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🏈 More NFL antitrust Qs. Federal Communications Commission chair Brendan Carr once again cast doubt on the future of the NFL’s antitrust exemption, which allows it to pool teams’ games together for national distribution deals. Carr claimed the league is “tipping the scale” by putting too many games on streamers and harming fans.

🙄 Cam-Gate continues. The beef that might break up First Take rolled on through the weekend, with Cam Newton defending his right to bring sad, angry contrarian Jason Whitlock on for an interview as Ryan Clark calls Whitlock “evil” and rails against Newton for perpetuating a conflict between Whitlock and Stephen A. Smith.

📺 RIP FanDuel TV. The cable network owned by the FanDuel Sportsbook will reportedly shut down by the end of 2027. While studio shows like Up & Adams and Run It Back will not be affected, the horse-racing and international basketball productions aired by FD TV will “wind down” over 20 months, resulting in 100 job losses.

🏈 Preseason streaming. Speaking of the NFL cordoning off inventory on expensive digital platforms, the league is reportedly moving to allow teams to sell preseason games to streamers. Preseason games currently go for “low millions,” according to Sports Business Journal.

🎙️ Clinton out. Veteran ESPNer Clinton Yates is leaving his role as midday host on ESPN Radio and senior writer at Andscape after a decade. Yates, who primarily covered baseball across stints at ESPN and the Washington Post, confirmed his departure on X.

As NBC has returned to NBA and MLB broadcasting over the past year, staffers have frequently used the word “new-stalgia” to describe the ethos of the coverage.

An appeal to the old days, touched up with new voices and new visuals.

This week, when NBC debuted its MLB coverage as part of a three-year deal to replace much of ESPN’s old package, plenty of the classic stuff was there. Bob Costas delivered an opening monologue to get fans ready for the season, then hosted studio coverage from the field. Familiar music rang over the speakers. The network posted social media videos with footage of today’s stars spliced into NBC’s old imaging.

But just as with the network’s NBA coverage, the “new” has made a far larger imprint than the throwback elements.

In the case of NBC’s first few MLB broadcasts, this means the new “Inside the Pitch” concept. Nobody really knew about this concept until a conference call last week, when producer Sam Flood and lead announcer Jason Benetti unveiled it. The idea builds on NBC’s “On the Bench” and “Inside the Glass” concepts on NBA and NHL broadcasts, respectively. Within the big at-bats in a game, the former pitchers on the network’s roster drop in to break down the pitch-by-pitch approach against a hitter.

This week, studio analyst Clayton Kershaw got his first crack at taking viewers “Inside the Pitch,” but the real star driving the idea will be longtime reliever Adam Ottavino. The retired 16-year vet was tremendous on the call for the debut of Sunday Night Baseball on Peacock.

Ottavino walked the audience through the pitchers’ arm angles, pitch mix, and mindsets throughout what ended up being a dud between Cleveland and Seattle. I learned more from Ottavino in the early innings of the game than I have from any MLB broadcaster in years.

“Inside the Pitch” also makes tremendous use of the camera worn by umpires, an innovation that has been in place for several years but never served a real purpose until now. NBC can cut between the usual broadcast angle and the ump cam while Benetti and Ottavino narrate the at-bat. When ABS challenges arise, viewers are keyed into where a pitch was supposed to be, where a hitter was looking. More than just great theater, “Inside the Pitch” makes baseball’s latest rule change into a pop quiz.

Everyone in sports broadcasting is trying to innovate with improved tech and data. Prime Video has incredible quality and stats-backed visuals. Netflix wants to win the branding game. Most associate NBC with great storytelling. “Inside the Pitch” is the latest convergence between those storytelling instincts and the new possibilities offered by today’s cameras and analytics.

Kershaw showed the challenges of the new concept. When Benetti tapped him in, the Dodgers great occasionally sounded as if he was giving studio commentary dubbed over a key at-bat. The trick will be for Benetti to be direct with his questions, and for the analyst to be as specific as possible. This is Tony Romo before a goal-line snap. The point is to do a trick for the viewers and guess right.

If Ottavino, in particular, can do so consistently and build reps, we could soon see “Inside the Pitch” as an integral part of NBC’s baseball coverage. From there, the data visualization and production features will continue to develop.

