Bryan Curtis On Washington Post Sports Destruction & Tony Romo Backlash

All right.

Joining me now, always great when he drops in for his periodic visit from the Ringer, editor at large, and of course the Press Box podcast, Brian Curtis.

Brian, how's it going?

Great to see you, Jimmy.

I'm reporting from the sports desert.

I, you know, at first I was like, are you in like a Radio row situation already?

I saw like a thing behind you there.

I didn't know I was getting excited.

This is a ringer headquarters here, busy day, so I stuck into a control room.

OK, well, I appreciate you, uh, appreciate you doing this, and the press box is, is that pod now on Netflix?

We're not on the Netflix tier, no, OK, I could, I can't figure between like you and Barstool which ones are on there, not on there.

I can't, I can't figure out which is which.

So, um, we are on the video tier now that people can watch us on the Spotify app.

So that's been, and you've been on that for a while, and I gotta say that's really harrowing because I've, you know, had to just look after my appearance in a whole different way.

Well, here's, you wanna know the truth about this?

I never knew that the video played on Spotify.

I think till I watched, till I went to listen to one of your pods.

I use Apple.

I know that.

I'm sorry, ringer people, um, just for convenience of the iPhone, but I went to Spotify a few weeks ago.

I don't remember what the circumstances were, and I saw your video pop up of your pod, and I'm like, oh, that's really cool.

I wish I had that.

Now you're telling me I have that and I don't even know, so there you go.

Like this whole podcast thing , like I got infuriated last week or two weeks ago when Netflix announced a podcast with Michael Irvin that is no audio.

It's just, so that's called a TV show.

That's not a podcast.

If it's on Netflix, and I don't wanna get Brian in trouble with Netflix with their partner, but like, so it's a show that's a video show on Netflix with no audio, no Spotify, no Apple, no whatever.

That's not a podcast, that's a TV show, but they were calling it a podcast.

I got all bent out of shape about it.

I need better things to worry about, but, you know.

I was thinking about this the other day because we're just in this interesting point of this technology.

And we're all just sort of making it up as we go along, which is part of the fun of podcasting, I think.

Yes.

But I'm like, was there a point in the history of sports radio where people were like, can anyone hear this?

You know, is this, is this, what do we, what do we, is it, was there this level of just invention, technologically and otherwise?

Uh, it's, you know, and it's funny too because I don't know if you saw it today.

I think it came out today, so I'm not sure if you saw it yet, but Barrett Media put out a list of the top 20 digital shows today.

And I don't know what the difference is.

What, like, so like, so like Pablo Torre is on there.

New Heights is on there.

Bill Simmons is on there, uh, you know, Mina Kimes, like, but I don't, what's the, what's a digital show?

What's a podcast?

What's a TV show?

I'm all confused.

I'm all confused.

Yeah, digital show.

I don't know.

Got me.

Yeah.

All right, let's start with this, um.

I had Mike Tirico on a couple of weeks ago.

The NBC Mike Tirico, Chris Collinsworth, they have the Super Bowl in a couple of weeks.

Tell me your feeling on this.

it made sense when I did the research and saw that this was Mike Tirico's first Super Bowl.

Like, if someone had said to me, has Mike Tirico ever called the Super Bowl, I would go through my head which networks, and then I would come up with, no.

But if I didn't do that, if I didn't take a minute to do that in my head, like when I first saw it, my initial split-second reaction was like, Mike Trio just feels like a guy that's called the Super Bowl already.

Like it's crazy to me that Mike Tirico has not called one already.

Um, so I'm looking forward.

I'm happy for him to get his first, and I'm looking forward.

I know it's gonna be a good broadcast if he's handling play by play, but it's wild to think that he's been around so long and now this is, this will be Mike Tirico's first Super Bowl.

I was thinking about that the other day because remember when he came to NBC.

And he made this bet.

And the bet was that he was gonna be behind Bob Costas on the Olympics, but he was eventually gonna do the Olympics.

And then he was behind, of course, Al Michaels on Sunday Night Football, but he eventually was gonna get that job.

And now we see him doing both of those jobs actually in the same month.

Because he's gonna do the Super Bowl and the Winter Olympics.

It's fascinating.

I mean, to me with Tario, one thing that's interesting is you and I know this, announcers can be great, good, bad.

That doesn't have anything to do with the way that people perceive announcers, even people that are in our business that are very serious critics of broadcasting.

But what's happened with Tirico is, Sunday Night Football Olympics, and then he's gonna be calling the conference finals in the NBA.

So to me, this is just like one of those moments where people all of a sudden are like, you know what, what if Mike Tirico is the best play by play man we have?

That's just, that is less of a reflection on him because I don't think his quality has changed over the last 3 years, but it's just everybody paying attention at the same time.

Yeah, I, you know, listen, who's the best?

You could make an argument for a couple of people here and there.

You, you, I don't think you can make the argument that there maybe there are a couple of people out there who are, who are as versatile , but there's no one more versatile like you just laid out.

NFL.

NBA he's gonna have the title, conference title game.

Olympics, golf.

He does golf on the, on Sirius XM radio.

I mean, the versatility, and I, I said this.

I had him on two weeks ago.

I said this last week in recapping.

I wanted to, I, I just wanted to bludgeon myself when I was done taping it because I realized I'd never asked him if he would do any baseball at NBC now that they have the package.

Just totally forgot to ask that question.

But like, I, would you have any doubt he could do it if he wanted to, like, you know, and it's, there's just this way that he is able to get information onto a broadcast that I think makes him just about different than anybody else.

