unusual system that is broadcasting. Yeah. And it felt a little better.

Also, notable yesterday, that was a terrible football game. Yeah. And I was watching. watching it, I thought, you know, this might have actually hurt Brady because if it's a great football game, we're not worried about the announcers. Not at all. It's exactly right. And he's got like interesting plays to describe. Yeah. But given how he's adjusting to the technology, I think it might have saved him a little bit. Because you notice third and fourth quarter, he was riffing on Belichick talking about different stuff. And it was just much more relaxed. Because America was not plugged into every play. Yeah. as they might have been during a close game.

What did you make of Brady's first? I think it's pretty similar to you. We haven't really talked about it, but most of the reviews I read or listened to were, you know, not apocalyptic, but pretty down on his performance. I didn't hear anything that made me think you wouldn't be,

you know, totally, totally fine, certainly up to speed by a game three or four. And maybe even by game two, maybe this is just a sort of, you know, kicking the ass that every professional athlete claims to thrive on, you know, you get some bad reviews and suddenly you just double up your time in the gym. I thought, you know, he didn't find, it wasn't until a couple of times, like you said, in the second half, that it really felt like you were hanging out with Tom Brady. Like you really got, I mean, what Fox is paying for, what people are, if they're tuning in for Brady, they're tuning in to feel like they're just getting some, some time, like, you know, sitting up at the bar with the greatest of all.

time. And that's how it's a tough balance if that's what people are expecting because because honestly, that's not what they want out of a color commentator all the time. So he's got to find that. I mean, it'll take him some time to find his footing there. But I thought that the fact that there wasn't a lot of that was good because it could have been easy. It could have been a Manning cast. You know, it could have been just like, I'm not saying that he's as the comedic chops of a Manning brother. But, you know, it could have been a lot more laid back, not not as, you know, Brady could probably be Brady if you wasn't trying to stick to the script of being a straight color guy with being brilliant 100 times in 10 second increments or whatever. But he did. He kind of left some of that on the table, which means, you know, once he figures it out, it'll be right there for him to take.

To your note about needing a kick in the ass is funny because he was talking to the second half about quarterbacks and how when you become a star in the league, it's hard to find people to tell you the truth. Yeah. and to really coach you. And I was reading that as, you know, Tom Brady, the announcer, thinking about how much he wants to be coached. Yep.

And critiqued. Uh-huh. And made and pushed to be better. Yep. And that that isn't going to be good enough, especially since he's calling the Super Bowl this year. Yeah. And this is all a very long red carpet to New Orleans.

Yeah. So, you know, he doesn't need to be Super Bowl ready by week one. But, you know, by week four, five, six, you'd like to start seeing it. Well, they're not going to take it away from him. But yes, you would, you would like, Tom Brady will not lose his job. Yeah, given that I think he did fine and that he's only going to get better and, you know,

I'm excited to see what's to come and whatever else. What is the line on Brady losing his job in the midst of the season, like a failing coach? Like how, how, how, like if he, if he shows up for work. but is clearly not prepared particularly or whatever like but he's not getting fired for failing to appear is there a level of which he can be so bad that they just yank him off the air and put gregg olson back in that seat you wonder like what would happen if he just like we're unable to speak in this scenario yeah not not not like you know oh there's something wrong with him just like dude he's just not like that he's just not he's just not he's kind of stumbling over his

words a lot. Just the anything, all the basic things you could really easily get wrong. Don't you think Fox would put somebody else in the booth with him? Wouldn't that be the in this extremely unlikely scenario? Wouldn't that be the interim step? Not just like, hey, man, sorry, you know. Well, yeah. I hate to have a conversation like this, but yeah. Yeah. I don't think, I don't think you get people in. But that would be an awkward conversation too. I got some notes for Tom Brady. This is the only time in my life. I feel like I can give Tom Brady notes. Oh, please.

So I'm going to take advantage of it. One is I think he's just got to unlock a higher level of analysis when he's talking play to play. Yeah. There were a lot of times there when he was talking and he sounded like he was talking at the podium as a player. Yeah. I was watching Michigan, Texas on Saturday.

