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⚖️ Charges dropped. Just days after a bombshell New York Times report revealed new details about FIFA’s process to award Fox U.S. broadcast rights to the 2026 World Cup, a federal judge has moved to drop charges against Hernan Lopez, a former Fox executive implicated in a sprawling federal investigation into bribery at the highest levels of global soccer media negotiations. The dismissal was initiated by federal prosecutors, citing shifting priorities under the Trump administration.

📣 Le Batard speaks. Nearly a year after Jon “Stugotz” Weiner last appeared on The Dan Le Batard Show, Le Batard offered his most direct response yet regarding his former cohost’s departure. The Meadowlark Media founder said, “I hope he comes back. I’d like to have him back. He knows that,” adding it has been “killing” him to leave the situation unresolved and unaddressed.

⚾ Costas returns. Chicago Sports Network announced Thursday that Bob Costas will join longtime White Sox analyst Steve Stone in the broadcast booth for the White Sox-Braves game on June 9, the first of two 1980s-themed throwback broadcasts the network has planned for the summer.

Read more of today’s top stories at Awful Announcing.

MLB owners have made their first move towards formally negotiating a salary cap into the next collective bargaining agreement with players.

On Thursday afternoon, MLB owners sent their first proposal to the players detailing what a salary cap could look like under the next CBA. The league’s current agreement with the MLBPA expires on December 1 of this year, and many experts anticipate a fraught negotiation that could result in a work stoppage. It’s the first time since 1994 that the owners have proposed a salary cap. Of course, that proposal resulted in the longest work stoppage in MLB history and the cancellation of the 1994 World Series.

It’s a stark picture to paint some 32 years later, with the stakes higher than ever.

Owners are proposing a $245.3 million salary cap for the 2027 season and a $171.2 million salary floor, along with a clean 50-50 split of revenues with the players. It has long been conventional wisdom that, to get players to consider a salary cap, MLB would need to implement a salary floor as well.

Here’s where things get interesting, particularly from a media perspective. According to multiple reports about MLB’s initial proposal, all local media revenues across the league’s 30 clubs would be classified as central revenue and subject to the league’s revenue-sharing arrangements. Under the current system, each club contributes 48% of local media revenues into the shared central revenue pool and retains the other 52% for itself.

It’s a pretty big sacrifice from the large-market teams. Think about a team like the Los Angeles Dodgers, which pulls in a ludicrous $334 million per year from its local broadcast deal, more than double what the next-highest-earning club, the New York Yankees, makes annually. As it stands, the Dodgers get to keep more than half of that for themselves (and are actually afforded a more favorable rate than the 48% most teams contribute, due to an agreement struck with MLB during its 2012 bankruptcy proceedings). Should this salary cap arrangement move forward, the Dodgers would be sacrificing hundreds of millions in local media revenue over the term of its SportsNet LA deal and putting it into the revenue-sharing pot with 29 other clubs.

Why?

Well, that’s just how valuable implementing a salary cap is to owners, particularly those of large-market teams. After accounting for the luxury tax, the Dodgers are estimated to pay approximately $580 million for their star-studded roster in 2026. That’s over double the proposed 2027 salary cap.

That expensive roster has been effective at buying championships, but it has come at the cost of the bottom line. Every large-market owner realizes that you don’t want to get into a bidding war with other billionaires over baseball players. They’re all willing to sacrifice an edge on the field to ensure a more sustainable payroll for their pocketbooks.

But what about the small-market teams? 11 MLB clubs currently have payrolls under the proposed 2027 salary floor of $171.2 million. A salary cap puts hundreds of millions of dollars back into the pockets of large-market owners, but it doesn’t do much to help the less-wealthy billionaire owners of small-market teams. (Yes, even at billionaire status, there are levels to this shit.)

That’s where the local media revenue sharing comes into play. It’s a wealth transfer from the league’s biggest brands, which stand to benefit the most from a salary cap, to the league’s smaller teams. It’ll help the 11 clubs that would come in under the salary floor afford a more expensive roster.

Crucially, all of this plays into MLB’s big-picture ambitions. For one, the league would like to improve its competitive balance.

“The biggest issue we need to solve next to continue to grow the game off the field is fixing the payroll disparity unseen in any other major U.S. sport,” league spokesperson Glen Caplin said in a statement to The Athletic. “Ultimately, the game is about hope and competition, and too many fans in too many markets have too little hope their team has a fair chance to win. Fans overwhelmingly support a salary cap and floor like in the other leagues because they don’t believe a $446 million spending gap from top to bottom is a fair fight.”

What makes the NFL so successful? Well, at least in part, it’s because the league’s strict salary cap and near-total revenue sharing puts each team on an even financial playing field. There’s a reason for almost every fanbase to have hope every year. Green Bay Packers fans don’t have to worry about the New York Giants buying up all the good players.

MLB wants to tap into this. The 11 clubs that are operating this year under the proposed salary floor shouldn’t have any excuse to cheap out when they’re earning exactly the same media revenue as every other franchise.

