The Press Box - Wade Wade … Don’t Tell Me! Joe Biden, the AAF, and Paul Pierce | The Press Box

Episode Date: April 9, 2019

Joe Biden’s unwanted touching (03:00), the destruction of the Alliance of American Football (25:00), and the Paul Pierce vs. Dwyane Wade sports debate (38:00). Hosts: Bryan Curtis and David Shoemaker Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

What's up, guys, it's Liz Kelly, and welcome to the Ringer Podcast Network. April is a huge month for TV, and starting this weekend, the Recapables feed returns to give you in-depth analysis on your favorite TV shows, including Killing Eve, billions, and many more. There will also be a special pre-capable series on the Recapables feed on the final season of Game of Thrones, where our staff forecasts what will happen every Sunday on the show. So make sure to subscribe now before the premiere of Killing Eve and Game of Thrones on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you can. at your podcasts. David, before sentencing radio host Craig Carton to three and a half years in prison, Judge Colleen McMahon said from the bench, Colleen from New York, first time, long time. What other talk radio catchphrases would you like to see injected into the veins of polite society?

I mean, listen, I'm not the, I didn't grow up with this like East Coast sports. radio, so I feel like I'm kind of coming from behind on this. I mean, it would be, listen, I mean, we all know that first time long time was just immaculate work. I mean, really ethically problematic. I'm sure. Was it a lot of the legal system looks at these things? Yeah, I think so.

Was she trying to win like the Jim Rome smack off from the bench? I mean, yes. I mean, I can only hope that before closing arguments, she said, like, I'll hang up and listen, you know, or something to that effect. I'm not sure that, like, I'm sure there are other court cases where, you know, you'd be excited to hear mega dittos or Baba Booie

or something being dropped in the middle of it. There probably has been Baba Booy used in the courtroom at some

point. I think I'd be horrified to hear Baba Bowie used in the middle of my federal trial that

could send me to jail for three and a half years. Do you think she, in the Rush Limbaugh sense, thought that

Craig Carton had talent on loan from God before turning to the life of crime? Oh my gosh. There was, you know,

this is WrestleMania weekend. It would be, I'm starting off the show with the mention, but there was one sort of almost tragic moment when a crazed fan tackled Brett the Hitman heart during a Hall of Fame induction speech that he was giving. That guy, I don't even, I'm going to mention his name, and he said that he just thought it was the right moment.

Obviously a little mentally disturbed or whatever, but he's already made his first appearance in court. It would be slightly humorous for all the wrestling fans out there if, you know, the judge said that he'd be serving hard time. We are the have a take and don't suck of media podcasts. This is the press box, a part of the ringer podcast network. The press box is the media podcast where billionaire presidential candidates are allowed to forgive cable news hosts. Brian Curtis and David Shoemaker here again with three topics for your pleasure and amusement.

First, David, Joe Biden isn't running for president yet, but he's already in trouble for the unwanted touching of female politicians and other women he's coming to contact with. how has that issue been covered and how has Biden used the media to get himself out of political danger? Second, we talk about the destruction of the insurgent Alliance of American Football last week. What mistake does sports writers make when we moon over spring football? And finally, it sounded like a Control Plus V sports debate. Who had the better career, Paul Pierce or Dwayne Wade? But on ESPN, it turned into the perfect and perfectly consumable sports TV opinion segment.

we discuss why plus the notebook dump and the overworked Twitter joke of the week. But let's start with Joe Biden, David. The idea that the former Veep was uncomfortably physical with women has been around for a long time. But it came back in a big way last week when Lucy Flores, a former member of the Nevada Assembly, wrote in the cut that at a 2014 campaign event, Biden put his hands on her shoulders, kissed the back of her head, and smelled her hair. according to Flores's piece, she thought, what in the actual fuck? Why is the vice president of the United States smelling my hair? And she continued, I never had experienced anything so blatantly inappropriate and unnerving before. This wasn't the only accusation Biden faced last week.

According to the New York Times, a former college student and sexual assault survivor said Biden rested his hand on her thigh and hugged her just a little bit too long. At an event on sexual assault, a writer named DJ Hill said Biden put his arm on her shoulder. at a fundraiser and started dropping it down her back before her husband intervened. Biden himself was finally forced to make a statement. Here's part of it. Hands on the shoulder, a hug, encouragement. And now, and now it's all about taking selfies together. You know, social norms have begun to change. They've shifted. And the boundaries of protecting personal space have been reset. And I get it. I get it. I hear what they're saying. I understand it. And I'll be.

much more mindful. That's my responsibility. My responsibility, and I'll meet him. But I'll always believe governing, quite frankly, life for that matter is about connecting, about connecting to people. That won't change, but I will be more mindful and respectful of people's personal space. Governing, quite frankly, life for that matter. It was like somebody said, please make this sound as much like a political apology as possible, which I think Biden accomplished there. After that came out Wednesday, three more women, David, described uncomfortable encounters to the Washington Post. So again, Biden was asked today, conference in Washington if he was sorry. Here's take two.

But there's someone who want to hear directly, I am sorry. Are you sorry for the way that you're doing? I'm sorry. I didn't understand more. I'm not sorry for any of my intentions. I'm not sorry for anything that I have ever done. I've never been disrespectful, intention to a man or woman. You know, that's not the reputation I had since I was in high school, for God said.

