House of Strauss

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.houseofstrauss.com

What a discussion we have for all of you. Topics! Include!

* Why the Clippers’ salary-cap cheating felt like a “victimless crime” only because they failed

* Wos argues the 2019–20 Clippers really were the NBA’s obvious championship favorite

* Was Steve Ballmer’s Clippers tenure actually a massive failure?

* Why today’s sports world increasingly operates on “what can I get away with?”

* Lane Kiffin and college football cheating

* The Patriots’ alleged optical-illu...

There’s perhaps no better person in media to discuss This Week in Golf Brand Turmoil than Jordan Rogers, former Nike executive and all-around golf guy. This was a great conversation and we explored so much within a recently disrupted industry. Topics! Include!

* The Good Good Callaway ad controversy and why it exploded

* How chronically online advertising escapes its intended audience

* The YouTube formula of chasing trends, titles and thumbnails

* Why golf’s old guard resents the YouTube golf boom

* Why mediocre golfers (Like LeBron) can become enormous golf star...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.houseofstrauss.com

It’s Cowherd Week at House of Strauss! Roughly once a year, we explore the state of sports media with one of the biggest voices in this industry. I’m pleased to say that Colin did not hold back.

Topics! With time stamps:

* 0:00 — Colin opens with his vacation movie reviews—and why modern horror films have completely lost him.

* 3:30 — Why Hollywood, sports media, and even Nike increasingly make products for insiders instead of consumers.

* 7:00 —...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.houseofstrauss.com

A lot of fascinating ESPN dynamics to discuss this week. Ryan and I get into the nitty, the gritty and so much more. Topics! Include!

* The dynamics of Ryan Clark’s ESPN firing

* Inside the bizarre race between OutKick and Andrew Marchand to break ESPN’s biggest layoff story

* Is ESPN quietly becoming less political—or is something else really happening?

* The real forces behind ESPN’s layoffs—and why Disney deserves more of the bla...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.houseofstrauss.com

I know many sports sickos but Saam Esfandiari might be the sickest. The Light Years co-host has in depth opinions on basketball (of course), soccer, football, and even baseball. Today we decided to explore some connection points between these fields, so we can get a 30K view of what’s happening across sports.

Topics! Include!

* The bizarre Matt Miller fantasy-football scandal and what it says about the industry.

* Sam’s theory that LeBron won’t announ...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.houseofstrauss.com

An entertaining and informative NBA CBA-based conversation with NBA agent and Move Insoles co-founder Nate Jones. Absolutely loved this one, and hope you will too. Topics! Include!

* Why Ethan doesn’t want LeBron on the Warriors.

* Nate’s theory that LeBron’s biggest business is attention.

* The lost art of celebrities who “exist when they exist.”

* Why the NBA’s new CBA isn’t actually costing players money.

* The hidden link between the 19...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.houseofstrauss.com

We’ve got a fantastic NBA-centric pod with SiriusXMNBA host and ever-candid broadcaster Justin Termine. So many subjects topics to cover as the NBA world comes to a boil. Topics! Include!

* Why are NBA teams suddenly treating Jaylen Brown like a risky asset instead of a franchise cornerstone?

* Has the new CBA quietly changed the definition of a superstar worth paying?

* Would LeBron’s farewell tour make more sense in Cleveland or Golden State?

...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.houseofstrauss.com

We’ve got a great House of Glass for you today. Just look at the docket. You have to subscribe, just so you can hear how Ryan pronounces “Thierry Henry.” Topics! Include!

* (2:00) Tim Bontemps to the…Hawks?! Why would someone voluntarily leave ESPN for an NBA front office?

* (7:00) Could “take artists” be more valuable than analytics exp…

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.houseofstrauss.com

A glorious conversation with our PRIDE CORRESPONDENT Katie Herzog of Blocked and Reported on this whole San Francisco Giants Rainbow Hat Controversy and so much more.

Topics! Include!

* Is catcher secretly the strangest and most brutal position in all of sports?

* The San Francisco Giants Pride controversy and the problem with compelled participation

* Has Pride Month become too large for its own good?

* Why awareness campaigns can sometimes backfire on the...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.houseofstrauss.com

Dunc’d On Founder and co-host of my new favorite YouTube channel Nate Duncan, everybody.

* How huge is this Finals?

* Wembanyama temp check: Nate loves Wemby, but how does the public feel?

* Does Wembanyama’s unprecedented physical advantage make him more compelling—or less entertaining—to watch?

* Is Wembanyama actually a dirty player, or is he simply dealing with the challenges of being 7-foot-5?