You know, as you say, we could have a great argument, you know, over a beer about who's the best play by play guy right now, and we, we'd put Joe Buck on that list and we, we'd put a lot, you know, maybe Irons on the list, we put a lot of different people on the list.

Yeah.

But what I had an opportunity a couple of years ago to actually not only sit in a booth with Tario, but literally sit about 4 or 5 ft next to him, which I've never done with an announcer.

I was almost peering over his shoulder and just watch everything he did and the way he's able to pick up an iPad in the middle of a game, while calling a game, and Toggle through things and search for information, and then get that information onto the air in a place that makes sense.

So it's not just, here's a bunch of stats like you hear on a random football podcast, but here's something relevant to a thing that happened 5 seconds ago, it's astonishing.

And I've, I've never heard anybody do it quite like Tirico does it.

Yeah.

You know, I think Tirico too, what, what I, I envy the most maybe, is that everything seems totally effortless with him.

I, there's never a moment of confusion slip up.

It's, it's really the, the smoothness is impressive for me with Tirico.

Smoothness.

I'll give you that to me when I think effortless, I think more Buck.

Well, yeah, yeah, when it feels like it's just so relaxed and yet so on point.

Somehow to me that's, that's more Joe Buck than Mike Tirico.

Mike Tirico, I would say, feels effortful.

Like I, to me, he feels like he's.

You know, you can almost feel the brain whirring in his head when he calls again.

Yeah , yeah, yeah.

It's different in that way, but.

And, and I, you know, I like that NBC has it this year because, you know what, I don't want to do a whole round of Tony Romo stuff.

I don't wanna do Fox making it the Tom Brady show.

I, I, I, like, it's like we, this will be like , we know we're gonna get a good broadcast.

Maybe you have issues with Collinsworth, I, you know, he's never gonna say anything bad about anybody ever.

That irritates me, but You're gonna get a good solid broadcast on February 8th.

100%.

They're really good.

NBC is great.

I, I just, I find that broadcast to be so, um, what's the word I'm looking for?

They're wonderfully detailed.

It's like, it's like Dorico in a way, you know , the shot is right, you know, the truck has the right shot.

They're looking for small things.

They come out of a commercial and Collinsworth is breaking down a replay, and it's an interesting point he's making.

Yeah.

They're also just really good, and they've been like this since Freddie Freddie Gelli was was uh producing that show.

They're really good at telling the story of a game in real time.

And that's, that's to me one of the small things that really separates like the great crews from the crews that are just pretty good.

You know, cause you hear a lot of NFL games and you're like, the guys who are broadcasting the game, who are calling the game, and the guys in the truck, they don't know what the story of this game is.

They don't have their arms around it.

They're not, they're not able to see it and tell us in real time, and NBC and Fox to me do such a fantastic job of that.

See, I feel that way.

I see, I think Joe and Troy, like, I think Joe and Troy are great at when the game is unfolding.

They don't miss one thing.

They're especially, and Troy's on top of it.

And when, you know, if this player is struggling, if this player is doing this correctly, I think Joe and Troy are the best at in-game when it starts identifying what's going on and giving you the full scope of that game.

I agree.

I think their truck has not been as good as they are.

It got much better this year, much, but there were, you could tell in previous years, you know, right replay wasn't up, the right shot wasn't there, it wasn't the quality of some of the other ones.

Yeah.

How much of the five-hour pregame will you watch?

Like there is the thing we have where like, there's a, I tell, I mean, maybe I don't want to speak for you, but it's like, you feel like you gotta watch something because of our jobs, but you also feel like you'd rather get run over by a bus than watch it.

Professional duty only, and like, you and I, you and I are kind of supposed to be watching this stuff.

Yeah, man, 5 hours of Super Bowl pregame, like, what will you learn in that 5 hours of pregame?

Like, will you, will there be one thing where you're like, oh, that's really interesting, I didn't know that.

I don't know, man.

Jason Garrett for 5 hours, that sounds like a lot to me.

We will see.

It's gonna be, I mean, listen, every network does it.

It's, well, I'm not picking on NBC here.

Every network does it, um.

Will they , you know, cool dances they do on social media for I hope, I mean, that's entertaining at least.

That's good.

I, I'm, I'm all for that.

Give me that, um.

And I know, I know you're not a ratings guy.

But I, I do wanna ask because it came out today.

Were you surprised at all that the early game on Sunday, Broncos Patriots outrated the night game with Rams Seahawks?

Um, Well, first of all, we should say that the early game was what, like 9, 10 million less than last year's AFC title game.

Well, but that game was Bills Chiefs with Mahomes and Chavez versus Kelsey and Taylor Swift and Josh Allen, and that was the late game.

So they were never gonna come close to that number just to put it in context though, yeah, they were never coming close to that.

They got 57 million for that game.

Yeah, I mean, the Seahawks to me are just, and again.

I have nothing against the Seahawks.

I don't, I don't really pro the Seahawks either, but they just like, that's one of those franchises that just does not have the glamour on it.

And especially yet, I mean they're they're new, they're new to being this good.

So like I think who's the person who's who's the player for the Seahawks that you tell a person who's just kind of interested in football that they really need to watch right now, right?

And I, and I, and I get that Sam, uh, Sam, I get that Matt Stafford is great, but I also feel that way about the Rams.

I don't feel like anyone outside of, I don't think anyone inside of Los Angeles cares about the Rams, and I don't think it's muted.

It's very muted.

Yeah, they're not a big national team.

So I wasn't, yeah, I wasn't shocked that that rating was, I mean, that rating, so Fox had 44 million last year for Commanders Eagles, which was the early game.

But like you said, like in that game, you could sell Jalen Hurts, Jaden Daniels, and, and a few others, you know, the, the Commanders with a story of coming out of nowhere with Daniels.

