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🎤 QUICK START ✍️

🏈 Bill Belichick is still in the headlines after a big report from Pablo Torre on his podcast last Friday. According to Torre, Belichick’s girlfriend, Jordon Hudson, was banned from UNC football facilities. The university denied the report, leading Torre to double down and state, “We stand by the specific reporting in our episode, which came from the highest levels of the football program.” Belichick is now booked for an interview with Michael Strahan on Good Morning America this Friday.

❓Outkick founder Clay Travis told Semafor that he does not see Barstool Sports as a direct competitor because “Barstool employs a lot of people that are super libs.” Travis insinuated that Barstool has not gone as far into right-wing sports commentary as Outkick, which means they still operate on different wavelengths. That may be true, but Dave Portnoy remains an influential voice in conservative media, and Barstool is much bigger and arguably more important given its younger, digital-first audience.

🇧🇷 The first domino of the NFL schedule release is here, as Front Office Sports reports that the Kansas City Chiefs and Los Angeles Chargers will clash in Week 1 in São Paulo, Brazil. It’s a tasty AFC West matchup that is still up for grabs on the broadcast side. As previously covered in his newsletter, YouTube is reportedly the favorite to broadcast the game. If it wins the bid, the game would be free on the Google-owned video platform — a revolutionary moment in the history of broadcasting.

️‍🚨LEADING OFF 🚨

Draymond Green deflects

In addition to being the revolutionary lifeblood of the Golden State Warriors, Draymond Green is also a provocateur, a troll, and a pest.

But until this weekend, most fans had never seen the Defensive Player Of the Year be so defensive off the court. It was earned.

According to a social media video, Green was heckled at Target Center during Game 3 of the Warriors’ second-round series against the Minnesota Timberwolves. While he was ejected later in the game, it was likely this interaction with a fan that spurred Green to respond to what he believes is an “agenda” to paint him as “an angry Black man.”

Fans, particularly in the proximity offered by basketball arenas, are far too comfortable. The cesspool of an internet comment section comes to life in the seats of any sporting event. Especially when they jeer instigators like Green, fans seem to believe they have the green light to trash talk as if they are in a game and have genuine relationships like the athletes on the court. Like Russell Westbrook, Kyrie Irving, and countless others before him, it is easy to believe that a fan in Minneapolis said something that crossed a line for Green.

Green did not address the media after a Game 4 loss on Saturday. But the media had plenty to chew on.

Friday morning on Get Up, Michael Wilbon made a rare appearance and defended Green. The longtime WaPo columnist quoted Arthur Ashe, telling ESPN viewers that being a Black man in America is a “full-time job.” Wilbon understands what it’s like to be a public figure in a country that gives him a lot to be angry about, but asks that he never show that anger.

One of Wilbon’s predecessors at the Post had a different take. Columnist Jerry Brewer wrote that “Green invented the idea that there’s a widespread conspiracy against him, as a Black man, without exhibiting an ounce of self-awareness.” There is certainly enough for any referee or fan at home to think about Green that goes beyond his race or any stereotypes they may have.

Beyond his run-ins with Reid or Dillon Brooks so far this postseason, Green has a history, to say the least. Just a few months back, he refused to fully retract his allegation that Karl-Anthony Towns dodged a game against the Warriors when, in fact, Towns missed the game for a funeral. Before that, Green spent most of the NBA All-Star broadcast clowning all its participants and the league, ruining what little fun was left in the broken exhibition.

Last season, Green was suspended after slapping Phoenix Suns center Jusuf Nurkic clean in the face. According to Green, the commissioner contacted him to ensure he was OK.

These are not easy incidents to decipher. Green shows us more of himself than most, which makes him a hard man to understand fully. That’s why it was such a shock to many that he would limit his reputation to something as simple as a caricature.

As Brewer wrote, Green could chide the racist fan if he wanted. Was there a misunderstanding with the officials that viewers missed? Another game has passed since his curt postgame statement, and still nothing.

Anyone who cares about the NBA probably has an opinion about Green. That’s how he’s wanted it for as long as we can remember. And while the Target Center fan’s allegedly ugly remarks remind us why it’s essential not to let those opinions turn into hate, most fans’ views of Green come from his actions — not their biases.