So that's really qualified. I'm sorry, David. It's more like, I'm sorry, but I'm a hugger, and I like to touch people, and that's what I'm going to do. What did you make of the Biden apology? I guess I'll just say, you know, get the benefit of the doubt section out of the way. I mean, if you were a hugger and that's what you plan to do, I guess that's what you would say, right? I mean, if you want to just, you know, take the kindest possible look at it, then, then, you know, I guess it felt, I mean, that, you mean, you can, you can look at that as a sort of refreshing, refreshingly honest way to respond. It is a weird kind of high ground to stake out, right, to say, I'm not apologizing for my intentions. my intentions were so noble and so palliative and comforting that I would not I will not

apologize for being nice. That's essentially what he's saying, is it not? Yeah, but that said the execution so it was really wanting, right? I mean, for one thing, you know, the expectation from Joe Biden and a Joe Biden presidential campaign, he's not technically in the race or whatever, but that's, that's really beside the point, right? I mean, he's very, very much in the race. Is that, is professionalism, right? I mean, we would expect at a bare minimum, a sort of a level of like preparedness and professionalism that maybe some of the candidates, I mean, that the campaigns of the, some of the, uh, less experienced candidates would lack. Qualified. This apology, this apology, yes, and this apology video started in mid-sentence or seemed to and cut off, and ended in

mid-sentence. It was films, you know, in a, I mean, I'm sure they were trying to go for a very casual look, but it was, it all, the presentation was kind of odd. And, and I think the reception was, you know, kind of, you know, across the board, no matter what your position was, I think it was received sort of poorly. I mean, for people who think that he needed to apologize, or people to think that he was, you know, actually, you know, in the wrong in these situations, they were really, they were really underwhelmed by what he by his by his by his you know semi-apology his response um and for people and

you know there's a large contingency of people who don't think he has anything to apologize for um even they were you know sort of offended by the ham fistiness of the attempt you know i mean it was it it just seemed to be um it just it just didn't seem to really satisfy anybody maybe that's the point maybe the point is you i mean i was not surprised that he was asked about it again um But I was sort of surprised that he responded. I almost expected him just to do the one video and for him just to say, like, we're done talking about this when asked about it going forward. We'll see how much it continues to be an issue in the campaign. A couple of responses of that. One, there was a big piece in New York Times yesterday by Alex Burns and Jonathan Martin that talked about the fact that Biden doesn't have a presidential campaign because he hasn't hired anybody.

He hasn't pulled his various weaknesses. He just, he has no infrastructure at all. So there were statements issued and then there was this two. Twitter video, and then there were the comments at the thing that we played on Friday. And I think that is a case of him not having any organization and anybody telling him, you know, or convincing him what he should do. And this is all just Biden purely following his instincts. So that's why it's all over the place.

And the second thing to what you said, and I agree, is that there's this idea that Biden is more competent somehow than some of the other people in the race. That is something I think a lot of we Democrats, or liberally inclined people believe because of the extreme competence and relatively scandal-free nature of the Obama administration, which Biden was a part of. But people who remember Joe Biden's presidential campaign, very short one, in 2008, or 1988, or 1988, for that matter, do not remember Mr. Competent. They remember a train wreck of a candidate who said semi-insulting things about Obama,

who plagiarized a speech back in 88. he was he was totally wheels off yeah i think that that's yeah i mean that's really important to acknowledge i think the i mean the point that i was trying to make is that if you that like the case for the argument for a biden presidency has to include that obama era confidence i mean competence and confidence i guess because without that then this is what you're left with right i mean even just the he's not anybody's in is sort of a it feels like a very old school move in 2019 right there's a lot of this sort of I think all of this

the presentation of this apology everything you just said underscores the sort of lack of freshness in his campaign and his ideas you know we saw I mean he can we saw what the reaction that Clinton got

four years ago when when it seemed like she was just sort of running on her you know resume and not not you know pushing any big ideas forward because but now even more so than then Biden's in a field with a bunch of you know,

relatively young or relatively fresh presidential aspirants with big ideas, you know? And he's done this sort of, hocus, by being Obama adjacent.

But there's not, so far, there's not, there's very, there's not a lot of new, like with his competition. And maybe he'll co-op some of those ideas.

And maybe he'll, you know, maybe that he'll evolve as a candidate. But if he's seen as a dinosaur, it's going to be hard to take any new ideas he comes up with seriously. And this is what circles back around to the subject year. If his ideas about human interaction, about touching in public,

about the way you can put your hands on strangers regardless of your intentions, if your argument, I mean, if your defense is, I'm an old, old man, then that's not going to help him with any other part of the campaign. What a bumper sticker. I'm an old old man. And I won't your vote for president. Yeah, I mean, he is attaching himself to Obama. And his quote from Friday when he wasn't semi-apologizing was, I'm an Obama Biden Democrat and, man, I'm proud of it.

And that then gets us into all kinds of other things because it's really about, one, attaching yourself to the competence of Obama, but two, this ideological argument that the Democrats are having right now about what should a Democratic president, presidential candidate. stand for and what should they look like and what kind of and what vision of the of the party. So right. So that gets us on a completely different track, but I completely agree. That is, that is he is single cell. And by the way, just to reiterate, he is not running for president at the moment. He is going to run for president. There was a lot of winky winky on Friday at that, at that speech he gave. But he doesn't have, and that was the point of the times piece I was talking about. He is, his whole idea was, I'm not going to officially push the start button. So I'm going to stay out of all of the nitty gritty of the campaign for as long as I can, because I know I'm

going to get attacked. I know I'm going to be the frontrunner. I know I have the longest, most troublesome record of anybody in this race. But all that happened is he is now in the nitty gritty and he doesn't have a campaign to deal with it. That was the argument of the times piece. And I think that's exactly right. The thing I want to talk to you about is the weird physicality of Joe Biden. isn't it part of what created the Uncle Joe meme that has been sort of a thing for a decade plus now and if you look in your in the Google Doc for the press box

you will see the I just put in that picture of him snuggling with the biker while the two guys look on like who the hell is this guy he at the speech on Friday hugged the union president who was a woman and said I just want you to know I had permission to hug Lonnie he said well the largely male crowd burst into laughter. This is at the, according to the times. A child walked on stage and

