transcript

Speaker 1:
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Speaker 2:
[00:39] If you thought HBO's euphoria was intense in high school, saddle up. Season three of Euphoria picks up five years later and life looks very different.

Speaker 3:
[00:48] Hello, Rue. You owe me money.

Speaker 2:
[00:50] No matter what they're chasing, money, love or redemption, no one can escape their fate.

Speaker 4:
[00:55] The problem is if you make a deal with the devil, there's no turning back.

Speaker 2:
[01:00] Don't miss the third season of Euphoria, starring two-time Emmy winners in David. Now streaming on HBO and HBO Max with new episodes every Sunday.

Speaker 5:
[01:23] Hello, media consumers. Welcome to Press Box. It's Bryan Curtis. It's Joel Anderson in the Tuesday slot as David Shoemaker makes his way home from Las Vegas, where he's been covering WrestleMania.

Speaker 6:
[01:37] Was he one of them people booing Steve Aday?

Speaker 5:
[01:41] Or booing Pat McAfee?

Speaker 6:
[01:42] Yeah, boy, yeah.

Speaker 5:
[01:43] He was actually involved in a match?

Speaker 6:
[01:45] Man, people, ESPN, man, not polling, Q-rating's not as high as you think, maybe, huh?

Speaker 5:
[01:51] Well, they're wrestling heels. And then there are wrestling baby faces. Bad guys and the good guys.

Speaker 6:
[01:57] That's true, that's true. Do you think-

Speaker 5:
[01:59] WWE knows what they're doing.

Speaker 6:
[02:00] You think Steve Aday thinks of himself as a heel?

Speaker 5:
[02:04] Yeah.

Speaker 6:
[02:04] You think so? I mean, I guess, yeah, he does walk in with the cowboy style. Yeah, you're right, you're right, you're right.

Speaker 5:
[02:10] He knows it. He plays to the crowd. Producers Isaiah Blakely and Bruce Baldwin here as well. Coming up on The Press Box, Cash Patel is following the lead of his boss and suing The Atlantic. Mike Vrabel has broken his silence for real after the Sedona episode, why NBC wants Mike Tomlin, NBA playoffs notes, The Washington Post needs a sportswriter, and something I'd never like to see in The New Yorker again. Plus our friend Jordan Ritter Conn talks to Joel about his new book, American Men. Joel, let's start with Kash Patel.

Speaker 6:
[02:44] All right. Let's get this sound like a party.

Speaker 5:
[02:48] Well, we've seen him in action before.

Speaker 6:
[02:51] He likes to get it in.

Speaker 5:
[02:52] With the men's hockey team, he knows how to go. There's a new piece in The Atlantic, it went up Friday, it's by Sarah Fitzpatrick, it's called The FBI Director is MIA. Though some people on Twitter like to point out that The Atlantic also called this, that Kash Patel's erratic behavior could cost him his job. And these people tried to do that. See, they're not standing by their story. It's like, no, this is just how headlines work.

Speaker 6:
[03:18] Yeah, man, just, they don't know about, yeah, all the SEO and all that bullshit you gotta do, man.

Speaker 5:
[03:23] Yeah. Yeah. Did you see that thing with the libs of TikTok person? Was like, I guess the message went out and took a screenshot of an AP story that had run in like a dozen publications. And it was the same story because this is how wire services work.

Speaker 6:
[03:40] Oh, yeah.

Speaker 5:
[03:41] Look, the message went down from on high. It's like, no, wire stories are printed in various places. Thank you for trying.

Speaker 6:
[03:48] I mean, if I say what I want to say about the libs of TikTok, people are going to accuse me in a very coded way of being uppity again. So I'll just reserve my comment about libs of TikTok. But it makes sense that they wouldn't understand.

Speaker 5:
[04:02] The Atlantic Cash Patel piece builds on a scoop in the Atlantic from earlier this month, in which Fitzpatrick and Ashley Parker reported that there were, quote, active discussions at the White House that Patel may be out of a job. This new piece begins with an absolutely gold tier opening anecdote in which Patel tries and fails to log in to the FBI computer system. He thinks that Trump might have fired him. The old thing from Hard Knocks where your badge doesn't work at the front door.

Speaker 6:
[04:38] You know what? One thing me and Kash Patel have in common is I always think I'm going to get fired. So I get it. He says, kick it, be scary.

Speaker 5:
[04:45] He's relatable, at least in that.

Speaker 6:
[04:46] He's relatable in that way, yeah.

Speaker 5:
[04:49] FBI and Congress members started calling the White House after Patel couldn't get into the FBI computer system and said, wait, who's running the FBI now? And as Fitzpatrick writes in The Atlantic, he, meaning Patel had not been fired, the access problem, two people familiar with the matter said, appears to have been a technical error and it was quickly resolved. It was all ultimately bullshit when FBI official told me. So that's where this piece began. And then Fitzpatrick reported about Patel's behavior with the help of two dozen sources. She used a couple of interesting words here, Joel. Conspicuous inebriation. That was one word combo. She writes, they, and this is several officials she's referring to, they said that he, meaning Patel, is known to drink to the point of obvious intoxication. In many cases at the private club NEDS in Washington, DC., he is also known to drink to excess at the Poodle Room in Las Vegas. Were you familiar with the Poodle Room?

Speaker 6:
[05:57] Not familiar with the Poodle. I'm not a Vegas guy, so I haven't spent a lot of time there, but now I want to know about NEDS.

Speaker 5:
[06:06] NEDS is an interesting place.

Speaker 6:
[06:07] Have you been to NEDS?

Speaker 5:
[06:09] I've never been, but I've heard of various people going to NEDS.

Speaker 6:
[06:12] They only got a 4.4 rating.

Speaker 5:
[06:13] People attending parties at NEDS.

Speaker 6:
[06:15] Oh, really? Okay.

Speaker 5:
[06:17] Yeah, it's kind of the 2026 thing to do in Washington, if you're one of the swells.

Speaker 6:
[06:24] Really? Okay. Yeah, I'm probably disappointed that when RFK Jr. brought a bowl of yogurt for the Super Bowl watch party, it was fine. But when I do it, I get yelled at by management. Oh, that's a one-star review. That's clearly a fake. So anyway.

Speaker 5:
[06:39] Now you're not a Vegas person, but maybe we can change that by the time of next season's national championship game.

Speaker 6:
[06:45] Oh, I'll definitely go for an event.

Speaker 5:
[06:46] All in.

Speaker 6:
[06:47] You don't even got to convince me.

Speaker 5:
[06:49] Well, we might need to go to the Poodle Room because the Poodle Room website says it's an exclusive members-only lifestyle and social club, crowning the 67-story hotel tower of the Fontainebleau, Las Vegas.

Speaker 6:
[07:03] The Fontainebleau, they have a fountain blue there in Vegas?

Speaker 5:
[07:06] I did not know that either.

Speaker 6:
[07:07] Yes. Man, when was the last time you've been to Vegas?

Speaker 5:
[07:11] Super Bowl, a couple of years ago.

Speaker 6:
[07:13] Okay, yeah, I haven't been there in a while, so we got a lot to catch up on.

Speaker 5:
[07:17] Fitzpatrick also reports in The Atlantic, on multiple occasions in the past year, members of Patel's security detail had difficulty waking Patel because he was seemingly intoxicated, according to information supplied to Justice Department and White House officials. And this was an amazing anecdote. A request for breaching equipment, normally used by SWAT and hostage rescue teams to quickly gain entry into buildings, was made last year because Patel had been unreachable behind locked doors, according to multiple people familiar with the request.

Speaker 6:
[07:54] That's a tough one, man. I mean, that sounds like, you know, my mom. You know, the person who just is not connected to their cell phone or whatever, and they don't kind of care about...

Speaker 5:
[08:05] And we're freaking out. Can we get a wellness check?

Speaker 6:
[08:08] Yeah.

Speaker 5:
[08:08] Something wrong?

Speaker 6:
[08:10] I was just outside in my yard. Like, come on, man. You got to be... So, yeah, I mean, I can't imagine that the director of the FBI is like that, though. It seems like you'd always want to be available and at hand if this allegation is true.

Speaker 5:
[08:24] So people should go read Sarah Fitzpatrick's story in The Atlantic. I think what stood out to me is the following. I go back to those word combinations. Conspicuous inebriation. Yeah, man. Obvious intoxication. Seemingly intoxicated. It's got to be tricky to report on drunkenness slash intoxication. Doesn't it?

Speaker 6:
[08:48] I don't think I've ever done it outside of a breathalyzer reading in a police report. And even then...

Speaker 5:
[08:59] Be measurable.

