The Press Box - Why Pat McAfee Went Unplugged. Plus: Jon Ossoff Breaks the Natalie Harp Fourth Wall.

Episode Date: August 18, 2026

Today on The Press Box, Bryan and David start by reviewing Pat McAfee’s album, 'The Diary of a Polarizing Figure.' Then in the notebook dump, they remember ESPN co-founder Bill Rasmussen, who passed away at age 93. They also talk about the updates on the NBA’s investigation of the Clippers, Natalie Harp, and a crazy book story (36:33). Plus, the Overworked Twitter Joke of the Week, and David Shoemaker Guesses the Strained-Pun Headline! Hosts: Bryan Curtis and David Shoemaker Producers: Isaiah Blakely, Jon Jones, and Remy Hdz Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hello media consumers. Hello, beautiful people. It's Brian Curtis. It's David Shoemaker. It's the press box. How are you, David? Great, great. Couldn't be better.

How are you? Some McAfee-like opening from you. Trying to keep it upbeat. Beautiful day in America. Mm-hmm. Got producers, Isaiah Blakely and John Jones, running this here ship. Coming up, we got some notes on the big Clippers news from yesterday in ESPN's big takeout. We'll say farewell to ESPN founder Bill Rasmussen.

John Ossif, dreamy John Ossif, has broken the Natalie Hartford Wall. And we will tell you the craziest AI-Amazon used book story that you have ever heard. But first, David, Pat McAfee dropped an album on Friday. Good, good, I'm glad we're here. Let us pause 10 minutes to take in that news.

Fast forward, if you have must. The album is called Diary of a Polarizing Figure. It includes 14 tracks. I'd like to give you the title of several of them. Go ahead. The tracks include Pit Bull and a Mugshot, Blue Collar Symphony, the titular Polarizing Figure,

Smoking, which is about what it sounds like. Rich as shit, which is also about what it sounds like. And finally, at the tail end, cheers to the South. Yeah. So you're my guy on modern country music. Oh, God. This is one of your sub-specialties. What does Pat McAfee sound like?

Well, there's a lot of correct ways to answer this question. I'm not going to be a gatekeeper here. He sounds like a lot of contemporary country radio. yes. He sounds like a man confused about his genre, yes.

Those first two things are not even remotely mutually exclusive. They're one giant circle. I guess more to the point if you said he sounds like you know, jelly roll, you'd be right.

More specifically, if you said, like, this album sounds like it was produced by Ernest, who's jelly roll's guy, he'd be exactly right, because he seems to have done the, Yeoman's work here. Arnes is a very successful I guess Nashville

andville music producer, although I doubt would even call himself a country producer. He does a lot of different things. I think he was like a SoundCloud rapper or something back in the day, but a lot of different genres brought together here

into a streamlined package that I guess is what we would nominally call a modern country. I don't know. Nothing to get me too excited. But also, that kind of weird genre bending thing, we're like, if you played this for us 10 years ago,

we'd be like, what is this future of music? That's what I was going to say. You know, the whole bunch of ESPN employees, including Dan O'Rolowski, sounded like Yon Winter, reviewing the Mick Jagger's solo album and giving it five stars on Friday. I don't want to be that person, but I will say this sounds like plausible,

modern, generic country to me. Sure. If I did not know who this was, and you told me this guy was really big now? You would not guess Pat McAfee and a million guesses. No. But if you just, if I didn't know who it was at all and you just say that, hey, this guy's really big right now,

I'd be like, I believe you. Yeah. It sounds plausibly like that kind of album. Yeah. Can we dive into a few of the songs? By the way, I think that's safe to say of like any of the male stars in top of country music. Like the first time any of us heard like Morgan Wallen

if you're not like in the scene. I'm sure you were just like, this is trash. And then maybe if you spend enough time with it, you're like, oh, I understand. Now I'm starting to get what the appeal is here. But it all sort of sounds the same at first blush. One of my favorite, I should say my favorite radio station in Dallas, did a bit with modern country music where they would note that the songs would often just name things in the South.

Oh, yeah. It'd almost be like when a person gets arrested and the police report has to have the list of things they found on the suspect. You're just naming them off. McAfee does this on his song Good Times. I'll give you the full inventory here. Guitar, fiddle, whiskey, small town, old dirt road, and my favorite, Creek Bank. Creek Bank.

Creek Bank. Was that necessary for the rhyme? Only modern country and Little House in the Prairie feature Creek Banks. This is also from the song Cheers to the South. Note the list here. Lake Life, John Deere, Jack Daniels, four-wheeler's,

Buckshot, Trucks, Barnes, Moonshine and Sweet Tea. Is Moonshine and Sweet Tea are those handcuffed? They go together? I just wrote about in a little. order. I'm not sure. Moonshine and sweet tea is potentially an incredibly delicious concoction. Apologies is that's a really common thing that I've never been exposed to. Yeah.

I mean, listen, what are you going to say about this album? This is definitely one of those things where if you find yourself writing a pitch letter to your editor or going live on whatever your social media is to give it five stars the highest rating ever, you should maybe just be like, you know, like maybe I'm not the guy to be reviewing this, you know, have a little bit of, like, circumspection there. Yeah, the first time, the first, I was hearing responses. I was hearing comments about this album before I heard the album or heard any part of it.

And there's a lot of people, I think there's a widespread thing of just, like, who is this man? It's not Pat McAfee. Like, he's just sort of faking it or something, you know, not being a man from the South or as far as we could tell here to four, interested in fiddles. Do you know fiddles in West Virginia? Yeah, no, there were actually probably an outsized number of fiddles in West Virginia,

but not in the parts of West Virginia where I presume anybody would go to and return. But yeah, it just seems, it just fell a little bit like I put on, and I think the things, and I was defensive in his, in his honor for some of that stuff. It's like, dude, it's okay to have like a creative life, a musical life. that is seemingly separate from your public persona. That's how, you know, a lot of our famous, most famous American rock stars saying, like they were British and vice versa, you know, like, it's a separate world out there. But then I heard the music, and actually the most disappointing part were the things that,

to me, seem the least authentic to Pat McAfee. When we're talking about just the John Dears and the fiddles, not only because I don't imagine those to be a part of his daily life, but because it's so wrote in the genre, you know, it's so just like cut in pace. You know, like I mean, you know, there is a sort of urgency to a lot of this stuff. I mean urgency in the weakest possible way.

