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🎤 QUICK START ✍️

🎵 McAfee drops a ‘Dukie.’ We can now add “recording artist” to Pat McAfee's list of job titles, the multi-hyphenate broadcasting star who released his first single, “Dukie,” last week. The song mines familiar ground for McAfee: his supposed haters and how much he detests them.

📝 Mark Sanchez speaks. For the first time since he was arrested in Indianapolis on assault charges and lost his job at Fox Sports, Mark Sanchez offered a public statement. In an Instagram post, Sanchez thanked his family and wished his followers happy holidays, but did not address the incident directly.

📺 Herbstreit’s bold take. The face of ESPN’s college football coverage, Kirk Herbstreit, called for the end of the weekly College Football Playoff rankings release show, which, incidentally, airs on ESPN. And that was before Notre Dame made the same demand after the committee left them out of the final 12.

🏈 ‘RedZone’ troubles. Audio and technical issues marred the first quarter or so of the early NFL slate on Sunday. As a crackling, hissing noise overwhelmed the NFL RedZone broadcast for about 10 minutes, producers cut to the NFL GameDay studio show on NFL Network while they addressed the problem.

🚨 LEADING OFF 🚨

Rece Davis is right about everything

During an interview with Sports Illustrated this past week, Rece Davis laid out what was, effectively, a mission statement for his role as host of college football’s championship weekend.

“You can’t really afford to totally divorce yourself from (criticism),” Davis said. “But I do try to not be totally overwhelmed by it.”

“Everything we say carries a great deal of significance, and there’s a great responsibility with that.”

In high-profile moments throughout the weekend, he rose to the challenge.

Back on GameDay (sans the desk, sitting on loosey-goose stools so as to seem more relatable), Davis acknowledged the conflicts in place that led fans to question the show’s conversation throughout November about Lane Kiffin and his move to LSU.

Perhaps it was too little, too late, but Davis disclosed that he, Nick Saban, and Desmond Howard all shared an agency with Kiffin. And he asked Saban an open-ended question that allowed Saban to address the even deeper conflict of interest he faced in covering Kiffin’s move while also serving as a confidante to the coach.

This is how the feedback loop should work on a show like GameDay, which ideally represents the constituencies of fans across the country and covers a sport as subjective as college football. To Davis’ credit (and unlike some of his fellow panelists), he did not deflect or fume at criticism. As host, he genuinely embraced the chatter directed at the show and responded.

Later in the interview, Davis pushed back on the idea of a TV host as a hands-off role.

“If you need somebody just to tee up a question, go get a trained seal,” Davis said. “I’ve got things I could do … a good host is prepared and involved in the conversation.”

Davis carried both perspectives — being thoughtful as a host, and addressing criticism — forward on Sunday’s CFP selection show.

When Alabama remained in the top 12 for the CFP, it was Davis who was one of the loudest voices questioning the committee’s decision. After all, the Crimson Tide got crushed in the SEC championship game. Whether or not Davis had the belief in mind that ESPN is biased toward the SEC, his close coverage of the CFP process gave him the tools to challenge the committee — and ‘Bama’s candidacy.

“I will say this: I understand the concept of not being overly punitive for a conference championship game,” Davis said, “But if you’re going to play them, they have to have stakes, both ways. To win a conference championship, or what happens if you lose?”

Davis kept the same energy later in the selection show when interviewing CFP committee chair Hunter Yurachek, as the question of the value of conference championship games came up once again.

Pressed by Davis on why Miami finally made a surprising appearance in the top 12, Yurachek delivered a convoluted explanation involving BYU’s loss in the Big 12 title game and Miami’s August win over Notre Dame.

Three different times, Davis tried to give Yurachek the opportunity to explain why BYU was punished — and how that had anything to do with Notre Dame. Yurachek failed to muster a reasonable answer.

Hosting can be an unglamorous job. Davis makes the most of it. And clearly, he relishes the opportunity of having sway in college football. When this outrageous and chaotic sport needed an honest arbiter, Davis gave us the closest semblance to one that we will likely get in a flood of takes, rankings, and resumes.

📱 SOCIAL EXPERIMENT 🌟

Peak college football to see this coming from an BYU’s official X account:

Here's a taste of the harsh sound that cut through NFL RedZone early on Sunday:

The “strangest postgame interview of 2025” award goes to Fernando Mendoza:

Hmmm…

👏 INDUSTRY INSIGHTS 🗣️

• Fox college football pregame show Big Noon Kickoff posted its best viewership ever in 2025. The success likely stems from the strong game schedule the show led into, as well as the addition of Dave Portnoy and other Barstool personalities.