Biden wraps his arms around a boy and says, by the way, he gave me permission to touch him, he says, more laughter from the crowd. So not only is this, was this a formally funny meme, but this was something that Biden himself was leaning into. Like, this is, this is the Uncle Joe identity, I think, is besides Obama, the other 50% of his mojo. And what this does is it directly goes to that and says, well, maybe Uncle Joe, the character, was always a little weird and a little bit skeezy. And we shouldn't have been, you know, mooning over that as much as we were. Yeah. I think, I think that that's probably right. I mean, I, I mean, I, I, um, you know, I mean, we got to say there's been a lot of conspiracy theories, too, that, that, you know, this sort of stuff was leaked from the Biden side. I mean, if you're, if you're going to make the argument, I mean, if, if the cases he doesn't have a campaign. and that sort of puts the lie to it. But to kind of get this out of the way earlier,

because for a lot of people, it doesn't feel like that. No, I don't either, but you see that, like, at this point, I mean, Biden has a big constituent, has many constituencies. I don't want to, I don't want to belittle his, you know, his chances in this race.

But he certainly has a big constituency in the, in the sort of Democrat mainstream, right? I mean, in the, the, you know, Washington Democrats are by and large Joe Biden fans, and some Washington Republicans are Joe Biden fans, you know? And for them, this is baked in, right? All of this sort of stuff is, you know, I mean, you could see, you know, I watched Morning

Joe the other day when this stuff, when this story was breaking, and Mika Bresensky could not have been more disgusted to have to have the conversation. And I mean, and by that I mean, like, she was just so dismissive of any allegations against him. She was like, this is just a hand, like a touchy-feely guy. This is a normal thing in the world. And let's move on. And I think that, you know, there's some, there has to be some hope that just by talking about it, by joking about it, as distasteful as that may be to so many people, that you just, that you can normalize it and move on and try to get the rest of the voter base, especially the primary voters to this sort of place where the Washington Democrat, you know, mainstream is, which is like, yeah, we know this about him. Now let's talk about something else.

Totally agree. I'd say a related point to that, too, is. And this is, and this is, and this is, you know, the same. is a tweet from the Washington Post Dave Weigel. I think a lot about the median voters' memory of Biden, the shirt-sleeved scrapper from 2008 versus the slower nostalgic Biden that hits the trail these days. And he adds, Weigel adds, how much did your parents change from age 65 to 77? I think this is one of the mostly unwritten things about Biden at the stage of the campaign. And I just happened to go to a Senate rally in Indiana for Joe Donnelly where Biden spoke in October. So this is sort of fresh in my mind. But this is not the Osama bin Laden is dead and GM is a live Biden of the 2012 convention.

This dude is in the speeches is all over the place. There are these weird long digressions. And it's something that I think newspapers have trouble writing about because it's sort of half theater criticism and it half you risk charges of ageism. But he is not the same guy on the stump that he once was. And whether it's he's older, whether he's in a different place in his life, his son has died famously, all these kinds of things have happened. It's not the same guy. And I think part of him not running for president is that's sort of been in the, that hasn't really come out yet. And him doing that extremely awkward Twitter video, it sort of reminded people, it's like, oh, wait, there's just some very different about this guy. And our memory of this guy, even outside of the DC bubble, our memory of this guy is just very, very different.

That's one thing I want to run. The other thing to you is that we talk about Biden in a different age of social norms with the touching and hugging and all that stuff. It's also a different age of media. And Democrats like Better O'Rourke or Alexandria O'Cortez have made it seem like they are speaking to you from their Twitter account or their social media accounts or Instagram, whatever it is, right? Biden, as he showed the other day, is not comfortable speaking to you from social media. In fact, it was really awkward him talking about selfies and all that stuff. I think that's a big thing, right? You look at the people like Trump on the Republican side, O'Rourke on the Democratic side,

have you showed how effectively they can use social media. And then you have Biden and you realize, oh, wow, this is a totally different world for him. This is a sandbox he's never played in. And that's going to be really during, I think, when he actually hits the road for 2020. Yeah. Yeah, I think that's right. I mean, I think it's going to be, you know, the competency we talked about earlier or the hope for it, the, you know, the experience. I mean, the problem with that is that, is that, especially for Joe Biden, there's this expectation that he's going to, you know, that he materializes as a big frontrunner.

And he will. I mean, he has a great name recognition. But there's only one real way for it to go from there. and if he falters, then the conversation immediately goes in a million different directions. I mean, if there's any hesitation and it seems like there's going to be, you know, a fairly steady stream

of potential faltering. So, you know, we'll see where we go. We've still got the Clinton era stuff. We've still got the Anita Hill stuff, which also bubbled up a little bit last week. He's just got such a long record to answer for and we'll be. And without an affirmative argument about what, why he's running for president.

Yeah. He hasn't made it. anyway. It's not, yeah, I mean, especially, I mean, you can say I'm an Obama, Biden. I love, you know, putting your own name in those, in that sort of, in that sort of, you know, formulation. I'm a shoemaker, Curtis podcaster. Yeah, exactly. But if you can be an Obama Biden Democrat, that's great. But like, you know, you can't, everybody was, Democrats seem, we're very content then, but there wasn't a, you know, I don't know what anybody actually hears when they see, when they hear, I mean, is it supposed to hear when he says that? It's a, it's a, it's a, it's a,

It's, you know, he needs to make a case. And as long as he's not doing that, then we're just going to talk about old Joe Biden and all the problems with it. The final and inevitable monkey wrench, David, into this story last week, was Donald Trump. I know this is going to shock you, but Donald Trump took advantage of the scandal. He didn't just stay away from it.

He tweets this, this weird thing, which is Biden giving his Twitter statement in these hands coming over and Biden's shoulders and all that stuff, which the New York Times, as Charlie Warzel reports, went from a talk subreddit forum to the president's Twitter account in 19 hours. That was interesting. And then the aforementioned Jonathan Martin raised this question.