📣 SOCIAL EXPERIMENT 🌟

Around the Horn is going rogue in its final days, bringing back expelled former ESPNers and touching on material that the Worldwide Leader avoids these days.

Exhibit A: Kate Fagan joined the show last Thursday and gave a short monologue on why “trans kids deserve to play sports.”

Fagan’s comments come after Charles Barkley became the latest major sports analyst to comment on the topic. On Don’t @ Me with Dan Dakich last week, Barkley said, “I do not, under any circumstances, zero, think men should play sports against women.”

Of course, just last year, Barkley expressed full support for the trans community at a celebrity golf tournament sponsored by Bud Light.

The lesson as always: If you disagree with Barkley, wait a week, and you might not.

🗣️AROUND AA💬

The Athletic’s profits soar

Occasionally, we like to turn the Awful Announcing Newsletter over to our publisher, Ben Koo, for a segment called “Thinking Out Loud.” It gives Ben a chance to provide thoughts from inside the sports media industry that are usually reserved for the AA Slack channels:

This past week, the New York Times reported in its quarterly results that The Athletic was profitable to the tune of nearly $3 million. A year ago, they lost nearly $9 million. So what changed?

Chiefly advertising now makes up $10.4 million of The Athletic's $47.6 million of Q1 revenue. Also bolstering their numbers, The Athletic has continued to cut costs with less local reporting.

If you recall, The Athletic was founded in 2016 with no advertising and ramped up local reporting as some of the key differentiators from existing media companies. Over a hundred million dollars of investment was raised on the back of this unique strategy, with the New York Times buying the company in early 2022.

Similar to Netflix, which proudly eschewed advertising.....and sports, the business strategy to scale and raise money is often not the business model to turn a profit. New ideas and innovation are great, but eventually, a business has to be profitable, and all too often, what made you special along the way is the exact thing keeping you from maintaining profitability.

Putting my cynicism aside, it's a great win by The Athletic and the NYT to have gotten the business to this point. Any media win is worth celebrating these days, regardless of what road was taken to get there.

📈💰INDUSTRY INSIGHTS🧐

• After just one season, Akbar Gbajabiamila is reportedly out at Good Morning Football on the NFL Network. The show's future is in question after Peter Schrager’s departure and the impending sale of NFL Media to ESPN later this year. Perhaps that could open up a spot for Manti Te’o, a guest panelist throughout the 2024 season.

• Good timing or a tease? Scott Van Pelt hyped up his work calling golf during an ESPN media call ahead of its early-round coverage of the PGA Championship this week. The comments come as U.S. Open broadcast rights are on the market, and ESPN could have a chance to broadcast a full golf major for the first time since it lost the Open Championship and PGAs two decades ago.

• The SEC and Big 10 appear to finally be close to voting on a College Football Playoff expansion that would guarantee each conference four bids as part of a 16-team bracket. The new format would reportedly include play-in games to sort out the seeding among conference teams as part of a “reimagined championship weekend.”

🔥 THE CLOSER 🔥

Mike Tirico, the anti-fan

In a recent podcast appearance, Mike Tirico had a lot to say about fandom among sports announcers — both himself and his colleagues.

The long and short is that Tirico stopped being a New York Mets fan when they won the World Series in 1986. He thinks any sportscaster today who covers sports through the lens of their personal affinities is doing the job wrong.

That means that at age 20, Tirico stopped loving a baseball team whose stadium he grew up within walking distance of. Those 1970s Mets teams were seemingly so putrid that they are coloring how Tirico now sees, for instance, Mike Greenberg’s Jets love or how Bill Simmons talks Celtics.

This is not a new debate. Considering that Tirico literally went to the same journalism school as Bob Costas and now basically has Costas’ job, it should be no surprise which side the voice of NBC Sports is taking.

That said, Tirico specifically highlighted Stephen A. Smith’s takeover of NBA Countdown to discuss the Knicks as an example of the problem. There is no argument there. But setting aside that unique example, Tirico is already on the wrong side of history. He admitted this in the podcast interview.

Sports analysts who once traded in dispatches and angles now realize their best tool is authenticity. Fans don’t need to be told what happened in a game when they’ve seen every highlight on their phone. Instead, fans want a clear point of view and a personality they connect with.

In sports, the easiest way to create that relationship is through fandom.