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 ✍️

😳 To hoe or not to hoe? As Lane Kiffin made Oxford, Miss., into a circus this weekend, he made special time for On3 reporter Ben Garrett. Walking off the field after an Egg Bowl win, Kiffin confronted Garrett over a podcast quip in which Garrett compared the notoriously flighty Kiffin to a “hoe” as opposed to a “housewife.”

📺 Up and down Al. Prime Video’s Black Friday game was the perfect encapsulation of the maddening Amazon-era Al Michaels experience. Michaels was unfocused and seemingly determined to relay stories rather than call certain pockets of the game, yet rose to the moment on Chicago’s winning touchdown.

❗A First Take reunion. Nobody had this on their bingo cards: This Thanksgiving weekend, a sports betting content creator ran into former ESPN partners Skip Bayless and Stephen A. Smith eating together at a Beverly Hills deli called Nate n’ Al’s.

🏈 CFP craziness. With the regular season coming to an end, ESPN’s Paul Finebaum and NBC’s Nicole Auerbach brought their most piping hot takes to air this weekend. The former pushed for Texas to make the College Football Playoff as a reward for their scheduling, while the latter suggested an upending of the conference championship rules to give Miami a shot to win the ACC and improve its CFP resume.

🚨LEADING OFF 🚨

How Lane Kiffin played ESPN

After all the rumors and the Thanksgiving photo and the jersey theft and the Egg Bowl win and the interviews, Lane Kiffin had a message to deliver to Marty Smith and America.

The more time went on this week, the more it became clear that the hold-up wasn’t about whether Kiffin was going to LSU (he was), but about how the transition would happen. Kiffin wanted to lead Ole Miss through the rest of the year, while athletic director Keith Carter appeared to be guarding against further defections from the Rebels out west to Baton Rouge.

As the two sides negotiated, a surprisingly large media contingent began to bid for Kiffin’s perspective.

Once Kiffin had released a statement formally announcing his move and joined Smith on the tarmac in Oxford, the mercurial coach not only revealed a more sophisticated understanding of why his continued presence at Ole Miss would be a conflict of interest, but underscored the way in which those very analysts had been so deeply misguided.

“(Carter’s) got a job to do, and like he said, he has to live here,” Kiffin told Smith. “He said, maybe all the national people understand why he should let me coach, but he has to live here. And it’s a little different when you’re the AD, so I totally respect that.”

From Kirk Herbstreit to (LSU alum) Booger McFarland to Dave Pasch, the airwaves of ESPN were overwhelmed with a pro-Kiffin slant. Takes varied from simply blaming the college football calendar or Carter to creating a fully new set of protocols in which — despite that calendar, which will see coordinators and transfers move across the country all winter — Kiffin should be allowed to continue overseeing the Rebels program while also being under contract at an SEC rival one state over.

These arguments offered a perfect cocktail for Kiffin to take a swig from during his tarmac interview. The national people understand why Carter should *LET* Kiffin coach? As if it is established fact.

The more conspiracy-minded college football fans and commentators (of which there are many) quickly alleged that ESPN’s on-air embrace of Kiffin’s side was a favor to a notorious CAA super agent named Jimmy Sexton, who represents Kiffin as well as just about every other top college football coach in the country. CAA, of course, also represents numerous top ESPN talent (including Herbstreit and McFarland).

Even if we set that aside and grant the analysts autonomy over their own opinions, Kiffin played them like a fiddle.

Fellow ESPNer Dan Wetzel and Yahoo’s Steven Godfrey led the charge with a more rational argument against such an arrangement.

“Lane is very smart. He is/was in control of everything,” Wetzel, a college sports reporting veteran, wrote on X.

“This is why "let him coach" made so little sense. Why would he act in the best interests of Ole Miss? He's the LSU coach.”

All Kiffin had left when he sidled up to Smith on Sunday was public opinion. Despite the fact that Kiffin’s boss, the entire national college football press corps, and any average person with common sense could see why his coaching Ole Miss through December and January would be bad for the program, Kiffin shone a light on the one corner of sports media that was on his side.

I don’t think that ESPN talent all colluded to prop Kiffin up, nor do I think that CAA enforced a message from the shadows. But the pro-Kiffin stance at ESPN snowballed all week, right up to the point that Kiffin smartly grabbed at it in an attempt to control the narrative and earn sympathy after a messy news cycle.

🎺 AROUND AA 🎺

Tom Brady has vastly improved as a broadcaster

As the lead NFL game analyst for Fox, Thanksgiving is one of the most high-profile moments of the season.

So while Fox didn’t air the potentially historically rated Chiefs-Cowboys game, Tom Brady had a chance in the early slot for Packers-Lions to show where he’s at as a broadcaster midway through Year 2. The results were surprisingly strong.

Click to read more on Brady’s strong Thanksgiving broadcast and the ways in which his experience is starting to show on the call.

👏 INDUSTRY INSIGHTS 🗣️

• We won’t see former Fox Sports NFL analyst Mark Sanchez face trial for alleged assault for several more months after an Indiana judge granted a continuance to Sanchez’s attorneys. The criminal trial is now set for March 2026.

• Dave Portnoy will not be on Fox’s Big Noon Kickoff next weekend in Indianapolis as Ohio State and Indiana face off in the Big Ten Championship game at the Colts’ Lucas Oil Stadium. In typical Portnoy fashion, he revealed the news with a sneering social media post after his Michigan Wolverines lost The Game on Saturday.

• As Stephen A. Smith continues his public feud with Michelle Beadle and Cari Champion, fellow former sports columnist turned ESPN host Jemele Hill highlighted Smith’s “unbecoming” tendency to take credit for former colleagues’ careers due to his platforming them on First Take and, before that, Quite Frankly.

📱 SOCIAL EXPERIMENT 🌟

ESPN’s Marty Smith, who has been on top of the Lane Kiffin story all week, scored the biggest sports interview of the fall before Kiffin boarded his plane to Baton Rouge

Very strange moment from Rodney Harrison on Football Night In America — but NBC tells us Harrison is healthy and doing OK.

Looks like Shedeur Sanders learned a thing or two from his father about how to handle reporters, even in the NFL:

️‍🔥 THE CLOSER 🔥

Geoff Arnold’s Orioles departure offers bleak broadcasting business reality check

Anyone seeking employment will agree; it’s tough out there. Economic uncertainty has led to a decline in hiring and popularized the term “job huggers” to describe workers who are “holding on to their jobs for dear life.”

Sports broadcasters have always been considered job huggers. Even in the best times, survival is challenging. Employment status can change on a whim, and much of it is beyond their control. Doing their best can improve their chances, but there are no guarantees. The owner, the front office, or the network may prefer someone else behind the microphone. Once a decision has been made, there’s usually little recourse.

The instability of the broadcasting industry has become more evident recently when The Athletic’s Britt Ghiroli reported that the Mid-Atlantic Sports Network decided not to renew the contract of Baltimore Orioles play-by-play announcer Geoff Arnold.

Click to read more from Awful Announcing's Michael Grant on how as the content and media businesses change, even the best are susceptible.