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🎤 QUICK START ✍️

🏈 RG3 goes pro. Robert Griffin III has cemented himself as the No. 2 college football game analyst on Fox, but this weekend, he’ll make a return to the pros. Griffin will call his first NFL game, Panthers-Saints, alongside play-by-play partner Jason Benetti this Sunday.

⚾ NBC the future. MLB will return to NBC's airwaves this upcoming spring as part of a new three-year media rights deal that extends through 2028. But NBC Sports president Rick Cordella sees a future beyond that for his network. "At the end of it, my hope and expectation is that we're in business for baseball for a super long time," he told The Athletic’s Richard Deitsch.

🚰 “A quick word from our sponsor.” That’s a phrase you might end up hearing during the World Cup next summer, as FIFA has reportedly engaged Fox and Telemundo in selling commercial inventory during its mandated three-minute hydration breaks during each half.

️‍🚨 LEADING OFF 🚨

Are there any adults in the room at ESPN?

The firing and subsequent arrest of Michigan head football coach Sherrone Moore quickly became the story of the week in sports media when the news broke on Wednesday evening.

By now, you know the broad strokes. Moore was dismissed for having an inappropriate relationship with a Michigan football staff member. The university had investigated the affair this past summer, but did not obtain “credible evidence” until earlier this week. Once the evidence was in their hands, Michigan acted swiftly to remove Moore.

Hours after the news initially broke, the story took a disturbing turn. Authorities detained Moore on Wednesday night in Pittsfield Township, MI. Immediately, rumors began circulating on social media, though there was little fact-based reporting on the matter.

That changed Thursday morning when John U. Bacon, a longtime local reporter and author, appeared on Fox 2’s Good Day Detroit to outline his findings regarding Moore’s detainment.

Bacon confirmed that the internet rumors were at least directionally correct. Moore broke into the Michigan football staffer’s home, grabbed a knife, and apparently threatened to harm her and himself. That’s when he was taken into protective custody.

While Bacon and others worked the beat to provide the public with more information, ESPN took a different approach, at least for two hours on Thursday morning.

Those two hours I’m referring to, you probably won’t be surprised to hear, were the network’s flagship morning program, First Take. It didn’t take long for the show’s coverage of the Sherrone Moore story to become puzzling when self-proclaimed “Michigan Man” Adam Schefter took the lead and blatantly carried water for the exiled coach.

“What we haven’t heard yet is Sherrone Moore’s side of this. And he gets his say in this particular situation as well. And I do know he felt like people had it in for him for an extended period while he was at Michigan. He felt like there were people who were out to get him,” Schefter said. “So all these things can all be true. It’s possible that Michigan has evidence that he had an inappropriate relationship with a staffer. And it could be that Sherrone Moore is right that people had it in for him.

“But the whole situation, itself, is just sad and tragic. Because now we have an individual who had his professional life, his personal life completely upended. We have a school with a bunch of players who don’t have a coach to turn to right now. We have a school in search of a new coach to lead forth that program. There are a whole host of things that have transpired here that have led this to be a completely surreal wild situation, that if you heard about it, you wouldn’t believe it because it almost seems made up.”

Independent of Schefter’s bizarre defense of Moore, which we’ll get to in a moment, ESPN’s decision to make him the face of this story is mind-boggling. Adam Schefter is an NFL insider. Let me repeat that. Adam Schefter is an NFL insider. What is he doing “reporting” on the biggest story of the day in college football?

ESPN has any number of actual reporters who could’ve lent their expertise to the story. Pete Thamel. Dan Wetzel. You know, the reporters who initially broke the story and cover college football full-time. Why weren’t they the go-to reporters for First Take?

Then, of course, there’s the obvious conflict of interest that “Michigan Man” Schefter has when covering this story. He has a well-documented history of defending Moore in the past, absolving him of any wrongdoing during Michigan’s sign-stealing scandal last year. He wears his Wolverine fandom on his sleeve. Fine. In today’s day and age in sports media, that’s often part of the gig, for better or for worse. What we don’t see is Mike Greenberg presented as the face of unbiased, fact-based reporting on the latest New York Jets quarterback controversy. But that’s how Schefter is being presented when covering the Moore situation on ESPN.

Now let’s get to the meat of what Schefter actually said. His point, broadly speaking, was that Michigan brass had it in for Moore before any evidence of an improper relationship with a staffer emerged. The undertone, of course, was that Michigan could simply be using this incident as a convenient opportunity to fire Moore with cause, thus avoiding any buyout clauses in his contract.

Not only is that a grossly irresponsible thing to suggest, knowing that Michigan had evidence of the relationship and also knowing Moore was actively in police custody, but it’s entirely beside the point. Who cares if Michigan had it out for Moore before this happened? Unless Michigan administrators are lying to us, we know the improper relationship did happen. Whatever they thought about Moore prior is entirely irrelevant.