Speaker 6:
[09:00] And even then, I mean, just think about how often DUIs or like those kinds of readings are thrown out in court. You know, but I mean, obviously there's a lot of technicalities around that stuff, but it's, you know, it's not bankable that just cause you get hit with the, you know, whatever kind of reading or you appear to be inebriated that it's sustained in court. So that's a tough one, but they must feel pretty good about their sources on this.

Speaker 5:
[09:25] They have to. They have to feel very good. You have to know. You had to know the lawsuit was coming.

Speaker 6:
[09:30] Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 5:
[09:31] If you tweaked him in such a way. So I'm guessing they feel very, very good. Now the fear Fitzpatrick says is this. It's not just, hey, this guy's running the FBI. And maybe the next director of the FBI is someone who is not gonna be posting up at the poodle room regularly. But also, what if Donald Trump's war in Iran sets off a series of events that leads to a terrorist attack here? Would Kash Patel be ready to respond to such an attack? Some other things in the story that Patel's hard to reach, that he's declared victory too early, both with the shooting at Brown University and the Charlie Kirk shooting. Patel's response to the story was printed, all false, and I'll see you in court. Bring your checkbook. Which it turns out is exactly what happened. On Monday, he sued The Atlantic and Fitzpatrick for defamation, seeking $250 million in damages.

Speaker 6:
[10:31] You ain't got $250 million worth of reputation, bro. I mean, that's crazy, but okay. Okay. All right.

Speaker 5:
[10:38] Well, this is where you learn from the master. Donald Trump would always just put the biggest figure on the media lawsuit.

Speaker 6:
[10:45] Why not a billion? I mean, if you're going to go that high, but okay.

Speaker 5:
[10:48] The Atlantic, of course, calls the lawsuit meritless. This really is the Trump playbook, is it not?

Speaker 6:
[10:55] It is.

Speaker 5:
[10:55] You should talk to media on Twitter, and then you file a lawsuit.

Speaker 6:
[11:00] So, I mean, what do you want to happen here? Because I'm sort of interested in, like obviously this costs a lot of money. The Atlantic has a funder that has a lot of money, right? Don't you think for America that they need to at least get to the point of discovery? Like to see if these willing to get to the point of discovery here?

Speaker 5:
[11:20] It really would be fascinating.

Speaker 6:
[11:22] Yeah, for America.

Speaker 7:
[11:25] For America.

Speaker 5:
[11:26] I don't love these lawsuits progressing because getting bad judgments on the books, if you get the wrong jury, is something I think that scares everybody in the media industry, whether the case is real or not. But man, discovery here. I mean, and again, how would that even proceed? I mean, first of all, there's journalistic discovery. What are your sources? That kind of thing. Obviously, the Atlantic does not want to talk about. But discovery for people at the FBI that have worked with Kash Patel.

Speaker 6:
[11:56] Right.

Speaker 5:
[11:57] People that might have been enjoying a martini across the poodle room from Kash Patel.

Speaker 6:
[12:00] Well, you love the poodle room.

Speaker 5:
[12:02] I really do. I really do. The other thing that struck me about this article is Fitzpatrick and Parker had a list in their previous Atlantic story about Trump officials who had been talked about, or were the subject of active discussions. Here's the list. Army Secretary Daniel Driscoll still has a job as we record this. Labor Secretary Laurie Chavez de Rehmer, gone as of Monday.

Speaker 6:
[12:31] That got handled.

Speaker 5:
[12:32] That got handled and Kash Patel. So if you're Kash Patel, or let's just say you are a Trump official who's on the list, and you're not totally sure you're gonna have a job in a day or two or a week or two, is it pointing your finger at the media and saying they're the enemy? I'm filing a lawsuit. Isn't that your best move at this point?

Speaker 6:
[12:56] Yeah, because I mean, I'm sure that he will stay employed through the right wing ecosystem in one way or another. Like there's some sort of job available for him that he will slide into. But it's kind of interesting to me that he cares so much about his reputation, given the things that we find, to see his girlfriend and all that.

Speaker 5:
[13:19] This is the country music sensation, Alexis Wilkins.

Speaker 6:
[13:22] Yeah, so I'm kind of surprised. But I mean, it is one way to also just kind of keep the heat off you for a little bit. And yeah, rally people who are inclined to think that all media are lefty liars. So yeah, I guess that makes a lot of sense. I mean, I mean, I think the thing is, it's not like the media is something, but and to your point, we know that it's going to end bad, right? Like there's no, who's the only person that's come through this through the Trump administration? Like Sarah Huckabee Sanders, is that really the only one?

Speaker 5:
[13:55] That turned out well for her?

Speaker 6:
[13:57] Yeah, the only one that's kind of come through unscathed. So you're-

Speaker 5:
[14:00] Jared Kushner?

Speaker 6:
[14:02] I mean, but man, he's been humiliated in public. I mean, the things we've heard reported about how Trump talks about him to other people in front of him.

Speaker 5:
[14:11] It seems like he's doing pretty well in the world of business though.

Speaker 6:
[14:13] Yeah, he's made a lot of-

Speaker 5:
[14:14] He landed on his feet.

Speaker 6:
[14:15] That's right, that's right. Took a step back, but yeah.

Speaker 5:
[14:18] I'm trying to think of somebody else who's he turned out well for.

Speaker 6:
[14:21] I mean, man, I just, I don't, there's just, who was the first, no, that was somebody else. What was the first press secretary? The way, the one with the- Sean Spicer, what was it? Sean Spicer, that's what I'm thinking of. What happened to Sean Spicer?

Speaker 5:
[14:40] I think he's hosting a show.

Speaker 6:
[14:42] Okay, yeah.

Speaker 5:
[14:44] He's hosting a streaming politics show, if I remember right.

Speaker 6:
[14:47] Okay, yeah.

Speaker 5:
[14:47] Or maybe he was and he's not anymore.

Speaker 6:
[14:49] Okay.

Speaker 5:
[14:50] I don't think we can count that in the plus column.

Speaker 6:
[14:53] You can't count that in the plus column? Well, somebody give us some ideas, but I mean, it's going to end poorly and you kind of want a nice landing place, if you also have aspirations and illusions of being an important person, this is one way to kind of grease the skids for that, right? Like taking on the lying American media and not letting, and also it kind of gives you a good way to exit. It's just like, I'm going to spend time defending my reputation and then, you know.

Speaker 5:
[15:22] Yeah, I was doing fine.

Speaker 6:
[15:24] I was doing fine.

Speaker 5:
[15:26] I was taming the deep state, but the liberal media got in the way and now I am forced to spend time, following my case through the court system. I no longer have time to run the FBI. That's one way to go. I mean, what's so hilarious about second term Trump people is we are doing everything we can to execute the boss's vision. There's no tension between us and the boss, but we're still not getting it done to the boss to satisfy.

Speaker 6:
[15:52] He thinks it up and it can happen.

Speaker 5:
[15:54] Yeah. Yeah, but that's what they're trying to do, but then they're still getting fired or becoming the subject of active discussions. Linda McMahon, weirdly enough, if you read that Zach Helfand piece in The New Yorker this week, seems to be the one person who has figured out how to do this, at least so far.

Speaker 6:
[16:11] That's a good point. Yeah, that's not heard a lot about. I need to read that profile, but yeah.

Speaker 5:
[16:16] She was in the first administration. We can say she landed on her feet.

Speaker 6:
[16:18] That's okay. Okay. Yeah, but look, it was always going to end like this for him, but maybe he didn't expect for it to quite come out like this. But man, I have this other large theory about why people hold on to public service well past their prime, but just imagine how cool it is for him too. I'm sure he's torn because he gets free travel, do whatever, as we've heard. He's an important person. People look to him for things. So I'm sure that he's torn on what to do, but this buys him some time, I think.

Speaker 5:
[16:56] He gets to solve cases from coast to coast.

Speaker 6:
[16:59] Yeah, what is he doing on the Guthrie case?

Speaker 5:
[17:05] Honestly, every couple of days, I see a reference to that and I'm like, oh my goodness. Somehow that has not been resolved.

Speaker 6:
[17:11] Yeah, I mean, they're on that, right? So, I just, you know, the thing is, is that results don't really matter in this job anymore. Like, it doesn't matter. It's just the idea that he gets the whole power and has influence. But if I were him, I'd be thinking about, man, when the shit goes bad, maybe you don't want to be around, you know?

Speaker 5:
[17:36] Story number two, Joel, is an actual, legitimate breaking of silence. We get a lot of fake breakings of silence.

Speaker 6:
[17:46] Yeah.

Speaker 5:
[17:47] This is real because Patriots coach Mike Vrabel talked to reporters this morning.

Speaker 6:
[17:52] I couldn't believe it.

