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🙏 RIP Lou. Lou Holtz, the only coach to lead six different schools to bowl games and a figure who went on to be one of the faces of ESPN’s college football coverage from 2005 to 2014, has died. His family confirmed his passing on Wednesday. He was 89 years old.

🦚 Benetti at the ready. NBC announced Jason Benetti will serve as the network’s lead MLB play-by-play announcer on Sunday Night Baseball. He’ll be joined by a rotating cast of local analysts throughout the season. The 42-year-old broadcaster will also call other sports for the network, which will likely include college football and college basketball.

📺 Sage talks. CBS News editor-in-chief Bari Weiss reportedly “repeatedly” floated former ESPN anchor turned right-wing provocateur Sage Steele as a possible replacement for Tony Dokoupil on CBS Mornings. Dokoupil recently took the CBS Evening News job. There are no ongoing discussions to bring Steele on board. CBS Mornings re-signed co-hosts Gayle King and Nate Burleson yesterday.

The NCAA Tournament is right around the corner. And as is tradition, CBS Sports and TNT Sports gave us a Selection Show of their own, revealing the eight broadcast teams that made the cut for this year’s March Madness tournament. We’ll take you through all of the notable promotions and demotions below, but first check out each broadcast crew along with their assignments. Changes from last year’s broadcast teams are bolded.

Play-by-play: Ian Eagle
Analysts: Bill Raftery, Grant Hill
Reporter: Tracy Wolfson

Play-by-play: Brian Anderson
Analyst: Jim Jackson
Reporter: Allie LaForce

Play-by-play: Kevin Harlan
Analysts: Robbie Hummel, Stan Van Gundy
Reporter: Lauren Shehadi

Play-by-play: Andrew Catalon
Analyst: Steve Lappas
Reporter: Evan Washburn

Play-by-play: Brandon Gaudin
Analyst: Chris Webber
Reporter: Andy Katz

Play-by-play: Spero Dedes
Analyst: Jim Spanarkel
Reporter: Jon Rothstein

Play-by-play: Tom McCarthy
Analysts: Candace Parker, Dan Bonner
Reporter: AJ Ross

Play-by-play: Brad Nessler
Analyst: Wally Szczerbiak
Reporter: Jared Greenberg

New York
Hosts: Nate Burleson, Adam Zucker, Ernie Johnson (Final Four/National Championship only)
Analysts: Clark Kellogg, Charles Barkley, Kenny Smith, Renee Montgomery

Atlanta
Host: Adam Lefkoe
Analysts: Bruce Pearl, Jamal Mashburn, Jalen Rose, Seth Davis

As you can see, much of the shuffling happened towards the bottom of the roster. But let’s start with what is arguably the most high-profile change, which is the elevation of Robbie Hummel onto Kevin Harlan’s team.

Hummel is a rising star in this industry and the recipient of the 2025 Awfulie Award for Best College Basketball Analyst. He won that award for good reason. The volume and quality of his assignments have gone up dramatically in recent years.

Hummel regularly calls some of the top college games for CBS, and even added a new role this season as one of the on-bench analysts for Peacock’s Monday night NBA broadcasts.

In December, our Ben Koo described Hummel as “a sharp basketball mind who is concise and authoritative in his commentary,” and, “a no-nonsense announcer who clearly loves the game and has quickly distinguished himself as someone with no ceiling as a broadcaster.” Fellow sports media analyst Andrew Marchand tabbed Hummel as the “heir apparent” to Bill Raftery on CBS’s college basketball broadcasts.

Last year, Hummel was only assigned March Madness games during the first weekend, so his elevation to Harlan’s team is a clear vote of confidence by CBS and TNT.

What was positive news for Hummel was unfortunate news for Dan Bonner, the longtime college hoops broadcaster that has made stops at just about every network throughout his four-decade-long TV career. Bonner shifts down to Tom McCarthy’s team to work alongside Candace Parker, who moves from the studio to the booth this year. It’s the first time Bonner will not call a regional final since 2014.

Bonner and Parker replace two analysts that were formerly assigned to McCarthy’s team: Debbie Antonelli and Steve Smith. Both have been staples of the CBS/TNT coverage for the better part of the last decade. Antonelli released a statement expressing her gratitude for the opportunity and wishing her teammates the best.

One team that is entirely new this year is that led by play-by-play voice Brandon Gaudin. Gaudin, alongside Chris Webber, replace the team formerly led by Lisa Byington, who last year called games alongside Hummel and Jalen Rose. Byington, who has also been a staple voice of March Madness for many years, will not return this season, while Rose is moving from the booth to the Atlanta studio.

The last of the major changes from a game broadcast standpoint is Wally Szczerbiak’s move from the studio onto Brad Nessler’s team. Szczerbiak replaces Brendan Haywood to round out the first and second round assignments.

There will always be nits to pick when it comes to how CBS and TNT decide to allocate broadcasters over the first weekend of the tournament. But it’s difficult to argue with the teams they’re putting up through the final two weekends. The only change was made to elevate Hummel, who is widely viewed as one of the top analysts in college basketball, at the expense of Bonner, who is great in his own right but has been calling games since the ‘80s.