Yet Schefter’s defense of Moore was presented as the authoritative take during the A-Block of ESPN’s most-watched morning show. He’s a news breaker, after all. Shouldn’t he be trusted?

Credit where credit is due, much of the First Take panel offered some pushback on Schefter after he was given carte blanche to describe the case as he saw fit.

But the entire debacle laid bare just how atrophied ESPN’s editorial guardrails are in 2025. Not even two months ago, we were having a similar discussion about how ESPN covered the FBI’s bombshell gambling probe into an active NBA player and head coach. In that case, ESPN relied on another of its star insiders, Shams Charania, to provide little substance or actual reporting on the breaking news. At least Shams was in the right sport. Schefter is out of his league here.

It begs the question: Who are the adults in the room at Bristol who can prevent this nonsense from happening on their air? Once upon a time, there was probably someone with the sense to tell Adam Schefter, “No. You actually can’t go on First Take to defend the disgraced head coach of your alma mater while you present as a neutral observer.”

But we are firmly in the superstar era of ESPN, where talents of Schefter’s stature get to pick and choose what they do, what they say, and where they say it. The guardrails are gone. And instead of doing the responsible, journalistic thing, ESPN is happy to let the inmates run the asylum. You’re not paying Schefter $10 million per year to sit on the bench, after all. Right?

📺 INDUSTRY INSIGHTS 🎬

• Linda Cohn will not return to Kraken Hockey Network this season, according to a report in The Seattle Times. Cohn had taken a part-time role as studio host for KHN during the network’s debut season last year, but the team has opted to go with Ian Furness full-time this season. “Linda brought passion and hall-of-fame experience to our inaugural KHN season, and we are so grateful she was part of our broadcasts as special host,” a team representative told The Seattle Times. “We wish Linda nothing but the best and will remain in contact about opportunities in the years ahead. The decision to go exclusively with Ian as host was to build on last year and bring a more consistent on-air group to our KHN broadcasts in 25-26.”

• ESPN has re-signed lead high school basketball analyst Paul Biancardi to a multiyear extension. The deal will see Biancardi stay on as the network’s lead high school basketball analyst, covering recruiting and the ESPN High School Showcase. He’ll continue to be ESPN’s national recruiting director for the boys’ high school basketball player rankings. Additionally, Biancardi will also continue to contribute as an analyst on select college basketball games.

• Elle Duncan’s tenure as a SportsCenter anchor officially has an end date. ESPN announced that Duncan’s final show will be on Tuesday, Dec. 16, at 6 p.m. ET. She’ll co-host the episode alongside her usual partner, Kevin Negandhi. It will take two people to replace Duncan as she departs for Netflix. Last week, it was reported that NBA Countdown host Malika Andrews will take Duncan’s place as lead studio host for ESPN’s WNBA coverage. And on Thursday, ESPN announced Christine Williamson will take Duncan’s old SportsCenter job and helm the network’s women’s college basketball coverage.

🎙️ THE PLAY-BY-PLAY 🎙️

The Play-By-Play crew breaks down how the media handled (or more accurately, mishandled) the Sherrone Moore story. They also talk about Christine Williamson’s promotion at ESPN, and close with a trio of Hot Mics. Check it out!

📈 DATA DUMP 📊

• In its final season of Formula One coverage, ESPN set a viewership record in the United States. The network announced this week that it averaged 1.3 million viewers per race during the 2025 Formula One season, the largest season-long average in U.S. TV history. Viewership increased by 18% over the 2024 and 2023 averages, both of which clocked in at 1.1 million viewers per race. 2025 slightly edged out 2022 for most-watched season in history, with F1 on ESPN averaging 1.2 million viewers three years ago. When ESPN began airing the circuit in 2018, races averaged just 554,000 viewers. In just eight years, the audience for F1 has grown by 135%.

• Courtesy of our guy Manny Soloway with the ever-valuable TV Media Blog Substack, the College Football Playoff selection show on ESPN averaged 1.97 million viewers on Sunday, up from 1.21 million viewers last year when there was a bit more certainty to the bracket, and the show ran an hour longer. Still, college football’s selection show is a far cry from what CBS scares up for Selection Sunday during March Madness, which averaged 5.71 million viewers last season. Even the women’s March Madness selection show draws near the college football version, averaging 1.65 million viewers last season.

🔥 THE CLOSER 🔥

Top 10 sports broadcasting bloopers of 2025

As I sometimes like to do with the Friday edition of The Closer, I’m going to keep it light today and share a longstanding tradition from us here at Awful Announcing. Here are a few of the 10 best sports broadcasting bloopers of the year! (You can check out our full list here!)

Mina Kimes enters stage left? Right? Center?

Paul Bissonnette breaks the TNT set

Watch out, Rob Ray!