And Joel Clatt asked him something about Micah Parsons and Miles Garrett. Two defensive ends were playing in the game, which turned out, at least in Parsons case, to be a big key to that whole game. And when Brady's talking, you can just feel that old athlete urge to be unquotable. That's not the job anymore. No, not the opposite. The job now is to be quotable. Yeah.

To say something that people at home are going to remember. And I, you know, it's almost like there were maybe a dozen moments in the game where I was like, he could right now just be like, when I was playing quarterback, comma. Yeah. And just go there. There was a moment where Deshaun Watson. airmail to pass out of the end zone and Brady was like every, you know, when I did that, every time my receivers and coaches would be like, just give me a chance. Yeah.

Just throw it like, you know, 10 feet in the air, 11 feet in the air, give me a chance rather than just throwing him in the stands. And I said, I'm like, yeah, yeah, yeah, that. Yep. More of that, please. There's also a moment out if you saw this, Dak Prescott threw his first touchdown pass to Brandon Cooks and they came out of a commercial with the replay teed up. That is like the Chris Collinsworth slot.

That's how I think of it. Something big happened. We come out of a commercial. We are setting up Collinsworth to talk about. Oh, yeah. To break it down. We've already had the play. We've already done the first pass.

This is the second pass. Fox had a big, good close-up of Dak Prescott like barking out of the line of scrimmage because it was an all-out blitz. Yeah. He could be like, he's changing the play. He's changing the play. He's seeing that all-out blitz. He's doing this.

He's like, yeah, yeah. Do that, but in real time. Yep. Like right after the play. We want more of that. Yeah. I think you said a higher level

and I think that you can take that a bunch of different ways. Everything you said is straight on. I mean, I think just as a general note, I know, I'm sure that the producers at Fox are set or have been trying to teach him how to how to relay his wisdom to the average person. But I wouldn't get tripped up on that.

I mean, this is 2024. I think that if Tom Brady says things that are in constant, incomprehensibly heady. If he's just in there doing like that, you know, locker room quarterback coach conversations that we literally don't understand the terminology,

I don't think anybody's going to complain. No. We're just going to be like, this is so smart that I don't understand this. Yeah. By the way, you noticed yesterday, no jargon. Uh-huh. A lot of athletes come to the booth with all this stuff that they, because that's the way they talked about football.

Mm-hmm. He barely, I didn't hear any of it. He also did the good thing that a lot of athletes struggle with the beginning where you just make one point. Yeah. Instead of trying to make five points after every play, he was good at that. The other thing I thought that would just cut through a lot is, did you notice when he got excited, there were a couple of times. One time the Brown scored in the second half, which made the game, you know, something

other than completely unwatchable. Yeah. And Brady just got into let's go voice and got psyched up about football. for a second. You don't want that for three and a half hours, but that Tom Brady voice really cuts through. Yeah, it does. His voice itself is not like super, you know, big and deep and memorable, but that voice, because we've heard that voice doing interviews after big games. It's true. On his podcast, like that to me, when I, when I heard that voice, I smiled. And went, ah, there we go. More of that, fired up about football. And I think, again, I think,

that will come when you're just more comfortable with the mechanisms of everything. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, that was a lot of what we loved about Tony Romo during his first season, like the clear, the visceral excitement. And I think especially,

I mean, listen, we all want, we'd love to sit under the, the Tom Brady learning tree. But I always say this about pro wrestling, but I think it implies to just about every facet of the media now. Like the most important thing to being.

successful is for the people listening to feel like, like, you love what you're doing as much as they love listening to it, right? It's not just the idea that Tom Brady loves football. I think that his passion for the sport kind of goes without saying, but like, you know, there's going to be a lot of people that are just like, Brady's just there to pick up a check, you know, like he knows more about football, but does he love calling football games, you know, and just because he love watching it as much as I do right here on my couch. Well, showing some excitement, I think really helps in regard. Totally right, man. And that was the, that was the lesson Tony Romo taught America. You got to smile. You got to remind people that this is not just a job. This is really fun for

you to be there because they're sitting on the couch on Sunday afternoon like, this is awesome. I get to watch football. Yep. Why does that man on television seem so dower about this whole thing? Yeah. It just doesn't work. And you're right. Like Tom Brady, if you'd listen to him talk, I interviewed him last or two weeks ago now. Like he is fired up a about this. He is and he's interested in the particular idea of analyzing football of being around the game, getting to allowing us a peek into his brain, but just some of that enthusiasm. I think Fox was really happy with Sunday, no matter what anybody writes on the internet, to go back to the rookie quarterback thing, didn't throw interceptions, he didn't have bad fumbles.