Diary of a polarizing figure. Doesn't that seem like that to be like the fifth album he puts out or something? Not like the, like, part of the great thing about first albums is that you've been writing them for 10 years in the privacy of your closet. You know, and all of these songs are very like, here's a thing that happened to me last week.

Which is less interesting than like, dude, if it turned out Pac-Magher, had been like legitimately like writing love songs in the private like to an audience of one for the past decade like i'd be very interested to hear that album like he was luther vandros rather than morgan wallen yeah or that he was just morgan wallen who'd just like to sing to himself like whatever you know like but this all feels very much like you know i spent a weekend with earnest and this is what we came up well and this is his big subject me me the polarizing figure i was going to say the south no no it's it's pat maccophie and that i am polarizing

and everybody is mad at me all the time. And I'm just trying to have a good time here. I'm just trying to be a positivity, talk about sports, bring people together, but everybody's mad at me. Yeah. That's what he says all the time. So here's some lyrics from the song, Polarizing Figure.

All of us so gullible. All of it's combustible. Stories out of context from folks considered trustable. They're reckless with their narratives searching for comparatives. So you think you ever does stuff to make sure that he's still squarely in the polarizing zone? Like, do you think it would ever cross his mind to, like, say, set next to the president at the...

Patriot games? Patriot games to keep that polarization going. It might. And as further evidence, I offer you some lyrics from the song, Oops. Oops is a track on this album. Oops, I stirred another pot today. I'm good at everything.

I'm a talent buffet. I'm whipping in the kitchen like I'm Bobby Filet. The next line is I used to not have shit. Now I got a bidet. So if you're rapping about or singing about stirring the pot, I think probably you are taking those moments to make sure everybody is mad at you. Some other McAfee obsessions appeared in these songs. This is from the track Richest Shit. We know Pat McAfee is interested in ESPN executives.

Oh, yeah. who might not have his best interest at heart. Mm-hmm, for sure. You know he was interested in former ESPN executive Norby Williamson. Mm-hmm. Here are some lyrics from Riches shit. Talentless suits might need to find a new scam. I'll make you go poof.

I'm a magic man. Okay. I'm not sure a country music song has ever been dedicated to Norby Williamson, but if that's what's happening here, congratulations to all involved. It's funny because there was a period where there would be some some, you know, outside the mainstream country

that would be directed at the suits in Nashville. But now I feel like we'd be directing it at suits in New York or L.A. I feel like Nashville is part of the sacred, you know, God bless the South Hole. He can't really turn on Nashville's suits anymore. No. But I could be wrong about that.

And Pat McAvey can't turn on ESPN suits anymore for reasons we'll get to in just a moment. Please. The song Outlaws appears to be dedicated to Andrew Marchand and other members of the media that cover the sporting press.

I'll give you some lyrics here. A bunch of puppets with some pens with only Muppets as their friends saying that we ruin sports television again. We know that McAfee often has strong reactions to those of us who cover the sports media space. Do you think there was actually a moment

at any moment in the entire creation of this album, I mean, I don't ask this sarcastically. Was there any moment where something happened to Pat McAfee on the set of his show, or he heard some news or got some reaction online and immediately just grabbed the pin from behind his ear and sort of jotting down lyrics about it? Like a songwriter does in bed

when suddenly inspiration hits him in the middle of the night? Do you think there's anything that happened over this course of this album where writing the lyric was, Pat McAfee's first reaction. That's a great question. It's kind of hard to imagine that. Yeah. But a fascinating question for him is how long were these songs rolling around your head?

Because as you say, it feels like I spent a week with a producer. Yeah. But maybe this is it. Maybe he's had that Norby line in his back pocket for two years. Who knows how long he's been thinking about Norby Williamson? here's a question for you what would you do if someone at the ringer cut an album? I don't know

auto retweet or over the top praise it'd be so much it would be so much easier if someone did a bad album like a self-consciously bad album like novelty songs yeah or they were doing like the kind of Eddie Murphy Bruce Willis

why not I'll cut an album no it would have to be super novelty just so you could all sort of like laugh about it together and yeah, whatever. But like a serious album, it would be tough. What if it was as serious as this one? Michael Pina's Diary of a Polarizing Figure. Would you just do an auto retweet

or would you actually praise Michael on social media? You got to get Michael on the show next week to discuss this. Yeah, there may be an auto retweet in it. Because if you said anything, it would just be, like, what would be the appropriate, like, quote tweet? Like, no matter what you think about Michael, this takes a lot of guts. It's like the book blurb we used to laugh about that there was apparently, I don't think we ever actually found it, but there was a blurb of a journalist

who attempted to write a novel, and the blurb was my great friend, so-and-so, has written a novel. Yeah. My great friend has recorded an album, took a lot of guts. Mm-hmm. The end. Another question for you. Why would Pat McAfee do this?

That seems like the big question, huh? I mean, there's a really, you know, skewed way of looking at it, which is basically what I suggested before. Could he possibly have recorded an album just to bring the haters out? Like, is that too much of a long con to give him credit for? I mean, it's the title of the album. Yeah. Right? Yeah.

The Diary of a Polarizing figure kind of says, I know you're going to dislike this. Yeah. I know that somebody But you know it's going to bring people out of the woodwork because it's like Pat McAfee defending himself as a songwriter is not very compelling on TV

but if they start saying the other stuff about him then all of a sudden you know he's the underdog again he can go to battle. Mm-hmm. But yeah, it's a bit, but why? I mean, it's either that or because he's it never occurred to him not to do it.

Right? It's just like you're super successful. So you see it with a lot of people who are successful on a sort of incomprehensible level, that you either don't know what, you know, the grind would look like, or that maybe it just, you just start to believe your own hype. You start to believe there is something magical and widely, you know, and just like universally beloved about you. And conversely that, like, people who aren't achieving that just aren't wanting it enough

or, you know, you enough. So yeah, so maybe it's just because why not have an album? Everything else seems to work. I agree with that. I also think when you get as big as he does, you probably just assume that you're two great subjects, yourself and the haters,

are as interesting to everyone else as they already. Yeah, for sure. I mean, the thing about this album is, it's not very provocative. It's not like he's taking stands that if you listen to this, you're like, man, I disagree with Pat McAfee. because the stands such as they are

just stuff that are unless you don't like moonshine or sweet tea. God, fucking siddles. The stands such as they are just stuff he says on the air all the time. It's a good point. Not just in the easy to digest song form. Matt Yoder wrote a really good column

for awful announcing about this. I just want to read you a couple sentences here. He says, McAfee's music speaks to an enormous disconnect that embodies his current predicament. Even though he is one of the most accomplished entertainers working today, he is desperate to be hated. It consumes him.

