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🎤 QUICK START ✍️

⚾ MLB.TV for sale? According to Andrew Marchand of The Athletic, MLB is exploring a deal for its MLB.tv out-of-market game service, hoping to license the service to a major network or streaming platform. Commissioner Rob Manfred has set a loose deadline of 2028 by which he hopes to combine a majority of teams’ local rights to sell them to a streamer.

🏈 Being charitable. Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce has done plenty of charity work around the Kansas City community, but he spoke out Wednesday to refute a recent “nonsense” story that made false claims about his charitable efforts. “Some false claims were thrown out there that I was doing something in the community that I was not.”

🏌️ Golf shot clock? A pitch clock has done wonders for Major League Baseball, and Scott Van Pelt, ESPN’s host of the Masters, believes golf can benefit from the addition of its own shot clock. “Because the game does take a long time to get moving,” he told Dan Patrick.

🚨LEADING OFF 🚨

The Pat McAfee grievance hour

Pat McAfee’s Big Night AHT pulled out all the stops in front of an announced crowd of 12,582 fans in Pittsburgh’s PPG Paints Arena. The variety show atmosphere saw a bevy of celebrity guests and musical performers, including Shane Gillis, Snoop Dogg, WWE’s Michael Cole, singer Jelly Roll, and the ever-available Oz the Mentalist. The pièce de résistance showcased Pittsburgh sports legends, including Ben Roethlisberger, Paul Skenes, and Sidney Crosby, attempting to throw a football to give away money to lucky attendees.

Before that, the show opened with McAfee emerging from a cloud of smoke on the runway stage. He regaled his audience with a part monologue, part stand-up routine. While the topics and stories evolved, one aspect remained consistent throughout his diatribe: McAfee aired his grievances.

At this point, it's cliche for a comedian to do a stand-up special called “Canceled” or “Cancel This!” while speaking to a huge crowd and getting millions of views on a worldwide streaming service. But that’s essentially what the opening of McAfee’s live show was.

McAfee discussed the many times he’d been criticized, including when Brett Favre sued him for defamation, being booed by Canadians, and the potential legal entanglement he finds himself in regarding Ole Miss student Mary Kate Cornett. Well, kind of.

“I never ever want to be a part of anything negative that is part of anyone’s life,” he said, dancing around names and specifics. “We will try to figure that out and make some sort of silver lining in a very terrible situation.”

As he often does, McAfee tried to deflect blame for any harm he’s caused by saying that even when he messes up, it’s “in the sense of being positive and trying to make people laugh,” absolving himself of responsibility for any harm. The onus is on you to know that when he dedicates a segment to questioning your gender, he’s just joshin’ about.

He even told the packed arena full of adoring fans, "I've been canceled 1,000 times." He did the thing!

McAfee also told the story of the time Aaron Rodgers appeared on his show, which was being broadcast on ESPN, and inferred that ABC’s Jimmy Kimmel was a pedophile.

“I had the right-leaning influencers and the right-leaning political people saying ‘Pat McAfee is getting bent over a table by Mickey F*cking Mouse.’ Goofy tagged himself in. ‘This woke coward won’t stand up for his friend,’” he said, before explaining that Rodgers agreed to return to his show a few days later.

“Well, the right-leaning folks. ‘Okay, we’re not gonna make up for everything that we said about you terribly, but we’ll kinda cool off.” Let’s take that sh*t to the left side. All of a sudden, the progressive Democratic party says, ‘This ***hole needs to be deplatformed because he’s putting conspiracies on the air that are gonna kill people.’ I was told a lot of things that evening by left-leaning people. I was told a lot of things on Tuesday by the right-leaning people. And on Thursday, that countdown hit, I looked right at that f*cking camera and said ‘Hello beautiful people and welcome to our humble abode, the Thunderdome.”

“Both political parties, back-to-back nights, called me the worst human on earth. If I wasn’t from [Pittsburgh], I don’t think I’d be able to show up on Thursday.”

McAfee goes out of his way to point out the many ways he’s been criticized, but never seems interested in interrogating whether or not his critics might have a point.

The former NFL punter eventually moved on from his grievances, though he did make an odd reference after Snoop Dogg and Wiz Khalifa performed. He said it was important that this event showcased people who’d dealt with “rumors on the internet.”

It was classic McAfee, positioning himself as some poor victim of an agenda against a guy who just wants to make the world a better place, and certainly not someone who is just as guilty as anyone of taking shots, punching down, and demanding fealty simply because of his stature.

Comparing McAfee to Donald Trump feels a bit much, even to me. Still, watching the Big Night AHT, it was hard not to make the mental parallel at times. especially when the camera pans back to show him holding court in the middle of the arena, looking more like a megachurch pastor than a sports talk host.

Couple that visual with McAfee praising himself while taking shots at nameless critics, and it often felt a little too familiar.

👀 AROUND AA 📰

Grade the 2025 NCAA Tournament announcers

With March Madness wrapped up, we want your opinions on how the men’s basketball NCAA Tournament announcers did. There were some changes this year from CBS and TNT Sports, most notably with Jalen Rose joining Lisa Byington and Robbie Hummel, and Steve Smith moving from working with Byington and Hummel to replacing Avery Johnson with Tom McCarthy and Debbie Antonelli. Click here to make your grades. It will be open through 10 p.m. ET/7 p.m. PT on Friday, April 11. The rankings will be announced at Awful Announcing early next week.

