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🎤 QUICK START ✍️

🔴 Jim Nantz was back at the Final Four supporting his beloved Houston Cougars, who couldn’t get the job done in their home city for Nantz’s last Final Four in 2023 but are one win away from a title on Monday night. After Nantz was captured by CBS cameras, the studio crew ribbed the longtime voice of the tourney. Ernie Johnson and Charles Barkley agreed that Nantz was more than welcome to delay his trip to Augusta for The Masters to see Houston vie for a national championship.

🏀 ESPN was all over UConn’s first title since 2016, with announcer Ryan Ruocco nailing the historic call at the buzzer and reporter Holly Rowe getting an emotional postgame interview with head coach Geno Auriemma. Before that, game analyst (and UConn alum) Rebecca Lobo got the scoop of the season by confirming that star forward Paige Bueckers is headed to the WNBA in this month’s draft. In the rematch of the 2022 national championship game, Bueckers finally got her ring and Auriemma got his 12th.

💵 Sports media sounded off on the Trump administration’s tariffs, with notorious stock market investor and Barstool Sports founder Dave Portnoy sharing that he lost $7 million last Thursday when the market reacted to Trump’s restrictive trade policy. Meanwhile at The Volume, Colin Cowherd accused the Republicans of “hypocrisy” for not giving the American people a straight story on the state of the economy as the tariffs hit last week. And last but not least, Stephen A. Smith continued his strange contrarian streak by slamming… the Democrats, for being overly critical of Trump for imposing the tariffs.

🚨LEADING OFF 🚨

Geno Auriemma and Dawn Staley sound off

The two best teams of this decade in NCAA women’s basketball met on the court in Tampa on Sunday, meaning the two best ambassadors for the sport got the spotlight.

Geno Auriemma and Dawn Staley have more than seized the moment as NIL, Caitlin Clark and the rising tide of women’s sports have brought more attention to women’s college hoops. This weekend, they took aim at the NCAA’s TV deal with ESPN.

Struck last year, the contract will bring in nearly $1 billion for the NCAA over the next years. All of the women’s sports championships are included, but the deal values the basketball tournament in particular at $65 million. Yet multiple studies suggested that was on the low side from the moment the NCAA signed it. But that wasn’t even the main issue that Auriemma and Staley seized on.

Instead, the two star coaches — like their counterparts in the WNBA and its union — want a separate media deal for the NCAA women’s championship so they know what the market is saying. It’s all part of a broader push for transparency and valuation in the sport.

This was the first March in which, largely spurred by Staley and new women’s basketball leadership at the NCAA, conferences will receive payouts (called “units”) for teams’ success in the tournament. And before he took on the ESPN deal, Auriemma criticized the tournament’s “super regional” format that began in 2023 to account for dwindling crowd sizes for games. The super regionals mean games are split among just two cities to maximize the number of traveling fans in each place. But since Clark, Angel Reese and Paige Bueckers helped blow the top off the sport in recent years, big crowds hardly seem a problem for women’s college hoops.

By putting pressure on the NCAA to properly value and sell the sport — and expecting compensation in return — Auriemma and Staley are paying it forward at a pivotal time for the sport. Watch closely, and you will notice that even during in-game interviews, both coaches graciously comment on how good the game is for the sport or how great the environment is. After Staley won the natty in 2024, she took a moment to shout out Clark for bringing attention to the sport.

As two of the most highly paid and winningest coaches in NCAA women’s basketball, Auriemma and Staley have influence. In some cases, they use it to recruit star freshmen like Sarah Strong or Joyce Edwards. In other cases, they hold their bosses’ feet to the fire and show that despite the strides made by the NCAA and their sport in recent years, it’s not nearly enough. They continue to deliver great games each spring, and they know their worth.