Listen to any of his shows, follow his social media feeds, and there is always this constant refrain, for as long as I can remember, my mere existence has made people hate my guts. And Yoder goes on to speculate as to why McAfee needs to work himself into that state, why he needs to repeat that line over and over. And Yoder writes, does he need some kind of Michael Jordan-like feeling of disrespect

to keep it motivated, or is it a commercial necessity? The moment his audience realizes he is now an insider, the whole thing falls apart. Great question. I really think he hit on two productive areas there. The Michael Jordan part of it is fascinating. Remember with Michael Jordan when he did the documentary, when he did the last dance?

Yeah. And he was still mad at Isaiah. I felt disrespect and all this stuff. And he was like, wow, that's an amazing insight on Michael Jordan's character. and then you realize, oh, wait, every single professional athlete thinks the same thing. Yeah. That to get to this place, they just had to work themselves into this frenzy that everybody was against them,

that everybody was trying to keep them down, that some track coach, their sophomore year of high school, had nearly derailed their career. You're like, oh, if every athlete says this is actually not much of an insight, it's just kind of a necessity if you get to that level. Yeah. And by the way, a lot of media people are like that, too. Sure. everybody's against me.

So the Jordan part is true. But the commercial necessity is fascinating. Because you referred to that a little while ago. You kind of have to be hated to be Pat McAfee. Yeah. If you're like, hey, president of ESPN, the chairman of ESPN loves me. Number two guy at ESPN loves me. The guy who runs Disney loves me.

The guy who ran Disney before him loves me. They're giving me tons and tons of money and tons and tons of opportunities. True. You start to sound less and less like the podcaster that created this huge audience and it brought it to ESPN. It's funny to think about. I mean, Howard Stern, I think you mentioned before,

is a great comp, but we all remember that era, I think very clearly of like these hugely successful people that succeeded despite the people, the bosses from on high. What was the dude's name, pig vomit? Was that the guy in Howard Stern? in private parts of the movie?

Yes. Is a pig vomit possible in 2026, or would pig vomit have already been replaced 10 times over by the Howard Stern, like, bootlicker? Pig vomit has been replaced. Yeah, right? Like, it's hard to imagine a world where Jimmy Patero actually doesn't like Pat McAfee. No, or there's just some henchman of Jimmy Patero that has outsized power over Pat McAfee. Yes.

That's like, you know what? once every six months, I need to put Pat McAfee in his place. That person would be gone. And in fact, probably already is gone from ESPN. Oh, sure. Well, I mean, I guess you're making an even more profound point that there's like the henchman class is kind of gone, right? Or at least, at least the henchman class, there's no henchman class between the

highest level talent and the people at the very top. One thousand percent. These people don't report to anybody except the chairman of the company. Yeah. And the chairman of the company has decided we're invested in them. So like what are they going to do that would really make me upset? Sure. What would they ever have to do for me to be like, hey, please stop that?

Yeah. In any kind of serious way. I'm sure there have been phone calls to Pat, to Stephen A, to all those guys, have been like, hey, do me a favor. This, you doing this, you know, Aaron Rogers coming on and talking about Jimmy Kim, who also works for the Disney family, that's just too much, right? Yeah. putting me in a bad place.

I'm sure those phone calls have happened. Sure. But they're not being handled by a henchman. No. By a sub-lieutenant. No, a sub-lieutenant making that call even under the best of circumstances, I think, would provoke the ire of someone like Pat McAfee. You bring up Howard Stern, and what McAfee faces at some level,

or what he's trying to distance himself from, is the Howard Stern problem. Where the people have spent the last, what do you think, I'm going to date this, 25 years, 20 years of Howard Stern's career being like, you're not the same anymore. You got big. Yeah. And you ceased to be the guy I liked because what I liked about you is that you were so dangerous to the, quote, quote, establishment, yeah, that you were making pig bomb and mad.

He flew a little bit too close to the King of Almedia's son, right? It's like, he called him to that for so long. At some point, you're just like, I guess he is now. Yeah. And he became, you know, he started liking the people that he was making fun of on the air because they were his allies. Yeah. Not comic characters that he could zing every morning.

Yeah. And you see that with McAfee. Like there's a point at which you're like, you almost have to put your hand on the electric fence. You have to appear with Trump a Patriotist. Oh, that made people mad. Oh, you know. You know, does that, by the way,

I think Pat McAfee's aesthetic is, you know, largely overlapping with or at least next to the Trump aesthetic or the right-wing podcaster guy aesthetic in the Venn diagram, right? They're not that far apart, so I don't think that's like a massive thing. No, no, no. I mean, you can go to what our teammate Van said on his pod last week. I'll just point you in that direction very generally without repeating anything. But I think the most, in some ways, the most interesting thing about Mac's the point

is that he hadn't fully embraced the Trumpism. You know, he had sort of avoided that point up until now, which. which, again, I don't know what it, it turns out it meant not a ton, but that was actually an intriguing component of his persona. Yeah, I, you know, I thought Vans thing was really good. I said just, I don't know how much Pat McAfee really cares about all that stuff. Well, but isn't that the question that we're asking ourselves at the very base here? It's like, does he care enough about being hated to organize, to work in, to advance that principle, basically?

Like, you know, is that, is the reaction really that meaningful to him either to keep him going or just as his, you know, as his nourishment good or bad? You know, it doesn't, it's, it, I kind of agree with you, but also I kind of think that if he doesn't care that much, then what are we talking about? Certainly he cares enough to touch the third rail, as you said, to kind of keep it going. 100%. It is interesting. Something I think we should state outright. Pat McAfee is now the most powerful on-air person at ESPN. Well, so when you say that, you're very specifically saying more powerful than Stephen A. Smith.

Or I guess, Mike Greenberg. Definitely Mike Greenberg. Well, no, I just mean like who are the upper ground? Who are the headliners? Who are the resumania main eventors at ESPN? Oh, it's funny you should ask because I actually made a historical list of the most powerful odd-air people at ESPN. Oh, so this is, is this the ESPN championship belt?

