⚾ New week for This Week. This Week in Baseball is coming back. MLB announced Wednesday that it’s reviving the iconic TWIB franchise as a short-form weekly series, with new episodes dropping every Friday at noon ET on the @MLB account on X starting April 3. The series will run through the 2026 postseason and is being produced by MLB Studios and MLB Network.

🏈 Brazil bound. The Baltimore Ravens and Dallas Cowboys will travel to Rio de Janeiro for a matchup in Week 3 of the NFL season, The Baltimore Banner reported on Wednesday. It will be the first of three games set to be held in Rio over the next five NFL seasons, and the third game being held in Brazil overall.

⛳ Access denied. Pat McAfee revealed on Wednesday that he has tried to get The Pat McAfee Show approved to air from Augusta National for the past three years of his partnership with ESPN, and has been denied each time. “They told us to go to hell.”

🐦‍⬛ San-done-sky. Gerry Sandusky, the voice of the Ravens and WBAL-TV sports director (and not the other one you’re thinking of), announced Wednesday that he is stepping down after 42 years in broadcasting, ending a run that included 20 seasons as Baltimore’s radio play-by-play announcer and nearly four decades anchoring sports coverage at the NBC affiliate he joined in 1988. He was named sports director in 1993 and has been calling Ravens games since 2006.

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

Last week, Awful Announcing asked its readers to rate how happy they were with the largest sporting events that have an exclusive long-term media-rights partner and whether or not they wanted to see those relationships change. 

Over 2,000 votes later, the results were both surprising and unsurprising, revealing a sharp divide between the dance partners viewers want to stick together and the important sports events they’d like to see with a new home.

Of the eight iconic sporting events we offered, the voting revealed three distinct tiers of what’s working and what’s not.

The Masters on CBS was the big winner in the poll, with an 8.6 happiness score from viewers, more than half of whom gave it a perfect 10.

Given that the relationship dates back to 1956, it makes a lot of sense. There’s a true understanding between event and broadcaster that is incredibly hard to replicate in modern terms. While CBS and The Masters could theoretically part ways within a year, this is one of the most stable and beloved relationships between an event and its broadcast partner, and few viewers would be happy to see the event head elsewhere.

CBS must be doing something right because the Men’s NCAA Basketball Tournament, which it broadcast in conjunction with Turner Sports, ranked second (8.26). Again, there’s a strong bond of familiarity. Viewers know what they’re going to get, and they like the way CBS and TNT provide it. The current contract runs through the 2032 tournament, so there’s nothing to worry about for now.

Rounding out this tier is The Olympics on NBC, which scored 8.06 out of 10. If there’s a common denominator between these partnerships, it’s that the broadcasters understand the gravitas of these events, and that comes through for audiences. NBC has aired every Winter Olympics since 2002 and every Summer Olympics since 1988, with ABC doing the 1984 games. Their current contract goes through the 2036 Winter Games, and they’ve done such a great job that it would be hard to associate the Olympics with another network.

The scores drop off a bit by the time we reach the second tier, where we had a tie for fourth place between The World Series on Fox and The Women’s NCAA Basketball Tournament on ESPN, both achieving a happiness score of 6.33.

Fox aired its first World Series in 1996 and has done so exclusively since 2000. Their current deal runs through the 2028 World Series, so if viewers are hoping to see a new take on coverage, they might get one. Unlike the aforementioned events, we received many comments from viewers who don’t think Fox made the World Series feel like the important event it should be.

As for the women’s tourney, this one received a score of 5, right down the middle, most commonly. ESPN deserves credit for being a part of the tournament’s growth and capitalizing in recent years on the women’s college basketball boom, but there still seems to be a lot of concern that they’re not elevating it to where it should be. ESPN has the rights through 2032, so there’s still time to convince those viewers otherwise.

Rounding out this tier was the College Football Playoff National Championship on ESPN, which received a happiness score of 6.29. This was the vote that swung the most wildly, from those who gave their coverage a 10 to those who gave them a low score. Comments were a mixed bag, with many voters commenting on the problematic studio show programming, which was often flagged as biased towards the SEC. Their analysts can sometimes be big grumps as well, especially if there’s a Group of 5 school around.

If there’s any sport ESPN is invested in, it might be college football, so while their current contract extends through the 2032 National Championship, don’t expect it to change hands anytime soon.

Somewhat ironically, the two partnerships that came in last, and by a significant margin, are both coming up this June. And their futures couldn’t be potentially more different.

Coming in 7th overall, with a happiness score of 4.64, is the FIFA Men’s World Cup on Fox. The network first aired the Men’s World Cup in 2018 and has broadcast the last three Women’s World Cups, going back to 2015. The women’s tournament is going to Netflix in 2027, and the men’s tournament deal concludes after this year. Considering the many comments we received about their coverage, it might be just in time for a fresh start.