The Eagles are the Eagles, Philly, Washington markets.

Rams Seahawks, that across America is a, I think a little bit of a tough sell, so I wasn't shocked by that.

America doesn't love the Rams as much as football reporters love Sean McVeigh.

100%.

Put it that way.

100%.

That's, that's the true love, Jimmy.

Sean McVeigh.

Oh my goodness, everybody loves Sean McVeigh.

Yep.

Oh, and I will say this though, he did do something in a preseason game.

Maybe a couple of years ago you can tell he'll be great in the booth when he decides.

I, I always thought that whole thing was weird a couple of years ago when they thought he was gonna leave the Rams and go into broadcast.

He's like 12 years old.

Why?

Where is he going right now?

Like, and he had literally just won the Super Bowl when those conversations were happening, right?

But he will, if when, if and when he decides to do broadcasting, he will be very good based on what I've seen so far.

It'd be fascinating.

I still think that the warmth would be an interesting question, but again, we only see him behind podiums and talking to sideline reporters, so maybe they more in that setting.

Uh, speaking of a couple of broadcasters, I, I, you know, I see the hullabaloo around Tony Romo, and I just don't get it.

Like, listen, the, the Bills Jaguars game was bad.

That was a bad broadcast.

I don't think anyone could bad a dog of a game for Tony.

There's no way to, there's no way to spin it.

It was a rough game for Nan and Romo.

It wasn't good.

But the totality of Nance and Roma, I don't see as this horrific booth that people , and we can get into the thought of like replacing them with Ian and JJ Watt, which is never gonna happen.

I mean, I shouldn't say never gonna happen, but like, CBS is not booting Jim Nance right now.

Um, but like, I thought Broncos Patriots, they were fine.

I, I didn't have any issues with anything in that game from the booth.

Where do you stand on this whole Romo stuff that's gone haywire?

I am, I'm with you.

Here's what in, in that I think that this happens when people.

Judge broadcasters, even, again, even professionals like you and I nominally are.

What they do is they get an idea in their head and then they go looking for data points to support that idea.

Right.

So, remember when everybody was mad at Joe Buck?

And I remember it was, you know, the first piece I wrote for The Ringer was about Joe Buck, and what interested me was, I was like, I'm watching him and I'm like, I'm sorry , are people this mad about the Randy Moss thing, like, 10 years later, and, and then all of a sudden they decided they love Joe Buck, so now they just go looking for the opposite data points.

So, Tony Romo is in the first category now, where he can't do anything right.

Right.

Now, I will say this about Romo, for me now, I would put him among the big 4.

Number 1 analyst, I'd put him 4th right now.

Like, I would, I think Brady, to me in my mind has moved ahead, just a guy I wanna see call a game, doesn't mean he's every time he's 4.

Right.

And, and look, the AFC championship game was a great example.

I thought he had a good game in a lot of respects.

I thought he was, well, he understood the whole thing about the snow very , very quickly.

100%.

I was gonna say that 100%.

He's like, the Patriots are gonna score now and then they're never, or they're never gonna score again, and he was, and he knew the play when they threw the ball away on purpose.

It was, he had a lot of good moments in that game , but then, of course, he had a typical Romo moment, which was on the Jarrett Stidham fumble, which we thought was an incomplete pass.

He was totally confused and he wasn't paying attention to the replay and alerting people, hey, hey, this actually might not be an incomplete pass, this might be a fumble, because he was taking a bow about, you know, about a prediction that he had sort of allegedly made, and I'm just like, that was one of those moments, like, that was actually the most important play of the game.

Yes.

So, and of course Gene's territory screwed it up.

I know I don't need to get you started on that topic, though that was just that whole sequence was rough.

Yeah, and it's, and it's sort of like Jarrett Stidham.

You can have a good game, but if you bungle one of the biggest plays of the game, then the grade for me is not gonna be all that high.

I thought Nance handled it well from the standpoint of He knew right away not to go into some big touchdown call.

He knew right away there was confusion.

He saw, you know, the refs didn't put their arms up right away, um.

You know, you thought it was a touchdown because the guy ran it back for the Patriots.

He's in the end zone.

And Nance, I thought was good at like, wait a second, wait a second, we gotta figure out what's going on.

Then it all went haywire because of, you know, Gene comes in, Romo's this, the backwards pass, lateral, wide the whistle blow, and then it becomes a big cluster.

But, um, You know, I feel, I do feel, and I have to say I do feel for all the play by play people across the board because you, uh, unlike half the touchdowns now, you have to really wait.

Like you want to get into your call, you want to get into the moment.

You wanna really, you know, it's a touchdown.

This is your moment to shine .

But half the time, there's either we gotta review, you know, we gotta review it because everything is, You know, crazy in the NFL these days with the reviews and the challenges and this and that.

I wanna say something too, because I saw our friend Richard Deutsch tweeting about it, you know, and whenever, whenever Romo's involved, we gotta get Richard involved a little bit, but one thing I, I totally agree with Richard with is Tony Romo's a number one announcer.

Like, let's not let criticism of Tony Romo talk us into this idea that he's not a number one guy.

He's a number one guy.

He's absolutely, he may be a flawed number one guy, and maybe like when we rank quarterbacks in the league and you're like, man, I don't totally trust that guy, but he's really great, he has a lot of great moments.

Tony Romo is that guy, as an announcer.

I do think JJ Watt doing so well as as a #2 guy, that gets in people's minds because they're like, it's a classic thing, hey, the backup quarterback looks pretty great.

Are we sure this guy is a starter, even if that's not gonna happen.

