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🎤 QUICK START ✍️

🙏 Lee Corso forever. The college football institution and ESPN legend retired Saturday after a career in the sport that spanned 70 years. Original College GameDay host Chris Fowler joined the celebration, while rival Fox even honored Corso by airing his final headgear pick (Ohio State over Texas).

🏆 Going out in style. A tuxedo-clad Corso didn’t just throw the Brutus head on and walk into the sunset. Corso also nailed Saturday’s biggest upset, picking Florida State to beat Alabama. The football gods had a goodbye for the beloved analyst, too; all six programs he played for or coached won their games this weekend.

🟠 “Not what college football wants.” After defensive players for both Tennessee and Syracuse blatantly faked injuries to stop momentum in the first half of their clash in Atlanta, ESPN’s Bob Wischusen and Louis Riddick ripped the teams and admonished the NCAA for failing to enforce what was supposedly an “offseason priority” for the sport.

❌ Where Colin Was Wrong. FS1 host Colin Cowherd fell flat picking the big games from a tasty Week 1 slate in college football, writing early Saturday on X that Clemson and Alabama would “roll” and Texas would narrowly beat Ohio State. Starting 0-3 is brutal, but incorrect predictions are nothing new for Cowherd, who joked in a follow-up post that he would have to “hitch-hike” home after all the bad beats.

🚨 LEADING OFF 🚨

Did the media overhype Arch Manning?

Usually it’s not a good sign when your take goes viral after a game. When Paul Finebaum called Arch Manning the best player of his generation in “every aspect” on the SEC Network’s pregame show, he was being intentionally hyperbolic. Finebaum’s definition revolved around “majesty, magic, and buzz.” Even he admitted Manning hadn’t proven yet.

This was the conversation within which Manning took the field in Columbus over the weekend. Three hours later, he had lost his first-ever road start, barely completing half his passes with just one touchdown and an ugly pick. But Finebaum wasn’t alone in his hype for the famous sophomore. Manning was the No. 1 overall recruit out of high school, the preseason Heisman favorite, and already the projected No. 1 overall pick in the NFL Draft. All those expectations inevitably led to backlash against Manning as the game went along on Saturday.

As tape grinders like Dan Orlovsky encouraged patience (even criticizing the Texas staff for calling a conservative game), others in sports media pushed back strongly. This was the phenom we were promised? The dude who just posted a 58 QBR and put up seven points? Any reasonable fan knows Week 1 will hardly define the season, let alone a 21-year-old’s career, but this wasn’t just any prematurely hyped QB.

Manning has been anointed at every step in his development, but Saturday was the first time anyone ever saw him play. Certainly, he wouldn’t be the first chosen son in a sport who didn’t live up to expectations. The people pushing back on the hype are a needed counter to the recruiting content industrial complex. Being the nephew of two former NFL champion QBs and the grandson of one of the most special athletes ever to play the position (plus all the resources that come with growing up around them) is a real advantage. As we saw with Bronny James, sometimes the outlets that publish recruiting rankings and mock drafts can overdo it with the attention they give to famous young athletes.

None of this means Manning will be a bust. Altogether, his Week 1 performance wasn’t even that bad. The Longhorns lost by a touchdown, and the passing attack never really got going against that Buckeye defense. Flush it and move on.

All fall, Manning’s season will probably be a push-pull between the studied analysts and the skeptical couch potatoes in sports media. The insiders will (hopefully) tell us what NFL decision-makers really think. But one thing that will be on the side of the couch potatoes and the Joe Schmoes all year is that they will be able to point to the lovefest around Manning and laugh if he fails to meet the outrageous bar that was set for him.

📣 SOCIAL EXPERIMENT 🌟

One last Corso headgear pick!

The return of college football means the return of Gus Johnson

…and Joe Tessitore

Here’s Alabama’s opening game, summed up in one shot from the broadcast:

👏 INDUSTRY INSIGHTS 🗣️

• We rounded up all of this year’s college football scorebugs in one place for the sickos. From the big, wide TNT graphic for its Big 12 package to Fox’s typical tailgate-sign look, there’s a ton of variety across the landscape.

