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🎤 QUICK START ✍️

💵 Sidelined reporter. ESPN’s Jenna Laine is used to reporting on other people’s injuries, but the situation was recently reversed when she announced her own upcoming surgery. After covering the Tampa Bay Buccaneers’ 28-23 loss to the New England Patriots Sunday afternoon, Laine revealed she was scheduled to undergo back surgery this week. Laine did not offer a timeline for her recovery, but assured everyone she would be back. 

🎙️ Smith v. Beadle: Yawn of Justice. Michelle Beadle has been lashing out at Stephen A. Smith since her SiriusXM show was unceremoniously dropped to make room for his. After she said last week she would “pray for the downfall” of Smith, he fired back without naming her, saying, “You got some people that were in this business and they talk smack now cause they can’t get a job in the business cause they didn’t do a good enough job when they were in the business so now they gotta talk smack and their reputation is they’re talking to people.”

🗣️ Heckler shackled. Days after an individual interrupted Dave Portnoy with antisemitic comments while the Barstool Sports founder was filming a pizza review, the alleged heckler was arrested by the state of Mississippi. According to a report by TMZ, the Starkville Police Department has arrested 20-year-old Patrick McClintock, charging him with “disturbing the peace” after he allegedly yelled “F*** the Jews” and threw coins at Portnoy.

🎧 Ring’m up. The latest move made by FanDuel Sports Network will see two popular podcasts from Bill Simmons’ The Ringer take regular slots on its programming lineup. The Ringer Gambling Show, hosted by Joe House, “Cousin Sal” Iacono, John Jastremski, Raheem Palmer, and Anthony Dabbundo, will air weekdays from 2:30 p.m. to 3:30 p.m. ET across FanDuel Sports Network’s channels. On Sundays, The Ringer Sunday Pregame, hosted by essentially the same group, will air from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. ET as the crew prepares viewers for the day’s NFL action.

️‍🚨 LEADING OFF 🚨

Disney vs. YouTube TV just got interesting

The dispute between Disney/ESPN and Google/YouTube TV got way more interesting on Monday night, though that had nothing to do with Bob Iger.

The Monday Night Football game between the Philadelphia Eagles and Green Bay Packers is the second since the Disney-YouTube TV carriage dispute started, meaning the number of NFL and college football games subscribers have now missed is adding up.

Both sides are bringing out the big guns to try to win over public sentiment as they continue to squabble. Google’s YouTube TV has offered credits to subscribers as a make-good for what they’ve missed. Disney and ESPN, meanwhile, decided to bring the CEO of their corporate behemoth on ESPN2’s ManningCast, presumably to provide some clarity or positive spin.

The 74-year-old Iger, a lifelong Packers fan and franchise investor, appeared alongside Peyton and Eli Manning. The CEO waxed on about his favorite NFL team while donning a crisp Green Bay hoodie, and the Mannings threw several softball questions his way. The milquetoast interview was all preamble — presumably to some question or segue — for Iger to discuss the YTTV situation.

It never happened. After a few segments, the Mannings sent Iger on his way, everyone thanked one another for the pleasant time, and that was that.

So… what was the point of that?

Disney and ESPN have tried to convey that the carriage dispute does not affect them in any meaningful or financial way. Iger’s appearance on MNF certainly backed up that sentiment. If there was any message to be sent by what he didn’t say, that was probably it.

Meanwhile, there was an actually interesting development on that front a little while later.

According to Puck’s sports media correspondent John Ourand, YouTube TV is demanding rates from Disney that are lower than those of the three largest pay TV distributors in the country: Comcast, Charter, and DirecTV. In fact, Disney has reportedly agreed to provide YouTube TV, currently the fourth-largest pay TV distributor, with rates equal to those of the three largest distributors. However, YouTube TV is insisting on “a better rate,” per Ourand.

Should Disney capitulate and give YouTube TV a better price than the other three distributors, Disney’s prior carriage agreements with Comcast, Charter, and DirecTV would almost certainly trigger “Most Favored Nations” clauses within those contracts. As a result, Disney would be forced to offer the same lower rates to the three other distributors.

That is an untenable decision for Disney, which would lose a substantial sum if all of that were to go into effect. However, YTTV is also projected by some analysts to become the largest distributor in the country as early as next year.

If Ourand’s reporting is accurate, there is much more at stake for Disney than initially thought, which could also explain why this dispute has dragged on for so long.

Eventually, one side will need to budge. Until then, this negotiation has officially become a true test of leverage in the modern media landscape.