It gets in people's minds and it affects the way we see him.

It reminds me so much of Brady and Greg Olson.

Like Brady, you know, it was tough enough for Tom Brady to be a rookie analyst doing it for the first time ever.

But it was also, he had to battle everyone thinking Greg Olson is the best analyst in the sport and Tom Brady booted him.

The JJ Watt Romo thing reminds me, so to me it's the same, it's almost the same exact thing.

And I think with Romo, like, to me, Romo has some gifts.

One is he's just, he's just a very likable guy, very likable personality.

He also doesn't feel like he's very coached in terms of, like, doing TV speak, and at times I think that hurts him because you see a little bit of the lack of preparation, you see a little bit of just like, for a while, he never knew offensive linemen, the names of offensive linemen, he just would, he would never call them by name, and I'm like, do you know, do you know who these guys are?

Do you know if they're good?

Like, he would have those moments, but I think he's just kind of like, The natural way he talks, the casual way he talks, that's actually what is winning about him.

Yeah.

And, and to me, like, again, like, you know, I just think everybody pays attention during the playoffs.

We, we look for data points, but I'm, and again, I'm like, again, I'm, I'm saying he's 4 out of 4, so I don't know what an endorsement that is, but to me, Tony Romo is the number 1 guy, and the criticism gets a little much.

I, I've said this, I do think, I do think Troy Aikman has sort of separated himself from the pack to me in a big way.

Like I think he's one and then you have obviously Collinsworth, Brady, Romo, and if you want to count Herb Street on Thursday night, um, Troy's just doing things those guys won't do.

I mean, what Troy said about CJ Stroud at the end of that playoff game, not one of those other guys would go near.

Near it the way he did.

They might say, rough day for CJ Stroud.

This isn't what how CJ Stroud wanted to play.

Troy.

Listen, this is 2 years in a row now.

This guy's gone backwards.

There's never been improved.

I mean, no one's given you that except for Troy, so that's why I think he has separated himself from all the others.

That's the other thing we should say, the quality right now and number one NFL boost is incredibly high.

Yeah, I mean, you and I have lived long enough to know this was not the case.

Remember the last couple of years of Phil Sims, there'd be a big CBS game and you'd be like, oh, this is, this is gonna suck.

Yeah.

Um, it's really good right now, and there's lots of different flavors of ice cream, and everybody has a different flavor of ice cream, and, like I said, all four of those top guys, I'm like, I don't, I don't dread hearing any of those games.

In fact, I look forward to hearing all four of those guys call a game.

No , I only dread the rules analyst.

Oh my God.

The Gene's territory thing where he just, he said two completely incompatible things and then the first time he said, well, you know, they, they , they didn't blow the ball dead on the play we were talking about with Stidham.

And then the second time he's like, well, they blew the ball dead, so it's not.

I'm like, do you even acknowledge that what you just, you just opposite thing what you, what the ref said, You're just repeating what they say when they change your mind, you change your mind.

It's unbelievable.

And I don't, and the, the worst by far, I don't know what ESPN is doing with college football, but their college football rules analysts are the biggest train wrecks on TV.

I mean, gotta remind me.

Yeah, Matt Austin maybe or something, I don't know, but it is rough.

I haven't done it.

But again, I, you know, I feel now I almost feel bad because everyone knows I'm like the guy who's bashing the rules analysts all the time and when something happens, my Twitter feed goes nuts.

And I just wanna say one thing.

Believe me, I, I've I was the first one on this years ago.

I I want everyone to know, I have just, well, I shouldn't say just as big, but a big issue here isn't just the rules analyst, it's the producer or director who's forcing The play by play guy to bring in the rules analysts when we don't need, when we don't need to hear from them.

It's, it's not just that the rules analyst is just gonna defend the refs.

It's the bringing in of the rules analysts to confirm what we just saw with our own eyes.

That's what irritates me to no end.

If there's a fumble and we see it's a fumble, I don't need to hear from Gene or Dean Blandino.

Leave him alone.

It's a classic TV mistake, and it's like when they have the drone camera.

And then they have to use the drone camera 28 times during a game.

And you're like, just cause you have it doesn't mean you have to use it, and that's the same thing with the Wills animals.

Yeah.

And then I guess Brady, everyone's now on the Brady bandwagon after his rough rookie season.

And I, I will not deny that he's made massive improvements.

I think he's a good listen.

I'm, I'm wondering now, because that first year is in the book, the nerves are over.

Now he's getting that praise.

I feel like Fox is, I, I think they're gonna get close now to turning every Brady game into the Brady Show.

Uh, they better be careful.

Let it be about the game.

Not so much.

I could see that being a problem here if, you know, the more comfortable Tom gets, the more they're gonna want to make it to Tom Brady show.

Is that, am I pulling that out of left field, or do you get what I'm saying?

The, the moments in his games when my ears have hurt the most is when his co-hosts have been like, TB, you know all about this is a, you know, you know, seven-time Super Bowl champion and all that stuff, and I'm just like , guys, we know who Tom Brady is.

Yeah, he's a broadcaster now.

He's here to call the game.

We, the whole, the, the reason these opinions really hit is because it's Tom freaking Brady.

Right, right.

We, we don't, we don't need actually a history lesson on who Tom Brady is.

So that to me is, and I understand, look, they paid so much money for him, there were the commercials and all that kind of stuff, but to me, one of the coolest parts about putting an announcer or putting former players in that role is that they've just suddenly become an announcer.

And, and they're there at the serving, you know, don't, we don't say Troy Aikman, Troy, you won 3 Super Bowl rings, like every time he analyzes the past, like, you just kind of have to, I think, I think that can all go away.

