Sarni's Scrolls: Jason Kelce Will Have Pick Of TV Jobs
Jason Kelce retired from football on Monday.
The game not the sport.
The former Philadelphia Eagles center will be back on your TV on Sundays this fall... talking football.
CBS, NBC and ESPN all want him for their studio shows.
Forget Fox, which has a full desk and originates from the West Coast, a long commute from Philadelphia.
■ CBS: Wide-open. Newcomer J.J. Watt is due back, Nate Burleson, Bill Cowher, Boomer Esiason and Phil Simms are all free agents. Kelce and CBS have talked.
■ NBC: The network added Devin McCourty last season. Kelce would make the desk more contemporary and work telecasts, possibly replacing Cris Collinsworth eventually.
■ ESPN: The cable network has a variety of shows from its marquees on Sunday and Monday to its daily NFL programs.
■ Another possibility: Pro Football Talk's Mike Fiorio believes Kelce will wind up as the third man in Amazon's "Thursday Night Football" booth. Kelce has a pre-existing relationship with Amazon after his documentary with his wife, Kylie, appeared on the platform.
***
Caitlin Clark's record-setting game for Iowa against Ohio State on Fox on Sunday attracted more than 4 million television viewers at its peak and was the most watched women's regular-season basketball game since 1999.
Clark scored 35 points and passed Pete Maravich as the NCAA Division I overall career scoring leader during the Hawkeyes' 93-83 win.
Average viewership was 3.39 million and reached a high of 4.42 million late in the second half.
No women's regular-season game on any network had more viewers since 3.88 million tuned in for UConn-Tennessee in January 1999.
The game was the second-most watched college basketball game of the season, trailing only the 5.18 million who saw the Michigan State-Arizona men's game that followed an NFL Thanksgiving game on Fox.
Ohio State-Iowa surpassed the 3.01 million who watched the Boston Celtics' 140-88 rout of the Golden State Warriors on ABC.
***
Conference basketball tournaments are underway with the top women’s leagues in the spotlight.
Sunday finals
■ Noon ET: Big Ten, CBS
■ 1 p.m. ET: ACC, ESPN
■ 3 p.m. ET: SEC, ESPN
■ 4 p.m. ET: Atlantic 10, ESPN 2
■ 5 p.m ET: Pac-12, ESPN
■ 6 p.m. ET: Big South, ESPN2
March 12 finals
■ 7 p.m. ET: Big East, FS1
■ 9 p.m. ET: Big 12, ESPN2
Men's finals
Saturday
■ 7 p.m. ET: Ohio Valley, ESPN2
Sunday
■ Noon ET: Big South, ESPN2
■ 2 p.m. ET: Missouri Valley, CBS
■ 2 p.m. ET: ASun, ESPN2
***
Nearly 230 women’s college basketball conference tournament games available across ESPN, ESPN2, ESPNU, ESPNEWS, SEC Network, ACC Network, ESPN+ and Big 12 Now on ESPN+.
27 Division I conferences will have their tournaments highlighted on ESPN platforms, with 24 Division I championship games slated for ESPN platforms.
Announcers
■ SEC: Eric Frede, Christy Thomaskutty and Tamika Catchings on day games; Courtney Lyle and Carolyn Peck on night games, semifinals and championship game. Brooke Weisbrod, sidelines. Studio: Alyssa Lang, Steffi Sorensen and Nikki Fargas.
■ ACC: Pam Ward, Stephanie White and Kelly Gramlich; Jenn Hildreth and Debbie Antonelli. Ward and Antonelli on semifinals and championship games. Angel Gray, sidelines. Studio: Justin Walters, Kelsey Riggs. Kelly Gramlich, Ivory Latta and Muffet McGraw.
■ Big 12: Tyler Denning and Andrea Lloyd on first two days; Brenda VanLengen and Sheryl Swoopes will cover quarterfinals through the championship game.
■ American Athletic: Sam Gore and Aja Ellison on day games; Tiffany Greene and Jasmine Thomas on night games, semifinals and championship game.
■ Pac-12: Eric Frede, Rebecca Lobo and Holly Rowe on final.
***
Tennis Channel has added recently retired American stars John Isner and CoCo Vandeweghe to its coverage of the BNP Paribas Open in Indian Wells and the Miami Open.
The "Fifth Slams” will again dominate the month, with 25 days of matches March 6-31. The action begins Wednesday at 1 p.m. ET.
Isner and Vandeweghe join analysts Martina Navratilova , Tracy Austin, Jim Courier, Lindsay Davenport and Andy Roddick.
