The Press Box - Trump’s Trial, Tony Romo For Hire, and the Legacy of Stuart Scott | The Press Box

Episode Date: January 17, 2020

Bryan Curtis and David Shoemaker discuss the impeachment trial of Donald Trump (03:00), the Overworked Twitter Joke of the Week (18:30), the upcoming bidding war for NFL announcer Tony Romo (20:45), the legacy of 'SportsCenter' anchor Stuart Scott (43:00), and more. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hey, it's Liz Kelly and welcome to the Ringer Podcast Network. Winging It with Vince Carter and Annie Finberg is back in full swing for its second season. Catch up on recent episodes with guests like Wyclef Jean, who talks about growing up in Haiti, hip-hop as a teacher, and performing with a goat. And you can hear from tennis phenom, Cocoa, on beating Venus Williams at 15 years old. You can listen to Winging It on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. David, among the pieces of evidence presented this week by Rudy Julie Ljani Associate Lev Parnas was a note

he had scribbled on Ritz-Carlton stationary from the Ritz-Carlton in Vienna. What I want to know is if you were writing a seemingly incriminating note, what would you choose to write it on? What napkin? I mean, or just what, or is anything here?

Yeah, I think anything. Super 8 stationary. I was going to say, Top Belly Sandwich Shop down the street does not have branded napkin as far as I know. Although the Dos Toros, I believe, though, that would be a leader in the clubhouse right now. Dang. I, let's see. I mean, if I want to be real here, and obviously that's the point of the press box and this segment in general,

the answer is probably either my hand. You still do that? Well, if there's a pin available, that's usually the big, that's usually what, you know, the barrier right there. I went to high school with you, and you didn't even. write notes on your hand in high school? I guess I developed later in life. I'm sorry, I had no idea. Probably if I was going to write something incriminating,

I would open up the notes app on my phone and write something incredibly important and I guess by definition incriminating. And then I would immediately forget and never look at that note again. David's Evernote account. has been turned over to the Democrats in the House. We are at the back

of the envelope of media podcasts. This is the Press Box, a part of the Ringer podcast network. Hello, media consumers, Brian Curtis and David Shoemaker here. We got lots and lots to get to today. We'll talk about the bidding war that's coming for NFL announcer Tony Romo

between CBS, ESPN, and at this point probably even Turner classic movies. We'll talk about the legacy of Sports Center anchor extraordinaire Stuart Scott. We'll talk about good surprises and bad surprises that happen on live TV, plus the overworked Twitter joke of the week. But David, we got to begin with Lev Parnas, who feels like the most, let me take that again. But David, we have to begin with Lev Parnas, who feels like the most interesting

person in the world right now. Parnas is, of course, the Rudy Giuliani associate, who's become a central figure in impeachment and now the Senate trial of Donald Trump. On Tuesday, House Democrats released photos, text messages, and documents that detailed Parnas's work with Giuliani and Ukrainian officials. Among them, this letter Giuliani wrote to Volodymyr Zelensky, Ukraine's president-elect, it begins like this. In my capacity as personal counsel to Donald Trump, and with his knowledge and consent, I request a meeting with you. There was also a note scribbled by Parnas on Ritz Carlton Stationery. I know, David, when you make your to-do list, you always use Ritz Carlton Stationery. That one read Get Zelensky to announce that the Biden case will be investigated.

Pretty cut and dry. On Wednesday night, an interview with Rachel Matt Alparnas said the biggest inaccuracy or lie was that President Trump didn't know he was trying to dig up dirt to aid Trump. Listen up. When you say that the president knew about your movements and knew what you were doing, Are you saying specifically, and I want to sort of drill down on that, that the president was aware that you and Mr. Giuliani were working on this effort in Ukraine to basically try to hurt Joe Biden's political career?

He knew about that. Yeah, it was all about Joe Biden, Hunter Biden. And also Rudy had a personal thing with the Manafort stuff, the black ledger. That was another thing that they were looking into. But it was never about corruption, It was never, it was strictly about the Burisma, which included Hunter Biden and Joe Biden. Parnas would repeat that same charge in an interview with the New York Times.

David, we can talk about what this is going to mean for Trump's Senate trial. But I kind of want to ask the general question. First is, wow, what did you make of all of this coming out right now? Yeah. You know, just, I mean, in a way, here, let me answer my own question. Were you as amazed as I was by the sequencing of this that we all decided like weeks ago or a lot of us decided that Donald Trump definitely did this stuff? And then now you get this super incriminating evidence almost after the fact and almost feel of anything. It's it has less impact now because it's coming out at this point in the whole saga.

If you're if you're apt to be skeptical, you're inclined to be skeptical about any of this stuff. the rollout, I think, lended itself to that predisposition. You know, Rachel Maddow has done some incredibly valuable things and is very talented at what she does. I was a little, I mean, just from the very beginning, her, I mean, obviously the Washington Post and the New York Times subsequently had big pieces on this,

but when she sort of was like owning this story earlier this week, you had to sort of wonder if this is actually like either the most, the wildest thing that's happened in the Trump presidency or just like some stuff that's being, you know, gussied up to make our moms watching MSNBC mad. But it does seem to be the, it does seem to be the former, right? I mean, this does seem to be like all true and legitimate. And there are questions about the, like you said, about the sequencing, why it's coming

out now. And it really does seem to have just sort of snowballed in the sense. I feel like it was just the beginning of this week that I felt like, you know, his name started inching back into the news. And it, but they were just sort of this, it was sort of in the context of, vague questions of what he might have, you know, if he might be allowed to offer what evidence he has and if he'll be accepted by, you know, the, by the Democrats in their impeachment effort. And then it just sort of all tumbled out, right? It does seem incredibly incriminating.

