Welcome back to The Varsity, my twice-weekly private email on the sports media business––Puck’s very own politics-free zone. Today, let’s ignore the forthcoming election (the most consequential in our lifetime!), and instead revel in the slow-motion collapse of the cable TV business, shall we?

First, congratulations to Big Ten Network comms executive Pat Kenny, who won The Varsity’s first-ever World Series Viewership Contest. Pat offered the lowest guess out of all the predictions that were submitted: 15.5 million viewers. In fact, Fox averaged 15.8 million viewers over the five-game series, the network’s biggest World Series audience in seven years. Pat told me that he assumed the Dodgers would win in five or six games, which is why he kept his guess low. In any event, Puck swag is on its way! And Pat is allowed one Marchand joke—unless it’s a good one, in which case we will extend the offer.

🎧 Programming alert: I appreciated NASCAR president Steve Phelps’s candor on my podcast, also artfully titled The Varsity. (These Puck editors must really be geniuses…) Phelps knows that he has to break some eggs while trying to grow his sport. In our conversation, he outlined his expansion strategy and also flicked at the Jordan lawsuit, which I noted last week. Listen to it here. And be sure to tune in on Wednesday, too. Ben Strauss of The Washington Post rejoins the pod to pick through a candy bowl of topics.

Let’s get to it…