Can we officially give it full ringer branding? This is the ESPN championship belt. Stephen A in recent years. Uh-huh. Absolutely, right? Giant salary all over ESP. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Do I even need to explain why?

I think if you backed it a little bit, Stephen A and Skip would have been in the conversation. I think Mike Greenberg cashes in the briefcase at some point between this run and Stephen A's solo run. All right, I got a category for Greenpeace. When Mike and Mike split up and one of them got the giant deal, I feel like that was a pretty big moment for easy. He's coming up here.

Just one second, though. But I feel like especially if Skip had re-signed with ESPN in 2016 instead of going to FS1, that would have been fascinating, right? Because he could have become a McAfee-like figure at ESPN. Sure. He would have had a lot of power. He added that at Fox, I think, too. But at ESPN, that would have been fascinating.

Our boss in the 2010s. Chris Berman in the 90s. He's like one of the first people to get a massive ESPN contract. Yeah. And those were the days, of course, when talk about like sub-lieutenants, there was a whole thing of like, friends, the brand is sports center. Yeah. The brand is not you.

You may be Dan and Keith. You may be on like the top 10 most important people on television list and TV guide. But you are not the brand here. I remember and I remember thinking Berman was hilariously overpaid at the time too, and I was wrong. No, he was not. It felt like, it feels like so sticky at first that you're just like, oh, anybody could do this. But it turns out actually nobody else can do that.

Then I have a quiet power tier, SVP, Joe and Troy. And if you want to put greenie, that's where I think he goes. Okay. Because I don't think they're like noisily asking for things or noisily imprinting their aesthetic on the rest of ESPN. No. Which McAfee is doing. But any of those guys could have probably gotten Simmons fired at his peak at ESPN. You said that, not me.

That text is coming to you. I'm just saying who, I'm just saying if you have enough power to get somebody else of some renown in the company fired despite no on-screen connection to them, then that's a lot of power you're throwing around. I just want to make sure you have David's number, so I'm going to read it here on the air because I'm not taking that text message. In terms of McAfee's power, he's not only has the show he's the only. he's the owner of his show, which is an important distinction. Stephen A does not have that with first take.

How significant is this really? It seems like one of these things that when he signed couldn't be overstated enough, and now I'm wondering if it can be overstated. Like, is there a point where you're famous enough? Like, can we all agree that Pat McAfee is famous enough that if ESPN swiped his Twitter handle, he would be okay?

Like, if he left the company, like all these things that we thought were benchmarks of prolonged success. Podcast feeds. Yeah, exactly. think that Pat McGee is beyond all that stuff now. Okay, that's one of the things, though. But ownership of the show, I would say it is part of it.

It is not nothing, for sure. I would say the fact that the executive class is oriented around McAfee, Yoder makes this point an awful announcing. Jim Petaro is a huge fan. Burke Magnus, who's the number two guy there is a huge fan. And to be clear, the contract stuff, I mean, the ownership of the show stuff is evidence of how much power he has. It's not necessarily like what gives him the power.

But the fact that he can negotiate that into a contract is bonkers. Mike Foss, whom I first met when I was reporting on Game Day, as like the executive who was with Pat McAfee, has now been promoted. Oh, yeah. Is a big figure at ESPN? I would also say this, since we've sort of forgotten this incident, and it's not that long ago, but Pat McAfee repeating false rumors about an 18-year-old woman who was in college. Oh, yeah, not a good look.

Not a good look, but remember, remember that happened and then months went by before he apologized? And the punishment for McAfee and indeed the response from ESPN leadership to the entire incident was nothing? And that apology was just a little over a year ago. Nothing happened. Nothing happened at all. We just moved on. And I know we like to, you know, pounce on moments here where Stephen A says something on the air or Kendrick Perkins or whoever,

you know, has a moment on debate TV where they're feeling the table, if I may, quote Perkins's wonderful phrase for describing the moment we're in a debate show. What McAfee did was one of the worst moments in recent ESPN history. In fact, it was the worst moment in ESPN history. And the silence from the C-suite was also terrible. Well, it's just sort of like, yeah, the C-Suite two-step at this point where you're just like, we can't say anything now because we're bracing against potential lawsuits. And then as soon as everybody's like, whatever happened of that lawsuit, you're just like, I don't remember what you're talking about. Oh, we just completely moved on.

Yeah. Just completely moved on. And again, if we want to demonstrate his power at ESPN, there's a demonstration of his power. Yeah, for sure. Why did he supplant Stephen A as the most powerful on-air person at ESPN? This is a good question. Part of it goes to the discussion you and I had about Ryan Clark not left long ago. Executives pick people.

They want to support. Clearly, there's a lot of executives. executive push behind both of those guys, but I think McAfee in particular, this is I will say about Pat, too. I think you can take Pat McAfee and put him on another show, and he succeeds within the framework of that show better than Stephen A. Smith does. Case in point, game day.

Yeah, yeah. Well, I mean, see. He's crazy. He's whipping up the crowd. You are obviously, you're obviously correct. I'm not, you're obviously correct, but like, you know, they put Stephen A. Smith on it, Countdown, like it was, it started orbiting around him a little bit and it began a different show.

But like, like, again, on paper, there's an argument on the other side of that, right? Yeah. So it's funny. It's so funny you say that because I was actually thinking about that as I drove into that. I was like, okay, if you put Stephen A on Countdown and please don't. Yeah. Please don't. But if you put him on Countdown, maybe he would say, hey, Charles Barkley is the star of the show.

Charles and Kenny and Shaq's relationship is important to this show and I have to pick my spots and I have to work within this framework. He didn't do that when he was on the other pregame show partly because everybody just stood around and watched and waited for him to talk. Sure. But would he do that?

Maybe. But McAfee's proven that not only could do that on game day, he could do that on wrestling as well, dude. He could be wrestling announcer. In some ways, the most powerful thing about Pat McAfee, and this maybe goes back to his being a whole, you know, outsider on the, the inside thing. Maybe it's, you know, being

not widely loved, or broadly known, basically. It's the first time you realize you're like, who is this guy? I feel like everybody's reaction to Pat McAfee. Everybody's first exposure to Pat McAfee is saying, who is this guy and having the person next to them just being like,

oh, this dude's a much bigger fucking deal than you realize. Do you know what I mean? Like, we're just like, who is this guy on WWU's doing this? It's just like, dude, this is a sports radio guy that has the power just to walk in and be done. WW's number one color guy. You're like, what?

