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🐘 RNC chairman Joe Gruters has officially made the most ridiculous claim in sports media history by suggesting the UFC White House event was bigger than the Super Bowl.

⚽ Fox Sports is off to a roaring start in ratings for the 2026 World Cup with viewership numbers more than doubling the 2022 event.

⚽ Stephen A. Smith is probably not the ESPN person that we want sharing his soccer “expertise” around the World Cup.

🏎️ TNT Sports has added seven-time NASCAR champion Jimmie Johnson to their summer race coverage.

💰 In totally unsurprising news, senior DOJ leadership reportedly rushed through the Paramount acquisition of WBD in spite of potential objections.

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

The 2026 World Cup is off to the perfect start for Fox Sports.

The USA shocked everyone with one of their best performances in years to start the tournament. Stars like Lionel Messi, Kylian Mbappe, Harry Kane, and Erling Haaland all scored multiple goals in their first games. Ratings are through the roof for all matches. Fox is even making an insane amount of money thanks to their sweetheart deal with FIFA and ads during hydration breaks.

So instead of celebrating all that is good, what does Fox do? Shift the focus to a nonsensical beef with ESPN over World Cup highlights.

It all started with a Front Office Sports article from Michael McCarthy touting that Fox Sports executives were upset about a lack of World Cup coverage and highlights on ESPN. While it’s a somewhat interesting premise, the story was met with skepticism quickly.

FIFA greatly restricts non-rights holders on highlights. Moreover, many ESPN shows are covering the World Cup, including SportsCenter, Get Up, First Take, Pat McAfee, and ESPN FC. Furthermore, the article doesn’t attribute any actual quotes to any Fox executives, on or off the record, about those frustrations.

ESPN executives were not afraid to put their names out there to immediately denounce any critiques coming their way. Mike Foss went on the record with Awful Announcing to dispute the claim and tout coverage across the network. Burke Magnus took to social media to dismiss the claim while retweeting several examples of ESPN’s coverage and skepticism about the FOS story.

At this point, Fox was left with egg on its face after facing stiff opposition from ESPN and a clear understanding across the general sports media world that there wasn’t a story here. But then the network somehow made it worse.

Only after being called out by ESPN did Fox finally go on the record with Andrew Marchand of The Athletic to discount the Front Office Sports story, calling the notion that they are upset with ESPN’s coverage “absurd.” For what it’s worth, Awful Announcing asked Fox for comment earlier in the day, presenting ESPN’s response, and they chose not to comment at the time. Their eventual statement left FOS scrambling to defend their own story, as they said they stood by McCarthy's report despite the direct refutation.

It’s almost impossible to put into words how mystifying the last 24 hours on the sports media beat has been, but Mike Florio put it best at Pro Football Talk.

“To summarize, FOS says Fox has beef with ESPN. Fox says it doesn’t, but it may have beef with FOS. Which may now have beef with The Athletic. Which has beef with FOS. It’s becoming a World Cup of banal pettiness. Which begs the question: Who’ll get the Peace Prize?”

Something went very wrong here with this story. And while Fox and FOS do the Spider-Man meme to figure out who is to blame, ESPN has come out of it all looking like the adults in the room.

The bottom line is that whoever at Fox decided that now was the time to score some cheap points was seriously mistaken. Because instead of talking about what a great first week of the World Cup it has been, Fox’s ratings wins, or the successful new additions to their broadcast team, here we are all talking about the nothingest of all nothingburgers.

It just makes the network look small-minded and unworthy of being on the biggest stage in global sports. Fox Sports would be much better served if they minded their own business and focused on keeping their own house in order than worrying about what ESPN is doing right now.

🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿 What could be better from the World Cup in North America than seeing international soccer stars trolling the Dallas Cowboys by comparing them to the England National Team.

🇦🇺 CBS Sports analyst Mike Grella has got Australia up in arms over his comments about their matchup with the United States.

🇳🇱 Former Dutch star Rafael Van der Vaart apologized over controversial comments about the Japan national team.

🇹🇷 A Turkish broadcaster had to be pulled from World Cup coverage because he couldn’t tell Iran and New Zealand apart.

🇫🇷 Kylian Mbappe made good on a promise to James Corden with a flute celebration after his first World Cup goal.

“We don't go on the stage, on the platform, right after somebody just been crowned champions and call that sh*t a participation trophy. Even if you're thinking that, you don't say that." - Kendrick Perkins was not happy with the controversial comments from ESPN colleague Vincent Goodwill.

"But you have to take a broader look at the city you’re playing in. What makes San Francisco so great is the acceptance of others — ethnicities, opinions, cultures — and that extends to the gay community.” - Mike Krukow spoke out about Giants players protesting the team’s Pride Night.

"F*ck, f*ck, f*ck." - Corentin Moutet gave a Hall of Fame entry for needless profanity in a post-match interview.

Let’s be fair to Fox Sports for this with the World Cup through its first week with every team playing at least one game — their studio additions have been a home run. And that’s especially true for Thierry Henry.

The French soccer legend is part of one of the best sports shows in all of television at CBS Sports with their Champions League coverage. His teamwork with Kate Scott, Jamie Carragher, and Micah Richards is the closest counterpart to the fun, insights, and humor of Inside the NBA.

Fox has faced plenty of criticism for the past direction in their studio coverage, but they went big this year by adding the likes of Henry, Rebecca Lowe, Zlatan Ibrahimovic, and several other new faces with huge international pedigree or top broadcast experience.

There have certainly been some unusual moments when those new stars have been paired with Alexi Lalas, but the quality of Henry’s analysis into Cristiano Ronaldo’s struggles with Portugal was perhaps the best moment in studio so far.

Ronaldo failed to answer the performances of Messi and Mbappe as Portugal struggled to a 1-1 draw against Democratic Republic of the Congo. And Henry gave a great breakdown why his personal quest for goals is hurting his team, saying "the team needs to score, not you need to score.”

Through the first week, Henry has been a gift to Fox with his presence greatly lifting the overall presentation. If this were past years, we would have probably been stuck with talk about Ronaldo’s “clutch gene” and making it all about comparing Ronaldo to Messi like we were debating LeBron James vs Michael Jordan.

But when you have one of the greatest players of all time able to so simply break down the game for hardcore and casual fans alike, it’s a huge gift. The more Fox can deliver on content like this, the better off we all will be.