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🎤 QUICK START ✍️

🍕 Family Guy spoofs Dave Portnoy. It’s one thing to interview the President of the United States, but another to be spoofed on a nationally televised cartoon. And if ever there was proof of Dave Portnoy’s place in mainstream pop culture, it came on Sunday when Family Guy spoofed the Barstool Sports founder — albeit, not with the most flattering portrayal.

🏈 McAfee reverses course. Weeks after revealing that he wouldn’t be taking his show on location for the 2025 NFL Draft in Green Bay, Pat McAfee is seemingly reversing course. On Monday’s episode of The Pat McAfee Show, the former All-Pro punter left the door open for the possibility that he and his crew will be on site for the draft, despite whatever issues with the NFL may linger.

🏀 LeBron to appear on McAfee. Speaking of McAfee, the former Indianapolis Colts punter has booked a helluva guest for later this week. On Monday’s episode of PMS, he revealed that LeBron James will be joining the program at an unspecified time and date in the coming days. The 4-time MVP’s upcoming appearance on ESPN airwaves (albeit via simulcast) is especially notable as it comes on the heels of his feud with Stephen A. Smith, who reportedly had his own issues with McAfee, which he later denied.

🚨LEADING OFF 🚨

R.I.P. Cinderella

In theory, March Madness is built on upsets. It’s literally in the name.

And yet, save for three first-round mid-major victories (four if you still count Gonzaga) and 10th-seeded Arkansas’ unexpected run to the Sweet 16, there wasn’t much from the opening weekend of the 2025 men’s NCAA Tournament that would qualify as “madness” — at least in the traditional sense.

Sure, there were a handful of exciting games and even a thrilling (albeit controversial) buzzer-beater finish to Maryland’s Round of 32 victory over Colorado State. But heading into the Sweet 16, we’re left with a field consisting of four No. 1 seeds, three No. 2 seeds, two No. 3 seeds, three No. 4 seeds, one No. 5 seed, two No. 6 seeds and one No. 10 seed — all of which hail from power conferences.

It didn’t take long for sports media’s talking heads to diagnose what happened, with the most prevalent theory being that NIL and the transfer portal have benefitted college sports’ big boys at the expense of the mid-majors. And truth be told, it makes a lot of sense: of course college basketball’s bluebloods would only get better with the ability to cherry-pick the best players from the smaller schools.

Is that such a bad thing?

As our Drew Lerner points out, probably not, as the ratings certainly suggest that college basketball is at its best when the big brands reign supreme. Sure, it’s fun to root for the little guys in Rounds 1 and 2; less so when you’re watching inevitable blowouts as the tournament progresses.

Of course, there’s something to be said for Stephen A. Smith’s suggestion that one of the biggest appeals of March Madness is the idea that everybody has a chance. But the reality is that despite the sentiment on social media that favors the underdogs, it’s college basketball’s bluebloods who attract the most eyeballs. And as is the case with most aspects of the industry in 2025, the rich are only getting richer in more ways than one.

🎤 MEDIA MOMENTS ✍️ 

• When UFC heads to Montreal for its UFC 315 pay-per-view on May 10, it will do so without one of its top personalities. Citing the political tensions between the United States and Canada, Joe Rogan says he’ll no longer visit The Great White North — including for UFC shows — joking that he’d “rather go to Russia.”

• To this point, Scott Van Pelt has performed his duties as the host of TGL remotely. That, however, won’t be the case this week, with the ESPN star on site in the SoFi Center for Monday and Tuesday’s TGL Finals Series between Atlanta Drive GC and New York Golf Club, as first reported by Josh Carpenter of Sports Business Journal.

• For the first 22 years of their lives, Ben and Sam Hutchens were inseparable. But while the twin brothers now live nearly 700 miles apart, they were reunited on Sunday as the two teams they cover, Ole Miss and Iowa State, squared off in the second round of the NCAA Tournament in Milwaukee.

📱 SOCIAL MEDIA POST OF THE DAY 🏆️ 

When Bill Simmons and Colin Cowherd finally share a screen

👀 AROUND AA 🗳️ 

Vote in our Best Broadcast Booth Elite Eight

Much like the NCAA men’s and women’s basketball tournaments, our Best Broadcast Booth bracket is continuing to take shape. And unlike the former, ours has even had a Cinderella run in the form of Al Michaels and Kirk Herbstreit’s Thursday Night Football booth moving on to the Elite Eight.

The Amazon Prime TNF team will take on Sunday Night Football’s Mike Tirico and Cris Collinsworth, with the winner taking on whoever emerges from the matchup between Fox’s Joe Davis and Greg Olsen and the CBS golf crew of Jim Nantz and Trevor Immelman. On the other side of the bracket, CBS’ men’s basketball squad of Ian Eagle, Grant Hill and Bill Raftery will face TNT’s Kevin Harlan and Reggie Miller, while ESPN’s top NFL (Joe Buck and Troy Aikman) and college football teams (Chris Fowler and Kirk Herbstreit) will also square off.

Who should advance to our Final Four? Vote here.