Right.

Especially now that he's established himself as a broadcaster.

Yeah, I, the only, what I would like more of maybe is.

Listen, I, I think you can lean on it in terms of, you know, let's say a receiver screws up.

Tom, how did that make you feel when you were playing?

You could do it that way.

The, the accolades, we know, we know the accolades.

We don't, we don't need a history lesson on him being the greatest quarterback of all time with every game he does.

I will say this about Brady, he's taken a ton, he's, he's made a huge, huge strides this year.

Yes, absolutely.

I, I keep going back to the old cliche, the game has slowed down for him.

Yeah.

Um, I think that's part of just like getting reps, getting used to it, um, and, and the fact that he's competitive and wants to be good, like, Tom Brady is the kind of guy that cares that people say, you know, Troy was a great broadcaster and Tom Brady wasn't.

Tom Brady is the kind of guy who cares about that and wants to fix that.

I will also say, it's a great credit, and these people won't take credit for this because this is not their way, but Richie Zients and Rich Russo in the truck at Fox.

If you want to throw, you know, Zeger and Eric Shanks from the front office there, Fox is good at this, right?

Here are the guys that have been the number one analysts at Fox since John Madden, Troy Aikman.

Cris Collinsworth Greg Olson and Tom Brady.

Yeah.

It all worked.

All of those guys had never been a number one analyst.

This isn't, those aren't guys they bought from another network.

And I remember when Troy Aikman walked out the door, there were a lot of hurt feelings, there was a lot of panic, what the hell are they gonna do from outside the building, and inside the building, it was always this feeling of, we know how to do this .

We, we have, we have the infrastructure here that we believe, if you put somebody in here that we have confidence in, We can help them.

Succeed.

We can, we can put them in the best position.

This won't be a case where they're gonna be left out.

This is, there is infrastructure here.

And to me, man, like that's, you know, they've outdone it every single time and they're number one.

And I almost, I don't, I almost, I don't want him to be, you know, Joe Broadcaster.

I, I let him be a little rough around the edges.

I, you know, I'd like, you know, I thought it was great.

There was a moment someday.

I guess there was like a ticky tack penalty and Tom said, you know, this is the NFC title game.

Unless there's blood, don't throw a flag.

Yeah, that was, give me a little, yeah, give me a little more of that, and, you know, yeah, because that's the way he like really feels like Tom Brady's a hard ass, right?

He's not Mr.

Nice Guy.

He didn't win 7 Super Bowls by being Mr.

Nice Guy.

Also, you know, the moment he had, was it, remind me, 49ers Eagles when he talked about the angle of the ball.

Yes, yes, that moment was that night?

Yes, it was about Brock Purdy.

Yeah, it was about the with the wind, yeah, whatever game that was.

What was their first game, San Fran, Carolina, who did they play in the first game?

Baley was the Eagle game, but it doesn't matter.

I know what you're talking about when he went into the wind.

I know exactly, and we know, and the thing I heard was that was not a pre-planned moment before the game.

That was something the truck came up with, and Brady had about a minute to prepare.

And then Tom Brady can just like, hey, I got science.

I know this.

I've thought about this, and you're like, Oh, that's interesting.

Yep, and he had a moment, and it was cool.

That's what I mean.

It's almost like let him be off more off the cuff instead of Joe Broadcaster and like come up with stuff like that with the wind, and it was the Niners Eagles game, by the way, so, um.

Yeah, so that's sort of uh That's sort of the state of the NFL.

I wanna get into one thing here on college.

I, oh, wait, let me do one more thing on the NFL.

Um, I had Scott Van Pelt on last week and he told me that.

For this year's Super Bowl in in Santa Clara on February 8th.

He's gonna be doing his show on SportsCenter from Soi as ESPN now kicks off.

Their promotion of next year's Super Bowl , which will air on ABC slash ESPN.

And then I guess, I don't know if you saw, you, I'm sure you got it too.

The PR emails came in today from ESPN that they're gonna do 24 hours .

Of Super Bowl promotion once this Super Bowl ends.

This has the potential to be a long year with ESPN in this.

Yeah, it is.

Um, I mean, look, it's, it's arguably the biggest day in the history of the network when that Super Bowl airs next year.

And you're right, we're, we are going to have that, uh, that idea tattooed into our minds for the next 365 days.

Yeah, I will have moments during the season.

I remember I did an interview, I think it was with Mad Dog actually, and we were talking about, this was like over the summer, and we were about the Super Bowl, and I said, you know, I don't even know off the top of my head which network has the game this year.

I gotta look it up.

You will know who has the Super Bowl next year.

There won't be one day next year where you don't know which network is airing the Super Bowl.

100%.

This is what they've been preparing for, yeah, um, like I said before, I know you're not a ratings guy, but I found it funny that there is so much, and I mean, every, you can't go a day without talk about what a mess college football is on every level.

Whether it's with NIL, whether it's the way they schedule the playoffs going deep into this competing, you know, going against NFL games, transfer portal, this, Duke suing the quarterback, like every day.

It's the biggest soap opera going.

And then they get 30 million people to watch the final between Indiana and Miami.

So, Is there a problem or is there not a problem, or is there a problem, but it doesn't need to be addressed?

Like, how do, what does college football do?

I think the answer is both.

You know, there are these big behind the scenes, how are we gonna handle competitive advantage and NIL and a salary cap, which is sort of still in the alleged mode for college football, and I say this as a University of Texas guy, right, but somebody who's reading message boards and it's up to my eyeballs and, you know, what is Texas gonna do next year.

Um, the on-field product is awesome.

It is truly awesome.