Like, somebody's that powerful? You know, it's like, it's this weird, like, it's that shock factor that comes with it. And so I think that that helps him. And all of those broadcasts, it would be, like, they could have started the Pat McAfee college pregame show on ESPN2, and it would have been fine.

But, like, to be able to walk in to game day and just to sort of like sneak in under the radar, and it's like, who's this clown? And then you're just like, that clown makes more than all the rest of the people on the stage combined. Yes. And I give him a ton of credit for being able to go in and fit in there.

To be like, Lee Corso is the man. And I defer to Lee Corso. Corso and Herbie got their thing going on, so I'm going to go and have my relationship with Nick Sabin over here. Wrestling, to use the wrestling terminology, I'm not just going to put myself over. I'm going to put over everybody else. Yeah. Like, that's a challenge for somebody who is empowered the way he is, whose show is all about him. Like, they're not that many people who could.

do that, I think. Whose show is all about him and whose life is all about... I mean, like, what do we know? But, like, he works to work with his friends. You know, like, this has been his whole thing. This has been his crew since the beginning. It's really, there's a lot of people who have had very similar lives who just get incredibly myopic and weird after just a couple of years, you know, and he seems to have avoided

that for the most part. Country music albums, notwithstanding. We got a note on Blue Sky. This is from En Brockett says, I think David needs to choose his fighter, debut rapper edition, Pat McAfee or Macho Man Randy Savage. Okay. McAfee's, here's the thing. McAfee's album is better.

It's been a while since I listened to Be a Man. That was a rap album by Macho Man? Yeah, it was like spoken word. But at the time, it was maybe less of a rap album than McAfee's album, but at the time, it was, like, widely labeled rap. Um, McAfee's album is better. But I think kind of what,

at the end of the day, what gets me most about the McAfee album is like, it's the authenticity. Like, it doesn't sound like, like, there's not really a swing. Besides,

I'm just going to try to make a real sounding country album, right? If it were more particular, if it were more like Be a Man, it might be better, because it would just be him, like, expressing something presumably real and very heartfelt. I can't say,

but being a man was about Hulk Hogan, for the record. It was Macho Man post-career calling out Oh, so it was like a call-out rap album. Yes. I can't tell you, and I give it again and give total credit to my guys down at the ticket in Dallas,

Corby Davidson, and the whole gang. Once you hear this about country music, modern country music, every song is like, Dirt Row, Big Dog, Pick Up Truck and a Frog, you know, and just like, wow, it's the entire inventory of the South. It's the lonely planet guide to

the southern region of the United States. It's like a seek and find. It's like which of these things does not belong here? And it's all just like, oh, look. They all do. Cornstalk. Grandpa's pipe. Sweet tea, buckies.

Just reeling off the list. And at the end of day, it's like, oh, was there a song here? Are we just doing a full inventory? He-ha on the TV. All right, David. Coming up in 30 seconds. That's more of a specific experience. He-ha on the TV.

That was the... Universal for everyone. a time, yeah. That was the 80s South. Duke's a hazard and their orange car. Not as offensive as you might think. Oh, yeah. You want to whitewash history? I got a take for you. All right, coming up in 30 seconds, David, the executive assistant to the president that dare not speak its name. But first, let's do the overworked Twitter joke of the week where we celebrate a gag that was so obvious that all, all of media

Twitter made it at exactly the same time. Send your nominees at the press box pod where they're always, always gratefully received. Just so we can get one more bite of the apple here. I have a collection of some of the best lines about Pat McAfee's album Diary of a Polarizing Figure. Would you like to hear those lines? Please. Number one, listen to one song on Pat McAvey's album

and just stole a catalytic converter. Here's another one. Pat McAvey's music really resonates with a certain demographic, people that want to keep their jobs at ESPN. Another one. Today I was excited to listen to Pat McAvey's new album with my dogs. When I played it, my dog snatched my keys, drove 30 minutes to the coast, and came back with a bunch of fireworks,

and begged me to shoot them off instead of ever playing Pat's album again. And finally, if you play Pat McAfee's album backwards, you hear former ESPN employees asking for health care. Oh, that's good. If you joined our inventory of Southern Features, Congrats. You made the overwork Twitter joke of the week. All right, some quick things in the notebook dump.

We need to say goodbye to ESPN founder Bill Rasmussen. Yes. Just before we came on, it was announced that Rasmussen died at age 93. By the way, they were paying tribute to him on ESPN's air, and then the McAfee show started and it cut off the tribute. No, does that really happen? It really happened. Sometimes television does all the work for you.

Bill Rasmussen, according to the ESPN obit that the network sent out, founded the network in 1978, or the idea came out to him in 1978. On a Friday afternoon in August 78, Rasmussen and another man were stuck in traffic on Connecticut's Interstate 84 while traveling to the New Jersey shore. They were discussing possible programming for their newly acquired satellite transponder from RCA. on a lark, Rasmussen blurted out the idea to create a network devoted only to sports. Sports fans both father and son instantly thought they had a great idea. Sorry, that was Scott Rasmussen who was in the car with him. In time, their idea grew from a service showing Connecticut sports to state residents

to a 24-hour national sports network. Bill Rasmussen, one of the very, very important guys in the early history of cable television, right up there with everybody. He changed the face of television. He was not at ESPN for its growth into a superhuman network, but it was his idea back in 1978 that got us here. Farewell to Bill Rasmussen. I want to say a few quick words about the Clippers News yesterday,

that big piece by Don Van Nata, Baxter Holmes, and Ramona Shelburne. Yeah. Talk to me about this. I'm sort of enthralled by the... media cycle here. So the piece basically said that the NBA had not found evidence that Steve Balmer, who of course owns the Clippers, was taking money and sending it through sponsors to get around the salary cap. That was the idea here. That they don't have smoking gun, basically. They didn't have a smoking gun. And I saw a few people including noted media critic Ty Lawson. Saw that, yeah.

saying that this meant Pablo Torre was wrong. Yeah. But wouldn't the thrust of Pablo's reporting that this was being... Many, many, many people, like many, many people that have been... Were saying that even, I mean, to the extent that you were just... I just assumed I was looking at bots almost immediately. Just like the volume of this was crazy. But go ahead.

