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🏀 Brandt says bye. Kyle Brandt is closing one chapter just as he’s opening a considerably larger one elsewhere. Brandt announced on X that he’s ending his five-season run contributing to CBS’s The NFL Today, thanking the network for granting him latitude he couldn’t have found on almost any other pregame show. The departure dovetails neatly for Brandt, who is poised to join several ESPN studio programs once football season commences.

🏀 McNutt on Clark. Social media spent Monday reacting to Monica McNutt’s reaction to Caitlin Clark saying she borders on being “fearful” of controversies the WNBA faces. The ESPN analyst said “there is room for a little bit more accountability and self-awareness in terms of her role in the larger sisterhood,” which set off a fresh round of criticism from corners of the internet.

💵 Prime time. For the first time since taking over exclusive rights to the Thursday Night Football package in 2022, Prime Video will produce the weekly primetime affair in-house. Per Austin Karp in Sports Business Journal, Prime Video will produce Thursday Night Football independently this upcoming season after having previously relied on NBC Sports to produce the games.

🏈 Lombardi on leave. The University of North Carolina announced Monday that Michael Lombardi, the general manager of their football program and longtime collaborator with head coach Bill Belichick, has been placed on administrative leave. The school's decision stems from a human resources complaint filed by a former UNC front office employee.

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

Of all the accusations, bad blood, harsh words, and nastiness thrown around last week following Ryan Clark’s swift ejection from his perch at ESPN, the former Steeler’s depiction of his removal as not a layoff is likely the one with staying power, as it would appear to be setting him up to sue his ex-employer.

ESPN characterized Clark’s removal and the removals of scores of his peers as layoffs, meaning the former employees were let go for financial reasons, not for how they did their jobs. Generally, employees don’t sue if they are laid off. If they are fired, it is typically for cause, meaning they did something that led to their ouster, at least from management’s perspective.

And Clark certainly has a few checkmarks in that regard.

On air, he said of Shedeur Sanders, “It’s not just about him being Deion Sanders’ son. It’s about the bravado he carries. It’s about the fact that he looks a certain way. It is about the fact that the color of his skin sometimes at the position can be questioned.”

There was the incident with Kyren Lacey, an LSU wide receiver who committed suicide in 2024 after he was in a fatal car wreck and under police investigation for it. Clark – as did others – in the immediate aftermath of Lacey’s suicide rejected that he was at fault and called him blameless. Later police footage undermined that contention, and ESPN made Clark apologize.

There was a high-profile rebuke of colleague Pete Schrager, in which the former Steeler told Schrager that, as a non-player, he could not understand the debate at the time. Clark again apologized for those words (as an aside, Howard Cosell is surely turning over in his grave on this one, as he railed against the “jockocracy” in sports TV..

I am not here to say whether Clark was fired or laid off, but he certainly has a number of controversies that could be cited for termination (that said, controversy sells, and that’s been the embraced debate narrative for years at ESPN). It sure smells like a firing, though.

Clearly, Clark is considering a lawsuit; thus, his strenuous descriptions of his dismissal as not a layoff, and telling The Pivot podcast that ESPN is run like a “dictatorship.”

Clark’s agency did not reply for comment.

“Let me put this to bed, I wasn’t laid off. I was fired. They’re using layoffs as a cover and a camouflage for what they already intended on doing,” Clark told The Pivot. “But there was no cause for it. So because there was no cause for it, you couldn’t just fire me. So you had to wait for the layoff so you could camouflage it and veil it.”

The last ESPN personality to sue the mothership was Sage Steele, who got into hot water in 2021 when, on a podcast, she criticized the company’s vaccine mandate and asked why former president Barack Obama is described as African-American if his mother was white.

There are distinct differences between the cases. Steele filed her case while still employed by ESPN, and left only after she settled (she was suspended for her remarks). Steele’s largely conservative approach to certain issues—some might say anti-woke — left her eager to depart (she currently hosts a podcast on Bill Maher’s audio platform). Clark was figuratively dragged off NFL Live mid-segment and has not been shy about his departure.

But there are similarities. If one accepts Clark’s contention that he was fired for cause, both he and Steele were allegedly punished for exercising their First Amendment rights. Both are African American personalities unafraid to bring race into a subject, albeit from different angles.

Steele hired a high-profile employment attorney, Bryan Freedman. Will Clark soon follow her path?

Clark reportedly has a contract worth $2 million a year; it’s unclear if he is owed under that deal or if it is expiring soon. Were he to sue, he’d of course argue he was fired, and that he was singled out for his comments when there is a long history of others at ESPN making controversial remarks.

