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🎤 QUICK START ✍️

🏀 An early exit for Rick Pitino and St. John’s ended one of the best stories in college basketball before it really started, leading to some typical Pitino-isms. After sideline reporter Evan Washburn refused to let Pitino evade an in-game interview question, Pitino was antagonistic in his postgame press conference, accusing a reporter of leading questions about the team’s poor performance.

😬 More leaked audio from Project Veritas founder James O’Keefe III appeared to capture ESPN producer Ryan Bertrand telling a woman that staff at the Worldwide Leader see Stephen A. Smith as a racial caricature who is uninformed on the political issues he has recently begun discussing more often on news programs.

🏈 New Orleans police has made two arrests in relation to the death of Kansas City Telemundo reporter Adan Manzano, who died while covering Super Bowl LIX. A local woman with a criminal history has been charged with his murder nearly two months after Manzano was found dead in his hotel room. The woman who was charged was initially found with Manzano’s credit cards and cellphone two days after his death.

🚨LEADING OFF 🚨

Spring belongs to CBS

College basketball owns March, and it’s a big part of why CBS owns the spring.

With all due respect to ESPN’s incredible wall-to-wall coverage of the NCAA women’s tournament, MLB Opening Day or any other great spring sporting event, the sports world’s eyes are on CBS more than any other network this time of year. When you add in The Masters, which pick up the week after the NCAA men’s national championship game, the case is clear.

Every network wants to say they do big events best, but CBS does this event best. Yes, it’s part of a collaboration with TNT Sports. But CBS opens each day of games and closes out with the Final Four. Their broadcasters and reporters lead the top booths. With Adam Zucker, Clark Kellogg and a rotating cast of other coaches and analysts, they wrangle the NBA on TNT talent and keep the studio shows on the tracks. The top reporters (more on one in particular at the end of this newsletter) have real relationships within the sport and deliver more than one shining moment each tournaments with their interviews.

The Super Bowl broadcaster owns January and February before CBS takes March and April. Maybe after that, it’s ESPN with the NBA and WNBA. Fox and NBC alternate between Olympics and World Cups in the late summer. Fox has October with the MLB playoffs. And then it’s back to football.

I write all this just after former ESPN president John Skipper claimed the dual bid was not as big as ESPN’s when they won the rights initially in 2010 (it was extended in 2016). The variety of sports broadcasting is part of what makes it fun. We all have our favorites (and the Ian Eagle/Bill Raftery/Grant Hill trio is in the Sweet 16 of our Best Broadcast Booth bracket; vote now!), but the fact that each network brings its flavor to a specific set of events and a unique part of the calendar makes being a sports fan more fun.

Getting Raftery and all his signature taglines this time every year is like eggnog in December. The Jon Rothstein tweets may get old, but we all can admit they’re fun. Seeing Barkley derail a studio show without Ernie Johnson there to corral him is hilarious! In particular, it’s the loyalty CBS has to its talent and the faces of its coverage that create a true bond between the network and the viewer.

That gives way to Jim Nantz in Augusta alongside Trevor Immellman (also in our bracket’s Sweet 16!), a tradition of its own. CBS does golf at a really high level, and its (unpaid) relationship with The Masters is fascinating.

All I’m saying is, in addition to another potential Duke championship or Dan Hurley’s latest explosion, enjoy what CBS does packaging this tournament and owning this moment. They make a spectacular sporting event even better.

📣 SOCIAL EXPERIMENT 🌟

From Sister Jean to Papa John to Christian Laettner’s mom, every NCAA tournament has an iconic off-court character. It didn’t take long for this year’s Madness to home in on its breakout star, McNeese student manager Amir “Aura” Khan.

March Madness also means the Inside the NBA guys in the studio (minus Shaquille O’Neal), and Charles Barkley delivered with his usual absurdity while trying to to keep up with the whirlwind of the first weekend.

Last but not least… thoughts?

💰INDUSTRY INSIGHTS🧐

• Awful Announcing contributing reporter Daniel Kaplan was at the SportsPro Conference in New York last week and has the latest on NBC Sports’ interest in MLB rights. NBC Sports president Jon Miller acknowledged the company could take over ESPN’s package from 2026-28, saying MLB has a “very positive outlook.” While Fox reportedly wants the Home Run Derby, a Sunday Night Baseball package on NBC could give the network a yearlong national window each weekend, bridging the gap between NBA in the spring and NFL in the fall and winter.

• Despite last week’s fiasco around the U.S. defense department attempting to rewrite the history of Jackie Robinson’s military service, Major League Baseball conspicuously removed references to its Diversity Pipeline Program from MLB web platforms. As first reported by Craig Calcaterra, the program (which was designed to improve diversity and inclusion in team front offices) was the subject of a lawsuit from former Trump administration officials alleging that its use by MLB constituted a discriminatory employment practice.

• Despite DraftKings parting ways with multiple internally produced shows earlier this year, John Ourand of Puck reports the gambling operator still hopes to retain its streaming network’s anchor, The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz. The outspoken former ESPN host licensed his popular digital show to DraftKings Network upon leaving the Worldwide Leader in 2021 on a three-year deal worth a reported $50 million, which likely was extended in 2024. Now, Le Batard is openly teasing another move while DraftKings appears to be leaking that it wants to keep him and the show onboard.

️‍🔦IN THE SPOTLIGHT🔦

Tracy Wolfson’s time to shine

Sunday after the reigning NCAA champs went down, head coach Dan Hurley appeared on-camera with Tracy Wolfson of CBS for an interview. Hurley shared why this season’s adversity while vying for a three-peat pulled out real emotion both good and bad between him and his players, tearfully opening up even in defeat.

It was an admirable way for the brash Hurley to go out. It was also a genuine sign of what makes Wolfson so great at her job.

Game reporters do a thankless job. At the lower levels, they parachute into teams and leagues they may not know well, acting merely as news gatherers. The best ones, though, get the benefit of working a beat.

Wolfson has been the lead reporter for the Final Four since 2008. She was there for both of Hurley’s recent championships, as well as the two UConn won under Jim Calhoun in 2011 and Kevin Ollie in 2014. If anyone in national media has built up the equity to get the best, most genuine response from an emotional Hurley in that moment, it was Wolfson.

The same is true each year during the AFC playoffs. The network’s lead NFL reporter since 2014, Wolfson’s stint spans from when Tom Brady and Peyton Manning were still duking it out through to the annual clashes between Patrick Mahomes and Josh Allen. When Wolfson asks these two MVP QBs questions in arctic temperatures each January, you’d never know they are both stoic cool guys.

Wolfson knows them and how they handle their business well enough to know the perfect types of questions to ask. After Allen beat Lamar Jackson and the Baltimore Ravens in the AFC Divisional round this season, Wolfson knew to set the humble Allen up to explain what made every other element of Buffalo’s win work. He wasn’t going to talk himself up, but you can’t say this isn’t the face of an athlete who respects the reporter he’s alongside:

From Craig Sager to Michele Tafoya, it takes a truly long-lasting career and personal touch to rise to the ranks of all-time game reporters. Wolfson is there, and is in the perfect spot to keep doing fantastic work that reaches tens of millions of sports fans each year in the biggest moments.