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 ✍️

🏈 Ohio State fans aren’t the only ones unhappy with Big Ten scheduling. Michigan State will visit USC in a Big Ten After Dark game, with fans in East Lansing seeing an 11 p.m. ET local start time.

🏈 Could the Miami-USF Top 25 matchup represent the biggest sporting event in the history of The CW?

🏈 Aaron Rodgers Tuesdays appear to be no more, with the Steelers QB absent from The Pat McAfee Show.

🏈 The Big Data Nielsen era has led to even more ratings records, with the new methodology yielding significant NFL boosts for CBS and Fox.

🚨 LEADING OFF 🚨

Is NBC ready for primetime?

NBC is poised to have one of the biggest months in sports broadcasting history for any network. Next February, they will have the Super Bowl, the Winter Olympics, and the NBA All-Star Game all at once. But with all eyes on the Peacock network, one area of improvement is obvious.

The weather delay in the season-opening Cowboys-Eagles game was a unique circumstance for an NFL broadcast partner. It also meant that the network had to rely on its studio team to fill airtime. And that’s when it was clear that NBC needs a serious infusion of energy, excitement, and star power.

The old saying is that if you have two quarterbacks, you really have none. The same might be true for NBC, which employs two different studio sets - one in the stadium and one in the studio. With both setups in play and so many microphones to feed, rarely are there ever any breakthrough moments. And it is all very fragmented and very dry.

When was the last time anyone took note of FNIA for good or for bad? What needles do Chris Simms, Jason Garrett, Jac Collinsworth, and company move? Why are Tony Dungy and Rodney Harrison still around in an auxiliary setup when they were the main analysts years ago? What purpose do Mike Florio and Matthew Berry really serve? Who exactly is the person we should actually be listening to?

It says something that recently-retired quarterback Derek Carr wowed more people in five minutes than Football Night in America has in five years. And it’s something NBC needs to fix on the fly this season in preparation for Super Bowl LX.

📣 SOCIAL EXPERIMENT 🌟

Troy Aikman had a humorous moment where he mixed up JJ McCarthy and Kevin O’Connell to come up with Kevin McCarthy, the former Speaker of the House.

The soccer world is saying goodbye to legendary soccer analyst Ray Hudson, who announced his retirement from broadcasting. The English language will never be the same again.

ESPN is not shy about posting its Saturday morning ratings victories for College GameDay against Fox and Big Noon Kickoff.

🔦 IN THE SPOTLIGHT 🔦

This week, Awful Announcing named the Top 25 Most Influential Sports Media Personalities of the 2000s. From the battle at the top between Stephen A. Smith and Bill Simmons to institutions like PTI and Inside the NBA, these are the people who shaped the sports media industry through the first quarter of the century.

🗣️ NOTABLE QUOTABLES 🗣️

“Ultimately, I think we all jumped the gun. Is he in the Heisman race? No, Arch Manning is not in the Heisman race as of today.” - Paul Finebaum is trying to find the guy responsible for overhyping Arch Manning.

“We as the media should be embarrassed by what we’ve become. Taking the football and running with it that he was fired, they didn’t want him back, his audience deteriorated, but it wasn’t true!” - Michael Kay was embarrassed over legacy media outlets getting duped by Howard Stern’s false exit.

“I would love to [have] the integrity we once had with media. I would love that.” - Deion Sanders was critical of a report from ESPN’s Pete Thamel about his new starting quarterback. But interestingly, he did not deny it.

“Like, if you want to be a victim, that’s fine. But you need to at least be a victim in something where you’ve been victimized. It’s just made up. It’s just false.” - Mike Florio thinks Bill Belichick is living in an alternate universe with his continuing Patriots feud.

️‍🔥 THE CLOSER 🔥

Asleep at the poll

Haley Sawyer of the Orange County Register is not doing her fellow college football media members any favors.

The USC reporter has created controversy thanks to her AP ballot. That’s nothing new. College football fans have sliced and diced outlying polls for ages. However, this isn’t your typical college football poll beef, where you can take issue with some of the rankings due to a difference of opinion.

Sawyer’s ballot was particularly egregious because she moved the Florida Gators UP in her poll despite losing to South Florida, who remain unranked despite defeating two ranked teams in the first two weeks of the season.

Then, she made a bad situation worse by basically laughing off any criticism, saying, “It doesn’t probably matter in the end, but I’m glad that people are having a really good time with it.”

Being an AP Poll voter is not an easy or glorious task. It’s impossible to watch hundreds of teams at once and form complete opinions. These people are only human. Mistakes and logical inconsistencies are inevitable.

However, there must be some respect for the process, the sport, the teams, and the fans if you are to accept the opportunity and responsibility of being a voter for any major poll or award. And if you’re going to tell the fans that your vote and your ballot don’t matter, then what are we even doing in the first place with an AP poll at all?