Speaker 5:
[17:53] I couldn't either. First time he's talked to reporters since. Those photos were taken of him and now former athletic NFL insider Dianna Russini at the hotel in Sedona. Since Russini resigned from The Athletic, again, see our podcast last Tuesday if you want to hear all our thoughts about that case. Why he talked is fascinating. Smart person told me this morning like, there's a point at which this is just going to hang over him. And if he is not present at all in front of reporters before the draft, which is Thursday until like mini camps, OTAs, then it's just going to be a story. Yeah. So he comes out today. He talked for about two and a half minutes. He also took some follow ups. We're going to play the most interesting part of that two and a half minutes. And let's discuss, here is Mike Vrabel speaking to reporters.

Speaker 8:
[18:42] You know, I've had some difficult conversations with people that I care about, with my family, the organization, the coaches, the players. Those have been positive and productive. We believe in order to be successful on and off the field, you have to make good decisions. That includes me. That starts with me. We never want our actions to negatively affect the team. We never want to be the cause of the distraction. You know, and what I... Those are comments and questions that I've answered for the team and with the team. We'll keep those private and to ourselves.

Speaker 6:
[19:21] You know, so I listened to this whole thing. Mike Vrabel really does seem like a decent dude, like he's trying to do the right thing or at least project decency, right?

Speaker 5:
[19:36] And not defensiveness.

Speaker 6:
[19:37] And not defensiveness.

Speaker 5:
[19:37] If you normally see in that situation.

Speaker 6:
[19:39] Right, it's like you have no right to understand it. You have no right to ask me about any of this. That's not okay. So he wants to be accommodating and he's been, I mean, I'm not trying to make a joke. He's been accommodating to the media in the past before, right?

Speaker 5:
[19:54] We will move on.

Speaker 6:
[19:54] We will move on from there. But yeah, but I'm curious about good decisions. So what was it, the thing I would say, what were the bad decisions in this instance then? If I would like to, if I could ask a follow up question to Mike Vrabel that I know that he would not answer, you know, we talk about making good decisions. Well, what was the bad decision that was made here? What are you saying? And, you know, what did you think of it?

Speaker 5:
[20:19] Well, that's, what was the bad decision is the question. Yeah. I think there's a way he phrased this to his team where he said, you know, I put myself in a position where somebody could take pictures and the New York Post would print them. And that would cause a quote unquote distraction. So it's probably a way to talk about this with the team without really talking about this while keeping it, as he put it to the press, a private personal matter. Yeah. That would be my guess. But, you know, again, like, it's pretty wild just hearing Coach talk about this at a press conference. And he did, like I said, he did take follow ups about this. He didn't say very much and he was asked directly, like, about Russini's resignation and some other things. And he basically said, you know, I understand why you have to ask that, but I'm not going to comment on that. Yeah.

Speaker 6:
[21:10] I mean, he never, he probably never will, right? Which is his right. But the thing is, I think that as this sort of press conference goes, it's about the sort of, if you're in a situation that is as embarrassing as his is, it's sort of the platonic ideal if you're on his side of it, which is that I'm trying to be, I would love to tell you, and I know that you have to ask this question, but I just can't do it, but I'm sorry. It's like, I can't tell you what I'm sorry for. No more follow-ups on this. We're going to move past this, not allow it to be a distraction. It's like you sweep it under the rug from then forward, right?

Speaker 5:
[21:51] Something very symbolic about it. I am standing before you. I'm not going to tell you what you really want to know.

Speaker 6:
[21:57] No.

Speaker 5:
[21:58] I'm not even really going to get close to telling you what you want to know. I'm also, you heard him say in the rest of that opening statement where he said something like, I wanted to talk to my team first, and I wanted to talk to you before the players inevitably got asked the same questions. So there's a lot of stand-up guy baked into that. But at the end of the day, the amount of information you're actually getting here is zero.

Speaker 6:
[22:28] Right. Right. I mean, which is, again, that is his right. He doesn't have to talk about this. He's not obligated to answer any of that stuff, but it was smart. It's just interesting given who the last two Patriots coaches were. Because Drog Mayo, the reputation that he left was that he was surly, people didn't like him, whatever. That's Belichick's boy, but not even really Belichick's boy. And then there's Belichick, right? Which is, I mean, he's kind of not gone through a similar thing, but just like this talking about his private life in a way that is sort of unfathomable. And I would like to have known how he would have handled this when he was the Patriots coach, right?

Speaker 5:
[23:11] I mean, he would have on to Cincinnati did. I think you know the answer to that.

Speaker 6:
[23:14] Yeah, I just-

Speaker 5:
[23:16] He would not have, that would have been it. Yeah. He would not have gotten two and a half minutes.

Speaker 6:
[23:20] And he wouldn't have even done like, I don't understand why you have to ask this question.

Speaker 5:
[23:25] He doesn't understand.

Speaker 6:
[23:25] No, he's like, what are you tearing?

Speaker 5:
[23:27] He does not care to understand why anybody in the Pats, any of the Pats Beats ask the question. Yeah. Another coach for you. The Athletics, Andrew Marshand, reported this morning that Mike Tomlin, former Super Bowl champion coach of the Steelers, is headed to NBC where he is going to be on their pregame show Football Night in America.

Speaker 6:
[23:50] All right. Okay.

Speaker 5:
[23:53] Marshand writes that Tomlin will join host Maria Taylor, ex Dallas Cowboys coach Jason Garrett. Yes, that's still happening. And Devin McCordy on set. NBC must still re-sign McCordy.

Speaker 6:
[24:06] Aren't you Cowboys fans? You Cowboys fans, man. You haven't won a Super Bowl, but you have foisted so many of your former players on us. You know what I'm saying?

Speaker 5:
[24:17] Tony Romo, Trey Aikman.

Speaker 6:
[24:19] Who was the tight end again? Oh, boy.

Speaker 5:
[24:22] Jason Whitten.

Speaker 6:
[24:22] Jason Whitten. Yeah.

Speaker 5:
[24:24] Michael Irvin's back.

Speaker 6:
[24:25] Michael Irvin is back.

Speaker 5:
[24:26] The Michael Irvin Netflix podcast. He's very back.

Speaker 6:
[24:29] Apparently they're blowing up. I mean, all the smoke is taking over Netflix. So yeah, I just, I can't believe that Jason Garrett is back, but this, is it fair to say, and given your reporting on this, Mike Tomlin was the top broadcast free agent, or sort of like the ideal guy for this spot for a long time. Like people have always said that, you know, if there's a coach out there that's going to be great at this, it's going to be Mike Tomlin, right?

Speaker 5:
[24:55] For years and years and years.

Speaker 6:
[24:56] Yeah.

Speaker 5:
[24:57] If you ask anybody in television, who's the person who's currently coaching or playing that you want to hire? Mike Tomlin was number one.

Speaker 6:
[25:04] Yeah.

Speaker 5:
[25:05] At just about anybody's imagination.

Speaker 6:
[25:08] Right.

Speaker 5:
[25:08] And the way he got here was through production meetings.

Speaker 6:
[25:13] Right.

Speaker 5:
[25:14] Those are the meetings that the producers and the announcers have with coaches and players before each game. And they use those production meetings to scout for the next great announcer. I remember talking about this with Freddie Gidele, who produced Sunday Night Football and Thursday Night Football and Monday Night Football way back when about this. And he said there were three ways that you could tell a player or coach would be a great announcer. One is, they were actually helpful to you. We got to come together as a team, all that stuff, you know. Those conversations are kind of on background and kind of on the record. But they would actually tell you stuff. That's number one. Number two, they were just good talkers. Which Mike Tomlin was. And number three is, they were interested in broadcasting. They would ask questions like, what do you guys do all week? What's your schedule? When do you watch film? How much time do you devote to this job? And Gedeli told me, that's how we knew, oh, that guy is interested in television.

Speaker 6:
[26:20] These guys know, right? I mean, at this point, the players and the coaches that run through that process, they know that it's sort of an audition, right? Do they know that? Do you think they know that at this point? Yes.

Speaker 5:
[26:35] How much time are they going to actually spend on that? Yeah. You know, given like, you're a quarterback trying to win a game, you're also doing the media thing where it's like, I want to reveal something, but not everything to this person.

Speaker 6:
[26:45] Yeah.

Speaker 5:
[26:45] Especially, there's a bunch of people in the room. You know, I don't know. I think toward the end of their careers, when they sort of get locked in on that a little bit more. Yeah. And the funny thing about Tomlin is, apparently, he was never interested in this. It was always, he's our number one draft pick, but he's the guy least likely to do TV. So it's a little bit of a, you know, oh my gosh, that guy's finally signing up to be a broadcaster. There's a little bit of that element to this.

Speaker 6:
[27:13] How old is Mike Tomlin? He's like 54 or 56 or something like that. Is that right? Oh, man.