And, you know, the sequencing, you're right, throws into a little bit of question, mainly because it does seem just so it's such like a a note for note sort of checklist of incrimination of of trump and juliani right i mean yeah the it's almost the most the most uh i mean the thing about it that makes it mo that makes you most skeptical is just how kind of precise and all encompassing the the these accusations are i totally agree and i and and i guess i guess when i say sequencing i'm not really talking about it in a raises question kind of way of why we're learning this now. Just in terms of how Donald Trump's conduct with Ukraine has kind of changed and, you know, I don't know what the word is, but just how it's kind of come to lodge in our minds. Like, I feel if this stuff had come out one week after we read that initial readout of his phone call was Zelensky, it would have been like, oh my gosh, wow, this is so damning. But what happened is it came out after like, months of the readout of the phone call, Trump basically kind of confirming all the allegations

in unscripted comments to the media. So then it comes out now and it's actually this, this feels like a key piece of evidence, but because it's after he's already been impeached in the house and because after we know so much, I don't know, it's just its impact, startling as it is, feels like it was diminished a little bit. But it's still incredible. And like you're right. there is something striking about is like, is there a piece of paper that exists that lays out exactly what Donald Trump is charged with by one of his alleged henchmen? Yes, there is. There's even, this is my favorite touch, that Ritz Carlton memo, there's even an asterisk before. I was going to mention that. Yeah, when you're making a to do list and you want to make sure that the items are kind of denoted, right?

so we're going to get some lengths to announce the investigation and then pick up my dry cleaning right? Do I need a new router for my computer? I just love that. I know inevitably all the items

end up getting starred and then you're kind of back to the beginning it's like the sneeches version of a to do list. Yeah, it's it's just sort of unbelievable. Now, before the Democrats

and you know, just the people who are inclined to, you know, wish the president would be removed from office get out too far ahead of ourselves or their selves or over our skis or whatever you want to say. You know, many wise people have pointed out one, you know, love partners is not necessarily going to be, even if he's 100 percent selling the truth, it's not necessarily going to be the most believable person when called to testify if indeed he is and even the information that he's present. may not be taking at face value.

And two, just from a practical point of view, I forgot who said this on Twitter, but it's, you know, worth repeating, is that the Democrats, you know, even with testimony and evidence, this damning, if it proves out, are, you know, need to be careful not to exaggerate, not to claim anything that's not completely nailed down

because any evidence of, you know, exaggeration or any confusion, any misstatement of facts is going to be just, that's going to become the entire story, no matter how, despite how, you know, like we've said, how exhaustive some of this, I mean, all of this, all this information is. Yeah, it becomes insert, fake news, tweet. And then we're, we're sort of trapped in the vicious cycle. I think just in terms of the short term, Trump's trial in the Senate, you know, this is, this will just, this feels like it will only, put pressure on the Senate to call witnesses. There had been this question of, are we just going to consider what the House did,

what the House presented us with, or are we going to potentially put John Bolton in there to testify? And just the sense, whether it's Parnas's specific allegations or not, it just, I think it sort of tells the American public there's more to learn here. We don't know everything there is to learn. And we already knew that because Trump was not being helpful with the investigation. But I think it puts in the public mind that there's more to learn here. And in this group of senators that has talked, you know, that really wants to, I think, make McConnell at least take a vote on this, Susan Collins, Lisa Murkowski, Mitt Romney, Lamar Alexander.

That just sort of cinches in their mind that there's more here to do, right? And I think in the short term, that's the most useful part. I want to ask you, too, about some of the ceremony around impeachment. did you catch the pictures of the footage of the eight impeachment managers walking the articles of impeachment from the House to the Senate yesterday? And then we've got John Roberts is going to be brought in to preside and all the stuff. I was just thinking this is one of those times that news anchors always use there. It's a very solemn ceremony, very solemn moment of politics. What's happened to solemn ceremonies in the age of Trump?

Do they just seem ridiculous now because Trump has just changed the national tone to insult comedy? I mean, on the one hand, it should be even more solemn. It should feel even more important. Oh, my gosh, despite this president who's just ranting and raving and insulting people, now the business, you know, government takes over, the constitution takes over. But actually, to me, it feels, if anything, it feels diminished. Like, this is, this is silly and Trump's just going to ignore all this stuff anyway. Yeah, I mean, you couldn't help but watch it and not think that they're trying to make a play for, you know, the TV audience just like the president does at times, right?

I mean, they're sort of like fighting a PR battle as opposed to invoking any kind of real solemnity. So I'm not sure that there's a there is a better way to do it. I mean, I think in some ways you do have to just sort of like take things seriously and have a little bit of a business's usual attitude. It's the only way to get through this situation, to put it generally. But yeah, I mean, the whole presentation just did seem a little bit unnecessary. In terms of the 2020 campaign, this is going to call four of the candidates back to the Senate, Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, Amy Klobuchar, and also Michael Bennett, who is still apparently running for president in some way or another. Do you think that's going to have any practical? value. I mean, this is the time normally when those people would just be camping out in Iowa

because it's, you know, especially Warren and Sanders just desperately trying to win in Iowa, Klobuchar too, I guess, for that matter. But is this going to, do you think change the trajectory of the race in any way? I mean, it's, it definitely puts a focus back on Trump and on impeachment. And, you know, there were There have been times throughout the primary campaign where we all, I think everybody, especially those, a lot of Democratic voters have been, you know, begging the conversation to be more about the president and less about these, you know, sometimes microscopic differences between the candidates who were running for the nomination.

