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🎤 QUICK START ✍️

🏈 The NFL’s Week 1 Friday night experiment will come to an end next year, thanks to a 1961 congressional act and the placement of Labor Day on the calendar.

🏈 The NFL has also fired a rare shot at Nielsen, arguing that the league’s massive viewership numbers are actually being undercounted.

🏈 The ManningCast has revealed its 2025 schedule, which includes an extra game for the brothers, while Peter Schrager is launching a new podcast with Omaha.

🚨 LEADING OFF 🚨

Across the Barstool Universe

Dave Portnoy’s drama with Ohio State stole the headlines for the first chapter of Fox’s partnership with Barstool thanks to his Big Noon Kickoff debut. Part II came on Tuesday as Portnoy anchored the first-ever edition of Wake Up Barstool. And depending on how deep you are into the Barstool Universe, your mileage on the show may vary.

In short, the show is unabashedly Barstool. At least it was by its second hour. After trying to masquerade as a regular morning sports show through the first hour, Wake Up Barstool then dove into social media memes, inside jokes, and breaking the fourth wall so many times that it now doesn’t even exist.

Is this a show for everybody? Absolutely, positively not. If you’re looking for actual sports analysis, this is not the show for you. If you’re looking for a rundown of the biggest sports stories of the day, this is not the show for you. But if you’re looking for a two-hour distraction of guys being dudes and enjoy the type of content that Barstool puts out on all its other platforms, then this is very much the show for you.

And maybe that’s the best-case scenario for Fox Sports and FS1. The network has tried and failed for years to replicate previous formulas that have worked on ESPN. They tried bringing Skip Bayless in for Embrace Debate, and it ultimately went down in flames. They tried to go hardcore into Xs and Os with The Facility, and that didn’t work either. So why not go for the biggest, baddest, boldest zig that you can think of in Barstool while the competition zags?

As Portnoy joked during the show, they can’t draw any worse ratings in the timeslot, so why not give this a whirl? FS1 can probably reach a baseline population of Stoolies that may match what they have done before, but the network should probably be realistic about what the ceiling and broader appeal for this show will be, at least if the first episode is any indication of what’s to come.

You may not know Rico Bosco from Uncle Rico, but at least FS1 is finally trying something different. And that’s clearly good enough for the network for now.

📣 SOCIAL EXPERIMENT 🌟

Someone should have probably taken down the balloon decorations at Bill Belichick’s postgame presser after TCU scored its 41st unanswered point on Monday night.

While Bill Belichick was experiencing the agony of defeat at a local high school’s fall formal, the TCU social media team was reveling in the thrill of victory.

Dianna Russini taped a live Micah Parsons trade reaction podcast from a local Starbucks and found that a $50 bribe thankfully still carries some weight in our inflation-heavy world.

🔦 IN THE SPOTLIGHT ☀️

Fox Sports will have two sets traveling around the continent for the 2026 World Cup next summer, an event president Eric Shanks is calling the biggest logistical undertaking in company history. Shanks hopes to capture the same feeling for the World Cup that college campuses evoke with Big Noon Kickoff and College GameDay.

🗣️ NOTABLE QUOTABLES 🗣️

“I like the life that I’m living, but I promised people that I care about very deeply that I wouldn’t rule it out. So I leave the door open because you never know what God has planned for you.” - Stephen A. Smith rekindled POTUS rumors just in time for his new SiriusXM politics show to be announced.

"Because when your boy was doing good, a lot of people didn’t have a whole lot to say. Now everybody got something to say.” - Shannon Sharpe chose not to engage in a feud with Ray Lewis, but seems to be taking a mental note of who is kicking him when he is down.

“He might not have wanted to see the second half. So, I don’t know if he’s a hard grader or an easy grader, but I like the way we played in the second half.” - Brian Kelly was in the rare position of dishing out some smack talk after Week 1 towards Dabo Swinney after LSU beat Clemson.

“I don’t want mass media, major media, networks, including people that we like to call our friends, to just ruin the watching of college football for me … by exaggerating the hell out of everything. By overstating everything.” - Michael Wilbon is already fed up with college football media after one week.

🔥 THE CLOSER 🔥

Fast Twitch Movement

Stan Verrett and Neil Everett are reuniting once again this fall. For anyone who enjoyed their classic SportsCenter pairing over the years, this is good news, as we will be able to continue enjoying their work in a new form. But they’re not just taping a new podcast together as we’ve seen nearly anyone else who has ever stepped in front of a microphone do. They’re also taking their new show to Twitch.

Twitch isn’t the platform that first springs to mind when it comes to two former sports anchors hovering around 60 years of age. It’s a platform that has largely been built on a gaming audience and IRL streams. But that does not mean that it’s a bad idea or some kind of Hail Mary attempt to catch lightning in a bottle.

Verrett defended the move after drawing criticism from Front Office Sports, which questioned the platform choice. And if anything, Verrett and Everett are using Twitch as a complementary platform to other, more traditional podcast outlets.

But it’s also very forward-thinking and necessary in 2025. Live streaming presents an entirely different avenue of content that many in sports media have yet to explore in terms of its potential. As Verrett notes, sports content is slowly growing on Twitch with many radio simulcasts and watch-along streams. With the popularity of altcasts, streaming could be fertile ground for sports personalities trying not just to amass views but to build a community.

We live in a day and age where streamers are now picking up legitimate broadcast rights to show games on their channels. You have to give credit where it’s due to Stan Verrett and Neil Everett for thinking ahead of the curve and trying to go where the people are. In the years to come, it wouldn’t at all be a surprise to see others follow their lead. After all, it’s better to adapt than to die.