I’d be remiss not to mention perhaps the best part of yesterday’s announcement, Dick Vitale will call a First Four game alongside Charles Barkley, with Brian Anderson on play-by-play. We already knew this was coming, but it’s incredible to see that Vitale, at 86-years-old, will call his first NCAA Tournament game for a U.S. television audience in his career.

Awful Announcing contributor Manny Soloway argues it’s time for TV networks to put a little respect on college baseball by giving the sport more windows in key spots.

Roch Cholowsky of UCLA might be one of the first names called in the 2026 MLB Draft. Recent high-profile MLB draft prospects, such as Nick Kurtz of the Athletics and Paul Skenes of the Pirates, reached the majors in only their second professional season. If this were basketball or football, most of Cholowsky’s games would be on national television.

A recent report from Baseball America found that baseball players are reaching the Major Leagues much earlier than ever before. In theory, that should mean more interest in college baseball. But television coverage of the sport is not moving quickly enough.

Of UCLA’s 54 regular-season games, only four will be nationally televised. The remaining 50 will primarily air on the inaccessible B1G+, with a few others streaming on ESPN+ or FloSports.

One of the nationally televised games was on February 20 against TCU. However, the game was announced for FS1 the same day of the broadcast. With no advanced promotion and no time to build anticipation, the result was predictable: just 50,000 people watched, according to data from the TV Media Blog Substack. By comparison, 200,000 people watched the Mets and Yankees play their first spring training game on MLB Network. The next UCLA nationally televised game is not until April 15 on Big Ten Network.

College baseball and Major League Baseball would both benefit from stronger coverage, much like the NBA and college basketball, and the NFL and college football.

Read Manny’s full column here.

A recent study by Wall Street investment firm Guggenheim Securities comparing the value of the NBA’s and NFL’s current media deals has been making the rounds this week.

The top-line takeaway from the analysis is that NBA broadcasters are paying approximately triple the cost per viewer hour for their rights than NFL broadcasters are paying for their rights.

More simply put, if you add up all of the hours people spent watching the NBA in a given season, then take the price that broadcasters are paying for NBA content (about $6.9 billion per year), broadcasters are paying about $3.55 for every hour a person watches the NBA. The same equation, when done for the NFL, comes out to about $1.27 per viewer hour.

Based on Guggenheim’s calculations, NBA broadcasters are paying about a 2.8x premium for NBA rights as compared to the NFL. As one would expect, these numbers are being used to suggest that the NBA’s broadcast partners paid way too much for their current media rights deals. And maybe they’re partly right.

It doesn’t make much sense that broadcasters would pay that much more for the NBA on a per viewer basis. These aren’t charities. If the acquisition cost of getting one person to watch an hour of an NBA game is $3.55, a broadcaster needs to make sure that viewer is worth more than $3.55 an hour through ad sales and distribution fees in order to turn a profit.

In reality, that equation would be impossible to formulate. But the theory rings true.

If broadcasters plan on making money from the NBA deal, that would suggest that the NFL, a ratings juggernaut by comparison, should be able to command similar rates per viewer hour, right?

Sure. That’s one of the reasons the NFL plans to take its media rights to market early. It feels its rights are undervalued based on the current market, which was by and large set through the NBA deal. But it’s not that simple. Not all audiences are created equal.

The NBA, for instance, commands a younger audience than the NFL. Thus, NBA audiences are more valuable to advertisers on a per viewer basis than an NFL audience.

There are also diminishing returns when audiences get as large as the NFL’s do. Many advertisers that can afford to buy space on an NBA telecast are priced out of an NFL telecast. Fewer companies fighting for ad space means broadcasters can’t charge the same rates per viewer. It’s the same reason why, somewhat counterintuitively, Super Bowl ads are some of the “cheapest” on a per viewer basis. So few companies can afford to spend $8 million on a 30-second spot, and so few companies see the value in advertising to a broad-base audience rather than targeting a specific niche, that Super Bowl ads are very affordable from a purely cost-per-viewer standpoint.

Now, let’s be clear, the NBA perhaps being slightly more attractive as an advertising vehicle doesn’t account for the discrepancy seen in the Guggenheim study. As a general rule of thumb, advertising accounts for just a quarter of revenue for networks, while distribution fees account for the other 75%. And the NFL drives distribution fees way more than the NBA does.

In reality, the NFL’s rights are almost certainly undervalued and the NBA’s rights are almost certainly overvalued (at least right now).

See, the thing about the Guggenheim study is that they used average annual value to determine cost per viewer hour. The NBA is in Year 1 of an 11-year deal. On average, the league will collect $6.9 billion per year in media rights, but that figure is much lower in 2026 than it will be in 2036. So broadcasters aren’t paying $3.55 per viewer hour yet.

By comparison, the NFL just finished Year 3 of its deals, and is therefore much closer to its average annual value figures. This serves to exacerbate the discrepancy in the Guggenheim study.

From a public perception standpoint, media rights deals almost always look like a horrible overpay at the beginning and a massive bargain by the end. That’s because we don’t ever get to see the exact figures networks are paying each year, just the average payment over a decade-long period.

This is all a long-winded way of saying, don’t put a ton of stock into the Guggenheim study. It’s eye-opening for sure, and it gets to the crux of why the NFL is eager to renegotiate its deals so soon. But it’s not exactly a perfect comparison. The same exercise will be much more telling after the NFL completes its new rights deals.