Are you sure you weren't? No, it probably was. Wasn't the thrust of Pablo's reporting that this was all happening in a very, very, like, quiet way? like the idea that the NBA would be able to prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that the money went from X to Y that was not the point at all, yeah. To subvert the salary cap. Like that, the idea the NBA would have some like, you know, legal, legal, you know,

legalish evidence that would prove that. And it would then make them able to punish Steve Ballmer, at least to the extent that maybe he should be punished. I didn't think that was ever the point of the reporting. No. If it were that simple, that would, Bomber just would have left a duffel bag full of cash, like, you know, accidentally put it down by Kauai's car in the parking lot or something, you know. You obviously have to jump through some hoops here. The other reaction came from the... By the way, would that have been more successful if he had just taken $25 million and put it in a duffel bag and left it out by Kauai's car? Like, would that, would there have been any paper trail for that? I don't know. I think Pablo finds out would have been much more for that. so unbelievable that you would just like dismiss it out of hand?

That would have been a big duffel bag, too, $25 million. A dumpster. Got a lot of those Trump bills in there. Come on. There was a reaction from the NBA to ESPN's article. And it was this. ESPN's article regarding the LA Clippers investigation for which the NBA declined to cooperate contains numerous and significant inaccuracies.

The results in this matter will be made clear once the investigation is concluded. When I see a reaction like that, I'm like, okay, what are the numerous and significant inaccuracies? And if you don't want to tell me what they are, then I don't really care about this response. Unless the follow-up tweet is coming five seconds later. Yeah. In the attached article. But like, it doesn't make any sense. Also, I'm not going to be one to line edit this, but the placement of this.

The MDASH is for which the NBA declined to cooperate. I know it doesn't literally say, but makes it feel like they're saying the NBA declined to cooperate in their own investigation as opposed to the ESPN article. Craig Gaines did not copy it at this. No. Put it in that way. But I saw front office sports headline, NBA rips ESPN reporting. Rips, they didn't say anything about it. Yeah.

They just said, that's wrong. Well, if you're not telling me why it's wrong, then sorry, you don't get that headline from me. So both, right. So Pablo wasn't, I mean, didn't get. corrected by this piece, but also this piece is not incorrect on its face because the NBA did not tell us anything. No. And also, like to the first point,

don't you think there's a scenario here where Balmer gets little or no punishment, but the NBA tightens up rules about owners and sponsors and the interplay between stars and sponsors and all that stuff? Yeah. So that something like what is alleged to have happened here will not happen again. I think that, you know, if there's an overall positive narrative of the Adam Silver era,

it's that he's a little bit more transparent, or at least you can tell from the smirk on his face that he's in on the joke with you guys, with the viewers too. Like, he's a little bit more transparent about the reasons of why they change rules and why they make big decisions. I think it would be, yeah, I don't know. I mean, I think it's inevitable that they would be, that they're going to be making changes. they've already made changes to tape over or whatever this put on display is being broken.

But I think even this leaked to ESPN, I think it's all just sort of a, I think that it's just trial balloons to see what punishments they can get away with. Is that too conspiratorial? I don't know. There's a lot of play acting, a lot of K-Fave there.

If you're that mad about you're releasing a statement saying, this article is completely wrong, oh, but we leaked all this to ESPN. so that we could float it out there and see how people reacted. I don't know. I don't think I believe that. But we'll see. Can we talk about Natalie Harp?

Oh, yeah. It took us a while to get here. So when it's the weekend, you know that John Ossif clips will be filling your timeline. Just like that's his role. And he will be photographed in the most dramatic way possible. They should just change MSNNL's weekend lineup to just John Ossoff. Yeah, just a live feature. and before he gets to the arena

Atlanta, it'll just be the podium for several hours. Anyway, I don't know there's any real dramatic connection between John Ossoff and Joel Osteen, but if I just saw John Ossoff in the upcoming shows, I would assume it was a preacher. Doesn't that just have the same vibe as Joel Osteen

where you're just like, what is his name? Oh, is he's a preacher. Has he been featured in a country song? Joel Osteen. Creek Bank, Joel Osteen. Big Red. He's got to be in the lyrics. He's got to be in lyric somewhere. John Asif, the senator from Georgia, running for re-election in Georgia,

had a rally in Atlanta this weekend. And at that rally, David, he said this. And while the sailors on the Lincoln fight his war, while he fruitlessly drains our munitions and oil reserves, the president sleeps through his meetings. He golfs and trades stocks. See, he doesn't. want to do the job. He wants to build his ballroom and travel with Natalie on their apparently

defenseless Flying Palace gifted by the Emir of Qatar. You see like a great speaker, he was working up there to the punchline. It took him a while to get there. Natalie, that is Natalie Harp, is the executive assistant to Donald Trump. She was an anchor at one American news before that. There's been a lot of reporting on her lately from Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan and regime change in particular. Here is Haberman explaining to Anderson Cooper on CNN her reporting on Hart. The separate piece on Natalie Harp, look, we reported in our book that she is completely devoted to Trump. She left letters in his personal spaces during the campaign, one of which said, you are all that matters to me. She, you know, her interest in him in those letters alarmed the Secret Service at the time, as we reported.

Trump has told people around him that, you know, she's the only staffer who loves him as much as his wife and children. You know, then you'll all go off and leave me and make money, and she'll never leave me. She's a taxpayer-paid staffer in the White House. So, you know, I'm not going to get into what Assoff insinuated about her. That goes beyond our reporting, but it is certainly legitimate to ask about staff in the White House. So why would John Ossif mention her name in a speech? One is clearly to pop resistance Twitter. I mean, he's...

Yeah, that's 100% it. What's the rest of the percentages? What's the rest of the callout pie there? Yeah, I was going to say, is that 100%? Pop resistant Twitter? Ooh, he went there. Yeah, it's like... It's like...

J.D. Vance needs to get off the couch and do something. Like, that's 100% with it. Remember that Tim Walls clip that everybody went crazy for? I actually almost asked Walls about that the other day when he was on the press box. And I actually had wrongly remembered it being from his convention speech, but it was from when he got introduced by Comma Heresy. Exactly, exactly.