The repetition of pitches over long innings can make baseball boring. NBC is working around that fact with one of the most innovative and intriguing broadcast features in a long time.

If you landed on Planet Earth this week from Mars or somewhere else in our universe, you would probably think that Alabama quarterback Ty Simpson sat just behind the President of the United States as the most relevant person in human existence.

And that’s just the way that ESPN likes it.

Awful Announcing’s Matt Yoder breaks down how the content machine around Dan Orlovsky’s take that Ty Simpson is a better prospect than projected No. 1 pick Fernando Mendoza was good, old-fashioned ESPN.

Click to read more on the saga and just how much ESPN pushed the Simpson conversation on its shows throughout the week.

“That’s why I’m sitting here, guys. That’s part of the reason why I’m sitting here. Because there is no loyalty anymore.” - TNT Sports commentator Bruce Pearl, reacting to the firing of Hubert Davis.

“There ought to be common sense, and common sense is not transphobic.” - Bob Costas, who anchored the Olympics for NBC Sports for many years, defending the IOC’s new, more restrictive policy toward trans athletes.

“I think what’s gone on in our country and what we’re doing to some of these amazing immigrants is really unfortunate, and it’s really sad.” - Charles Barkley, during an Elite Eight pregame show on CBS, reacting to a feature segment on UConn’s Alex Karaban.

“AI is coming, and if we’re using AI, who gives a shit? People are upset about it. … How about this: Shut the f*ck up and watch the fights.” - UFC president Dana White, defending the promotion’s choice to use AI-generated promotional materials.

After almost every episode of The Bill Simmons Podcast, listeners flock to social media to jeer Simmons for his latest absurd take or peculiar angle. Simmons is prone to surprising cultural references, outlandish comparisons, and puzzling gimmicks. Nobody does it like the Pod Father.

Yet the key to understanding Bill Simmons as a podcaster is to realize that all he wants is a good conversation.

Not to let The Ringer boss off the hook for some of his less thoughtful takes or lazy segments, but the point is never to win a debate or to simply be right. Simmons constructs his opinions and his prompts to generate the best conversation with his guest(s).

And the best Simmons guests take this baton and run with it.

For most of his run at The Ringer and since leaving ESPN, Simmons has best exemplified what he wants a podcast to feel like on Sunday nights. With “Cousin” Sal Iacono during the NFL season and Ryen Russillo during the NBA stretch run, Simmons not only created his ideal vision for sports talk content but also occupied a key role as a conversation starter in the sports media ecosystem.

As the relevance of TV and newspapers waned, Simmons’ podcast gained notoriety as a go-to for topic ideas across other national and local platforms. What Simmons discussed on Sunday nights rippled out across the industry. Shows with Iacono were funnier while Russillo's pods were a little more serious, but this was true across both.

When Russillo left The Ringer last fall and was replaced by Zach Lowe as Simmons’ go-to NBA guest, it appeared the podcast would trend even more in this direction. Lowe is a deeply sourced, incredibly knowledgeable analyst. The Sunday shows between February and June were ready to level up.

Until the opposite happened, Lowe has undeniably been worse with Simmons through a few months than Russillo ever was.

The answer, again, comes from a clear understanding of what Simmons wants from a podcast conversation. Where Russillo was an ultimate improviser, happy to be the butt of his own joke and surprisingly adept at teasing Simmons without crossing a line, Lowe may as well be Gregg Popovich on air. In multiple instances since taking over for Iacono, Lowe has outright turned down topic suggestions from Simmons on air.

This weekend, Lowe bristled at the construct of a “scary playoff teams draft” as Simmons introduced it. Rather than having fun with the very recognizably Simmonsy idea, the stodgy former ESPN writer questioned the draft's parameters and danced around his picks.

While Lowe can and will get better as he learns Simmons’ unique beats and adjusts to the weekly, live appearances, the episodes have been a letdown. Two of the top NBA commentators ever joining forces during a period of transition for the league and the media should be a huge opportunity. Aggregators should write down at least one bold take or newsy rumor from Lowe and Simmons per episode. Instead, the two seem to be negotiating the shape of the episode in real time each week.

With only a few weeks to go until the postseason, there’s a long way to go for Lowe to catch on to what it means to be a great copilot for a Simmons Sunday and redeem Year One of his new pairing with the Pod Father.