House of Strauss

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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<...

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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...

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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...

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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...

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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...

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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...

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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...

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I spent much of Monday listening to Spike on the WIP livestream as Philly digested the Eagles playoff loss to the 49ers. What I encountered did not necessarily fit Philadelphia’s reputation for brutality but it did validate its stereotype for sports passion. I was spellbound and needed to converse with Mr. Eskin.

In this pod, Spike Eskin and I discuss the Eagles disaster, head coach Nick Sirianni as Tim Robinson character, the media controversy stemming from that nice Ja...

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

WARNING: This is an NFL heavy House of Strauss podcast.

DOUBLE WARNING: You should really join the free of charge HoS Sports Predict NFL Playoffs Contest. You can win $1000 in prizes based on making NFL predictions with no money risked.

So, Dieter and I believe the overachieving 49ers have finally arrived at an impasse. We discuss this, my fraught parasocial relationship with Kyle Shanahan, whether Robert Saleh is a FRAUD, plus sports uniforms aesthetics. Oh, and of...

The NFL Playoffs, With a Scoreboard That Actually Matters

In this pod, I discuss an exciting reveal: The official NFL Playoffs House of Strauss contest! Beyond the contest, Sports Predict co-founder Steve Kuhn and I also get into our nerdy NFL strategy obsessions and whether the league is starting to mirror the “mixed strategy” approach that took the poker world by storm.

But, once again, ladies and gentlemen, we’ve an NFL Playoffs SportsPredict.com contest for all of you. It’s all upside, no downside. We are doing sports prediction, not gambling addiction. Okay, it’s a l...

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

Congrats to ZigZag for again winning a SportsPredict NFL Week. The prize is a 30 minute phone conversation with yours truly, and I’m happy to re-up on that. In the spirit of NFL content, this week’s pod is with the ever granular Dieter Kurtenbach of the Dieter and Hutch YouTube channel. The overarching topic is an exploration of a) Why the 49ers went from analyzed to ignored by national media and b) How NFL national media arrives at its collective take...

I was touched by your responses to this article and apologize if I’ve yet to get back to you. Here is the audio, in the meantime.

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Our guy Spike has been at ground zero of the Great Jalen Hurts Debate, which might be coming to a head following an astounding Eagles collapse in Dallas. We discuss this, plus many other subjects. Topics include…

* Dumb NFL narratives

* Jalen Hurts’ teammates don’t like him

* Remember when Rush Limbaugh got fired by ESPN for race-ing the Donovan McNabb debate?

* Film geeks too often blame coaches

* Jalen Hurts’ golden moment that imm...

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

The Peach Fish is back, for a very special episode. The great Mike Pesca and I have a bunch of thoughts regarding a Pablo Torre podcast about the activist Riley Gaines that kicked up much dust online. We also discuss how Sally Jenkins might save college sports. Enjoy!

Here’s the audio for the YouTube show with Wos on, primarily, what we glean from Steph Curry’s DIVORCE…from Under Armour. Like, subscribe, listen…

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

First of all, congrats to Tom P for winning our NFL picks contest for Week 10. His reward is what many would regard as a punishment: A 30 minute phone conversation with me. Hit me up at houseofstrauss@substack.com if you wish to collect.

My conversational shortcomings aside, it’s been great speaking with subscribers who’ve won so far. Getting to know you through these weekly NFL competitions has been edifying.

Starting this week, we’re making prizes more tangible by adding $100 Ticketmaster gift cards for weekly winners, and the prizes will grow as the crowd...