The Press Box - Will Troy Aikman Have a TV Job Next Year? Plus, Election Madness in Ohio.

Episode Date: October 22, 2026

Bryan Curtis and David Shoemaker break down CBS’s decision to elevate J.J. Watt to its top NFL broadcast team alongside Jim Nantz, assess Watt’s development as an analyst, and consider what the network shuffle could mean for Troy Aikman’s future in the booth. They also examine an increasingly ugly Ohio governor’s race, the wider midterm media narrative (16:31), and Blake Griffin’s new media-criticism show, 'The Step Back,' including whether its John Oliver-inspired format makes the best use of Griffin’s perspective as a former player (37:58). And don't forget to subscribe to Bryan's newsletter ⁠⁠⁠⁠here⁠⁠⁠⁠! Hosts: Bryan Curtis and David Shoemaker Producers: Jon Jones, Steve Ahlman, and Ben Cruz Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Product availability varies by Regency App for details. This episode is brought to by Google Pixel. at the game, your kids party or a wedding, you want to capture the moment, but you also want to stay present. So you should probably check out Google Pixel 11 Pro with just one tap, magic capture on Google Pixel 11 Pro captures both video and high quality photos, then finds the best ones. So you can get back to what's important. Ask more of your phone. Try the Google Pixel 11 Pro. Check it out at store.gookle.com. David? Yes. That's a Halloween costume coming along. Oh, it's coming. I got several.

in the works and my press box costume, it's really coming together. Without telling the audience what we're doing, we should note that we do have some Halloween costumes planned. Not exactly the literary Halloween costume that we discussed on previous episodes, but it's a media-centric Halloween costume. Yes. Yeah, we will both be going as Ted Turner. A little throwback.

He with a yachtsman's hat. or a nice wig and mustache. There will be wigs involved. You will see the Brian and David Halloween costumes next Thursday on the press box. Trust me, it's going to be something else. If it works, we'll be wearing wigs every week for now. We are. You and I could both use it, I think.

Some big news this morning, David, from the world of sports TV. CBS announced that JJ Watt, who has been auditioning for the number one announcing job next to Jim Nance, has got that number one job. The network announced they've signed Watt to a new multi-year agreement. He's going to be calling games with Nance and Tracy Wolfson going forward, including the Super Bowl next season. Now, that's interesting in its own right.

The other thing that's interesting about that little news item is that barring something very unexpected, Troy Aitman isn't going to be calling NFL games next year. Let's go through the musical chairs here. Right. Fox, Tom Brady. NBC, Chris Collins, who has got the number one job. CBS is now what? So that leaves only two spots.

ESPN, and we know what's happening there at the most. Seems unlikely. Go on, yeah. Seems very unlikely. And then Amazon, where Kirk Herbstree is signed to that weird, we'd love you back unless we get someone else deal. I guess theoretically Troy could be someone else. He feels unlikely, right? Like, Troy is as famous and as good as he is doesn't seem like the high profile upgrade over Herbie, right?

I mean, he doesn't quite have, like, the excitement factor, I guess. Well, I don't know if we're saying that because of his stature. Are we saying that just because he's more downbeat than Herbys? Yeah, just and not like, not fresh, I guess. It would be the thing. What if I told you Al Michaels retires after this season? Ion Eagle starts calling Thursday night football, and I could give you Ian Eagle and Trey-Akman?

I think I said before that Herb Street, would be rather comfortable as part of a three-man booth. And it's not like Troy chews up the scenery. So maybe you got both of them in there. I don't see three-man booths, man, man. No, not for these guys. I know you hate the idea. No, but yeah.

Not aesthetically. I mean, I don't think they would agree to that. Yeah. Remember Troy and Chris Collinsworth in a three-man booth early in both of their careers? And it was like, actually, we went our own booth. And we're good enough to call. by ourselves. But Collinsworth and Troy, both of their like,

but they're, you know, differing draws. It's like you're sitting in the middle of a conversation at a bar or something, you know, in Texas where we're from. It might have been too much, too much, too much broke. But, but yeah, it's a, it's, I think you're right, actually, that Troy and Eagle feel like, you know, that A announced team together in a way that maybe Herb Street doesn't in that spot. It feels like a big crew.

Yeah. Troy did talk to Amazon four years ago when he had that out in his contract with Fox. There was always a sense that maybe he would go to Amazon on Thursday night and still do the Sunday games for Fox or at least the biggest Sunday games for Fox. He's going to kind of double dip and that would help him get the Tony Romo money, which everybody was chasing back in 2022. So it would be funny to think of him winding up there after all. this. Now, that does not come with the Super Bowl. It's a different job. The games, I think, on balance have gotten a little better than they were early on. But it's still Thursday night football. It's not Sunday at 425 Eastern Time football. Well, the alternative would be not having a job,

which would also not come with the Super Bowl. So, I mean, listen, I understand the Super Bowl thing. The way that you talk about it all, it's always conveys this great esteem. which is, I'm sure, significant to these people who this is their career. But, you know, if someone said that, like, you know, you take this job and, like, one out of every four years, they send you on a cruise or something. It's like, I'm not taking the job. I'm not saying yes or no because of the cruise, right? I'm deciding whether or not I want the job.