I heard this, and I come at this to me from this point of view. This is one of those moments where you see the giant divide between people that actually report the news and those of us making comments from the loge level of the media. Uh-huh. Like, it is so easy for the latter group

to be like, why didn't the media just say it? I mean, we all know what's happening here. I mean, why can't somebody just come out and report it? Yeah. You know, why? The media, it's like, guys, everything you know about this woman comes from the media.

Yeah, we wouldn't know who she was without the media. There's a Washington Post story by Isaac Arne. Dundorf and others three years ago that had lots of details about Natalie Harp in it, including her unusual position in the White House, mentioned Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan. I mean, John Ossuff knows about Natalie Hart because of the media.

Right? Like that's what it is. Now, maybe this is a moment where because he's a prominent politician and he mentioned her name aloud, there'll be more coverage of it. People will go look to turn up new facts about her relationship. relationship with Trump, whatever that is. But the reason we know about this person is the media. Like, they are the ones who put these facts.

The idea to turn around is... What's conceivable that he knows about her, I mean, just being a senator, spending time in Washington, whatever, but you're right. He wouldn't have said it without what we know through the media. Yeah, and I don't know that those... I think that's one of those things where I think people like that, honestly, are getting their stuff from Haberman and Swan. Oh, yeah, yeah, probably so.

I mean, that's one of those things where he's like, well, he must know something. Does he? I don't think so. Yeah. I'm guessing he knows it just like we do, which is the media. So yesterday, Asif went on with MSNAL's Jensaki. Jensaki said, why did you mention this particular name? Well, I've heard this particular aide referred to as his security blanket.

And I think we could say that about any number of the senior aides in the White House. They're not telling him what he needs to hear. They're telling him what he wants to hear. And the nation is at war, and we cannot afford that. We need a team in the White House. We need folks of the State Department, at the Defense Department in the United States Congress, who take their jobs seriously. Those sailors out on the Lincoln, they do their jobs with excellence and dedication every single day.

They didn't sign up for luxury. They signed up to defend the country. And the president, surrounded by enablers, in the West Wing, is playing golf, is trading stock, and is decorating his ballroom. See, I was just talking about enablers. Generally speaking, I just happened to mention one of them. Yeah. There was nothing else I was implying by that comment.

It's a great ropo-dope that you see around the political news here more and more frequently, but Asoff might be the first person that you can just like watch the entire wind up and pitch all the way across home plate where you're like, if I say this one thing that can be perceived as being out of pocket, then every question about it is just a setup for my spiel that my, like my, my, like, my, my, pre-recorded spiel about how corrupt Trump is, right? He sounded like he was giving a speech in that interview. Yeah, it's exactly right. It's like if I can get him to ask this, then I can say all this stuff. It opens up the door a little bit.

Or a lot in that case. I mean, listen, it's obviously like he knew what he was implying. Everybody, the entire intended audience know exactly what he's implying. The response by Republicans at large has been frankly shocking, because if you don't understand how to just like just get out of your opponent's way. sometimes. You know, and all he said was he likes to fly on the plane with Natalie, right? I mean, it's just like, dude, if you guys were recording over there,

and you're like, oh, there's David, just recording in that studio with Remy. I wouldn't, it wouldn't be a big deal. But if I was like, why do you talk about me and Remy like that? Then you start wondering, right? Like, that's why you would, that's when your eyebrows would go up. So, yeah, they're making, I mean, the Republicans are the ones making this into an issue. and all the responses from the left of like, you're not allowed to say anything

after however many years of Donald Trump is that's entirely true, but I don't think it really matters that much. So, yeah, I mean, I think more than anything to him, it's like we've seen this before, it's the idea is that it's a signal to the base that he's willing to go there, right? That he's willing to take the gloves off

and just like fight with Trump or with whoever's in his way to get to the White House. Yes. Because he's not going to necessarily have the most lefty politics of all those people in the field. But if he seems like the one who's most ready to brawl, then that'll cover a lot of those gaps. We want a fighter. Yeah. It may be a fighter like AOC, but it may be a fighter like John Awesome, but it has to be a fighter.

Yeah. It all goes back to that Michelle Obama, they go low, we go high. Yeah. Ever since Democrats lost the 2024 election, like, actually, like, actually, we want to go low. Trump goes low and we want to go low We do not want to take that golf club out of the back Yeah And as you say you just got to do a winking rabbit

Oh he'll go there Yeah, he'll go he'll go low He won't he won't worry about that So maybe he'll be our nominee By the way Trump got asked us about this by CNN's Kristen Holmes Trump pivoted pretty quickly To home renovation as Trump often does but then the

Twitter account Rapid Response 47 tweeted this at Holmes Someday your children will come across your disgusting and inhumane question they will be sickened

and embarrassed to have a parent be so callous and vindictive it's quite troubling Yeah Your government at work for you

Yep with that tweet All right Before we go An absolutely crazy book story This comes from 404 media

I saw all the tweets about this yesterday and I was mesmerized and then I read the story, which is by Emmanuel Mayberg, and I was even more mesmeras. I'll read you a few paragraphs here. Amazon is buying massive quantities of books, scanning them for AI training data and destroying them in the process. Yeah.

A 404 media investigation was able to reveal Amazon's book buying operation, which hasn't been previously reported by placing a track. tracking device in a rare book we suspected would be acquired by an AI company for training data and then following it around the country to its final destination That final destination David was an Amazon warehouse in Las Vegas, Nevada Amazon employees who work at this location say all they do is receive massive shipments of printed books Which they then cut the bindings off in order to scan the books more quickly the printed book is destroyed in the process This is the kicker the logo of the Amazon team that works at this warehouse called VGT3 is a dinosaur brandishing its teeth and with a book in its hands.

Just like the Bill Rasmussen tribute being cut off by the start of the Pat McAfee show, sometimes they do all the work for you. Yeah. You know, it's funny. Was it last week that we were talking about, that's what the book is you bought over and over again, regardless of whether or not you had it? What I was talking about this story is like I used to work at a small press that we published. Charles Portis's backlist or whatever. And that's actually the reason why, like the inception of this thing.

The reason why there are like 10 copies, like first edition copies of Dog of the South sitting around the office is because if you're, I know it sounds terrible. When you're reprinting an old book, one of the ways to do it is to chop off the spine and scan in the pages and then you just get, that's what you print from.

