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🎤 QUICK START ✍️

🗣️ Ban denied. ESPN vehemently denied Outkick's report that Paul Finebaum was banned after expressing interest in running for U.S. Senate as a Republican, with Finebaum appearing on First Take Tuesday as scheduled. His absence from Get Up and Sunday's SportsCenter following his Outkick interview sparked speculation, creating a perception of a double standard given Stephen A. Smith's perceived freedom from political constraints.

🔪 Legal escalation. Fox analyst Mark Sanchez now faces a Level 5 felony charge after prosecutors upgraded his case following an alleged attack on a 69-year-old truck driver over a parking space in Indianapolis. The victim filed a lawsuit against Sanchez and Fox seeking unspecified damages, while Fox hasn't commented on the former quarterback's future with the network.

🙏 Mea culpa. Barstool's Jack Mac apologized for his initial reaction to the fatal crash involving former LSU star Kyren Lacy after new evidence suggested the wide receiver wasn't at fault. McGuire admitted that he "judged based on evidence reported and could have waited," though the Louisiana State Police maintain that Lacy's reckless driving caused the crash.

💰 Box office bomb. The Rock's UFC biopic The Smashing Machine posted Johnson's worst opening weekend ever at $5.9 million against a $50 million budget. The film was tracking for a $17 million debut before projections cratered due to poor word of mouth and an unclear target audience.

🚨LEADING OFF 🚨

The petty vendetta Bill Belichick can't quit

Bill Belichick spent Monday morning proving he's more worried about public perception than he's willing to admit.

Drake Maye threw for 276 yards Sunday night and led the Patriots to an upset victory over the Bills on Sunday Night Football. The second-year quarterback completed 22 of 30 passes and orchestrated a game-winning drive that showcased exactly why he was the third overall pick in 2024. It was the kind of performance that gets former players trending on social media and drives highlight reels across every platform.

Every college program in America would treat that as free recruiting material. A former player starring in primetime, delivering clutch moments that remind high school prospects what they could become if they commit to your program. The kind of organic promotion that money can't buy.

North Carolina's social media accounts stayed completely silent about Maye. The program posted about former Tar Heel Javonte Williams scoring two touchdowns for the Cowboys on Sunday. But Maye's breakout performance against Buffalo went completely ignored on UNC's official channels.

247Sports' Ross Martin reported Monday morning that Belichick had issued a directive banning all Patriots-related content from North Carolina's social media. Sources inside the program confirmed the coaching staff told the social team not to tweet or retweet anything involving New England.

No posts, no mentions, nothing.

The reasoning behind the ban was obvious to anyone who's followed Belichick's first season in Chapel Hill. His ongoing feud with the Patriots has already interfered with his job multiple times. He banned Patriots scouts from UNC practices last month, explaining, "It's clear that I'm not welcome there, so they're not welcome at ours." He has repeatedly claimed he isn't welcome in New England, despite attending Tom Brady's Patriots’ Hall of Fame ceremony last summer and Robert Kraft publicly stating that he wants to build a statue of Belichick at Gillette Stadium once he retires from coaching.

Patriots coach Mike Vrabel, who won three Super Bowls playing for Belichick, calmly dismissed the whole thing when asked about it. The drama is entirely one-sided, which makes the social media ban even more absurd. Belichick is fighting a war with an opponent that isn't showing up on the battlefield.

Martin's report drew immediate attention online and from national outlets covering college football. Former UNC coach Mack Brown posted about Maye shortly after the story broke, writing, "So Happy for Drake. Fun to watch him win last night in Buffalo like he did so many times at UNC." The contrast between Brown's willingness to celebrate his former quarterback and Belichick's apparent ban couldn't have been more obvious.

Less than two hours later, North Carolina posted a Maye highlight. The tweet showed him stiff-arming a Bills defender before connecting with Stefon Diggs, prompting the question, "Where have we seen this before?"

If the ban never existed, why did North Carolina suddenly post about Maye only after getting publicly called out for ignoring him? If the ban was absolute, why cave to pressure so quickly and obviously? The answer to both questions reveals the same thing. Belichick and his staff are aware of the poor start to the season, and they're scrambling to mitigate any further damage.

The immediate reversal suggests that Belichick is acutely sensitive to criticism at the moment. A coach confident in his program and his approach doesn't panic and reverse course within two hours of negative coverage. A coach who genuinely didn't care about outside noise would either stick with the ban or never implement it in the first place. But Belichick caved immediately, which suggests he's very aware of how the narrative around his tenure is spiraling.

North Carolina is 2-3 with blowout losses to TCU and Clemson that weren't competitive. The off-field controversies involving his girlfriend, Jordon Hudson, continue generating headlines that have nothing to do with football. CBS analyst Aaron Taylor called the Belichick hiring "a mistake" on national television Saturday and said UNC should fire him despite the massive buyout. A UNC student went viral saying on ESPN that the TCU loss was "one of the saddest feelings I've had in University so far" and that she'd "failed midterms before, so that's saying something."

