Welcome back to The Varsity, my twice-weekly private email chronicling the inner sanctums of the sports business.
While I agree with Woj that time isn’t in endless supply, I have no plans to retire from the news industry anytime soon. In fact, I’m able to produce this private email twice a week while still managing my underperforming fantasy football team, The Grinfuckers, in Puck’s highly competitive league. (The last-place contestant of our premiership risks relegation to the Semafor league next year.) Marchand, on the other hand, would be gone in a heartbeat if only he could get his script in front of the right producer (Dirty Dancing meets Platoon, I’m told).
Programming note: Molly Solomon and Amy Rosenfeld, NBC’s top Olympics producers, join me on The Varsity pod this weekend to talk lessons from Paris, L.A. 2028 expectations, and, of course, Snoop. Meanwhile, make sure to catch yesterday’s show and listen in as Axios’s Sara Fischer and I discuss the dreadful R.S.N. scene, Zaz, and Disney versus DirecTV.
Also, in celebration of Puck’s third anniversary, we’re offering readers a special 20 percent discount off an annual subscription. Take advantage of this special offer while you can by clicking here.
Okay, let’s get to it…
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On Sunday afternoon, soon after the NFL’s 1 p.m. ET slate of games had kicked off, news broke that the Secret Service had thwarted another assassination attempt on Donald Trump in Florida. Obviously, football is a game played by men in tights, while the assassination of a former president and current candidate (if not frontrunner) woul be election-shaping, historical international news. Sports TV executives prepared for news alerts to gravitate viewers over to CNN, MSNBC, Fox News, etcetera. After all, election cycles historically deplete the NFL’s ratings. As I’ve reported before, NFL viewership was... |