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📺 ‘WrestleMania’s strange special guest. Partway into WrestleMania 42 on the ESPN app on Sunday, WWE commentators Michael Cole and Wade Barrett welcomed a surprise guest to the desk. In an unusual segment, crypto billionaire and Syracuse booster Adam Weitsman was introduced alongside the commentary team but did not speak, leading many to speculate whether Weitsman paid for the opportunity.

😒 WWE ousts ESPN. Andreas Hale, a combat sports reporter for ESPN since 2024, was stripped of his credential for WrestleMania 42 this weekend after multiple critical reviews of WWE cards last year. The WWE already seemingly asked ESPN to stop grading its Premier Live Events, but that wasn’t enough, so the network’s top reporter was banned from covering the biggest WWE event of the year.

🏌️ TNT Sports’ about-face. Amid lingering questions as to the fate of LIV Golf and its funding from the Saudi PIF, TNT Sports UK was caught editing an interview with LIV’s CEO last week. The network deleted a clip in which CEO Scott O’Neil stated that Saudi funding would end after this year, then deleted it, edited O’Neil’s admission out, and reuploaded.

🏈 Russini latest. A new ESPN story showed the depths to which Dianna Russini went to evade punishment at The Athletic over allegations of an improper relationship with New England’s Mike Vrabel (and the lack of proof Russini ever provided to the company), while noting that the NFL will not investigate Vrabel’s conduct.

🎙️ ‘A Touch (No) More.’ While announcing their surprising breakup, women’s sports icons Megan Rapinoe and Sue Bird also revealed they will wind down their podcast, A Touch More. The show was a key part of Vox Media’s inventory as it looks to sell off its podcast network. Bird and Rapinoe will host separate podcasts in the future.

Read more of today’s top stories at Awful Announcing.

A few days into Noah Eagle’s broadcasting career, he went for it.

Eagle was in Las Vegas for the NBA Summer League, working as a production assistant, when he ran into the star of his childhood team.

It was Vince Carter.

“I went into the meal room, and he was at a table by himself,” Eagle recalls. “So I kind of worked up the courage at the time to go up to him and be like, ‘Hey, I’m sure you don’t know who I am, but I’m Noah Eagle. I’m Ian’s son.’

“And he just goes, ‘Yeah, I know.’

“And I was like, ‘What?’ And he goes, ‘Yeah, I know who you are.’”

That the man who helped Eagle fall in love with basketball and into a career would see him coming felt, to Eagle, massive and of itself. They worked together later that summer at the Jr. NBA World Championships, and again at Summer League and the youth tournament the following year.

“It was my first real foray into the real world,” Eagle says, and right along with his first favorite athlete.

This season, they were teammates calling Nets games for YES Network and at NBC.

As Eagle built a career, he introduced himself to the world in much the same way, never hiding from the name, stuck with a voice and a style that would have made it hard to. He scaled the business quickly, landing assignments that some announcers wait a career for as the industry debated the source of his fortune.

But since arriving at NBC Sports in 2023, Eagle has earned his place among the top echelon of sports broadcasters through iconic calls and a sensibility rooted in early memories in arenas and stadiums across the country. Sunday in Detroit, Eagle will be courtside for his first national NBA playoff broadcast, going for it again, driven by a persistent pressure from his skeptics and a lifelong passion for basketball. The season has been important to everyone who helped bring the NBA on NBC back to life. For Eagle, it is not only a rich, high-profile assignment but a dream realized.

Read the full profile of NBC’s Noah Eagle at Awful Announcing.

The WNBA Draft became the latest story around journalism ethics in sports last week when the Dallas Wings shut down a local newspaper columnist’s question about whether No. 1 overall pick Azzi Fudd was still in a romantic relationship with reigning Rookie of the Year Paige Bueckers.

Ashtyn Butuso of OffBall and Flagrant Mag joined me on The Play-By-Play LIVE to break it all down.

Watch the episode on YouTube, or listen on Spotify and Apple.

Pat McAfee was taken out of WrestleMania 42 on a stretcher after being attacked by country singer Jelly Roll, only to re-enter the ring later as his recent partner, Randy Orton, turned on him in the final moments of the main event match.

Meanwhile, the fans were quite vocal about not wanting Stephen A. Smith in the building for WrestleMania.

Vintage Inside the NBA on Saturday night. It’s been too long.

Yet another Michael Jordan interview on Fox, while NBC, where he is allegedly a “special contributor,” begins its NBA playoffs coverage without him.

Just as the NBA welcomed NBC and Prime Video, as well as the voices and faces of each network, into the fold this season as it embarked on an 11-year broadcast rights deal, the WNBA will do the same this summer, albeit with even more partners due to a shrewd distribution strategy.

The newcomers, for the most part, are retired star players. When WNBA fans tune in for national games this season, they will see a collection of greats that spans the entire history of the league.

NBC will use Sue Bird and Cheryl Miller, two of the more recognizable women’s basketball players ever, on its studio coverage. USA Network is giving Tamika Catchings and Chamique Holdsclaw, both Hall of Famers, their first big-time WNBA analyst opportunities. Candace Parker will be the lead game analyst for Prime Video. Lisa Leslie is in the studio for CBS.

Popular role players will also be fixtures in the landscape, as Renee Montgomery appears across USA and CBS, and Sophie Cunningham works as a special contributor for USA while playing for the Indiana Fever.

This change is interesting for a few reasons. The first is that it shows the potential for coverage and storytelling around the WNBA when ESPN is no longer the sole big-time national rights-holder. The Worldwide Leaders’ women’s basketball coverage is tremendous, but locked into place. With more outlets airing games now, there is more space for new faces and voices. For a league still in need of greater exposure, that is a huge positive.

The second is that these greats have been coaxed into the media at all. Not only are there more networks airing games, but the league is now seen as a draw worthy of investment and time in a way it was not always viewed.

Look at Parker: She entered the media on the men’s side with TNT Sports. She will have called NCAA men’s basketball tournament games and NBA playoff games as a lead analyst before doing so for the league she dominated during her playing career. Bird has hosted an ESPN+ series, college basketball alt-casts, and podcasts in the four years since she retired, but has not worked a major television job.

Networks are clearly willing to pay up to lure must-see commentators.

In this, the WNBA’s 30th season, the coverage on national TV broadcasts will tell the league’s history with the network’s casts and the perspectives they share. Not every former superstar player pans out in the media. But the perspectives an NBA fan gained from Bill Walton, Charles Barkley, or Reggie Miller over time enriched the league's legacy. The same goes for John Madden, Jimmy Johnson, and Tom Brady, and the NFL.

The WNBA, across nearly every one of its long list of national broadcast partners, gets its first example of the value audiences can glean from this depth of on-air star power this season.