Welcome to The A Block, Awful Announcing’s daily newsletter where you’ll always find the latest sports media news, commentary, and analysis.

Did someone share this newsletter with you? Sign up for free to make sure you never miss it.

🎤 QUICK START ✍️

⚾ Why did the gambling arrests of Emmanuel Clase and Luis Ortiz of the Cleveland Guardians draw so much less attention than Terry Rozier and Chauncey Billups?

⚾ Speaking of the MLB gambling scandal, the league has worked with Ohio governor Mike Dewine and announced a limit of $200 for single-pitch prop bets. Dewine is calling on other leagues to enact similar limits.

🏈 Penn State and LSU in the Top 25? The Giants one spot behind the Patriots? ESPN’s Football Power Index is producing some wonky results.

💰 Someone is going to have to pay for that massive UFC-Paramount+ deal, right? It will soon be time for subscribers to do their part with another streaming service price hike.

🚨 LEADING OFF 🚨

Pat McAfee plays Donald Trump's game

On Tuesday, Pat McAfee interviewed Donald Trump on his syndicated ESPN show. The interview was unsurprising for multiple reasons. Trump ranted and raved, offering his typical recipe of bombast and falsehoods, condemning his political enemies, and running roughshod over the entire exercise.

And Pat McAfee usefully played along.

McAfee has consistently shown a willingness to be a friend to those in power. He touts his relationships with ESPN and Disney leaders such as Bob Iger, Jimmy Pitaro, and Burke Magnus. He’s offered a friendly platform to sports commissioners like Roger Goodell and Adam Silver. And at the same time, he’s often shown disregard for people in middle management, whether it be at ESPN, College GameDay producers, or the NFL.

As just one more recent example, instead of challenging Louisiana Governor Jeff Landry on his strange personal involvement in the LSU coaching debacle, McAfee conducted the congenial interview in a fake Cajun accent. It was more of the same niceties on Tuesday with Trump.

McAfee laughed along with Trump’s most outlandish comments, including another reference to his most infamous lie about having the 2020 presidential election stolen from him. It was almost as if he was with his high school buddies on set, and the class clown had just stood up and burped in the middle of class. (Yo! Can you believe Donny T. actually did that!) He had Trump perform some patriotic pantomiming on Veterans Day (despite his many appalling past comments about veterans). And he attempted to shoot the breeze with Trump on several sports topics, like the Ryder Cup, and his bizarre disdain for the new NFL kickoff rule - as if it were as unfashionable as the East Wing of the White House.

Almost immediately after the interview ended, McAfee tried to deflect any criticism he knew would inevitably come his way. He said that he reached out to the team of former President Barack Obama for an interview, presumably as a peace offering to satisfy both sides of the political aisle.

It was clear that McAfee knew, in this moment, that the die had been cast and that he had reneged on everything his show had stood for in the past. Maybe that happened already, as McAfee was already the chosen mouthpiece to exclusively report that Trump had planned to attend Sunday’s Lions-Commanders game. A day later, a report from ESPN’s Adam Schefter and Don Van Natta revealed that Trump’s larger play was an attempt to get the new DC football stadium named in his honor.

McAfee has frequently talked about sports as a great unifying force and attempted to stay above any political fray. In the wake of several controversial Aaron Rodgers appearances that had drawn condemnation for how he failed to rein in the conspiracy-riddled quarterback, the host once said, “I’m rather certain that nobody’s wanting to come hang out with us to hear us talk about politics. I think it’s probably a massive reason for our success, actually.”

Maybe McAfee now thinks he’s big enough and attached himself to enough influential people that he doesn’t have to listen to his own advice.

For a decade, the American societal fabric has been torn asunder by Donald Trump. He is the most uniquely polarizing presence in modern American history. His approval ratings are historically unpopular, he is dismantling democratic norms by the day through the empowerment of a second term, and any number of 10,000 things he’s done as president would be the most shocking of the vast majority of previous administrations combined.