So you're saying 100 million people watching you on television is like taking a cruise? I'm just saying, it's a perk. Is it a nice thing? With the cool water slides or what are we talking about here? I can bring my family. That's actually, that might make it worthwhile. Super Bowl's coming. A big deal.

No, it is a big deal. Yeah, sure. I think that that, you know, that makes a lot of sense for him to go to Amazon. But, yeah, you know, not everybody gets to call a Super Bowl. For all he knows, he could take a job. If he got offered a job at one of the Super Bowl having networks, he could be out of a job again by the time the Super Bowl came back around. So, you know, it's kind of a, it's a strange bet, you know?

The thing is with Amazon, we're guessing because we don't know who's on that list. Andrew Marchand says, you know, it's more of a Sean McVeigh kind of idea. Like if McVeigh were to retire from the Rams, as he's always threatening to do, Amazon would be all over him. Yeah. I'm not sure Troikman's on their list or not. Well, it's a little like the Madden thing way back when. It's like you use those people to convey gravity or to significance onto the other guy in the booth if it's necessary.

Obviously, you don't need Troy to give Al Michaels any street cred or whatever. But like to, you know, to put Iron Eagle in that role as in a sort of big time way, it makes a little sense. to put Troy next to him. Yeah, and it's funny because back in 2022, what Amazon wanted to do was just convey bigness to the whole operation.

Sure. Say, hey, you know, we got Thursday Night Football, we're new, we're a streamer. That's like Fox, that's like Fox hiring Madden and Pat.

Absolutely. Absolutely. Now, you did say something interesting there, which is Troy not having a job. Here's something I don't totally understand about him.

And this is just a psychological thing or an idea about where he is in his career. I know he likes calling games. I'm sure he likes making somewhere around $17 million a year to call games, because who wouldn't. I know he likes being close to football. Yeah. But if you told him, hey,

whatever gig is around the corner is not the gig that you've had basically continuously since 2002. Mm-hmm. Does he really still want to call games? I don't know. I feel like I, I mean, I very clearly remember a podcast interview that he did. And I don't remember if it was Bill or somebody else several years ago where he talked about the amount of time he spends, you know, like staying up on things and traveling and everything else and the way that bounces out with his family life. So I don't feel like I can answer with confidence because I don't remember the specific answer.

But it's a good question. I mean, obviously there's an argument. And we see this over and over again. with coaches and people who do commentary in sports is that you don't want to be away from the game. Some people are like, I'm happy to take a year off, and some people I think are probably correctly,

like one year off and I'm a dinosaur. You know, like I won't understand playbooks. I'll be forgotten by the fans or by the people that matter, you know, like. And so, yeah, I'm sure everybody has a different point of view for the whole thing. I don't know, I have a question. Let's just say he doesn't get a job.

what would the what would the what would be the the best filler job if you if you wanted to say in like what is the troy what does the troy eggman podcast look like or what does the troy eggman youtube show look like to you well we just did cowboys member berries on the netflix doc with jerry jones so we've probably had our fill of the 90s cowboys i think you'd have to have like a podcast where somebody's just teeing him up yeah and not only letting him do like here's some cool things that happened in my career but just feel free to lay out quarterbacks on this podcast like you do when you see crappy football being played on Monday nights. Do you want it to be like one of these retired wrestler podcast or they just tell stories about the old days and criticize the current players? The Troy-Henman-Shood interview? Yeah, can we get Conrad Thompson as the host of this show? I think Conrad would do a fabulous job with Troy Ackman.

We can hook those two up. We can, I'd love to do that. We've got a couple of reports this week about the Joe and Troy relationship One was from Dylan Byers and Puck, which I would recommend you reading. The other, very oddly, came from In Touch Weekly. I'm totally sure what In Touch Weekly is, and I'm not sure if I should be trusting In Touch Weekly when it comes to sports broadcasting news. But that's the thing that got aggregated.

I also want to talk about JJ Watt for a second, because this is a big vote of confidence by CBS for him. They picked him, which I should say David Burson, who now runs CBS sports or Skydance Sports, picked him, put him on the pregame show, and then last year, in what looks like a very, very prescient move, took him off the pregame and put him in the number two booth.

Yeah. When I watch him with Jim Nance on Sundays, I'm like, I can see a number one announcer there. Sure. I don't know if he's going to get there. It's a little bit like looking at, like looking at a rookie quarterback and trying to project and saying like,

is this like Drake May, right? Is this going to be kind of cool and exciting? And then always kind of cool and exciting or is this truly going to be great? I don't know that I have a take on that yet because I can see the potential, though. I'll do you one better. When you look at a rookie quarterback, you're trying to see your greatness, but you're also trying to see greatness on the timeline of the rookie contract.