He was not Will Levis in other words. There were not Jason Witten moments in that broad You can totally live with, you know, that sounded a little, that piece of analysis sounded a little cliche or pedestrian. Yeah. He was a little quiet then and there and then kind of perked up later. Again, all about the lead up to a Super Bowl that Tom Brady is going to call. Yeah. The end of this season. I think wouldn't that be great if Tom Brady just leaned in to all of the bad announcer cliches and just acted like the secret truth behind football is that your least favorite announcers are the

ones who are right. You never know what goes on at the bottom of a pile. Crazy stuff happens under there. By the way, how about Mike Pereira leaving Tom Brady hanging when he tried to do the fist pump? Oh, yeah. That was a comedy moment number one for me. Other comedy moment was Fox.

And again, showing us as many shots of Tom Brady. Even the NFL showed Tom Brady walking into the arena in his suit. normally we get that just with Dak Prescott like look at the pregame fits but we got that with you I guess Stephen A sort of is in that tier now but we got that with Tom Brady

but they showed Tom Brady Burkhart and Aaron Andrews talking to Jerry Jones on the field before the game yeah and I was like where's Rinaldi you off getting news or something can we get everybody into the shot here

the whole team that would have been nice coming up in 30 seconds David Russia and wrestling. 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, always gratefully received. I know we just did this last week when the guy who ran Barnes & Noble died. But I have another chain store death to report.

No, no. What happened? Walt Emmer, the president and CEO of Waffle House, has died. President and CEO of Waffle House. It was an overwork Twitter joke to write. His ashes will be scattered, smothered, and covered. Yes, of course. Thanks to Mark Mascalino. And again, we mean that only in the most caring and compassionate way.

If you use that gag, 24 hours a day, seven days a week, congrats, you made the overwork Twitter joke of the week. All right, in the notebook dump, you gave me the high sign about story, David. I'm going to read to you from the report from Hadass Gold over at CNN. The Justice Department is alleging that some of the biggest stars in the right in right wing social media were unwittingly part of a sinister Russian operation. Side note, is there such thing as a benign Russian operation, but I continue. Part of a sinister Russian operation to influence the 2024 U.S. election. The personalities weren't directly named or accused of wrongdoing by the

Justice Department, but court documents unsealed Wednesday revealed Russian state media producers funneled nearly $10 million to an unnamed Tennessee-based online media company. The company identified by CNN as Tenant Media boasts a slate of high-profile right-wing commentators as quote-unquote talent, including Tim Poole, Benny Johnson, Lauren Southern, Taylor Hanson, Matt Christensen, and Dave Rubin. tenant media launched last year describing itself as a network of heterodox commentators that focus on Western political and cultural issues. By the way, what a run for the word heterodox since we first encountered it in the SAT class many, many years ago? Yeah, that's true.

This was an amazing detail. According to the indictment, one of the unnamed social media stars was paid $400,000 per month, $400,000 per month to create $400,000 per month to create. create videos for the platform with another unnamed influencer also receiving a hundred thousand dollar signing bonus yeah now that should have been a warning sign david because unless you host the call her daddy or new heights podcast you are not going to be clearing that kind of money to make videos yeah well one presumes not uh matt gerts tweeted the good news is there's someone out there with deep pockets willing to put real money into alternative media and actually pay their talent well. The bad news is that it's the Kremlin. I believe that it was determined that the person

getting $400,000 a month was Tim Poole. And in his public response said that, yeah, he just subcontracted a tenant and was paid basically the going rate for this sort of video content. So who knows whether or not that's true. If somebody offered us $100,000 for a video every week, I'm not saying that that means I would know that it was a Russian operation, but I'd have a hard time claiming ignorance when it was unveiled, when it was unveiled as a Russian operation by the U.S. government. That's a shocking, shocking amount of money. Will Summer of the Washington Post had this note.