He says, does that make Democrats nervous about Biden's viability, a la the attacks on Elizabeth Warren? Or does Trump attacking him throw Biden a life preserver at this crucial moment and say, hey, wait a second. Okay, enough of a pile on. Now, Trump's, look at this. Trump is using. our attacks. Now let's

rally around him. How do you read that? I mean, I think, I mean, there might be a bit of truth to both of those things, but I don't think either of them are the, you know, the final answer. I think that the truth is that Trump is indeed, I think Trump is being pretty forthright in the way, in what he's tweeting about. I think that he thinks that he can beat Joe Biden because of stuff like this. I think that, I mean, I think that he definitely thinks he can

beat Elizabeth Warren. And so he's egging, he is egging them on. you know, and just sort of like preemptively gloating. I don't know that either, that he could actually beat either of those people or any particular person in the race. But, you know, I think it does, I think it does put both of them in a positive light for a certain, you know, for a big part of the Democrat base because they're, you know, you want someone who can quote unquote get down and dirty, get in the mud with Trump, whatever. And this sort of puts them there. And as long as they keep going, it seemed as it's a positive. but, you know, I don't, I would hesitate to try to read too much in the tea leaves just based on what Donald Trump is doing.

He's obviously very excited to be back in campaign mode. And, you know, this is just part of the way he operates. All right, David, now it's time 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. First up, I have a tweet for you from a Houston television station. Quote, the Drug Enforcement Administration is looking for a contractor who can burn 1,000 pounds of marijuana per hour, end quote. The DEA sees a lot of drugs, right? So they need someone to who can burn 1,000 pounds of marijuana pretty quickly. It was an overworked Twitter joke to volunteer yourself.

Thanks to Eben Altman for that one. I believe reading this piece, the DEA actually had to issue a later statement saying, look, we need an actual professional firm to do this. that actually does these things, not Cheech and Chong to help us out with that one. Thanks to Eben Altman for that one. David, two pretty great final four games on Saturday. Virginia barely beat Auburn on a last second foul.

And Texas Tech, the old Southwest Conference's very own, defeated Michigan State. Now, the final four is in Minneapolis, and I don't know if you saw this note, Tom Izzo, coach of Michigan State, said that former Spartan quarterback Kirk Cousins

would address the Michigan State basketball team on the eve of the final four. Kirk Cousins. It was an overworked Twitter joke to say that this was the moment Michigan State lost the game. Why didn't Michigan State just do what everybody else does and hire Rick Flair?

Isn't he just... It's WrestleMania Weekend, man. Rick Flair was helping Triple H beat Batista. That was the whole thing. We could chalk the loss up to the WrestleMania. Because Rick Flair is like the most hireable person in the planet to fire up your team right now. It's absolutely true.

to J. Carpe DM 94 for that one. And finally, David, another self-nomination from Dan Diamond, writer over at Politico. I'm so glad the famous journalists are listening to us because God knows no one else is. Dan Diamond nominates himself for this. You saw David that Donald Trump now wants to nominate Herman Kane to the Federal Reserve Board. It was an overworked Twitter joke to write out-Kensian economics in Keynesian economics. If you trickled your way down to that one, congrats.

You made the overwork Twitter joke of the week. All right, David, topic number two, and this is lesson number one billion about why TV ratings are a dumb metric to measure anything except TV ratings. We paid a lot of attention to the ratings that the Alliance of American Football got during its debut on February 9th.

The AAF had 3 million viewers on CBS, which was more than the NBA game over on ABC. Well, less than three months later, the AAF is dead. Last Tuesday billionaire Tom Dundon, who had basically become the guy running the league when he agreed to lend it $250 million, pulled the plug.

A couple of interesting facets of this story for you. First, it's kind of an amazing what happened business story that I feel we haven't quite gotten the full what happened yet, but a few of the things that surfaced early was Albert Breer over the MMQB said the AAF going, bust was about really about the app.

He said there's a perception inside the lead that Dundon, who is also the owner of the Carolina Hurricanes, bought a majority stake simply for the gambling app being developed. And as source tells Brewer, Dundon got the technology he wanted. And now he's minus one rather large headache, aka he's minus

the league. So remember when we were joking about how the A.F was it really a data company? And that was so depressing? It turns out it might have been. And you didn't even you didn't want the football. You just wanted the data. Yeah, I haven't seen much more on the subject, although, you know, people that I talked to

seem to think that, that Breer is on the right track with us, and he's certainly well-sourced and, you know, gets things like this right. It is, it is really interesting. I mean, the fact that, I mean, Dundon sort of rode in on a, you know, on a white horse, but it was, it all happened, and I don't even know how to continue this metaphor. It all happened. Yeah, I don't know. I mean, it was, it was all, it was, there was such a weird.

crowd around the whole thing. And it was he just sort of appeared out of nowhere willing to buy to to take over, you know, to buy in $250 million. After the first week, by the way. After the first week. And by the way, I mean, before we get away from it, you know, the rate, there's a lot of, it's a WrestleMania weekend. There's a lot of this that's tied in with the XFL. I mean, this is, Charlie Ebersoll's dad was the, was the, you know, partnered up with Vince McMahon to do the XFL the first time. And I think a lot of the sort of backroom reporting that we've heard is that they approach Vince McMahon to buy the XFL name and and some of that, you know, some of the trademark assets and Benzumann was like, nah, I'm just

going to start my own, I'm just going to do the XFL myself again. And so that's theoretically a year off. And so, but, and so they, they got this new name and they continued on. It seemed like a little bit of a lost cause from the beginning if you, if you look at it that way. But the XFL, you know, in its first week got like a 9.5 rating. And, and everybody was just stunned. And then like the next week it was down to a four something. And, and it was like, okay, well, this is, this is where we are. I mean, people are always interested in new things. People are always interested in professional football under whatever auspices. But, you know, I think you just sit down, you watch it, and you're like, oh, well, actually, there's a reason why I watch the NFL,

