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🏈 CBS Sports isn’t putting a timetable on a final Tony Romo decision, with J.J. Watt joining Jim Nantz for now. Meanwhile, Romo’s departure has completely revamped the NFL on CBS announcing lineup, with Ross Tucker jumping up to join Ian Eagle.

🏀 The NBA has revealed its Opening Night and Christmas Day schedules, and wouldn’t you know it, the Philadelphia 76ers appear on both.

🏈 Pat McAfee looked very comfortable next to President Donald Trump at the Patriot Games.

🏀 The Field of 68 is reviving the famous 24-hour college hoops marathon to start the new season. Grambling and Northern Illinois deserve auto bids to the big dance for playing at 3 a.m.

🏈 ESPN NFL Draft analyst Matt Miller is now facing misdemeanor charges relating to causing the accident that left him severely injured and precipitated questions about his fantasy football dealings.

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

It’s appropriate that college football has begged Congress to put their house in order over the last few years. Because now the sport is functioning about as well as modern-day Washington, D.C.

Congress has an approval rating in the range of the Black Plague and stepping on Legos with your bare feet because of its self-serving nature and refusal to actually do anything for anyone. And judging by recent CFP negotiations, college football is following suit.

The Big Ten and SEC have emerged from the chaos of college realignment with an effective duopoly over the sport. They hold all the power with the College Football Playoff and what its future holds… if only they could agree on what that is.

The SEC (with rights partner ESPN in the background) is fixated on a 16-team playoff and preserving its conference championship game. While the SEC sees a competitive advantage in maintaining at-large berths and touting its now-hypothetical superiority complex, ESPN would benefit as well. A smaller expansion means the network can hold on to the exclusive and lucrative television rights to the playoffs and do what it wants, like sublicense games to TNT Sports that may go head-to-head with the NFL.

On the other hand, the Big Ten (backed by Fox Sports) is fixated on a 24-team model with guaranteed berths for power-conference schools. As you might suspect, this seems favorable to the Big Ten because it could get more teams into the playoff who aren’t often given national spotlight. And it’s where they feel their true capabilities can shine against the SEC and others, whom they have dominated in recent years.

But likewise, there’s something in it for their benefactors as well. An expanded playoff could give Fox Sports access to games and break ESPN’s stranglehold on the event.

When you see these two sides with so much to gain (or lose), it’s no wonder that negotiations are at a standstill. And it’s starting to look eerily similar to all the other fractures in modern-day society. The latest reports that a hybrid 20-team model is being dismissed almost out of hand offer little hope of a solution or compromise any time soon.

So what does the future hold for college football? That’s a question that is starting to be asked with real trepidation. The Protect College Sports Act has stalled in the Senate and now faces an uphill battle amid amendments and opposition during the August recess. And if it’s not a political aisle that separates the SEC and the Big Ten, it might as well be the Grand Canyon.

If no agreement can be reached, the 12-team playoff continues as usual. And there’s nothing wrong with that! It may not be perfect, and the sport may be in a ridiculously complicated quagmire, but college football has never been more successful than it is now. Is the postseason format that most people agree works just fine really the hill everyone wants to die on?

If it’s not a 20-team playoff, surely both sides have to find some middle ground for the sake of the sport, its institutions, and its fans. There is simply too much at stake to dig in for trench warfare over this issue. Whatever it is, fans will grow to get used to it. Alternate between 16 and 24 teams every year, let Paul Finebaum arm wrestle Joel Klatt for the last at-large spot, play the championship game in Saudi Arabia if you have to. Just find any path forward.

But right now, that path is impossible to see. And the longer this impasse over the CFP goes on, the closer we come to the entire system being torn apart.

⚽ Is the fourth season of Ted Lasso really necessary? Michael Grant says the first episode of the new season is an awkward reboot.

Episode 1 wasn't the smoothest start. It felt like running into your college friends after years apart, unsure how to act. The chemistry was missing. However, in all fairness, this episode was about setting the stage for the stakes of this fourth season, in which Rebecca travels to Kansas City to try to convince Ted to coach Richmond’s women's team. Also, since we all know that Ted is going to take the job, there’s no drama here.

⚾ Lauren Shehadi spoke to Sam Neumann about working the upcoming Field of Dreams broadcast with Netflix and what the opportunity will bring.

"Baseball purists like myself, we love our game. We love it how it is. So our first call with Netflix, they said, we're honoring every game, we're honoring the fabric of the game — everything that baseball players and fans love — and we're going to add in our entertainment. Every single broadcast has been baseball plus entertainment, and they've woven it in beautifully."

🏈 Adam Schefter’s tweet about J.J. McCarthy being “forced” to be a backup in Minnesota to Kyler Murray was met with quite the skeptical and puzzled reaction. Sean Keeley explains why.