You know, it's like it really only works if you can get to the sewer. before you have to start paying him ungodly amounts of money every year. With a football, with a football color guy, it's like you have to be great and also on the timeline that you're not so far away from the game that you don't have any connection to it anymore. So really, it's like, can you be great within three years? You know, and that's why we jumped out of her chairs at Tony Romo, you know, Tony Romo sat down because not only was he really good, but he like, like, he was fresh out of the, out of the

workout room, right? Like, he knew every play before it was called on both sides of the. the ball. And it's a real kind of pressure cooker situation. I don't know. I think Watts really good. And I certainly think that in a, you know, we touched on some of this last time and not just the fact that he's younger, but he's just got a lot more name recognition than

some of the other dudes in that role, you know, for younger fans or whatever else. I think that that helps with, you know, when you're doing the up fronts or whatever the hell networks do these days, you know, he's just got, he's got that sort of that he's got a certain amount of pop cultural credibility. And he's also very good at his job. You know, he seems to take it very, very seriously. Definitely takes it very seriously. He's a little more low-key than, like, Tom Brady was his rookie year.

When I heard Tom Brady, I was like, okay, you just need to slow down. Yeah. You need to say less. You need to pick your spots a little bit more. The energy is good. The enthusiasm's there, but it all felt like it was happening fast and he was kind of all over the place. With Watt, I feel like he's totally in control. He understands what he's doing. It feels like the machinery of broadcasting is not too much for him. Of course, he did last year with

Ian Eagle, the aforementioned. But at the same time, I'm like, sometimes I just want more performance from him. Like, this television, you just got to be big now. There are moments when the game's exciting and you need to grow in size without screaming or yelling, which he's done a little bit of. You just need to like, we need to feel the game through you because that's what we did through Tony Romo for all those years.

For sure. I mean, you talk about guys like, like Troy Aikman, who's reserved in his own way and Joe Buck, but there's an element to them, the way they call games. It's like, I don't know if they turn down the volume in their headsets,

but they're almost, they almost are half shouting, like an old school broadcast, right? Where you're trying to speak up over the crowd noise around you or whatever. and Watts's the other end of the spectrum. Watts just, like, you know, got his $10,000 headphones on and can't hear a thing and he's just speaking, you know, he's just speaking in a cool whisper half the time, you know,

just assuming you can hear him. And there's some power to that, but you're right. He doesn't need a little bit more of an electric shock in his chair or something. I got an interesting text from my friend Jake Kemp, who's a podcast host in Dallas, hosts the excellent Dumb Zone podcast and did sports radio there for years. and he said this about JJ Watt. He said, it's almost like he's the incredible Hulk,

but he can't decide whether he should be the Hulk or Bruce Banner. You have this big guy, a lineman, the rare lineman in a huge spot. And it's like, should I be the big old tough, you know, lovable lug? Or should I be the smart X's and O's Professor football? Yeah. And it feels like he is caught between those two personalities. I thought that was such a good way to put it. Because he is really good.

Like, he can diagnose a play just like Greg Olson can diagnose a play or Tom Brady can diagnose a play. But there are times when it feels like he just doesn't quite know which personality to embrace or how to fit them together. And that feels like the next step for him, too, just finding his lane in broadcast. For comic nerd continuity's sake, there was a period where there have been several periods with the Hulk is both strong and in. intelligent. I believe Mr. Fixit was the first one when he was gray. But yeah, it can happen is what I'm saying.

I love you so much that you actually knew what history of comic, what period of comic books brought those two things together. David knows just the right reference for what J.J. Watt can be as an announcer. Also breaking Jim Nance's wrist the other day or nearly doing so. It's a vote for the Hulk. Rather than Pruse. Anyway, go get him J.J. Watt. But coming up on the press box, David, it's 12 days, 12 days until the midterms. And we must ask, what the hell is going on in Ohio? Plus, Blake Griffin is trying to be John Oliver. How's that working out? All that much more on the press box, a part of the ringer podcast network.

Hello, media consumers. It's Brian Curtis. It's David Shoemaker. It's producers, John Jones and Steve Allman. Who is joining our press box podcast. Welcome, Steve, and thank you for everything in advance. David, when we get this close to the election, we inevitably have two news cycles. News cycle number one is the polls are tightening.

You might have seen that over the last few days. Inevitable news cycle number two is things are getting ugly. Yeah. And let me tell you in Ohio, they actually are getting ugly. Amy Acton is running for governor of that state against Vivek Ramoswamy. On Monday, a pro-Romiswami ad popped up featuring Amy Acton's mother, Donna Arthur. Here is a little bit of that ad. I love my daughter, but when I saw her lying about her opponent,

it's not easy for a mother to say this, but Amy has a serious problem. She is a liar. She lies about her past. She says she grew up living in a tent. None of that is true. She's lied her entire life. My daughter needs help. And she can't help you if she needs help herself.

So that is different. Mm-hmm. There's also some essential backstory here. Amy Acton and her mother have been estranged since 1978. Yeah. The New York Times says that according to a newspaper report at the time, Dr. Acton's stepfather was charged with raping her in 1978. The Times continues that the Acton campaign produced documents showing that Dr. Acton's stepfather pleaded not guilty,

was indicted by a grand jury, and fled the state before trial. Dot, dot, dot, dot. He died in Pennsylvania in 2004. Horrific stuff. Acton's brother, Phil Stearns, said this, our birth mother stayed married to Amy's rapist until he died. Acton's campaign also put out an ad featuring Stearns. Here's a little bit of that. I received a lot of abuse, but Amy always got the worst of it.