The legal case involving Ohio State beat writers Austin Ward and Jeremy Birmingham and their now-former employer has taken another turn. An amended lawsuit suggests that the two OSU insiders didn’t just mishandle podcast funds, but admitted to taking money that was supposed to go directly to players for paid appearances. Sam Neumann has more on this developing story. 

As the Trump administration has endured recent turmoil, Dave Portnoy has become a prominent voice for both sides of the aisle. Despite his status as a public supporter of President Donald Trump, the Barstool Sports founder hasn’t been shy to be critical of the 45th and 47th president. And Portnoy’s commentary has made him an unlikely media darling for the left and adversary to those on the right, both sides of which have clipped portions of his rants to prove their points.

During Wednesday’s edition of his Davey Day Trader stream, Portnoy made note of liberals who he says have taken his comments out of context and conservatives who have criticized him, some even going as far as to send him death threats. In doing so, he debuted a new strategy to prevent such clips from going viral, repeatedly inserting the phrase “don’t clip this” throughout his commentary.

Naturally, Awful Announcing clipped all the instances of “don’t clip this.” Enjoy.

📣 NOTABLE QUOTABLES 🗣️

•  “I would say he’s the most underachieving golfer in the history of the game.” - Brandel Chamblee on *checks notes* Tiger Woods.

• “Is it strange that my wife is rooting hard for Joe Davis?” - Ian Eagle, on whether his wife will be rooting for him or son Noah for the Sports Emmy

• “I don’t really like to answer rhetorical questions.” - Justin Fields when asked a hypothetical question about the Jets drafting a quarterback.

• “It’s a fanbase that feels cheated. He expected — and I think he feels like he was stabbed in the back because of the way it was done.” - Doris Burke on Luka Dončić’s return to Dallas after being traded Donči.ć

📈 DATA DUMP 📊

• After a lackluster opening week, UFL viewership is still struggling to gain footing. Against significant college basketball competition on both the men’s and women’s sides, the UFL averaged 640,000 viewers between its primetime broadcast windows Friday and Saturday on Fox and ABC, respectively. Week 2 viewership was up slightly versus Week 1’s broadcast network average (637,000 viewers), though still well off the UFL’s year-long average of 816,000 viewers across all networks last regular season.

• Fox’s debut postseason college hoops tournament, the College Basketball Crown, delivered some ho-hum viewership figures. Sunday’s College Basketball Crown title game aired at 5 p.m. ET on Fox and drew 822,000 viewers for Nebraska’s win over UCF. The audience was 62% bigger than the NIT championship game Thursday night on ESPN (508,000 viewers).

🔥 THE CLOSER 🔥

On Journalistic Objectivity

On Tuesday night, I wrote about the topic of journalistic objectivity as it related to a University of Florida student reporter who celebrated and cheered the men’s basketball team’s national title while sitting in media row on Monday. That garnered a lot of strong reactions, some who felt it was unbecoming of a reporter, and some who thought it was not a big deal.

I shared some thoughts, and I figured if anyone would appreciate a discussion on the value of sports journalists’ objectivity, it would be the people who signed up for this newsletter. So here you go.

Since everyone seems to be offering strong opinions on the matter, I’ll share mine as well, but I’ll do it in the form of a question.

Would it have been okay for [University of Florida student reporter Talia] Baia to boo?

Would it have been acceptable for her to boo the referees over a perceived bad call or jeer Houston players as they walked by after beating her beloved Gators?

Of course not. She would have been universally excoriated for doing so. But there’s no essential difference between her cheering and booing because both are activities of a fan.

Indeed, the lines between journalist, blogger, social media user, and content creator have blurred recently. I know this as well as anyone. I’m a longtime blogger who gained media credentials to many press conferences and media opportunities. I’ve sat in plenty of press boxes and media rows. It’s just common sense that you set your fandom aside to serve the journalistic needs of the situation. If I wanted to cheer, I waited until I was somewhere else.

While the media game has changed in many ways, and there needs to be room for content creators and non-journalists who cover sports, there is also still a need to protect journalistic objectivity. Because objectivity protects you as a journalist. It shields you from claims of biased coverage or impartiality. It allows you to speak freely and honestly because you have the integrity that comes with space between you and the subject. Most importantly, it allows you to be critical when necessary without fear.

Conversely, it also acts as a check and balance on you, the media member. It informs your audience that you won’t report rumors or biased information because it might benefit your subject. It ensures that your school, head coach, or players can’t easily influence your coverage by bribing you with fan-related incentives.

And, quite frankly, it keeps you from looking silly in front of a lot of people.

Journalistic objectivity and impartiality are good qualities; we should strive to maintain them. We can also accommodate those who want to cover a team they root for, but there is still a delineation between them. The notion that one has to die for the other to live doesn’t make sense.

So, ultimately, I will side with those who think it was inappropriate for Baia to cheer while sitting with the media. I don’t think she should be punished or lambasted on social media. It’s less of a “how dare you” and more of a “hey, maybe next time don’t do that” scenario.

Thousands of student reporters nationwide do this all year long and, for the most part, understand the need to remain objective. If they don’t, they also know that the option to be a different kind of media member now exists that can co-exist with reporters.

You can read the whole piece here.