Against that backdrop, the Drake Maye situation becomes even more damaging. Belichick positioned North Carolina as "the 33rd NFL team" when he took the job. He promised professional-level development, NFL-caliber coaching, and direct pipelines to the next level. He sold recruits on his connections and his track record of producing NFL talent.

Then he banned NFL scouts from his practices and forbade his staff from promoting players who succeed in the NFL. The contradiction is stark and impossible to ignore. Belichick wants to leverage his Patriots legacy when it helps recruiting, but pretends that chapter doesn't exist when it reminds him of how things ended. He's trying to have it both ways, and Monday proved he can't.

The Maye performance should have been an easy win. Post the highlights, celebrate a former player succeeding at the highest level, and remind recruits that North Carolina quarterbacks can star on Sunday Night Football. Instead, Belichick let a personal grudge dictate strategy, got exposed for it publicly, then reversed course in the most transparent damage control move possible.

The sequence of events reveals more about Belichick's mindset than any press conference could. He's fighting battles that don't need to be fought. He's making decisions based on personal feelings rather than what's best for the program. And when those decisions blow up in his face, he caves immediately rather than defending his position.

Belichick has spent decades cultivating an image of someone who doesn't care what anyone thinks. The guy who gave terse press conference answers and focused exclusively on football regardless of outside criticism. But that version of Belichick operated from a position of strength, with six Super Bowl rings and two decades of success backing up everything he said.

This version of Belichick is coaching a 2-3 team at a program that averaged eight wins a season under Mack Brown before his arrival. The off-field distractions keep multiplying. The on-field results haven't come close to justifying the hype. And now he's showing that criticism gets under his skin badly enough to force immediate course corrections when the heat gets too intense.

Monday's social media reversal wasn't about Drake Maye or the Patriots. It was about a coach desperate to stop the bleeding around a program that's quickly becoming a punchline. Belichick can ban Patriots scouts and restrict social media content all he wants. But he can't ban the growing perception that his first season at North Carolina is heading toward disaster.

📣 NOTABLE QUOTABLES 🗣️

"Grow up. It's not my fault your team was up 17-0 and then took a giant dump in their helmets." - Fox analyst Mark Schlereth firing back at a Dolphins fan who complained about alleged broadcast bias after Miami blew a 17-point lead to the Panthers.

"If I was the head coach, I'd be like if you don't run with the ball to the sideline and keep it tucked, I'm just gonna cut you." - Greg Olsen on what he'd do to players who fumble at the goal line like Cardinals running back Emari Demercado, whose dropped ball before crossing sparked a complete Arizona meltdown against the Titans.

"I was literally joking. Everybody takes everything out of context nowadays." - Texans quarterback C.J. Stroud, clarifying his viral comments about feeling old at 23 after throwing four touchdowns in Houston's 44-10 win over Baltimore.

"Now, Tom Brady, to me, is the greatest football player of all time. You know, he went to Tampa and won a Super Bowl, which I don't think helped Bill's legacy. We're trying to determine the most important person in the Patriots' success. Was it Brady or Belichick? Brady went to Tampa Bay and won a Super Bowl with Bruce Arians, who I love, as the coach. Belichick has really not done much else since. I think his legacy was already in question before the whole North Carolina thing." - ESPN's Sean McDonough on Bill Belichick's legacy being questioned before UNC's struggles even began.

"If Ty Simpson's name were Ty Manning, we would cancel the end of the season Heisman Trophy ceremony and just do it now. That's the best pure passing game in college football." - Joel Klatt arguing Alabama's quarterback is getting overlooked compared to Texas's Arch Manning despite superior statistics and performance.

"Figure out the f*cking cameras, FloSports. Like, don't suck this much." - Bill Simmons ripping FloSports for nightmare streaming quality while trying to watch his daughter's Division 3 college soccer games 3,000 miles away, describing broadcasts with test patterns appearing every time the camera moved and technical difficulties lasting 20 minutes at a time.

📣 SOCIAL EXPERIMENT 🌟

Ryan Clark channels 'Rocky IV' to preview Chiefs-Jaguars, because apparently Monday Night Football needed a Cold War analogy:

Jason Kelce opens ESPN interview with the only question that matters:

Eli asks the questions everyone else is too polite to ask:

The Manning brothers make "wet ball drills" sound exactly as weird as it is:

📺 INDUSTRY INSIGHTS 🎬

• LIV Golf's first season on Fox proved disastrous for viewership, averaging just 338,000 viewers across 17 telecasts. The Saudi-funded league's final round broadcasts averaged 385,000 viewers, while PGA Tour final rounds averaged 2.66 million on NBC and CBS. When LIV broadcasts moved to FS1, viewership cratered to 63,000 viewers. The Financial Times reported LIV lost nearly $500 million in 2024 alone, continuing a pattern of massive losses that shows no signs of stopping despite minimal American audience interest.

• Wayne Gretzky renewed his contract with TNT Sports to continue as a studio analyst for NHL on TNT. The Great One enters his fifth season with the network alongside Liam McHugh, Paul Bissonnette, Anson Carter, and Henrik Lundqvist. The renewal comes as Warner Bros. Discovery navigates Inside the NBA moving to ESPN next season, putting more pressure on TNT's hockey and baseball studio programs to fill the void left by its signature basketball coverage.