Steele ultimately settled her suit, and if Clark were to bring a case, that too would be unlikely to reach trial. ESPN doesn’t want to see its management decisions put under a microscope in public. And the Worldwide Leader would surely seek to dismiss the case early on the basis that Clark was laid off, not fired. - Daniel Kaplan

“I was sitting there every day after it happened going, ‘Is the news going to break today? Is the news going to break today? Is the news going to break today?' I certainly looked at my wife a few times in the last 12-13 days, and we looked at each other, ‘Huh, this is pretty amazing it still hasn’t come out.'” - Chris Simms on the Kyle Shanahan car crash news, which he was aware of before it broke.

“Why is ESPN holding the information? If you’re in the news-gathering business, or at least you used to be, the NFL now owns 10 percent of ESPN, but did ESPN have the information and chose to sit on it? For 11 days? Did ESPN say to the Niners, ‘We won’t release it until you tell us to release it?’ Hmm. OK.” - Dan Patrick on how long it took ESPN to report the Shanahan news.

“The point is he never loved LA. How do I know he never loved LA? Because he didn’t love Cleveland enough to go back to Cleveland when they were good and he’s from Akron. He didn’t love Miami enough to go back to Miami when they have Giannis, and they have Bam. It just turns out, and it’s ok, you can be this thing; he’s an absolute mercenary.” - 97.1 The Fan’s Bill Reiter on LeBron James.

“We’re the flagship station, of course, but at the end of the day we’re diehard Philadelphia sports fans. They are not. They suck. Screw them, dude. That is a negative, negative vibe that they are putting out. And it will be amplified, and it bothers the hell out of me. Same old song and dance.” - 97.5 The Fanatic’s Sean Brace on WIP and Spike Eskin’s negativity around LeBron James’s arrival.

“[The Chargers] never really had a superstar receiver; Keenan Allen was their best receiver; he’s been cut by half the league.” - The Herd’s Jason McIntyre on Allen, who has amassed 12,000 receiving yards in 13 seasons and never been cut.

“The network had not started yet, and they were thinking about firing me.” - Paul Finebaum on how ESPN almost let him go before his SEC Network role began.

You can debate which conference is best, but only the Big Ten has the hardware to prove it. The league has produced three straight national championships at three different schools. And there’s a good chance that dominance could extend to four in a row.

Big Ten Media Days begin today and run through Thursday in Chicago. Among those in attendance will be Dave Revsine of Big Ten Network.

Awful Announcing recently caught up with the studio host to discuss the league’s current state and Big Ten Network.

“I would say the biggest story has just been the league’s dominance. I mean, how good it’s been to have three straight national championships from three different teams. That’s remarkable. And just the CFP success,” said Revsine. “The Big Ten’s won 13 CFP games over the last three years. No other conference has won more than five. So it’s really pretty remarkable the run the Big Ten’s been on. And so, I guess the question is, do you sustain it? Is there another team perhaps? Can you make it four different teams in four years? I think that’s compelling. What happens to Indiana? How much staying power does IU have? I think that’s an interesting one. The change at the top at Michigan. There are so many great storylines, but I think ultimately the biggest one is the league’s dominance.”

You can read the whole interview here.

At long last, YouTube TV users who subscribe to a package that includes ESPN will now have access to the full suite of ESPN content at no additional cost.

Cord Cutters reported the news on Monday. YouTube TV subscribers can now access ESPN Unlimited content directly in the app's sports section. Subscribers can now link their YouTube and ESPN accounts.

While Awful Announcing staffers have yet to experience the ingestion feature, this is likely to be rolled out slowly to users instead of being readily available all at once. However, Awful Announcing has successfully logged into the ESPN Unlimited platform with a YouTube TV subscription, so the long-awaited day is finally arriving.

The linkage was promised following the protracted carriage dispute between YouTube TV and Disney late last year. This will give YouTube TV subscribers access to live content that is exclusive to ESPN Unlimited, like WWE’s premium live events and grand slam tennis tournaments, at no additional cost. ESPN Unlimited also includes all content from ESPN+ (now ESPN Select), like out-of-market NHL games, PGA Tour Live, and any number of college athletics that are not scheduled for ESPN’s linear networks.

When ESPN launched its new app last August, which included the new ESPN Unlimited tier, the network had promised that anyone who accesses ESPN through a pay-TV subscription, be that through a cable, satellite, or digital provider, would receive ESPN Unlimited included in their packages at no additional cost. That quickly proved not to be the case, with major providers like Comcast and YouTube TV waiting many months — and in YouTube TV’s case about a year — before gaining access. As such, folks who already paid for ESPN via a pay-TV subscription that also wanted access to ESPN Unlimited-exclusive content had to pay an additional $30 per month.

Luckily, that is no longer the case, with YouTube TV being the last major provider to come on board.