Welcome to The A Block, Awful Announcing’s daily newsletter, where you’ll always find the latest sports media news, commentary, and analysis.

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🎤 QUICK START ✍️

🏈 The Brady rules. According to Joe Buck, the Las Vegas Raiders weren’t too happy when ESPN cameras showed minority owner Tom Brady in their coaches’ box during a Monday Night Football game. Our thought? If they didn’t want anyone to see the Fox broadcaster in their coaches’ box, perhaps they shouldn’t put him in the coaches’ box.

🏀 Aces up. The WNBA Finals ended in a four-game sweep for its first-ever best-of-seven series, but that didn’t deter fans from tuning in at near-record numbers. This year’s WNBA Finals between the Las Vegas Aces and Phoenix Mercury averaged 1.5 million viewers across ESPN and ABC, down slightly from last year’s five-game thriller between the New York Liberty and Minnesota Lynx (1.6 million viewers), but still good for the second-most-watched Finals since ESPN began airing the series in 2003.

🦚 NBC layoffs. NBC News informed staffers on Wednesday that the company is laying off approximately 2% of its workforce as NBCUniversal prepares for its impending spinoff of Versant. According to a report by Alex Weprin in The Hollywood Reporter, NBC will reallocate resources to other departments, including NBC Sports. “NBC News is shifting resources to other areas, including the forthcoming subscription offering, and new areas of coverage like sports,” Weprin reports.

🏈 Aikman v. Williams. Whether you think this week’s saga between Monday Night Football analyst Troy Aikman and Chicago Bears quarterback Caleb Williams is much ado about nothing likely depends on your beliefs about what constitutes unfair criticism and what’s simply an announcer calling a game as he sees fit. For his part, Williams added fuel to the fire, saying that he had reached out to Aikman after missing their production meeting for the Monday night game while working at Halas Hall, but that Aikman did not respond.

🚨 LEADING OFF 🚨

Indiana-Oregon’s disappointing ratings explain college football’s TV landscape

Oregon vs. Indiana. It was the clear game of the week.

Even ESPN’s College Gameday couldn’t deny it. They took their 12 equipment trucks all the way to Eugene, Oregon, to promote a game that would air on another network for a conference with which it no longer has a business relationship.

Two undefeated teams. Two Heisman contenders. And the game lived up to the hype, with constant action and a competitive score to the very end. CBS and the Big Ten got just about everything you could ask for with this matchup. When the smoke cleared, Indiana emerged as a new national powerhouse, a positive development for the conference and its television partners. The game was featured on SportsCenter and various sports talk shows (in some instances, it was shown behind Penn State’s loss to Northwestern). Indiana-Oregon succeeded in living up to its mantle as the biggest college football game and story of the weekend in all aspects.

Except from a ratings perspective.

When the TV ratings came out, it wasn’t CBS bragging about that prized matchup winning the week. In fact, Indiana vs. Oregon didn’t even make the medal stand and was close to being the fifth-most-watched game of the week. Here’s how the weekend numbers shook out:

1. Oklahoma vs. Texas at 3:30 p.m. ET on ABC (8.7 million viewers)

2. Alabama vs. Missouri at noon ET on ABC (7 million viewers)

3. Georgia vs. Auburn at 7:30 p.m. ET on ABC (6.7 million viewers)

4. Indiana vs. Oregon at 3:30 p.m. ET on CBS (5.6 million viewers)

5. Ohio State vs. Illinois at noon ET on Fox (5.3 million viewers)

6. Michigan vs. USC at 7:30 p.m. ET on NBC (4.3 million viewers)

Indiana-Oregon had three million fewer viewers than Oklahoma-Texas, which played at the same time and didn’t see the Sooners score for the final two hours of the game. If Ohio State-Illinois were any closer, it would likely have surpassed Indiana-Oregon in viewership as well.

So, why is there such a disconnect between the perceived importance and interest in a game and its viewership? This past week’s slate of games was the perfect explainer of how college football’s nuances impact what we watch. Click here to read about the four reasons why.

🎺 AROUND AA 🎺

This week on the Awful Announcing Podcast, host Brandon Contes interviews Eric Collins, the Voice of the Charlotte Hornets. Brandon and Eric discuss a wide range of topics, including his NFL broadcasting debut and his upcoming NBA work with Prime Video, working opposite Vin Scully at the Los Angeles Dodgers, calling Charlotte Hornets games when Michael Jordan was the owner, and more.

Click the video to watch their discussion or look for the Awful Announcing Podcast wherever you find your podcasts.

📣 NOTABLE QUOTABLES 🗣️

“2007, when our quarterback went to jail.” - Cardinals coach Jonathan Gannon, referencing Michael Vick, when asked when he learned to take emotion out of coaching decisions.

“As a leader of this team, the Miami Dolphins, the comments that have been said, I would say I made a mistake. I’m owning up to that right now.” - Dolphins QB Tua Tagovailoa apologizing for calling out teammates following Sunday’s loss.

“I normally don’t comment on things like this, but I feel I need to address that there are a number of accounts posting fake quotes and attributing them to me on this platform right now. I appreciate @X putting community notes on several, and I will not address the other accounts specifically, because I do not want to amplify their engagement. But please know, unless you hear something directly from me via one of my platforms, it is not real.” - ESPN’s Jason Kelce on fake quotes attributed to him circulating on X.

“I don’t want to overstate it when I say this is the single worst power ranking in the history of sports media. I’ve never seen anything like it.” - FS1’s Nick Wright on ESPN NFL Power Rankings that dropped the Chiefs further for beating the Lions than they dropped the Lions for losing the game.

“The life of a college football coach has absolutely no appeal whatsoever to me." - CBS Sports broadcaster J.J. Watt on his coaching ambitions.

“If I was [Penn State AD] Pat Kraft, I would start with the biggest swing possible. I know this sounds crazy, but I think the first call I would make is Nick Saban. Just make sure that that’s not going to happen.” - Fox’s Joel Klatt on who Penn State should hire to replace James Franklin.

️‍🔥 THE CLOSER 🔥

‘Go Long’ creator Tyler Dunne talks about being an independent NFL reporter

If you’re a fan of the NFL, Tyler Dunne is a must-read. Go Long on Substack aims to take readers inside the complicated and sometimes messy world of the National Football League.

The longtime sports writer, who previously wrote for Bleacher Report, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, and the Buffalo News, started Go Long in November 2020. Since then, Dunne has broken notable stories, such as Sean McDermott’s regrettable 9/11 speech in December 2023 and the dysfunctional relationship between Caleb Williams and the Chicago Bears in September 2025.

We caught up with Dunne to discuss his life as an independent journalist.

“Since day one, I’ve tried to take readers places that they can’t go and places many people in sports media are unwilling or unable to go,” Dunne told Awful Announcing. “I think that there’s real, raw pro football out there that isn’t necessarily regurgitated on daytime television. At times, it might be uncomfortable, and it’s going to be ugly. But I think fans are the ones who are paying $118 for a ticket, $60 for parking, $18 for a beer. You’re investing so much financially, but more than that, you’re investing so much emotionally into these teams. Everybody is investing so much in every way. They deserve to get the truth, or as close to it.”

Click here to read Dunne’s full interview with Awful Announcing’s Michael Grant, where he discusses dealing with pushback, why he went to Substack, and whether or not Adam Schefter ever apologized for screenshotting his story without attribution.