Finally, bringing up the rear was the NBA Finals on ESPN/ABC, with a score of 4.5. Not only did 20.7% of voters give it a 1 out of 10, but 28.3% gave it a score between 2 and 4. The NBA Finals received the most comments, almost twice as many as the World Cup. These comments were nearly universally negative, with about one-third suggesting that the Finals move to NBC, which returned to covering the league this year.

Does any of this matter to networks and broadcasters? Maybe, maybe not. But if perception is reality, it’s clear that perceptions vary across broadcasters and in the ways they respect and showcase the events they have the rights to broadcast. If the goal is to continue serving as the broadcasting steward of those cornerstone sporting events, consider what you can do differently to earn a higher score (or give someone else a shot).

“My son in particular, who’s now 22, so he was 18 at the time, 17—I said, ‘I just want to apologize for what’s coming, and I’m sorry. And don’t ever feel like you have to defend me, okay? But just remember, when someone gives you crap about me, just remind them of the importance of diversity of thought and that we are all entitled to our opinion, including your mom— including your crazy mom. But that matters, and don’t defend me.’ And my son looked at me, and he said, ‘Mom, it’s about time you stood up for yourself.'” - Sage Steele detailing the conversations with her family before suing ESPN.

“It’s proven to me that people love rooting for their school and they love rooting for the name on the front of the jersey,” Eagle said. “And the name on the back of the jersey’s important, but in terms of priorities, they just love their squad. The names may change, but their love of their school, program will always be there.” - Ian Eagle on the impact of NIL, transfer portal on March Madness.

“Bump his privacy. I don’t care about his privacy. We don’t care right now. You’ve been behind the wheel of a vehicle inebriated three times. Ain’t nobody trying to know all your business. What we want to know is that you ain’t gonna get behind the wheel of a damn car. You’re lucky you didn’t kill somebody. That’s what we want to hear.” - Stephen A. Smith reacting to Tiger Woods’ statement following a DUI arrest.

“I am the loudest voice that Luka is not the defensive liability that people think he is once he gets to the playoffs. He cares differently; he plays differently. He does not play that way in January, I’m sorry. And it is a full-season award, and it is for both sides of the ball. So, am I going to vote him my No. 1 for MVP? No. Is he going to be on my ballot? Absolutely.” - Rachel Nichols on why Luka Dončić is not her pick for NBA MVP.

A common complaint among Major League Baseball fans this season is that watching their favorite team has become much harder.

With MLB’s new agreements with NBC Sports and Netflix this season, there are now exclusive baseball games on three different streaming services (Peacock, Apple TV+, and Netflix), along with three different cable channels (ESPN, FS1, and TBS) and three different over-the-air networks (ABC, NBC, and Fox).

Even watching games on local networks has become a pain. With the collapse of the regional sports network industry, many teams have turned to MLB to produce and distribute their local games. For many of these teams, local deals with cable providers were not announced until Opening Day.

To be clear, it isn’t all bad. Nationally, there are more over-the-air games than ever before, and this is the first season ever where every MLB team will have a direct-to-consumer streaming option.

But which fans have it the worst? Awful Announcing’s Manny Soloway went through every MLB club to find just how hard it is to watch local games. We ranked teams based on direct-to-consumer cost, cable availability, number of national exclusives, over-the-air access, and streaming exclusives.

Click here to see Awful Announcing’s MLB Accessibility Rankings, from worst to best.

Look, when we found out that former MLB pitcher Randy Johnson had started his own photography business and that the business's logo was a dead bird, that was pretty awesome.

And when we learned that MLB great Ken Griffey Jr. had shifted careers and was now a photographer, capturing viral images at The Masters, it was cool to see.

When NBA superstar Kevin Durant spent Super Bowl 50 on the sidelines trying to capture the game as a photographer, it was weird but still felt interesting.

And when Marshawn Lynch stiff-armed a running back while taking photos on the sidelines, it was classic Beast Mode.

Over time, however, the whole “athlete spends a day as a professional photographer” activity started to jump the shark in recent years as it became a trendy thing for Olympians and others to do. Weirdly, while people like Simone Biles and Suni Lee got lots of headlines for snapping photos, the photos themselves never seemed to be worth sharing. That remained something for the pros, who were trying to make sure they didn’t get boxed out by celebrities.

As she’s done in so many ways, it appears that Caitlin Clark has broken down the dam holding this trend back from going fully off the chain. The WNBA star worked as a baseline photographer for a Pacers-Lakers game, and it appears that’s been the cue for everyone else to launch their would-be photo careers.

In the past few days alone, NFL cornerback Mike Sainristil worked an NHL game, Olympic skier Mikaela Shiffrin worked as a photographer during a Nets game, and former Raptors guard C.J. Miles has reappeared as a team photographer.

Are their photos any good? Who knows? The point isn’t the photography, it’s the PR bump. And you can just feel every pro sports PR person revving up their phones and laptops to find an athlete to don a photo credential this weekend so they can take photos of them taking photos so we can look at the photos of them taking photos.

The shark on this kind of thing has already been jumped, even though we fear it’s only just beginning.