and I'm not interested in the CFL or whatever else. There's only so far this sort of newness can take you. Yes. And if your business model also, which seems to be the case, if your business model is we're going to start operating and then and then publicly insist that we're an NFL developmental league until they give us an influx of cash. Well, that seems like a problem too, right? I mean,

the whole thing just seemed like, it seemed like, even the parts that you can discern from just public statements, just make it feel like a weird shell game, and you end up with AAF players saying that they're like suddenly getting credit card charges for their hotel stays

that they were supposed to be covered by the team or the league. And, I mean, it's just a, It's just a mess now. Yeah, I think it's sort of what journalists are trying to do right now is figure out what the shell game actually was. There's also a good piece by this guy, Ryan Karchee, I hope I'm saying his name correctly in the Orange County Register. Oh, yeah. He did this big piece, and he goes over the Dundon stuff, which is really interesting. By the way, Dundon made his fortune, according to Carty, off subprime auto loans.

So can you see the parallels of giving the Spring Football League a giant influx of cash when you're doing subprime auto loans? Dundon's role, we've talked about a little bit, and him, as you say, trying to force this issue with the NFL Players Association. He seemingly like he came out and said, well, we need a talent sharing agreement right now or I'm going to fold the league, which seemed ridiculous, right, at the end,

barely at the end of their first year. But the other thing is like, how much, how good an idea was this by Charlie Ebersol and Bill Polion, who were the founders of the league, if they ran out of cash so quickly that they had to hand over the league to this dude within like five minutes of it starting.

If they were, they blamed that they said there was this payroll problem and all and stuff. Do we really understand how well baked this was if you had to turn to the white knight immediately after your league started and say, hey, you get, you get control this whole thing,

just give us this much needed money. I mean, that seems awfully quick to me. And I sort of wonder if there's not a lot of blame here to go around. And by the way, you mentioned the tier. jerking stories. That was sort of the second gear of this. Adrian

Robinson, one of the players you mentioned about the hotel charges. He tweeted, he was the tight end with the Memphis Express. I woke up to a $2,500 charge bending on my account from the hotel our team stayed in. I called the bank and Memphis's team president. My only option is to dispute the charges on Monday.

So he's like you when your credit card details get stolen. Gianni Paul Linebacker with the Salt Lake Stallions tweeted, play game, break arm, league ends all within 24 to 48 hours,

now looking for an apartment, need help finding an apartment, you can't make this shit up. So that was some of the human interest part. I do want to get to the think PC part of this with you, which is spring football.

We always hear, and it's now the gleam in Vince McMahon's eyes, that there's this appetite for this. Do we really think, whenever I hear this, I think America already has spring football.

It's called the NFL draft. It's called Adam Schaefter flexing during free agency. It's the schedule release. It's all that stuff. Like, we have this thing that is attached to the NFL. And do you really think there's a ton of appetite beyond that stuff that runs on the NFL network 24-7 for the six months we're not playing actual football? Yeah, I mean, it seemed sitting down for extra full games.

I mean, it does seem like at some point that, as, as all of our sports leagues evolve into year-round activities, and we get more and more obsessed with the chefterisms and all that kind of stuff, and Woge on the basketball side and all that. It does seem like sitting down to actually trudge through watching a game is sort of the hardest slog of the whole of fandom, right? I mean, it's like the last thing you need

is another three-and-a-half-hour obligation to sit in front of the TV. But, yeah, I mean, I do think that it's, I do think that it's an interesting question. I mean, it's sort of like we've all taken for granted that there's an appetite for this. And I lean towards you. I'm not sure that there is. I'm not sure either. First of all, as a college football guy, I always get offended when people say, well, there's got to be an appetite beyond just the NFL.

Yeah, we have college football all year. February, you know, winter is recruiting all the way through February. And then you have the spring games and all these, you know, practice reports and stuff in the spring. there's just a ton of football stuff in the world. And I also just think, like, to me, whatever one of these leagues is interesting. At the end of the day, it's bad football for teams you don't care about. Like, if they had the Fort Worth Mustangs in the league, in the XFL or whatever, what would it take to get you to care about the fortunes of the Fort Worth Mustangs?

Like, I couldn't give a damn. It's our hometown. I couldn't care at all. But if you told me that there's... some team in, you know, Boise that has the Cowboys' third-string quarterback who's not going to get any reps, but he's going to start for this team. And it's his chance to prove that he is an NFL football player by taking reps in the spring. I'm like, oh, okay. I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, perking up a little bit. Yeah, I think, I think what you're, what you're hitting on is that it's,

is, is that we do have, you know, we do, we do have associations with the teams, you know, and we have, we, what we care about is, is, yeah, is, yeah, is, that. That is that's my team. Not the San Diego fleet. The fact that we watch football, you know, the fact that America watches football doesn't make football the sport any more, like a new football startup any more exciting than, you know, major league soccer trying to come into markets, you know, it's still like, you're, you're, you still end up pitching these, you know, pitching the games to the audiences by like the live

experience. Like come down and, you know, it's family day and get cheap hot dogs and everybody loves hanging out, you know, and that kind of, you know. Firework show. Yeah, exactly. and the Beach Boys are going to play afterwards. And it's a, you know, it's not, just because it's football doesn't give it any extra, you know, I don't think any extra source of connectivity with the, with the average fan.