Schefter was roundly mocked on social media over the framing. Though perhaps this is a case of "fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me" when it comes to Schefter, who has long been accused of shilling for agents and executives through his reporting.

There's also the double whammy of the Michigan connection to consider. Schefter, a Michigan Man, faced similar criticism over the way he carried water for Sherrone Moore during the former Wolverine coach's downfall last year. The ESPN insider also absolved Moore of any wrongdoing in Michigan’s sign-stealing scandal a year earlier.

🏈 Drew Lerner was at the NFL on CBS media day in New York and spoke with CBS Sports president David Berson about the network’s ongoing talks with the NFL around its hopes for speedy new media deals.

“There's nothing to report on this right now, but the relationship is outstanding. We're talking to them every day. I mentioned the viewership success we've had, I mentioned they covet reach so much; CBS is the number one network 17 of the last 18 years … so they really value what we provide and we also value what they're providing. So conversations continue, but there’s nothing at this stage to talk about."

"I'm not sure I went that far. But I appreciate you trying to trap me in that sh*t." - Todd Monken is off to quite the start with the Cleveland media as Browns head coach.

“If I knew how much criticism was waiting being part of that, I might not have taken the job.” - Mike Tirico knows very well that golf fans are the toughest critics out there.

"This, to me, is extraordinarily troubling ... and the lack of response for days on end here. Because remember, the Clippers, when the Aspiration thing came out, within a day or two, Steve Ballmer was in Connecticut talking and denying to Ramona Shelburne, our colleague." - Brian Windhorst sees red flags in the Clippers’ lack of response to the newest Kawhi Leonard reports.

"I'm not proud of it. I just don't like seatbelts. Listen, I know that I'll get skewered. I'm a bad example. Sometimes I'll put it on; if I'm going 95 on the highway, I might throw it on there.” - Bill Simmons, what are you doing?!?

"You look at the O-line, and we talk about them and their ability to play together as a unit. There are so many combination blocks that they are involved in, and we have to be better. Again, five O-linemen have to be able to sustain a line of scrimmage, and I just walked into that meeting room and said, ‘How do we improve? How do we improve our combination blocks?’ We are not asking you to block everybody 1-on-1. So, I think we all have areas that we can improve on, and that includes the coaches." - Mike Vrabel responding to a question about his marriage counseling. Seriously.

It seems like the drama around the WNBA is never-ending. We’re now three full weeks away from Sophie Cunningham’s fateful ESPN feature article that brought the debate around transgender athletes to the front door of the league. And while that has put the WNBA on the front lines of the culture wars, it also devolved into pathetic and malicious stunts from the likes of Enes Kanter and Royce White.

But now the story has taken a strange turn. Before Tuesday night’s home game against the New York Liberty, Fever coach Stephanie White was booed by a contingent of her own fans. This came after she defended Dijonai Carrington of the Chicago Sky after her flagrant-two foul against Cunningham over the weekend.

For her part, White gave an impassioned speech before the game, saying that the hatred and divisiveness that have followed the league will not win.

But how can that happen when it seems like the league, its players, and coaches are under the microscope of the culture wars for every word and act?

Here is a thought, and it’s where the WNBA’s rights partners can step in.

ESPN, NBC, CBS, USA Sports, Ion, and Amazon all need to stand up and be counted and put their coverage where their money is. All of these networks are partners of the WNBA, and they all can do more… much more… to spotlight what matters - the basketball.

Let’s be honest, there is not much happening in the sports world right now. Instead of talking ad nauseum about the Dallas Cowboys, can ESPN give us multiple WNBA segments on their flagship morning shows to help steer the conversation where it belongs?

Minnesota Lynx rookie phenom Olivia Miles is one of the best stories in sports. Give her half the attention given to Dak Prescott in August, and she will be a household name in no time. But instead, do you know how many times she has been promoted on the X pages of Get Up and First Take this WNBA season? Zero.

If you’re CBS and NBC, spotlight some of the top WNBA stars on your morning shows. Don’t let Fox News be the news outlet that is giving the league the most coverage! Interviews, profiles, features, human interest stories; push the envelope on what’s possible and help us see new and old stars in a new light. And if you’re USA Sports, maybe Sophie Cunningham can take a break from her contributor role and not cause any more distractions. She’s earned it.

We’ve gone from anti-trans rhetoric and political stunts to the fanbase of the marquee team in the league turning on their own coach. If this isn’t a league-wide crisis, then what is? It should be all hands on deck for anyone invested in the WNBA’s present and future. And if the league and its commissioner won’t do anything about it, maybe the rights partners can.