• Longtime Fox NFL Sunday anchor Curt Menefee predicted that the highly rated pregame program’s irreverent star, Terry Bradshaw, will continue working on the show until he quite literally cannot do it anymore.

• We will spare you the 25 minutes it would take to watch Stephen A. Smith’s full response to Max Kellerman on Friday. But the essential takeaways are that Smith said he does not “hate” Kellerman and believes the decreasing viewership spoke for itself when it came to their time together on First Take. In typical Stephen A. fashion, Smith also threatened to reveal more behind-the-scenes issues if Kellerman continued insulting him.

• A new report suggests the NFL has plans to carve out a full “holiday” slate in its next broadcast package. Industry insiders expect a streamer or even YouTube to be interested, giving them games on Thanksgiving, Christmas, and potentially Black Friday.

 🎺 AROUND AA 🎺 

Assuming that the agreement between Netflix and Warner Bros. Discovery holds, Hollywood is on the precipice of one of the craziest acquisitions in its history.

But a critical layer to the streamer’s pending purchase of WBD’s studio and streaming assets is that it does not include the company’s cable networks. Those will be spun out into a new company called Discovery Global next year — and will consist of all of TNT Sports’ live sports rights.

So the NCAA men’s basketball tournament, MLB postseason, French Open, and beyond will not be going anywhere for now. The future beyond 2026, however, is incredibly uncertain, Awful Announcing editor Drew Lerner wrote this week:

Should TNT Sports remain independently owned by Discovery Global when it comes time to renew those deals, it’d be tough to imagine any one of those leagues wanting to stay in business with a sub-scale media company holding assets in terminal decline without strong corporate backing.

TNT Sports’ best chance at survival (whatever that even looks like for a legacy brand in today’s media environment) is to find an interested buyer. We already know Comcast’s planned cable spinoff, Versant, isn’t interested in acquiring any additional cable networks, so they’re off the table. But who else is out there?

Find out Lerner’s answer right here at Awful Announcing.

️‍🔥 THE CLOSER 🔥

The biggest NBA story of the decade is hiding in plain sight

The Oklahoma City Thunder are on pace to win 79 games.

The NBA record for most wins in a season is 73.

The last time a team set that record, the Golden State Warriors became one of the biggest stories in sports history and delivered a viewership bonanza to the league.

So while Shai Gilgeous-Alexander is not Steph Curry and Oklahoma is not the Bay, and there may not be a Kevin Durant looming to bolster this dynasty's narratives and star power, in the here and now, the NBA is on the precipice of a boom. If OKC comes within sniffing distance of the regular-season wins record, the NBA will get its biggest story of the decade.

Not a moment too soon. So far this season, the NBA has been doomed by the opposing forces of a continual epidemic of major soft-tissue injuries and a leadership group that shows no interest in reducing wear and tear by shortening the season. The national conversation spins in circles as analysts debate tired tropes like load management and player empowerment.

Faced with questions over who will take over as the marketable face of the NBA once Curry, Durant, and LeBron James retire, as well as concerns over a new CBA that forces cost-cutting and institutionalizes parity, a Thunder takeover would be quite the salve. A dominating OKC run would give fans even more of a throwback scoring guard in Gilgeous-Alexander, a cost-controlled core with real chemistry, and a potential dynasty that could feel like quite the opposite of parity.

About half of the Thunder’s final 58 games will be nationally televised, including a handful of weekend games on broadcast networks ABC or NBC. League officials are surely circling Christmas Day against San Antonio, Feb. 1 against Denver, and Feb. 7 against Houston.

The countdown to the Warriors’ 73 during the 2015-16 season featured numerous huge national TV games, including a Christmas win over James’ Cavaliers, a surprise loss to Milwaukee early in Giannis Antetokounmpo’s career, and the fateful, record-breaking W on the final night of the season. The Thunder getting anywhere close would be a boon for the league.

With broadcast revenue flowing in, several young superstars breaking through, and rising viewership, the NBA is largely doing just fine. But the Thunder making a real run at the Warriors’ record would be a delightful story for a league that needs one, and a reprieve (or a distraction, at least) from the larger challenges facing the NBA.