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🏈 Super Bowl LX ended the streak of record-setting audiences with 124.9 million viewers, falling shy of last year’s total.

🏈 The NFL push for 18 games still has a chance to come to fruition in 2027 with no date set for Super Bowl LXII in February 2028.

📺 The Rich Eisen Show will be subbing for The Pat McAfee Show on ESPN as the latter takes a two-week break following the end of football season.

🏀 Noah Eagle will call the NBA All-Star Game on NBC with Mike Tirico in Italy on Winter Olympics duty.

“All fans who subscribe to ESPN, whether through a traditional pay TV package or directly with the ESPN DTC Unlimited plan, have access to the new features when watching on the ESPN App.”

That was one of the selling points of the new ESPN direct-to-consumer platform when it was unveiled to the masses last year. The streaming initiative was to be a crossing of the Rubicon for Bristol, finally launching a DTC streaming outlet to reach cord cutters directly and help the business move forward in a new era.

But access for those already with a traditional ESPN subscription via cable, satellite, or streaming was supposed to be easy. We’ve all grown accustomed to authenticating subscriptions, usually just with the ease of a couple clicks. When ESPN Unlimited was rolled out, it was largely an afterthought because we all assumed it would go smoothly.

However, it’s been anything but the case. Initial confusion around which subscribers had access hit as early as the first WWE premium live event. That continued through the fall as ESPN stated that new deals would have to be re-worked with providers to include the new Unlimited package. And when the Disney-YouTube TV dispute blew up and became a five alarm fire, it became even more of a talking point.

However, an agreement was finally reached and ESPN Unlimited was now finally going to be made available to YouTube TV subscribers. As a bonus, it would eventually be available inside the YTV interface. But like pretty much everyone else along the way, fans assuming they would have quick and easy access to all the content on ESPN Unlimited were met with a rude awakening.

For tens of millions of sports fans, that promise has thus far been an empty one. Comcast and YouTube TV customers are still without access to ESPN Unlimited, even after carriage renewals with the companies that took place months ago. Comcast says it could be made available in “coming weeks” while YTV is now advertising a Fall 2026 rollout.

Apparently, the delay is being blamed on technical issues adding millions of new users to the platform. But you can understand fans feeling left out when they were told that they would have had access to ESPN Unlimited last summer. What happens if Comcast Xfinity subscribers aren’t able to watch WrestleMania? What about YouTube TV subscribers that are going to be left out in the cold until football season?

The importance of the ESPN app (now colloquially referred to as ESPN Unlimited after their top tier featuring all ESPN linear and streaming content) can’t be overstated. With cable subscribers dwindling, ESPN needs a consistent streaming platform to help supplant some of the lost revenue of the cable bundle. While that will mostly depend on cord cutters paying the full $29.99 per month, surely the cost of the platform has been baked in to new carriage deals with Comcast and YouTube TV. It’s fair at this point for sports fans to ask if they are already paying for a product that they won’t have access to for weeks or perhaps even months.

And on top of all of these issues, fans are feeling the weight of ESPN Unlimited as a heavy bargaining chip or even an extra paywall. Content that was available on ESPN+ like the Australian Open has already been moved to a pricier tier. And the fiasco around the MLB.tv situation means that fans have to pay special attention so they don’t get caught in a double paywall.

Thus far, the only thing that’s been unlimited in the rollout of the ESPN app has been confusion, frustration, and desperation for sports fans. And that’s for those who are lucky enough to have access, let alone the ones still on the outside looking in with no idea when they may finally enter ESPN’s quagmire of a streaming promised land.

Sam Darnold dreamed of being an ESPN anchor, but he will probably settle for being a Super Bowl winning quarterback.

Who knew there were some hard feelings between Tim Cowlishaw and Marc Stein?

In what surely has to be the script of an upcoming Lifetime movie, a Norwegian skier commemorated winning a bronze medal by begging to get his girlfriend back after cheating on her.

Note to self: if you ever plan a trip to Italy, don’t ask for pineapple on pizza. Don’t even think about it.

“You don’t even know where the games are. Is it on Prime? Is it on ESPN? Is it on NBC? NBA TV? Where the hell’s the game? I can’t find it.” - Michael Wilbon is all of us trying to find when and where we can watch live sports.

"Just do their sport and play for our country and respect the flag and respect everything that’s going on." Boomer Esiason told US Olympic athletes to stick to sports in a controversial take.

“So, if I’m the NFLPA, I’m like, ‘Hey, we’re not playing any more Super Bowls in California,’ we’re just not doing it.” - Not to be outdone, Esiason also floated the NFL not hosting any more Super Bowls in California due to the state’s high taxes.

"It's too valuable right now in the current climate to overlook not expanding. I think we need to expand sooner rather than later." - Ohio State athletic director Ross Bjork is continuing the push to expand the College Football Playoff.

Tanking is always going to be an issue in sports when draft capital is one of the most valuable assets in any professional sports league. But for the NBA, the tanking problem is becoming a real crisis thanks to the actions of the Utah Jazz.

The lottery that exists in the NBA and NHL is supposed to discourage all-out tanking, but in fact, the opposite appears to be happening. With draft picks protected at all different kinds of levels, teams are tanking in more scenarios than ever before. But what the Jazz are doing is beyond the pale, even by historical tanking standards.

It’s not even the All-Star break and the Jazz are actively pulling their best players like Lauri Markkanen and the newly acquired Jaren Jackson Jr. off the floor and benching them for entire fourth quarters. While it worked when they blew a massive late lead against the Magic, it didn’t against the Heat as the Jazz bench actually won the game with Brice Sensabaugh nailing a clutch three-pointer. At least the players on the floor are still trying!

It has ESPN analyst Bobby Marks now saying out loud that the integrity of the league is being called into question.

The NBA has a lot of issues to deal with - major gambling scandals, load management and player injuries, and now this. One of the biggest problems the league has to face is that fans don’t know who is going to show up on any given night. It’s one thing if it’s injury-related, it’s another when coaches are actively trying to do everything they can to lose with healthy players.

What’s really the difference between what Jazz coach Will Hardy is doing and what Terry Rozier and Jontay Porter were accused of when it comes to trying to win? And can the NBA actually allow this to go on for two full months before the end of the season? If the Jazz are this committed to tanking, surely other teams in the hunt for the most ping pong balls will follow suit. Utah has only the sixth worst record in the league. What happens when Brooklyn, Indiana, New Orleans, Washington, and Sacramento start to feel their lottery position is under threat?

This has to be the moment that Adam Silver and the NBA go to the drawing board and find a new plan for the draft process. Because the league itself is risking going down with tanking teams in its entirety if it is allowed to continue.