* Should playoff basketball be officiated differently than regular...

We’re podcasting per the launch of the World Cup-tracking Probability Cup, but of course, just had to talk about Wednesday night’s NBA Finals classic. The BIG question on my mind: Should predictors/gamblers price in the NBA’s massive incentive to make this great series continue? Topics!

* Knicks–Spurs Finals comeback analysis and whether San Antonio collapsed or New York surged.

* How teams should manage volatility differently when protecting large leads versus playing from behind.

* Debate over NBA referee incentives, league interests, and the possibility of series-extension bias.

* SportsPredict’s World Cu...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.houseofstrauss.com

Wow, do Ryan and I have much to discuss with all this Knicks-Spurs NBA Finals buzz. Topics! Include!

* Why the NBA Finals suddenly feel like a major cultural event again

* Glass man gives a tepid defense of New York’s most hated man (James Dolan)

* The controversy surrounding Trump’s appearance at the Finals

* Conflicting explanations for moving a Knicks watch party

* Whether sports media applies political standards consistently (No!)

...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.houseofstrauss.com

Delighted to be joined by Scott Agness, publisher of Fieldhouse Files and man of the hour. I asked him Scott the Indiana Fever are acting so strangely towards him and media writ large. Scott was fair and measured on this pod, as per usual, which makes what the Fever did especially inexplicable. Topics!

* Agness explains why the Fever revoked his credential over Caitlin Clark injury reporting.

* I argue that the Fever’s messaging around Clark has been co...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.houseofstrauss.com

We love Neil Paine, our analytics-forward friend. He covers seemingly every sport with a data-driven zeal. Today we took at look at whether the foul-bait backlash to the Thunder is rooted in reality. Does this populist basketball anger result from a real difference between this team and all the others? Topics! Include!

* Thunder Derangement Syndrome is real (H/T Kevin O’Connor)

* Why SGA became the NBA’s villain

* The Internet’s obsession with “ethical hoops”<...

Teutonia World, otherwise known as “Ben,” has been a prominent subscriber since the earliest House of Strauss days. He’s vocal in the House of Strauss BCC chat and often sends me good ideas over email. He’s an analytical mind and a critic at heart. I wanted him on to reflect on this site and what it’s been up to over the past few weeks. In that vein, if any of you have ideas for topics that deserve more coverage, feel free to mention them in the comments.

On a personal note, I enjoyed this conversati...

I was introduced to Chris Dalla Riva, who I’d describe as an analytics-driven music historian. He wrote Uncharted Territory: What Numbers Tell Us about the Biggest Hit Songs and Ourselves. I know very little about music but I’m fascinated by objective measures of subjective taste. I enjoyed our talk and look forward to reading the book for yet more fascinating question fodder. Topics!

* 00:01:14 – Big question: Is taste objective or culturally constructed?

* 00:02:01 – Top-down vs. organic creation of hit music in the 50s–60s

* 00:03:36 – Why 1950s hits often centered on death and tragedy<...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.houseofstrauss.com

We’ve got Jesse Singal in large part so we can discuss his quality as a basketball player. Of course, other less important topics were discussed. Such as!

* 49ers Draft Controversy

* The Michael Tracy/Jim Acosta Altercation

* The Jeffrey Epstein Files

* Social Media Bubbles vs. Normal People

* Hassan Piker and Modern Radical Chic

* Better career: Scottie Pippen vs. Kevin Durant?

* The “Post-Literate” Era

* Jesse’s Dirty Di...

Sharing the pod I did with the TECH BROS over at Monitoring the Situation. Tried to give some sense of what we discuss over here at HoS, plus engage in the discourse of the day. Topics covered include:

* How sports shape the future of X/Twitter

* Caitlin Clark, the WNBA, and the business of controversy .

* Nike, ideology, and shareholder value

* The fragmentation of internet culture

* Erik Torenberg’s controversial, “Right-wing memes are displacing African-American Vernacular English as the most dynamic source of linguistic innovation” comment

House of Str...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.houseofstrauss.com

House of Glass is here to discuss an especially fertile week in sports media. Ryan Glasspiegel of Front Office Sports DARED DISAGREE with a few of my takes on Vrabel-Russini. We found considerably more agreement as we shifted to NBA television discussion, as per usual. Topics!

* Mike Vrabel-Dianna Russini scandal and press conferences

* What are the chances Vrabel actually gets fired by the Patriots?