I feel like in some ways we've kind of, we're at the other end of the spectrum now. I'm not, I'm not sure. I think for some people that will certainly hone that message, the anti-Trump message, if that's the one, if that's the argument they want to make. But I do think it forces, it forces a sort of change of narrative, right? I mean, it's going to reconfigure the campaign. I mean, and, you know, even though it's still Democrat versus Democrat at this point, um, it's hard to imagine, especially if any of this love partner pans out. I mean, if this is, if, if the, if the impeachment trial takes a turn, um, then that's going to be.

all that anyone's talking about. And then in the primary campaign, they're either going to have to be solely discussing that and like, I guess competing over who can tis, test, test Trump the loudest, or they're going to be making, or their or, which is more likely,

they're going to keep on debating and be debating over things that like the American public literally doesn't care about right now. So that's exactly the point Nate Silvermaid. I think you are absolutely right because the biggest effect is not those people being, not being on the ground in Iowa. It's that the media is just paying attention

to different stuff. The media is not paying attention to the campaign and the media is paying attention to impeachment. So the conversation. So how are you going to run around talking about how to pay for Medicare for all when everybody just wants to talk about the trial of Donald Trump? And I don't know if that's just going to put everything on hold because it's not like any of these candidates.

You and I've talked about this after the various debate. It's not like any of these candidates have particularly differing opinions on what to do about Donald Trump. I think they'd all probably remove him from office at this point, at least the major ones. But it will just, I think, force people kind of into impeachment zone. And it really does, doesn't it bring out the just age old question of how to beat Donald Trump if you're the Democrats? Are you going to lean into corruption, et cetera, et cetera? Or do you feel that's the mistake Hillary Clinton made?

And the path to victory is just health care, jobs, taxes, red meat or blue meat? I guess, democratic issues. And anything about this is just going to get us distracted away from how we actually win votes in the Midwest. Yeah, that's a great question. Obviously for Nancy Pelosi, and again,

we're going to keep talking about this because the TikTok of kind of how this level of information came to the, you know, came to the public's eye and came to the, you know, the congresspeople's eye, the congressperson's eyes is going to be significant. I'm not sure if that, had anything directly to do with Nancy Pelosi's calculus, but it wouldn't surprise me if it did.

All that is to say that the, you know, the kind of backstage argument that we keep that we keep hearing about and alluding to was, you know, Nancy Pelosi's calculus about whether or not, um, whether it was even worth trying to impeach Trump on a public stage as opposed to just sort of let it, you know, concentrating on winning the election, right? And for, and for all of the anti-Trump and cinnamon that all these candidates have expressed. And for all the that most of them have said that he should be impeached or moved from office, they're implicitly running on the other side, right? I mean, despite what they say, they're, they are, they are, they are, the examples one through six, however many are left of like, you know, about how we, how we can go

about removing Trump by just voting him out of office, right? I mean, these are people who are trying to remove him that way. So, you know, I think that it's going to, I think that, you know, they're going to have to, they're going to have to wrestle with this. I mean, it is a sort of implicit conflict, even if they're, even if they fully believe that he should be removed from office, you know? And the more they talk about impeachment, the less they're kind of making a proactive case for their own candidacies. David, it's time now for 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. Please send your nominees to at the press box pod where they are always. always gratefully received. As a result of this week's revelations, there was a kind of side

story we didn't even touch on, was it whether Ukraine, and this is from Parnas's text messages, was actually following former ambassador Marie Yovanovitch, was just incredible. There was some kind of surveillance going on. Ukraine is now opening an investigation to see whether Giuliani's associates were participating, possibly in some effort to surveillance. her. It was an overword Twitter joke to write Giuliani finally got Ukraine to open an investigation. Right one. Thanks to Jamdad for that. David, you'll appreciate this as an art director.

Before Tuesday night's debate, the New York Times Art Department made one of those graphics where they basically have head to toe shots of the six Democrats in the debate all against a single color background, kind of looking out at the viewer there from your computer screen. you know what I'm talking about? Yeah. It was an overwork Twitter joke to write,

Is this Weezer? Thanks to Tim Sampson. Finally, there is billionaire presidential candidate Tom Steyer. We talk Wednesday about Steyer inserting himself into that tense post-debate conversation between Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders. Well, we got audio of that encounter this week,

and Steyer can be heard uttering this. I don't want to get. get in the middle. I just want to say hi, Bernie. It was an overwork Twitter joke to write never, ever in my life did I think I would relate to Tom Steyer this much. Thanks to David Ubert. If you found the idea of Tom Steyer being relatable to other humans inherently funny, congrats, you made the overwork Twitter joke of the week. All right, David, the notebook dump. I want to start with Tony Romo. He's going to call Sunday's AFC championship game on CBS with Jim Nance.

But Tony Romo's contract runs out after this season. And Michael McCarthy over at front office sports reports at ESPN is redding an offer to steal away Romo from CBS. It's a multi-year deal McCarthy writes. It would pay Romo between $10 and $14 million annually, according to sources. 10 and 14 million dollars. If you want some context here, like the big analyst on a network football, a team makes like $6 or $7 million.