Speaker 5:
[27:19] Mike Tomlin is 54 years old.

Speaker 6:
[27:21] Yeah, 54 years old. I mean, he could theoretically go back to coaching again, but I think, you know, again, once upon a time we said that about Bill Cower. It was like, there's just no way Bill Cower is never going to coach again. Like he's, you know, pretty good at this. He's, it's a good, comfy job. And then you look up, and one day I looked up and I was like, oh man, Bill Cower is an old man, you know?

Speaker 5:
[27:46] Bill Cower decided, I can be bland on television and I never have to coach again. I had cash to check for years and years and years.

Speaker 6:
[27:56] Yeah, man.

Speaker 5:
[27:58] But you hit on the problem with hiring coaches. A coach takes a television job to audition for his next coaching job.

Speaker 6:
[28:05] Right.

Speaker 5:
[28:06] They all do this. The only exceptions to this rule are people like John Madden and Jeff Anken.

Speaker 6:
[28:14] Right.

Speaker 5:
[28:14] And I'm talking about coaches who are in the prime of their careers who are actually hireable.

Speaker 6:
[28:21] I just wonder what Mike Tomlin wants to, you know, I wonder what Mike Tomlin wants to do with the rest of his life. Which I would, when we get him on this show, Oh yes. When we get him on The Press Box, we'll get to ask him.

Speaker 5:
[28:32] I'm sending the email right now.

Speaker 6:
[28:33] Yeah. Shit, let it out, man. Cause I mean, 54 is a really interesting age, you know? Like does he really want to go through being, I mean, but again, if you spent your whole life in a locker room and in a film room, like it's really destabilizing when you're not in it. And that's if you've only been into the age of 24, let alone 54. So I'll be interested to see how he feels about that and how long this lasts, but it's a good job. And I think we'll be better for it. Because have you ever heard of anybody, have they told you about anybody who was great in production meetings and ended up actually being bad on air once it actually, once the lights started rolling?

Speaker 5:
[29:10] I think Garrett was a good production meeting guy.

Speaker 7:
[29:12] Yeah.

Speaker 5:
[29:14] Trying to think of somebody else who would have been bad.

Speaker 6:
[29:17] Damn, look at you. I mean, you don't, you and Coach Garrett, man, you're gonna have to squab it out, right?

Speaker 5:
[29:21] No, it's just, I mean, I feel that what you do is like, I love the Cowboys media conspiracy, because I love just always feeling like I'm always watching a Cowboys game, no matter what, even when the Cowboys aren't playing because they suck.

Speaker 7:
[29:34] Yes. But then at some point, you're just like, why, why do you have this job again?

Speaker 5:
[29:39] What is the point of this?

Speaker 6:
[29:40] And it can't all be Babe Laufenberg.

Speaker 5:
[29:42] It can't all be Babe Laufenberg. Babe is, Babe is nails at all times.

Speaker 6:
[29:45] Yes sir.

Speaker 5:
[29:47] Do you think Tomlin's actually gonna say anything? Do you think he will be interesting on air?

Speaker 6:
[29:53] I think the thing is, is that, once you actually get into that world, it's really difficult to be interesting. I don't know why. I'm not an NFL guy. And it's been many, many years since I've even watched a lot of those NFL previous shows. Cause it's just like, you know, I mean, again, I kind of feel like I, I had seen it all at a certain point. And so it's really hard to break out, I think. But, you know, there's this clip that they play of Mike Tomlin over and over again. And I think it was when he was on that show, the podcast of Ryan Clark and Channing Crowder and Fred Taylor. And he talks about how coaches, he runs to coaching and some people run from coaching. They want the guy to already sort of be ready and develop prospect or whatever. And he's like, I run to coach and I look for, and look, just regular football. That's just regular football shit. Probably not that, you know, fascinating to anybody. But the way he told the story, I was wrapped. I was like, damn, I was like, I was. So he does have a sort of a compelling way of talking. And so, yeah, I mean, I will tune in just because I want to hear him. And also he has like this big spotlight. They're not fighting for attention with anybody else. It's just going to be him on Sunday night. And so he'll have a lot of the spotlight to himself. And so I, you know, I'm willing to give him a chance. I think he has a better chance than a lot of people. If you said Jason Garrett, since we shouldn't know Jason Garrett today, I would have been like, I don't know, bruh. I don't know how that's going to turn out. I had heard Tony Dungy talk my whole life before he was on TV, and I never could remember anything he said. You know what I mean? But Mike Tomlin, I think he has a chance to work out. What about you?

Speaker 5:
[31:33] I think there's two things you want from Mike Tomlin if you're NBC. One is ex-coach gravitas. That's Bill Cower. That's Tony Dungy. You want something that you can't get from an ex-player or that's different than you would get from an ex-player, especially with Tomlin because he has a ring. So you're like, okay, we want a little bit of that. But I think the bigger thing you want, instead of just programming like, okay, we need one coach, we need one player, we need one this, is in today's media world, you want a person who starts talking and makes people that are sitting on the couch look up. Yep. Makes you and I who are tuning out these shows because they are not for football fans like us, by and large. Makes people like you and I go, oh, he's talking. What's he saying? He's interesting. And if I think of the coach who has done that most effectively, it's Nick Saban on College Game Day.

Speaker 6:
[32:35] Yeah.

Speaker 5:
[32:36] Nick Saban starts talking. I'll listen to Nick Saban.

Speaker 6:
[32:39] Yeah.

Speaker 5:
[32:40] He's a gravitas guy and he's a guy.

Speaker 6:
[32:45] You know what? When he showed that to me, when he was on that same podcast with Ryan Clark and Shane Crowder, that interview was fascinating and I was like, man, he was really good at this.

Speaker 5:
[32:57] That's what Tomlin has to get to because otherwise it's just somebody talking on your television set.

Speaker 6:
[33:02] So you don't-

Speaker 5:
[33:02] And I think you get that through passion. You can get that through a little bit of that rah-rah coach stuff. Saban does that from time to time. But I think there has to be an analytical or critical aspect to it. And look, it's so unlikely that Mike Tomlin's going to come in there and dump on people.

Speaker 6:
[33:22] Well, that's what I was going to say.

Speaker 5:
[33:24] I mean, are you really going to do that? We've seen that with Tom Brady. We've seen all these people. That's sometimes the hardest thing to pull out of them because they've been in Mike Vrabel mode for decades.

Speaker 7:
[33:35] I don't want to say it.

Speaker 6:
[33:36] What does that mean?

Speaker 7:
[33:37] Perhaps the wrong analogy.

Speaker 5:
[33:42] I'm not sure what the safe coach is here to talk about. You've been in press conference mode. So can you unlock that? But if they're not going to be critical, if they're not going to be like, hey, you know, Bryan Shottenheimer really screwed that up today, or he didn't have his team ready to play, or whatever you want him to say, what's the thing they're going to say that's just going to make you pay attention? That's going to add something to the show. That's what they've got to unlock.

Speaker 6:
[34:09] Well, Bryan, that's what I was going to say, because that's kind of off the table for every former coach, right? Like, does Rex Ryan occasionally dip into criticism of a coach or whatever? Rex Ryan is like kind of over the top.

Speaker 5:
[34:22] He's kind of past the hiring stage, right? Like, he's probably not going to be a head coach again. I think his name weirdly came up with the Jets this time, or he was trying to make his name come up.

Speaker 6:
[34:31] The Jets again? Really? It's okay. You're manless.

Speaker 5:
[34:36] I swear I read something about that.

Speaker 6:
[34:37] That was the last time they were interesting, but anyway.

Speaker 5:
[34:39] They don't want to offend people because, like I said, they see it as a gap year. And I'm going to come on, I'm going to seem smart about football or generally smart about football. I'm going to remind people that I'm hireable. But you've got to get something more out of them than that, if you're a producer. So what's that going to be? Is it going to be critical? Great. Sounds fantastic. Is he going to go on and just be passionate in an interesting way that's different from, to say his name one final time, Jason Garrett? Okay, that's cool. Is he going to be more interesting than Tony Dungy? Like, you know, what's the thing he's going to unlock? Anyway, I find that that's NBC's job. Now that they got their number one draft pick.

Speaker 6:
[35:18] Can't wait to see him, man. I'm excited.

Speaker 5:
[35:20] I am genuinely interested as well.

Speaker 6:
[35:22] I want more Mike Tomlin. So, yeah.

Speaker 5:
[35:25] Saban is the gold standard here. That's the one that's really worked. Both is like, you know, a guy with rings and is a grand old man of football.

Speaker 6:
[35:33] Sure. I mean, he's the president of football now that Bill Belichick is at UNC. Don't you think? Like, he's kind of like our national football president.

Speaker 5:
[35:44] Yes, and knows the actual president as well.