• NBC announced that Basketball Night in America will air on-site for Sunday Night Basketball games when the franchise launches on February 1, 2026. Maria Taylor will host the one-hour studio show on-site each week, similar to the network's approach with Football Night in America. Lenny Kravitz will perform at the show's opening, marking NBC's return to NBA broadcasting after a 23-year hiatus from the sport.

• President Donald Trump confirmed a UFC event at the White House will take place on June 14, 2026, which happens to be Trump's 80th birthday. UFC president Dana White has promised the best card in the promotion's history, with the event expected to air on national television via CBS. White suggested weigh-ins at the Lincoln Memorial and fighter walk-outs from the Oval Office as unique features for the event.

🎺 AROUND AA 🎺

Kevin Harlan isn't slowing down; he's just being smarter about his schedule. The 65-year-old play-by-play legend sat down with Awful Announcing’s Michael Grant to discuss his move to Amazon Prime Video for NBA coverage, where he'll call 30-35 games this season, starting with Timberwolves-Lakers on October 24.

Harlan won the 2024 Awfulie Award for Best Play-by-Play Announcer, and his reduced schedule isn't about fatigue. It's about timing his NBA workload around his NFL commitments with CBS, creating a more balanced calendar that lets him maintain his trademark energy across both sports.

The move marks his first NBA season away from TNT after three decades at the network. Harlan praised Amazon's commitment to the product, saying, "Their enthusiasm for this product and this brand-new venture is contagious. It's exhilarating."

When asked how much longer he would broadcast, Harlan made it clear that he's letting performance guide the decision rather than age. "If I feel like I'm still able to make my employers feel good about being on the air, and my own heavily critiqued way of looking at my work... I'd like to go as long as that feel is there."

Click to read the full interview, including Harlan's thoughts on doing wedding announcements for free, whether he'd ever try baseball play-by-play, and the story behind his famous "I'm wet. I'm dirty" call during the Pacers-Knicks playoff game.

️‍🔥 THE CLOSER 🔥

Finebaum’s last stand

Paul Finebaum didn't accidentally reveal he's a Republican who voted for Donald Trump and is considering running for U.S. Senate in Alabama. He didn't stumble into telling OutKick's Clay Travis that the conversation felt "cathartic" because he was finally saying things ESPN's policies prevented him from discussing for his entire career.

He chose OutKick specifically. He chose Travis specifically. And he decided to break character, knowing precisely what would happen next.

The SEC Network host announced last week he's seriously considering leaving ESPN to run for Alabama's open U.S. Senate seat in 2026 as a Republican. The seat is currently held by Tommy Tuberville, who's running for governor. Finebaum revealed he's a Trump supporter and voter, and said if Trump publicly backed him, he'd have no choice but to run.

Then Monday happened. Travis reported ESPN pulled Finebaum from all network programming following the interview. ESPN vehemently denied it, with VP of communications Bill Hofheimer calling the report "TOTALLY FALSE." The network confirmed Finebaum would appear on First Take on Tuesday as scheduled.

The confusion stems from Finebaum's reduced presence on ESPN's flagship programming last week. He didn't appear on Get Up or Sunday's SportsCenter, shows where he typically discusses college football after big weekends. He did appear on the SEC Network and continued hosting his daily radio show. When a caller tried bringing up the controversy on Monday, he was immediately dropped mid-sentence.

None of this matters. Whether ESPN actually banned him or just quietly reduced his ESPN appearances while keeping him on the SEC Network is irrelevant. The relationship changed the moment Finebaum went on a Fox-owned outlet and revealed he's been a closeted Republican for decades while working at ESPN.

You don't go on OutKick to discuss running for Senate as a Republican unless you've already made up your mind. You don't tell Clay Travis that ESPN's policies silenced you for years unless you're done playing by those rules. You don't describe the conversation as "cathartic" because you're saying things you "did not intend to say" unless you absolutely intended to tell them.

Finebaum is 68 years old. He's been at ESPN for over a decade. He cited Charlie Kirk's assassination as the catalyst for reconsidering his priorities, saying he "spent four hours numb talking about things that didn't matter to me" after hearing the news. That's not someone exploring options. That's someone who has already made the decision and is shaping the public narrative around it.

The question isn't whether ESPN banned him. The question is how long Finebaum drags this out before making it official. He told Travis he'd like to make a decision "in the next 30 to 45 days" since Alabama's qualifying deadline is in January. That timeline suggests he's already working the math backward from a conclusion he's already reached.

ESPN can deny banning him all it wants. Finebaum can appear on First Take on Tuesday morning and pretend everything's normal. But once you go on Outkick to reveal you've been hiding your politics for 35 years and you're considering running for office, there's no walking that back. The bridge doesn't just get burned. You're the one holding the match.

Finebaum built a career discussing college football with people in Alabama. Now he wants to represent them in Washington. He's trading sports media influence for political ambition, and he's doing it on his own timeline regardless of what ESPN says publicly.

The "ban" controversy is a sideshow. Finebaum already made his choice when he sat down with Clay Travis. Everything else is just noise.