That's where Troy Aikman makes that much? Yeah, well, let's say that's the going rate. Without knowing Troy's salary off the top of my head. What do you make? That is a lot of money. That is a lot of money. What do you make of the whole idea? of paying Tony Romo that much to steal him away and presumably put him on Monday night football?

I mean, listen, it's hard sitting in the seat that I'm sitting in, having all the conversations that we've had any number of times to not look at that number and say, would that buy 250 journalists? like with that with that with that but i mean literally how many was it too is that just is that a good estimate of the number of people who have been let go by ESPN in the past uh in the past five years it could be rehired for that amount of money it's it's hard not it's not hard not to immediately go there right um on the flip side you know if we're going to talk about the distinction between six million dollars or eight million dollars and 14 million dollars i mean it's in some in some sense it's funny money right or and it's it's if it if they have the money to spend, and certainly the parent company has that much money many, many, many, many, many times

over, you know, you go out, if you go out and you get your, you get your dude, right? I mean, it's, it's like, you know, someone like Tony Romo is worth the amount of money that Tony Romo is going to get. And if you're, and if you're not, if you're not the home team to use the sports metaphor, and, and if you're not, by the way, if you're not running a nationally, If you're not running a network, a weekly network television show, so presumably the prestige would be a little bit lower, you might have to pay a lot more. So maybe that's just the number that they would have to pay. Now, all of that, I mean, but all of that aside, it does beg the question, like how many millions of dollars of additional eyeballs, of additional ad revenue, of additional, however you want to quantify it, would Tony Romo sitting in the Monday Night Football Booth really bring in? I don't think it would ever bring in enough to justify the money on its own terms.

And I don't think that's just Tony Romo. I think you could say that about every single announcer in the history of announcing. Maybe a Howard CoSell or a John Madden to cite two of the familiar ones would be able to boost enough. I'm not saying to cancel out their salaries, but would have like a discernible effect on the ratings. I just can't imagine that there's just about anybody else who really does. And that's the funny part of announcing, right? Like I, of all people, pay attention to these people a lot. Like when I'm watching the AFC championship game on Sunday,

I'm going to be paying attention to what Tony Romo says. But even if Romo is fantastic, is like at the height of his powers like he was last year at this time, will that just increase my enjoyment of the game more than 10% versus generic Phil Sims at the end of his run announcer guy? I don't think so. So I can't imagine, you know, Joe Sixpack from Cleveland, like watching, who wasn't going to watch an NFL game on a Monday night, now wanting to watch it because Tony Romo's on

there. And again, that's not an insult to Romo. I just think I'd say the same thing about everybody announcing a game right now. Well, you mentioned Madden, right? And I think that there's, you know, I don't think Tony Romo is at that level. I mean, he's not one of the, you know, if he retired tomorrow, I don't think he'd be in the, you know, the NFL announcer's Hall of Fame or whatever. But the last time, you know, Madden got paid. I mean, when he got that, the gigantic, you know, Fox Sports NFL bag.

1994, you know, you could have, you could have, you could argue. at the time about whether or not he was worth the dollar figure that he got. He was getting paid by Fox to legitimize their new operation, right? I mean, he was getting paid to be the face of football on a new network. And now we're used to these rights packages jumping, you know, jumping from channel to channel and kind of having to seek them out by Google search every time you want to watch a game. But back then, you know, Fox buying the rights to NFL games was, you know, kind of a shock to the system for a lot of viewers who were used to just watching the exact same way every week their

entire or most of their lives. And so that's what the value of, a lot of the value of Madden was built into. You can kind of see a little bit of that in the ESPN's pursuit of Tony Romo because you know, they, they pay a lot of money for Monday night football games that fewer and fewer people are watching

every year and that have less and less significance every year to the point where you'd be forgiven if you, you know, were a casual NFL viewer that didn't even realize games they're being played on Monday. And hiring someone like Tony Romo, or hiring only Tony Romo. I think he's the only person you can really put in that category

except for maybe, you know, you see Sunday night booth that would really, that would really, you know, be a signal of, yeah, we're in this game too.

That's a good point. I would say that their audience has actually been up the last two years. I think it's a, I think it's totally fair to say it's a smaller place in the sports TV football universe than it was. certainly, you know, 20, 30 years ago. Absolutely. Yeah, and you're right.

It is an announcement. And I think that's what I think at the end of the day, there's a couple things paying announcers. A couple of reasons you pay announcers that kind of money. One is you're paying hundreds of millions, if not billions of dollars to the NFL. So you just want the game to sound good, right? You really want it to be, you want it to be announced well

if you're going to pay all that money. But the second thing is, is exactly what you say, those guys become faces of the network. And if you're in the fourth place, you know, NFL broadcast booth just in terms of quality, just purely in terms of quality of games, putting Romo on there is, is a way to say, oh, oh, wow, that doesn't look like fourth place anymore. That looks like something else. There's also this game theory going on because we're about to redo all these NFL rights

deals. And there's a lot of thinking that maybe Disney wants some part of it. of a Sunday package. They want to get back. They want it with actually they haven't been on that in a long time. They would want to get some slice of Sunday football. Maybe it's a big package like CBS's package. Maybe it's some small thing.

They also want to get in the Super Bowl rotation. So they are signaling not just to viewers pay attention to us, but to the NFL. Hey, we got the best guy. Now, why don't you think about us and allow us to pay you a whole bunch of money so that we get better football games. And that makes a certain amount of sense. You know, the problem is all that's going to happen after Tony Romo would probably sign a contract.