Those become the new plates. You don't, just because you bought the rights to it, doesn't mean you get the printer's plates from the old place, you know? You could also scan it. I mean, you can scan it directly to PDF and you literally run with those plates. You can scan it, reset it. You know, now it's, of course, that stuff's super easy. But like 15 years ago, even the idea of like scanning it without taking the book apart

would have been prohibitive. I guess that kind of goes without saying. But the craziest part of me, this whole story to me, is that they haven't figured out, the AI companies haven't figured out a better way to do without killing the books. What I'm trying to say is it's sort of an inconsequential part to the story. I say this is someone who treasures the life of books like they're a living thing. But all they would have had to do is figuring a way to scan the books without destroying them. And I feel like so much of this animosity would go out the window.

Am I crazy? The destruction of the books makes this extra insane. Wouldn't it be so much different if it was like, we scanned all the pages of this book and then we donated it to a library? Like I feel like this is like this is like Shark Tank 101. It's just like just have there be a happy ending just tied on to the end. Yeah, it does give it the extra oof. You're right. I mean, the fact that AI.

How much would it cause Google to invent the book not the book like the page opening machine? It would have been nothing. The page opening machine. Yeah. I mean this is and what's interesting about this too from an AI perspective is so AI wants to scan everything. But books, especially old rare books. remain not on the internet. There's not an efficient way to do that.

And that's part of what made this investigation so fascinating. I'll read you one more sentence here. In July, one bookseller told me they received a very large order of around 1,000 books on Biblio, which is a used book marketplace. The seller agreed to put an Apple Airtag in. And so they are ordering tons and tons of books. And if you ever do research,

and you've recently done it for a book of your own, you know that stuff in books is often the stuff people don't know because it's not like there's a whole kind of journalist who is so expert at searching databases, Google, everything else. But then there's stuff in books that can only be found by actually reading a book. Yeah.

So what this AI is doing is trying to collapse that distinction. We will buy the books, the rare books, we will scan them, and then we will destroy it. Adding an extra layer to the story. Yeah. All those books that were never available on Google Books, books when we were coming up, all the newspapers that were never available on newspapers.com.

Now that the AIs need them, they will be getting scanned. Thank you very much. Check out Emmanuel Mayberg's story on 404 Media. All right, it is time for a feature that will never be destroyed that will always be donated to a local library. It's time for David Shoemaker guesses the Strain Pun headline. Yeah. Our last headline about the new instrument that actors are playing in movies was

such a lot to my little friend. Very good. Today's headline comes from alert listener Michael Izzo. It's from the Hollywood Reporter. By the way, I've been reading the Hollywood Reporter in analog form recently. So much good stuff in a Hollywood reporter. So much good stuff.

Isn't that the craziest, like the recurring feeling in modern media is just when you're reading a print magazine or print newspaper and just being like, oh, yeah, all the stuff that I don't normally get my digital intake is the best part. Yes, I'm learning things. Yeah. That weren't in my Twitter feed.

This piece was by Mikey O'Connell, and it's about the rise of a particular kind of show called The White Wine Thriller. Mm-hmm. A white wine thriller, David, is a show like Big Little Lies or the Perfect Couple. Yeah. It's defined in here is dark, but not too dark.

The body count is kept low. A few murders, nothing too graphic. That's from O'Connell's piece. So I want you to think of white wines and think of filming white wine thrillers as you ponder. What was the Hollywood Reporter's Strain Punt headline? Is it, this isn't the best white wine one. Is it sprits and glamour? That's funny.

No. Chardonnay. You and I are such a wine snob, so this should be an easy one for us. I'll give you a little help here. Savagnon. Yeah, Savagnan, Blanc. Okay, so let's go with Blanc. What is it about filming them?

Yes, we're filming them. We are putting them before the camera. You're doing this to the Blancs. We are... Why am I totally missing this? We are... I am blanking the movie. I am...

Making the movie? No, no. No. No. What is it? I have no idea. Shooting. We are shooting blonks.

Oh, shooting blonks. Shooting blunts. Yeah, it's too many degrees away from me. That is a good one, though. Shooting blanks, he is David Shoemaker. I'm Brian Curtis. Production magic. By Isaiah Blakely and John Jones.

What do we have to plug here, David? How about my interview on Friday with California Senator Adam Schiff? We talked about everything from the midterm. to Iran, to J.D. Vance. He even made a ringer list of his favorite movies because he's a movie guy and was writing screenplays of his own for a while, which we also talked about.

One movie that came up that I don't think has ever been mentioned on the press box before, Joe versus the Volcano. In 1990, Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan. So I watched it in preparation because his staff told me he liked it. That's a good movie. Yeah.

I saw that with my mom in the theater in 1990. I was about to say, I saw that in the theater too, although I can't remember who I was with. I should be able to remember that. It's a kind of movie you might have gotten taken to with like a kids movie because Tom Hanks was sort of in the zone.

And the volcano, yes. I mean, just the presence of a volcano, of a man fighting a volcano. This was my, this is standard Saturday morning cartoon fair. It was a real 80s, 90s thing to just be taken to movies that looked like they were appropriate

for children but really weren't. I remember a birthday party. We all went to big, and like there are parts of big that are very understandable to kids and they're parts of things a little bit too old for kids not being.

That was, we lost that in the, like it used to be, not only would you go to Blockbuster Rental or whatever and just come back with the box it just said the title of the movie on it, like no, I mean, I know there's display covers. A smiling actor going like. Yeah, but you don't even know.

It's just the Blockbuster was just the title. The Blue and White Box, yeah. So the reverse would happen at my house. My dad would come home and just be like, look, I got a new movie called Beethoven. I think it's a biography. I think it's a biopic of the classical composer, like, nope, that's about a dog.

Oh, man, that's funny. But yeah, it was, but that, yeah, that sort of stuff would happen a lot. Just things that looked vaguely like kids' movies were just assumed to be kids' movies, and it took a long time for it to recategorize. It truly did. Joe versus the volcano,

definitely 100% perceived as a kid's movie at the time. Mm-hmm. It absolutely was. Anything with volcanoes, quicksand, swinging from vines, these are all kid tropes. Yeah, it's like an adventure movie. Yeah. We're on Instagram at

Pressbox Ringer. Pressbox Ringer at gmail.com if you want to contact us, David, I will see you next Tuesday with more lukewarm takes about the meeting. See you later, Brian.