She continued to receive that abuse because she knew she had to protect me from that. And that if she hadn't done that, who knows where I would have ended up. And she's 11 and 12 years old. and to think that that's somehow a talking point. Shaman Vivek, it's the contempt he has for Amy is the contempt he has for Ohio. He's not fit to lead. When I first saw this story, David, I thought,

okay, this is going to be one of those ads that was put out by a super PAC that Ramos Swaming and his team is going to say, hey, you know what, we didn't do this. This isn't our thing. It's just out there. What's been so shocking is that Ramoswami did not distance himself from it.

No. He has embraced it. And according to Axios is putting $4 million into running this ad in Ohio. I don't even know if it's worth asking why he's doing this. But if we do ask the question, the answer starts with the fact that he's losing this election. Am I right? Yes, that is correct. I mean, I think you could, it's almost a Mug's game to ask why Ramoswami is doing.

doing fill in the blank at any point over the last five years. It's everything seems so hilariously wrongheaded. Remember, you only took on this man, this role when he was sort of unceremoniously booted from the unceremonious Doge department and the, when Trump was reelected. This seemed like the kind of fallback plan. And then now it's like just blowing up in his face too. I mean, listen, for better or worse, he's always had a tough time being real partisan. And so getting in the mud like this just really doesn't suit him.

And I'm not saying it's like a moral positive for a less, for a more unsavory character, but at least it like fits in with the profile you're trying to draw a little bit more. This just seems like so out of character from this like smiley technocrat. And it just shows it just makes him feel so much more morally corrupt, you know, just so bereft of any sort of guiding principle to be running an ad like this. Speaking of bereft, we should also note that Vice President J.D. Vance

didn't distance himself from this ad either. Oh, God. Said, I'm a little bit disgusted when I see Republicans across the country who are whining more about that advertisement than they are about what the congressional Democrats and other Democrats want to do to the United States of America.

I don't know. I mean, I'm sure there's some cheerleaders in his life. meaning speaking of J.D. Vance, I'm sure there's some people that are out there that are slapping him on the back and telling him he's out there, he's the smartest guy in the room and he's doing the right thing. I don't know why he decided being like deflector in chief was the right job for him. But if you read the, I mean, listen to what he said. He basically just says, I don't know why everybody's so offended about this ad that's calling Amy Acton a liar. Like it refuses to engage in the substance like he does with every single argument that he makes on some sort of controversial decision by the Trump administration. He refuses to engage in the actual facts of the matter, finds one way to describe the thing that makes it seem unobjectionable, and I guess hopes that the people listening to him won't know the difference, or at least knows that his entire base is so, is so much more interested in having a line of argument

than having the truth, that they're willing to swallow it up and retweet it, you know? It's, I mean, I guarantee that going out there, I mean, and pretending that the thing isn't the thing is not going to get him elected president when he runs in a couple years, right? Like, it's just the absence of content is not content. There's something about him that's just so,

I am trying to win the debate on points, or I'm trying not to lose the debate on points. Yeah, it's a debate club tactic. Yeah, I'm just trying to say a thing that is true and is unobjectionable as opposed to actually dealing with the substance. It's just so awful. He's also trying to, trying to figure out a way to be the thinking man's Donald Trump.

Like, how can I deny reality but still engage in like cogent arguments, even if they're not moral, even if they're not like intellectually serious? And it's not going to ever work. No. It just, it feels just, I mean, you know, more broadly, he's just tried on so many personalities, partly at a necessity because he is Donald Trump's vice president. And every day is a new, you know, there's every day requires something. different, but man, I mean, just seeing him out on the stump and, you know, being like,

you know, why are we so disgusted by this? Why can't we just try to beat the Democrats? Come on. I mean, as long as we're just like tearing into J.D. Vance, can we, I mean, talking about trying on all these different things. Is there anything more ridiculous than this man that wears a beard but has a mustache shaved down almost to the skin? Like he's some sort of like gilded age barren. Like, it's just like, finally, we found what's really. wrong with J.D. Vans. He refuses to be a beardy guy, but he refuses to go all in on it. He doesn't want to, for some reason, he's just like, it's the, it's the, you know, I want to wear a beard,

but I still want to be able to wash my face. Like, no, you got to buy into the beard, man. You got, you got to be willing to have that upper lip stink if you really want to do it. David is truly a moral force here on the press box. Yeah. Telling people what they should, uh, how they should live and how they should act in American politics. Hold music. Not what you want to hear when a pipe dispersed and your basement is flooding. That's why intact insurance answers 2 million claim calls per year within 20 seconds. So instead of hearing this lovely track, you'll hear this in seconds.

Hello, intact insurance. Unlock unlimited free grocery delivery with PC Express Pass. Shop online and get the same low No Frills prices delivered. Get your first year of PC Express Pass for just $2.50 a month. Learn more at nofrills.ca. This episode is brought to you by Wild Horse 9, only in theaters November 6th. Earning rave reviews at the Toronto International Film Festival, don't miss this wildly entertaining movie that critics are calling easily one of the best films of the year.

