Welcome to The A Block, Awful Announcing’s daily newsletter where you’ll always find the latest sports media news, commentary, and analysis.

Did someone share this newsletter with you? Sign up for free to make sure you never miss it.

🎤 QUICK START ✍️

🏈 Bill Belichick and UNC are getting the Hard Knocks treatment, a first for an NCAA program and a first for Belichick. According to Mike Florio of Pro Football Talk, Belichick is expected to leverage a close relationship with NFL Films to exercise final cut on all episodes of the shows, and NFL owners are none too pleased.

⚾ Pete Rose is ready to make the Hall of Fame great again, as a push from President Donald Trump for a potential pardon (for what crimes, no one is 100% sure) of the late Cincinnati Reds star last week appeared to prompt MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred to consider moving Rose off the ineligible list resulting from a gambling scandal that came to light in the late-1980s.

🇺🇸 Pat McAfee gets the last word on the politically motivated USA-Canada rivalry that stemmed from the NHL’s 4 Nations Face-Off tournament last month. The Canadian crowed in Toronto for the WWE Elimination Chamber event booed the “Star-Spangled Banner” once again with McAfee on the mic on Peacock, leading the ESPN and pro wrestling host to call Canada a “terrible country.”

🚨LEADING OFF 🚨

Chasing down the casuals

If the NFL were a metal token on the modern sports “Monopoly” board, it would be the steam engine.

I’m not sure what token had the highest winning percentage in everyone else’s household, but at 345 Park Avenue, the endurance is what’s winning. Sure, we just saw the most-watched Super Bowl ever. But when you factor in Nielsen adjustments and streaming, it’s easy to poke holes in Fox’s record. What the NFL really has going for it is that it still pulls in tens of millions of live viewers for its games, while the rest of live television has cratered.

The dissolution of cable television would take longer than this newsletter to break down, but the loss of that habitual viewing changed something fundamental about sports fandom. Like the newspaper sports section, AM talk radio or Sports Illustrated before it, ESPN groomed casual sports fans for generations.

Sports fans use that term, “casuals,” as a pejorative now. But in the era of SportsCenter and its cousins, being a sports fan meant casually following the big moments throughout the calendar. Maybe you gravitated toward a particular person or team and got hooked. Otherwise, you watched the Super Bowl then the NCAA tournament then the Masters and so on, like the casual you were.

As social media and YouTube got popular, it became easier to keep tabs on the day-to-day of sports without ESPN and SportsCenter. Sports that were dependent on that casual, consistent attention — especially on the quiet days between those tentpole events — sank. The NFL kept swimming.

ESPN believes it doesn’t have to be this way. We know because they just announced SC+, a 15-minute version of the beloved sports highlight show that will be available on the Disney+ app. Hosted by Gary Striewski and Randy Scott, it will give fans the quick 411 on the big sports stuff of the day in the place where most Disney streaming customers spend their time.

I have no idea whether SC+ will succeed because I have yet to see an entertainment company bring people back from the a la carte viewing buffets we’re all accustomed to now. But I know at one point, casual sports fans would watch the big NBA game or big MLB game of the weekend live — and enjoy it. They did it because being a sports fan was a personality, an identity.

The NFL still has them. Either every other league has lost them for good, or SC+ will teach us something about how to get them back.

📣 SOCIAL EXPERIMENT 🌟

The NFL Network coverage of the Scouting Combine in Indianapolis has been a nightly variety show, with Rich Eisen and Daniel Jeremiah weighing in on the Starbucks altercation heard ‘round the world, joking around with the Inside the NBA crew from afar, hosting Pat McAfee and even weighing in on… Elon Musk’s tweets?

That’s right, after Musk confused attorney Norm Eisen with an employee at his least favorite agency, the USAID, Rich Eisen teased Musk on Saturday night in Indy.

Pointing out fans in the crowed at the Combine with Tesla shirts, Eisen joked that a cease-and-desist was coming their way before catching himself.

“I should be careful... I've been told Elon is going after all Eisens these days."

👏 INDUSTRY INSIGHTS 🗣️

💪 John Cena turns heel. One of the biggest stars in WWE history is on a long retirement tour headed toward WrestleMania in Las Vegas this April. Against all odds, he finally turned heel after years as a stubbornly positive and uplifting personality in the pro wrestling universe and across Hollywood.

⚾ Netflix is in on MLB according to John Ourand of Puck. Many expect that in addition to stealing away baseball rights after ESPN’s opt-out, the streamer will pursue a deal with Formula 1 after the worldwide leader also revealed its intentions to get off those rights after the 2025 season as well.

🏀 LeBron James set off a chain reaction at ESPN by calling out the negativity of NBA coverage in response to a question about the “face of the league” once he retires, a not-so-subtle shot at Stephen A. Smith. The chain reaction even caught Scott Van Pelt and Chiney Ogwumike in its path.

✍️ AROUND AA ✍️

Rob Manfred may have blamed the death of Baseball Tonight for the MLB-ESPN opt-out last week, but the reality is the move was teed up by a series of changes in sports media in recent years.

Those include:

• Shorter TV rights deals for sports leagues

• Constant changes in viewing habits make deals obsolete more quickly

• Fewer entities have the leverage for opt-outs

In a new feature story at Awful Announcing, sports business reporter Daniel Kaplan spoke with multiple executives to highlight this evolution.

Read the full piece here.

️‍🔥THE CLOSER🔥

The Rock is cooking… up a comeback

If you’re like me, your attention was on Tinseltown on Sunday night for the Academy Awards.

The sports representation was dulled this year as September 5, the retelling of ABC Sports’ coverage of the 1972 Munich Olympics, lost after being dominated for Best Original Screenplay. But the story might be very different this time next year.

The Oscars love a comeback arc. It gives voters the chance to honor a beloved actor or filmmaker with a career achievement award, in everything but name. Look no further than the 2020 coronation of Brad Pitt (who also has a sports movie out this year with June’s F1).

At the Dolby Theatre in 2026, Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson could be in the right place at the right time for just that type of win. Later this year, A24 will release The Smashing Machine, the biopic of real-life MMA fighter Mark Kerr. Judging from the success of films like The Fighter, Foxcatcher and The Iron Claw in recent years, wrestling movies have suddenly become Oscar-bait. Add in a buzzy director in Benny Safdie and a respected costar like Emily Blunt and The Rock has all the ingredients for an attention-grabbing movie.

That won’t necessarily be enough for an appearance at next year’s Oscars. The movie — and Johnson’s performance — have to be good. But Johnson was selective in his pursuit of the right comeback role to adult movies, and settled on The Smashing Machine for a reason. Fighting is in the family, and The Rock was due a big role.

Not since 2013’s Pain & Gain has Johnson starred in an original, non-franchise film for adults. Ballers ended in 2019.

Over the past few years we’ve seen Johnson’s return to sports and the WWE. This year will see his return to movie stardom.

If everything breaks right, next year might deliver something new for Johnson: a gold statue.