And I think, you know, I think that's the real problem. Now, if you want to, before we get out, I want, I do want to bring up, if you want to get into, we're talking a little bit about conspiracy theorizing early in the show, but if you want to get into, you know, the conspiracy here, we can, we can loop our own boss Bill Simmons into this. when ESPN's 30 for 30 did the This is the XFL documentary directed by Charlie Ebersaw. If famously ended with the sit down dinner between Dick Ebersoll and Vince McMahon

and the unspoken subtext, I mean just the screaming loud subtext was just the glint in both of their eyes about how it was time to do this again. Just going through the process of retelling the tale was all they needed to know about this being a lucrative property that just came a couple years too early or something. thing. And so it's a little wonder that, that, you know, Charlie Ebersol went straight from there to,

I'm just going to make this a reality. It's a little wonder that Vince McMahon was like, I don't need you guys. I can do this on my own like he did, you know, like he, with the hubris that Vince McMahon always will have, which has made him very successful. And, but, but just because like, again, just because people watch football doesn't make, the NFL doesn't make spring football, you know, going, anything of interest to a football fan. Just because there was a successful 30 for 30 about a spectacular

flameout of a spring football league doesn't mean that there's room for a spring football league. They had the wrestling audience and all these people interested in it, that 30 for 30? Sure.

They had the rock out there doing cutting promos during the pregame or whatever. Yeah, I mean, it's not, it's, I mean, listen, they caught fire in a bottle to get as far as they did

with the XFL. The fact that we, you know, still make he hate me jokes on rare occasion is a great success, you know, for what they accomplished.

But, I mean, I don't think any of us should be too surprised about the direction this is gone. I think it's also just how we think about these leagues. If you tell me

there's going to be a television, a sports-themed television special that gets everybody's attention for like six weeks or three weeks or whatever, I'd be like,

okay, I can believe that. That's like Tiger versus Phil competing in a million-dollar match in Vegas or the old Battle of the Network stars or whatever. Like,

if you tell me this kind of fun sports thing, but this idea that we're trying to build a league that lasts for the next 100 years. I'm just like, nah, it's not going to work. Yeah, I mean, you see, I mean, if you talk about leagues that have done it well, and I'm not speaking from any kind of deep research

on ratings and stuff, but the big three is actually, seems like they've made more headway than anyone would have expected them to, and they did that by taking name players who you recognize and who are recently retired or, you know, legends of the days gone by, and just put them in a situation.

We're like, nobody, I mean, I don't have any idea how the win-loss playoff structure for this thing works, but when it's on TV, you can just pop it on and watch it for 30 minutes. You know, I mean, that's what's interesting about it. And there's, there's not some sort of deep obligation, but you are attached to the players already, like you were saying earlier. There's a, there's a level of attachment. And I don't know that anybody would be, I mean, from a pure mortality standpoint, I don't know that anybody would be interested to see, you know, Troy Aikman go out there and get under center for a couple of snaps. But, you know, that, you wouldn't be worried about Troy?

I'd be worried. I'd be very worried. Yeah, see, that's the point. I don't, I don't, I don't, I mean, that's exciting for a few minutes. And then you just realize you're watching with your face hidden behind a pillow. Anyway, yeah, this, this seemed like a bad idea from the start. And I cannot, I cannot wait to have the same conversation a year from now about the XFO. Speaking of old athletes, David, and their legacies, I want to talk to you about Paul Pierce versus Dwayne Wade. And after this segment, I don't want anybody to say we don't sound like a typical ringer podcast, okay? Is this heat check enough for you?

is it? All right. You ready? I'm ready, man. All right. This started as an NBA countdown segment where the gang was going on one of those hot take but not really hot take things about Dwayne Wade versus Alan Iverson versus Isaiah Thomas, et cetera. And then Paul Pierce was asked who was better him or Dwayne Wade. And with an assist from Michelle Beatle, he went in.

Listen to this. Paul riddle me this. Who's the better NBA player? That's easy. I can say that off the bat. That's me. If you give me Shaq, if you give me LeBron, they did, and it's called a big three.

Yeah, we got that late. But like early in my career. I mean, what are you doing right now? If you give me these guys early in my career. Well, let me ask you this. What would have been a perfect time for you, Paul? Let's make sure we get this right. When I was 24 years old, you beat me Shaq.

When I'm 24, 25, you give me LeBron and Bosch. I'll be sitting on five or six championships, easy. So then who has the better NBA career? I played 10 years with who? You know what? Antoine Walker. But here's the thing. Come on, man.

Antoine's all-star. I think that was the perfect sports debate TV segment of all time. I really do. Can I outline the ways for you? Yeah, please explain. First of all, there's two fairly legitimate sides to the debate. Paul Pierce is better than Dwayne Wade by the case he just outlined in his very old man way. And then there was his co-host, Jalen Rose, making the reverse case.

and slightly humiliating reverse case for Dwayne Wade. Let's listen to that. He's made all NBA first team twice. Paul hasn't done it. He made all NBA eight times to your four. He made all defensive team three times to your zero. Oh, zero. That's rough.

He's won one scoring title. You weren't able to win a score in title. That's too bad. He has three rings. You have one ring. Ooh, three is bigger than one. What you can't see is Pierce's face there, which is this weird sort of frozen smile.

that Twitter had an incredible amount of fun with. It was kind of like Ben Affleck doing the press tour. So there's that. It was a sort of back and forth in a uniquely humiliating moment, don't you agree, of Jalen Rose going back at Pierce?

Yeah. It was just a really amazing spectacle. I mean, just to watch this, I mean, on the one hand, this is just like, you know, one episode of a, you know, a TV show that's, that's on a fairly regular basis,

and this might have been seen as a throwaway segment. I have no idea what the discussion was leading into it. But, I mean, it was, it was, it was just, just spectacular. I mean, it was, there's, there's no other way to put it. I think it comes at a really weird time that we have,

you know, these players only broadcasts on T&T and, and, and just a proliferation of, um, stars or borderline stars, as our talking heads, which is a fairly new, I mean, not a new phenomenon, but in the NBA,

you know, it wasn't always the case, you know, it was sort of a novelty that, like, you know, Reggie Miller would get in the broadcast booth, you know, because it certainly wasn't going to be Michael Jordan or anybody of that ilk, you know, you didn't see Patrick Ewing sitting in a T&T halftime show or whatever. I mean, Magic Johnson was there. There's exceptions of these rules, but, you know,

ever since, I feel like, you know, Shaq sat down, I mean, Shaq became a part of it. And don't, don't read this as me discounting the, career of Charles Barkley. He's a great, but he had become more of a talking head by the time that he started with the T&T thing. But ever since Shaq was just like, yeah, I'm going straight from playing to inside the NBA on T&T, it seems like there's more and more guys who just have, who are a little bit overqualified playing career-wise to be doing these just like, just random bits on ESPN. And so you're suddenly confronted with these hypothetical discussions. You know, it's one thing for

