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🏈 Miller on leave. NFL Draft analyst Matt Miller said he was stepping away from ESPN “indefinitely” as he recovers from multiple surgeries related to a car accident last month. Awful Announcing previously reported on irregularities related to Miller’s charity fundraising and unfulfilled payments from fans for scouting lessons. The Missouri Attorney General’s Office is investigating Miller’s charity.

⚾ Manfred’s miss. MLB commissioner Rob Manfred mispronounced the name Roch Cholowsky, the No. 1 overall pick in this weekend’s draft by the White Sox, during a broadcast that drew sharp criticism from baseball media for airing during a slate of MLB games on Saturday afternoon.

⚽ A Skycam run-in. In the build-up to England’s equalizer on Saturday against Norway, the ball appeared to hit the FIFA Skycam, which Fox Sports rules analyst Mark Clattenburg argued should result in a dead ball. The interruption was not called on the field, and FIFA has since issued a statement claiming the ball’s censor did not show a collision with the camera.

⚽ Dellacamera hangs ‘em up. JP Dellacamera, 74, announced his retirement from World Cup broadcasting after calling 18 combined men’s and women’s tournaments. Dellacamera will continue calling NWSL games for CBS and Ion, and hopes to work with Fox in the future, calling Concacaf and UEFA competitions.

🏀 Patrick calls out Engelbert. Veteran host Dan Patrick revealed on Friday that WNBA commissioner Cathy Engelbert had ghosted his radio show for a scheduled interview, despite still competing in the American Century Championship this week, where his show was broadcasting.

A couple of weeks ago, I took a nod from Dan Patrick and wrote in this newsletter about all the small ways the WNBA could increase its transparency and get ahead of the bad PR that too often circles it.

After Patrick’s latest fracas with the league, it’s time to get out of his way and let the veteran host’s words speak for themselves. On Friday’s show, while live from a celebrity golf tournament in Lake Tahoe, Patrick revealed how an interview with WNBA commissioner Cathy Engelbert collapsed. In the process, he demonstrated publicly what many have been insinuating about Engelbert or leaking privately.

"We’re waiting to interview her. They didn’t balk at anything, didn’t say you can’t ask anything. And we thought, okay, we’re gonna be able to finally ask questions about Caitlin Clark, the WNBA, expansion, a lot of different things,” Patrick explained.

“We waited, and we waited, and we waited, and then Todd got word that the commissioner said the WNBA PR staff said she is not allowed to do this. You’re the commissioner, and you’re listening to the PR department, which is fine, but did you check with PR before you said yes to us?”

The situation was made all the worse optically, given that Patrick’s camera crew captured Engelbert playing on the course down the way from their set.

And it came off the situation last month, when Engelbert’s staff could not even put together a statement for Patrick’s show about the league’s perspective on Clark’s on-court confrontation with Phoenix’s Alyssa Thomas.

“We’re just trying to be a journalist here, that’s all. We’re just trying to ask questions,” Patrick added.

Unfortunately for the WNBA, sports leagues don’t have the benefit of patience. A commissioner has to be nimble. They or their staff must frequently speak to top media voices, on or off the record, to control the narrative around their league as much as possible. These conversations are how leagues try to shape the way they are viewed. If nothing else, they can help dictate what gets talked about and what does not.

The WNBA likely canceled the interview with Patrick because they prefer the more controllable environment of All-Star weekend, just days away. Yet being scared off by Patrick, a balanced and informed journalist, is small in comparison. It is a funny compounding effect that stems from ineffective leaders, who must evade scrutiny for their mistakes.

Patrick is as respected as they come and far fairer toward the WNBA than most of his counterparts. Whereas other top media voices use the league as a stand-in for the culture wars or do not actually follow the games, Patrick’s interest appears genuine. To his credit, he is drawing attention to the league’s shortcomings rather than turning it into a punch line.

The simplicity of Patrick’s disagreement with Engelbert is why it is so effective in underlining what Minnesota’s Napheesa Collier famously called “the worst leadership in the world” last fall. By merely asking for a statement or an interview, Patrick is setting a low bar for the WNBA to clear. It has failed to do so.

I expect Patrick to keep pushing now that he has been personally disrespected. If a league cannot stay friends with someone as beloved and objective as Dan Patrick, its leadership has no business staying in power.