Starring John Malkovich, Sam Rockwell, Steve Bouchemmy, Parker Posey, and Tom Waits, and written and directed by Academy Award winner Martin McDonough. See Wild Horse 9, only in theaters, November 6th. Elsewhere in Ohio, David, Donald Trump. has been talking about Senator John Houston's ass. This soundbite, one of many, was from Tuesday. So he's over here, I'm over here, and I'm studying his body. I've never studied the body of a man before.

It's not my thing. Nothing wrong with it, of course. Nothing. I always proceeded by saying nothing wrong, but it's never been my thing, to be honest with you. But I looked at his ass. and then I looked at his legs and I said his ass is shit it's like

it's like a pile of muscle then I looked at his legs and I said man his feet are big then I looked at his shoulders and I tapped him on the shoulder and it actually hurt my hand it was like a piece of steel

nice to see Donald Trump recycling the Seinfeld not that there's anything wrong with that jokes from a million years ago I don't know. Isn't this like Jerry Jones talking about like Emmett Smith's like hindquarters or something at great length? Wasn't that a big thing?

There was a weird one. Yeah. And similar, similar vibes for sure. By the way, I love that the whole Trump thing starts with, and I don't normally look this way, in case you haven't been paying attention.

And I assume most of the Trump fans are, he does look around at men's asses all the time. Yes. Like he's constantly complimenting men on their physiques, on their looks, on their whatever. I think Ashley Parker did a whole big thing about this in The Atlantic. That's definitely worth looking at just for the chuckles. But this has definitely become an increasingly significant obsession with Donald Trump.

It was a great example of what if Biden had done this several days in a row? What kind of conversation would be having? I know, I know, double standard, all that kind of stuff. I get it. But I'm just like, what would we do with that if this were any other president than Donald Trump who had multiple news cycles late in a midterm election that he needs to win. I don't think, I think once he gets up there, there's not any tether to the talking points or reality or whatever anymore.

He's just riffing, you know? It's the older he gets. The we've got, the less the riff really has any bearing on reality. I mean, I don't know what your algorithm is looking like, but I'm constantly amused by these, by these like Twitter doctors who are out there saying like every time he does something like this is like, this is, this is. just clear evidence of whatever sort of dementia I'm going to diagnose him with today. You know, it's like, and every, every weird mental lapse is, you know, part of the bullet point of,

you know, why we should remove this man as president. Although I will say the weird episode of him waving at nobody on the way to the helicopter the other day. I mean, thank goodness he's not going to get to run for reelection because that would, for his sake, because that would be the entire ad campaign, just a slow pan back to show him waving at nobody, that's like all you would ever need in the world. That's such a killer ad.

And just absolutely brilliant ruthlessness by whoever was operating the camera right there. I mean, just incredible stuff. Because you've seen him do it before, right? But to have it like that where he's waving it literally just a yard is just incredible. And when you combine that with the five days of Katie Zachariah

who was disappeared immediately after we did our segment on Thursday, the other internecine White House feuds, the deal with Russia, the inability to end the war with Iran. It's just like, again, it's almost like he's trying to lose on purpose. Almost.

Yeah, except for the fact that he's talking about, you know, $5,000 checks after the election, which I know are their own can of worms. He's talking about oil prices coming down after the midterms. There is a report today that he's already talking to, Netanyahu about re-escalating the war in Iran after the midterm. So there's clearly things that he, like, there are clearly indicators that he has an idea of what's on the other side of the midterms, right?

Like, he's making plans based on the existence of the midterm elections. So it's, he's cognizant that they exist and that there is a political expedience to something, you know, as it relates to them. He's out there on the road to try to, I mean, he had a midterm convention to try to drum up excitement about that. I mean, he knows that they matter, but it does feel like the wheels are, I mean, it sounds so, it sounds so redundant, even though it's, the wheels do feel like they're off more than ever before here. It feels like if he were truly trying to lose this election, he wouldn't be doing all that much differently. Correct. That's how I'd put it. If you,

if you're, if you're, if you're, if you're believed the conspiracy theory that he's already planning for like, to like declare martial law or to dispute the results of the election, maybe there's some psychological explanation, like he's just real excited to get those like, to like disqualify states votes or whatever when the results come in. He's just like, he's already,

he's already got the game plan and he just wants to do it even if it's not a best case scenario. Well, we need to have some bad results on the board so we have some stuff to dispute. Exactly. If Mike Rogers wins outright, what am I going to do?

