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🎤 QUICK START ✍️

🏈 Wake up the egos. For a brief time on Wednesday, it was reported that an event at a Notre Dame bookstore featuring sportswriter Ivan Maisel had been postponed, presumably due to his role on the College Football Playoff selection committee, which recently snubbed the Fighting Irish. Cooler golden domes prevailed, with Maisel later adding that the bookstore initially postponed the event “in good faith and out of an abundance — OK, overabundance — of caution.”

🎙️ Williamson rises. ESPN has moved quickly to replace Elle Duncan, reportedly awarding the fast-rising Christine Williamson to two of Duncan’s key positions at the network. According to Front Office Sports, Williamson will replace Duncan on both the vaunted 6 p.m. ET SportsCenter as well as the studio lead for the women’s basketball College GameDay.

⚾ Frickin’ time. Joe Buck finally won the Ford C. Frick Award. The Baseball Hall of Fame announced Wednesday that Buck earned the 2026 honor after falling short three previous times as a finalist. He’ll be honored during Hall of Fame Weekend in July and becomes the only broadcaster to join his father, Jack (who won in 1987), as a Frick Award winner.

📱Threedone. Once considered ESPN’s primary digital offering, ESPN3 is no more. As first reported by Luke Bouma of Cord Cutters News, Disney recently discontinued the channel, which primarily featured exclusive college sporting events, niche competitions, and replays. As a result, ESPN3 is no longer available in any streaming or linear pay-TV package, with its content now available across Disney’s other platforms, including ESPN and the ESPN app, as of Dec. 2.

🚨 LEADING OFF 🚨

Remembering Stuart Scott

In another universe, 60-year-old Stuart Scott is one of ESPN’s elder statesmen — a link between a bygone era where SportsCenter anchors were the stars and the modern superstar-centric ethos. Few, if any, of his contemporaries have been able to manage that tide shift, but if anyone from the Worldwide Leader’s halcyon days could have made that transformation, it would have been Scott.

In 2025, you can imagine Scott as the long-running face of ESPN’s NBA programming, or perhaps the host of Monday Night Countdown, or maybe the host of his own daily program. How much would ESPN kill to have someone like him to fill the 5:00 p.m. void right about now?

Or maybe he would have left Bristol, like so many of his peers, to reboot his career elsewhere as a radio host, podcaster, entertainer, or pundit. You can imagine it wouldn’t have been too tough for someone with Scott’s personality and drive to find their footing for a second act.

In 2007, a stomach ache was the impetus for Scott to get his appendix removed. However, after testing the appendix, doctors learned that he had cancer. Despite preventative chemotherapy, the cancer returned in 2011 and again in 2013. Scott passed away on January 4, 2015, at the age of 49.

This week, ESPN is honoring Scott with the release of a 30 for 30 documentary about his life. Boo-Yah: A Portrait of Stuart Scott “shines bright and makes us nostalgic for a particular time in sports media,” writes Awful Announcing’s Ben Koo in his review.

The film celebrates not what Scott didn’t get to do, but what he did accomplish, and how much of an inspiration he was to so many watching at home.

“When ESPN called me about it, it wasn’t a why-not situation; it was a yes, please,” director Andre Gaines told Awful Announcing’s Michael Grant. “He was somebody that I thought was an incredible voice and a legend, a trailblazer, a pioneer, a cultural icon, all of those things. And for me, it was just an honor, not a burden or a challenge, but a proper challenge to bring his story to the screen.”

Koo notes in his review that the film doesn’t delve deeply into specifics about the hardship and pushback Scott sometimes faced in Bristol. Those details are left for Scott’s colleagues who have left ESPN to call out.

“Stuart was such an innovator,” former SportsCenter anchor Trey Wingo recently shared. “I’ll tell you one of the things that no one ever knows about Stuart, and maybe some people know this, but he was under a lot of scrutiny by management at ESPN. They didn’t like his style, which is interesting now because all they care about is style, for the most part.”

You could say Scott was ahead of his time, but it’s more likely that he was exactly where culture was, and everyone around him needed to catch up. The culture has evolved significantly since he passed away, and so has ESPN. The hope is that current and future generations remember Scott for the foundation he laid in so many ways.

He was indeed “as cool as the other side of the pillow.”

🗣️ NOTABLE QUOTABLES 🗣️

“They’re paying you because you are willing to say the nasty things about Black people that they want to say… you’re not being paid for your numbers, you’re being paid for what you’re willing to do to us for white people’s entertainment.” - Joy Reid with a scathing response to Stephen A. Smith

“I’ve been waiting for the tap on my shoulder to say, ‘Hey, you’re a little hard on the refs here, pal.’ But no, I have not gotten that in any capacity, which I’m thankful for.” - J.J. Watt on whether or not he’s heard from the NFL about his referee criticism

“You don’t know what he’s gonna say next, but that’s part of the fun of it,” Amin said. “And it’s made me better. It made me a better broadcaster.” - Adam Amin on Chicago Bulls broadcasting partner Stacey King

“No response. Pat’s trying to do the best job he can for Penn State, but I heard it. It was good.” - Oregon’s Dan Lanning on Penn State AD Pat Kraft’s leaked comments

“I wouldn’t be surprised to see a bunch of these bowl games get moved to the front end of a college football season.” - Rick Neuheisel, floating an idea on how to save bowl games, potentially

“The only thing that’s disappointing is I’m sure it’ll say ‘SF Austin.’ Why we can’t get that fixed? Not on us, but ESPN. Come on, ESPN, let’s get it going. I mean, we’ve been on ESPN all the time, it just says ‘SF Austin.’ It should say ‘SFA.'” -Stephen F. Austin coach Colby Carthel’s message to ESPN.

