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🏅 Milan Thee Stallion. Megan Thee Stallion is heading to the Winter Olympics as part of NBC’s Milano Cortina Creator Collective, creating behind-the-scenes content for her YouTube channel throughout the Games. The Creator Collective is NBC’s partnership with Meta, YouTube, and TikTok that gives content creators access to Olympic venues

🏈 ESPN’s Super Year. ESPN is branding the next 12 months as “The Year of the Super Bowl,” launching a coordinated campaign across ESPN and Disney properties as the network builds toward its first Super Bowl production on Feb. 14, 2027. The initiative kicked off over the weekend with “The Handoff,” a 24-hour event that moved from SoFi Stadium to Disneyland, in which Chris Berman symbolically passed coverage responsibilities to Scott Van Pelt.

🎙️ No longer Miller Time. Jim Miller is out at SiriusXM NFL Radio after several years co-hosting Movin’ the Chains with Pat Kirwan. Kirwan announced Miller’s departure on Monday, ending a week of listener speculation that started when Miller went missing from the network’s Super Bowl week programming. He had last appeared on the show the Sunday before Super Bowl week.

⚾ Word is Bond. Netflix wants Barry Bonds in the booth when the Giants and Yankees open the 2026 season at Oracle Park on March 25. The streaming giant is pursuing Bonds for both pregame and postgame coverage of its first baseball broadcast, according to The Athletic’s Andrew Marchand. Netflix is also trying to sign CC Sabathia for the Yankees side of the matchup.

If you’re old like me, you might remember a Saturday Night Live faux commercial called “Bad Idea Jeans.”

The premise, a spoof of Dockers ads at the time, featured a group of men sitting around discussing ideas and activities that are obviously wrong or ill-advised (e.g., "Now that I have kids, I feel a lot better having a gun in the house."). Each guy in the group is wearing Bad Idea-brand jeans.

If your friends were like mine, the sketch became shorthand for any time someone put forward an idea that was so clearly dumb, it needed to be shut down immediately. “Dude, that’s Bad Idea Jeans,” we’d reply.

I feel confident in saying prediction markets are Bad Idea Jeans.

I’m not going out on a limb with that. Plenty of people are spilling e-ink these days to sound the alarm on how Kalshi, Polymarket, and other prediction markets could go horribly wrong in so many ways. Heck, it’s not even the first time I’ve written about it in this very newsletter.

Despite being havens for insider trading and manipulation, prediction markets have grabbed Americans’ attention, with Kalshi alone surpassing $1 billion in trading volume on Super Bowl Sunday. All of that came with plenty of controversy, thanks to disputes over performer cameos and whether Mark Wahlberg would appear, with at least one prediction market bettor losing $100,000.

All of that is just the tip of the iceberg, of course, as Giannis Antetokounmpo’s recent investment in Kalshi clarified. As many pointed out immediately, being able to bet on whether Giannis Antetokounmpo would be traded by the NBA trade deadline, while he becomes a part-owner in the platform and could potentially affect the odds or place a bet himself, is an unconscionable conflict of interest.

However, the reason I'm certain there will be an enormous scandal related to prediction markets isn’t any of those aforementioned things.

I know something’s coming because the media has already figured it out.

Within hours of one another on Tuesday, Wired’s Katie Knibbs and NBC News’ Suzy Khimm both announced that they were immediately switching beats to cover prediction markets. The edict had obviously come down on high that these companies require dedicated coverage. And perhaps unsaid in that is the idea that we need someone on the case now, for when the dam breaks.

As our Ben Koo put it, “the race to be in the Theranos/WeWork doc or series as a journalist is heating up!”

They join reporters like Dustin Gouker, who has been at the forefront of sounding the alarm on these markets.

Perhaps we’ve already become desensitized to the dangers therein because there’s a new sports-betting scandal every month, so what’s another 10? But prediction markets, somehow, make sportsbooks seem like the bastions of integrity by comparison.

Something very bad is coming. If you’ve spent any time paying attention to technologies that emerge too much and too soon, you’ve seen this story play out plenty of times before. Maybe it’ll be sports-related, maybe it won’t. But at least we know there will be people there to document whatever happens when it all comes crashing down.

“We just have to say, you know what? PC headlines be damned. White guys vs. Black guys. Luka, Joker, Flagg, Reaves, Knueppel against Wemby, whomever. There would be a real edge to the game. It would get a lot of attention.” - Nick Wright’s suggestion on how to fix the NBA All-Star Game.

“Our media rights were exposed. Our inability to acquire the true valuation of our media rights was exposed by the NBA contract. They got $8 billion because they offered the league. We offer regional. And so consequently, we’re getting half at $4 billion. And yet our content is double, and yet our ratings are there.” - MLB super agent Scott Boras on MLB’s media rights deals

“It’s terrible what he did to Covino & Rich. For every 10 big guests Colin gets, those guys get one. Right? So let them have their big guest… Those guys should get big guests every now and then.” - Fox Sports Radio’s Stugotz, calling out Colin Cowherd for reportedly stealing Fernando Mendoza from Covino & Rich during Super Bowl Week.

