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🎤 QUICK START ✍️

⛳ Longtime CBS golf announcer Ian Baker-Finch announced his retirement from the broadcast booth at the end of the season.

🎙️ Barstool drama spilled out into public view with Dan “Big Cat” Katz offering an apology for mishandling a staffer’s harassment complaints.

🏈 Jimbo Fisher has a new gig as an ACC Network studio analyst this year.

🚨LEADING OFF 🚨

ESPN’s nostalgia play?

Rich Eisen isn’t just returning to ESPN to appear on their DTC service, he will also anchor the ESPN Radio afternoon lineup it was announced on Tuesday.

But along with Eisen’s full-fledged return to ESPN came another fascinating wrinkle. As part of the new deal, the former SportsCenter anchor will work on a legacy project featuring the iconic highlights show where he starred for many years, most notably alongside Stuart Scott. He will also interview past and present Bristolites for the project.

Sometimes it’s easy to poke fun at ESPN celebrating itself. After all, it’s why the ESPYS exist, even though no athlete to this day has ever grown up dreaming of winning an ESPY. But ESPN playing into their legacy and former connection with sports fans may be a worthwhile strategy ahead of their DTC launch.

There has been a lot of talk in the last year about the tectonic shift that has happened at ESPN. The network has gone all-in on brash personalities and big names in the hopes of driving interest and eyeballs. And it’s led even some former ESPN personalities (like Trey Wingo) to long for simpler times.

But what if we could all relive ESPN’s glory days? With Rich Eisen’s triumphant return, perhaps ESPN is hoping to have its cake and eat it, too. They can continue to pump up current royalty like Pat McAfee and Stephen A. Smith while also playing to the nostalgia crowd with the likes of Rich Eisen. What’s stopping the ESPN DTC from giving us an old-school SportsCenter with Larry Beil and Bill Pidto while we are at it?

In some respects, ESPN is already doing this. Chris Berman hosts a streaming version of NFL Primetime on ESPN+ throughout the NFL season for longtime fans. But bringing back some more Bristol favorites like Eisen could go a long way in building goodwill with fans who may have cut the cord but also feel like ESPN’s programming has passed them by.

📣 SOCIAL EXPERIMENT 🌟

First Take apologized after airing what they said was a George Pickens highlight from Cowboys training camp… even though Cowboys training camp hadn’t even started yet.

Speaking of First Take and the Cowboys, Kevin Clark had a pretty incredible Jerry Jones take that sounds too crazy to be true but probably is.

Note to Patriots media members: do NOT repeat a question to new head coach Mike Vrabel. Don’t even think about it.

🔦 IN THE SPOTLIGHT ☀️

Speaking of ESPN nostalgia, Dan Patrick looked back at his ESPN departure with some honest thoughts about whether or not he could make it after leaving Bristol. Patrick has already talked about his future retirement plans, but one last stop at his old stomping grounds would surely be welcomed by sports fans, right?

🗣️ NOTABLE QUOTABLES 🗣️

“I worked with, for, in various capacities at ESPN for about 20 years. I’ve known what you can and can’t get away with, I’ve been there for the ebbs and flows of what you can do, whether it be [on] digital or whatever it is. This is wild. There are officially no rules, as long as you’re talking about stuff that doesn’t really matter.” - Bomani Jones on the new state of play at ESPN after the Shane Gillis ESPYS monologue.

“In the court of public opinion, honestly, I think I’m guilt-free. I think I should be set free. It was not waiting in the parking lot to fight an umpire or in his face like Billy Martin screaming at him with spit flying out.” - WFAN host Brandon Tierney gave his side of the story after being ejected from a Little League game.

“That is independent from my personal aspirations of, I want to take this to the highest level I can. I want to call Super Bowls. I want to get to a top crew. I want to continue to elevate and see how high in the industry that I can get. Those things can both simultaneously exist.” - Greg Olsen on another looooooong season of constantly being compared with Tom Brady.

🔥THE CLOSER🔥

Big Ten needs to get its story straight

Big Ten media days kicked off in Las Vegas, of all places, and the first day was newsworthy for a couple of reasons.

First, commissioner Tony Petitti doubled down on his wishes for automatic qualifying spots to be gifted to the conference in an expanded College Football Playoff. His reasoning was to increase the value of conference games and create play-in games for after the regular season. In other words, it is to do whatever he can to advance the agenda of his conference’s short-term power and long-term dominance over the sport.

One curious aspect of Petitti’s logic is that Big Ten teams will be free to schedule more challenging non-conference regular-season games without penalty, because conference records would solely determine the playoff.

But he was almost immediately proven wrong by Indiana head coach Curt Cignetti.

Cignetti is no stranger to big talk, and he did it again at a press conference where he defended Indiana’s impossibly weak non-conference schedule (even passing on a series with the juggernauts at Virginia) because he was taking a page from the SEC playbook in scheduling FCS and Group of 5 opposition.

For Cignetti and Indiana, it makes perfect sense. They made the playoff after not playing anybody in the non-conference slate last year, so why not do it again? As long as they can punch above their weight in the conference, there are more than enough spots to get into the playoffs. And with the Big Ten’s on-field success trumping the SEC recently, he is well entitled to give their conference rivals a taste of their own medicine.

But in his brutal (sometimes arrogant, sometimes refreshing) honesty, the Indiana coach ran completely against what his own commissioner was trying to sell just hours earlier. And if anyone should take note, it should be the TV partners who are footing the bill for the entire thing.

If you’re an executive at Fox, CBS, or NBC and paying a massive bill for Big Ten games, you want all the premier inventory you can get. The same goes for ESPN and the SEC. And when it comes to losing potentially gigantic non-conference games like the season-opening Texas-Ohio State clash, they would be wise to heed Cignetti’s warning about what could come with automatic conference qualifiers for the CFP rather than being sold a bill of goods by Petitti.