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🎤 QUICK START ✍️

⏸️ Paid protester conspiracy. Vikings announcer Paul Allen is taking time off after pushing conspiracy theories about anti-ICE protesters in Minneapolis, twice asking on-air whether "paid protesters" get hazard pay in extreme cold. Allen apologized Monday, calling it "a misguided attempt at humor," before stepping away from his KFAN show.

🥊 The truth-teller turned shill. Ariel Helwani tore into Max Kellerman's Zuffa Boxing debut, questioning what happened to boxing's biggest truth-teller. Kellerman said twice that he'd waited his entire life for Dana White to save boxing, compared prospect Callum Walsh to Hall of Famer Roy Jones Jr., and spent the broadcast promoting TKO executives with whom he has close personal relationships.

🏈 Script writers strike again. The NFL had to deny conspiracy theories about a September graphic that showed Sam Darnold and Drake Maye standing closest to Levi's Stadium. Social media sleuths claimed it proved the league scripted the Patriots-Seahawks Super Bowl matchup before the season even started.

📰 California dreaming. News Corp launched the California Post with plans to replicate the New York Post's success on the West Coast, poaching Dodgers beat writers Dylan Hernandez and Jack Harris from the LA Times. The paper aims to double its 10-person sports staff by next NFL season.

🏆 ACC goes solo. The ACC moved its championship game to Saturday at noon on ABC, giving each Power-4 conference an independent window after years of the ACC and Big Ten competing head-to-head on Saturday night drew split viewership.

⛳ Brooks goes linear. ESPN will air live coverage of Brooks Koepka's PGA Tour return at the Farmers Insurance Open, the first time the network has aired a non-major PGA Tour event on linear television since 2006. The broadcast bumps Pat McAfee to ESPN2.

🎮 Cover mystery. San Diego Studios announced that MLB The Show 26 won't feature a new cover athlete but didn't explain what will appear on the game's packaging, asking fans to "stay tuned" for more information about a decision that breaks with nearly two decades of tradition.

🚨 LEADING OFF 🚨

The Athletic at 10

The Athletic turned 10 this week. What it promised versus what it delivered says less about The Athletic and more about whether subscriptions can save sports journalism.

A decade in, the answer is complicated.

The Athletic proved fans will pay for good sports writing. That's not nothing. But everything else the company promised — sustainable local coverage, an alternative to corporate media, a viable model that could scale without sacrificing quality — turned out to be wrong. Or at least, it turned out to require compromises that made the final product look suspiciously similar to what it was supposed to replace.

The core bet was right. In 2016, Alex Mather and Adam Hansmann believed fans would pay $60 a year for deeper coverage than newspapers provided. They launched in Chicago with three writers covering the Bears, Blackhawks, Bulls, and Cubs. It worked. Toronto worked. Cleveland worked.

By 2019, The Athletic had 80% year-over-year retention. Not only did that prove that people would try subscription sports coverage. It also proved they'd keep paying for it. Retention validates the model in a way subscriber acquisition never can. Anyone can convince someone to try something once. Getting them to renew means you delivered value worth paying for.

The Athletic also correctly identified underserved markets. Hockey coverage became a strength early because NHL teams outside major markets got minimal attention from traditional media. WNBA coverage worked for the same reason. The Athletic went all-in on baseball in 2018, hiring beat writers specifically for teams newspapers were abandoning. These weren't the biggest subscriber drivers, but they proved the model worked when you served passionate fans nobody else was serving.

The writing was good. The Athletic hired talented people and let them do actual journalism instead of chasing traffic with slideshows and aggregation. Beat writers produced long-form features. Investigative reporters broke stories. Columnists wrote pieces that didn't need to be designed for social media virality. The product justified the price.

But then something changed.

In August 2017, The Athletic hired Ken Rosenthal. This decision mattered more than any other single move the company made, and it happened because Fox Sports made one of the most misguided decisions in modern media history.

Jamie Horowitz, Fox Sports' president, eliminated the company's entire written content operation in 2017 as part of a pivot to video-based content. Ken Rosenthal, Bruce Feldman, Stewart Mandel, and others suddenly needed somewhere to put their work.

The Athletic, subscription-based and desperate for national credibility, became that somewhere.

This is where The Athletic's mission changed, even if nobody said it explicitly at the time. The original pitch was hyperlocal coverage. Every team gets a dedicated beat writer. Serve the fans that newspapers are abandoning. But a Cubs beat writer convinces 5,000 Chicago fans to subscribe. Rosenthal convinces 50,000 baseball fans nationally. Feldman and Mandel anchor college football coverage that works in every market.

