🎤 Scott stays put. Scott Van Pelt has been the subject of enough speculation about the 5 p.m. timeslot on ESPN that he took a few minutes on his podcast Wednesday morning to address it head-on, saying, “We’re not gonna change where we are, for the time being.” ESPN’s quest to find a replacement for Around the Horn continues almost a year later.

🏀 Vitale update. Dick Vitale, who has spent several years battling various forms of cancer, provided a health update through ESPN PR on Wednesday. The longtime college basketball broadcaster said routine test results revealed “abnormalities.” His doctors have recommended additional testing, but the next steps won’t be determined until after an upcoming biopsy.

📻 Missanelli arrested. Former longtime Philadelphia sports radio host Mike Missanelli was arrested on Wednesday for simple assault and harassment. Per the police report, Missanelli’s fiancé was witnessed with what appeared to be fresh blood on her forehead, a laceration, and that her ear was swelling.

🦚 For the Birds. Several weeks after ESPN opted to move on from The Bird & Taurasi Show, Sue Bird is expected to join NBC and Peacock’s WNBA coverage this season, according to Front Office Sports’ Ryan Glasspiegel. Her exact role — whether in the studio, on game broadcasts, or both — has not yet been finalized.

Tuesday night, The New York Post’s Page Six dropped a bombshell on the sports media world when it ran a story about The Athletic NFL insider Dianna Russini and New England Patriots head coach Mike Vrabel. The duo had been spotted together two weeks ago at the Ambiente, an adult-only resort in Sedona, Arizona. The series of photos in the article shows them holding hands, hugging, and lying side by side in a hot tub.

Objectively, the optics are not good. A reporter for a New York Times-owned outlet seen getting overly comfortable with the head coach of an NFL team, a prime subject of their reporting, sends up alarm bells. That Vrabel, 50, and Russini, 43, are both married and have a working relationship that dates back to Russini’s time with ESPN as the Tennessee Titans beat reporter when he was the head coach adds a whole other layer to the presumed salaciousness.

It’s easy to follow all of this down a rabbit hole, and in fact, much of social media spent Wednesday doing just that. Digging up old clips of Russini discussing her husband or sharing contextless comments about NFL coaches. Resurfacing old, unsubstantiated rumors about the female reporter. Pulling individual pieces of information out of the story to extrapolate. Assigning meaning to body language, clothing choices, and locations. Creating a correlation between facts that may or may not have any.

This is, of course, by design. The Page Six story was a masterclass in insinuation, in which just enough information was provided, leaving ample room for readers and online detectives to weave whatever narrative they wanted onto the scene.

Russini and Vrabel both offered explanations, with the reporter saying the photos were curated from a larger meeting of six people, and the coach saying the whole thing was “completely innocent.” The executive editor of The Athletic added that “these photos are misleading and lack essential context.”

Of course, the pictures don’t tell a full story about Russini and Vrabel’s encounter. If you’re asking this writer what he thinks, I’d say the fact that they don’t have a “smoking gun” photo of them canoodling implies they’ve cherry-picked what they do have to tell a story. But even in saying that, I’m falling for the same trap that so many others are falling for, filling in the blanks with my perceptions and assumptions in order to complete the story.

Unfortunately for Russini, even if evidence is eventually provided to vindicate hers and Vrabel’s accounts, the damage is done. The theories and connections have been made in the court of public opinion, and she has most certainly been judged. As many have stated, the frustrations and hardships that female sports media journalists face are already sky-high, and assumptions and accusations like these strengthen how detractors and critics already feel. There’s no redemptive arc in their eyes.

Page Six did its job and did it well. They knew exactly what they were doing. They even had a “Who is Dianna Russini?” SEO post ready to go to maximize its traffic impact. They knew that in the wake of their insinuating post, people would be desperate for as much information as they could get their hands on to fill in the gaps or confirm their preconceived notions. Whatever Russini and Vrabel did or did not do became irrelevant at that point. Social media and the modern media ecosystem now own that truth, making it a case study for journalism professors and editors who need to scare rookie reporters straight. The story is already set in stone.

Even if the actual truth eventually comes out.

“The biggest problem is, let’s say there was a female wide receiver coach, we now have female coaches in the league, and let’s say you saw (ESPN New York Jets reporter) Rich Cimini hugging her,” Esiason said. “We’d all be saying, ‘Ah there goes his journalistic integrity out the window.’ You know what I mean? And that’s really what this is all about, whether or not she can recover from that kind of feeling within the business. I’m not really worried about the salaciousness. I actually do believe both of them.” - WFAN’s Boomer Esaison on the Russini-Vrabel story.