A tenant founder who has told YouTubers their funding is coming from a Western European businessman, emails the investor for more money. When no one responds, tenants founder drops the pretense and Google's time in Moscow. So didn't get a response to the email asking for more money and then said, oh, wait a second, Google time in Moscow, all part of the case that was unveiled this week. I want to talk to you about a football announcer becoming a wrestling announcer. okay because most of the world knows

Joe Tess atour is the voice of college football and also boxing over at ESPN he has now become the voice of Monday Night Raw and let me tell you dude the spirit

of guerrilla monsoon was saluting from heaven when Joe Tess opened last week's show from Den from the majestic that was very guerrilla monsoon

I wouldn't have a, it didn't really occur to me at the time but that was certainly some guerrilla vibes there. Yeah, Joe, Joe did a good job, man. I mean, he had a better first week to Tom Brady

at the new gig. For sure. I don't know. I was, Brian knows. We've talked about this. Brian Waters knows. I thought he did a really good job. I thought he, I thought he injected some real professionalism into it, which is not to say that Michael

Cole and the other guys aren't pros at what they do. But he sounds like an announcer. And even at his weakest moment, it seemed like he was just reading statutes off of the, you know, production notes or whatever. But there's a real value to that in modern wrestling when they're really trying to like convey the sportsiness of the whole thing. Right. So two things there.

And I learned all of this from you. But one is the WWE has tried to bring in quote unquote professional sports announcers for a long time. Yeah. They have dabbled with this. There's Mike Adam Lee, Adnan Verk. I mean, back in the kind of olden days, it was more traditional

for a local sportscaster to be involved in a wrestling promotion, you know, wrestling broadcast. But yeah, I mean, they've definitely tried it before.

It's just usually too, it's too much of a different world, you know, and in the, in the kind of peak years of, of, you know, Vince McMahon's reign.

He was always in people's years, as you well know, like, you know, telling the announcers what to say and everything. and that didn't always drive with the way

that people had done the job before because it really is it's it's it's it's a weird world you know I mean it's not always one to one you're not just a dude who's like playing an announcer or you're not just an announcer I should say you're playing an announcer in so many ways and yes

telling stories first and foremost not as just some sort of happy byproduct of whatever has happened on the field so yeah it's it's it's not an easy it's not an easy transition for a lot of people. I was thinking about that while watching Joe Tess last week and then also, you know, having spent some time with Michael Cole this last summer, wrestling and college football

are a lot of like and that they both have a gigantic storytelling element to them. College football is a lot different than the NFL because even people like me flip on a Georgia game and an Alabama game and we know about three of the players. Yep. And it's up to the announcer to just constantly be doing exposition. Chris Fowler on ESPN is the master of this. You are just like every breath, you are like, this is who this is. This is what this person did.

And if you listen to Michael Cole, that's what wrestling announcing is. This is why this person is mad at this other person. This is what happened last week. Even if you watched last week and watch the pay-per-view or a premium live event, as we call it now, I'm going to remind you and constantly tell the story of what's happening in front of you. So maybe that college football or wrestling transition is a little easier than another sports transition would be?

Yeah, I mean, I think that there's probably a lot of validity in that, but also we're in a post-Vince McMahon era where I think the announcers are given a lot more latitude to do their own thing. And especially not just post-Vince McMahon, but in the Pat McAfee era where he, you know, Pat does college game day, obviously does his own show and when the football season's not happening,

he's playing color commentator over there. I think weirdly brought a lot of legitimacy to the crossover and to the sort of appeal that the pro wrestling gig can get you. You're broadening your fan base. That's what's first and foremost here. And I think that someone like Tessator

or just about anybody else that would follow in those footsteps will probably say, dude, this has been huge for Pat. You know? And like, look, the ESPN powers that be are like accommodating for him to go over and do this wrestling stuff like they see the value in it too you know and and uh and i think that allows that sort of comfort i mean that sort of

seeing that allows you to be more comfortable right and be more comfortable in your own skin and just sort of go figure it out you know i mean i think joe has in some ways a lot of he's got a lot of runway because like i said baseline joe tessitore is still a value at the wwe you know just going in there and functionally just reacting to what's happening. And I think he's got a lot of room to get a lot better, which is even better. First of all, his delivery is absolutely a perfect fit with the world of pro wrestling. Yeah. His delivery, I've always enjoyed it.