And you know, part of the argument's going to be, I was out there on the road for all these candidates. It is, and look at the past, it's impossible for me to be on the road and not have that not lead to an overwhelming victory, right? That's why the votes are not going to count. I was thinking the other day about something you and I talked about a couple weeks ago,

which is if you are a reporter and you're trying to be even-handed, you're trying to look at the positive and the negative for both parties, what is the negative story you'd write about concerning the Democrats right now? what is the on the other hand story where you'd look around and say look all the news isn't great for the Democrats well i mean i don't know maybe this is too zoomed out for you but i do think that there's a problem on all of these wave elections where almost inherently when you win by a lot the tent gets too big to govern effectively or at least govern in a way that makes everybody happy right um and i think that as like despicable as some of the so-called, you know, liberals who are out there running down

El-Sayed every chance they get or, like, questioning his electability. I do think that that's, I do think that there is like an actual like second degree argument here where it's like, okay, he's going to get elected, but then like who's going to really have the reins in Washington? So you go back to the old war for the soul of the Democratic Party. Yeah. Which we talked a lot about during the primaries, which, now has kind of been pushed to the side, but this is in the event that El Sayed is in the Senate

and also Roy Cooper's in the Senate. And you just tee it up again for not only control of the party, but then who becomes the eventual nominee in 2020. I mean, I think that, I mean, I believe that the L-Sai bloc more or less has control of the soul of the Democratic Party. The question is whether or not the establishment members of the Democratic Party, the dynos, as some would call them, will allow anything significant to change, you know, or allow that to have any control. And I think that's the sort of thing that a presidential election sorts out.

You know, a midterm election, not so much. But what else do you criticize the Democrats for right now? I mean, I certainly think that the more interesting arguments are like, how wrong are these polls or how right are these polls? It could be very different when we're talking about a week of half. We have Wedgewood, whatever polling, the second polling group in the past couple of months to come out

and say we're full of shit. That was amazing. And people are already blaming them on Elsaid winning the primary. Mallory McMorro had long tweets. Yeah. I think she was weirdly more reserved than some of the people speaking on her behalf, or speaking on, well, whatever, I'll leave that aside. But the polling could be really wrong.

I don't think anybody knows how to poll anymore. You know, this is election number five, where this is the case, right? we're about a decade into nobody knows how to poll. And even the pollsters themselves are saying Trump voters aren't answering the phone or they're pretending they're not Trump voters or like it's impossible to get a real read on what everybody's going to do.

There's also the wonderful refrain of like people who pretend they're not Trump voters but actually are. So we don't really know where this is going to go. I think that if anything, if I was going to criticize the Democrats, I would just hold a lot of that critique can reserve to see what actually happens on election day because it might end up that like all this

was total hot air and the situation is much more dire than anybody realized and no one on the ground was smart enough to see it coming yeah i mean that's that's the thing we can tell ourselves lots of different stories on november 4th now they're campaigning on an on a national way as if the polls are even or are erring on the other in the other direction which is to say like they feel like mississippi is open ground right now you know it's like kansas South Carolina. South Carolina, yeah, it's kind of crazy. So, you know, when you're dropping a lot of money there,

if the decision, if it turns out that decision was made not based on polls, but to project some sort of dominance, that's a pretty sketchy decision too. I'm not saying that's what the case is, but there's a lot more of this. I don't know. Do you think that there's a reason to critique of the Democrats right now that's not just punting the ball off into the future like I want to do?

I don't know what the non-punt one is, because I think if, you know, James Tala Rica loses in Texas, there will certainly be a, if not now, when can the Democrats win a statewide election in Texas, right? We can look at individual polls like that. And that'll be another, or individual elections. That'll be another poll story, too, because Tala Rika has led almost every single poll in that race. Yeah. So, but that feels like stuff you and I are going to be talking about post-election rather than they're making bad decisions of the wrong decisions right now.

And again, it feels like, you know, if El Cahed gets over the finish line and Peggy Flandigan, who's in a weirdly close race and Minnesota gets over the finish line, Troy Jackson wins in Maine, then a lot of these arguments are going to be tabled or we'll just replace them with new ones. Yeah, I don't think that there, I think if anything, and this is the most pie in the sky thing I could ever say, there's not a, there's not a central, there's not like a central face of the Democratic Party. And I don't think that there's a lot of, there's probably a really strong argument that there should not. be because again, that's what like primaries are for. But, um, but, you know, the congressional leadership, uh, is, is not great, especially speaking, you know, in a national like rah-rah sort of way. And I know all these elections that like so much of it comes down to how much money is being spent on ads in the state, right? And that's not really a thing that you can, that you have a lot of control of in a central way necessarily. But I just feel like the Democrats would

have a lot more that if there was some sort of more like central control of of the messaging that it could be a lot more effective because all of the, despite the power of the ads, all of these elections that we're talking about are national at this point. You know?

Yeah, though there's a big difference between how do you win in Kansas and Texas? Totally true. I think it's more of it. I think I'm talking about more of like a central body of some sort that can take on the Republicans. That can can like that can that can that can be more of a you know formal daily show surrogate where it's just like look at this idiot as opposed to as opposed to saying you're right it's a real it's it would be a

bad idea to go out there and say vote for all these democrats because we want universal health care or like whatever like that's not you don't you you your your priorities should be different every state you're in but it is but it is not a it doesn't need to be a local game to show corruption on the level that we're seeing it across the republican party i'd put it this way if the Democrats have a huge night on November 3rd. I am excited about seeing who gets credit for that. Because let's say you have Abdul El Sagan, about ready to go into the Senate. Ooh, big win for the progressive flank of the party.

