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 ✍️

🏈 Just a day after exiting NFL Network and Good Morning Football, Peter Schrager was officially unveiled by ESPN with an expansive portfolio across the worldwide leader’s various platforms.

⚾ The YES-Comcast carriage deal may not be all that it seems as Yankees games have become a political football that has made it all the way to the White House.

🤓 MSNBC data guru Steve Kornacki is leaving the cable news network for a new joint role at NBC News and NBC Sports. Kornacki’s data-driven approach is always a hit with viewers no matter the platform.

🚨LEADING OFF 🚨

Major League Liftoff

Over the past few years, baseball has tried to implement changes to make the game more exciting and accessible, especially to young fans in the social media age. But who would have thought that the best thing that could happen to the sport was a subtle scientific discovery from an MIT physicist?

By now, if you haven’t heard of “torpedo bats,” you’ve probably been camping in the remote Alaskan wilderness for the past week. They have been all the rage and taken up time that should be reserved for headlines about the NCAA Tournament, the Masters, or the NFL Draft, and given it to baseball. It’s even gotten First Take to talk about the sport! In March and April! If only this could have come along before ESPN opted out of their MLB television contract, maybe the two sides would still be on the same page.

The home run explosion that has been witnessed, especially with the New York Yankees, is one of the most exciting and interesting things to happen in the sport since the steroid era. And this appears to be entirely legal. How did it take 150 years to move some wood in the bat around to make a bigger sweet spot?

The home run is one of the most exciting plays in sports. If MLB can market another summer of swat without the cloud that hung over the last offensive boom period, perhaps the sport will experience a new renaissance era in the American sporting lexicon this year.

Time will tell if the competitive balance gets a little too far out of order if torpedo bats continue to spread around the league and homers fly out of ballparks at a greatly increased rate. But sports leagues have rarely ever made rule changes to reduce scoring and offensive firepower. And odds are that if star players keep smashing dingers, then MLB will not step in to stop it because they know the ratings and interest it can generate over the course of the season. If there is one thing that has always been true in sports, it is this - chicks dig the long ball.

📣 SOCIAL EXPERIMENT 🌟

The world’s most famous Maryland basketball fan, Scott Van Pelt, unloaded on Kevin Willard making a mess of leaving the Terps for Villanova.

Thanks to the program's impending cancellation, around the Horn can’t give us a Halloween episode later this year, so they did it for April Fool's Day instead.

🔦 IN THE SPOTLIGHT ☀️

Time editor-in-chief Ben Jacobs sat down with Awful Announcing to discuss the legacy publisher’s renewed push into sports since its corporate separation from Sports Illustrated.

📈💰INDUSTRY INSIGHTS🧐 

✍️ Dennis Dodd spoke to Awful Announcing about his upcoming retirement, future plans, and the best game he ever covered at CBS Sports.

🥊 Boxing insider Mike Coppinger is departing ESPN to work for The Ring Magazine and its new fight promotion arm under Turki Alalshikh and the Saudi government.

⛳ CBS Sports golf announcer Frank Nobilo has the noble task of replacing Verne Lundquist atop the perch at the legendary 16th hole at Augusta National for this year’s Masters.

🗣️ NOTABLE QUOTABLES 🗣️ 

“I think Caitlin represented — and again, some of this to me probably is not fair to her, because it was not anything that she said or was truly based on her personality — but she was a white girl from the middle of America.” - Monica McNutt on Caitlin Clark’s popularity with fans.

“Everybody asks me what I think of the TGL, and I say it’s fantastic. It’s more stuff, more golf, it’s more innovation. It’s taking things to a new level.” - Greg Norman offering praise to longtime rivals Tiger Woods and Rory McIlroy over the success of TGL.

“They don’t think it matters, because they don’t know who I am and they think that I deserve it, but I don’t.” - Ole Miss student Mary Kate Cornett detailing the trauma of Pat McAfee and others amplifying false rumors about her earlier this year.

🔥THE CLOSER🔥

Chalk Talk

The NCAA Tournament ratings numbers from the second weekend were out, and they failed to follow the historic highs of the first weekend. The Elite 8 saw games dip 10% compared to last year, but much of that could be due to the Easter holiday falling last year. Overall, the tournament is running about even compared to last year.

The other factor that didn’t help the second weekend numbers was the lack of great games. There has been a true lack of madness this March, with just one buzzer beater (Maryland’s Derik Queen in the second round against Colorado State) and one overtime game (Arkansas vs. Texas Tech in the Sweet 16).

That trend continued in the Elite 8, where Florida’s comeback against Texas Tech was the only truly thrilling contest. The other three games had a combined zero second-half lead changes, which definitely did not help in the ratings department. As we saw with this year’s National Championship Game in college football, where Ohio State ran out to a quick lead against Notre Dame, sometimes games that feel like they are decided early may just have a limited viewership ceiling.

Conventional wisdom has always said that networks prefer early upsets and drama, and the blue bloods in the Final Four as the perfect mix for ratings and excitement. With all four top seeds making it to this year’s semifinals, we will see just how well that theory holds at the back half of the tournament. But no matter which brands and stars show up, actually seeing some exciting games will definitely help, too.