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🎤 QUICK START ✍️

🏈 The NFL Christmas Day tripleheader on Netflix and Amazon resulted in the biggest day of viewership in the history of streaming. This year’s games also earned Netflix a record amount of new subscribers.

🎾 Tennis fans are feeling the squeeze with Australian Open action moving behind the pricier ESPN Unlimited paywall.

🏈 The cold takes about Indiana head coach Curt Cignetti are some all-timers, but none surpasses Paul Finebaum’s reaction after his huge contract extension.

🏀 The NBA is making significant changes to the 2026 Finals schedule to accommodate for the World Cup this summer.

🚨LEADING OFF 🚨

ESPN's changing of the guard?

The morning after the College Football Playoff national championship game, it was striking to see who was on the air on First Take the morning after to break down Indiana’s historic victory over Miami.

The show is a fertile playground for stars both present and future at the network given the outsized influence and kingmaking abilities of Stephen A. Smith. So it was fascinating to see who was and who wasn’t on the air.

Longtime ESPN mainstay Paul Finebaum was nowhere to be seen. Instead it was Desmond Howard from College GameDay, a Michigan alum from the Big Ten and E.J. Manuel, a Florida State alum from the ACC.

Of course, given the title game represented both conferences, it made all the sense in the world to showcase two analysts who know them well. But given First Take has highlighted SEC loyalist Paul Finebaum all year, it was also quite the statement for where ESPN might go from here.

Finebaum has been a ubiquitous presence on ESPN’s college football coverage over the last few years and for good reason. Love him or love to hate him, he is a dynamic personality who has been around the sport for decades. But while he and the SEC have had to eat a lot of crow this postseason, the end of their dominance over the sport might represent an opportunity for others to make their voices heard.

That’s why it was refreshing to see Manuel, a rising ACC Network star, get a turn in the spotlight. The ACC has had to live as second class citizens at ESPN for years. They get less television time, less revenue, less… well, everything. And don’t think that reality is lost on ACC folks. And yet, Miami’s run to the title game showed that maybe the conference is a lot closer to the SEC than we’ve all been led to believe.

For as much focus as the ESPN-SEC deal has received, ESPN also has the rights to the ACC and runs the ACC Network. In fact, that deal now looks like an incredible sweetheart deal for Bristol given how early it was struck and how long it runs for (through 2036). In fact, that length of deal and the grant of rights was the subject of much consternation that almost tore the conference apart before a new revenue sharing agreement kept Clemson and Florida State in the fold.

But if this is a preview of ESPN’s 2026 college football coverage, it could be transformative for the way the sport is received and the narratives that are formed. Just imagine what a shock to the system it would be to see ESPN choosing to go to a Miami-Virginia Tech game for College GameDay instead of their SEC game of the week. If the ACC is given more respect by ESPN, it might help break the stigma that it is less than the Big Ten and SEC.

Reportedly, there’s a belief in Bristol that ESPN doesn’t quite know how to properly handle the growth and popularity of college football. Featuring some newer and more diverse voices like E.J. Manuel, Josh Pate, Bussin’ with the Boys and more can provide a much needed boost and refresh to their coverage. And if it takes more of a national approach versus an SEC or bust mentality, that can be a welcome development for the network’s reputation for calling it down the middle versus playing favorites.

📣 SOCIAL EXPERIMENT 🌟

The question over how B-roll footage of a small flock of geese worked their way into a Clippers broadcast will be studied by journalism students for decades to come.

Grayson Allen will forever be haunted by being a Ted Cruz doppelganger.

Who would have thought a three second clip of this Miami… let’s just say, “fan,”… would cause such a commotion.

Here is your feel good local news clip after the Hoosiers won their first national championship in football.

🗣️ NOTABLE QUOTABLES 🗣️

“This app will break ya man.” - Dan Orlovsky was the subject of much scorn after his NFL playoffs analysis, specifically his praise of Josh Allen.

“Disgraceful, disgusting act and I hope they can figure out some sort of way to right this wrong." - David Dennis Jr. called out LeBron and Nike for their shoe attempting to remember Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

“If he’s up for it, then we’ve gotta write a good script first.” - Tom Brady is open to the idea of Leonardo DiCaprio playing him in a movie. Then again, who wouldn’t be?

“That chemistry, that trust is not there. That Buck and Aikman Trust, that I know you’re gonna go to the right place there, is not there, and it hasn’t been for a long time.” - Andrew Marchand sees big trust issues in the pairing of Jim Nantz and Tony Romo.

️‍️‍🔥 THE CLOSER 🔥

Hall of Token Appreciation

One of the favorite pastimes of baseball fans is loving to pick apart Hall of Fame voting ballots. And in the Steroid Era, as some of the game’s biggest stars are left out of Cooperstown, each ballot that is released has taken on greater scrutiny. But sometimes there are those ballots that make you think maybe we need to take a deep breath and relax.

Enter longtime columnist Steve Politi of NJ.com.

Politi did vote for Alex Rodriguez and Manny Ramirez. He also voted for Carlos Beltran, Jimmy Rollins, Chase Utley, Mark Buehrle, Cole Hamels, Andy Pettite, and David Wright.

And he voted for Rick Porcello.

In his accompanying piece explaining his ballot, he remarked that the vote for Porcello was for one reason - he is from New Jersey.

“This no doubt will lead to some social media vitriol, but when you’re the sports columnist for a New Jersey website, every now and then, you get to salute one of your people,” Politi wrote. “Porcello, a former Seton Hall Prep ace, is likely going to drop from consideration after one year. I had room on my ballot, and so I’m tipping my cap to the Jersey guy on a tremendous career.”

Politi was only one of two votes cast for Porcello, we can only assume the other vote was also from the Garden State. Beltran and Jones ended up being elected while no other player got above 60% of the 75% needed from the writers. Pour one out for Howie Kendrick, Gio Gonzalez, and Daniel Murphy who got no votes, even from their hometown writers.

That brings up the question of whether it was right and proper for Politi to use his Hall of Fame ballot to stump for a local. If all you needed was a New Jersey birth certificate to get in then the baseball shrine would look very different. And while it might not be a great look to scores of people who would treat a Hall of Fame ballot like it was an original copy of the Magna Carta, some perspective is always helpful.

There’s a time and a place for everything and context matters. The Hall of Fame is one unique instance where a writer can pay tribute to someone like this without doing any harm. Politi’s ballot was already full of nine players, and if he wasn’t truly going to vote for another eligible player, then why not throw Rick Porcello a nice honor for his career where he did win a Cy Young Award? Some voters choose to vote for only a couple players in a given year. Nobody was left out of the hall because Steve Politi cast one extra vote for Rick Porcello.

Now, if it was something like the NFL MVP award though, you can imagine the nationwide crisis would ensue. But thankfully this isn’t that serious.