To treat any interview of Trump on a sports program as something normal that should automatically be accepted under the guise of “obviously if we have the opportunity to talk to him, we’re going to,” as McAfee said, is willfully living a privileged existence in a world of fantasy that no longer exists. Trump being given free reign to talk about “sadists” that he removed from the VA, blaming Democrats for the government shutdown, and spreading his inflamed anti-immigration rhetoric is not the same as Barack Obama filling out an NCAA tournament bracket with Andy Katz.

After a decade of dominating American life, an interview with Pat McAfee is not going to change anyone’s opinion of Donald Trump. But it will change the public opinion of Pat McAfee.

Whether he likes it or not, McAfee is now a player in the political realm. Or better put, a pawn.

📣 SOCIAL EXPERIMENT 🌟

SportsCenter anchors Randy Scott and Gary Striewski took their bromance to a new level when Striewski made Scott a groomsman for his upcoming wedding live on the air.

NBC continued the dopamine rush of nostalgia by using Marv Albert to voiceover an intro for their 76ers-Celtics broadcast.

New York Jets coach Aaron Glenn took a dig at ESPN’s Rich Cimini and his reporting at his Tuesday press conference.

🗣️ NOTABLE QUOTABLES 🗣️

“He ruins everything. He has jumped so many sharks that it’s Seaworld.” - Detroit radio host Mike Valenti is completely over the Gus Johnson experience.

"I knew that I didn’t want to stay, and had an offer to stay. But I was like, 'Man, do I really want to do this for four more [years]? Is this the right time to leave?' And I very much feel great about when I left." - Kay Adams opened up about her decision to leave Good Morning Football for her own show at FanDuel.

"Nico was right to trade Luka, and the Mavericks were very, very wrong to fire Nico." - Skip Bayless is obviously the one person willing to defend Nico Harrison after he was fired by the Mavericks on Tuesday because how could he not be?

️‍️‍🔥The Closer🔥

Beware a Stephen A. Smith scorned

Stephen A. Smith has oftentimes devotes his own podcast to settling his many feuds throughout the worlds of sports, media, and politics. On Monday evening, it took a Shakespearean turn as he addressed former First Take colleague Cari Champion.

Et tu, Cari?

Smith responded to an Instagram video from Champion that itself was a response to Smith’s ongoing feud with another former ESPNer in Michelle Beadle. Beadle has been a frequent critic of Smith over the years and went to the well once again in calling him out over his farcical endorsement of a questionable solitaire app.

Champion pleaded with Smith to keep the “same energy” for Beadle as he does for several Black women that she named from Rep. Jasmine Crockett to Michelle Obama to herself and Jemele Hill.

Smith then… proved Champion’s point? After quickly explaining why he hasn’t responded to Beadle in 11 years, the First Take star spent almost ten minutes going through his entire personal and professional history with Cari Champion.

It wasn’t like his famous colorful takedown of Jason Whitlock. And it wasn’t like his many monologues aimed at a number of politicians, athletes, and commentators that he has had in his crosshairs. Instead, it was several minutes of Smith metaphorically pulling the knife from his own back, feeling as though Champion had personally betrayed him by questioning his integrity.

In some ways, it was as raw and as human as Stephen A. Smith has sounded, maybe ever. But it still had all those elements that make others question his outsized presence and influence.

Smith wondered if Champion just wanted attention after leaving ESPN. He made it clear he was the one responsible for giving her an opportunity in the first place. And it was all reminiscent of the cryptic way in which he addressed Molly Qerim’s still-unexplained departure from First Take. The fact that he is so comfortable talking so freely about the professional situations of his former female colleagues and how much power he had (and has) over them is disconcerting.

But maybe it’s as simple as this. Stephen A. Smith is incapable of not having the last word. And Stephen A. Smith won’t let an opportunity go by without boasting of the power and influence that he has in the world today. Maybe if he does become president some day, he can finally get an interview on The Pat McAfee Show.