I've always enjoyed it on football because it just sounds so unique. And he is being himself and not trying to be somebody else, which a lot of announcers try to do. But there were people, especially when he got the Monday night job, who were just like, I just don't, this is, this is too different. from generic announcer X. I can't get used to that. You put him in a wrestling setting, just like with boxing, it's like it sounds like he was made for this place.

Just the excitement, the language. And the thing about Tess is he's not like some announcers we've seen where it's just unregulated crazy excitement. Like I'm just going to go bonkers all the time. He knows the moment to bring it up and bring it down. Yep.

He's also an incredible studier. You know, like he's one of those guys who get is not using excitement to compensate for the fact that he didn't bone up for the game. He knows everything. He will know everything 10 times over. I do wonder from you, what is it going to take for wrestling fans?

You mentioned earlier, the love of the sport, sensing a kindred spirit at the announced table. I don't know, I'll almost say broadcast booth, but he's actually sitting next to the ring. What will they need to? who just wrap their arms around it.

Well, there's a couple of things. One, it matters, that you care. But wrestling fans aren't averse to bringing in, to broadening the fan base, right? If they see you falling in love with it, even if you weren't a fan two days ago, then that's great. That's even better, right?

So I think just really expressing the passion for it, and as an announcer, that means sometimes the shock and the disgust and all the other high-level emotions that come with it. Speaking of high-level emotion, one of the reasons things that's been really difficult, I think for a lot of announcers, a lot of people coming in and a lot of people that just came up through the pro wrestling world is the looming, I mean, is the ever-present shadow of Jim Ross.

I know you wrote about this in your Michael Cole piece, but, you know, this one man sort of defined what pro wrestling commentary was for a generation, and he was absolutely the best, but like, you know, he was a dude doing schick. He was a very sticky guy who was like turning up the volume on it, right? And in a lot of ways that that affected the way that people saw pro wrestling. The pro wrestling world would be a shadow of itself without Jim Ross. But I think it kind of negatively, of it adversely affected everybody, every announcer that came after him, not just being held up to his standard. But the expectations of the fans that like the announcers are going to be more than passable.

You know, I mean, sometimes your color guys or, you know, or characters, but in pro sports it's like you know sometimes you're play by play guys the best thing they could do is just like recede into the background you know and and that's never been an expectation of pro wrestling especially not since Jim Ross I think that Joe Tessitore will you know if he loves if he loves what he's doing and I think I think that he'll have a lot of latitude like I said now because the fans are looking for something different you know fans I think are appreciating some of the ways that you know the ESPN trained producers over there are bringing a more real sports aspect or affect to the whole presentation.

And I think, you know, when we see a lot of these athletes, a lot of the people that are wrestlers now are top tier athletes too with like, you know, Olympic and collegiate backgrounds. I think I think there's there's, it's, it's funny. I mean, wrestling is more more plainly predetermined than ever. but, you know, the way that you the way that you compensate for people's knowledge that wrestling's pre-determined in the past is like guys like Hulk Hogan pretending that Andre the Giant might not have let him slam him, right?

You read some deeper reality back into the, back into the retelling of the story. Now it's just we just have real athletes who can really do all these amazing things and real production quality and real announcer. So this is real sports in so many ways. it's just a little bit better. So interesting to me, that's the case I would make. So interesting to see a sports announcer come into professional wrestling and then a wrestling

announcer, Michael Cole, who's been the voice of that company for a long time now, start to sound more like a sports announcer. Yeah. He has all these stats. Mm-hmm. You know, here's how fast this guy runs. Here is his record at SummerSlam. The kind of things that a sports announcer would come armed to the booth with.

So you see these two worlds converging. Mm-hmm. each coming from sides. And let me tell you something, dude, if I had to follow Jim Ross as a wrestling announcer, even many decades after the fact, I think I would get a case of the limber tail. Yeah.