Michael Strahan, the star of Fox NFL Sunday and Good Morning America, is getting into podcasting as both a host and executive.

For Awful Announcing last week, I spoke with SMAC Entertainment COO April Guidone about the company's launch of a podcast network in partnership with Sinclair’s AMP Media. Guidone explained how podcasts fit into the company’s portfolio, how it will balance shows hosted by clients of its representation business with those hosted by outside hosts, and more.

Click to read more on SMAC’s plans for podcasting.

There’s a new women’s pro baseball league launching this summer, and you might not have heard about it yet.

But the nearly 2 million people who watched the launch announcement video posted by “Coach Jackie J” not only got all the info they needed to keep up with the league in its inaugural season, but also the stamp of approval from one of the internet’s most popular sports content creators.

Coach Jackie has nearly 1.5 million followers across TikTok and Instagram, though the videos she posts about women’s sports news frequently reach far wider than that. And over the past few years, she has become the go-to creator in the women’s sports world for announcements and promotions of all kinds.

Shortly before Coach Jackie announced the Women’s Pro Baseball League on her accounts, she shot a video with New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani to promote Gotham FC’s upcoming move to Etihad Park in Queens. Later, she announced she would be speaking on a panel at the WNBA All-Star weekend in Chicago.

But the reason the audience shows up, trusts Coach Jackie, and follows her tastes and perspectives is that she has posted everything in between. The other videos on Coach Jackie’s feed recently include dispatches on recent episodes of Love Island and Big Brother, as well as more serious, straight-to-camera monologues with her thoughts on equity in sports and beyond.

The way Coach Jackie relates to her audience of diehard women’s sports fans makes her an ideal promotional partner. These are the people whose interests the league will be based on. And with Coach Jackie's approval, the audience learns that the WPBL, in this case, is not only fun and exciting but also right for women’s sports for the right reasons. More than just an influencer, in a world of women’s sports opportunists and bad actors, her investment in something signals it is legit.

Looking ahead, Coach Jackie appears set to be one of, if not the, top tastemakers in women’s sports as it continues to grow — starting in Illinois this summer with the first-ever WPBL games.

“Because our soccer media is a little soft and precious and too often panders like our NBA media too often does, it’s taken actual soccer players to lower the boom.” - FS1’s Colin Cowherd, celebrating the criticisms of Christian Pulisic from former U.S. Soccer stars like Carli Lloyd and Landon Donovan.

“Yes, I feel a responsibility for them, to keep this thing going. … It’s not like I would shut it down necessarily to punish people.” - Dave Portnoy, backtracking on his threats to shut down Barstool’s New York offices in protest of the election of Mayor Zohran Mamdani.

“It feels like sports and gambling on sports are too quickly becoming the same thing, instead of it being … that you can have a relationship with sports outside of a financial one.” - SiriusXM’s Katie Nolan, explaining why she does not air gambling ads on her podcast Casuals.

“Instinct is your weapon, because no one actually ever makes a decision with the benefit of hindsight. Your critics are the only ones who have the benefit of hindsight.” - Josh Pate, defending his decision to host President Donald Trump for an interview last winter, despite the conversation ultimately being a whiff.

“If I were a soccer guy and everybody’s doing this four-year drive-by telling me what’s wrong with my sport, I would lose my f*cking mind.” - Barstool’s Ryen Russillo, calling out the pile-on toward the USMNT last week after its loss to Belgium.

Assuming FIFA were to pick this format (16 groups of four teams with the top two finishers advancing from each), the World Cup would expand from 104 games under the 48-team field to 128 games in a 64-team field. In other words, FIFA would be creating 24 games of additional inventory to sell to broadcast partners across the globe.

…

The expanded format, however, could pave the way for FIFA to split World Cup rights among multiple partners. With robust interest from both streamers and linear networks, and the likelihood that television consumption will remain substantially fragmented between those two distribution methods by 2030, FIFA may be wise to split its inventory among multiple partners that together can offer a mixed approach.

Click to read more from Awful Announcing’s Drew Lerner about how FIFA’s latest expansion plans could affect its U.S. broadcast rights talks for 2030 and 2034.