💊 The Terry Bradshaw experience. Fox NFL analyst Terry Bradshaw appeared on The Joe Rogan Experience on Tuesday. Who knew his folksy charm and lived-experience common sense would be the thing that makes Rogan’s commitment to bad science look so silly?

🏛️ Dana’s decision. Typically, the press looking to cover marquee events held at the White House receives credentials directly from the White House. Not this Sunday, however, when UFC Freedom 250 takes place on the South Lawn. According to a report by Scott Nover in The Washington Post, the White House has ceded control of press credentialing to the UFC, and only reporters approved by the Dana White-run fighting promotion will be able to cover the event on premises.

🏀 The Battle of New York. Stephen A. Smith got everything he’s been dreaming of for the past two years when Donald Trump took the bait on his criticism over the president attending Game 3 of the NBA Finals. Trump insulted Smith’s IQ (his go-to insult for people of color and women), and Smith responded, calling out Trump for “ducking him” and doubling down on his critique that the president’s presence disrupted New York City.

🎙️ Time to shine. On Tuesday, TIME revealed its inaugural TIME100 Sports, a list recognizing the 100 most influential figures shaping the global sports landscape. Current athletes made up much of the list, but some sports media folks made the cut, including Mike Tirico, IShowSpeed, Pablo Torre, Pat McAfee, Shams Charania, and Bill Simmons.

🏈 Sticks no longer moved. Move The Sticks launched when Daniel Jeremiah and Bucky Brooks, two NFL Network analysts with scouting backgrounds, shared a passion for talent evaluation and had an idea for a podcast. More than a decade and 1,000-plus episodes later, they announced Monday it’s coming to an end. Jeremiah noted that he has a new podcast in the works.

Read more of today’s top stories at Awful Announcing.

You didn’t need to know that ESPN is reportedly negotiating an extension in the range of $60 to $65 million per year to know how much they’re in the Pat McAfee business.

That the reported deal would include an expanded role and potentially more NFL coverage wouldn’t be a shock to anyone who has followed McAfee’s meteoric ascent.

There’s no shock or surprise in the news that ESPN wants to lock the media superstar down before Netflix or other suitors offer him the moon.

His daily show has the best guest list in town and gobbles up valuable social media metrics. He’s a large part of why College GameDay has gone to the next level. And for all intents and purposes, he’s the face of the company and favored son to all of its suits, much as he might fight that perception.

By all accounts, ESPN wants McAfee front and center any chance it can get, and with good reason.

Except, coincidentally, we were reminded Monday that McAfee is, in fact, fallible.

Last month’s primetime special edition of The Pat McAfee Show on ESPN drew just 278,000 viewers across its two-hour window beginning at 8 p.m. ET, per data from Sports Business Journal. The special show featured commissioners of six different sports leagues and was billed as a “State of the Union” for sports. The entire program came together in about a day, after ESPN needed to fill programming following the New York Knicks’ sweep of the Cleveland Cavaliers in the Eastern Conference Finals.

Of course, this doesn’t include social media numbers, which tend to be the focus of McAfee’s stated impact (inasmuch as you can trust what any social media company considers a “view” or “impression”).

Still, as our Drew Lerner noted, “perhaps the primetime show does outline some of the limits to McAfee’s stardom… The daytime sports host doesn’t necessarily translate to ESPN’s nighttime audience, which generally expects to see a live sporting event at that time. Even if McAfee is interviewing some of the most important figures in sports, there appears to be limited interest in that type of content, at least among ESPN’s primetime viewers.”

All of this is small potatoes to ESPN, which would likely have drawn an even smaller audience had McAfee not stepped up to steward that evening’s programming. The program achieved hype and virality, far more than any filler would have.

What we can take away from the data is that while McAfee remains a boffo box-office draw for the Worldwide Leader, there are limits to his gravitational pull. In a few days, we’ll find out if NBA audiences also shied away from spending primetime with him as part of his All-Access broadcast of Game 3 of the NBA Finals. McAfee spent a lot of time explaining and almost apologizing for that altcast beforehand, so perhaps even he knew that it was a bridge too far for some audiences.

Plus, as we’ve seen with the ManningCast, the appeal of altcasts might be waning in general.

Perhaps the takeaway here is that while McAfee is the brightest star, he is not the entire sky. That’s actually a great lesson for him and ESPN to take to heart. He is a ratings magnet and social media maven, but he can’t be everything.

Of course, you don’t pay a guy $65 million per year if you don’t plan on using him for as much as possible, so perhaps it's all moot anyway.

“I cannot stand this guy. I hate his outfits. I hate his face. I hate his hair. I hate everything about him. I think he’s just, like, such a try-hard.” - The Ringer’s David Jacoby on Victor Wembanyama.

“It’s holier-than-thou. I hate it. It’s so hypocritical. Every league, every sport, our bosses, they’re in bed with gamblers, plain and simple.” - Michael Wilbon on the hypocrisy surrounding the Texas Tech-Brendan Sorsby boycotts.

“Accountability that only activates when you get caught isn’t accountability. And Mike Vrabel hasn’t taken any accountability. He’s only spoken publicly about what he’s doing privately as a person.” - Crisis communication expert Molly McPherson on Mike Vrabel.

“No, sh*t no. That had nothing to do with it. The Spurs outplayed them. The Knicks gotta find a way to get off to a better start. But it was one of the coolest environments I’ve ever been a part of.” - Charles Barkley on Donald Trump’s impact on the Knicks’ Game 3 loss.

“You can’t have this standalone one guy. What happens to the next guy? And the next guy? You’ve got legal precedent here. You’ve got a green light to bet. Like, this is crazy.” - Dan Patrick on Brandon Sorsby being allowed to play for Texas Tech.

Alan Shipnuck has spent three decades covering golf for various media outlets, most notably Sports Illustrated and, most recently, Skratch. He’s also the author of ten books. His latest is a biography of Rory McIlroy titled Rory: The Heartache and Triumph of Golf’s Most Human Superstar.

It’s already been a memorable year for McIlroy, who won the Masters for the second straight year. After finishing tied for seventh at the PGA Championship, he now turns his attention to next week’s U.S. Open at Shinnecock Hills Golf Club in Southampton, N.Y.

Awful Announcing’s Michael Grant caught up with Shipnuck to discuss the U.S. Open and McIlroy. You can read the full interview here.

The NFL has long defended Sunday Ticket’s pricing and structure as reasonable, arguing that it is a premium product geared toward avid fans. Avid here means the fan is an NFL junkie, interested in all of the league’s games, not just a displaced Dallas Cowboys booster located outside of the team’s broadcast zone, only interested in Dallas’ games.

This paradigm is an NFL defense in the ongoing lawsuit brought by restaurants, bars, and average fans against the league over Sunday Ticket’s pricing and refusal to offer single-team packages. The league argues that games are widely available to a team’s fans, and that Sunday Ticket is really only serving a small subset of fans who want more than just their favorite team. Now, a House Judiciary committee may have given the plaintiffs a new data point to use in the long-running litigation.

The House Judiciary’s subcommittee on the Administrative State, Regulatory Reform, and Antitrust released a 27-page report earlier this week, previewing Wednesday’s sports broadcasting hearing, that revealed the panel had done its own research to find that seven out of every 10 Sunday Ticket subscribers buy it to follow only one team.

“The Committee and Subcommittee obtained data from YouTube, the current exclusive Sunday Ticket distributor,” according to the report.

Drew Lerner digs into the details and how the 27-page report is a heavy broadside against the NFL that could leave Sunday Ticket very exposed.