* Whether Patriots knew about relationship pre-hire

* Russini’s career fa...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.houseofstrauss.com

Trying something new and curious what you all think. Instead of separating this week’s articles into their own narrations, I combined them all into one narration. It’s an audio compilation of the following:

Eagles Fan Shows the Flaw in NFL Broadcasting

UBS Report: NBA Decline Hurt Nike

NBA’s Solution is More in Stakes Than Style

LaMelo Ball is an Idiot and a Savant

The WNBA Wants Attention—Just Not This...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.houseofstrauss.com

Honestly, this was one of the most enjoyable podcasts for me. I credit the WNBA, everyone’s favorite league, and also give thanks to the incomparable Wos. We had a great time cathartically venting on what’s unsaid about recent NFL media and WNBA “coupling” scandals. Topics! Include!

* WNBA romance frenzy: Fudd-Bueckers #1 picks dating? Team hides dynamics amid HR risks, media gatekeeps.

* Have two NBA players ever “dated”? What would we guess?

* Russini Talk: Sex between medi...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.houseofstrauss.com

Spike Eskin got into it with Sopan Deb of the New York Times and became a character in my article on UBS blaming the NBA for Nike woes. We podcasted about this subject, Diana Russini resigning from the Athletic, and the playoff outcome that would best help the NBA. Topics! Include!

* NBA popularity decline: Discussing why Finals viewership is the real NBA popularity indicator, and UBS report linking it to Nike’s struggles.

* Sopan Deb’s tweet skep...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.houseofstrauss.com

Our guy Tom Haberstroh is here to discuss an article of his that sent shockwaves throughout the NBA. What’s going on with this “alarming data” that suggests stars are increasingly prone to miss national TV games? We talk about that and much more. Topics! Include!

* Record star injuries explode with 1,400+ games missed (up from 892 two years ago); stars like Lillard, Hal…

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.houseofstrauss.com

The greatest sports media podcast in all the land returns as Ryan and I get into some NBA heavy chatter, with a side of Roger Goodell’s Rooney rule defense. Enjoy!

Topics include but aren’t limited to…

* LeBron James’ likability in a golf video with Bob Does Sports and potential post-retirement renaissance.

* Luka Dončić’s MVP case, improved conditioning, defense critiques, and discourse around Rachel Nichols.

* Evolution of NBA MVP criteria from team su...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.houseofstrauss.com

Kyle Porter from Normal Sport is a thoughtful commentator who thinks about a lot more than just the sport he covers. So I wanted to press him on this topic, plus a few others: Is golf, with the PGA Tour now led by a former NFL exec, about to truly take off and conquer the culture? We get into the sport’s eccentricities and current moment. Topics include…

* Post-Tiger Woods stars: Debate on who has “juice” in golf, including Scottie...

Some of you have asked where I am on politics these days, so my best friend and occasional main antagonist decided to objectively gauge it. In this episode, Matt and I go through every question of the famous Political Compass Test, reasoning out where we fall on the spectrum. Will WOKE MATT pull me towards his way of thinking? Listen and find out.

For a taste of the questions we’re answering, see below:

House of Strauss is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or pa...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.houseofstrauss.com

Our man Ryan Glasspiegel of Front Office Sports is here to discuss how Ross Barkan and others are joining his MLB > NBA bandwagon. Is it true? What are the numbers to support the idea that MLB has surpassed the NBA? Topics! Include!

* World Baseball Classic Buzz: Is our media rooting against us?

* Rob Manfred’s Reforms

* One fascinating theory on why March Madness is fading from culture

* Why did the PGA Tour outlast Li...

I visited the friendly confines of Basketball Illuminati, only to be at a severe rhetorical disadvantage versus Amin Elhassan. He was strongly anti Luke Kornet’s criticism of now cancelled Magic City Night, and argued that case with energy. I was more understanding of Kornet’s position, but wasn’t inclined to vigorously defend it. Still a great talk that included, but wasn’t limited to, Adrian Wojnarowski’s troubles in college basketball, and Pablo Torre vs. Adam Silver. Enjoy!

House of Strauss is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.houseofstrauss.com

It’s a convoluted world out there and I trust Stratechery’s Andrew Sharp to help us navigate it. In this podcast we humble former NBA media types dared entered the fraught topics of Anthropic vs. Trump, world affairs, reason for America’s Israel alliance, the Iran war, and always, fixing the NBA. Enjoy!

This audio article is up. Happy Friday, folks.

House of Strauss is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.houseofstrauss.com

Author, filmmaker and ardent basketball fan Sherman Alexie joins me to discuss one of my favorite topics: The 1990s. Though, to be honest, we stray from that subject and get into others subjects of interest. Such as!

