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Kyle Brandt on ‘Fight’ With Seth Rollins: ‘Weirdest 24 Hours of My Career’

The ‘Good Morning Football’ host drew major heat for taunting and insulting the WWE superstar.
Jimmy Traina|
Kyle Brandt’s taunting caused Seth Rollins to throw a Terrible Towel in his face.
Kyle Brandt’s taunting caused Seth Rollins to throw a Terrible Towel in his face. | Good Morning Football

1. Last Thursday, while in Pittsburgh for the NFL draft, Good Morning Football’s Kyle Brandt and Seth Rollins got into an unpleasant back-and-forth that caused the WWE star to throw a towel at Brandt’s face and walk off the set.

The next morning, Brandt and Rollins revealed it was all a work that was cooked up by Brandt.

However, many people believed the bit to be genuine, which led to Brandt receiving a ton of hate.

“It was like one of the weirdest 24 hours of my career,” Brandt said on a new episode of SI Media With Jimmy Traina, “because everyone was so mad at me.”

“I feel kind of bad,” said Brandt. “I mean, in retrospect maybe it wasn't the best thing to do while you're at the draft because you've got to focus on the draft and being on TV and now you have all these people sending you threats.

“I also got DMs, Jimmy, from people that you and I know, peers of mine, after it was revealed that it was a setup. To sum up their DMs, they were like, ‘God, I'm so glad that was fake because I was so disappointed in you.’ And I was like, ‘I'm flattered that you were disappointed. You thought that I was better.’”

Before the reveal, though, it was an eventful experience for Brandt, who told me that 80% of people who saw the bit thought it was legit.

“Over the next 24 hours though, Jimmy, it got very strange,” Brandt said on the podcast. “I don't regret it at all, but I didn't think I was going to be that much of a heel. I thought it was going to go, ‘Seth and Kyle have a fight and Seth leaves.’ Instead, it was ‘Kyle bullies Seth off the set and goes way below the belt and insults him until he leaves. And Kyle is such a prick.’

“The wrestling fans were nuts. I had many threats of physical violence in my mentions, all that stuff, which now I can laugh about, but I had industry people being like, ‘Dude, what was that?’ I think there was a palpable disappointment in how rude I was to Seth.”

When all was said and done, though, the wrestling fans came around.

“In the end,” said Brandt, “the most gratifying reactions were the true wrestling fans who were like, ‘Great job. That's how you do it. You actually got me and I've been watching wrestling for 40 years and I thought it was real. You guys were both really good actors.’”

You can listen to the full podcast with Brandt, who also talked about reuniting with Peter Schrager at the draft, working with Mel Kiper Jr., ESPN taking over the NFL Network and more, below.

2. As I wrote earlier this week, and discussed on last week’s SI Media With Jimmy Traina during my conversation with The Ringer’s Bryan Curtis, the NFL draft is not a great television event anymore.

It seems a lot of people agree with me because overall viewership for the three days of this year’s draft was down 12% from last year. This year’s draft averaged 6.6 million viewers. Last year’s draft averaged 7.5 million.

This drop is even more significant than it appears because all sporting events have been up since September, when Nielsen changed its viewership measuring system.

3. Sunday Night Baseball returns to NBC this weekend after a couple of weeks off for the NBA playoffs. Rangers-Tigers will be the featured game. Former pitchers Dan Petry and Mike Bacsik will be the analysts alongside Jason Benetti.

As I’ve been saying all season, the experiment of using different analysts just doesn’t land.

I don’t understand how NBC thinks giving Benetti two random guys instead of a regular analyst every week makes for a better product.

4. The Phillies’ game last night against Giants was rained out, so a bunch of players decided to attend the Flyers’ playoff game against the Penguins. The players were shown on the Jumbotron at one point. Given that the Phillies are 10–19, their appearance didn’t go well.

5. I don’t love to point out bad writing by others because someone can turn around the do the same to me. However, it’s pretty astonishing that the second paragraph in this CBS Sports story about Texas Tech quarterback Brendan Sorsby entering rehab for a gambling addiction got past editors.

6. This was vintage Charles Barkley on Wednesday night. At halftime of the Raptors-Cavaliers game, when Cleveland was down 74–67, he apologized to America for picking the Cavs to go to the NBA Finals.

Final score: Cavs 125, Raptors 120.

7. RANDOM VIDEO OF THE DAY: I watched Netflix’s four-part documentary on Hulk Hogan that came out last week. It’s a complete waste of time. If you’re a wrestling fan, you learn nothing new. The doc also totally glosses over his various controversies.

Truth be told, even as a kid, I wasn’t a Hogan fan. I always rooted for the heels to do a number on him because he was so boring. This old-school clip is a good one.

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 X 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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