📣 THE PLAY-BY-PLAY 🎙️

Donald Trump joined the "NFL on Fox" broadcast of Commanders-Lions on Sunday alongside Kenny Albert and Jonathan Vilma. On the latest episode of The Play-By-Play, Awful Announcing’s Brendon Kleen and Drew Lerner discuss Trump's comments about sports and politics and why sports media is more open to Trump 2.0. Click above or look for The Play-By-Play wherever you find your podcasts.

📣 NOTABLE QUOTABLES 🗣️

“My daughter is a brave woman. Is a strong woman. Is a woman who is able to go through these treatments, understanding the importance of them while recognizing the difficulty of them. When you go to a hospital every day to get treatment and your hair starts falling out, and you recognize what hair means in terms of vanity, you realize that vanity takes a step behind living. And I don’t mean a small step.” - David Samson, who shaved his head in solidarity with his daughter.

“Thursday Night Football… what a treat it is. No preparation, no time to recover, no chance. Get rid of these Thursday night games! Dump them! It’s not fair to the players, it’s not fair to the coaches. Who goes out and tries to perform at a high level with no preparation? Dump these games!” - Jon Gruden, urging the NFL to get rid of TNF.

“One of the all-time worst calls I’ve ever seen by Gus Johnson. I’m not a Gus Johnson hater. I would even call myself a ‘Gus Johnson guy.’ I like his enthusiasm, his excitement, his passion. I like when he gets crazy. That being said, first weekend of November, beating a 3-5 team after playing sh*tty for three quarters, is not — don’t give him the Heisman immediately. And Gus Johnson saying, ‘Give him the Heisman right now,’ is awful.” - Barstool Sports’ Brandon Walker on Johnson’s Fernando Mendoza call during Indiana’s comeback win over Penn State.

“I took these two tools, captured the bird in between like that, took the bird outside, and freed it into nature. People [say], ‘Oh, Dave can’t hammer.’ Well, Dave just caught a bird in the wild and let it loose and saved its life without harming a feather on it… that was an unbelievable act of just being a man.” - Dave Portnoy after catching and freeing a bird during Wake Up Barstool.

“They keep regressing. They do this thing where, and I tweeted about this, they lead the league in saying, ‘They did this game a couple of years ago or earlier in the season. We were at that game.’ No one cares if you’re at the game. That has nothing to do with it. We get it. You guys do the big games, but that doesn’t matter.” - Andrew Marchand on the Jim Nantz-Tony Romo broadcasting partnership.

🔥 THE CLOSER 🔥

The Giants should probably stop doing ‘Hard Knocks’

The New York Giants don’t learn their lesson easily.

That can be said of many things related to the storied NFL franchise. Given our focus, it defintely includes their participation in HBO’s “Hard Knocks.”

Just one year after participating in Hard Knocks: Offseason, Big Blue will be back on the NFL Films-made docuseries as part of an in-season version focused on the NFC East.

“Hard Knocks” isn’t what it used to be. The latest version, which covered the Buffalo Bills, might have been the nadir of the series, as it was essentially a PR puff piece. Gone was the access, excitement, and unknowns that once made it a must-watch.

In a way, you can probably blame the Giants for that. The inside look that season provided into how the team discarded Saquon Barkley before he signed with the rival Philadelphia Eagles, where he became Offensive Player of the Year and won a Super Bowl, was a dream scenario for the show and its audience. It was also a nightmare vision for every NFL team that might appear on it in the future.

The Giants were finally starting to put that nightmare behind them as Jaxson Dart, Malik Nabers, and Cam Skattebo emerged as an offensive trio signaling the franchise’s future and potentially saving head coach Brian Daboll’s job.

A few weeks later, Nabers and Skattebo were done for the year with injuries, Dart is dealing with multiple concussions, and the moribund Giants finally fired Daboll, throwing in the towel on his regime and the rest of the season.

Did we mention “Hard Knocks” starts in a few weeks?

Get ready to see cameras inside the Giants organization as they come to terms with all of the above. We might even see a similiar situation to last time, where the front office decides to pull the plug on Daboll’s tenure. Oh, and by the way, their interim head coach now has to figure out how to salvage what’s left of the season with cameras in his face.

It all suddenly makes “Hard Knocks” interesting again. From a viewer's perspective, it’s precisely what we want. From an NFL franchise perspective, it truly makes you wonder whether the Giants are a performance art piece exploring the true meaning of schadenfreude.