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🎤 QUICK START ✍️

📱 Stan the Man. As first reported by FOS’ Ryan Glasspiegel, longtime SportsCenter anchor Stan Verrett’s time with the Worldwide Leader will conclude later this summer. Verrett, who started as an anchor for ESPNEWS in 2000 before moving to Los Angeles in 2009 to co-host the 1 a.m. edition of SportsCenter with Neil Everett, said he’s not retiring and is “really excited about the future and some incredible opportunities.”

⚾ NBCU wants MLB. Per the WSJ, NBCUniversal has made an offer to take over the MLB package of regular-season and postseason games that ESPN is leaving behind after this season, though at a discounted rate from what they were paying. The offer was reportedly made in early May, but the WSJ notes that MLB and NBC had been in talks for several weeks beforehand. The offer includes Sunday Night Baseball on NBC and MLB games on Peacock.

🏈 Tush Push Lives! The “tush push” survived an attempt by some NFL owners to ban the play. Twenty-two NFL owners voted to ban the play, which fell short of the required 24 votes. Credit apparently goes to Jason Kelce and a very NSFW Eagles owner Jeffrey Lurie. The Eagles also made sure to send a message to the Packers, who backed the ban.

🏀 WNBA player Sophie Cunningham responded to reports of a salacious rumor related to a lawsuit against the Phoenix Suns and Mercury, calling the allegations “untrue and extremely hurtful” and chastising outlets that wrote about the rumors, saying it “feels irresponsible that I was never asked for a comment about the accusation before several clickbait stories went to print.”

🚨LEADING OFF 🚨

The Jim Irsay way

Jim Irsay was 12 when his father, Robert Irsay, purchased the Los Angeles Rams for $12 million and immediately swapped with Baltimore Colts owner Carroll Rosenbloom. As a child, Jim worked as a ball boy and in the ticket office. After graduating college, he returned to work in the franchise personnel department. And right after the team moved to Indianapolis, which is another story, he was named vice president and general manager.

Winner of three NFL championships and Super Bowl V, the once-storied Colts were a shell of their former selves when they arrived in Indiana in 1984. They hadn’t been to the playoffs since 1977 and hadn’t won a playoff game since 1971. We won’t sit here and tell you Jim Irsay turned the franchise back into winners overnight. In fact, there were still plenty of lean years ahead. But by the mid-1990s, the Colts were back in the conversation. And when Robert died in 1997 and Jim took over as owner, the franchise’s fortunes truly changed.

Under Irsay’s leadership, the Colts drafted Peyton Manning, became a perennial division winner and playoff team, and went to two Super Bowls, winning Super Bowl XLI.

But when most people think of him, they don’t think of any of that. Irsay, who passed away Wednesday at age 65, was the kind of larger-than-life character who made the most of being a billionaire NFL team owner. He was a lot of things over the years. Eccentric. Outspoken. Problematic. Quirky. Defiant.

Irsay was a lot of things, but he was never boring.

From a media perspective, he was everything you’d want from an NFL owner, for better or worse. Like a more agreeable Jerry Jones, at least most of the time. He would sometimes make headlines for wacky exploits or being on the right side of history. He would also make headlines for saying incredibly dumb things and being on the wrong side of history. He could be a champion to animals and a tyrant to his own players. He could be defiant and petulant. Some of his media appearances and social media posts are textbook incidents of what not to do. He was the kind of guy who could say, "I am prejudiced against because I’m a rich, white billionaire,” and somehow still be beloved by so many former players and coaches.

Whatever you think of Irsay, and that’s something that might have changed day by day, the NFL lost an authentic character on Wednesday. There aren’t many owners willing to be so quintessentially themselves, for better or worse, and that makes the NFL a little less interesting today.

📣 NOTABLE QUOTABLES 🗣️

• “[Coming up with the tush push was] like a wet dream for a teenage boy.” - Eagles owner Jeffrey Lurie, reportedly, telling his fellow NFL owners what it felt like to come up with a play so unstoppable that the rest of the league wanted to ban it.

• "If you think about it, there haven't been that many home runs to left in this ballpark this year." - Tampa Bay Rays announcer Andy Freed one second before Astros third baseman Isaac Parades drove a ball deep to left field for a home run.