But also, if this night goes as the Democrats wanted to, Chuck Schumer will have done an excellent job recruiting candidates. That is indisputable. Getting shared Brown to run in Ohio, getting Roy Cooper to run. in North Carolina. He's going to have put a lot of Ws on the board. Yeah. And sorting out the credit will be fascinating. Let me give you our press box election schedule here. Monday, November 2nd, that's the day before election day.

David and I are going to be holding down the pod. Joel has got a previous engagement. Then on Tuesday, November 3rd. He's going to be scaring people off from the polls. Well, I don't know what he's going to be up to. Tuesday, November 3rd, Election Day itself. I will have my substack newsletter now. They tell us out with a bunch of Election Day reads.

You nervously twiddle your thumbs and wait for the gang on CNN to tell you what results are coming in. And then on Wednesday, November 4th, the day after, you're going to have Brian plus David plus Joel on the press box, sorting through all the returns and perhaps even waiting for the final returns. from Alaska. So join us in a week and a half. We're going to have a lot of great stuff for you. A final topic for you, David, today. Blake Griffin. Heck yeah. You know Blake Griffin. We all know Blake Griffin. Here is what Blake Griffin sounds like right now. And look, the response of all these people might be, hey, we're not saying we're journalists, but they're taking the desks and articles and the airtime of journalists. They are journalism's

replacement. And that matters because we need good sports journalism. It connects fans to teams. It makes players feel human. And in real meaningful ways, it holds the powerful accountable. I saw it firsthand when I was with the Clippers. Donald Sterling was forced to sell because of good journalism. We don't have to get rid of insiders and embrace debate, but we do need to make sure there are places for real reporting. No, that's not a press box segment. It's better than a press box segment. Much more cogent than what you and I usually come up with. That's a clip from Blake Griffin's new show, The Step Back.

Episode one is called What Happened to Sports Journalism. Blake Griffin, welcome to the media criticism racket. We're very happy to have you. So good. What I heard about this show, and you should go read Alan Siegel's piece on Theringer.com right now, Blake Griffin was also on with Bill Listen to that as well But when Alan told me about this piece

A couple of months ago I'm like oh no Somebody's not going to try to do the daily Show for sports Are they? Because I feel like Doing the Daily Show of Blank Has been a very attractive

idea for a lot of people And the only two people who have done it are John Stewart and John Oliver who just did The Daily Show something very much like The Daily Show. So I went into the step back with a lot of trepidation. I was surprised that it's as good as it is. Yeah.

Blake Griffin's a very winning TV guy. Mm-hmm. Just has a real nice magnetism to him. It is funny that they put him on a stage with a live studio audience. It's funny, yeah. That they had him do something like a monologue and then, walk over to a desk where he looks into the camera,

Oliver's style. Yeah. I had a couple of reactions to this. So if you haven't seen this episode yet, Griffin talks about two parts of sports journalism that have developed in recent years.

One is insiders, a.k.a. Woge. And the other is debate shows. Mm-hmm. And he comes at it from the perspective of here's a player who was weirdly talked about in talked about by the debate hosts and whose transactions were monitored by the woes of the world.

Yeah. Then he starts to do the full John Oliver thing where he talks about like how newspapers have fallen off and there are charts on the screen. I started watching that. I'm like, okay, I don't know that we need to do the full build up here with all the history. and charts and everything. I think I'd actually just prefer you talking about like, I was a player.

And it's really weird that there are two guys on television like Skip and Stephen A back in his day who were just going at each other about the subject of me. Yeah. And having to take different sides of me. He plays this really funny clip of Skip where Blake Gryphon actually had had a great playoff game. And Skip was like, oh yeah, well, let's see him do it again.

Like he was still on the con. of it even after a great playoff game. Yeah. So it's a fascinating experiment. I don't know what to think of it yet, though. I will say this. I mean, I was clear when Blake Griffin started doing his first media rounds in the modern era,

he was just like the Victor Wimbunyama of potential on-air talents, right? I mean, he's just like, I remember seeing him on whatever Barstool podcast it was talking about code switching. And it was just like, he's just inherently, immediately the smartest and funniest guy in any conversation, but refrained, restrained enough that he doesn't, he's not wearing anybody out. You know, he doesn't, like, overwhelm anybody.

He's not making anybody feel like they're less than. You know, and I say that meaning, yes, he's got, like, the full toolkit, like more. Like, he's better than anybody that's come before him in a lot of different ways. Humility is a big way as well. You heard him on Bill's podcast he was talking about the inside the NBA crew as if there's, you know, they're the greatest thing that's ever happened in comedy and television and sports broadcasting. But yeah, having said all that, I'm not sure of just sitting at a desk and reading the news,

like John Oliver style, is where I would have targeted him. But that said, I mean, he's got a really good team, it seems like, around him. I know there's like, I'm pretty sure the showrunner is from the daily show, and he's got talent from like Seth Meyer's show

and that, you know, working for him in the writer's room. and I don't mind it you know like I think that like somebody's got to be taking this stuff on you know I don't know if it's again the best use of Blake Griffin but it's certainly like the best platform that that sort of argument will be given you know he's certainly got a he's got a better handle on sports journalism than John Oliver would even if we listen to John Oliver when if he said the same thing a little bit more um it's it's pretty it's to me it's just like it's more intriguing than it is anything else.