And, you know, we talked about, like, Seattle Rams, how do you explain that to a non-football fan?

Indiana, Miami was easy, you know, Fernando Mendoza, Kurt Signnetti, Indiana, Miami, the U is back, like, that just felt like the most natural thing to talk to people about, even if they didn't care about college at all.

Mendoza, number one draft pick, Tom Brady on the sidelines, I just, there was so much there.

Um, and I think, you know, as a college football fan, I was very, very worried about a playoff at all, an expanded playoff, just because, you know, the way it would change the sport, it's the best regular season sport ever to me, because it used to be, and I say this from, you know, I was a guy who was at the Vince Young National Championship game, it used to be you couldn't lose.

You could, you could, you had to finish with zero losses.

You were not guaranteed a shot at the national championship .

Now you can lose a game or two.

but it's, but it's been awesome, like, competitively, it's been awesome.

We got some great games, we got Ole Miss Georgia, we got Ole Miss Miami, we got the final, which was fantastic.

We got, you know, it's funny, like, it used to be like, I could name easily the top 4 college football games of the year.

It's really hard now at the end of the year.

I feel it's almost always double digits when you think, you know, and sometimes like more than 20 where you're like, man, that was that game I will remember for the rest of my life.

So much fun.

You know, it's funny if you, if you, and here's what I, I, you know, to piggyback on that.

If you said to me, just on a personal level, what was my most memorable game of the college football season.

It wouldn't even have to do with anyone significant.

It was UCLA's win against Penn State, which like was the most, you know, as a degenerate gamble, the line was like 30, and then, you know, it ends up with, you know, they end up firing Franklin a week or two later.

Um, so yes, so from that standpoint, the sport has a lot going for it and 30 million for that final with Indiana football in there.

ESPN had, I, I, I also think ESPN deserves credit.

They know how to promote that sport.

100%.

They're good at, they're good at telling the story of a complicated season because it is complicated.

There's a lot of moving parts, and that's what.

Game Day is good at.

That's what Reese Davis is good at.

That's what Fowler and Herbie are really good at during the game.

They just, they just, they, they know how to do that, absolutely, yeah, um, a couple others here.

I, I, I don't know if you don't want to get into this.

We don't have to because I don't know what you know about it.

I don't know about it, but it, I just, I saw you had a tweet about it.

And I haven't discussed it really, and I get people asking me to discuss it, is this Dan Le Batard, Le Batard Stuatz thing.

Because I don't know anything because there's no information.

But Stuatz threw out a nugget last week about being very hurt and went into a dark place.

Now, listen.

You don't have to be a rocket scientist.

I say this all the time on this podcast.

I write in my column.

99.9% of the time, anytime there's any issue in this world.

Money is at the root cause of it.

So I don't know if, I, you know, I don't know what happened, but my guess would be something business-related, money-related, contract-related, you know, the, the Le Batard show went to DraftKings, Stu Goza's podcast didn't go over.

So I don't think you, you, it might not be the biggest mystery that people are making it out to be.

But there is a lot of interest in what happened here.

Now Stu Goz has his Fox Sports Radio show.

And then Dan this week said he wants Stu Goz back.

Stuatz didn't sound like he would want to come back.

What do you make of all this?

The reason I tweeted about it is because I feel we've gotten 99 awful announcing updates about the story, and every one of them is like a hint of the story.

It's just totally inconclusive, and I wish, I wish everybody well here.

I don't know, I don't know these people well at all.

Um, and, and I'm not, and I just, so, so I don't, this isn't me , like, on a side or anything because I just truly don't, don't understand, but I feel like I click on every one of these updates because I'm like, OK.

Here now this is the whole story of the rupture and it's like somebody making a, you know, a kind of pointed comment or or alluding at something.

So that was the only thing I was like, man, I just feel like I've got a ton of updates on the story and I still don't have any real sense of what happened.

Right?

And it is interesting because this is not a business and, you know, the people in this business, I'll include us, like, It's like usually stuff gets out there.

This has been one, I mean, listen, we, behind the scenes, you, you know, someone may say something to you, but publicly, they've kept this pretty under wraps, which goes to your point about like the 99 awful announcing stories.

There's the information's really not out there still.

It's not.

It's amazing.

And like I said, every time it's, you know, so and so opens up and, you know, they opened up a little, and I'm, and again, I, I imagine, I don't wanna make light of it because I'm sure this, this, it's painful and people are friends and business partners.

Anyway, that was just what struck me, but I was like, man, I just, I have read a number of updates on this.

Well, and yeah, and in fairness to, to sort of the audience of that show, and even if you're not a fan of that show, if you're in the business, I mean, It is one of the biggest partnerships in sports radio over the last whatever it is, 20 years.

So for it to break up, I don't blame people at all for wanting to know what the hell happened.

I mean , when Mike and the Mad Dog split, just using that as an example, even they sort of played it like, you know, Dog made it like, oh, I have this offer from Sirius XM.

But obviously you could figure out there might have been some like I'm sick of this guy, I'm sick of it, you know, so like, but with this one, it just really seemed to come out of left field, yeah, and it's like, um, I get the other one was Mike and Mike in the morning, remember that, right?

That one's really bitter that was like old Deadspin, yeah, that was bitter, yeah, and that was the whole, you know, I always loved the radio breakup because you still have to do the show together.

Yeah.

Stuatz actually went off and has done his own thing, but oftentimes you're actually in the studio doing the show together.

You're not even on separate Zooms, but you're not speaking to each other, you're just doing your part of the show and then the other person is doing their part of the show and somehow that becomes a show.

Right, right.

It's terrible, by the way, what a horrible way.

Yeah.