So if you're Romo, there's a scenario where you do that and Disney gets back in the game and you're calling a Super Bowl every four years and all that stuff and maybe your portfolio game changes. There's also a scenario where you're just calling Monday night football as it is right now. And you have some, you know,

Bengals, Jaguars, style Monday nights which wouldn't be quite as fun. The couple more points on Romo. One is you have heard the term highest paid sportscaster ever thrown around.

Can I be the annoying sports media person here? So that John Madden contract you mentioned in 1994, he made $8 million a year. We have to adjust that for inflation. Romo is not trying to beat $8 million a year.

And the equivalent now is $14 million. $8 million in 1994 is $14 million today. So I'm not sure we should care who's number one ever. But if we do, the number is $14 million. If the people who write about movies can adjust for inflation, then the people who write about sports media can adjust for inflation. So that's good. I'll also note this is my favorite, my favorite Madden note ever.

Actually, I got two. Favorite Madden note number one is that in 1994, he was paid more than any player in the NFL. Wow. So the real equivalent is Romo making like $40 million a year. Yeah. For me. Remo leaving the, Roma making more than he made as a quarterback.

Yes. And making more than, you know, Aaron Rogers makes as a quarterback right now. Wow. So that's incredible. Number two is when Madden was being courted by three networks in 1993, 1994. NBC came to him and said, here's our offer. We're going to give you a bunch of money. And because you don't like to fly, we're going to

build you a train car. This sounds like an agate the Christie thing, but it's real. We're going to build you a train car that will carry you around the country. That was part of the offer. David's recent ringer renegotiation also included the offer of the train car. David had other priorities. I'm actually on a train right now. Believe it or not, the sound muffling capabilities we have these days are incredible. I thought I heard fine China being laid out before you for your afternoon meal.

Here's my other point about Tony Romo. Tony Romo is now in the point of his career where the money is so beguiling and the free agency. And we're all kind of playing woge about him. The people, I think, have stopped listening to Tony Romo call a game. It's like, he's the greatest. Let's give him money. Here's the thing I'd say about him. When he has a wide open, high-scoring offensive game like he did last week, KC versus Houston,

he is absolutely at his best because he can wrap his arms around that tellistrator and tell a great story. He's less good when he has a defensive battle. If you watch last year's Super Bowl, Tony Romo was not that great because he couldn't tell the story of the game via offensive excellence, right? He couldn't do that. And I think if it had been another announcer during that game, they would have seen where that game was going. And they would be like, okay, we're going to grab defensive tackle, Aaron Donald, Kyle Van Nuoy, and we're just going to show them every play.

And we are going to tell the story of this game as being a defensive battle. I don't think Romo is as good at that at this point in his career. He may become it. But whenever I'd be making claims that Romo is better than Madden or better than all this, I would just say, Romo's really, really good at one kind of game right now. And I'd love to see him get better at other kind of games as he goes along. Well, that kind of starts getting at a bigger point, which is that, you know, if ESPN has to pay whatever, however, $14 million to get Tony Romo, you know, and they get him, I'm sure they will see that as a victory.

But when the tide eventually, you know, when everyone eventually turns on Tony Romo, you know, which for announcers and color commentators. in particular. I mean, Romo's staved it off for the most part, pretty nimbly for his career in the booth so far. But when we turn on him, ESPN is then going to be the company who's paying

$14 million to, you know, someone who's just getting like dunked on on Twitter every, you know, every time he calls a game. And I'm sure that's not going to look too good on the spreadsheets. Elsewhere in the sports media transactions column,

How about Barstool? Our pal Peter Kafka, who's great, had a report in recode that Barstool, yeah, those guys, may soon have a new owner, which Kafka calls a low-profile casino operator. Quoting Kafka here, sources say the Chironin Group, which currently owns Barstool, is in advance talks to sell a majority stake in the company to PIN National Gaming, which has 41 properties in 19 states. industry observers expect Penn National which operates such properties as the Hollywood Casino in Bangor, Maine in the Greek Town Casino Hotel in Detroit two places I often take my family

to adopt Barstool the Barstool brand for at least some of its operation. So Barstool the Casino. What say you? Ha! What did he call it? A medium tier what? Is that?

It was a low-profile casino operator. Okay, sorry for getting that wrong. First things first, to all the low-profile casino operators out there, David Shoemaker's bank account is open for business. Yes. Yeah, I mean, it's a little bit, I mean, listen, it's an easy punchline. It's an easy joke to make. Although, you know, with all of the money casinos make,

Particularly in the new age of sports betting, it's not surprising that even someone who, a gambling outfit that we might not be wildly familiar with is interested in bidding for even what is, you know, what seems to be a very profitable, you know, website and internet, presence in the kind of sports media world. Barstool seems like sort of a natural fit. And, you know, they're going to get as much money from whoever ends up, you know, whoever ends up buying from them, buying them, then they would get from whoever you perceive to be the big players that would have been a more, that would have been a, you know,

a more expected match. It's their Tony Romo, is it not? Yeah, yeah, exactly. I just, you know, I mean, we can talk about the journalistic integrity or, you know, the ethics of this sort of pairing or whatever else. else, I'm not sure that it's really worth wasting our breath. This is, this is, I mean, for Barstool in particular, I'm not sure that this would come as any kind of, this pairing comes, would it come as any kind of shock.