I am intrigued by the fact that he's doing this rather than just doing another ex-athletic podcast. That itself is a happy result. Yes. Because we have plenty of the latter and we have very few of the former. The one thing that struck me about this episode other than the fact that it mirrored John Oliver a little too much. is it's kind of written for Twitter.

Sure. Like he gets into the fact that CNN became like ESPN. He gets off a Scott Jennings joke. Like, does Blake Griffin, is he annoyed by Scott Jennings like the rest of us are? Perhaps. But it really felt like I am writing for the people that Brian and David follow. Rather than just here is my interesting opinion about the world. Right.

But it's sort of, I agree. And there's always a chance that this is like, you know, maybe he will, when he finds his footing, he, he or his EP or whatever else will be a little bit more confident to say, no, we don't need that joke. You know, we can, like, I can veto that even though it's smart and funny. But it's also sort of like almost meta-criticism that's like, hey, we really enjoy this. But will everybody enjoy this? That's the question. You know, it's a, it's a weird criticism line to walk. But I don't disagree with you. you about the Scott Jennings bit. We just need, we don't need any more of that is what I'm saying. Yeah, sure. And I realize media critics heal themselves. We are as guilty as anybody else, but we don't need something that is just pitched exactly to that, mostly liberal, very online, doesn't like Stephen A audience. Like, we got it.

Like, that, that has been registered, that opinion. The only other thing I'll say about it is this is a YouTube and Amazon show. This is not, you know, a broadcast, like a network TV show or even an ESPN show. And so the fact that it's targeted at Twitter is sort of just seems like obvious. You know, like, you know, you make these YouTube shows so that they can be carved up into Twitter clips almost, you know? Sure. And so, I mean, but that doesn't, I don't disagree with like the actual substance of what you said. Yeah.

I'd just like to hear him. And again, we'll see where he goes next. Yeah, he's got different targets in mind. He's got a lot of latitude. The thing about a YouTube, Amazon. show is you can kind of do whatever you want you know and i think that i think hopefully we'll see i mean it would be funny if the giant old-fashioned talk show set was not permanent if it was just like you know like just like a one-time gimmick or we come back to that every once in a while because it's

funnier if he is not just stuck there right and they deliberately go there at times um but i you know i thought i think i think he i think he's i think he's really talented and i think that it's a really good move to put unlike some of these ex-athlete podcasts, you put real actual talented people like career comedians and producers around him and see what you can do. Don't be hamstrung by old TV mindset, but still like,

let's really get some talent together and see where it can go. Yeah. I don't know. It's intriguing. I think it's very, yeah. And the magnetism, you described his affect perfectly,

the magnetism is just off the charts. It really is. Like you want to watch him and see what he says next. He's so compelling that Elon Musk has already paid $100 million to try to get him off the air. All right, it's time for David's shoemaker guesses. The strained pun headline. Yeah.

Our last headline, I believe, about an airball in the Senate was Eric Schmidt's the bed. It's been a while. There's like no way I was going to get that. And it's not great, but it is just funny as hell. Yeah, it was. And it was about 19 political controversies ago. Today's headline, David, comes to us from Sharmes and Five Man Army on Blue Sky. It came in just as we were recording.

It is a headline from the New York Times, from cereal. Oh, the brand cereal within the New York Times. I'll read you the subhead here. In New York's Diamond District, there's a war on. Real versus fake. It's hard to know which side is which. I want you to think of words that we use about diamonds. As you ponder, what was cereals strained pun headline.

I mean, carrot is the only thing that I can think of. Carrot. What are good carrot idioms? Yes, that's where you're going. Carrot idiom, that's good. Carrot on a stick, carrot on a... Yeah, so carrot and stick, that is... That's the start of it, but

Carrot and Stick race? What is it? How about carrot? Carrot and Think of comedy maybe. Trot and Trick? Not stick. Carrot and Schick.

I'm going to have to listen to this so I can understand what schick is. Is this a new season of cereal? What are we talking about here? It is, well, it's hosted and written and reported by Sarah Koenig, so. And it's under the serial banner, so. Check it out. Well, I'll figure out what it is.

together, I guess. He's David Shoemaker. I'm Brian Curtis. Productions, magic by John Jones and Steve Allman. Thank you, gentlemen. I invite you to subscribe to my newsletter. There's some words I never thought I'd say. It's called Now They Tell Us.

It's free. It's on Substack. If you subscribe right now, you will find a new piece that I wrote about Lawrence Wright. I went to the great Lawrence Wright's house in Austin and interviewed him about his new book, about how he got to the New Yorker,

about his many articles and books about religion and belief and his own beliefs. Check that out right now. Now they tell us on Substack. Follow us on Instagram at Pressbox Ringer. If you need to email us, we are at Pressbox Ringer at gmail.com. David, I'll see you next week in costume with more lukewarm takes about the media. Hold music. Not what you want to hear when a pipe dispersed in your basement is flooding.

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