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🎤 QUICK START ✍️

🎤 Cast your vote for the best booth. March Madness is officially here. And as such, we are contractually obligated to create our own bracket.

Our version of this year’s big dance comes in the form of a 32-team bracket featuring the top broadcast booths in all of sports. Who deserves to move on from star-studded first-round matchups such as Chris Fowler and Kirk Herbstreit vs. Jim Nantz and Tony Romo? Cast your votes here, with our champion broadcast team to be crowned on Monday, April 7.

🐟️ Bernstein off air. Just days after going viral for threatening to dox a user on X for questioning his sportsmanship as a fisherman (yes, you read that correctly), Dan Bernstein wasn’t on the air for his usual shift co-hosting 670 The Score’s midday show on Monday.

According to the Chicago Sun-Times, co-host Marshall Harris announced that Bernstein has the week off. The incident comes months after a dustup with Barstool Sports, in which Bernstein — I mean, Dan — took issue with one of the outlet’s personalities referring to him by only his last name.

💲Last Week Tonight takes aim at gambling. HBO’s Last Week Tonight used the arrival of March Madness as an opportunity to address the growing prevalence — and problems associated with — sports gambling in America. And the John Oliver-hosted show drove its point home with a parody advertisement for a fake sportsbook known as “GriftKings,” which was awfully similar to the “Rock Bottom Kings” sketch that Saturday Night Live aired during last year’s episode featuring Shane Gillis.

🚨LEADING OFF 🚨

A Mountain State-sized controversy

Move over Cooper Flagg, there’s a new face of the NCAA Tournament.

And it wasn’t even one of the 68 teams selected for this year’s field.

On the Monday after Selection Sunday, it wasn’t Flagg’s injury, St. John’s revival or UConn’s unlikely — but still possible — chance for a three-peat that attracted the most attention. Rather, it was West Virginia being snubbed in favor North Carolina for one of the final spots in the big dance.

While some advanced metrics favor the Tar Heels, the Mountaineers appeared to have the edge when it comes to traditional resumes. If you weren’t familiar with “Quad 1 games” before Monday, chances are you are now, as UNC went 1-12 in such matchups, hardly supporting their inclusion in the field of 68.

Although West Virginia is hardly the first team to find itself on the wrong side of the bubble, the Tar Heels’ selection over the Mountaineers has now taken on a life of its own. That’s because UNC athletic director Bubba Cunningham served as the head of this year’s selection committee — a nightmare optically, especially when considering the financial incentives associated with the Tar Heels’ accomplishments, such as making the NCAA Tournament.

West Virginia’s snub and the circumstances surrounding it unsurprisingly resulted in plenty of social media backlash, which was only amplified by the reality that one of the loudest (literally and figuratively) voices in sports media just so happens to be a former Mountaineers punter. And whether he’s legitimately outraged, sees it as a political opportunity or a combination of the two, West Virginia Governor Patrick Morrisey seized on the opportunity by launching an investigation into the NCAA (or as he calls it, the National Corrupt Athletic Association).

We’ll see what Morrisey’s investigation brings, but for now, this entire situation remains a mess. And as a result, one of the NCAA Tournament’s primary storylines now comes in the form of whether the 11th-seeded Tar Heels will make the most of their opportunity or prove the skeptics wrong, beginning with a “First Four” play-in game against fellow No. 11-seed San Diego State on Tuesday night.

🎤 MEDIA MOMENTS ✍️ 

• Two weeks after his viral confrontation with Ian Rapoport, Jordan Schultz continued his feud with the NFL Network. Replying to a post from the NFL’s official X account, the Fox Sports insider claimed he — and not Tom Pelissero — deserved credit for breaking the news regarding the Cincinnati Bengals signing Tee Higgins and Ja’Marr Chase to contract extensions.

• By this point, NFL insiders crediting agents for free agency deals has become common practice. That, however, doesn’t make it right, with Pro Football Talk’s Mike Florio calling attention to the “symbiotic relationship” between insiders and agents and why it flies in the face of objective journalism.

• Bill Belichick and his girlfriend, Jordon Hudson, took part in a viral beach photoshoot in which the 72-year-old North Carolina head coach hoisted the 24-year-old former cheerleader into the air using his legs over the weekend. And First Take’s segment on the subject went… well, just about how you probably expected it would have.

✍️ AROUND AA ✍️ 

R.I.P. to the NIT

If the NIT was already on life support thanks to the recent increase in declined invitations in the era of NIL and the transfer portal, then the emergence of Fox Sports’ College Basketball Crown has all but pulled the plug.

And according to Awful Announcing’s Drew Lerner, that’s a shame, as it marks the end of an era for what was once the most prestigious postseason college basketball tournament.

As noted by Lerner, this year’s NIT field includes just four teams from power conferences, including three from the ACC and one from the Big 12. That stands in stark contrast to last year’s field, which included 18 power conference representatives, after another 15 declined invites.

“Aside from the history that’s being lost with the newly-gutted NIT, it’s simply not an ideal setup for fans,” Lerner writes. “Prior to the College Basketball Crown, fans could watch all of the best non-NCAA Tournament teams in one competition. The winner of the NIT had a claim to being the best team outside the field of 68. Now, with teams divided between two competitions, both tournaments are diluted and neither champion will have a legitimate claim to the title of best non-NCAA Tournament team.

“This is the reality of modern college sports. If there’s an opportunity to make a little extra coin, it’ll be taken, tradition be damned.”

What’s more? The CBC’s own field is hardly anything to write home about either, leaving both tournaments with a sense of diminishing returns.

📱 SOCIAL MEDIA POST OF THE DAY 🏆️ 

Extra Points’ Matt Brown on the CBC