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.

🏈 Romo arrested. CBS Sports game analyst Tony Romo was arrested last week on first-offense “operating while intoxicated” (OWI) charges, and released. The network has not commented publicly on the incident.

📺 Paramount deal paused. The acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery by Paramount Skydance is on pause, following a lawsuit from several state attorneys general and a U.S. district court-approved restraining order. Now, Paramount has agreed to delay the deal until June 1 of next year, or whenever the trail is completed.

🏀 Clark column controversy. After USA Today columnist Nancy Armour issued a statement calling her own piece linking Caitlin Clark’s histrionics on the WNBA court to the lynching of Emmett Till “inartful,” the outlet denied comment because the piece was strictly Armour’s opinion. Later, one line in Armour’s column was updated, though the broader connection to Till remained.

🟠 WNBA rolls out replay. The WNBA announced at All-Star weekend that starting next season, it will utilize the NBA’s replay center in New Jersey to improve transparency and accuracy in officiating. New cameras will be installed in arenas, and all reviews will now be handled centrally from the office.

⚽ MLS looking to double fees. Coming off a huge World Cup in North America, MLS is reportedly aiming for between $400-500 million annually on its next broadcast rights deal. The current deal with Apple TV, restructured last year, is reportedly worth $250 million per year and ends after the 2028-29 season.

Ryan Clark believes that expressing his perspective as a Black man led, in part, to his ouster at ESPN.

And he’s not the only one.

“I’ll say straight up, with no hesitation, that if Ryan Clark would not have been so outspoken, was not so outspoken about issues relating and regarding Black people, both on-air at ESPN and with the things that he does with The Pivot and other places, I do not think that he would have lost his job,” said The Ringer’s Van Lathan last week.

In Clark’s words, he held back on his podcast, The Pivot, this year, trying not to be “too black.” Judging from a long tell-all conversation on the show Friday, Clark and his cohosts seemingly avoided certain issues and reined in their conversations in order to not draw the ire of the Worldwide Leader.

In the past, Clark had eagerly weighed in not only on racially charged topics such as Angel Reese’s basketball career or the treatment of former LSU athlete Kyren Lacy by police, but also the racial identity of other media voices like Robert Griffin III. The version of Clark we got the past year or so was apparently restrained.

Also on the episode, Clark alleged that some at ESPN have been in cahoots with Outkick, the Fox News-owned sports outlet, to force his exit. Clark pointed specifically to the fallout from the Lacy story, when Clark said he begrudgingly apologized for referencing disputed details of Lacy’s car accident live on air. In the aftermath, Clark noted, Outkick praised two white ESPNers for their apologies while hammering Clark for a slight delay.

This gets to the larger dynamics facing Clark and all ESPN talent as the network, now much leaner than in its heyday, reimagines itself for the future. In another episode of Lathan’s Ringer show, Higher Learning, last week, outgoing ESPN EVP David Roberts suggested his departure could lead to an even stronger rejection of so-called political commentary on the Worldwide Leader’s airwaves.

“I was always unafraid to challenge within the organization that especially nothing drove me crazier than, ‘Well, you know, we don’t mix politics with sports, and covering issues like that is crossing the boundary of politics into sports,'” he said.

It’s worth defining what “politics” means at ESPN. To its detractors, politics is usually a catch-all for when Black talent discuss race. Truly nobody is talking about election horse races or public policy on ESPN air. The conversation is about social issues, and despite the constant debate over what crosses the threshold of being worthy of discussion on-air, it almost always is tied to a sports story.

Restrictions on political discourse from the sports network are, instead, a limitation on what is an accepted point of view. All normal, of course; everyone has rules at their job. And at ESPN, even the most outspoken talent can agree there is a time and a place for these discussions. Sports, after all, are a distraction and are meant to be fun, even if the real-life has a habit of breaking through into the games.

In the decade since Jimmy Pitaro took over for John Skipper, Clark is hardly the first talent to be forced out in part because of their outspokenness. Yet ESPN is not a politics-free place today because Clark and these others are gone. Pat McAfee’s most newsy interviews ever, with QB Aaron Rodgers, routinely plunge into politics. Rodgers, after all, was in consideration to run as vice president. McAfee also interviewed Donald Trump for his show last year. So did Josh Pate, one of the content creators ESPN is borrowing for a new college football show, as well as his new cohosts from Bussin’ With the Boys.

Certainly, it would be too narrow an analysis to paint any of this as purely or solely based on the analysts’ race or political lean — even in a media environment where Disney is under fire on multiple fronts for crossing Trump. What is telling about Clark’s exit is that he did it the way you are, in theory, supposed to. When Clark started at ESPN, he was just a film guy. He worked his way up talking football. It wasn’t until 2022, after he had already risen to NFL Live and a prominent role at the network, that he launched The Pivot and spread his wings.

We’ve seen plenty, including Stephen A. Smith, Scott Van Pelt and even Mina Kimes graduate into a class that is allowed to wade into these waters. Clark certainly made his mistakes, maybe didn’t pick his battles as well as he could have. But he’s not unique in that, either.