* Rob Mahoney thinks “Smells Like Teen Spirit” is bad. Fair?

* Smells Like Teen Spirit changed everything

* What was the last great movie?

* Why, exactly, Toby Keith’s “Courtesy of the Red White and Blue” became a hit again...

Mike Pesca wrote a fine piece for the Free Press on how oddly not controversial the supposedly very controversial Eileen Gu is. She’s from the United States, but competes for China, and yet receives…mostly glowing mainstream American coverage? What’s with that? And beyond Gu, what’s the elite American consensus on China? But before the topics are introduced…

Per the new Substack/Polymarket partnership, I’m posting an Eileen Gu involved competition. As someone incapable of accurately pricing Winter Olympics events, I’m interested in whether bettors reflect Gu’s true odds for winning the Ski Halfpipe...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.houseofstrauss.com

This pod was so hot, so provocative, that our man Ryan Glasspiegel was worried about career consequences. Personally, I believe we were just being reasonable about potentially fraught topics, such as…

* Not everyone loved Ryan’s reporting on the viewership drop during Bad Bunny’s Super Bowl halftime performance

* Was the bigNBC viewership falloff another “Bud Light” style boycott, or simply lack of American median fan connection with the artist?

* Who SHOULD the halftime show artist be...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.houseofstrauss.com

First of all, congratulations to our SportsPredict Super Bowl winners SFZevi, Nathan Shea and Peter V. I had fun competing against all of you this NFL season, even though I reliably fell short of prize territory.

But before we completely say goodbye to football, I present this look back at the game/season with John Middlekauff, absolute contest BEAST for The Volume network. Of course, we got off topic into issues of interest, as tends to happen. Subjects include!<...

As I told Chuck Klosterman, I planned to do a pod on his Football book with non sports fan Rob Henderson. So what did our favorite sports agnostic intellectual think of such a deep dive into America’s favorite game?

Topics! Include!

* When one’s job is a bigger marker of identity than one’s race

* Is the NFL a more positive racial story than what gets relayed in media?

* Why did conservative media know football was coming back during Covid?

* Most retired NFL players have painful daily injuries. Most o...

I highly recommend Football, Chuck Klosterman’s latest book. In this podcast, we discuss his trenchant and personal exploration of the sport, along with the following topics…

* Are we primarily writers or podcasters?

* Many believe that young people are correct about the future, but few think they were smarter as young people

* Will opinions change less often now that we are publicly anchored to opinions?

* Would Chuck lie if his privacy was violated to procure damning information?

* Why do we want coaches to be scary assholes?

* Chuck asks...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.houseofstrauss.com

Great conversation with Mike Pesca in which I, unfortunately, regressed to my old ways of pronouncing Chuck Klosterman’s name incorrectly. This is possibly our most controversial and free associative podcast yet.

* Was Alec Baldwin’s best Trump imitation actually Jack Donaghy?

* “Seinfeld sucks and isn’t funny”?

* Mike disagrees with certain Minnesota ICE takes from my podcast with Kat Rosenfield

* Berkeley made me biased against protestors

* We discuss Brian Phillips’ belief that...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.houseofstrauss.com

Kat Rosenfield has, as she often does, written brilliantly of late. I especially enjoyed her nuanced takes on the Minnesota shootings. We discussed intrusive thoughts on recent political events, millennials seeking meaning, the adultery based cancellation of Jay Asher, and whether James Franco was morally wrong to LARP as a college student so as to pick up college women. A great pod imo.

The House of Strauss SportsPredict playoff contest continues, so make some picks for this weekend. For the championship round, the prize is a $500 DICK’S gift certificate, plus, of course, bragging rights. So join in.

In this episode our friend Tyler Dunne from Go Long is here to discuss NFL. We also get a Glasspiegel cameo at the start of this episode which is, admittedly, HEAVY FOOTBALL. Topics!

* Why was the Sean McDermott firing controversial?

* Why did Ryan Glasspiegel want Matt LeFleur FIRED?

* Are young defensive coaches the next wave?

...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.houseofstrauss.com

First, congratulations to Kevin Turner for winning NFL Playoffs Week 1 of our Sports Predict contest. He receives a $250 Ticketmaster prize, and I have it on good authority that there’s more money to be won (by Kevin or whoever) this week. I’d encourage all of you to join for the Divisional Round and beyond, given that the contest is free of charge and it’s a lot of fun.

This podcast was initiated by our man Tom Haberstroh breaki...