“I just caught enough of Bad Bunny to go, ‘Oh, here’s another guy that has a penis!’ Did you know that he has a package? Because he spent the whole time, and all their dancers spent the whole time, just ‘Oh here it is!’ Congratulations, Mr. Bunny. You have a penis!” - Boston radio host Mike Fegler’s takeaway to the Super Bowl halftime show.

“It’s the first time I really wondered, like, do we have the right guy running the league? Because he doesn’t seem interested in actually fixing real problems that everybody can see.” - Bill Simmons on NBA commissioner Adam Silver.

“The NBA needs to suspend LeBron James… It's the third time this year he has chosen, while healthy, not to play basketball against the San Antonio Spurs.” - WFAN’s Craig Carton on LeBron James missing games against other stars.

Up until very recently, the history of women’s sports was not being told.

Things changed in 1972 with Title IX, but of course, women’s sports have roots much deeper than that. The vast majority of these tales are lost to time. No reporters or commentators were around to tell them.

More recently, audience metrics have risen, and revenue has followed. Across television, digital, and social media, companies are competing hard to align with women’s sports brands. Finally, Superstars like Caitlin Clark and Trinity Rodman, along with the leagues they play in, are reported on in real time. Women’s sports fans get a first draft of history in a way they never could before.

Helping lead that charge is Sarah Spain, the longtime ESPN host who, in 2024, launched the Good Game with Sarah Spain podcast as the anchor show for the iHeart Women’s Sports Network. It was the first-ever daily women’s sports podcast from a corporate media company. Spain has since been promoted to content director for the network, guiding its voice and perspective as it has added new shows from UConn women’s hoops star Azzi Fudd, sports columnist Jemele Hill, and more. has roots much deeper than that. The vast majority of these tales are lost to time. No reporters or commentators were around to tell them.

Awful Announcing’s Brendon Kleen spoke with Spain and others about how the iHeart Women’s Sports Network is ‘creating a foundation’ as women’s sports continue to grow.

Move over McDreamy and McSteamy, make way for McAfee and McCarthy.

Wednesday, ESPN officially unveiled “The Year of the Super Bowl,” a 12-month celebration across multiple platforms building toward ESPN’s first-ever Super Bowl production in February 2027.

Any sports fan not living under a rock would know about this already, given how much pomp and circumstance they put into “The Handoff,” their 24-hour event spanning SoFi Stadium to Disneyland, in which Chris Berman symbolically passed coverage responsibilities to Scott Van Pelt for Super Bowl LXI coverage.

Michael McCarthy was covering the announcement for Front Office Sports and even dropped a few extra nuggets on Tuesday about what Disney and ESPN might have planned for their Super Bowl. He reported that they were considering a "family-friendly altcast” featuring one of their iconic IPs, such as The Simpsons or Star Wars (ESPN has already effectively announced a ManningCast Super Bowl altcast).

He also reported that the company was considering adding a Field Pass with The Pat McAfee Show altcast for the Super Bowl, but noted that the idea “faces rights hurdles.”

About three hours later, McAfee took to X to offer a reply to McCarthy’s announcement. “BREAKING: Source(s) tell me that the rights hurdle is very hurdle-able,” he wrote. “Would be absolutely bonkers.”

That’s all pretty normal, but it was the attached image that made things so very Pat McAfee. In a petty move, the mercurial host had taken a screenshot of McCarthy’s post but cropped out all credits to McCarthy or Front Office Sports.

Sensing an opportunity, McCarthy quoted McAfee’s credit-less aggregation by saying it won’t hurt him to include “the dreaded letters” FOS and invited him to connect.

In the subsequent hours, McAfee’s selective editing didn’t go entirely unnoticed, and, in a curious change of pace from his usual relationship with the media, he offered a follow-up that included credit to FOS.

The turnaround is curious on two fronts. One, as noted, McAfee’s relationship with sports media reporters is usually adversarial. Two, McAfee didn’t seem to receive too much, if any, public pushback from the move. So why feel the need to reverse course?

We can speculate that either there was a McAfee-McCarthy McConnection to smooth things over, or someone inside ESPN asked McAfee to play nice, given how important “The Year of the Super Bowl” campaign is to the company.

It certainly wouldn’t be the first time the GameDay analyst has hijacked ESPN’s best laid plans. And perhaps he was mad that he had been scooped, which is understandible, though a bit naive to expect, given his status in the sports media world. But considering how important the corporate synergy at play seems to be for Disney and ESPN, this might have been one defiant move too many, even if it was relatively unnoticed.