Local coverage became secondary to landing big names who could drive subscriptions across geographies. That's not a criticism of the decision — it was probably the right business move. But it fundamentally altered what The Athletic was building. The company stopped being a collection of local sites and became a national publication with some local coverage.

Fox Sports' implosion handed The Athletic the credibility and talent it needed to scale beyond local markets. Without Rosenthal, Feldman, and Mandel, The Athletic would likely remain a niche product serving hardcore fans in individual cities. With them, it becomes something that can justify a $550 million acquisition price.

That credibility came with a price tag, one that The Athletic couldn't sustain on subscription revenue alone. The business model required burning venture capital to hire writers faster than revenue could support. Between 2016 and 2020, The Athletic raised $140 million across seven funding rounds. By 2021, the company had 1.2 million subscribers and $80 million in annual revenue. It was still unprofitable.

That's the part that never worked. The subscription model proved that fans would pay for quality sports writing. What it didn't prove was that you could operate a 600-person newsroom profitably on subscription revenue alone. The Athletic needed $140 million in VC funding to scale, which meant it had to deliver returns to investors and would eventually be acquired or go public

The New York Times paid $550 million in January 2022. The initial promise was that The Athletic would operate independently. That lasted until June 2023, when The Athletic laid off nearly 20 writers and eliminated team-specific beat reporters in favor of coverage where its audience data indicated it made sense.

One month later, The New York Times shut down its own sports department.

The Athletic at 10 looks nothing like what Mather and Hansmann promised in 2016. The local-first model is gone. The promise that every team gets a dedicated beat writer is gone. The independent operation is gone. What remains is a profitable subscription product at the New York Times that primarily serves football and soccer fans, with some baseball and basketball coverage for teams that move the needle.

That's not necessarily bad. The Athletic still employs talented writers. It still produces good work. Subscribers are getting value. It’s just not what subscribers were sold when they initially signed up 10 years ago.

The Athletic needed VC money to scale. VC money required returns. Returns required growth. Growth required prioritizing content that drove subscriptions over content that served readers. The company that promised to replace corporate media with a sustainable subscription model ended up becoming corporate media with a subscription model.

The lesson from the last 10 years is that subscription can work, but only if you're willing to make the same compromises every other media company makes. Prioritize what's profitable over what's valuable, cut what doesn't scale, and serve the audience that drives the most revenue.

The Athletic proved subscription sports journalism works, just not the way anyone hoped it would.

🎺 AROUND AA 🎺

The hardest part of solo radio isn't filling three hours alone. It's figuring out when to break up your own voice so the show doesn't become an endurance test for listeners.

Nick Kostos has been hosting You Better You Bet solo on Westwood One Sports for nearly a month, and he's identified the puzzle that nobody talks about: creating natural breakpoints in a format that doesn't have any. Television shows have commercial breaks, teasers, and video packages. Co-hosted radio shows have a built-in rhythm from the back-and-forth. Solo radio has none of that unless you deliberately engineer it.

For Kostos, that means mixing guest interviews, audio clip reactions, and crew banter throughout three hours to give the audience different textures and rhythms. Long solo segments work when they're bookended by something different. Deep analysis plays better when followed by something lighter. And betting content needs to be distributed across the show rather than concentrated in one block, or you lose the non-betting audience for 30 minutes.

The challenge gets more complicated when you're broadcasting across multiple platforms simultaneously. You Better You Bet airs on traditional radio through Westwood One, streams on YouTube with video, broadcasts on Twitch, and airs on NESN as a television show. Each platform has different expectations, and balancing them while keeping the core content work for radio requires constant recalibration.

Kostos credits executive producer Bill Zimmerman — who spent years producing Chris "Mad Dog" Russo's four-hour solo show on SiriusXM — with understanding how to navigate these challenges. Nearly a month in, Kostos isn't declaring victory. He hopes that even 20 years from now, he'd still say they haven't mastered it, that they're still learning every day.

Click to read the full piece on why solo radio's biggest challenge isn't what you think — and why never feeling like you've mastered it might be the secret to actually being good at it.

👏 INDUSTRY INSIGHTS 🗣️

• Paramount+ averaged 4.96 million viewers for UFC 324, the promotion's streaming debut following its seven-year, $7.7 billion rights deal. The card peaked at 5.93 million viewers and reached 7.18 million households, dwarfing the half-million signups UFC's ESPN+ debut generated in 2019.