📺 INDUSTRY INSIGHTS 🎬

• YouTube TV, the largest virtual pay TV provider in the United States, is set to launch a sports-focused skinny bundle in early 2026. The offering will include all of the major broadcast networks (ABC, CBS, Fox, and NBC), the ESPN family of cable networks (including ESPN Unlimited), TNT, TBS, truTV, FS1, and the newly launched NBCSN.

• The first round of the 2026 NFL Draft will likely be the shortest in recent memory. According to ESPN’s Adam Schefter, the NFL has agreed to shorten the clock between its first-round picks from 10 minutes to eight minutes. The change will take effect in the next draft, scheduled for April 23 in Pittsburgh.

• The NFL finalized the TV schedule for Week 17 of the 2025 NFL season on Wednesday, announcing the Houston Texans-Los Angeles Chargers game will fill the 4:30 p.m. ET window on Saturday, Dec. 27. That game will air exclusively on NFL Network. Later that night, the Baltimore Ravens-Green Bay Packers game will kick off at 8 p.m. ET exclusively on Peacock.

• A scripted drama about the gambling scandal involving Japanese MLB star Shohei Ohtani and his former interpreter Ippei Mizuhara is making its way to Starz. The series, which Lionsgate Television has been working on since April 2024, will be sold to Starz, according to Rick Porter in The Hollywood Reporter. Prior reports indicated that Lionsgate was having trouble selling the project to companies such as Disney, Apple, Warner Bros. Discovery, Netflix, and Comcast — all of whom have media rights agreements with MLB — because those companies wanted to protect their relationships with the league.

🎺 AROUND AA 🎺

During its heyday, ESPN was not only home to the biggest stars in sports media but also a fertile ground for developing great young broadcasters.

The Worldwide Leader plucked local sports anchors, newspaper reporters, radio hosts, and, of course, retired athletes from their jobs in cities across the country and gave them the resources and platform to advance. That is how a young jabberer from Portland named Colin Cowherd became the biggest radio host in America and how college coaches like Lee Corso and Dick Vitale became household names.

As more Americans cut the cord and ESPN (and other media companies) shrink, this pipeline has weakened. Since the departure of former president John Skipper, known for his passion for journalism and creative content, the decline has been even more pronounced. Under Jimm Pitaro this decade, it has been more common to see ESPN poach or license the best content from rival networks or independent shops than to see a new voice come into its own through the Bristol system.

And so, mainly by its own doing, ESPN has developed a reputation for no longer incubating broadcasting stars. The headline-makers on its airwaves today come from Barstool, Omaha, TNT, or the Thunderdome. In many cases, this is true.

Yet each time ESPN has had a critical opening this year — building up Monday Night Football, replacing Elle Duncan on women’s basketball, or replacing Molly Qerim on First Take — it has quickly promoted a strong internal candidate. The network is smaller overall, but between its second-tier networks, its digital shows, and its variety of SportsCenters, it is still going strong; there is still quite a strong crop of homegrown talent on the come-up.

Click to check out Brendon Kleen’s rundown of the top homegrown stars who have come up through ESPN’s ranks in recent years.

️‍️🔥 THE CLOSER 🔥

Pete Golding is exactly who Ole Miss needs right now

Lane Kiffin is a particular kind of guy. Smug, sarcastic, and full of “Chevy Chase in Caddyshack” charm, he’s the guy who used to bully you in high school, but you still can’t help but want to hang around him.

Kiffin made Ole Miss into a winner; there’ll be no revisionist history here. But the way he left the school mirrored his reputation.

His replacement, Pete Golding, couldn’t be more different. Whereas Kiffin was well-groomed and well-dressed, Golding seems at home in a hoodie sweatshirt. Kiffin was always camera-ready while Golding sports a scruffy beard. Kiffin made headlines for playing pickleball, doing yoga, and sparring with others on social media. We’re not even sure Golding knows what pickleball is.

More specifically, it’s been a pleasure to get to know Golding through his press conferences and media appearances since taking over a program that was on the verge of playing for a national title. He’s saying all the right things, but more importantly, he can’t stop cursing up a storm. Not in a malicious way. He just seems incapable of being anything other than what he is.

In between all the utterances of how he had to get up off his a** and get to work or how he thinks people are “talking about the wrong sh*t,” Golding keeps driving home how his focus is on how great his players are and how his responsibility is to keep them grounded and motivated. Perhaps most importantly, keep them from worrying about what others are saying after their head coach gave up on them amid a potential championship run to take a cushier job.

Golden also made sure to give the Ole Miss faithful some red meat along those lines.

“I’m not changing who I am,” he told OutKick’s Trey Wallace. “I ain’t changing what the hell I wear or going to yoga or playing pickleball. I ain’t doing any of that sh*t. I am who I am.”

Pete Golding is no Lane Kiffin, and that’s precisely what Ole Miss needs right now.