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🎤 QUICK START ✍️

🏈 ESPN backpedals on Arch. It took less than a month for College GameDay and the broader college football crew at the Worldwide Leader to be all the way out on Texas quarterback Arch Manning. While Pat McAfee and Co. offered a mea culpa for “crowning” Manning before he took a snap against elite competition, reporter Pete Thamel showed a straw poll in which Manning received just one vote among CFB personnel staffers as the top QB in the country.

🧐 Simmons backs Kimmel. In an episode of his podcast last Friday, Bill Simmons expressed strong support for his longtime buddy Jimmy Kimmel after the ABC host’s suspension. “This is censorship,” said the Ringer boss, who wrote for Kimmel’s show in its inaugural season and shares an agent with Kimmel.

🏀 Leaving Inside as-is. In a yet to be released podcast conversation, ESPN content head Burke Magnus reportedly said he intends to keep Inside the NBA’s classic postgame shows as close to their TNT format as possible — including the long runtime. How ESPN will pull this off or where the late-night hours of the show might air is seemingly still being sorted out in Bristol.

😬 A quieter Wrestlepalooza. The first WWE premier live event on the ESPN app came and went with many of the biggest cable providers in the U.S. still not having struck deals with the company to allow subscribers to authenticate their cable subscriptions on the app. These users were not able to watch Wrestlepalooza unless they purchased a separate ESPN subscription.

⚾ Kershaw goes out on Apple. Future Hall of Famer Clayton Kershaw and the Los Angeles Dodgers announced the pitcher’s looming retirement ahead of the team’s final home series of the regular season so that fans could scoop up tickets for his final home start last Friday. However, the game was blacked out on SportsNet L.A. because it was an Apple TV+ exclusive. So Apple announcer Wayne Randazzo did some reporting to share what SportsNet’s Joe Davis would have said on the call.

🚨LEADING OFF 🚨

Pat McAfee takes the ‘GameDay’ torch from Lee Corso

Leave it to Lee Corso himself to say if you haven’t caught on: When the legendary face of College GameDay retired last month, he passed the torch of the signature ESPN college football show to Pat McAfee on his way out.

Corso spelled it out in a touching phone call recorded and posted by McAfee on Sunday. This weekend on GameDay, McAfee put together by far the most grandiose segment standing in as the show’s closer sans Corso. The high dive at The U doubled as a tribute to Corso, with McAfee posing for a “pencil” dive in honor of the coach’s affinity for Ticonderogas.

While certainly far bigger and louder than Corso’s viral setpieces on GameDay, the high dive evoked the spirit Corso brought to campuses across the country for decades. With McAfee engaging young fans, embracing what makes schools and cities unique and keeping a flare for entertainment, it is no wonder that Corso saw himself in the Speedo-clad man way up high above the South Florida school.

The question of how GameDay will end post-Corso has been answered. Whether riling up the locals before making his pick for their game or pulling a stunt like the high dive, McAfee is proving a versatile closing act. He will orchestrate the show’s finale as long as he is on it.

If it wasn’t always, GameDay has become far more of a show for casuals since McAfee became its face. The average fan tunes into GameDay to catch up on the sport and get hype for the games of the week. By using the close of each show to pull the attention to himself, McAfee is solidifying GameDay as a more personality-driven spectacle, like the rest of ESPN’s programming.

The trend, however, holds more weight on GameDay than other shows. More people watch GameDay than just about any other piece of sports content each week. In amongst the fans each week, the show’s hosts hold a true connection to the sport’s community. McAfee feeds off this. Whereas the torch Corso held was as a disciple of the sport and its culture, McAfee takes it from him as a megaphone.

We saw this when, in Week 4 following Charlie Kirk’s assassination, McAfee spent several minutes at the open of GameDay encouraging unity through sports. Almost nobody else could have delivered this speech: loose, earnest and convincing. Because it was McAfee, it sort of also sounded as if it was delivered from a WWE ring and went out of its way to be politically ambiguous. Still, the point cut through.

