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 ✍️

🥌 Curling legend and longtime CBC reporter Colleen Jones died following a battle with cancer at the age of 65. The first female sports anchor in Halifax, Jones was also a fixture on CBC News for nearly 40 years as a reporter and host. While she covered plenty of curling, broadcasting 10 Olympic Games during her career, she was perhaps most beloved for her slice-of-life reporting about everyday Canadians.

🎙️ Kevin “KFC” Clancy and John Feitelberg announced Wednesday that the long-running Barstool Sports podcast KFC Radio will conclude at the end of the year. The two plan to conclude the podcast’s run with a nostalgic look back at the show, which started in 2012, before launching new projects in 2026.

⛳ The PGA Tour could look radically different in just a matter of a year or two. Golf Digest reporter Joel Beall confirmed scuttlebutt that the PGA Tour season could eventually feature only 20 or 22 events, down from over 40 on the current schedule, saying chances it happens are “stronger than you might think.”

🤝 After a two-month blackout, TelevisaUnivision networks are back on YouTube TV. The two sides announced a new multiyear carriage agreement on Wednesday that will see Univision, Unimás, TUDN, and Galavisión return to the YouTube TV platform via the distributor’s base plan and Spanish-language offering. As part of the new deal, TelevisaUnivision will sell its popular Vix streaming service through YouTube Primetime Channels.

📺 ESPN has had a hole in its daily lineup ever since canceling Around the Horn back in May. But according to ESPN President of Content Burke Magnus, the network is in no rush to name a permanent replacement. It had been reported that Scott Van Pelt might take that slot, and Magnus talked Van Pelt up, but said they “would like to have a little bit of both worlds” with the timeslot and talent.

🚨 LEADING OFF 🚨

What the NFL announcer rankings tell us

On Monday, Awful Announcing released its 2025 rankings of all the NFL announcer booths, as determined by our readers. This has been an annual tradition for us, going back to 2018 (except for a hiatus in 2021), and offers a snapshot of which announcers are resonating with viewers and which ones aren’t quite breaking through.

It’s always interesting to look at where booths end up year over year. However, we don’t tend to look at long-term changes in grades and rankings for broadcasting booths that have stayed together over time.

Given that we’re halfway through this decade, we thought it might be interesting to look at the rankings over the 2020s to see how perceptions and affinity for the biggest names in NFL broadcasting have changed. While most of the booths in our rankings rarely last beyond a few years, a handful have endured and offer fascinating insights.

So, looking back through the 2020, 2022, 2023, 2024, and 2025 rankings, we can find five booths that have stood the test of time and are still intact.

First up is Spero Dedes & Adam Archuleta. CBS has five core NFL broadcasting booths, and this one keeps hanging on. While most of the booths that we charted across the decade are among the top tier, this one surprised us as it’s not necessarily one that many people think of. The rankings have borne that out, as they’ve been 14th, 16th, 15th, 21st, and 17th across the five years.

Fox’s Kenny Albert & Jonathan Vilma have also been together for the entirety of the decade. They don’t tend to get stuck with the sexiest game of the week, though they did get the honors of interviewing the president mid-game. Unfortunately for them as a unit, they’ve seen a drop-off over the years, from the bottom of the top tier to the middle of the pack (9th, 9th, 13th, 16th, 14th).

Joe Buck & Troy Aikman started the decade at Fox, but they’re now calling Monday Night Football over on ESPN. The years have been kind to both of them, especially Buck, as football fans have warmed to his style. That shows in the rankings as well, as they’ve maintained a top-tier status (6th, 3rd, 1st, 2nd, 2nd).

Kevin Harlan & Trent Green might be considered the stalwarts of the CBS NFL broadcasting lineup. They tend to fly under the radar behind the A booth, but you could make a case that they’re CBS’s most consistently liked duo. A look at the last five rankings shows how much our readers appreciate them (3rd, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 4th).

CBS’s Jim Nantz & Tony Romo were considered the cream of the crop not too long ago. Just a few years later, some feel that the wheels have come off. They still have plenty of fans, but a close look at the decade’s rankings shows that they’re in the midst of an undeniable slide (1st, 4th, 6th, 6th, 7th).

While they weren’t a team in 2020, we did start seeing NBC’s Mike Tirico and Cris Collinsworth paired in 2022. And I just wanted to cite them because you could make a case, based on the rankings, that they’re making the opposite moves to Nantz and Romo. Despite many misgivings about Collinsworth’s style, there seems to be an appreciation for the consistency of the SNF booth, one that might not be finished peaking yet (5th, 5th, 3rd, 3rd).

🗣️ NOTABLE QUOTABLES 🗣️

“These Ohio State fans, they’re psychotic about this, man. They all need to go see the doctor someplace. I’d rather win the national championship than beat Michigan. That’s just me.” - Nick Saban’s latest salvo against Ohio State fans.