Speaker 6:
[35:46] Yeah, that's his boy.

Speaker 5:
[35:47] That's a discussion for another time.

Speaker 6:
[35:48] That's his boy.

Speaker 5:
[35:49] Let's talk a little bit about the NBA. The Knicks lost game to the Hawks last night. Knicks were down one with a little over five seconds to go. Every Nick fan in your life is yelling at the television going, You have a timeout. Call a timeout. Get a good shot. They didn't have a timeout. It was just that NBC's television graphics said they did. Here is the aforementioned Maria Taylor with a little cleanup after the fact.

Speaker 9:
[36:16] Listen, we have been sitting here through two games already and a great fireworks also at MSG. We just want to say that the scoreboard showed a timeout that the Knicks did not have on the final play, but due to a data issue, the wrong timeout information was communicated. So that's why you see a timeout on the scoreboard.

Speaker 5:
[36:33] Not ideal when you're doing highlights.

Speaker 6:
[36:35] Everybody.

Speaker 5:
[36:35] Please ignore the scoreboard.

Speaker 6:
[36:37] Yeah, everybody was so mad at McHale Bridges because I was like, it was reminiscent to me of when Russell Westbrook played for the Rockets and I had to live with that experience for a year. And I was like, what the fuck are you doing? Pass the ball, please. Or call a timeout. And McHale Bridges was doing that last night. I'm like, that's surely not what you guys are trying to do. Right? But yeah, they did not. Yeah, they didn't have that timeout. So, but everybody was really mad at him for like three to four minutes.

Speaker 5:
[37:05] You realize we're talking about this with Jim Nance the other day or talking about Jim Nance the other day, that television is a game of inches. I'm sure somebody said that before, but it's a little things like that that are different between, you know, a great broadcast and a so-so broadcast. NBC and Fox's NFL game of the week and CBS's game of the week. And, you know, if the data is being fed to you that's incorrect, somebody in the truck has got to look at that and be like, hey, they don't have a timeout. We got to take that off because we are misleading viewers with this graphic. And again, it's the end of the game, just like that Rory McElroy final putt. Like, you got to get that stuff right.

Speaker 6:
[37:43] You got to get that right. I mean, again, you said in those trucks, I know there's so much stuff going on. I have real empathy for how difficult it must be to keep track of everything, especially because that game was sort of over. Like, people had thought at one point, oh yeah, like all of a sudden the game sparks back up and it's competitive again, and you're sort of scrambling. But yeah, like, I mean, until we started talking about this, and again, I'm thinking about in real time how I experienced that. And I was like, man, Kyle Bridges, you fuck up. And then now it's like, oh, wait, sorry. Not sure. You didn't, you know, we, we all, everybody else had it wrong, not you.

Speaker 5:
[38:21] It's NBC's problem, not yours. When we're in Vegas for the National Championship next year, we're going to go sit in Bill Bonnell's truck for a quarter. I love the ESPN. You can see, see one of the masters doing his, executing his craft. The Portland Trailblazers, this is interesting. Tom Dundon is the new owner of that team. He bought the Blazers this spring from the estate of Paul Allen. Remember that Paul Allen died in 2018?

Speaker 6:
[38:50] Man, I had forgotten that he had died, to be honest. I mean, not before, until this, I read about, started reading about this guy, but I was, I just, in my head, Paul Allen was still alive. He just wasn't the Blazers owner anymore.

Speaker 5:
[39:06] Tom Dundon is living up to the nickname that our boss has bestowed on him, El Chippo. Tom Dundon did not send the Blazers two-way players on the road during the playoffs. I believe the Rose Garden Report is one of the outlet that broke that story. Jason Quick over at The Athletic notes, the team photographer and digital reporter did not travel with the team for its playoff series in San Antonio. Shout out to the digital reporter who did not get sent to the playoff series.

Speaker 6:
[39:36] I mean, just imagine, I could look this up, but the digital reporter probably was a former newspaper person. And he was like, I got this lifeline. I'm not going to have to work. I'm not dealing with that bullshit anymore. People lose jobs and people being cheap around me. And then this happened.

Speaker 5:
[39:54] You know what I'm saying? God, the newspaper followed me to the Portland Trailblazer.

Speaker 6:
[39:57] Yeah, now the blazers are a trailblazer newspaper.

Speaker 5:
[40:01] Employees were told to avoid late checkout fees at hotels. You had to get out of your room before somebody started knocking at the door.

Speaker 6:
[40:10] Unbelievable.

Speaker 5:
[40:11] And now we learn that the blazers will not put out the playoff t-shirts on the backs of chairs for their games against the Spurs on Friday and Sunday. We saw the Spurs doing that.

Speaker 6:
[40:22] Well, our-

Speaker 5:
[40:23] themselves in San Antonio.

Speaker 6:
[40:24] Our boss will like that, though, because he's not a fan of the t-shirt, the playoff t-shirt.

Speaker 5:
[40:29] So El Chippo has something going for him.

Speaker 6:
[40:31] There you go. That's one thing.

Speaker 5:
[40:33] Why does a story about a sports owner cheaping out still hit so hard?

Speaker 6:
[40:38] Because it doesn't make any fucking sense. Like, you do this because it's fun, because you want to elevate your standing in your community or somewhere, right? To own a team. Now, in recent decades, it has become more of a financial proposition. Like, the values of these franchises are escalating. One of the few things in America that's still like the value is increasing, right? But it gives you a chance to become important in a community in a way that not many other things can. And then you're going to do the same shit that everybody else in the world is doing to us, like cutting, you know, cutting corners, being cheap, treating your employees badly, you know, like all of us are going through that. This is supposed to be a refuge from that. You're not too, an NBA player, not being able to go to the NBA, on an NBA roster and not being able to go to travel with the rest of his team on the playoffs. Like that's, I mean, maybe that's unprecedented or unheard of. I've never heard of it before. So yeah, it just doesn't make any sense. Why would you bring the grinding, crushing reality of life, American life right now, into this world where it doesn't have to be that, man? Like this is where you're supposed to have fun. And your team is in the playoffs. Like they've, they're winning. Like they're, they've got something going for them after not having anything going for them for a while. So it just doesn't make any sense. Isn't that kind of, doesn't that bum you out too a little bit?

Speaker 5:
[42:06] It really does. Also the scale, like every team is now worth billions of dollars, including the Portland Trail Blazers. And then you're like, okay, well, I'm not going to put the digital reporter on the plane.

Speaker 6:
[42:19] Yeah.

Speaker 5:
[42:19] At the cost of hundreds of dollars for a hotel room.

Speaker 6:
[42:23] Yeah.

Speaker 5:
[42:23] You say flying on the team plane.

Speaker 6:
[42:24] I was going to say, you probably saved what? $1,500. Where are they playing right? Where the Portland is playing? The San Antonio show. I mean, them hotels could not. We've stayed at some San Antonio hotels. Yeah, we stayed at some San Antonio hotels. Yeah, man, he can afford it.

Speaker 5:
[42:39] I also love this, by the way, Jason Quick wrote a really good story for The Athletic about all of this, about Dundon's philosophy and why he is just cutting corners, he believes. Like, nothing that, anything that does not affect play on the floor, it's gone, right? He's that kind of owner, as you say, which is an owner we've seen in all of American life. This is what life was like under Paul Allen for Blazers players. I'll just read you from a quick story here. While players practiced, their cars were washed and detailed in the parking lot. They were feted, only in journalism, to lunches on his 413-foot private yacht, the Octopus, from which they were given helicopter tours over the Golden Gate Bridge. And for years, the Blazers flew to road games on Allen's private Boeing 757 jet, Blazer 1, complete with satellite television, a wet bar, and a master bedroom.

Speaker 6:
[43:33] Can you imagine? I mean, look, also, I mean, the thing is, you don't win through free agency anymore in the NBA because it's just, it's prohibited for teams to like really, you know, still sign guys out of free agency. So you got to do either of these really complex trades or you got to draft. Like you build through that. But I mean, you're not making Portland a desirable place for any NBA player to play. Like you already like in a sport where most of the players are black, Portland is not one of those cities that black folks look at and be like, I got to live there. So you're not making this a desirable location. It almost, again, I'm sure there's some stipulations about him not being able to sell, you know, move the team or anything, but I'm just like, do you want to turn off everybody in Portland? Like, this is all they got, man. That and, you know, their MLS team. Like, what are you doing? You know, like, what are you, are you trying to turn people off? It's like the Miriam Adelson thing. When they, when they sent away Luka Gantic. It's just like, are you trying to turn off your fans?

Speaker 5:
[44:38] Yes, apparently. That's the answer there. Build a giant casino in Dallas where the stadium is. Couple quick ones for you before we get out of here.