Shoemaker and Joel, you know, we've never had that, that issue.

We're young yet.

Um, two more things.

You know, the Washington Post thing is just so brutal.

It sounds like they're gonna just, You know, they want, it's, again, one of these things like, they're not sending people to the national spring training.

They're not sending people here, they're not sending people there, but they're not gonna say the sports department's done yet.

Like, And here's I, I'm gonna come at this from a very simple, unintelligent perspective.

I understand that Jeff Bezos' money is not the Washington Post's money.

I get it.

But for something owned by Jeff Bezos.

To just eliminate the sports department.

I, I just, I don't understand.

I just don't understand.

I don't either, and I'm really, I'm really upset on behalf of the people that work there.

Absolutely.

Like Ben Strauss, who covers what we do, what we do and does a fantastic job covering what we do.

Those people, Ben in particular, and all of them there, they deserve way more than to be part of something like this, to be caught up in this.

But I'm also just really angry.

At Bezos, at the publisher of The Washington Post, Will Lewis, who's been in that office for 2 years and has not done anything to fix the paper editorially or monetarily.

He has, he, he has, he has, like, close to 0 wins in 2 years as publisher, and I'm like, wait a second, this guy gets to be the one to obliterate the Washington Post sports page in whole or in part, he gets to do this.

That, that, that angers me, because he shouldn't be working at the Washington Post anymore.

He, he shouldn't, he shouldn't have a job there, and he's gonna take away all these other people's jobs because he didn't modernize the paper like he said he was going to.

Get, get out of here with that stuff.

I mean, that's just.

You know, and you and I could have a whole conversation sometime about sports pages and their role in 2026, and it, it is, there are difficult things to navigate.

It's hard.

It's not, it's not the good old days.

It really, it is not a newspapers.

And connecting, we saw.

with that whole Lynn Jones thing, which I promise we'll not talk about that.

But what we saw with that is a lot of people look at sports writers and places like the Post, like, I don't understand what you do, and I don't understand why I should pay for this.

Like, that approach doesn't make any sense to me.

That's just a lot of younger people now, and a lot of people.

But that doesn't mean that this guy should get to do this.

Like he, he shouldn't.

He, he failed at his job.

They didn't fail.

He failed at his job, and then, it just makes me so angry that that would, that this would be allowed to happen.

You just, I get sick every time I see it because we've been through obviously some rough times at Sports Illustrated over the years with sales and this and this.

So I know that feeling, that helpless feeling.

So I feel sick for all the people who work in that sports department.

And again, like, I understand.

Jeff Bezos' personal fortune is not part of the Washington Post budget, but like, isn't the whole point of being Jeff Bezos and having that money that you can do things like save your sports department?

I like, I don't get it.

But clearly he doesn't care.

Totally.

And what you've seen, you know, my old boss Jack Shafer pointed this out the other day, what you've seen with the New York Times, which has done so well, is they've added things, right?

for in our world, they add the athletics.

For half a billion.

That was a brilliant move that it turned out to be a brilliant move.

You know what I do with my wife every night once our kids go to bed, we play those freaking puzzles every night together.

Oh yeah, you know.

Oh yeah.

You know, spelling bee, Wordle, all that stuff, and it's like, it's fun.

It's games, and they're like, you know what, what could be part of the newspaper?

A fun game to play together, right?

We're expanding the idea of what the New York Times means to you.

Washington Post, like, I'm sorry , the people running the paper.

They haven't delivered any ideas like that.

Haven't figured the thing is now they're just chopping the limbs off the patient as the cure, and I, I just, I don't get it at all.

And all, and, and by cutting the sports department, OK, you're gonna save those salaries.

You're not doing anything else to help you.

That's all you're doing is saving the salaries of the people who work there.

And the, and the budget that goes, but That's not helping you.

Like, you're not adding new customers, adding new users.

You're not doing anything to help you by doing that.

No.

No, that's, you're giving up on the business.

I mean, that's the thing it's like, and again, from talking to people in that world, I think there's a scenario where it's completely gone.

There's a scenario where it's a skeleton crew.

That's doing sports there, but giving up on a subject area, especially when you've got like commander's coverage and stuff like that locally that people wanna read, it's not like the commanders are unpopular, right, right, right, yep, and I mean, sports is like, sports is the one thing in this whole thing that has not, you know, we, we, when it comes to hard news, so much of it is bad, fake.

When it comes to, You know, the politics, it's, it's anarchy, but like the thing that people are still interested in is sports.

Like that, that's still, that hasn't changed.

You, if you know what you're doing, you should be able to make something out of having a sports department, yeah, so they don't know what they're doing.

The people running the paper don't know what they're doing.

Just for, just for levity.

I'll, I'll switch it now.

My order every day is Wordle connections strands.

What is the order that you play the games, spelling bee.

Which my wife and I have gotten much better at is we play together.

I don't know if that's allowed, yeah, but we played it's that, is that cheesy?

Play on your own phone, yeah, but it's a good, it's a good bonding exercise, and then we go connections, and then we go Wordle.

See that I feel like that's cheating two people doing Wordle, although I guess you could fight over what letters to guess, and then that could, it's never, it hasn't sparked a fight yet.

Yeah.

All right, so let's, let's end it with this, uh, you know, the only thing .

The only thing I look forward to over the next two weeks is reading your column from Radio Row about who's a Monday guest, who's a Tuesday guest, who's a Wednesday guest, who's a Thursday guest, and before we started, you told me you're not gonna be on Radio Row.

I'm devastated.

I'm not going to Radio Row, and I, and I have to say, as, as, as the, as the second biggest student of Radio Row behind only yourself, um.

