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🎤 QUICK START ✍️

💣 Woj bomb-adjacent. The Woj bomb lives on. Kind of. According to a report by Andrew Marchand in The Athletic, former ESPN NBA insider Adrian Wojnarowski is launching a new show called The Program with Woj, which is set to air on YouTube in weekly installments. The former ESPN star will interview “big-name team builders using his vast contacts from his decades in sports media and first year in the front office.” Now the GM of the St. Bonaventure men’s basketball program, Woj says, “My financial motivation with The Program is simply to raise revenue to be distributed directly back to our players on campus.”

📱 Turn it down. There are few things less enjoyable while watching a TV show or sports event than to immediately get hit in the eardrums with an excessively loud commercial. If you live in California, those days are over. On Wednesday, California Governor Gavin Newsom signed a law banning excessively loud commercials and ads on streaming platforms, including Netflix, Hulu, Disney+, and Amazon Prime Video. The law goes into effect on July 1, 2026.

🏈 Who’s Lion? A few weeks back, ESPN NFL insider Adam Schefter reported that the Detroit Lions complained to the league about the way some teams were blocking defensive end Aidan Hutchinson. Lions head coach Dan Campbell wants to clarify that the report was inaccurate. “That’s bogus. That’s a bogus report. I don’t know where that came from. Nobody from here ever did that. That’s bull,” Campbell said Wednesday.

🏀 Katz kall. Hoops HQ, a college basketball digital media company launched by Seth Davis in 2024, has made a significant addition ahead of the 2025-26 season. Longtime college basketball insider Andy Katz has joined Hoops HQ as a contributor, Davis told Front Office Sports. Katz will “provide a wide range of written and digital content for Hoops HQ.”

🚨 LEADING OFF 🚨

What’s the point of sports documentaries anymore?

A football coaching god, cast out of the NFL, decides to give up a well-earned retirement to prove one last time he still has what it takes.

A 73-year-old curmudgeon, often private and secretive, suddenly becomes tabloid fodder with his 24-year-old pageant girlfriend-manager-publicist.

A university desperate to ensure its college football program keeps up with the powerhouses and survives the next round of realignment makes an unconventional hire.

An offseason of hype and excitement comes crashing down, thanks to a 2-3 start, where it becomes apparent that this won’t be the cakewalk some thought it would be.

Rumors, reports, and leaks suggest that the program is in disarray, with legal challenges and investigations underway, and speculation about a coach buyout begins to circulate.

Drop all of that in a pot, stir it up, and you have the makings of a fantastic documentary chronicling what may end up being Bill Belichick’s disasterously short stint at North Carolina. The fact that a documentary crew was actually filming behind the scenes at UNC means there must be all kinds of footage that captures the real moments and human stories at the heart of this redemption tale, which quickly becomes a modern Greek tragedy.

Of course, that will never happen. The planned season-long docuseries with Hulu was scrapped at some point when it became clear things were not going to go according to plan.

We don’t know precisely how the docuseries fell apart. However, we can assume that Belichick’s program decided it was no longer in its best interest and told Hulu it wouldn’t provide further access.

If that were the case, given what they already presumably had in the can, it would have made sense for Hulu to keep filming anyway. Although they lost direct access, they could still have obtained plenty of footage from games, press conferences, and interviews. They could have shifted their focus from covering the season as a partner to covering it as an objective observer of the downfall. Getting locked out would have made for a fascinating turning point that the docuseries could have pivoted on, like Bryan Fogel’s Icarus.

Of course, you and I know there was never any chance of that happening. Because we know Hulu didn’t get into this deal to get their hands dirty or do any capital-J journalism.

This was a puff piece. This was PR. This was carefully controlled messaging intended to act as a recruiting tool for North Carolina football and help rehab Bill Belichick’s image (and probably give Jordon Hudson some airtime as well).

And as soon as it could no longer be any of that, presumably, Hulu was happy to pull the plug, perhaps on a handshake promise that they might try again next year.

We can feel reasonably confident because this is how sports documentaries and docuseries typically work now. Anyone who’s watched Netflix’s Untold films knows this. If you’ve watched any documentaries or docuseries produced by WWE, LeBron James, or Steph Curry, you know they exist to tell a specific story, not to dig at the scab on the heart of truth. Even the 30 for 30 series, once the paragon of sports documentaries, is barely trying as it limps along (the recent New York Sack Exchange entry never justifies why it exists).

It’s no surprise that the one genuinely fascinating moment to happen in a Hard Knocks series in years —the infamous New York Giants front-office meeting where they decide they’re going to let Saquon Barkley go —is also likely to be why the franchise dies. It was too real, too honest, and too insightful for the way our modern media landscape works. The recent Buffalo Bills edition was so uninteresting and bland that it was indistinguishable from a team production.

Even the most well-regarded sports docuseries in recent memory, like The Last Dance, arrive pre-loaded with authorial intent. And facsimiles of that, like Dynasty and America’s Team, learned all the wrong lessons.

Ezra Edelman, the award-winning director of O.J.: Made in America, laid it out succinctly in a 2024 Pablo Torre Finds Out interview.

“The types of documentaries that are more popular, more prevalent, are increasingly things that are shown by streamers that are sometimes about famous people, artists, singers, whomever, and that are sort of like bordering a little bit on branded content because they’re done in sort of connection with the subjects themselves who often are producers,” he said. “And this idea of documentary filmmaking as journalism is being pushed by the wayside a little bit… I do think there happens to be a glut of documentaries that are now being done in participation with the subject. If the subject has any creative control, I have a problem.”