“I recall you saying that you absolutely love working at ESPN. You love being the ‘Mouth of the South,’ you love the Paul Finebaum Show, you love being on Get Up, you love being on First Take… But you sat up there on the airwaves and said, ‘Hey man, if the opportunity presents itself, I might be a senator. Yeah, I don’t know.'” - Stephen A. Smith breaking kayfabe to call Paul Finebaum out over his Lane Kiffin hypocrisy.

“The news cycle that lives off the backs of these kinds of things that drags on for days upon days among those outlets, we all know who they are, who have fashioned a business around commenting on ESPN and in many cases manufacturing a controversy that doesn’t actually exist, at least internally, is part of the issue here. Just because it gets said ten times on X over a week’s span doesn’t make it different to us.” - ESPN President Burke Magnus talking about… hmmm… could be any outlet, really…

“I miss a lot of stuff. I missed a lot of weddings. I miss a lot of events. You have to love it to get you through the fact, ‘I’m not gonna be home for Thanksgiving next week’ or ‘Christmas is cut short.’” - Erin Andrews on the sacrifices that come with working in NFL broadcasting.

“So you just want to start trouble, huh?” - Shedeur Sanders, when asked about rumors that Kevin Stefanski is sabotaging his NFL career.

“He definitely been a supporter for a minute, so I’m just thankful for him, from even taking time out his day to be able to speak out, his support.” - Shedeur Sanders on the support he’s received from President Donald Trump.

“Shedeur Sanders is the most powerful black man since 2009. You know what happened in 2009? That’s when President Obama got elected in office.” - Kendrick Perkins, with quite possibly the take of the year.

🎺 AROUND AA 🎺

The dominant narratives in sports still come from live video. Television hosts, podcast stars, radio personalities, and game announcers shape fans’ opinions more than anyone else, and this is the coverage that teams pay attention to.

Yet as everyone spends more time on their phones and watches user-generated content on TVs as often as, if not more than, traditional television, the way fans engage with sports does not align with that conventional recipe.

With our first-ever list of the top sports influencers and content creators, we sought to find the most successful and popular people serving this purpose for fans across America’s top sports.

This list comprises people who are innovating and building a real community around their exhaustive coverage and incisive analysis. That is not to say that these people are not also entertaining. To cut through in the ever-crowded online content marketplace, you have to be all of the above. The talent we are highlighting here certainly is.

Click to see who topped Awful Announcing’s top sports influencers and content creators list of 2025.

️‍️‍🔥 THE CLOSER 🔥

The only constant is change

I came across this Bluesky post by Timothy Burke on Wednesday, regarding the channel that viewers would find this year’s Florida vs. Florida State showdown on.

That sounds about right, given that this game, which used to have significant consequences for the national title picture, is a complete non-factor. The Gators come into the contest with a 3-8 record and an interim coach. The Seminoles enter with a 5-6 record and 2023’s 13-1 season seemingly like a distant memory.

When I was young in the 1990s, Steve Spurrier’s Gators and Bobby Bowden’s Noles were seemingly championship contenders every season. Now, they’re yo-yos, constantly bobbing up and down between solid runs and rebuilds.

I thought about how, as Burke noted, this game was sure to be an ABC, ESPN, or CBS broadcast when I was younger, likely in primetime. And now that it’s stranded out on ESPN2, I wondered which games had taken its place this coming Saturday.

On ABC, the country will get No. 8 Oklahoma vs. LSU at 3:30 p.m. ET, followed by the Iron Bowl, Alabama vs. Auburn, at 7:30 p.m. ET. Both of those games likely could have pulled similar spots back in the day.

On ESPN, however, the 1990s college football fanatic in me really sees the difference. The 3:30 p.m. ET game is No. 14 Vanderbilt vs. No. 19 Tennessee. Setting aside how weird it still is to see Vandy ranked so highly, this would have been the ESPN2 broadcast if this were, say, 1995.

The 7:00 p.m. ESPN broadcast, meanwhile, is No. 18 Virginia vs. Virginia Tech, which is also a bit of a mindbender to 18-year-old me. The Hoos were a solid program in the ‘90s, and the Hokies were ascendant. However, like Florida and FSU, Virginia Tech finds itself in full rebuild mode.

All of this to say that, sometimes, college football feels rigid and monolithic. The same 10-12 teams seem to compete every year for the title while everyone else fights for scraps. And there is some truth to that in a sense. But there’s also a lot of change, especially if you wait long enough. Take it from a guy who grew up in a world where Nebraska, Florida, Florida State, and Auburn were guarantees to be in the title hunt every year… things change.

At least for a time.