Welcome to The A Block, Awful Announcing’s daily newsletter, where you’ll always find the latest sports media news, commentary, and analysis.

Did someone share this newsletter with you? Sign up for free to make sure you never miss it.

🎤 QUICK START ✍️

💵 Big Ten Billions. As first reported by ESPN’s Pete Thamel, the Big Ten Conference has been in talks “for months” about private capital investments that would inject at least $2 billion into the league and its schools. While most of the schools in the conference are on board, “a few of the league’s biggest brands — including Ohio State and Michigan — are still in discussions with the league.”

🏀 NBAI. The NBA is thinking big with a newly unveiled partnership with Amazon Web Services that will build a new Inside the Game platform for AI-powered statistics. The collaboration between the NBA and AWS will utilize motion-tracking data from in-arena cameras to develop a new set of statistics that will be available in real-time for teams, broadcasters, and fans. AWS will use its cloud computing technology and AI machine learning tools to create statistics based on the movement of players on the court.

🏒 Verrett-able Success. According to a report by Brian Steinberg in Variety, FanDuel Sports Network is launching a whip-around-style pregame show hosted by former SportsCenter anchor Stan Verrett. The show, which will begin its run on October 27, is designed to take viewers across the country to preview numerous games within the three major leagues that FanDuel Sports Networks airs: the NBA, NHL, and MLB.

⚾ Si, Si Pedro. With the 2025 MLB Postseason underway, Pedro Martinez has a new deal. As first reported by Front Office Sports’ Ryan Glasspiegel, the Hall of Fame pitcher has inked a multiyear extension with TNT Sports, where he has been a staple of the network’s coverage for more than a decade. While terms were unknown, TNT currently has MLB rights through the 2028 season.

🚨 LEADING OFF 🚨

Sports media still hasn’t figured out how to talk about the WNBA

In the wake of WNBA star Napheesa Collier publicly criticizing commissioner Cathy Engelbert’s leadership and league officials, Stephen A. Smith began Wednesday’s First Take by calling for the much-criticized commissioner to resign. While Monica McNutt, who closely covers the NBA and WNBA, was right there, she was asked to sit tight while Chris “Mad Dog” Russo offered his keen insight into the situation.

“I don’t follow this carefully, but I watched it today,” Russo started before launching into a defense of the WNBA’s officiating and blaming all of the criticism directed at Engelbert on CBA negotiations.

“However, if you watch the clip, good luck absorbing anything other than McNutt’s genuine reactions to everything Dog was arguing,” wrote Awful Announcing’s Brandon Contes. “Hands on her chin, hands on her face, hands covering her eyes, eyes widened, jaw dropped, McNutt gave a master class in the five stages of listening to Dog rant about the WNBA.”

It was indeed amusing. However, as Hill noted in her critique, this was also a classic example of the problem that mainstream sports media still face when covering the WNBA and women’s sports in general.

“This is a perfect illustration of what’s wrong with women’s sports coverage,” wrote former ESPN host Jemele Hill on Threads. “A man who has spent very little time discussing, covering, or even watching the WNBA is allowed to shout opinions and shape the narrative of a league he doesn’t know. The woman who actually covers the league sits in baffled silence. I get it. I know it’s Mad Dog’s schtick, but it’s representative of a larger issue in women’s sports coverage. The bar has not been raised. This is the expected standard.”

Hill’s point is valid. We’ve been having this conversation for as long as women’s sports have been deemed worthy of discussion by daytime sports shows like First Take. Male hosts and analysts offering half-baked opinions despite admitting they don’t follow the sports closely, while talented and informed female media members wait in the wings for the scraps.

This would have been a fantastic opportunity to showcase McNutt and let her provide a critical analysis of the situation, drawing on her wealth of knowledge and expertise. Instead, she’s reduced to being a sideshow so that a 65-year-old guy who doesn’t care about the WNBA can talk out of his butt (and I say that with love for Mad Dog).

This isn’t a new phenomenon. What’s disappointing is that it appears the mainstream sports media haven’t learned anything. Women like McNutt have been gaining platforms they didn’t previously have, but a show exclusively streaming on Disney+ is not the same as the show that airs daily on ESPN. And instead of nuanced conversations full of depth, it appears that women like McNutt will have to keep pushing back against the old boys' club that continues to dominate the mic.

