The NFL expected the Los Angeles Rams to be a team that America would be interested in watching this season. And that was before they traded for arguably the best defensive player in the game. Coming off a 12-5 season that ended one game short of a Super Bowl appearance, the Rams are among a…
As expected, the climactic Game 7 finale in the epic Western Conference Finals series between the Oklahoma City Thunder and San Antonio Spurs was a massive ratings winner for NBC. The Spurs emerged triumphant over the Thunder by a 111-103 final score in a contest that wasn’t decided until the final minute. It marked the…
Sports broadcaster and author David J. Halberstam passed away on Tuesday following a year-long battle with brain cancer. He was 74. Halberstam’s over-50-year career in sports media spanned several roles, including play-by-play announcer for St. John’s basketball from 1982 to 1992, and the radio voice of the Miami Heat from 1992 to 1998. An unfortunate…
For the first time in her basketball career, cracks are starting to show in Caitlin Clark’s facade. Dealing with injuries, criticism about her defensive abilities, and a struggling Indiana Fever season so far, Clark has been letting her emotions show. Along with getting snippy with the media, she got into an intense exchange with head…
A thrilling UEFA Champions League Final on Saturday earned CBS the largest audience for a club soccer match in U.S. English-language television history. Paris Saint-Germain’s win over Arsenal averaged 3.09 million viewers on CBS, according to the network’s announcement on Tuesday. Saturday’s match, a 5-0 walloping by PSG over Italian side Inter Milan, increased last…
A defamation and false-light lawsuit brought by former Alabama basketball player Kai Spears against The New York Times is headed to trial, according to a report by Michael McCann in Sportico. The suit, initially filed in 2023 following a Times report suggesting Spears was at the scene of a shooting involving some of his Alabama basketball…
If Victor Wembanyama becomes the face of the NBA, he’ll be the first non-American-born player to carry that baton. As Wembanyama leads the San Antonio Spurs to the NBA Finals, ESPN’s Mike Greenberg is ready to declare him the face of the NBA regardless of what happens against the New York Knicks over the next…
Frank Isola will be watching the NBA Finals with keen interest. He was the New York Knicks beat reporter for two decades at the New York Daily News. That includes covering the last Knicks team to reach the Finals, in 1999, when they lost to the San Antonio Spurs. Time is a flat circle because…
Caitlin Clark was a surprise late scratch with a back injury for the Indiana Fever’s home matchup with the Portland Fire on May 20, and new ripple effects from the story continue to emerge. The latest comes from independent reporter Scott Agness, who covers the Fever and Indiana Pacers through his “Fieldhouse Files” Substack. In…
Six years ago, then-Sacramento Kings play-by-play announcer Grant Napear posted a tweet that cost him his job. Even now, he still stands by it. Just days prior, protests and demonstrations against police brutality had started in Minneapolis and spread across the United States in reaction to the murder of George Floyd, an unarmed Black man…
It’s the 21st consecutive season calling the NBA Finals for ESPN’s Mike Breen, and for the last four years, he’s been doing it with a different set of analysts each time. This season, ESPN has settled on Richard Jefferson, in his second year as a lead analyst, and Tim Legler, making his NBA Finals debut,…
The New York Knicks are doing little to eliminate the Streisand effect on Mitchell Robinson’s right-hand injury by keeping him from attending the NBA Finals media day. As Knicks fans waited for the San Antonio Spurs and Oklahoma City Thunder to play through a grueling seven-game series in the Western Conference Finals, they did so…
PFL, an MMA promotion looking to claw away some of UFC’s market share in the growing combat sports space, is seemingly on the move. After signing multiple media rights deals with ESPN, the first of which dates back to 2019, PFL’s return to the Worldwide Leader appears very unlikely, according to a report by Adam…
Linsanity is coming to the NBA Finals. Jeremy Lin is joining ESPN’s coverage of the Knicks-Spurs series, per USA Today, appearing on NBA Today, SportsCenter, Hoops Streams, and potentially other network programming through the duration of the series. He makes his Finals debut on Wednesday on SportsCenter, live from Washington, D.C., alongside Scott Van Pelt.…
When DirecTV’s NFL RedZone debuted in 2005, it wasn’t clear at the time, but it was a seminal moment in sports television in the United States. The whip-around style NFL show that cut between Sunday afternoon games, taking viewers to the best moments from each, was a groundbreaking format for the American viewer. But funnily…
Sophie Cunningham will be on your TV screen a lot more this WNBA season, and USA Sports is counting on her to say exactly what’s on her mind. The Indiana Fever guard joined the network as a contributor in April, and in a piece published Tuesday by USA Today, USA Sports executive producer Jeff Behnke…
If Keith Hernandez wasn’t part of the best booth in baseball, maybe he would have been busy trying to create the best office in politics. Hernandez joined the latest episode of Sources Tell Jeff Passan, where the New York Mets Hall of Famer admitted he never dreamed of having a second career in baseball as…
Ian Rapoport is officially an ESPN employee, with the longtime NFL insider announcing he signed a multiyear contract this week. With the NFL Network recently becoming a product of ESPN, there were questions about whether there was a need for the Worldwide Leader to make room for Rapoport when they already have Adam Schefter. But…
Jason Benetti has been calling Sunday Night Baseball for NBC since March, but his role beyond baseball at the network is still taking shape. Appearing on the Sports Media Watch Podcast, Benetti revealed that, despite being two months into his role as the face of NBC’s Sunday Night Baseball, the conversation about what else he’ll…
After two editions in the booth, Kirk Herbstreit is out of EA Sports College Football 27. According to On3, ESPN’s lead college football voice is out of the game’s booth for the third edition of the relaunched franchise, which is due out in July. He appeared in both College Football 25 and 26 as part…
Don’t tell Wright Thompson he’s the last of a dying breed. The ESPN storyteller from Mississippi is widely considered the preeminent sportswriter in America. And he’s not ready to declare sports journalism — or the magazine-style features he built his career upon — as a lost art or extinct practice. “There is something about the…
Lucy Rohden is leaving Meadowlark Media and The Dan Le Batard Show to formalize a college football media brand with multiple new partners, she told Awful Announcing this week. Rohden, best known for her viral TikTok explainers and sketches as well as her Off-Rohding campus series at Meadowlark, will launch CFBLucy this week. This fall, Rohden will…
Lucy Rohden is leaving Meadowlark Media and The Dan Le Batard Show to formalize a college football media brand with multiple new partners, she told Awful Announcing this week. Rohden, best known for her viral TikTok explainers and sketches as well as her Off-Rohding campus series at Meadowlark, will launch LucyCFB this week. This fall, Rohden will…
Scripps-owned broadcast stations went dark for DirecTV customers across the country on Sunday, leaving countless viewers in a lurch as major sporting events like the NBA Finals and Stanley Cup Finals are set to begin. Scripps is one of the largest owners of ABC affiliates in the country, operating stations in major markets like Phoenix,…
Sean McDonough was 22 years old and calling games for the Syracuse Chiefs when the photo was taken. He looks like what he was: a kid with a microphone and a dream that hadn’t paid off yet. That photo hangs on the wall at NBT Bank Stadium, right next to Marv Albert, Matt Vasgersian, Jason…