🏈 Super Bowl redux. The Seattle Seahawks’ Super Bowl LX win over the New England Patriots wasn’t particularly exciting, but we’re gonna run it back to start the 2026 NFL season all the same. To be fair, we’re thinking Mike Vrabel might end up being the most interesting topic of discussion that night.

🏈 NFL worldwide. The NFL officially revealed its 2026 international schedule on Wednesday, a day ahead of the full schedule release on Thursday. Nine games are on the slate this season across seven countries, the most in league history and the contractual maximum under a 2023 resolution that allows the league to play up to eight overseas games in addition to the Jaguars’ annual London contest. Hope you enjoy 9:30 a.m. kickoffs!

🏈 NFL-flix. Netflix formally announced on Wednesday that it would add three games to its NFL slate this season, on top of its usual Christmas Day doubleheader, and that it has extended a media rights deal with the NFL through the 2029-30 season, aligning with the league’s opt-outs from the majority of its broadcast partners.

⚾ Fallen Angel. Patrick O’Neal is out after 13 years with the Angels. The team released a statement on Wednesday confirming his departure from the broadcast team. O’Neal responded on social media, saying he cherished every moment and every friendship he made during his time with the organization, and that the people — not the platform — were what he would miss most.

Read more of today’s top stories at Awful Announcing.

There are two pieces of information about ESPN that, if you don’t know them already, would be a minor miracle.

One is that ESPN has a $1.6-billion deal with WWE to broadcast their PLEs for five years, which has invariably led to the Worldwide Leader in Sports often becoming the Worldwide Leader in professional wrestlers appearing on its programming.

The second is that ESPN has the broadcasting rights to Super Bowl LXI, which is on February 14, 2027.

If ESPN is a Sports Media Death Star, their promotional efforts around both of those things are fully operational. And in between professional wrestling events and Danhausen appearances on First Take, the company is making sure you know they plan on making this Super Bowl feel like the biggest one yet.

In fact, they’ve thrown down the gauntlet on what they expect to happen that day. Amid a Disney Upfronts presentation in which ESPN made it clear they’ll be sparing no expense on their Super Bowl promotion and presentation, Laura Rutledge said that the company’s goal was for Super Bowl LXI to be the most-watched Super Bowl ever. 

Uh, it better be.

Not to yuck ESPN’s yum, but honestly, it will be an epic embarrassment if their Super Bowl presentation ISN’T the most-watched of all time.

The number to beat is 127.71 million average viewers, set in 2025 when the Eagles dominated the Chiefs in Super Bowl LIX on Fox, Telemundo, Fox Deportes, and Tubi. This past season’s game, which was broadcast on NBC, Peacock, and Telemundo, came up a little short at 125.6 million thanks to a lack of big names and drama.

We’ve seen broadcasters pull out a few tricks recently in attempts to expand the Super Bowl audience. The ascension of streaming services like Paramount+, Peacock, and Fubo gave their network partners a boost. Altcasts like the Nickelodeon broadcast were great ways to pad the stats. And of course, Spanish-language partnerships expand the audience base and just keep growing.

While previous Super Bowl broadcasters have picked and chosen among these options, ESPN (and, to a greater extent, Disney) is mashing all the buttons at once for their big game.

First, they’re simulcasting the game on ABC affiliates, which should probably lock up the record right there. Beyond that, the game will be available on their direct-to-consumer streaming service and its millions of subscribers.

Thanks to a deal with TelevisaUnivision, Spanish-language versions of the game will be telecast on both Univision and ESPN Deportes, giving them an immense boost.

The company isn’t planning to do an altcast. They’re planning to do ALL the altcasts. An ESPN2 ManningCast is happening, and it seems like a foregone conclusion that a Pat McAfee altcast will also happen. And there’s no way Disney isn’t doing some kind of kid-friendly altcast featuring characters from their incredibly deep well of IP. Whether it’s Mickey Mouse and friends, The Toy Story crew, The Simpsons, Star Wars, Marvel, or all of them, that’ll be what gets millions of viewers to Disney+.

Honestly, if ESPN et al. don’t crack 130 million viewers for this game, they might just want to hang it up.

Bragging that this will be the most-watched Super Bowl of all time is like the Los Angeles Dodgers bragging that they expect to win another World Series this year. Yeah, we know, guys. You’ve already skewed the numbers as much as humanly possible to make that happen. And honestly, the pressure isn’t on you to succeed; it’s on you not to fail.

