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🎤 QUICK START ✍️

💩 No more POOP games. As the Philadelphia Phillies kicked off their Spring Training slate, many fans took notice of NBC Sports Philadelphia’s new score bug. That’s because eliminating the teams’ primary logos means the screen will no longer read “P00P” whenever the Phillies are scoreless against the Pittsburgh Pirates.

🦅 Eagles’ White House visit marred by fake news. With Donald Trump’s second presidential term underway, White House visits for championship teams are once again a sensitive subject. And in case you needed any proof, look no further than the controversy surrounding the Philadelphia Eagles’ impending visit, in which fake news has resulted in the team being criticized for not accepting an offer to 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. that it has yet to even receive.

👀 ESPN endures BottomLine outage. Viewers tuning into ESPN on Sunday night and/or early Monday morning might have noticed something missing from the screen. That’s because an hours-long outage resulted in the BottomLine ticker disappearing from ESPN and its sister channels.

Fortunately, the ticker returned to all channels just before 3 a.m. ET on Monday. And while one could certainly question its usefulness in 2025, seeing such a staple of ESPN’s presentation missing from the screen was still jarring.

📺️ New York media legend passes away. ESPN’s Alan Hahn had some sad news to share on Monday, revealing that longtime MSG Network broadcaster Al Trautwig passed away just days before his 69th birthday. A longtime fixture of local New York Knicks and Rangers broadcasts, Trautwig hadn’t been on air since taking a health-related leave just before the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.

🚨LEADING OFF 🚨

Richard Jefferson finally gets promoted. But will it last?

ESPN’s search to replace JJ Redick in its top NBA booth finally ended on Monday with The Athletic’s Andrew Marchand reporting that Richard Jefferson will, in fact, call the 2025 NBA Finals alongside Mike Breen and Doris Burke.

To say that ESPN’s path to landing on Jefferson to complete its top NBA trio was strange would be an understatement.

Over the last two years, ESPN has laid off Jeff Van Gundy and Mark Jackson, only to be spurned by Doc Rivers and JJ Redick for NBA head coaching jobs (ESPN says Redick’s departure was expected. Rivers’ was not). As a result, the Worldwide Leader entered the 2024-25 NBA season knowing it would have a different NBA Finals broadcast booth for the third time in as many years.

Please make no mistake: Jefferson was always the obvious answer; a rising broadcasting star who was already a staple of the network’s No. 2 booth and spent his career playing alongside the likes of Jason Kidd, Tim Duncan, Stephen Curry, Dirk Nowitzki, LeBron James, and Nikola Jokić. Even before he retired in 2018, it was clear that the former Arizona star would be a force as an analyst and somebody who would routinely be calling the league’s top games.

But for one reason or another, ESPN played it slow with Jefferson’s promotion, even though it claims it knew Redick would likely be taking a head coaching job at the end of the season when he got moved to the top booth a year ago. Rather than outright promoting Jefferson, the network opted to also try out — literally — Jay Bilas and Tim Legler alongside Breen and Burke, with Jefferson quickly cementing his status as the frontrunner for the role.

Yet even upon leaking that Jefferson would remain in the top booth for the rest of the regular season, it wasn’t until Monday that it was finally reported that he’d be calling the NBA Finals. Why the delay? Two theories might explain it.

First, ESPN isn’t sold on Jefferson as an A-list broadcaster. In both comments made on-record and leaked through the media, ESPN has seemingly made it clear that it’s looking for a “huge name” — something Jefferson, a career role player, can’t claim.

“We have this whole entire regular season in front of us to give people the opportunity to see what kind of chemistry develops and make that decision when we’re ready,” ESPN content president Burke Magnus said on the SI Media with Jimmy Traina podcast in November. “And then looking ahead to next year, who knows?”

The other explanation? Looming over all of this is the fact that Jefferson’s contract with ESPN expires at the end of this season. And not only that, but he’s reportedly already received interest from Amazon as the streamer continues to build its NBA coverage plans for next season.

Considering the lack of stability in ESPN’s top NBA booth in recent years, it’d be understandable if the Disney-owned company hesitated to promote Jefferson out of fear he’d soon leave for another network. Considering the shifting landscape of the NBA media, it would also make sense for ESPN not to want to make a long-term commitment, especially with A-list talent — at least in name — such as Dwyane Wade still available.

Ultimately, the answer for why ESPN took such a strange approach to replacing Redick is likely a combination of the two explanations. Still, if I had to guess, his looming free agency played a bigger role. Now we’ll wait to see whether the 44-year-old finally brings some much-needed stability to ESPN’s top NBA broadcast booth or if 2026 will see a different team calling the Finals for a fourth consecutive year.

📱 SOCIAL MEDIA POST OF THE DAY 🏆️ 

CBS Sports’ Ashley Nicole Moss fires back at NBA social media influencer

🎤 MEDIA MOMENTS ✍️ 

• Do you dream of owning the iPhone Adrian Wojnarowski used to break stories like the NBA suspending its season due to the then-emerging COVID-19 pandemic? You’re in luck. The ex-NBA insider-turned-St. Bonaventure's general manager is auctioning off several items — including old iPhones and credentials — from his storied sports media career to benefit the Bonnies’ NIL efforts.

• The Dallas Mavericks’ shocking decision to trade Luka Dončić continues to serve as a content source. But despite what Colin Cowherd told Rachel Nichols on Monday, there’s no truth to the fake report that the Mavs are banning fans from wearing the now-Lakers star’s jersey at their arena.

• The end of football season means it’s time for Bill Simmons and Ryen Russillo’s weekly Sunday night podcasts. And it didn’t take long for Russillo to come out firing, as he criticized Paul George for continuing his podcasting duties amid the Philadelphia 76ers’ (and his own individual) disastrous season.

🤔 THINKING OUT LOUD 💭 

What would a Big Ten-SEC partnership mean for CFP rivalry games?

There has been increasing chatter that in college football’s unabated search for higher revenues, the Big Ten and SEC — and more so their primary TV rights holders in ESPN and FOX — will enter into some type of scheduling pact.  The networks know there are dollars to be made in playing into the feverish regional tribalism between the power conferences. Meanwhile, the SEC is believed to be finally ready to join its power conference brethren in playing nine conference games. 

While all this exciting news (especially for ESPN), I'm skeptical that the full lineup of schools in both conferences can actually participate in such a scheduling pact.  

In the SEC, Georgia, Florida, Kentucky, South Carolina, and Vanderbilt all play an ACC team on rivalry weekend. A scheduling pact with the Big Ten plus another conference game essentially eats two extra games for each SEC school. Those with a popular rivalry game, I'm not so sure, would be up for their annual rivalry game, as well as a new extra SEC game, as well as an annual Big Ten game. On the flip side, Iowa, Oregon, and Washington all have annual games they want to keep. 

The bottom line is that while the networks are seeing dollar signs, schools will probably want to keep some existing non-conference games as well as the flexibility to schedule a couple of home cupcakes.

- Awful Announcing’s Ben Koo (@BKoo)