A GameDay built in McAfee’s image isn’t so different from what it was with Corso. The big difference is that with Corso, the sport was the show. With McAfee, he is the show. Fans on set and in bars and on couches around the country may love it anyway. This week’s show certainly gave a peak at how it will be different. McAfee may have given Corso a send-up with his dive, but as McAfee leapt off the platform and into the pool below, there were no students onscreen, no team headgear or even logos, no cohosts. Just McAfee.

📣 SOCIAL EXPERIMENT 🌟

Here was the retro 1970s-inspired intro from CBS for the 50th anniversary of The NFL Today this weekend:

The Pat McAfee high dive at the University of Miami was quite a spectacle:

A nice moment from Tom Brady on Fox this week, bringing a lightness and self-deprecating sense of humor that goes a long way:

👏 INDUSTRY INSIGHTS 🗣️

• As part of NBC Sports’ major expansion into MLB, the network will reportedly take back over the Sunday morning national window it used to broadcast on Peacock but which briefly moved to Roku in recent years.

• The Phoenix Suns inked a massive new deal with free local TV provider Gray Media to air Suns and WNBA Mercury games on the broadcast network across Arizona. Reportedly worth $30 million, the deal puts the Suns in line with many other NBA teams still on FanDuel Sports Networks on cable.

• Longtime Chicago sports media reporter Jeff Agrest of the Sun-Times wrote a column calling for the dismissal of White Sox announcer John Schiffren after just two seasons at Chicago Sports Network.

• As the College Football Playoff evolves to prioritize strength of schedule more in its selection process, the ACC is changing its schedule to play ten Power 4 games, including as many as nine conference games.

️‍🔥THE CLOSER🔥

A refreshed No. 2 booth is shining for CBS

CBS Sports made a big swing this offseason when it promoted studio analyst J.J. Watt all the way to the No. 2 booth. The network believed in Watt so much that it got rid of veteran analyst Charles Davis to make space before giving Watt a space opposite star announcer Ian Eagle.

Not only was it a big bet on Watt’s talent, but also his potential chemistry with Eagle. After three weeks, it looks like to be paying off as Eagle appears rejuvenated and Watt sounds like a natural. The latest example saw Eagle and Watt contributing to the 50th anniversary tribute to The NFL Today by dressing in their best 1970s garb. Eagle even threw on a Keith Olbermann-esque mustache to set the mood.

The gimmick brought the best out of the tandem. Eagle is supremely comfortable hosting a broadcast, and brings it better than almost anyone calling big NFL plays. Anyone who appreciates Eagle also knows that he is intensely self-deprecating while also boasting a mastery of pop culture that comes out often on-air. Watt has caught on quickly, following Eagle’s lead when it comes to cultural references or lighter moments while also making a strong impression with his commentary.

The two appear to genuinely enjoy working together, with Eagle in particular rejuvenated. CBS has a lot riding on Eagle, who is the voice of the men’s basketball Final Four on the network as well. Putting Eagle in the best possible position makes the Watt promotion a win on its own. The fact that a strong Eagle-Watt booth appears capable of becoming the future No. 1 booth on the network makes it an even bigger win.

It was no secret when Watt jumped to the booth that he could be an eventual replacement for Tony Romo, whose contract will end in 2030. But it would not be a shock to also see Eagle replace the 66-year-old Jim Nantz, just as he did on the Final Four two years ago.

If the Eagle-Watt booth continues to succeed for CBS, it puts them in a jam to what Fox is facing with Greg Olsen and Joe Davis. There is no big issue with the No. 2 booth outpacing the No. 1 booth on a major network. Both Fox and CBS get multiple strong games each weekend, and plenty of viewers get to see both groups. Setting aside that the bosses may feel they are wasting money if the little brother outpaces the big brother, a strong stable is always a good thing. Still, it can become embarrassing for the network to show that it misgauged its own hierarchy or frustrating for talent that see the disparity go unaddressed.

There’s a long way to go before anyone at CBS will be talking about that sort of change.

With Eagle settling in and a young star in Watt continuing to grow, CBS is in a good place. They cashed their bet. As the Eagle-Watt broadcast develops this season comes the question of how to reward the tandem for surpassing expectations and delivering great broadcasts so far.