Speaker 6:
[44:46] Okay.

Speaker 5:
[44:47] Before we bring on Jordan Conn.

Speaker 6:
[44:48] Yeah.

Speaker 5:
[44:48] The Washington Post needs a sports writer. Now, where would they find one of those? We know this because they posted a job for a national sports reporter. I'll read you the description of the job here.

Speaker 6:
[45:01] Okay.

Speaker 5:
[45:02] This role is designed for a reporter who sees sports as a powerful lens into the forces shaping the country, including politics, culture and business. They should be passionate about both deepening fans' understanding of their favorite sports and engaging casual and non-fans.

Speaker 6:
[45:17] And not all that pressed about job security. I mean, I should apply for this job. No. You don't think so?

Speaker 5:
[45:29] Don't leave me, no, don't leave me. Even as a bit, I don't want you to do that.

Speaker 6:
[45:32] Even as a bit, you don't want me to do it?

Speaker 5:
[45:34] No.

Speaker 6:
[45:35] Okay.

Speaker 5:
[45:35] That would be funny.

Speaker 6:
[45:36] All right.

Speaker 5:
[45:37] You sent them a couple of podcast segments you've done recently.

Speaker 6:
[45:40] Well, I've written occasionally and some other stuff. You know what I'm saying?

Speaker 5:
[45:43] Well, but I mean like, hey, you might have been interested in my commentary.

Speaker 6:
[45:45] Oh yeah, well, yeah. I mean, well, how many of those people are still there? Well, it just, if anything, it just highlights to me. See, the thing is, it's really tough as a journalist or anybody that works in media right now. There's this assumption that management, when they're going through this and they're like, we're going to have to hack off like a fifth of the newsroom or whatever. We're going to lay off, or half. Yeah, we're going to lay off all these people, but we're doing it deliberately, intentionally. Like we're just thinking about what the fallout might look like we've game, you have AI. So maybe you can use AI of some sort of way to get to war game out what it looks like if you cut all this out. But you that there's something in that they understand that this is a really difficult thing to do, right? And it just appears that they did not take this task very seriously, right?

Speaker 5:
[46:36] They didn't at all. I mean, even if even if you agreed with the idea and you and I certainly do not, but even if you agreed with the idea that you should get rid of something like half of your newsroom, they did it in a very, very stupid and incompetent way. Like, you want a reporter in sports who can write about, you know, sports, the way it's shaping the country, including politics, culture and business? Let me give you a few ideas. Kent Babb, who you already had writing features. Jesse Doherty, who you already had covering the rapidly changing environment of college football and NIL. Ben Strauss, who was writing about media and co-wrote a book about college football. Those people already worked for you. You laid them off. Now, they have other jobs or soon will. So get out of here with this stuff. You literally had those people. So again, if you're like, okay, we need a sportswriter on staff in our heavily downsized sports department that's going to do that. You had that person.

Speaker 6:
[47:37] I know they were there.

Speaker 5:
[47:38] Maybe you could have talked to them into staying.

Speaker 6:
[47:40] I've reached out to a few people who work there who no longer work there. I was like, and I sent them this and they were just like, I'm not going to work with those people. I would not work there again. But yeah, how can you have any confidence? If you happen to have made it, if the blade didn't fall on you this time and you work at the Washington Post, I'm sure you already know you're suspicious of your management or whatever, but just imagine being in that newsroom today and looking at how they're conducting themselves and how they're running this newspaper, right? It's just like, oh, you guys don't actually have a plan. Didn't they have like, they were reorganizing the newsroom so that somebody was going to do forward-facing and thinking about a new structure to the newsroom and all this other stuff too. It's just like, you guys are wasting everybody's time and money. You're just having meetings for no reason, and you're scaring people and ruining people's lives haphazardly. You're not even taking their job seriously and it's infuriating. It did not have to be this way. It does not have to be this way, and yet it is.

Speaker 5:
[48:49] Here's another example. Did you know this guy John Fisher? He used to work at Slate?

Speaker 6:
[48:52] Oh my God. Yeah, I know John. Yeah, absolutely.

Speaker 5:
[48:55] All right, so John Fisher was a Washington Post editor in the arts section. He was the quarterback of the Washington Post Kennedy Center coverage. And again, there's a theory, not necessarily a theory I agree with, but there's a theory, okay, let's radically downsize the Washington Post so it's just about politics. If there's one thing you want to cover in the arts section, it's the freaking Kennedy Center, which is as Washington as it gets, and which Donald Trump has attempted to take over and put his name on.

Speaker 6:
[49:25] Because he sees it as a political, a useful political tool.

Speaker 5:
[49:28] Yes, that just seems like right in the bullseye of, okay, what is the arts coverage that we can bite off? It's the Kennedy Center. John Fisher got laid off. John Fisher gets hired quickly by The Atlantic. Under his byline at The Atlantic and Ashley Parkers, he breaks the story that Bill Maher, Trump critic Bill Maher is gonna get the Mark Twain Prize. And then The Atlantic publishes this juicy story, but someone that used to work at the Kennedy Center, this kind of what I saw inside thing, they got the scoops. They just went over, they went across town. And again, like, he could have stayed.

Speaker 6:
[50:11] He could have stayed.

Speaker 5:
[50:12] He could have stayed. Just, and again, it's just, it's just, yeah. Last thing for you, before we get out of here. I watched a New Yorker video the other day.

Speaker 6:
[50:23] Okay.

Speaker 5:
[50:25] This was an unusual kind of New Yorker video.

Speaker 6:
[50:29] Okay.

Speaker 5:
[50:29] I don't know if you've ever watched the TV show Hacks. I'm gonna guess that's a hard no.

Speaker 6:
[50:34] Yeah, sorry.

Speaker 5:
[50:35] Jean Smart and Hannah Einbender are the stars of Hacks. And there was a New Yorker video where they were interviewing each other. Okay. Okay. Here's a little clip of Smart and Einbender.

Speaker 2:
[50:48] The New Yorker famously loves facts. Can you tell us a little known fact about yourself?

Speaker 3:
[50:59] I don't have pierced ears.

Speaker 2:
[51:03] Okay.

Speaker 6:
[51:04] It's tough.

Speaker 5:
[51:06] Let me tell you something here.

Speaker 6:
[51:07] It's tough.

Speaker 5:
[51:08] I understand that we're all venturing into the new media frontier.

Speaker 1:
[51:11] Yeah.

Speaker 5:
[51:12] We're all doing different things. I don't think I need the New Yorker to be hosting celebrities interviewing each other. We just had this with Vanity Fair with the SNL cast and Chloe Feynman casually confessing to pantsing a little kid.

Speaker 1:
[51:29] I remember you.

Speaker 5:
[51:31] I don't think we need more venues for celebrities to interview each other. I think it's just that we can give that to the Hollywood trades to do around Oscar time. That's just fine. We're all good from there.

Speaker 6:
[51:44] I don't think you can blame BuzzFeed on this because I remember when I was there, there was just if we bring a celebrity in and they'd be interviewed and they were the star of the show. Of course, they were the star of the show. Then I think maybe a couple of times, maybe they interviewed each other. Of course, like Interview Magazine, for instance, like that's sure, Artifice behind that. But yeah, that's pretty rough. I mean, I hate that. I have not kept up with Gene Smart since Designing Women.

Speaker 5:
[52:14] God, I love that show.

Speaker 6:
[52:14] It was a good show. It was a great show, man. That was a fantastic show.

Speaker 5:
[52:17] Trixie Carter, Annie Potts.

Speaker 6:
[52:19] Yeah, man. Meshack Taylor? I watched every, RIP.

Speaker 5:
[52:22] RIP, yeah.

Speaker 6:
[52:23] RIP, Meshack Taylor.

Speaker 5:
[52:24] Anthony, right?

Speaker 6:
[52:25] That's right. They had Louis Grizzard on there one time. You remember that?

Speaker 5:
[52:29] That's so Atlanta, it hurts.

Speaker 6:
[52:30] Very Atlanta, that's right.

Speaker 5:
[52:31] Just bought one of his books the other day at a used bookstore.

Speaker 6:
[52:34] Of course she did, of course she did.

Speaker 5:
[52:35] And again, by the way, if Rachel Syme, my old pal from The Daily Beast, wants to interview Gene Smart and Hannah Heidbender, I'm all there for it. I just think we need more celebrities interviewing celebrities.

Speaker 6:
[52:44] I have Isaac Chotman, man. You know what I'm saying?

Speaker 5:
[52:47] That would be a fascinating.

Speaker 6:
[52:47] You want to get to him?

Speaker 7:
[52:48] Is Isaac available?

Speaker 6:
[52:49] Yeah, can he interview Gene Smart?