Tennis Channel, its second network T2 and its streaming-service Tennis Channel Plus plans more than 550 total hours of coverage.
Typical lineups include 12-hour blocks of live competition, followed by all-night encore replays.
***
The impact of women’s sports was a central theme at the MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference in Boston last weekend.
Quotes from the Boston Globe story:
■ "Everybody wants what’s in the fans’ pockets, and the most powerful fans of women’s sports are women. They drive the economy, they’re going to own two-thirds of the wealth in the economy by 2030, and so if we’re not really paying attention as to how to captivate her and capitalize on her engagement, then I think we’re missing the sport.” -- Thayer Lavielle, executive vice president at Wasserman’s The Collective.
■ "One of the biggest challenges right now is the amount of content that we need to make sure that, for example, search trends are absolutely accurate in terms of what’s trending around women’s sports. It’s pulling from the entire Internet, right, and there’s still an over-index towards there being a disproportionate amount of male sporting content in the system.” -- Kate Johnson, Google's global marketing director of sports, entertainment and content partnerships.
■ “We have to make experts out of our experts. The more we have Stephen A. [Smith], the more we have Pat McAfee, the more we have the faces of our network talking about women’s sports authentically, we all win because we get to scale.” --Susie Piotrkowski, vice president of women’s sports programming and espnW for ESPN.
Other topics included artificial intelligence, the globalization of soccer, the next phase of sports ownership, the evolution of poker strategy, and the discovery of fair handicaps for darts using the Markov decision process.
***
ETC.
■ The Dartmouth men's basketball team voted 13-2 Tuesday to join its local service employees union, marking the first time any group of college athletes has taken a public action as employees of their school and potentially setting a precedent that could significantly alter the business of college sports.
■ EA Sports announced that more than 10,000 college football players have opted into being in the video game, less than two weeks after saying real-life players would be featured in its newest game.
■ Fox CEO Lachlan Murdock's modest prediction for the Fox-Disney-WB/Discovery bundle: five million subscribers in five years.
■ WalletHub's Best Cities for College Basketball: 1. Los Angeles, 2. Philadelphia, 3. Storrs, CT., 4. Durham, NC, 5. Lexington, KY, 6. Lawrence, KS, 7. East Lansing, MI, 8. Chapel Hill, NC, 9. Boston, 10. New York.
■ Mark Mulvey, Sports Illustrated's managing editor from 1984-1992 after an illustrious career covering hockey, has been enshrined in the Hockey Hall of Fame.
■ Dwight Howard, 38, has signed with the Puerto Rico Guaynobo Mets.
■ The 19 Bally Sports RSNs will re-brand after the 2024 MLB season as part of Diamond Sports reorganization plan.
***
■ Kansas fell seven spots to No. 14 in this week's AP men's basketball poll, ending its streak of 55 straight weeks in the top 10. No. 1 Houston now has the longest active top-10 streak at 36 straight weeks.
■ "UnSportsmanLike," my favorite morning show, celebrated its half-birthday on Tuesday. No cake.
■ MLS is bringing back Liga MX as an All-Star opponent.
■ Canadian billionaire Larry Tanenbaum is pursuing a WNBA expansion team for Toronto, per CBC Sports.
■ Belmont Park's $455 million revamp includes more fan amenities, including infield access.
■ The Masters will debut a new Map and Flag premium hospitality venue. Cost: $17,000 for the week.
***
■ "Dune: Part 2" delivered the best opening weekend box office of 2024. $81.5 million domestic, $178 million worldwide.
■ The "Baywatch" reboot landed at Fox.
■ "Tracker" was renewed for Season 2 at CBS.
■ Kumail Nanjiani has been cast in Season 4 of "Only Murders in the Building."
■ USA Today named Eva Longoria one of its Women of the Year for "pushing for accurate portrayals of Latins."
■ Dick Wolf is producing two new docuseries for Netflix: "Homicide: New York" and "Homicide: Los Angeles."
■ Fox has ordered Season 4 of "Crime Scene Kitchen."
■ D.C.'s cherry blossoms will hit peak bloom between March 23 and 26.
■ New study released by the Lancet shows that, in 2022, more than 1 billion people in the world are now living with obesity. Worldwide, obesity among adults has more than doubled since 1990, and has quadrupled among children and adolescents (5 to 19 years of age).
■ The magic number for daily exercise is 22 minutes.
■ Happy National Oreo Day.
***
THEY SAID IT
■ "I feel different. When you wake up in the morning and you see that baby, you understand responsibilities. And everything that I've always wanted for myself, but you want that for somebody else even more. Yeah, it's special." -- Dak Prescott after becoming a father.