• "They’ve lowered those [academic] standards some. So there’s absolutely no reason they shouldn’t be successful." - Former UNC football coach Mack Brown inadvertently shading current UNC football coach Bill Belichick

• “I can’t understand what he says…you have this Aussie guy, I feel like I’m watching Australian rules football…it’s so out of place, I don’t get it.” - Seattle radio host Marc James complaining about Mariners broadcaster Ryan Rowland-Smith.

🗣️ THE PLAY-BY-PLAY 🗣️

On the latest episode, Awful Announcing’s Brendon Kleen and Ben Axelrod discuss the NFL going all out for its 2025 schedule, the WNBA’s hot start and emerging narratives, and the end of Around the Horn.

Click the video above to watch or find The Play-By-Play wherever you listen to podcasts, including Spotify and Apple Podcasts.

📈 INDUSTRY INSIGHTS 📺

• According to Front Office Sports’ Michael McCarthy, Scott Hanson is “likely” to return to his NFL RedZone hosting duties “with a new contract under his belt.” Hanson will also reportedly re-join NBC Sports’ Olympics coverage for the 2026 Milan-Cortina games next year, hosting the popular Gold Zone whip-around show.

• ESPN announced Wednesday that, beginning June 27, it will debut SportsCenter: 50 States in 50 Days, “a nationwide tour designed to bring SportsCenter and its anchors directly to fans across the country.”

• NFL veteran Manti Te’o has landed a full-time role on NFL Network’s flagship show. Te’o will join Good Morning Football full-time, replacing Akbar Gbajabiamila, who last appeared on the show on February 14 and has since been reported to have exited the show after just one season.

• The Buffalo Bills have been selected to participate in the Hard Knocks franchise's flagship training camp edition this season. HBO is also bringing back Hard Knocks: In Season, which debuted its division format last season and featured the AFC North. This year, NFL Films will be documenting the NFC East.

🔥 THE CLOSER 🔥

In the Ryan Clark-RGIII feud, everyone lost

Let’s work backward to make sense of this week’s Ryan Clark-Robert Griffin III feud.

On Wednesday, Robert Griffin III posted on social media to promote his wife’s fitness business, calling on those who “stand against discrimination and tearing down love” to purchase her Booty Bands.

Also on Wednesday, ESPN NFL analyst Ryan Clark shared a post on X about his daughter Jaden, noting that he did so because “the news in light of this week is that she’s biracial.”

If you hadn't kept up with anything related to either man, you'd probably find both posts curious and confusing.

When you realize these two posts culminate a days-long feud that started when Caitlin Clark fouled Angel Reese during a WNBA game, it makes everything ten times weirder.

Indeed, following Clark’s flagrant foul on Reese during the Indiana Fever’s season-opening victory over the Chicago Sky, RGIII stated his belief that Reese hates Clark personally. That prompted Clark to accuse his former NFL and ESPN teammate of trafficking in racial stereotypes, citing Griffin’s marriage to a white woman as proof he doesn’t understand the plight of Black women. RGIII responded that Clark crossed the line by making a sports debate personal and implied that ESPN might want to consider how this looks. Clark then responded again, saying Griffin was a bad teammate and co-worker. Concurrently, Le’Veon Bell, who played with Clark in the NFL, called out that his first child was conceived with a white woman, which would presumably undercut his criticism of RGIII.

All of which is how we arrived at those two posts on Wednesday.

Again, all that stemmed from a hard foul in a WNBA game. I cannot stress this enough. Because it’s such a perfect microcosm of what people have been complaining about regarding how our mainstream sports media interacts with the WNBA and women’s sports in general.

Within a couple of days, the two women at the center of the story (which was overblown, to begin with) were erased entirely from the narrative, which was now centered on two men. That the story became this strange referendum on their Blackness based on the women in their lives only added to the absurdity.

Robert Griffin III lost because he proved he was the engagement baiter he’s been accused of being.

Ryan Clark lost because he took a story that had nothing to do with him, made it personal, and lost himself in the feedback loop.

Caitlin Clark and Angel Reese lost because they became afterthoughts in their own story.

We all lost because Clark and RGIII distracted everyone from the WNBA and any meaningful analysis or conversation.

Sadly, it’s a pattern that seems likely to be repeated many more times in the months ahead.