Speaker 5:
[52:52] All right, here's Joel with our very special guest.

Speaker 1:
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Speaker 3:
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Speaker 1:
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Speaker 6:
[54:42] So happy, happy book release day to friend of the show, Jordan Ritter Conn. Jordan is a senior staff writer at The Ringer, just like me, and also author of The Road to Raqqa, a story of brotherhood, borders and belonging, which won the 2021 Dayton Literary Peace Prize. His new book, American Man comes out today and it's a book that focuses on four very different men against the backdrop of a rapidly changing society and shifting expectations. He's gonna tell us a bit about it so you can go out and buy the book today if you haven't already, but Jordan, welcome.

Speaker 10:
[55:16] Joel, thank you so much for having me, man. I'm really excited to be here.

Speaker 6:
[55:19] Oh, of course. Where are you right now? You're in a hotel room.

Speaker 10:
[55:22] I'm in a hotel room in CJ. McCollum's New York City.

Speaker 6:
[55:26] Oh, man, you were talking shit. You all may not know that Jordan is a Hawks fan, one of six.

Speaker 10:
[55:33] Well, you know, we're out here. I, to be honest, I got here yesterday and was doing interviews and meetings and stuff and was so exhausted I didn't even see the game last night. But I woke up and watched the fourth quarter this morning. And I've been in the hotel room doing interviews so far today, but after we are done here, I will be walking around New York City in my Hawks jacket. Excitedly, excitedly accepting whatever comes my way.

Speaker 6:
[56:00] All right, man, don't let us see you on New York One later today, man. You be careful out there. So don't antagonize those people.

Speaker 10:
[56:05] I'm standing up for Trey Young. I still, he's still got a special place in my heart. And yeah, I've got to defend his honor while I'm here.

Speaker 6:
[56:14] I appreciate it. Well, so this is book release day. What's it been like for you today, man? I mean, this is your second book. So obviously, it's not like the first book release day. But what's the second one around like this time?

Speaker 10:
[56:25] It's been cool. The first one came out in 2020. And so that experience was July 2020. That experience was very different from how you would imagine it. Because you couldn't go anywhere, couldn't see it in a store, couldn't do any of that stuff. And today has been, even just this week, just being in New York City doing some interviews. And I have seen, like it kind of got on shelves a few days early in a few places. So having the experience of picking it up in a store, signing books in stores, it's been amazing. And yeah, I'm doing a reading tonight in Brooklyn, or an event with the writer Zito Madu. And just being able to see this thing that you poured yourself into out in the world is a pretty amazing thing.

Speaker 6:
[57:14] Awesome. So did something happen in your own life or in the news that made you want to write about this? Cause you mentioned in the book, in the acknowledgements at least, you mentioned this to your agent and he was like, oh, you got to write about it. So like how did this all come up? How did this start?

Speaker 10:
[57:31] Yeah, you know, like so my career as a journalist has been doing a number of different things, but I kind of feel like what I'm best at is like really intimately writing about people's lives. So doing the kind of stories where people really kind of open themselves up to you. And, you know, being in the world that's, we're kind of largely in, you and I both spend like sometimes in the sports world, sometimes outside of it, but in the sports world, when you do those kinds of stories, it means you're often writing about men. And so I've spent a lot of my career kind of having conversations with men about the kind of things that we're always told men don't really like to talk about, where they're kind of revealing pieces of themselves, revealing experiences that they've been through, that we tend to think that men like to kind of keep hidden. And so kind of when this conversation around masculinity just started, I'm talking like first Trump administration, and there were people talking about how, you know, things about men not having friends, things about men not really being willing to kind of open up, things about men starting to struggle or latching on to this avatar of like kind of cartoonish masculinity and Donald Trump. I had this feeling of like, I've spent kind of a lot of my life thinking about this. I spent a lot of my life having these kinds of conversations with people, both personally and professionally. And I wanted to do a book that would kind of dig into all the stuff that we're not, we supposedly don't want to talk about. And we'd do it with four men from very different parts of the country, walks of life experiences, but feel like you're kind of like inside their heads and fully inhabiting what they're going through. And to be honest, I got started on this in 2020. The conversation around this stuff has only gotten louder and louder and louder since then, so I've gotten kind of lucky in that way. And now here we are.

Speaker 6:
[59:25] How hard was it to resist turning this into a memoir? Right, because you say you've spent a lot of your life writing about people's lives, but you also make sort of passing reference to your great-grandfather, your grandfather, your father. And of course, you have a son, a toddler's son. So in your own experiences, what you talk about movingly in the introduction or whatever, so why didn't you go down that route? Or did you consider going down that route?

Speaker 10:
[59:51] No, I never really did. It's just, I don't know, man. Journalism is just fun. Talking to people is fun. Interviewing people is fun. I wanted to, honestly, that introduction that is personal was the very last thing that I wrote. It was the hardest thing to write. I had to go through versions of it before I finally arrived at what I wrote. Because I think, I don't know if you ever feel this way, but as journalists, often we write about other people sometimes because we don't necessarily want to be digging into what's going on in ourselves. Or we write about other people as a way to explore things that we've been curious about in our own personal lives or experiences of people we know that we've never really learned about. We learn about them through proxy in those interviews. And so I felt like I wanted to do that. And also, I wanted something that was through these individual stories that added up to a sweeping look at what masculinity looks like in this country right now. And I'm just one guy. I have one very particular set of experiences. But I felt like with four guys who are so different from each other, obviously you can't fully encapsulate the experience of masculinity. But I felt like I could come closer by looking at it through the lives of four individual men.

Speaker 6:
[61:15] You said what masculinity looks like today. What does masculinity look like today?

Speaker 10:
[61:21] I think of it as just the waters that we're all swimming in, you men. It's something that we don't really think about until we're really confronted with it in a direct way. But I think the one thing that came to me over the course of working on this book that binds us together is that we all have an idea of who we're supposed to be as men. We inherit it from our fathers, we inherit it from our culture, we inherit it from the particular context that we're raised in. At one point or another, we don't fully measure up. There's some consistent themes with that, like we're taught to be emotionally reserved. We're taught to be physically dominant in whatever ways we possibly can. We're taught to be providers, we're taught to be sexually attractive. At some point or another, you're not going to be one of those things. Maybe you're five years old, you're the kid on the playground who's getting picked on, and you're like, oh man, I'm not like the other kids. Or maybe you're the guy who has it all, and you're just getting older and dealing with an aging body, and the fact that all the success that you've had maybe doesn't add up to what you hoped it would. And so I think that it's how we deal with that failure, how we deal with those inevitable moments when we don't measure up to this thing that we feel like we're supposed to measure up to that ultimately defines our individual relationships to masculinity.

Speaker 6:
[62:57] You said you started this in 2020, so it means you didn't give yourself much of a break after your previous book. Did anything happen in the last five to six years that has really impacted, though, some of the themes that you wanted to talk about in the first place? Has there been anything that has exacerbated it or anything like that?

Speaker 10:
[63:17] Yeah. I wanted to write about these themes that feel timeless, to be honest with you. I wanted it to feel like those books that we read that have a huge impact on us when we're young, that feel like they're rooted in a particular moment in time, that we can imagine returning to 10 or 20 years later. That's what I was hoping to do. Writing something that feels universal, but also obviously it's connected. It's coming out in a specific moment. It's coming out in a moment when men are increasingly isolated, coming out in a moment when a lot of men have latched on to, again, these what feels like such nakedly desperate attempts to paper over insecurity in the avatar of people like Donald Trump. Coming out in a moment when we're hearing about things like incels, looks maxing, whatever else. But I see a lot of that is just new ways of grappling with the same old question. The same old question of how do I measure up? I see a lot of it as things that men are dealing with that everyone is dealing with. We talk a lot about the ways in which men are isolated right now. Everyone is a bit more isolated. Technology is pulling us apart from each other. It's making us less connected. It's making us less empathetic. I think men are dealing with that in the same ways that everyone else is. I wanted to connect to all of the stuff that's happening right now that we're seeing in the headlines while at the same time feeling like something that's kind of removed from time a little bit. It could feel a little bit timeless.

Speaker 6:
[65:02] It's really interesting that you talk, and I've listened to some of your other interviews, and you talk a lot about empathy, understanding these men. You don't talk about, and I'm guessing this is intentional. You don't talk about patriarchy. You do talk about violence, though, right? But you don't talk about men as a malevolent force, necessarily, in the way that a lot of people probably are talking about men in other spaces. I'm assuming this is intentional, correct?