You know, they're already testing out. I mean, we're, they already have a bunch of gambling content. I mean, the ringer has gambling content too, but they have, you know, the, but Barstool is definitely already making a push in this direction. And, you know, this is, you know, this is. Not something we, that we serious journalists should be proud of, but this may be, you know, the direction, a lot of places like Barcelona will end up going, right? I didn't know you're going to broaden it out to we're all going to be owned by low-profile casino operators at some point. Listen, if the ring, if the ringer got bought it, probably by a low-profile casino operator too.

If we got bought by a casino operator, I'm not, I mean, who knows? Maybe, maybe we get bought out by draft kings or something. I don't know. But it's not, I mean, you know, we're working on, working with very, very. different, you know, very different degrees of, of wealth in our, in our respective ledgers here. You know, I mean, it's, this is a, it's a, it's a sort of frightening new world. I'm not, I don't think we're all going to be owned by casinos anytime soon, but, you know, we, we talk a whole lot about, about outlets going under and journalists losing their jobs,

you know, the fact that money is coming back in the other direction, even such as it is in the story is, you know, it's something. I don't really know. I don't really know what the end of that sentence is. You were joking earlier when you said my DMs are open. If there's any casinos out there, if the press box sold itself as a branding vehicle, don't you think our highest upside would be the newsstand at the airport? Like, you know, when you walk it through the airport, you see the newsstand, you're like,

I wasn't totally sure that that magazine or newspaper was still publishing. And yet it's the. the brand name of the newsstand. Yes. I kind of think we could be competitive in that space. Oh, yeah. Please. I mean,

I mean, what's more valuable than an airport newsstand? I mean, when you get to the airport and you realize you like, you know, left your novel at home, there's only one option. You got to go in there.

You got to buy your trail mix and your like U.S. News and World Report or whatever. Gummy peaches, man. That's, I'm in. I'm at some nutter butters.

Get me through the flight. Let's one more transact. transaction, David. That's House of Highlights. Oh, yeah. Because over in Variety, there's a piece saying that ESPN has signed another free agent, not Romo, not a broadcaster, not a writer, but 25-year-old Omar Raja, who created House of Highlights.

Brian Steinberg writes, Raja's game is figuring out how to get sports fans chatting about liking and passing along the video clips he makes of top athletes and plays. And that may be the skill most in demand at ESPN, perhaps in the TV industry at large, in a future likely to be dominated

by new video watching behaviors. comes from Bleacher Report. His Instagram has 15 million followers. And Steinberg says he will serve as the main voice of ESPN's Sports Center Instagram account. What do you make of that move by ESPN? We talked about him before, I think, when these rumors first started floating around, I mean, this is just sort of, this is, you know, there's this kind of big variety story about this. And, you know, he's officially been signed by ESPN starting his job.

I mean, it makes a lot of sense for ESPN. And it certainly makes a lot of sense for Rajah, who's, you know, been incredibly successful thus far in his career. And according to, you know, this piece, according to Rajah himself, he's kind of still just doing the same thing he's always been doing. Just like, you know, calling cool clips that people are going to enjoy to watch, enjoy watching, but he's just doing it over at ESPN now. You know, there's also a quote in the piece. It says ESPN expects him to help plot the strategy for hundreds of new live programs the company's created digital outlets. Hundreds. Hundreds.

I mean, and one wonders, you know, if he's fully aware of what's being expected of him. I mean, listen, if he's going to be the fall guy for the failure of ESPN Digital take 100 or whatever, then I'm sure he's getting paid well enough to do that, to be that guy. But, you know, and honestly, like, he is in a very specific, in a very real way in new media. He is, he made it. He is the best there is at what he does, right? I mean, I mean, he's been incredibly successful at what he does so far. How that translates to not just the creation of a hundred new TV show, which is a lot to think about, but how that translates into just the ESPN boardroom, you know, is an open question. And, and we will, I mean, I guess.

it remains to be seen. I mean, there's, you know, I don't think he's, I mean, I presume they're going to give him some runway and, you know, going to find out really what he has to offer because, because he, I'm sure he has a lot to offer a company like ESPN. But as we've seen before, you kind of hire a company with, it's kind of with as much institutional, uh, legacy as ESPN. It's not always the easiest fit to hire someone who's just sort of working in their own vertical and trying to like suddenly affect everything else that's already going on. So, you know, best of luck to the guy. And good for ESPN for going out and hiring the biggest name in the, you know,

in an area of need. But we'll see what happens. There's been a couple of stages I feel of ESPN evolution. One is them kind of subtly, not so subtly going post text. You know, you had that generation of print guys who really ran a lot of the network. Vince Doria, John Walsh, John Skipper, leave the network. writers getting laid off. You mentioned that. That felt like one stage. And then I think the next stage is at some point, and maybe it's a long time from now, maybe it's tomorrow, is not only post text, but post TV. And what do we do? You know, what is ESPN in that universe? So this just strikes me as like, this is like, this is the guy that's going to help us figure it out. And maybe we don't have the answer right now, but maybe the answer is, Hundreds of TV shows.

Does ZSP even have a hundred shows currently? That's a lot of shows. Hundreds of TV shows. But maybe this is the guy who, and maybe it's not a show, right? It's like some product. Here's a three-minute something or other. Here's a 30-second something or other.