The only thing standing in ESPN’s way is itself.

And, perhaps, a Tennessee Titans-Carolina Panthers Super Bowl.

“…if another guy did it, it would still be a big deal because we live in a homophobic society. And that's unfortunate. That's why, first of all, anybody who thinks we ain't got a bunch of gay players in all sports, they're just stupid. But there is such animosity toward the gay community, and that's what's really unfortunate.” - Charles Barkley on Jason Collins, who died earlier this week.

“Lakers weren’t on TV like they were. When they had all them guys and they were celebrating and doing all kinds of crazy stuff, there wasn’t nobody talking about the Lakers.” - Shannon Sharpe, claiming that LeBron James elevated the Los Angeles Lakers into a TV-worthy franchise.

“ESPN has been pretty clear with all of us that they’d like it to stay at 12, maybe 14, but no higher than 16.” - ACC Commissioner Jim Phillips on ESPN’s CFP desires.

“International game slate is nearing the realm of traveling circus as opposed [to] occasional showcase.” - CBS Sports’ J.J. Watt on the NFL’s nine-game international schedule.

“It was never more apparent than last night in the broadcast where they framed a game that Wemby was fortunate to be playing because he had avoided what would have been a totally reasonable, if not a little punitive suspension, as if he was the one who got elbowed in the neck. The entire conceit of the broadcast was Wemby’s hero return, as if he had been the one who was wronged.” - Nick Wright on NBC’s framing around Victor Wembanyama in Game 5.

“Somebody gotta tell Rich, brother … what the hell are you talking about? What’s having a two-parent household got to do anything? As if to say, you’ve gotta have a two-parent household to be labeled an unselfish player. Don’t nobody care nothing about that. Do you got the clutch gene?” - Cam Newton reacting to Rich Paul’s claim that LeBron James is unselfish because he was raised by a single mother.

Before last week’s Skip Bayless-Stephen A. Smith reunion on First Take, I wrote a piece about how this was an exercise in anti-nostalgia.

“Everyone remembers that Stephen A. Smith and Skip Bayless used to yell at one another every morning on ESPN, but no one could tell you anything about what they yelled about,” I wrote. “There are no iconic moments. No memes from that era continue to populate social media platforms or Slack channels. There isn’t a single debate, take, or zinger that has stood the test of time. It was all ephemeral nonsense.”

Not everyone was a fan of that column. And there was some fairness to the criticism that I hadn’t accounted for the demographics of the show’s initial success.

Folks who disagreed with my sentiments got to take a victory lap this week when it was reported that Bayless’s return led to a 44% jump in viewership compared to the comparable episode last year. Per Michael McCarthy in Front Office Sports. Friday’s First Take averaged 647,000 viewers, a 24% increase from the show’s average 2026 viewership.

As soon as the show ended, ESPN not-so-subtly sent out the signal that Bayless will be back. And while I offer them my congratulations on turning his First Take return into a ratings success, I regret to inform them that bringing him back with any regularity is still a big mistake.

ESPN, Smith, and Skip were able to craft a great narrative with the reunion, hyping it up perfectly. But the thing to remember is that, at the end of the day, not a lot of people actually like Skip Bayless. I know, I know, I should have learned my lesson from last time, but anyone who has followed sports media over the past decade has to admit that, when the pomp and circumstance falls away, audiences remember that they don’t actually enjoy watching Skip, even if he is very good at whatever it is he does.

Do you remember Skip’s ratings on FS1 after Shannon Sharpe left the show? Do you know anyone who even watched? A little bit of Skip Bayless goes a long way in making you wish he’d go away.

The next time he comes back, he won’t have the promotional juggernaut behind him, and the novelty will have worn off. The ratings won’t be as great. And they’ll dip even further the next time after that. Pretty soon, people will start wondering why this 74-year-old keeps showing up to yell about LeBron James before changing the channel.

Bayless built up a lot of goodwill by disappearing from relevance and yelling into the abyss for a few years before ESPN’s reclamation job last week. That’s especially impressive considering he was named in a sexual harassment lawsuit a year ago. It is no surprise to realize this reunion was always going to be the first of many returns. It will also not be a surprise when the bloom falls off that rose in record time.