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🎤 QUICK START ✍️

🏀 Stephen A. Smith is confirmed to not be in ESPN’s plans for NBA Countdown this year. While this wasn’t a surprise given a decreased NBA workload was part of his new contract, it sure drew plenty of reactions.

🏈 Netflix revealed their cast of thousands that will cover their Christmas Day NFL doubleheader including two teams in the broadcast booth and two teams in the studio.

⚾ ESPN and MLB.TV are approaching a deal that will see out-of-market baseball games appear on ESPN Unlimited.

📡 Disney was denied in their attempt to gain an immediate injunction in a lawsuit against Dish for including ESPN in their Sling Orange passes.

🚨LEADING OFF 🚨

 Sports media, then and now

Burn like a slave
Churn like a cog
We are caged in simulations
Algorithms evolve
Push us aside and render us obsolete
- Muse, “Algorithm”

The past and present of sports media can be best summed up by two feature pieces published on Tuesday at Awful Announcing.

The first by Owen Lewis, entitled “Sportswriters remember Grantland as a writer’s paradise” shows the past of the sports media industry.

The second by Kevin Driscoll, entitled “Pat McAfee isn’t running ESPN, the algorithm is” shows the present of the sports media industry… and probably its future, too.

We are all guilty of yearning for a glory day that is lost in time, but maintained through the wistful longing of our memories. A longing for when we weren’t so old and jaded and things felt fresh and new.

When it comes to the case of Grantland and the sports media of old, that came through storytelling. It didn’t matter how many followers a subject had or how much buzz it would generate. What mattered was how captivating, how interesting, how enthralling a story could be. The industry was allowed the time and space to share these stories.

Maybe that’s being a bit pollyannish. After all, Grantland was still an endeavor from the capitalists at the Disney corporation. And it did ultimately meet its demise when Disney and ESPN eventually ran out of good will. But our memories have a funny way of working sometimes.

Grantland isn’t alone in the graveyard of storytelling with the downturn in print media as a whole. But what is true is that a place like Grantland simply could not exist today in 2025, unless it was a passion project on someone’s Substack.

In its place are Pat McAfee taking his shirt off whenever he gets the chance and Olympic highlights being narrated by an AI version of Al Michaels. Instead of programming towards what will produce the highest quality material to serve fans, sports media is programming towards what can gain the highest amount of views to serve whatever social media algorithm is running our lives on a given day.

It’s the reason why First Take has replaced SportsCenter in the ESPN hierarchy. It’s why nobody does highlight shows anymore. And it’s why everything is geared towards what has the chance to go viral. It’s not just that one performs and one doesn’t. It’s that we have literally been programmed to reject anything that takes more effort than doomscrolling to consume.

The race to produce something to capture our ever decreasing attention spans has led to a race to produce the most bombastic, reaction-inducing content possible. It’s why ESPN content looks more and more like a TikTok feed than the New Yorker. An algorithm is going to love a Stephen A. Smith rant video about the Dallas Cowboys. It’s not going to love several thousand words on juggling.

You can’t really blame ESPN or the rest of the sports media universe for this. It’s just the way our current world works. This is the hand we have currently been dealt. Whether it is sports, news, politics, culture, YouTube golf videos, or anything in between, we are all trying to survive from one day to the next and one algorithm change after another. And we have to constantly keep going bigger, bolder, and louder to keep pace.

Maybe one day, someone will consider 2025 to be their glory days. Maybe they will yearn for the way things used to be when we had meaningful, thought-provoking content like “67” memes from NFL broadcasters. Then again, maybe we should just pack it in and admit that humanity has had a good run.

📣 SOCIAL EXPERIMENT 🌟

You have to watch the audio (and video) of BBC Scotland calling the clinching goal in Scotland’s 4-2 victory over Denmark to send them to their first World Cup since 1998.

The Giants have taken the lead over the Jets this week in which New York City NFL team is the bigger dumpster fire. WFAN talking heads were in meltdown mode over both Abdul Carter falling asleep at the team facility and Cam Skattebo mixing it up on Monday Night Raw fresh off a season ending injury.

Speaking of the Jets… why is Jets fan Mike Greenberg trying to play the role of Dallas Cowboys superfan to troll Stephen A. Smith? Was Skip Bayless not available for the day?

🗣️ NOTABLE QUOTABLES 🗣️

“The point is, however willfully ignorant people want to be to it, that I’m highlighting the disadvantaged platform that he is throwing from.” - Josina Anderson defended herself after the widespread mockery that came from her “against all odds” tweet about Shedeur Sanders.

“These idiots say, 'How much do people pay you to say this bullshit?' F-off.” - Kirk Herbstreit having his own podcast and constantly responding to ragebait is a weird move for a guy that took himself off the weekly CFP rankings show so that he didn’t have to constantly respond to ragebait.

"Unless you're trying to showcase what the game has done to them, I don't think there's any justification for ESPN interviewing a guy who's been ravaged by memory loss and decreased cognitive skills.” - Jeff Pearlman slammed ESPN for putting Pitt legend Tony Dorsett in a vulnerable on-air position.

️‍️‍🔥The Closer🔥

Aloha means goodbye for Maui?

When you think of early season college basketball, there’s likely one event and one venue that comes to mind - the Maui Invitational. But as Michael Grant writes, the importance and impact of the Thanksgiving week tournament from the tiny gym in paradise is sadly waning.

Thanksgiving week is almost here, which means it’s nearly time to enjoy a buffet of college basketball action. The main course has traditionally been the Maui Invitational, the most prestigious of the holiday tournaments. Since its inaugural 1984 tipoff, we have seen some of the most storied programs battle it out in Hawaii.

Who doesn’t love to watch brand-name schools with elite prospects battle it out in a tiny gym? Normally, this would be something to celebrate. But this year, you’re going to notice something different about your TV experience. Not only are there no bluebloods in paradise, but there is just one ranked school in the 8-team field. The tournament, which starts Nov. 24, features No. 25 NC State, Seton Hall, USC, Boise State, Washington State, Chaminade, Arizona State, and Texas. None were ranked in the Associated Press Preseason Top 25 poll.

If you think this is a one-year outlier, guess again. The 2026 tournament includes Arizona, BYU, Ole Miss, Clemson, Colorado State, Providence, VCU, and Washington. What in the name of Dick Vitale is going on? Where are Duke, North Carolina, Michigan State, Kentucky, UConn, Kansas, Indiana, UCLA, Villanova, etc.? Just last year, the Maui Invitational had North Carolina, UConn, and Michigan State.

It’s not to say that ESPN isn’t featuring college basketball anymore. The weekly CFP rankings show on Tuesday night aired live from the State Farm Champions Classic at Madison Square Garden with Kentucky, Michigan State, Duke, and Kansas competing.

But now these preseason moneymakers are either driven by networks or NIL from the same sterile rotation of neutral site venues. And with everyone in college sports chasing the quickest, easiest, and most available bucks imaginable, trips to Maui to play at Lahaina Civic Center just don’t carry the same weight it once did.

It’s just one more reminder that college athletics is changing fast and much of what we once loved is being left behind.