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🎤 QUICK START ✍️

📺 Fox addresses Sanchez. Throughout Sunday morning, the NFL on Fox team addressed the Friday night incident in Indianapolis that left Mark Sanchez hospitalized and facing three misdemeanor charges from local police. On Fox NFL Kickoff, Fox NFL Sunday and the Colts-Raiders broadcast, Fox broadcasters gave succinct statements sending best wishes to Sanchez and the other victim.

🏀 WNBA fallout. After Minnesota star Napheesa Collier torched WNBA officiating and league leadership, commissioner Cathy Engelbert denied many of the allegations in Collier’s statement during a pre-Finals media address. This was apparently the wrong move, as Collier reportedly cancelled a follow-up meeting with Engelbert after hearing the commish’s comments.

🏈 RGII’s scare. Before calling the Colorado-TCU Big 12 clash this week for Fox Sports, Robert Griffin III posted a photo to his X feed showing a scary car crash he survived with his family outside of Fort Worth. Griffin’s wife Grete shared online that the family was checked out at a nearby hospital and were cleared.

🔵 Neuheisel to Neuheisel. The most shocking result of the weekend in college football came from Pasadena, where UCLA upset Penn State at the Rose Bowl as the offense came alive for the first time under new OC Jerry Neuheisel. Over at CBS Sports, the longtime CFB coach Rick Neuheisel was working in the studio as the game finished up. Dad’s response was fantastic.

😳 Theo turned down. Theo Von, the comedian and controversial celebrity guest picker this week on College GameDay (given his affiliation with the road team rather than the home Crimson Tide), tried to use his appearance on the ESPN studio show to shoot his shot with reporter and Peloton trainer Jess Sims. She turned him down.

🚨LEADING OFF 🚨

The Mark Sanchez mystery in NFL media

Nobody could ever have been prepared for a story like the one that came out of Indianapolis involving Mark Sanchez over the weekend, but the coverage nevertheless served as a reminder of how ill-equipped some segments of the NFL media apparatus are to covering breaking news.

Early Saturday morning, word broke that Sanchez had been hospitalized after an altercation at his hotel in Indianapolis. For many, the first information to cross their online feeds likely came from ESPN’s Adam Schefter.

In Schefter’s first post on Sanchez’s hospitalization, the NFL insider referred to the incident as a “robbery.” As Schefter’s tweet sat unverified for days, other outlets, namely TMZ and FOX59 in Indy, continued to work local sources to uncover the full story.

Whereas the original news report suggested a random incident in which Sanchez was the victim of a stabbing, follow-ups indicated that Sanchez was instead being arrested as the instigator. Eventually, the Indianapolis police department’s account of the events were released. There was no robbery.

Sanchez appears to have accosted a delivery driver (we don’t know why, as Sanchez told police he does not remember anything after he walked toward the driver’s truck). The driver told police that Sanchez became violent, eventually throwing him to the ground. After the driver defended himself with pepper spray, he ultimately stabbed Sanchez in the chest multiple times before the Fox analyst bolted away.

The public learned these details early Sunday, but Schefter did not delete his initial post about the “robbery” until hours later. In the meantime, X users pegged him with a Community Note correcting the phrasing. All this from the supposed top reporter covering football at the Worldwide Leader.

In contrast, NFL Network’s Ian Rapoport addressed the incident only by way of reposting a statement from Fox Sports and another from Indy police. Independent reporter Jordan Schultz — whom you would think can make his own editorial standards — did not cover the topic at all on his X feed.

Wherever this breakdown happened, it’s incredibly bad work. Schefter increasingly appears to be using ESPN staff to run his X account, often posting videos from strange accounts or covering relatively small news. We don’t know whether Schefter runs his own shop within ESPN or has oversight moment to moment, but no other ESPN insider works this way on social media. Not Shams Charania, not Jeff Passan, not even the retired Adrian Wojnarowski, who was as engagement-hungry as anyone.

No matter who posts to Schefter’s account or where the buck stops with running his very influential X account, the bottom line is it goes a long way toward the average NFL fan’s understanding of key stories. Schefter’s posts not only flood out to millions, but they are closely watched by aggregators on websites and social accounts.

X influencer Mario Nawfal ran with the story to his 2.6 million followers, likely referencing Schefter’s original post.

Even a local news outlet in Cincinnati treated Schefter’s ESPN-minted posts as gospel:

The breakdown here from Schefter and his social media reporting follows a troubling trend that seems to happen often when he covers breaking news regarding criminal cases or legal troubles. Schefter once broke news of a lawsuit against running back Dalvin Cook from the perspective of Cook’s agent, who called it “extortion.” When quarterback Dwayne Haskins tragically passed away in 2022, Schefter posted about it through the lens of Haskins’ disappointing NFL career.