I, I even like, well, I'm, I'm only a student because Mike and the Mad Dog tell me that they invented it.

They invented it, yeah yeah.

Uh, I look around it and I'm like, I don't know, man.

I, I just, you know, last year I was like, I don't know if I have anything else to say about Radio Row, and it's , it's funny now because you still do have all these like sports radio stations there.

Like, it's 1998, you know, and it's awesome, by the way, I love sports radio like you do, so, like, that's awesome to me that that still exists.

But um, It's also, I think it, it always feels a little muted now, and I think because some of the big, big companies, you know, that were like big monster companies, other than Sirius really have scaled down a lot of their operations, so.

Right.

It's an interesting, it's an interesting thing, but I will miss Radio Row.

I'm gonna miss seeing like those 5 people that are always on Radio Row, you know, there's always, and I don't mean like Jim Rome and and Mad Dog and stuff, I mean like, you know, the guy from Wisconsin, yeah, and the and the Monday guys, yeah, absolutely, like the.

You know, former such and such a player, have you been getting the invites already?

Do you get these emails?

Oh, I got, I got one too.

It's funny you said that.

I just pulled up the one I got earlier, a couple of hours ago.

Uh, offering me on Radio Row Mike Golic Senior.

OK, this, I got this email.

Yes, Cameron Dicker, kicker for the Chargers, Kyle Rudolph, that's what I was gonna say, Vikings legend, I believe Vikings legend Kyle Rudolph, who on Fred and Fred Warner, who didn't even play this year, basically, OK, Fred Warner didn't, but at least there's a local thing there, right now.

You just tell me like who is flying across the country or from wherever to Santa Clara and it's like, you know what.

Kyle Rudolph would just make my show today.

Like, I understand if it's KAN and and Minneapolis or whatever, but like.

Who, who is like the third person who says, yes, Kyle Rudolph.

I got, you know, this, this is gonna do it.

Like now we, we got this.

And again, no offense to Kyle Rudolph, I'm sure he's, he's a great, I'm sure he's a great spot.

Mad Dog would say, but I, I , I don't know that, you know, that that's, I don't, I don't understand the economics of that.

I'm really pissed because I had one even better than that, I think, from last week and I deleted it, but they were offering me like, you know, 20 different athletes.

But You know, the athlete interviewers.

Rough, to say the least.

And then you gotta do the sponsorship, you know, and it's just.

It's, it's, it's awful and wonderful at the same time.

I, I said this last week when I did the train of thought segment with Sal, so I don't know if anyone missed it, but like, I, I pride myself on being very nice to the PR people.

I don't wanna ever be nasty or snarky or mean to the PR people cause I know they're just doing their job.

And I, I said last week was the first time ever in 20 plus years of doing this where I was snarky with a PR person because I got offered this, they send this email.

And you know, in bold letters, it's Peyton Manning, Peyton Manning, and I'm thinking, OK, I would have Peyton Manning on the podcast, obviously.

But the offer was not, do I wanna interview Peyton Manning.

It was, do you wanna publish an interview that this company did with Peyton Manning.

It's like I interview people for a living and you want me to publish someone else's Q&A.

Why are you sending me this?

I love it and I'm sure it was a great interview, very, very penetrating.

I mean, Peyton Peyton opened up like he'd never opened up before and then like you, yeah, rough, rough.

Well, we, we, we're depressed you won't be on Radio Row, but we're happy you joined me here today.

So where will you watch the Super Bowl, home, you'll be home for the Super Bowl.

I'll watch it from home just like, and I have done that, by the way, in previous years, you know, I'll go to Radio Row for the week, and I'll come home and watch it like God intended, Jimmy.

Like we, we have jobs to do.

We're not, if we, we'd be wasted in a press box.

I have a feeling this is gonna be like this is usually like, you know, like I, I don't know, like that Monday morning, I don't think Tirico and Collinsworth are gonna give us a ton to write about.

Like I think you're gonna get.

The typical solid Tario Collins, I mean, listen, if a player screws up royally, Collinsworth won't say that.

So maybe that that'll be one little piece of criticism, but like, you know what you're gonna get here.

It's gonna be solid.

An interesting scenario is like, what if Sam Darnold has a Sam Darnold game in the Super Bowl, right?

How do they handle that?

Like that's gotta be in your, in their minds, you know, the 3 interception, the full ballone, my boss calls it, that would be fascinating.

And I think, excuse me for coughing throughout this interview.

I also think if you don't have a dog in the fight, you better root for the Seahawks because if not, and if the Patriots get like a leader, it's gonna be all about the legacy of the Patriots and look at what happened after Belichick, look at what happened after Brady and Drake May following Brady and Belichick was here and they won all these Super Bowls.

That's gonna be the whole broadcast if they get up like, you know, 24 to 6.

So, Root for the Seahawks to keep it competitive.

Some great memes about that all week, by the way, too.

There was a Randy Wharton Undertaker one was at it, where it was, you know, we thought the Chiefs were dead, and then it's the Patriots and like.

You know, all, all the, all these people are happy the Chiefs weren't there.

How bad do you think CBS and Fox was the, the Chiefs were there?

57.4 million for Chiefs bills last year, and the highest rated game of this season will be Chiefs Cowboys Super Bowl.

Is that correct, which I was actually asking.

That was like a funny, like to me that's amazing.

Like the Thanksgiving game was the biggest game of the year.

Thanksgiving out drew the AFC and NFC title games.

Yeah, yeah, that was great.

Yep.

All right, Brian, be well.

Take it easy.

Appreciate you joining me.

Thanks.

Thank you, Jimmy, as always.

great.

Take care.