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🎤 QUICK START ✍️

🏀 CBS honors Greg Gumbel. Monday’s national title game between Florida and Houston marked the first since Greg Gumbel’s passing. Ahead of the annual “One Shining Moment” montage, Ernie Johnson honored the longtime CBS host, who passed away in December.

🏈 Brock Huard steps down. Fox’s No. 2 college football booth will have a new voice next season with Brock Huard announcing that he’s stepping down from the role to help coach his son’s high school football team. It’s unclear who will replace the former Washington quarterback in the Fox booth that he shared with Jason Benetti. But Mark Sanchez, Robert Griffin III and Dan Orlovsky all stand out as potential candidates.

📺️ Four teams ‘likely’ to re-up their RSN deals. While there’s no shortage of uncertainty surrounding the state of regional sports networks (RSNs), at least four NBA teams are considered “likely” to extend with the FanDuel Sports Network.

According to a report by Tom Friend in Sports Business Journal, the Atlanta Hawks, Miami Heat, Minnesota Timberwolves and Milwaukee Bucks are likely to re-up local media rights agreements with the Main Street Sports Group’s RSN. Meanwhile, the Cleveland Cavaliers are still considering pivoting to their own streaming service, but could very well re-sign with FanDuel Sports Network too.

✍️ The Athletic continues national push. Longtime Penn State beat writer Audrey Snyder announced on Monday that she’s leaving The Athletic. While the end of Snyder’s tenure at the New York Times-owned outlet is notable in and of itself, it especially stood out as she stated that The Athletic no longer wants a full-time Penn State beat writer. Considering the Nittany Lions’ status as a national title contender entering 2025, the move only seems to solidify the outlet’s ongoing shift from local coverage to a more national approach.

🚨LEADING OFF 🚨

Dave Portnoy goes (even more) mainstream

A few weeks ago, Family Guy spoofed Barstool Sports president Dave Portnoy — a layup of a post for a sports media website such as Awful Announcing.

I framed the story around the idea that the Portnoy parody — which he wasn’t a fan of — announced his arrival as a mainstream celebrity. As it turns out, that premise was premature.

While Portnoy has been part of the sports and (to a lesser degree) pop culture zeitgeist for more than a decade, he’s seemingly never been more relevant than he has been the past few weeks, and not just because of his recent feud with Yankees star Jazz Chisholm Jr. As President Donald Trump’s second stint in the Oval Office has endured recent turmoil, it’s been Portnoy — a public Trump supporter — who’s been one of his most vocal critics.

It started with the Signal war leaks controversy and has continued with the tariffs and ensuing stock market crash. As Monday’s market opened and instantly plummeted, former Obama spokesman and current Pod Save America co-host Tommy Vietor live-tweeted Portnoy’s Davey Day Trader stream.

Portnoy didn’t mince words, leaning into the “Orange Monday” label for the market crash and criticizing Trump for playing golf throughout the weekend. He insisted, however, his comments weren’t political and criticized liberals who were celebrating the consequences of Trump’s actions.

Whether you agree, disagree or a little of both with Portnoy’s stance is somewhat beside the point here. What seems indisputable, however, is that the Barstool Sports honcho has filled a lane that few — if any — have filled over the course of the last nine years; the rare Trump supporter who’s also willing to not only disagree with him, but take him to task.

Even if others have attempted to thread that needle, the reaction to Portnoy’s recent comments indicate that it’s an underserved audience. Sure, a lot of the support he received has come from those on the left (such as Vietor). But there’s also a reason why the White House uncharacteristically responded as delicately as it did to Portnoy’s criticism when confronted with it at a recent press briefing.

NBC News’ Allan Smith recently reported on the White House’s “Barstool problem,” with the thesis being that Portnoy has so much equity built with his following that a not insignificant portion of it is willing to follow his lead — even if he’s criticizing Trump. And a big part of that trust has been developed through the belief that what he’s doing isn’t a bit; he actually means what he says and isn’t following a predetermined script based on partisanship.

What does all of this mean? It’s too early to say, but it’s certainly a situation we’ve been monitoring and will continue to do so. On last week’s episode of our sports media news podcast, The Play-By-Play, our Ben Koo opined that Portnoy is the most influential voice at the intersection of politics and sports. Much like my Family Guy story, he was simultaneously ahead of the curve and also may have been selling Portnoy short.

📱 SOCIAL MEDIA POST OF THE DAY 🏆️ 

Adam Schefter covers his bases on the Browns’ draft plans

🎤 MEDIA MOMENTS ✍️ 

• Alex Ovechkin breaking the NHL’s all-time goals record should have been cause for celebration. And while ESPN’s First Take highlighted the moment with a guest appearance from P.K. Subban, the conversation somehow devolved into a LeBron James vs. Michael Jordan (vs. Kobe Bryant) debate.

• J.J. Watt recently got the call to replace Charles Davis as CBS’ No. 2 NFL analyst. But on a recent podcast appearance, the future Hall of Fame pass-rusher admitted that he has “a very difficult time” being critical of players as an analyst.
  

• While the Pittsburgh Pirates might lay claim to one of baseball’s best pitchers in Paul Skenes, they can’t hang their hat on much else. And that led YES Network’s Michael Kay to call out the Buccos’ spending — or lack thereof — during Sunday’s matchup against the Yankees.

🔥 THE CLOSER 🔥 

No Cinderella? No problem.

Remember all of that talk about how the lack of Cinderellas after the opening weekend had ruined March Madness? What a difference two weeks makes.

Even with an all-No. 1 seed Final Four, CBS still managed to fill the “One Shining Moment” montage on Monday night. And even before the Cougars and Gators tipped off in San Antonio on Monday night, Saturday evening’s semifinals laid claim to the highest-rated Final Four since 2017.

Here at Awful Announcing, we’re not surprised — just as our Drew Lerner said two weeks ago, history shows that ratings follow the big names and teams. Is there something to be said for the magic of an unexpected run? Of course. But the tournament sure didn’t seem to be lacking for excitement when the two teams who would go on to play for the championships both completed improbable comebacks in previous rounds (Florida in the Elite Eight vs. Texas Tech, Houston in the Final Four vs. Duke), let alone the thrilling nature of the Gators’ two-point national title win on Monday night.

Ultimately, every tournament takes on its own shape and this one just happened to be largely drawn in chalk, which only made the instances in which it wasn’t stand out all the more. In the end, there’s a reason why there have only been two all-No. 1 seed Final Fours since seeding first began in 1979 and odds are, next year will be different, as will the seasons that follow.

But even if NIL and the transfer portal permanently give the favorites an easier path, that doesn’t mean it will be any less exciting. And perhaps most importantly for the sport, it certainly won’t make it any less watched.