Welcome back to The Varsity, my twice-weekly private email on everything about the sports business—and the executives who shape it. Happy first day of the NFL season to all who celebrate. I fully expect Christian McCaffrey to lead me to glory in Puck’s inaugural fantasy league. I teamed up with Puck’s engineering director Phil Roth. Our squad’s name? Obviously, it’s The Grinfuckers! (Drink!) Our goal: We just want to finish higher than Peter Hamby.

Puck superfans will be interested to know that Dylan Byers and Lauren Sherman, co-managers of The Byers Club, drafted Breece Hall with their first-round pick. (Byers Club picked up Aaron Rodgers in the 10th round, too.) Matt Belloni was busy writing What I’m Hearing and missed the draft…

The Varsity podcast’s lineup of heavy-hitters continues this weekend with WNBA commissioner Cathy Engelbert. The pod posts Sunday morning, and you’re not going to want to miss it. You can find my conversations with Peyton Manning and Jimmy Pitaro here and here. As always, this is a Marchand-free safe space.

Reading list: Before we begin, I want to highlight Bryan Curtis’s must-read piece on how Fox landed Tom Brady—starting with an early Sunday morning meeting at the Hotel Bel-Air two and a half years ago between Brady and his rep Steve Dubin and Fox Sports’ Eric Shanks and Brad Zager. “It was a meeting that I think changed my life forever,” Brady told Curtis.

Let’s get to it…