And he figures out that for sure. It's really interesting. And if you're those guys, you want people like that in your literal or figurative boardroom helping you think through that stuff. Yeah, absolutely. What do we do? I mean, I was going to say,

I was going to say that this won't be the last time that his name comes up on this podcast for sure. But it very well may just be coming. I mean, we may spend more time talking about what the shape of content looks like. I'm sure we will. What the shape of content looks like over the next year, two years, six months even. You know, I mean, it's going to be a whole different landscape, especially for a company like ESPN that, you know, has a lot of different audiences accessing, you know, they're in. I want to talk to you a little bit about Stuart Scott, David. Please.

This month marks the five-year anniversary of the death of the former Sports Center anchor. I've got an oral history of his life and death up on the ringer right now. Fantastic. Thank you so much. We can't talk about Stu Scott without hearing Stu Scott, right? It's just stupid. You have to hear him to understand him, to appreciate him. So here he is in 2006, doing highlights from Kobe Bryant's 81-point game.

I'll just let this run for a while. Enjoy. Let's do it. Now, last time they met Kobe Bryant had a seasonal 11 points. Second quarter, Chris Mamm, back door to Kobe, who just yokes it. Now, Kobe leads the league, scoring 34.8 points per game. Lakers, though, down 14 in recess. Second half, Kobe Bryant went off.

Command Center, this is Kangaroo Boxer requesting permission to fire. Kangaroo Boxer permission granted. 7 of 13 from 3-land. Late third quarter, Kobe. Some, another three. This is about to get silly. It's his 13th, 40-point game this year. Third quarter, some bunnies with a baduca dunk. His fifth 50-point game this season. Time winding down to third. Lamar Odom wide-open Kobe, who rocks the rim. Lakers up four. Now fourth quarter, this is just straight silliness. Kobe Bryant, first player since Jordan in 87,

two 60-point games in one season. But earlier this season, he has a lot. at like 62 and then sat the fourth quarter on the line with 62 there's covey's new career high 63 later in the quarter you know lakers owner jerry bus said quote you're watching and it's like a miracle unfolding in front of your eyes and you can't accept it somehow the brain doesn't work kovby pran cut it out at 70 a couple things number one roy williams coach over the University of North Carolina told me this. I didn't even put it in the oral history, but he said this to me, which I thought was so great. When you, when you think of Stuart Scott, you smile. And when you hear Stuart Scott's voice do highlights, it is impossible not to smile.

It is impossible. Like he was at his enjoyment. You heard it there at the end. Kobe Bryant is he's the guy who was like, I can't wait to tell you about what happened in sports tonight. I am so excited because I am a fan like you. So that's number one, just that enthusiasm. Number two there, did you notice, David, that as great and as beguiling as those catchphrases were that were sprinkled throughout that minute and change we listened to, did you notice the statistics and information were just as gaudy as the catchphrases? and that a Stuart Scott sports cast, I think it gets misremembered, by the way,

by me too, before I started this whole piece, it's like, Stuart Scott was just great at everything. He wasn't just graded catchphrase. He was great. He was, he understood how to tell a story,

how to stud it with just enough information, just enough catchphrases, how to put emotion into it. And again, like that runs for like a minute plus. that ran, you watch it on YouTube, it runs for another minute. That dude could do everything on sports television. And that's why he's that pantheon level sports under anchor.

It's true. I mean, it's hard to find words that don't immediately just smack of cliche, right? I mean, but there's, but it's, there is a, you know, it's enthusiasm, it's authenticity. There's, it sounds so silly to say, but like, you know, there's, being, Doing what he did is so many people's dream job. And it doesn't, and he managed to make it sound like he was doing his dream job, but still do it like in the most perfect way, right? Like the enthusiasm was like so clear.

And, you know, his humanity, I guess through his originality was always on display. But like you said, it wasn't, even if we think of the catchphrases, it wasn't at the expense of the actual like nuts and bolts of the job. he was excellent at that too. And the way that, you know, we've talked about him before in the show, I mean, his influence has been profound and not always strictly positive, you know, I mean, just because a lot of people have kind of learned isolated lessons from him and not just the kind of lessons of excellence of excellence.

But you talk to a lot of people in your piece, Michael Smith, you know, is one of the big voices in there, who talk about the level of, the amount of, like, inspiration. that he provided for, you know, viewers for up-and-coming sportscasters, Black ones in particular. And, you know, it's hard to, I mean, that's just one thing, you know, that they can be focused in on because Stuart Scott certainly was an inspiration to everybody. But, like I said, it's just like for someone that embodies so many clichés, but proves them out, you know, like you can use all these, like, just words with,

without any hesitation, any reservation, it just says everything you need to know about him as a man and as a sportscaster. Yeah, I just think when you say, it does sound like a cliche to say be yourself on television. It also turns out that that's the hardest thing to do on television is be yourself. Not try to sound like some guy who came before you. It turns out it's even harder when you arrive at ESPN in 1993, and it's not an especially diverse company.

You know, there's nobody, he wasn't the first black anchor on ESPN, but there's nobody that looks and sounds like you on ESPN. So you're trying to be yourself and be totally different than everybody else who's come before you. Like that level of difficulty is incredible. And the other thing to remember is, you know, I feel now if you ran into the pushback that Stuart Scott got at ESPN, you'd say, okay, this isn't working, I'm going to go work for this other network, or I'm going to go be on Twitter, or I'm going to have, you know, I just have these other places I can go and take my, take my talents to use the LeBron James phrase. That didn't really exist in the same way, you know, minus a few random times that Fox tried to compete with ESPN. Like, that wasn't a possibility. So when he in the 90s is

saying like, no, no, this is me. I'm not going to change. I'm not going to not be myself on the air. He didn't have a place to go. Like, you know, the place to go was you don't have a job or the place to go was go back to local television. And I think that underlines the, you know, just how profound that decision was that he made at that point in time. Yeah. It's also, and I mean, you wrote that everyone should go read this piece. My very limited interaction with the story before it was published was as the art director.