These gaffes vary from insensitive to inaccurate. All of it is incredibly poor form from someone who is compensated and treated as one of ESPN’s most important NFL reporters and commentators. What Schefter says is gold, as we see, from internet gadflies to reputable local news stations. At some point, that has to matter to him.

This weekend, while Sanchez was in critical condition and an older delivery driver lay in a hospital bed with wounds suffered at the hands of the Fox analyst and local authorities worked hard to develop a factual accounting, Schefter did what he always does. He tweeted. And the poor attempt at news coverage warped fans’ understanding of the story for more than a day, if not longer.

📣 SOCIAL EXPERIMENT 🌟

Internet favorite Charlotte Hornets announcer Eric Collins made his debut calling an NFL game for Fox this weekend, and the result was as expected:

This North Carolina student ripped Bill Belichick a new one:

Barstool’s Dave Portnoy used his weekly air time on Big Noon Kickoff to rant about… the Yankees:

👏 INDUSTRY INSIGHTS 🗣️

• Kelly Stafford, wife to Los Angeles Rams QB Matthew and host of the popular podcast The Morning After, announced she was stepping back from the show for the next month. The next day, the Detroit Metro Times reported that her cohost Hank Winchester had been fired by WDIV in Detroit, where he worked a consumer affairs reporter and was investigated for sexual harassment earlier this year.

• As Major League Baseball explores how to package its local, in-market live TV rights going forward, two big fish are swimming toward shore. Executives from the Red Sox and Dodgers separately expressed support for a centralized, streaming-first package run by MLB.

• Breakout ESPN NHL analyst P.K. Subban has signed an extension with the network, fresh off a strong performance around the 4 Nations Face-Off this past winter, when Subban broke through with several pointed comments hyping up hockey compared with other leagues like the NBA.

• Popular New York Mets analyst Keith Hernandez revealed that his contract is up at SNY but that he “would love to continue in the booth,” where he has worked for two decades.

️‍🔥THE CLOSER🔥

ESPN tackles WNBA labor strife head-on

Heading into the WNBA Finals between Phoenix and Las Vegas, The Athletic’s Richard Deitsch penned a column pleading with ESPN to cover the bombshell dispute between Minnesota star Napheesa Collier and commissioner Cathy Engelbert head-on. Through two games, the network has more than lived up to the task.

Engelbert spoke before Game 1 on Friday as is customary for the NBA and WNBA commissioners, sidestepping the strongest allegations in Collier’s statement while denying the essence of the All-Star’s framing. ESPN was ready with its popular women’s hoops studio team, where Andraya Carter directly addressed Engelbert’s refusal to fully deny Collier’s recollection of a February meeting between them.

“It’s a yes or no question,” Carter said.

Later, Chiney Ogwumike (who, it should be said, is also sister to WNBA players’ union head Nneka) laid out how Collier’s comments were part of a larger effort by leading players.

By Saturday, ESPN reporters Ramona Shelburne and Alexa Philippou had broken the story that Collier called off her planned follow-up meeting with Engelbert after hearing the commissioner speak in Las Vegas.

Perhaps you could say that ESPN is only following the winds because Engelbert appears to be playing out the clock on her tenure, but the network deserves real credit for covering this dispute with integrity. They do not have many incentives to do so. The saga highlights real rifts between immensely popular superstars like Collier and Caitlin Clark and WNBA leadership, as well as breakdowns between the WNBA league office and its patriarchs in the NBA.

The best interests of ESPN likely lie along the path of least resistance to the WNBA and NBA as Bristol embarks on an increasingly lucrative 11-year partnership with both leagues. Rather than skate around that, ESPN brought out the big guns to cover the Collier-Engelbert dispute like the historic sports moment it is.

The crux of the disagreement traces back to officiating. Collier was injured on the final play of a series-tilting Game 4 two weekends ago, and her head coach shredded WNBA referees postgame. When Collier called out Engelbert, she did so by highlighting Engelbert’s decision to guide the league toward a ruthlessly physical, less entertaining style of play — and Engelbert’s lack of responsiveness to feedback from players.

So ESPN followed this lead as well, with the strong broadcast tandem of Ryan Ruocco and Rebecca Lobo taking care to deliberate over and explain nearly every big call throughout Games 1 and 2 over the weekend.

Altogether, it was an impressive showing from ESPN’s women’s basketball talent, editors and producers to balance the magnitude of the games with the significance of the Collier-Engelbert story.