“You want to talk about somebody who’s invested in what you do, he’s invested in what you do,” Jastremski said. “Some of the lessons he gave me as far as not only being a talent — he’s your boss, but yet he’s a talent, he has his pod, he obviously has had these unbelievable successes in business — when you hear lessons from him, it matters.” - John Jastremski on working for Bill Simmons at The Ringer.

“In the fullness of time, I absolutely expect that will happen. Our desire is for that to happen in the fullness of time.” - Jay Marine, Amazon’s head of Prime Video U.S., on potentially getting the Super Bowl.

“Even when LIV events are broadcast in the United States, and even when they’re broadcast and finished in primetime on the East Coast, they garner 35-50,000 views. More people watch pickleball than that on TV. And these are the best players. I mean, Bryson DeChambeau, Jon Rahm, playing on the East Coast, finishing then, they’re just not galvanizing anybody to watch them.” - Golf Channel’s Brandel Chamblee on LIV TV ratings.

“There are many folks out there who want me done. They want me fired. They want me taken off the airwaves of SiriusXM. They want me taken off the airwaves of ESPN. Good luck with that. Because, ladies and gentlemen, if I had a speck of fatigue, if I was melancholy about anything, if I was devoid or stripped of inspiration and fervor and defiance, oh, they cured that. There’s nothing that gets me up more than adversaries that have the nerve to think they can go against me. I love it. It inspires me, it fuels me.” - Stephen A. Smith on his critics.

Barstool Sports personality Evan McDowell, commonly known as “Big Ev,” appears to have been sidelined by the outlet amid multiple accusations from fans alleging he stiffed bookies they helped connect McDowell to, or in other instances, failed to repay followers who placed wagers on his behalf.

Since allegations first surfaced, McDowell has gone silent on social media, ceased appearances on Barstool’s gambling show Picks Central, and been removed from promotional material for the show on the DraftKings app. Additionally, Picks Central, which streams live, has disabled the chat function on its broadcasts since accusations about McDowell went public.

Awful Announcing has spoken with two alleged victims, both providing similar accounts of McDowell. Both say that the Barstool personality requested introductions to illegal bookies and subsequently failed to pay them as expected.

Click here to read Drew Lerner’s rundown of what we know happened and how it appears to have impacted McDowell’s place with Barstool.

On the latest episode of The Play-By-Play, Brendon Kleen and Drew Lerner break down the sordid insinuations behind the New York Post/Page Six story on Dianna Russini and Mike Vrabel. Where will the story go from here? They discuss.

You can also find The Play-By-Play on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you find podcasts.

“The Kelce brothers are about to face their toughest opponent: Overexposure.” I wrote that article in September 2024. To think, that was before Travis’s engagement to Taylor Swift, before Jason had started his work for ESPN, and before their mother’s home renovations warranted intense coverage on TMZ.

While Travis has his hands full with another NFL season and impending nuptials, Jason’s journey has been a bit more nebulous. While his path might have seemed straightforward as an NFL personality, ESPN has instead spent a lot of time treating the Eagles player like Chunky on I Think You Should Leave, trying to figure out what it is he does.

An attempted run at being a late-night host came and went. Recently, ESPN has thrown Kelce into hockey coverage, put him under the TGL green, and is reportedly considering him for its No. 2 NFL booth.

They also announced they’d be sending him to the Masters, where he’d take part in the Par 3 Contest broadcast. And sure enough, Kelce was there on Wednesday, donning a caddie jumper and inserting himself into various shenanigans.

While ESPN clearly thinks it has a golden goose in Kelce, the online reactions to his Masters antics seemed to tell a different story. In fact, the overwhelming reaction was about just how exhausted everyone is of seeing him on their screens and in their feeds.

Of course, you don’t want to take online discourse as the overall opinion, especially if you’re talking about X, but it does speak to the ongoing issue ESPN faces around its prized personality. There doesn’t seem to be enough for him to do in its NFL coverage, and it’s unclear if viewers want his gregarious energy showing up in other sports.

There’s no denying that Kelce has the personality and X factor to warrant a presence on TV screens, but no one can win a battle against overexposure, especially when you’re slotting them in spots no one asked for.