And I was working with Sean Fennessee, our esteemed boss, to do some photo research in the piece. And, you know, if you would ask me, I might have remembered a little bit of it. But I had basically forgotten just how cool he was. Just like looking back at old photos of him through his prime where he's like hobnobbing with celebrities, just like cracking up on the sideline with just like the most elite athletes of the day. you know, he could do his job putting the microphone in front of Paul Pierce as he was, you know, hoisting the, you know, the championship trophy, but also just like, you know, like I said, be doubled over in laughter with athletes of that caliber at the after party. You know, I mean, he was just, just such a huge presence. And I'm so glad you did this piece. And by the way, that was something he was criticized for was that was hobnobbing with athletes. at that time that was seen as this big breach in journalist subject ethics. Why are you shaking hands?

Why are you giving these guys a hug? Why are you shaking hands with these guys? Like there were people who said that. Like today, nobody would care about that. It wouldn't even make a difference. But it is, and I didn't get into it a ton here just in terms of space and in terms of what I was focusing on. But there is a really unhappy trail of Stuart Scott clipping. in America's major newspapers.

They were really bad. And just, and again, some of it was clearly coded language. I think some of it was just stupid. I think somebody who said, oh, well, you know, he didn't, you know, he was, his act wasn't worthy of the WB network. Oh, I wonder why he chose that example. But some of it, too, was just picking on him relentlessly. Like people that didn't even write about media, just continually mentioning him.

just over and over and over again. And, you know, what a time capsule of the mid-late 90s. The reaction to Stuart Scott is as much as anything. All right, David, let's do a little listener mail. First one comes from James Raddock. We talked earlier this week about the whole idea of political K-Fabe. Oh, yeah. K-fabe, David, for listeners just turning in is...

The big lie in pro wrestling. It's the adherence to the, you know, the show. against the truth. You are in character, right? Yes. Listener James Raddock writes in, I feel it should be brought to your attention that Nate Silver also brought up K-Fabe

on the 538 political politics reaction pod pronounced it, Kaffabe. Kaffabe. That's why you need a wrestling guy on your post-politics. I'm glad that's where we're going with that. Well, we don't make those mistakes around here.

This note comes from Phil Senderowitz. Phil writes, not news related but the best pun I've seen lately. Cast cafeteria at Disney's New Galaxy's Edge Park is called Admiral Snack Bar.

Oh my gosh, yes. Admiral Snack Bar. Bravo Disney. That almost deserves a whole binge mode episode. Can we get Mallory and Jason on the line? Admiral snack bar.

Wow. And then finally, David, last week we talked about the phenomenon when two funny things get smashed together in your Twitter feed. Oh, yeah. And they just happen right or the algorithm sort of pulls it in. I think the example was World War III slash WW3 getting mixed together with Weight Watchers tweets. We asked, what should we call this phenomenon? We got a lot of suggestions. Seth Somerfeld said it should be called synchronistic.

Synchronicus of feed. Oh, I like that. An account called Heapings of Jim, something we also have over here at the press box, Heapings of Jim, said it should be called MalgoRhythm. Oh, I like that. Malgo rhythm. Joe Shean and James Radick, again, say it should be called serendipit tweet.

Serendipatweet. But I think I'm ready to declare a winner. Kirk A. Beto, one of our pals, a longtime listener, says it should be called the juxtapost juxtapost I think that's it for sure anyway congratulations Kirk

all right time for David Shoemaker guess is a strain pun headline okay last week's headline attached to a paper about college and siblings was called oh brother where start thou as usual our listeners were funnier than we were

your boy Orbison says it should be called oh brother where art school Jeff Newman says Oh brother where bachelor of art thou Misty Mountain Hot says oh brother We're liberal arts though Today's headline is pretty incredible

Comes from Chris Fleischer Once again we're exploiting David The comedy stylings of academic papers Because this is from volume 57 of Economic Inquiry Something I know that's on your nightstand The paper in question has three authors it's about male pattern baldness something neither you nor I has ever thought about

no sir not once the authors surveyed balding men to see how much they would pay in order to have hair again the answer apparently was $30,000 $30,000 I want you to put aside that number for a second

think of balding men how much would they pay to have hair again? What was economic inquiries strained pun headline? Oh, God. Man, I cannot think. How much you'd pay plugs? Yeah, what form would you have come in? Oh, a high price to pay?

The price to pay? What is it? I'm going to, I'm going to, Claire Victory, willingness to pay. Oh, that's great. Willingness to pay. Congratulations to the comedians over there at economic inquiry. Do you get economic?

Do you get economic inquiry at your house? I think I let my subscription lapse, and I apologize for that. He is David Chewmaker. I'm Brian Curtis. Research by Chris Almeida and Erica Servantes. Production Magic by Jim Cunningham. We're back next Tuesday with more lukewarm takes about the media.

See you then, David. See you, Brian. David, I request a meeting with you. Okay. No, no, this is me. Yeah. Oh, my gosh. In a way, here, let me answer my own question.

Yeah. Wow. Did you make some nutter butters? Some stuff that's being, you know, gussied up to make our moms watching MSNBC mad. Yes. But. Were you as amazed as I was by the sequencing of this? Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.