Speaker 10:
[65:27] Yeah, it is, to be honest with you. I think that, I don't know, patriarchy, to me, is a word that has had a very specific meaning about kind of systems that kind of uphold men's power and the ways in which we contribute to that. But it's also a word that has become so ubiquitous that it almost has become stripped of that original meaning and becomes used as, you know, I just feel like often when people hear that word, they have a visceral reaction to it that's not really rooted in what the word is intended to mean. And so, you know, so for that reason, like I wanted, I, you know, the whole lesson of show don't tell, I felt like I was kind of telling these stories that show the ways we have these expectations that are brought on by kind of, you know, patriarchal expectations without trying to kind of hammer the reader over the head with, you know, lessons about, you know, what should be done.

Speaker 6:
[66:30] Man, it's interesting you say that though, right? Because, I mean, another way, I mean, you say, I would, I'll say it for you. That's a way, that's a tough way to get people interested in the book, right? If you're talking about patriarchy, if you want a lot of people to read it. But on the other hand, one of the four characters in your book is a trans man, right? And that's another thing that people probably, you know, there's a certain kind of person that would roll their eyes at patriarchy. They would roll your eyes at including a trans man. And that was Nate, if I'm correct. Why did you include Nate?

Speaker 10:
[67:01] Yeah. You know, Nate is, so he is a trans man who is living in a town outside of Youngstown, Ohio. And, yeah. Oh, man.

Speaker 6:
[67:15] Yeah.

Speaker 10:
[67:15] Oh, shit. You know, and he is someone who, his story follows a lot of just his transition, but also kind of his, he's the youngest of the four men, and it's a lot about kind of like your identity online and how you kind of disentangle who you are on the internet from who you are in real life. But I wanted to include his story in particular because again, I talk about masculinity as being kind of the waters that we're swimming in without us even really realizing it. It's something where sometimes I would have conversations with men about this book and the first time I asked them to reflect on their relationship to masculinity is the first time they've ever thought about it. Because it's just kind of the oxygen we're inhaling from the time we're born. But Nate's experience being trans is like he was born into a different kind of script. He was born into a different set of expectations for who he was going to be. That script was one of femininity. And so he ends up having to be a bit more, like think about this stuff in a bit more of an explicit way at an early age, at five, six years old, desperate to be a boy, praying to God to turn him into a boy. As an adolescent who's kind of like seeing and feeling jealous of the boys in his class and wanting to be like them. And so he goes through his life kind of very aware of what kind of divides us, what divides men and women in terms of kind of the, again, the scripts and the ideas that we inherit and how he wants to go about navigating that. And I also thought, you know, this is a book about our relationship to gender, gender about the way we inhabit masculinity. He's someone whose relationship to gender, the way he inhabits his sense of masculinity is under threat. I mean, he lives in Ohio. He lives in a state that has restricted access to trans health care. He lives in a place where there are new rules passed, new laws passed all the time that make it more difficult for him to be who he is. But it's also a place that is his home, a place where he has found acceptance, a place where he has found people who care about him. He, you know, with a nonfiction book, I don't think there's any such thing as spoilers. So I'll say that late in the book, he kind of finds this community of this group called Black Trans Men of Ohio, where he, it's never occurred to him that there are other black trans men in his state. And when he finds these guys, it's like, it's this incredible kind of community building thing for him. And so, you know, I thought it was important to show that like trans people exist in places like Youngstown, Ohio, trans people exist in places like where I live, Tennessee, and they are finding community and acceptance in those places, even as their government kind of strips them of their rights.

Speaker 6:
[70:01] Look, I've seen some of your book roll out here, Jordan, okay? You've talked to a lot of people. You've done a lot of NPR, public radio stations. New York Times did a great review. There's a whole Manosphere media ecosystem out there. And you even referred to it by saying, you're not terribly interested in the man who lead that space. Why not? Given their influence.

Speaker 10:
[70:23] I mean, I'm not terribly interested in, I wasn't terribly interested in them while writing the book. They want to talk to me about it. I'm glad to talk to them.

Speaker 6:
[70:29] Okay.

Speaker 10:
[70:30] I will say that. I'm more than happy. My DMs are open and my phone, I will gladly pick it up if Joe Rogan or any of those guys call. The reason why I kind of made that point in the introduction to the book is that I feel like it was more about kind of the moral panic that surrounds all of that stuff. It was like, the sense that like, none of this shit is new. Like, none of like what those guys are doing is, like the stuff that people get upset about, you know, stuff that feels misogynistic is new. Like that misogyny has existed for as long as men and women have existed. Like men have been using their power to subjugate other people for as long as men have existed. Like it is, so what we're dealing with now, again, is just, I think, like a new, all of this stuff mapped onto new technologies, all of this kind of distributed through new media. But it's the same kind of ancient thing that's us like, trying to figure out how to grapple with our own feelings of frustration, inadequacy, disempowerment, whatever else, and often doing so by lashing out at other people, trying to subjugate, trying to disempower other people. And so I wanted to just make clear that I feel like none of this is new.

Speaker 6:
[71:57] Okay. You also say you didn't set out to advance any argument about what masculinity should be. The book contains no bold proclamations or grand theories. I'm not concerned with redefining or reinforcing any ancient ideas about what makes a man. So the person that gets this book probably is a gift because the stereotype men don't read. So it's probably a woman or their partner that buys it for them. What do you want the man that gets that book today, they order it online and they go to their local independent bookstore. And what do you want them to take from this then?

Speaker 10:
[72:30] Yeah. It's funny you say that. During the years I was working on this, when I would tell people what I was doing, the demographic that was almost immediately interested every single time were millennial and Gen X women, particularly mothers, particularly mothers of sons. Just really interested, wanted to know more. Among men, it ran the gamut. Some men would be immediately like, oh, that sounds amazing. I'm really excited about that. Some men would be like, what do you mean you're writing a book about masking? What are you talking about? Or they would start telling me about, oh, I hear what you're getting at. You should hear about my fuck up nephew or something. He's got some real issues dealing with all this stuff. But me, I've got it all figured out. Don't worry about me. But I get that there's those guys out there. Ultimately, what I would want anyone to take away from it, who reads it, a man or woman or anyone, is just this sense of connection to an understanding of what people are going through, connection to an understanding of the forces that shape us, that kind of seep their way into how we define ourselves, often without us even really knowing. I would want that there are men in this book who might seem on the surface very different from you, whoever you are, if you pick it up and read it. But I would like for anyone to feel some point of connection to each of these four guys, something that makes them realize, oh, I've dealt with that, or I know what that feeling is like. And just feel a little bit, just kind of seen and understood, and maybe become more conscious of the ways in which their own lives have been kind of shaped by all of these forces.

Speaker 6:
[74:26] Jordan Ritter Conn, American Men. I got that copy right here, man.

Speaker 10:
[74:30] Thank you so much, Joel.

Speaker 6:
[74:31] No, of course, of course, man. Good luck on this book tour. And man, for all our listeners, please check it out, read the book. I'm sure you're going to be touring. Do you got a little website or something you want to pimp out?

Speaker 10:
[74:42] I do, yeah. My website, jordanritterconn.com, has all my tour dates. Got 17 stops. First one tonight in New York, Thursday in Nashville, Saturday in Philly, and yeah, I'm excited. And this is one of my favorite podcasts. You're a journalist and writer, podcaster, everything that I've admired for a long time. And I love that we're colleagues now and love getting to talk to you today.

Speaker 6:
[75:05] Likewise, man. If you make it to DC, if you don't die in the streets of New York with that hawks jacket on, we'll hopefully get a chance to catch you in DC, man. But thanks for stopping by The Press Box, buddy.

Speaker 10:
[75:15] All right. Thanks, Joel.

Speaker 6:
[75:17] All right.

Speaker 5:
[75:18] That's The Press Box. He's Joel Anderson. I'm Bryan Curtis. Predicting magic by Isaiah Blakely and Bruce Baldwin. Thank you, gentlemen, for all your help. Thursday on The Press Box, David Shoemaker is going to be here. David is back from WrestleMania. I cannot wait to see David. He's had a- I got all kinds of texts from him. He's like, dude, did you know there's a Radio Row at WrestleMania now? What? I mean, man. We saw all kinds of interesting people there.

Speaker 6:
[75:46] Do we need to go to one of these? Do you think?

Speaker 5:
[75:48] Yeah, I think we do.

Speaker 6:
[75:49] You think so?

Speaker 5:
[75:50] I think we do. I think we'd all have a fantastic time.

Speaker 6:
[75:53] I think so. Hey, man, I haven't checked in since WrestleMania 4. So you just-

Speaker 5:
[75:57] and you'll find out. You just get right back into it.

Speaker 4:
[75:59] All right.

Speaker 6:
[75:59] Let's get you to it.

Speaker 5:
[76:00] You just get right back into it. Joel, I'll see you next Thursday with more Lukewarm takes about the meeting.

Speaker 6:
[76:04] Looking forward to it, buddy.