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🏈 An NCAA split? On CBS’ Face the Nation over the weekend, NCAA president Charlie Baker hinted at a potential future in which football schedules remain more sprawling and national, while other sports with more rigorous schedules return to more regionalized models. The comments come as the NCAA continues to lose ground on its jurisdiction over college football.

🏀 Caitlin’s callout. In her first public comments since an on-court confrontation with Phoenix’s Alyssa Thomas more than a week ago, Caitlin Clark said she agreed with the WNBA upgrading the call to a flagrant foul, and called out the league’s officiating. Clark also reminded the media and her fans that the constant scrutiny wears on her and the rest of the people in her orbit, calling it a “disservice to the league” to be so focused on her over the rest of the WNBA.

❌ Wiley arrested. Former ESPN and FS1 host Marcellus Wiley was arrested over the weekend in Florida amid mounting sexual assault allegations from as many as seven accusers dating back to his college years. Wiley, who is being held in jail without bond, has claimed he has evidence that refutes his initial accusers’ stories.

🏌️ Dalke’s big finish. YouTube golfer Brad Dalke, formerly part of the popular Good Good Golf content brand, finished 30th at the BMW International Open in Munich. Dalke will compete in two more tournaments this summer by way of sponsor invites, and credited YouTube with helping him rediscover his joy from the game.

During a PBS interview as part of the press tour for his new memoir, Dave Portnoy was asked last week whether he saw Barstool Sports as “mainstream.”

Portnoy’s response used a fairly rudimentary definition of the term, arguing that Barstool couldn’t be clustered with CNN or the New York Times. Of course, Barstool over the past year has struck massive partnerships with both Fox Corp. and Netflix. It is one of the biggest partners for DraftKings. In terms of Q-score, audience and influence, Barstool is undoubtedly mainstream.

A better question would be how big it can get.

Barstool appears to be on stable ground three years after leaving Penn. In the six months prior to Portnoy buying the company back from Penn Entertainment and taking it private, SEC filings show it lost more than $16 million on around $81 million in revenue. The company laid off about a quarter of its workforce after Portnoy’s buy-back, and has been forced to let some top talent go, but both the DraftKings and Netflix deals reportedly pay Barstool in the low eight figures annually.

Portnoy and the company have signed with UTA, which seems to have helped normalize relations with the rest of the industry and led to forward-thinking deals like the ones mentioned here already.

And as the company seemingly makes an effort to dial back the controversy and be a more welcoming potential partner, the possibility of a bigger Barstool is once again a real one.

What could that look like? You would have to think, following lucrative but fairly contentious splits with both the Chernin Group and Penn, that Portnoy is not interested in selling the company again any time soon. The partnership with Fox has to be a success from a promotional standpoint, but the straight sports talk on FS1’s Wake Up Barstool is a poor fit. A deeper footprint on Fox or FS1 seems unlikely.

Plus, Barstool has more competitors these days, if not in tone or structure, at least in shape. Nobody else can do an FS1 morning show while also producing Barstool Beach House or the Internet Invitational golf tournament. But plenty of companies now produce laid-back talk podcasts that are just as good as Barstool’s. Bill Simmons and Colin Cowherd have companies built around their own shows and stardom that can compete with Portnoy’s.

One of the next battlefields in sports media appears to be who can dominate on YouTube and Netflix, and Barstool is well-positioned to do that. As streaming and “always-on” content grows, Barstool can answer with reality-style series like Surviving Barstool and The Dozen trivia, or daily streams like The Yak. It has several strong short-form shows built for social media, such as Kevin Clancy’s “One Minute Man” or Portnoy’s pizza reviews.

If I were to guess where Barstool could look next, though, it would be back toward experiences. With college football Saturdays, Super Bowl week and a handful of other moments on the calendar, Barstool is still out among its fans. But some of the company’s most effective expansions came with tours and live shows that the rest of the digital video industry is following suit on.

Barstool seems uniquely capable of executing (and monetizing) a drawn-out series with waves of content, a variety of personalities, on-site activations, and big guests. As Pat McAfee tries out live events, “IRL” streamers hit it big, and sports leagues explore creator-led simulcasts, Barstool can capitalize.

The company appears to be back on track under Portnoy’s ownership. For years, it has been ahead of the curve with big creative swings. If it can muster that same level of creativity now, the likely result would be something back out in the world, a new take on Barstool’s early breakthroughs.

It’s already been a big summer of deals for the major sports network, with Fox buying Roku for $22 billion and Comcast announcing it will spin off NBC Universal.

CNBC’s Lillian Rizzo joined The Play-By-Play LIVE to discuss both moves and how they will affect the sports rights landscape, in particular with the NFL, going forward.

Plus, a look at efforts by FIFA and the NBA to move content from linear television to social media and YouTube in an effort to chase younger fans.

Watch the episode on YouTube, or listen on Spotify or Apple!

Last summer, I found myself in the bizarre situation of writing that I missed Adrian Wojnarowski, a man whose run as top NBA insider I found largely abhorrent and selfish. I couldn’t ignore what I was feeling amid an NBA offseason almost entirely devoid of spice.

Without “Woj,” the rumors and hypotheticals that make the NBA one of the best soap operas in America almost entirely disappeared. Mostly, all we got were announcements on done deals, the type of insider work that makes you wonder why the job title exists at all. It was a testament to Woj that neither his successor at ESPN, Shams Charania, or any others in the industry, could keep his pace. There truly was less news without him.