In addition to competitive balance, implementing the salary cap/floor system in conjunction with the local media revenue-sharing sets the league up perfectly to execute its plan to centralize local broadcast rights in a single hub for all 30 teams. Without this type of revenue sharing in place, there was little incentive for teams like the Dodgers or Yankees to join the league’s platform; why would they willingly sacrifice their lucrative media rights deals with regional sports networks and give up a competitive advantage? But when the revenue is fully shared, there’s no reason for any team to abstain.

So, beyond competitive balance, the league could set itself up to vastly simplify its local broadcast model by aggregating all 30 clubs onto a single platform under the proposed system.

The question now, of course, is whether MLB can get its players to agree. The MLBPA has long stood firmly against the implementation of a salary cap. And out of every players’ union in major sports, the MLBPA has historically been the most effective.

But these changes are seen by the owners as crucial to the league's health and future success. In their minds, restoring competitive balance and simplifying how fans watch games are two of MLB's biggest priorities. To the owners, these are issues that warrant a work stoppage, perhaps even an extended one.

How long will the players be willing to miss game checks, especially when the owners could be in the rare position of having fan support on their side? Fans want a fairer system where every team has a chance to secure the league’s top talent. They also want it to be easier to watch games. The league’s proposal seems to address both.

Enjoy your baseball now, folks, because we could be in for a long, drawn-out labor negotiation once this season ends.

Michael Irvin is not a fan of Troy Aikman working for the Miami Dolphins…

Joe Rogan is not a fan of UFC Freedom 250 on the White House lawn…

ESPN was dealt two duds in the conference championships; one courtesy of the New York Knicks sweeping the Cleveland Cavaliers, and the other courtesy of the Vegas Golden Knights sweeping the Colorado Avalanche.

It was a nightmare scenario for the network, which typically banks on series length averaging out to about 5.5 games in a best-of-seven format. With the NBA and NHL series combined, ESPN fell three games under expectations during this year’s conference championship round. And while that’s certainly a challenge for the network’s ad sales team, who are now tasked with arranging make-goods for advertisers expecting the larger audiences and added inventory a deeper series provides, it’s also a challenge for ESPN’s programming department, which had to figure out what to air in primetime for several nights where it could’ve reasonably expected to broadcast some games.

Enter The Pat McAfee Show.

On Wednesday night, McAfee and his crew produced two hours of original primetime programming for the Worldwide Leader at the television equivalent of a drop of the hat. McAfee had one day to book six conference commissioners — Adam Silver (NBA), Rob Manfred (MLB), Gary Bettman (NHL), Cathy Engelbert (WNBA), Don Garber (MLS), and Dana White (UFC) — and conduct interviews with each that would become the backbone of his special episode.

The primetime edition of McAfee won’t be winning any Pulitzers. The interviews were the standard McAfee fare that make the most powerful people in sports so eager to enter the Thunderdome with regularity. That is, McAfee gave the commissioners the usual latitude to list their talking points without much pushback. Combine that with his huge following, and the platform is catnip for those wanting some favorable publicity.

That’s, in part, the power of McAfee. But perhaps the more underrated aspect of the show is its nimbleness.

See, had ESPN faced two 4-0 sweeps that created several open blocks of primetime programming in the pre-McAfee era, the network’s options would have been limited. It could elevate the Women’s College World Series to the main ESPN channel, as it plans to do the next five nights. Or, it could throw on an old 30 for 30 and call it a day. There isn’t a scenario in which ESPN creates its own original programming on the fly, as McAfee allowed it to do on Wednesday.

And that’s partly why ESPN is willing to license McAfee’s show for a reported $17 million per year. He and his team are capable of putting on shows that the modern ESPN outfit cannot. SportsCenter can’t book six commissioners in a day. Get Up isn’t going to command the attention of a primetime audience by debating whether Shai Gilgeous-Alexander gets too many foul calls.

McAfee leans into what makes his show different. He travels to events like the NFL’s league meetings and MLB spring training, investments he’s willing to make that would probably be a bit too rich for ESPN if they were in charge of the budget. He’s willing to dedicate lengthy segments to sports like hockey, baseball, and golf, when all of ESPN’s other shows stay laser-focused on the NFL and NBA (or WWE).

It’s the added layer on top of McAfee’s aforementioned nimbleness. Yes, his show is nimble from an operational standpoint. But McAfee himself is also nimble, able to hold court on any number of topics and make the segment interesting. Does that sometimes come at the cost of his interviews lacking a certain depth? Absolutely. But McAfee is under no illusions that he’s a journalist. In fact, he’s gone to great lengths to distance himself from that label.

Pat McAfee is more important to ESPN now than ever, making that $17 million deal look more like a bargain with each passing day. And shows like the one he hosted Wednesday night display exactly why ESPN executives are willing to go to bat for him even when he occasionally steps on a rake. His show offers something that no one else at ESPN can provide, from both an operational and content standpoint.

ESPN needs a differentiator, and McAfee is willing to provide it.