Welcome to The A Block, Awful Announcing’s daily newsletter where you’ll always find the latest sports media news, commentary, and analysis.

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🎤 QUICK START ✍️

📱 Max Out. The geniuses at Warner Bros. Discovery have come to their senses, and after two years of branding the company’s flagship streaming service simply as “Max,” the company is putting its prestige brand “HBO” back in the title. Add it to the list of weird decisions by WBD CEO David Zaslav.

🏈 Kiper Sniper. Miami Hurricanes head coach Mario Cristobal appeared to take a shot at ESPN’s Mel Kiper, Jr. when discussing QB Cam Ward at the ACC spring meetings, saying the Shedeur Sanders-obsessed draft guru never reached out to him. Kiper responded by claiming he had Ward ranked higher than other draft experts, so there.

🐏 On Their Heels. Wednesday, the Washington Post profiled Bill Belichick’s girlfriend, Jordon Hudson. In it, they spoke to an unnamed UNC official who said, “It’s just so odd” of the way the duo have handled things. “We just don’t know what’s coming. Those two decide what they’re going to do, and they do it.” Who knew that Belichick could become such a walking distraction?

🚨LEADING OFF 🚨

The 2025 NFL primetime schedule is here

The NFL finally released the full 2025 schedule after a week of dropping crumbs of information along with their national television partners.

One of the first things to look forward to for NFL fans is the schedule of primetime games to see which marquee matchups the league will highlight on Thursday, Sunday, and Monday nights to a nationwide audience. However, with how the NFL has continued to carve out exclusives for new streaming partners, there are more nationally televised (or globally streamed) games than ever before.

Some notable games and notes:

• All international games, except for the Friday Week 1 contest in Brazil, kick off at 9:30 a.m. ET on NFL Network.

• The NFL has set aside five unscheduled Week 17 games (Seahawks vs. Panthers, Cardinals vs. Bengals, Ravens vs. Packers, Texans vs. Chargers, Giants vs. Raiders). One of these games will be a Peacock exclusive, and the other will be on NFL Network.

• Week 18 will once again feature full flexible scheduling, with a Saturday doubleheader on ABC and ESPN featuring games with playoff implications and the regular season SNF finale.

• Expanded flex scheduling for regular Sunday, Monday, and Thursday night games is still in effect.

Click to see the full primetime and national NFL schedule, from the 2025 Thursday night season opener all the way to Week 18’s TBD season-ending clash on Sunday Night Football.

📣 NOTABLE QUOTABLES 🗣️

• “When you’ve got somebody with that kind of potential, and they’re white, and you are in America, you keep that dude. I’m telling you right now.” - Stephen A. Smith explaining why he thinks the Dallas Mavericks should draft Cooper Flagg instead of trading the No. 1 pick.

• “Could you imagine a year where there is a top quarterback prospect or the year Arch Manning comes out? They put that in primetime, a half-hour special primetime NFL Draft Lottery. Come on. It’s a home run.” - Adam Schefter, making the case for an NFL Draft Lottery.

• “…There are also other black marks against Rose’s name that have come up in more recent years since he was permanently made ineligible, that had nothing to do with gambling. So it’s gonna be a tough case for the committee to finally decide on that.” - Mets broadcaster Gary Cohen on Pete Rose.

🗣️ THE PLAY-BY-PLAY 🗣️

On the latest episode, Awful Announcing’s Drew Lerner joins Brendon Kleen and Ben Axelrod to discuss Michael Jordan joining NBC, what Rich Eisen’s return to ESPN means for Pat McAfee, and the state of sports streaming.

Click the video above to watch or find The Play-By-Play wherever you listen to podcasts, including Spotify and Apple Podcasts.

📈 INDUSTRY INSIGHTS 📺

• ESPN has officially announced its highly anticipated direct-to-consumer streaming service. However, at a steep price of $30 per month, many are wondering who the service is for. According to the analysts at LightShed Partners, the service is ultimately a Trojan Horse that gets people directly to ESPN’s app.

• IndyCar is showing some flexibility in its first year on Fox, shifting the start time to five of its races to avoid competing head-to-head with NASCAR races. The most drastic change will be next month’s World Wide Technology Raceway event, which will move from 3 p.m. to 8 p.m. ET on Father’s Day. Initially, the event was scheduled to compete directly with NASCAR’s Cup Series race in Mexico City.

• WBD is gearing up to split its business into two. One side will keep the movie studio and the Max streaming platform; the other will house declining cable assets like TNT, TBS, and truTV. But what happens to these properties — and WBD’s marquee sports inventory like MLB, NHL, and March Madness — when the company splits? That could pose a significant reach problem.

🔥 THE CLOSER 🔥

Do we need to privatize the Dallas Cowboys?

Last season, the Dallas Cowboys limped to a 7-10 record, a five-loss differential from the previous year. Between Jerry Jones’s devil-may-care attitude, concerns over hiring Brian Schottenheimer as their new head coach, and Dak Prescott’s ongoing recovery from last season's hamstring injury, there aren’t many reasons to think they’ll be much better in 2025, let alone interesting. As Kyle Brandt put it, they’re the Tupperware of NFL teams.

For most NFL franchises, this would signal the league to keep them as far away from high-profile broadcasting windows as possible and, if nothing else, protect audiences from mediocre football.

The Dallas Cowboys are not most NFL franchises, however. They are, as we all know, America’s Team. As such, we will be subjected to them in primetime as much as possible, regardless of whether or not they’re any good.

In the 2025-26 season, the Cowboys will have more primetime games (6) than the defending Super Bowl champion Philadelphia Eagles (5). Only the Kansas City Chiefs (7) have more. The Cowboys will play in the NFL Kickoff Game, host the Chiefs on Thanksgiving, and tangle with the Commanders on Christmas Day.

Despite their mediocrity, we know why the Cowboys continue to get so much love from the schedule makers. For better or worse, they draw big audiences. It often feels like Jerry Jones knows this and factors it into his decision-making (or lack thereof).

All of which is to say, if we’re going to be saddled with watching Cowboys games so often each season, we deserve a Dallas franchise that might actually do something of value or, at the very least, be interesting. And since Jones seemed incapable of making that happen, it’s time for America to buy the Cowboys.

We need to privatize the Cowboys for the good of the country. Take all that money that DOGE says they’re saving* and put it towards the $10 billion price it will take to get the franchise out of Jones’s hands. Only then can we safely tune in on Thursday nights or holidays and know we’ll be able to watch an interesting NFL game.

*may not actually be true