That has changed this summer, and not just because the league has been more active. Over at The Stein Line, longtime NBA reporter Marc Stein and newcomer Jake Fischer, who joined the publication last year after leaving Yahoo Sports, have delivered precisely the sort of behind the scenes information and potential moves that we all are used to. Yes, a Substack is outpacing ESPN and The Athletic on NBA news.

Most importantly, Stein and Fischer have stayed on top of the biggest stories. They were insistent that a Giannis Antetokounmpo was coming, and were early on Boston both as a suitor and a one-to-one partner on the sort of deal that the Celtics ultimately offered, with Jaylen Brown at the center. Stein and Fischer have also given continual updates on LeBron James’ potential departure, and linked him strongly to the Golden State Warriors, who still appear to be a top suitor. And the Stein Line duo has been all over Nikola Jokic’s leverage play with Denver as he holds back from signing a contract extension.

The Stein Line was also a go-to on the Lakers’ plans beyond James, forecasting the team’s all-out push for two new centers last week, as well as the possibility that Kawhi Leonard could also leave Los Angeles. When it seemed impossible that Leonard would actually go back to Toronto, Stein and Fischer said it was real.

These are not only nice morsels for fans, they add context to moves that have franchise-altering influence. It is the type of transaction reporting that actually matters, because it sheds light on when minds change and why negotiations shift in a way that allows local communities to hold teams accountable.

Stein and Fischer also deserve credit for getting news out creatively. They are relentless on social media, but they each also have roles with digital properties that help them get info to bigger audiences. Fischer is a live host for Bleacher Report, while Stein is a host and insider at All City Network. A newsletter can’t possibly match the reach of corporate media, so independent reporters have to go to social media and YouTube as well.

The results speak for themselves, as Stein recently announced The Stein Line is up to 50,000 overall subscribers. Launched in the summer of 2021, the newsletter now ranks sixth on Substack’s sports chart.

With subscriptions ranging from $50 annually to $12 monthly, it wouldn’t be hard to imagine The Stein Line generating seven-figure revenue.

Wojnarowski’s retirement left a huge void in the NBA reporting game, and a couple years in, The Stein Line appears to be filling it most effectively.

“I feel like that’s been a narrative people have been using for a long time to try to attack me and my character.” - Philadelphia’s Jaylen Brown, responding to Colin Cowherd saying Brown has a “disease” of always seeing himself as the smartest person in the room.

“When did we become so soft of a culture that we’re not allowed to ask questions anymore?” - Jeff Pearlman, doubling down on his criticism of ABC’s Michael Strahan over an interview with NFL legend Chris Johnson in which Strahan did not inquire about whether Johnson' believed his recent ALS diagnosis was caused by playing football.

“…I used to be able to drive people to go drink this, go do this when we’re more on the up. Now it’s harder because we’ve made it, and people see my lifestyle and how it’s like, ‘we don’t necessarily need to support Dave.’” - Dave Portnoy with an interesting perspective on Barstool’s rise to the mainstream.

“The story is was and always will be Capo Verde. … Yes, I know they ended up losing the game, but they won our hearts.” - Fox’s Thierry Henry, lauding Cape Verde’s run in the World Cup and near-victory over Argentina.

“It seems like, you know, our president’s buddies with the guy who runs the thing. He got the Peace Prize. Maybe make a phone call, maybe see what you can do.” - FS1’s Nick Wright last Friday, nailing President Trump’s apparent efforts on behalf of Folarin Balogun and the USMNT this weekend.

“I personally think … it’s incredibly inappropriate to be releasing numbers of agreements that we have with media rights partners that are very complex and have rights fees included, have marketing commitments included.” - Pac-12 commissioner Teresa Gould, sidestepping questions about the conference’s broadcast rights revenue from CBS, The CW and USA Network.

We here at Awful Announcing didn’t expect the wedding of Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce to be replete with sports media news, but one peculiarity did catch our eye.

And no, it wasn’t that Fox NFL officiating analyst Dean Blandino got the invite.

As we scoured the many publicly reported guest lists published of the Swift-Kelce wedding, we noticed an oddity. Practically everyone from the NFL on Fox team was in attendance: Tom Brady, Kevin Burkhardt, Greg Olsen, Erin Andrews and Charissa Thompson (who are friends with the couple), Michael Strahan, Rob Gronkowski, Julian Edelman, and even Blandino. Practically everyone from Prime Video’s Thursday Night Football team was there: Tony Gonzalez, Richard Sherman, Ryan Fitzpatrick, Andrew Whitworth, and the aforementioned Thompson. (Notably, Al Michaels and Kirk Herbstreit did not appear to be there, which we’ll get to in a second.) A strong contingent of ESPN NFL personalities also showed up, including Joe Buck and wife Michelle Beisner-Buck, Rich Eisen, Pat McAfee, Stephen A. Smith, and, of course, Jason Kelce.

…

But absent from the event was seemingly anyone from CBS or NBC.

Click to read more from Awful Announcing's Drew Lerner, who read the tea leaves of the guest list for the star-studded Taylor-Travis wedding in New York City to see whether it might have something to tell us about the star tight end’s media future.