SI

This Is March and One of College Basketball’s Top Insiders Was Stuck on a Plane: TRAINA THOUGHTS

Jon Rothstein tweets through panic of nearly missing start of NCAA Tournament

Jimmy Traina

1. When you think of college basketball’s biggest media stars, a few names immediately come to mind: Dick Vitale. Bill Raftery. Jay Bilas.

But if you’re a heavy Twitter user, the first name that may come to mind is Jon Rothstein. The insider who has 300,000 followers tweets “This is March” on a daily basis. The guy pretty much lives and breathes college basketball.

Rothstein was in Dayton, Ohio, the past two days working the First Four games for truTV. He was supposed to get on a plane early this morning and head to New York so he could be in the CBS Sports Network studios during Thursday’s games.

However, things did not go as planned, causing Rothstein to hilariously tweet through his travel drama.

If you are familiar with Rothstein’s persona, you know that his Twitter thread was part comedy and part legit panic.

Here’s how it all played out:

Fortunately for Rothstein, everything worked out in the end.

What a way to start the 2022 NCAA tournament!

2. A brand-new SI Media Podcast dropped this morning and it features a conversation with Sports Business Journal reporter John Ourand.

Why did Fox let Joe Buck and Troy Aikman go to ESPN and Monday Night Football? Will the ManningCast be impacted at all by Buck and Aikman now calling MNF? What role did Amazon play in ESPN going after Buck and Aikman? What did ESPN have to give Fox for letting Buck out of his contract early? Will Fox go with Kevin Burkhardt and Greg Olsen as its No. 1 team? Where will Fox go for a No. 2 team if that happens?

Other topics covered include where we stand with NFL Sunday Ticket and DirecTV's exclusivity, Major League Baseball's bizarre deals with AppleTV+ and Peacock to exclusively air games and much more.

You can listen to the podcast below or download it on Apple, Spotify and Google.

You can also watch the SI Media Podcast on YouTube.

3. ESPN made the news official yesterday that they have signed Joe Buck and Troy Aikman to call Monday Night Football. Steve Levy, who has called MNF the past two seasons, showed that he is a class act, by sending well wishes to Buck via Twitter.

4. Kevin Durant doesn’t just chirp back at fans on Twitter. He also does it during games. One Nets fan found that out last night when he told Durant, “You gotta take over the game.” This prompted Durant to tell him, “You gotta shut the f--- up and sit down.” 

5. Wednesday was “Austin 3:16 Day” and “Stone Cold” Steve Austin celebrated by going on The Rich Eisen Show and explaining the origins of his famous promo and how he ended up with two of the best-selling shirts in wrestling history.

6. Even Giannis got in on celebrating the big day.

7. RANDOM VIDEO OF THE DAY: My fellow Veep fans will be happy to know that former Vice President Jonah Ryan has shared his thoughts on Congress agreeing to do away with daylight savings time.

Loyal viewers of the show know that this was an issue near and dear to Jonah.

Be sure to catch up on past editions of Traina Thoughts and check out the Sports Illustrated Media Podcast hosted by Jimmy Traina on Apple, Spotify or Google. You can also follow Jimmy on Twitter and Instagram.

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Jimmy Traina
JIMMY TRAINA

Jimmy Traina is a staff writer and podcast host for Sports Illustrated. A 20-year veteran in the industry, he’s been covering the sports media landscape for seven years and writes a daily column, Traina Thoughts. Traina has hosted the Sports Illustrated Media Podcast since 2018, a show known for interviews with some of the most important and powerful people in sports media. He also was the creator and writer of SI’s Hot Clicks feature from 2007 to '13.

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