• Fresh off an agreement with Fox to stave off a blackout during Week 1 of the CFB season, YouTube TV is reportedly considering a “skinny bundle” of just sports and broadcast networks. Per Puck’s John Ourand, the Google-owned MVPD’s carriage deals for NBCUniversal and Disney networks are also set to expire this fall.

• After a widely praised debut on TNT Sports’ coverage of the French Open this past spring, American tennis legend Andre Agassi is pumping the brakes on his return to television. “I’m not a fan of reducing what’s happening out there down to little insightful clips,” Agassi recently told Yahoo, though he left the door open for more broadcasting jobs if the format is right.

• The recently announced EA Sports college basketball video game could be axed. Per the Sports Business Journal, the gaming company has been unable to strike exclusive licensing deals with schools and conferences amid competitive pressure from 2K Sports. Following a deal between 2K and UCLA, the return of the NCAA Basketball series could be dead before arrival.

• Longtime NBA reporter Jeff Zilgitt accepted a buyout from USA Today, he announced last week. A beloved voice in the NBA community, Zilgitt has received regular cancer treatments over the past few years but wrote on X that he “still (has) stories to tell.”

🎺 AROUND AA 🎺

How Dave Portnoy brought pro wrestling theatrics to ‘Big Noon Kickoff’

It was a big weekend for college football pregame shows, and not just because they were on-air for the first time this fall to get fans ready for Texas-Ohio State.

The premiere of the 39th season of College GameDay was all about Lee Corso, who was set to retire after one final Saturday in Columbus. But over on Fox, it was the Dave Portnoy show.

The Barstool founder, who quickly turned his ban from Ohio Stadium into an easy first run as the new heel on Big Noon Kickoff, debuted in front of thousands of booing fans in the heart of enemy territory. The Michigan alum and booster worked the crowd all morning in a manner that Awful Announcing’s Ben Axelrod couldn’t help but compare to pro wrestling:

It didn’t take long for the Barstool Sports founder to lean into the sports entertainment of it all, literally arriving on the Big Noon set via a WrestleMania-esque entrance before cutting a WWE-style promo on the Ohio State fans surrounding the stage. Portnoy played it up by riling up the audience with jabs about Michigan avoiding significant sanctions from its sign-stealing scandal and, of course, the Buckeyes’ four-game losing streak to the Wolverines.

The only problem: nobody else seemed to be playing along.

Read Axelrod’s full take at Awful Announcing.

️‍🔥THE CLOSER🔥

Tim Legler bucks every trend in sports media as new top ESPN NBA voice

Nothing about Tim Legler’s addition to ESPN’s top NBA booth should have happened.

Of course, Legler deserves it on merit. The man clearly is a basketball junkie who still puts the work in and geeks out about distilling the game for fans. It was the right time for him personally, after Legler put years into coaching his son’s high-school team. But all the rules of sports media in 2025 say Legler should not have gotten this promotion.

It was a long shot that Legler would ever call games at all. A journeyman shooting specialist whose main claim to fame was winning the 3-Point Contest in 1996, Legler is far from the typical type of TV star. When ESPN hired him in 2000, he succeeded the way everyone does there. He never said no. But by the 2010s, Legler was mainly an afterthought at the network, a bench player the way Udonis Haslem or the Morris brothers were last season.

Again, he never said no. Legler got a lifeline from Scott Van Pelt and the midnight SportsCenter, making himself useful enough to stick around. Not for a second chance, but for his still-out-of-grasp first chance, calling the biggest games.

Like in many industries, sports media executives are increasingly focused on securing big names rather than finding the best announcers. Just ask Greg Olsen or Charles Davis on the NFL side, or look at how John McEnroe keeps chugging along when it seems like nobody likes his tennis commentary. Remember that NBC just hired Michael Jordan and that the Worldwide Leader bought a halftime show rather than building one. ESPN has long had a challenge reeling in the biggest fish on the NBA side, but Legler is not the type of analyst that networks typically are willing to shake up their rosters for. Legler had to really impress Bristol executives for them to consider replacing Doris Burke with him, whose presence as a woman in the top booth had generated significant attention.

Ahead of a new broadcast deal with the whole NBA media industry evolving, Legler pulled off the impossible. He brought an improbable career back from the dead at a time when the bosses would rather chase stars, and now he will call the NBA Finals.