Michelle Beatle or even Jalen Rose to be having these hypothetical discussions about who's the goat or who's the whatever but then you have those people sitting right next to you and it comes at a time where this is maybe a little bit too maybe a little bit too heat checky for the press box but

I'm hearing all these conversations about where Dwayne Wade should exist in like sort of the basketball firmament you know I mean like if he like there's a lot of people trying to figure out how good he was for the purposes of like ranking all time greats and no one saying that he's like a top five player, but it is an interesting discussion in terms of shooting

guards, in terms of, you know, the lower, the top 25 or something like that, does he even make it that high? And Paul Pierce, as great as he was, seems to sort of be in this other class of NBA players that just sort of floats separate from any of these real serious discussions. It's almost like, I mean, I can't even think of a parallel. It's like, it's an apples and oranges thing almost. And so you get into it and there's not a real answer, but because of the culture of sports, courts that we have, there's always an argument. You know, there's always an argument in both ways. And, and, yeah, it's, it was just, just watching, I mean, going back to what you said,

Paul Pierce's face when Jaylin's going at him kind of says all you need to know. Yeah, it's like when you mention all these sort of over-the-hill athletes sitting around and controlling the conversation, like every segment turns into a discarded chapter in the book of basketball. It's like, it's like a chapter that didn't make the cut. Wade versus Pierce. Like, really, this is a thing? I think also what made this so perfect, though, is that Pierce is working from the Charles Barkley model, which is every bit of your analysis begins with the premise, I'm better than all these assholes who are playing right now.

And that, for whatever reason, that is, it should be completely a complete dead end. It should be so annoying. But it turns into actual, and Charles Barkley has lived off this for years. It's incredibly entertaining television. where you just shit on all the players of today in the benefit of your career. I also think, by the way, what also made this so fantastic was

once this escapes the bounds of sports debate TV where everyone understands why Pierce is doing this and the air quotes kind of around all the analysis, it just seems like an actual bad blood thing. And I turn your attention to the tweet from Gabrielle Union, actress and wife of Dwayne Wade, who says this Paul Pierce thing is wrong on many obvious levels, but what I find troublesome is this idea of a man trying to diminish another

man that looks like him was raised like him in order to shine a tad brighter. Shit isn't entertaining. It's sad. I mean, she is sticking up for her husband. I totally understand all that. This is surely NBA shit talk and my career was better than yours. And if I just had a couple extra superstars, I could have won a couple more rings. Surely that is the most eternal thing of all time. And surely Dwayne Wade is not offended by this. Surely everybody has had this conversation with each other, with each other. It's not like he was saying Dwayne was a bad player.

He was, I mean, to me that I read this as being about Paul Pierce. And, you know, boy, I wish I'd had, you know, Shaq and LeBron on my team, so I could have won a couple of more rings. That's how I read it anyway. Yeah, yeah. I mean, certainly these are the things that incredibly successful multimillionaires go to bed, brewing at the end of the night, you know, if only, if only I had had Shaq on my team when I was 25, you know, it does say a lot about him.

Remember when NBA players were all happy, David, back when Paul Pierce was playing? Oh, wait, turns out that's a total myth. No, that wasn't the case. But I mentioned earlier, I don't know how it came together. I don't, you didn't read this Beaumani Jones tweet yet, did you? Go for it. No, I mean, I think it's good to go back. It's good to reference this tweet that Bomani Jones said where he obviously has a lot of experience

working on ESPN television where he said, The most fascinating thing about this whole thing is to me, to me is that Paul at some point had to say, yo, let's do this on the show or at least agree to it. That's amazing on about 15 levels. I mean, sure, maybe he's just saying,

all right, what's our B block? We don't have anything. And so, like, I'm willing to do it. But it's a weird thing just to sort of say, you know,

sure, let's, let's have this argument. Or maybe somebody said, how do we make NBA countdown interesting? Which is, which has been kind of low-key, kind of not interesting for a really long time.

and less interesting than Rachel Nichols in the daytime. How do we make Paul Pierce interesting? How about that as a television commentator? I know. Defend your legacy versus Dwayne Wade. Oh, wow, he's interesting. Here we go. I mean, to me, it's like the imperatives of TV,

of nothing else, and even that particular show. It's like, all of a sudden, like, oh, this is good. Here we go. I'd watch this. Yeah. Yeah, no, it would be interesting to see, you know, how many players would put themselves on, would raise their hand and put themselves on the list

to say, Dwayne Wade if I had Jack and LeBron at various points in my career. Should we quickly do the notebook dump? Let's do it. A couple 20 and 20 notes for you. I learned from the Twitter account of Crang T. Nelson that we may have a candidate name pun to compete with Beta O'Dork. That was the name given to Beto O'Rourke by Fox News as Kennedy.