Between the Cathy Engelbert story, CBS negotiations, the WNBA Finals, the impending Unrivaled season, women’s college basketball’s rise, and the imminent return of Caitlin Clark and Angel Reese next season, we’re about to enter a critical time for the WNBA and women’s basketball. It would be great to know that ESPN and other sports media entities will be able to offer interesting and valuable conversations about them.

At the very least, can we get Chris Russo to watch one WNBA game? Maybe two?

📺 INDUSTRY INSIGHTS 🎬

• The highly anticipated Green Bay Packers-Dallas Cowboys game on NBC’s Sunday Night Football, which resulted in a 40-40 tie, earned the top audience of the week in the NFL. Micah Parsons’ return to Dallas averaged 26.9 million viewers across NBC and Peacock, marking the highest audience for an overtime SNF game since NBC acquired the package in 2006.

• Immaculate Grid is fun to play, but is it interesting enough that you’d watch a TV show of others playing it? That’s what production company Religion of Sports is banking on. The company founded by Gotham Chopra, Tom Brady, and Michael Strahan is developing a TV game show based on the online trivia game hosted by Sports Reference.

• While the entirety of the 2025-26 women’s college basketball broadcast schedule has yet to be revealed, we already know that one of the most highly anticipated games of the season will air on national television in primetime. South Carolina announced that its Feb. 14 matchup against LSU will air on ABC at 8:30 p.m. ET. This appears to be the first women’s college basketball game to air in primetime on ABC, which has had the rights since 1996.

• The Big South Conference is sticking with ESPN for the foreseeable future. The network announced on Wednesday that the two sides have reached a six-year extension to their media rights agreement, which will see the Big South remain on ESPN platforms through the 2030-31 season.

📣 NOTABLE QUOTABLES 🗣️

“There is zero chance I’ll be watching, I’m just gonna be honest with you.” - ESPN/ABC MLB analyst Ben McDonald no-selling ESPN’s NHL Opening Night coverage during a promo.

“Zero is also how many postseason innings Ben McDonald pitched in his MLB career.” - ESPN hockey host and announcer John Buccigross with the burn.

“I don’t really see a reason why it should be (banned). The injury data’s not really there. Because you can’t stop it, let’s get rid of it? I don’t like it. I like the play and I hope it stays.” - Fox NFL rules analyst Mike Pereira on the tush push.

“The Jalen Carter situation … was what pushed me off the edge. I don’t trust the man, I think he’s a coward of a man. And that’s it.” - Todd McShay explaining why he doesn’t like Paul Finebaum.

️‍🔥 THE CLOSER 🔥

What does Chad Powers have to say about modern masculinity?

Artistic intention is a tricky thing. Depending on how deliberate, careful, and creative an artist is, the intention behind their work may or may not come through. More commonly, that intention is cast aside when the viewer interprets that art for themselves.

One person’s thoughtful meditation on class and race is another person’s propaganda.

After watching two episodes of Hulu’s Chad Powers, I’m not entirely sure about their intentions, though I can make some Ted Lasso-informed guesses. But after digging through the dick jokes, gay panic humor, and copious references to “chewing shit,” I was fascinated by the political and cultural dynamics at play between the titular character (or, more aptly, the character pretending to be the titular character) and the Georgia college football program he runs to in search of redemption.

Is Chad Powers a good TV show? Two episodes in, I’m not sure, but it has already received numerous positive reviews. It very obviously wants to be the American Ted Lasso, and the plot and characters of this show have been shaped around the bones of that one, though the skin hangs loose in many places.

Almost as interesting as the show is the time at which it’s been brought to the world. It would have been decidedly easy for Chad Powers to lean into the current American drumbeat and see the main character’s macho ostentatiousness as a positive or a norm worth striving for. A red-coded Ted Lasso, if you will. 

Instead, and here’s where the show really gets interesting, it does the opposite. It appears to have a desire to Trojan Horse its way into that subculture to show how puerile it is. 

Click here to read more, as I potentially read way too much into a show about a guy who wears a prosthetic face to play college football.