• Netflix released the trailer for Miracle: The Boys of '80, featuring never-before-seen 16mm footage and firsthand reflections from the 1980 U.S. hockey team that defeated the USSR at the height of the Cold War. Al Michaels appears in the documentary, which debuts Friday, Jan. 30, just weeks before the 2026 Winter Olympics.

• Geoffrey Mason, a pioneering sports producer who contributed to nearly every major broadcaster over five decades, died at age 85. Mason's career spanned ABC, CBS, NBC, and Fox, producing everything from Monday Night Football to NFL playoffs.

• The Washington Post reversed course and will send four reporters to the Winter Olympics after initially canceling coverage two weeks before the Games, but won't send beat writers to Nationals spring training, the latest cost-cutting move as the sports desk faces potential shutdown following reports that the entire desk could be eliminated.

• Fox is moving the Wienie 500 off its app and onto linear television for the second edition of the Oscar Mayer Wienermobile race, which will almost certainly draw more viewers than it deserves.

• The Los Angeles Dodgers secured a favorable revenue-sharing agreement through 2039 that gives the franchise significant financial advantages over other MLB teams in how they share local media revenue, helping explain why they continue to outspend the rest of baseball.

📣 NOTABLE QUOTABLES 🗣️

"I believe that Ryan Clark should've been interviewed for the job." - ESPN's Stephen A. Smith calling for Ryan Clark to have been interviewed for the Steelers head coaching position despite having zero coaching experience.

"We're gonna beat the f*cking Patriots. Redo." - A Seahawks fan dropping F-bombs on live TV after KING 5 News reporter Drew Mikkelsen asked for a preview of Super Bowl LX, then doubling down when asked for a clean version: "We're about to f*cking redo this sh*t, we're about to beat the f*cking Patriots."

"They offered me like $5,000 or something embarrassingly small." - Free solo climber Alex Honnold describing Netflix's lowball offer to scale Taipei 101 for a documentary, calling out the streaming giant's compensation practices for extreme athletes risking their lives.

"Mike McCarthy is a Super Bowl-winning coach. He's been to two NFC Championship Games. What more do you want?" - CBS's Bill Cowher defending the Steelers' hiring of McCarthy despite backlash from fans who wanted a younger, more innovative offensive mind.

"I won a playoff game kicking five field goals... You can win with field goals." - ESPN's Booger McFarland criticizing Sean Payton and Sean McVay for not taking field goals in Championship Sunday losses, referencing his own Colts team that beat Baltimore 15-9 in the 2007 playoffs.

"What the hell kind of question is that?" - Rams coach Sean McVay snapping at a reporter who asked if he expects Matthew Stafford back next season, moments after losing the NFC Championship Game.

️‍🔥 THE CLOSER 🔥

Kirk Cousins already has his next contract lined up

Kirk Cousins spent Sunday doing what he's been doing his entire career.

The Atlanta Falcons quarterback joined CBS's The NFL Today in Denver for Championship Sunday, filling the void left by Matt Ryan's departure to become president of football for the team he once played for. And if social media reaction is any indication, Cousins didn't just fill Ryan's seat — he pretty much claimed it permanently.

The bigger question is whether Cousins wants to retire now or keep playing. He's still under contract with Atlanta through 2028, but the Falcons restructured his deal in December in a way that would save them $27.5 million if they release him this offseason.

If Cousins does walk away, CBS would be smart to offer him Ryan's old role immediately. The network just watched him audition for the job on national television and saw the overwhelmingly positive response. They know he can do the work. They know viewers respond to him. And they know the seat is open right now.

Cousins has spent 13 years in the NFL defying expectations. He was a fourth-round pick who became a franchise quarterback. He signed fully guaranteed contracts when everyone said it was impossible. He turned himself into one of the most financially successful players in league history despite never winning a playoff game as a starter.

Now he might have just positioned himself to do it again — this time by walking away from $180 million to take a job that could pay him $10-15 million annually for the next two decades without the physical toll of getting sacked 40 times a season.

Sunday wasn't just a good TV appearance. It was a job interview that Cousins passed with flying colors. CBS needs a long-term studio anchor. Cousins just showed he can be that guy. The only question is whether he's ready to make the transition now or wants one more year of getting paid $45 million to hand the ball off to Bijan Robinson.

But if he does retire, CBS should have the contract ready before he finishes his goodbye press conference. They just found their next Matt Ryan. And unlike the first one, this one isn't leaving for a front office job.