I really would. Just put it plainly. Only JR could put it. All right, David, late breaking news here. I was waiting for that laugh. Late breaking news here from Brian Waters. Shannon Sharp had a little moment with his producer. Can we hear just a smidgen of that?

So I can't read why that's play it in my ear. It's not now because I'm not talking but it was. If Shea is not in the state or a city near you, you can order it. And it comes. Guys, damn it.

So do we need to do quick, on-screen talent producer power rankings, on-screen talent versus producer power rankings? Is that what I'm trying to say here? Can you do it as a rant at Brian H. Waters' expense? Can we do like a top five ranking? But the whole thing is you screaming at Brian for some perceived. slight. I'd like to do that as a bit, but we never yell at Brian Waters, nor would we ever have any

reason to. No. We're not like that over here. Everybody's doing a great job. We're not sitting there just like Chris Berman at the ESPN zone. If I have some negative to say about Brian, I'm going to say it quietly to one of my superiors. You just committed an HR violation on this podcast. I'm just staying out of the way right there. No, no, you're absolutely right. I mean, this is, I mean, doing podcasts is sort of, you know, one of the incredible luxuries of it is that you just have real human being relationships and hopefully part of your human being relationship system

is not screaming at people when they get stuff wrong. So wait, there was the Berman one. If we were going to do the best ones of our, of our, no research or memory, there was Berman, you said at the ESPN zone? Yes, that's like a funny detail. And it was also at the ESPN zone in Baltimore, multiple funny details.

there, which was the originally ESPN zone. There's Bill O'Reilly. Love the Bill O'Reilly one. What was his line? Let's Do It Live. Wait, was that, was it current affair? Did he have more than one? Was there an O'Reilly factor one and a one from the, from a current affair back in the day?

That sounds right. Because it definitely was one from a current affair. It's inside edition was the do it live. Oh, sorry. Sorry, yeah, inside edition. Wrong, wrong, uh, weird pseudo newscast in the 90s. Inside Edition, Bill O'Reilly, any others? Should we throw this open to press box listeners? Because I bet they would have some great ones.

Yeah, there's definitely some classic ones from like local news, like regional news, you know, that we've all seen on the internet and immediately forgotten. Part of the problem is that meltdown has been defined down by a generation of aggregators. Yeah. So if you search news anchor meltdown, you get a lot of stuff with just like I'm upset at some of the, events of the day. Yeah. And I'm giving a particularly impassioned presentation on MSNBC. Like, that's not, that's not what we're looking for here. We're looking for on-camera people yelling at their production team, at their producers or their producers. Yeah. Something David and I would never do that we have obviously different, different ways we'd handle it behind the scenes,

according to David. It's never David Chewbaker guesses his strength on headlop. Yeah. Don't make me yell at you, David. You do your yeah. God, damn it, Brian, you were supposed to send this to me an hour ago. Thursday's headline about a beloved sheep drive in Montana was much ado about mutton. Love it. Listener, Zach Rapanchic suggested much a you about nothing. Also pretty funny. Today's headline comes to us from the great Dan Wojke, fine Lakers writer over at the Los Angeles Times.

It's from the New York Times magazine, David. and the story is one of those takes that I have been reading for almost my entire career. Let's get rid of the penny. Wait, was this the giant magazine piece they had about the penny? This is the giant magazine piece. You didn't see this headline, did you? My wife, I literally read aloud a lot of the piece to me,

but I definitely did not see it. Let's get rid of the penny as kind of like, let's cancel the Olympics. Yeah. Just I wait every four years for that to burble up into a mainstream publication once again. Yeah. But let's get rid of the penny, David. What was the New York Times as strained pun headline?

It's got to be something with sense, right? Two cents. My two cents. This makes no sense. Good in there. Do we want to think of the talking heads? Stop making sense. There you go.

Stop making sense. He is David Shoemaker. I'm Brian Curtis. Blackson, Magic. By the great. And I mean great Brian Waters. Coming up, David, Wednesday, September 11th, a day earlier than normal. Harris Trump debate reacts with our official politics reactor.

Benji Sarlane cannot wait to talk to him. Shoemaker and I return Monday with more lukewarm takes about the meeting. See you then, David. Can't wait to see who wins the debate in the trenches. See you later, Brian.