📈DATA DUMP💰

• The CBS broadcast of the men’s Final Four on Saturday night was its most-watched since 2017, with close finishes in both games and a shock late-game upset by Houston over Duke. The festivities averaged 15.3 million viewers across both games, up 19 percent over 2024. These numbers will likely rise by Monday when CBS releases exact data, though the viewership for the title game could take a hit with Cooper Flagg and Duke eliminated.

• The ESPN broadcast of the women’s Final Four was also a massive success given the circumstances. Without Caitlin Clark for the first time in three years and with both favorites blowing out their competition, ESPN viewership was still up 44 percent over 2022. That, coincidentally, was also the last time UConn and South Carolina faced off in the title game, giving a useful benchmark once the numbers come in for Sunday’s rematch.

• Another poll showed Stephen A. Smith competitive with many Democratic stars in a hypothetical 2028 presidential primary. Smith trailed 2024 nominee Kamala Harris by just 21 points and nearly even with the likes of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and even presumptive GOP nominee J.D. Vance.

📈💰INDUSTRY INSIGHTS🧐

• Sue Bird and Diana Taurasi returned to ESPN with The Bird and Taurasi Show alt-cast for the NCAA women’s Final Four over the weekend. It was Taurasi’s first major appearance since retiring from the WNBA this year, and the anticipated follow-up to her “call out” of Caitlin Clark last year. Of course, it was all in good fun as the pair of former teammates hosted Clark — as Rookie of the Year and All-Star joked that she did not in fact struggle to adjust to the pros — for an interview.

• Ian Eagle told Sports Illustrated he was not consulted when CBS promoted J.J. Watt to be its No. 2 NFL game analyst, replacing Charles Davis. However, Eagle praised Watt’s football smarts and predicted the two will develop “a playful side” considering their shared passion for sports and popular culture.

• Geno Auriemma praised the number of women at his Final Four press conference in Tampa, noting “the most women I have ever seen at a press conference since I started this 40 years ago” before telling the reporters “I’m just really, really proud of you all.” In recent years, numerous outlets have invested in women who cover women’s college basketball, including The Athletic (Chantel Jennings and Sabreena Merchant), ESPN (Alexa Philippou, Arielle Chambers and Kendra Andrews), Front Office Sports (Annie Costabile), iHeartMedia (Khristina Williams), and The Ringer (Seerat Sohi).

️‍🔥THE CLOSER🔥

Going vi-Rioux-al

Florida redshirt freshman Olivier Rioux did not play a single minute for the Gators this season. But he’s a national name.

That’s because Rioux is 7-9. And he went viral again over the weekend when Fox and NBC college basketball reporter John Fanta posted a comical interview with the Quebecois center emphasizing their vast height difference. It was just the latest moment in which college basketball media made Rioux’s height into a story all its own.

Don’t get me wrong, a 7-9 man in college basketball is super interesting. He held the Guinness World Record for world’s tallest teenager in 2021, and has competed for the Canadian national team. In a sport known for very tall people, Rioux is on another level.

Yet the spectacle around Rioux is familiar to anyone who saw Tacko Fall or Sim Bhullar or Bol Bol come through in recent years. Their height is the story, and the sideshow follows them throughout their careers.

While Rioux is not believed to suffer from gigantism, or the over-production of growth hormone, there still is a fine line before this level of attention veers into gawking at someone over their physique. Basketball is probably one of the only things in which being 7-9 is a benefit. Many player over 7-feet struggle with lower-body injuries and heart problems later in life. It’s impossible not to stand out anywhere you go.

Maybe Rioux is all good. He has the freedom to decline all the media attention he’s getting.

But the media crossed a line a while ago from good-natured curiosity into making Rioux a full-blown mascot. If you’ve ever been around Fall or Bol like I have, you know these “fan favorites” quickly become obsessed over and gawked at by crowds. Whether it’s Fanta’s interview or the dozens of features on Rioux published in March or the endless scroll of social media content, there’s too much of it.

After Monday, the men’s college hoops season will end one way or another. But hopefully Gainesville media and national reporters alike learn to respect Rioux’s privacy and personal life a little more going forward.