It's safe to say that Edelman would have hated whatever the Hulu UNC docuseries ultimately became. The world did not lose a fascinating insight into a very public disaster. The entire ordeal was, indeed, creatively controlled by its subjects and would therefore have produced something of little value to anyone other than Belichick, Hudson, and their compatriots. Perhaps, in some small way, the fact that this docuseries will never exist is a blessing to any of us who might have tried to watch it.

Unfortunately, there are many more pointless puff pieces to come. As corporate entities acquire media companies and enter into incestuous deals with one another to fill the #CONTENT coffers, sports documentaries have been stripped of meaning to fill space on a schedule. Getting the A-lister to appear is now more important than trying to tell an interesting or truthful story.

We don’t know how it will end yet, but Bill Belichick’s tenure at UNC is prime material for an excellent documentary. It just feels so unlikely we’ll ever get that version, if we ever get one at all.

🎺 AROUND AA 🎺

Jeff Pearlman is best known for his books on legendary sports figures and teams. However, his most recent biography explores the world of hip-hop.

Pearlman’s new book is Only God Can Judge Me: The Many Lives of Tupac Shakur. In it, he details one of the most influential rappers of the 1990s. Tupac was infamously a victim of a drive-by shooting in the Las Vegas area after leaving a Mike Tyson fight in 1996. He died six days later at 25 years old. Like many musical artists who die early, his pop culture status remains high, and his mythology has grown over time. Today, it’s not uncommon for teenagers to wear shirts with Tupac’s likeness.

Awful Announcing’s Michael Grant recently caught up with Pearlman to ask the New York Times best-selling author about his latest work. “Only God Can Judge Me” will be released on October 21.

📣 NOTABLE QUOTABLES 🗣️

“It’s a great song.” - Travis Kelce on Taylor Swift’s “Wood,” which is apparently about his penis.

"He doesn't get the credit that he deserves because he played on a defensive-oriented team, which is tricky." - Chris “Mad Dog” Russo making the Hall of Fame case for Phil Simms.

“She could use like, uh, Vagisil daily fresh wipes.” - WFAN’s Boomer Esiason’s attempt to find an endorsement deal for Yankees broadcaster Suzyn Waldman akin to Dave Sim's’ Dude Wipes’ deal.

“You guys are idiots. We all knew it was an ad, right?” - Lakers coach JJ Redick on LeBron’s “second decision” ad campaign reveal.

“I’ve never seen it so blatant.” - Fox announcer Adam Wainwright on Mariners’ Josh Naylor’s sign-stealing from second base.

“YOU BET! YOU BET!” - ESPN’s Ryan Ruocco’s first-ever double You Bet! following A'ja Wilson’s WNBA Finals Game 3 winner.

️‍🔥 THE CLOSER 🔥

Bad Bunny and the lessons of growing old

When the news dropped that Bad Bunny would be the halftime performer at Super Bowl LX, I wasn’t particularly surprised. While I hadn’t listened to much of his music, I was aware that he is an extremely popular rapper and singer. Ironically, I know him more for his non-singing endeavors, such as his appearances in WWE or hosting Saturday Night Live (the "Please Don’t Destroy" sketch, where he shows up dressed like Shrek, is a favorite).

I consider myself someone who pays attention to pop culture. I have a decent-enough grasp on what’s popular and trending. However, I am also 47, and as a 47-year-old, I can attest that I am considered old. That may seem relative to you, but I don’t mean it in a judgmental or pejorative sense. Anyone who is 47 or has been 47 knows what I mean is… I am too old for what is truly popular. As such, the popular culture is no longer for me. It’s for teenager and 20-somethings on their TikToks and their YouTubes.

In other words, the process of selecting Bad Bunny as the Super Bowl halftime performer was not done with 47-year-olds like me in mind. Nor should it be, frankly.

As you’re no doubt aware, Bad Bunny’s selection has caused some consternation with certain people who would have preferred a different kind of performer. Their reasons for not liking Bad Bunny or his selection are a discussion for another newsletter, but I was struck by the language used in some instances.

“I didn’t even know who Bad Bunny was, but it sounds like a terrible decision, in my view,” said Speaker of the House Mike Johnson, who is 53 and would prefer to see Lee Greenwood perform.

“I don’t know who he is,” said President Donald Trump, 79. “I don’t know why they’re doing it — it’s, like, crazy.”

Setting aside the possibility that these people may also have ulterior motives for disliking Mr. Bunny, the shared sentiment that they were unaware of his existence until last week is precisely why their opinions don’t matter on this subject. They, like me, are too old.

Bad Bunny is a three-time Grammy Award winner, eight-time Billboard Music Award winner, Billboard’s 2022 Artist of the Year, the most-streamed artist on Spotify from 2020 to 2022, the second in 2023, and third in 2024, and has sold over seven million records worldwide.

I didn’t know any of that until this very moment, when I researched it while writing this. Because I’m 47. I am old. And the very successful Bad Bunny reminds me that culture is a young person’s game. So let’s leave it to the young people. Let them enjoy their Bad Bunnies.

Besides, trust me, Lee Greenwood ain’t hard to find.