Crang T. Nelson shares that there are people calling Bernie Sanders, David, Bernard Panders or Bernard Slanders. so that's um wait why i don't know that was unclear i think you just call by the right it's like the obama thing barry satero or whatever yeah or or calling

Beto uh bedo robert you know just like ha ha ha i know that you have a birth certificate name you know like it's very strange um and you just i guess i guess it indicates more if you the best view is that it indicates that you are like that you are intending to make a joke it is it's a signifier of what is of the second half. Bernard Slanders, I don't think, is going to pick up much steam, but I'm excited to hear Kennedy try to get that over. You wanted to talk about Tucker Carlson floating a theory that Trump

wants to lose the 2020 election. Yes. Should we hear a little sound of that to kind of set it up? Yeah, do it. Jim, let's hear a little Tucker Carlson on Trump 2020. But what if Donald Trump had decided he's had enough? Too many investigations, too much nastiness, too few upsides. It wouldn't be a crazy conclusion. I'd like to spend your 70s locked in the White House. Now, I got, I need some clarity here. Am I spending my 70s locked in the White House as the president? Or am I just locked in the White House full stop?

You got to be clear with me on this way. All right. Anyway, David. Yeah, and of all presidents and reasoned memory, Trump is sort of the least constrained to the White House, it seems, by his weekend schedule. But, but yeah, I mean, listen, this is the best, this is the most just hilarious, wonderful kind of conspiracy theorizing where you're not just it's not just a conspiracy theory to to you know make yourself i mean to to you know find the the hidden cabal at the root of everything it's not it's not just to explain away existence it's it's to make excuses for a

politician that you are have to you've been forced to support for his entire presidency it's almost the conspiracy theory is here is the secret reason the secret cabal behind what I've had to do on camera for the past two and a half years. You know, I mean, it's like he's trying. And the thing is, this is rooted in fact, right? Or not fact. Rumor, this is, there is, there was many existing sources that said Trump didn't even want to win the first time and was, you know, many, many memes passed around of him on election night,

his facial expression when he realized that he had won, not looking too excited. But, but yeah, I mean, it's just, it's just incredible work by Tucker Carlson. to do this sort of post facto rewrite of the Trump era and to sort of absolve himself of of you know anything bad that comes out of it. Also in 2020 watch, David, Politico's Jesus A. Rodriguez tweets, I looked at the Spanish websites of the 2020 Democrats and found typos incomprehensible phrases and whole paragraphs that match Google translate. So congrats to the 2020 Democrats on their Spanish language outreach, which is going about as well as we probably could have predicted. Last week you mentioned the classic he-hawn sketch, Where, where are you tonight? Just want to inform you that at least four people,

and I'm going to name them, these brave individuals. Sean, Mike Watts, Mike Miller, and Gene Monta Raselli reached out to tell us they are down with He-Haw. And Mike Watson over a super cut of the sketch. By the way, I had forgotten how much He-Haw was like Saturday Night Live in the sense of performers are reading from Q cards and trying not to break. halfway through the bit.

I guess I thought he-ha was more professional. I thought he-ha was the Joe Biden of comedy sketch shows. And in fact, much like Biden, I totally misremembered it. Anyway.

All right, David, it's time for the David Shoemaker guess is the terrible pun headline slightly renamed from last week. This one, let's just put it this way. I wrote this one in the car

with my wife the other day. I think it exists in the world a few places, but not maybe like this. So anyway, I'm going to name a hypothetical feature story in a magazine. And you tell me the appropriate strained pun headline. Are you ready? You're just making up an article? This doesn't exist. This does not exist. But I am saying, what would I write as the strain? What would you write as the strain pun headline of this fictitious article? Are you ready? Does that make any sense to you at all? Okay. I will do my best. This is like Tucker Carlson and Trump. Here we go. A lament of,

about the gentrification of Atlanta, Georgia. A lament about the gentrification of Atlanta, Georgia. And let me give you a little more, a little more, a few more clues here. The gentrification and the parts of the city that were left behind, okay? Parts of the city that may have just been erased through the gentrification of Atlanta, Georgia.

All right. Start, come up with some words, here we go. We'll play a little hot cold here. I'll walk you through it. I mean, I immediately go to like Georgia, just go to Georgia Peach. Go with the other half of that. Go with the city. Atlanta.

I mean, is it hot Lanna? Atlantis. Hot, hot. Scalding hot. Scalding. Atlantis Resort and Casina. Maybe there's, maybe there's an Atlantis in popular culture. The Lost City of Atlanta.

Oh, the Lost City of Atlanta. All right. Well done. The Lost City of Atlanta. Isn't that good? That's great. Yeah. Let's publish that.

I love it. We will in our fictitious magazine we edit in our heads. That's the press box this week. He's David Chewaker. I'm Brian Curtis, Research by Chris Almeida. Production live from New York by Jim Cunningham. Thank you to all of the professional wrestling fans

that approached me this week to say how much they love the press box. I really appreciate that. So does Jim. That was one person. I was there. It was many. Truly, one of the more ambitious crossover events and ringer podcast history is wrestling fans listening to the press box. Yes, thank you all. We appreciate it.

Making the world better one smart mark at a time. We're back next week with more lukewarm takes about the media. See you then, David. See you later, man. David? Yeah. My career was better than yours. What in the actual fuck?

I mean, it was just spectacular. I mean, it was... It's like, all of a sudden, like, oh, this is good. we go. I'd watch this. I think that was the perfect... I cannot wait to have the same conversation a year from now about the XFO. What in the actual fuck? Yo, let's do this on the show or at least agree to it.

That's amazing on about 15 levels. I mean, sure. I'm perking up a little bit. Come down and, you know, it's family day and get cheap hot dogs and everybody loves hanging out, you know, and that kind of... Firework show. Yeah, exactly. The beach boys are going to play afterwards. Oh, oh, oh, hot, hot. Yeah. I mean, certainly these are the things that are incredibly successful multimillionaires go to bed,

brewing at the end of the night. There was a lot of winky, winky on Friday is dead. Yeah, no, it would be interesting to see, you know. Am I spending my 70s locked in the White House as the president? Or am I just locked in the White House full stop? Looking for an apartment. Need help finding an apartment. You can't make this shit up.

So that's really qualified. I'm sorry, David. It's more like, I'm sorry, but I'm a hugger. and I like to touch people and that's what I'm going to do. What did you make?