House of Strauss

A hearty welcome to American Soccer Man Alexi Lalas. He’s sometimes discussed as “controversial” in sports media, but is he? We get into how and why he expresses his views, how the culture is shifting, and how athletes are different from us. We also look back at his and Carli Lloyd’s viral 2023 World Cup commentary. Enjoy topics that inclu...

Wosny Lambre wears many hats and today we accidentally went heavy on politics. For that I apologize, given that sports > politics, but I did throughly enjoy the conversation (which even included some spirited arguing). The caveat is this is just two guys shooting from the hip on controversial matters. We are not experts. To quote Charles B...

Nate Jones is one of the most thoughtful commentators on all things NBA. For some insane reason, he still tweets his honest thoughts. We get into those, starting with the end of Turner’s Inside the NBA, transitioning to ESPN’s recent NBA issues and fanning out to Jones’ perspective on sharing normie political tendencies on Twitter/X.

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

We are joined by Mike Pesca, host of The Gist, and (much to his great shame), House of Strauss super fan. On today’s pod we unpack the various overlapping dramas surrounding Chiefs kicker Harrison Butker’s commencement speech. The NFL has disavowed Butker’s words. But has “the NFL” really disavowed his words? Topics include but aren’t limi...

Grant Cohn is a) The originator of the now multimillion dollar media ecosystem known as “49ers Youtube” b) Most prolific critic of 49er coach Kyle Shanahan and, now, c) In a beef with Athletic reporter David Lombardi.

We start with that last part, because it’s an intriguing entry point. Why are Cohn and Lombardi openly fighting? Does Grant represent the gate crashing threat of New Media? Or is Lombardi heading him off at the pass b...

Ben Kaplan and Danny Parkins are best friends and co-creators of this particular passion project. It turns out that the ranks of NBA decision makers and coaches are replete with guys who cut their teeth in obscure Division 3 college programs. The sheer amount of influence out of D3 is pretty incredible, as the book chronicles and conveys. So why has this happened? How come the lowest level of college competition is fueling the high...

Ryan, our nation’s preeminent sports media critic, is here to discuss reports that NBC wishes to offer the NBA a tremendous amount of money. What does this mean, other than that Adam Silver is our lord and savior?

Topics…

* Can Warner Bros. Discovery (TNT) possibly come up with a competing offer?

* What’s with WBD CEO David Zaslav sitting at...

Ace New York politics reporter, all around culture writer and crazed baseball fan Ross Barkan objected to my “Is Baseball Dying?” article. Naturally I had him here to say his piece and boy did we hit on a range of other topics.

* Contra conventional wisdom, is baseball more international than basketball?

* Why might baseball survive the fu...

Joe is really smart about the sports + business overlap, as evidenced by his viral story about Glen Taylor thwarting his own sale of the Timberwolves to the ARod + Lore duo. We got deep into that deeply reported article and hit other topics of interest, such as…

* The Pat McAfee + Bill Belichick combo

* Robert Kraft’s Dynasty hit job on Beli...

Jason Timpf of Hoops Tonight on the Volume Network seemingly appeared out of nowhere, thriving at the top of NBA media. Of course, like many an “overnight success story,” his rise was many years in the making. This was a great conversation wherein we discussed, among other things…

* How Jason used 2020 era Twitter Spaces as the battering ram to break into media

* Why Jason, as the counterpoint to Spike Eskin, loves JJ Redick

* How Ja...

Prominent foreign policy writer Eli Lake, currently posting at The Free Press, dropped by HoS to talk basketball. I, of course, wanted to discuss Lake’s views on politics, culture and the ever fraught topic of Israel. I’m not sure which of us won the battle for topic allocation, but I thoroughly enjoyed the conversation (and I’ve made the ...

We’ve got Andrew Bogut and Mike “Pro” Procopio of the Rogue Bogues podcast to discuss the eliminated and possibly dead Golden State Warriors dynasty. Obviously we talked about a lot of other subjects with these first grade ballbusters. Topics include but aren’t limited to…

* The Warriors. What should they do?

* Draymond Green as player-podc...

Top flight Audio Man Spike Eskin is here to discuss the newest NBA podcast hits. Spike’s gotten a lot of mileage out of humorously critiquing LeBron and JJ Redick’s “Mind the Game” pod, but perhaps he should be focusing more of his energy on Michael Porter Jr.’s “Curious Mike” product?

Topics discussed:

* Is Spike a hater for laughing at Le...

Boy do we have a loaded topic docket with America’s preeminent sports media critic and New York Post newsbreaker Ryan Glasspiegel. Honestly discussed fraught topics abound.

As Ryan would frame this rundown:

* All things Caitlin Clark (ratings, will it translate to WNBA, the backlash from women's basketball players and the backlash to the b...

Sports announcers and 49ers Youtuber Guy Haberman had vocal cord surgery and now sounds like Patty + Selma. I find his current predicament fascinating. He insists the subject of announcer voice issues isn’t interesting. We start talking 49ers around the 52 minute mark, for people who are into that sort of thing.

Topics include:

* What does a vocal cord surgery do for a broadcaster?

* Which sports announcers qualify for Top 5 “All Pip...

Our friend Amin Elhassan went negatively viral with his jump shot, but it’s only made him stronger.

Many a fraught topic discussed in this one, including whether it’s easier to say things now vs. the recent past. Subjects include but aren’t limited to…

* Amin’s crazy co-workers argued that Michael Jordan lacked charisma

* Amin’s moment as In...

In the Elon X era, no article ever goes viral. At least that’s what I used to think. But now, of late, articles in New York Magazine and The Cut have broken through as a sort of rage bait. To assess what’s going on, we’ve called in honest and trenchant culture writer Kat Rosenfield. Topics include but aren’t limited to…

* Pre mourning your ...

If you’re an NBA fan you know who Andre Iguodala and Evan Turner are, beyond being recent guests on House of Strauss. In this episode, I used my “stupid questions” approach to ask these current media members about their old jobs. The answers? Well, they were anything but stupid. Enjoy…

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Joe covers sports, business and often how the two intertwine. He’s been all over the sports + gambling topic, most recently with his viral observation on live sports betting integration getting added into NBA League Pass. Basically, Joe discusses all my favorite topics, so of course we had a great conversation. Topics include but aren’t limited to…

* How America and Europe are on opposite timelines with sports betting

* Is the sports...