As ESPN changes around him, it is easy to see why Clark could feel as if the problem was not some unbending rules guiding the network, but actually what he said.

Last week’s ESPN layoffs further consolidated the network around live sports games and star personalities. They also signaled a shift from Stephen A. Smith to Pat McAfee in the pecking order.

On The Play-By-Play LIVE, we discussed these broader changes at ESPN and what comes next for departed talent like Ryan Clark and Cam Newton. Plus, how the newly announced college football show from Josh Pate and Bussin’ With the Boys fits into these trends.

Watch the episode on YouTube, or listen on Spotify or Apple.

A quick thought bubble from our publisher, Ben Koo, about what could be coming on ESPN airwaves this NFL season…

Ryan Clark out. (Cam) Newton out.  Last year (2024) RGII. (Peter) Schrager is going to get that 2pm show.

Are we headed into a football season where non-former players take a big step up in terms of their role at ESPN (Mina, Brandt, Schrager, Clark)?

I would have to keep an eye on it, but feels like without many big hires they will all pick up a lot of the slack on various platforms?

“When I walk out of the locker room, I shouldn’t be, not fearful, of what the conversation is gonna be. But it’s emotionally exhausting. It’s draining. … Because people don’t want to talk about the basketball, they just wanna stir it up and make something else.” - Caitlin Clark, giving her first public statement of the season on the endless politicized news cycle around her in the WNBA.

“Me and Peter talked. Me and Peter fixed that. Me and Peter had the conversation. Me and Peter moved on from it.” - Former ESPNer Ryan Clark, dispelling the reporting that he was laid off in part due to an on-air argument with Peter Schrager last NFL season.

“I’m going to tell you as well that I am just now beginning to get the texts of, the Heat are curious how it is the Sixers did this. The texts I’m getting are, ‘Time for Pablo to see if he can find out.’” - Dan Le Batard, promoting a theory from his Miami Heat sources that Fanatics CEO Michael Rubin tampered in LeBron James’ move to Philadelphia.

“It’s a problem when you have executives who want to fall behind the ‘well this is sports’ mentality.” - Outgoing ESPN EVP David Roberts, countering the seeming return to a "stick to sports” mentality at the network.

“She’s sort of showing who she is. She’s not a kitty cat. She’s not soft and cuddly. She’s kind of a d*ck.” - Michelle Beadle, arguing that Caitlin Clark’s fire on the court should show her supposed defenders in media that she doesn’t need their backing.

“There is like 10 transgender athletes in all of the NCAA … to allow this to take our attention away from like housing and healthcare and wars and all the other actual harmful sh*t in our country is dumb.” - Bravo reality TV star West Wilson, seemingly countering recent, anti-trans comments from his podcast cohost and WNBA heel Sophie Cunningham.

When reports surfaced about a new college football show from ESPN starring former Barstool Sports hosts Will Compton and Taylor Lewan, it drew a predictable response from Barstool boss Dave Portnoy:

“Espn really just Barstool Jr now,” he wrote.

It’s a drum Portnoy has been beating for a while. Without entertaining the somewhat tongue-in-cheek remark too much, let’s start by pointing out the obvious: If ESPN is hiring talent Barstool couldn’t afford to keep, that would seemingly make ESPN more of a Barstool Sr., not a junior.

Certainly, ESPN has hired several internet personalities in recent years that give it far more of a Barstool flavor than it had when it turned down the chance to launch a show with Pardon My Take nearly a decade ago. These include Compton and Lewan as well as Pat McAfee as well as contributor runs for Patrick Beverley, Cam Newton and Gilbert Arenas. Even tennis analyst Andy Roddick and Monday night star Jason Kelce started out with podcasts before going to TV.

But despite Portnoy’s teasing, ESPN is still the place talent goes to graduate. Barstool is the development ground. This is not to say Barstool cannot keep talent. Outside of the very biggest hosts, talent that incubates at Barstool is best off staying there. The problem with Portnoy’s jeer is that he was talking about the very biggest talent.

While we’re here, let’s address another recent tweet from Portnoy, in which “El Presidente” wrote that, “When our stars become huge and command tons of money like Mcafee at ESPN we part ways rather than fire people who have been with us for decades to pay for the 1 star. Loyalty matters here. At Espn there is no such thing.”

Again, Portnoy misses the point. At Barstool, he is the “1 star” talent. There is no universe, especially not since buying the company back, where he would command a big salary somewhere else and leave. Barstool exists without the fear of its face ever leaving, whereas ESPN must constantly renegotiate the ability to keep its top talent.

There is no doubt that ESPN was years late to the evolution of sports content, a future that Barstool foresaw better than anyone. I’m sure Portnoy feels ecstatic to see ESPN chase down his former talent to stay relevant. But the financial scale of each company and the business model each is chasing is different as to render any further comparisons, especially the taunts Portnoy made this week, mostly useless.