I understand the facts should never get in the way of a good narrative, particularly in a Presidential campaign, but the idea of moving debates to accommodate NFL football games is so absurd, it necessitates further context. On the excellent Reliable Sources yesterday, a Trump campaign spokesperson told Brian Stelter: …

I love Research Fridays. It is my day to dig into projects and, occasionally, stumble on something unexpected. Such was the case today when I re-read (I say “re” because I was loyal Sports Illustrated reader in 1991, and assume I read it then) the late William Oscar Johnson’s “Sports…

Rochelle Olson’s piece in yesterday’s Star Tribune provides more fodder for the notion that sports organizations are increasingly in the media business. …

In the wake of Sunday’s “Nuditygate” (I made that up, but on the heels of Spygate and Deflategate it seems appropriate) on the NFL Network, Martin Rogers of USA Today authored a completely useless piece suggesting, essentially, that having one’s rear end shown on national television is a price American…

Earlier this week, tennis star Novak Djokovic indicated he would decline an ESPN request for a mid-match interview at the U.S. Open, while acknowledging ESPN’s intent: “I think it’s interesting. What I think they’re trying to do is implement a same kind of media interaction as other sports, like basketball…

With the usual caveat for sample size, a brief tour across Twitter this morning shows many FBS programs using a homogeneous approach to signing day Twitter announcements. Did media relations folks attend a seminar on this pre-signing day? For example, here are graphics from Georgia Tech, Arkansas, Louisiana Tech and…

Each morning I receive email newsletters from two trade publications in higher education: The Chronicle of Higher Education and Inside Higher Ed. Often, the news of the day overlaps, as one would expect it to. Today, I noticed distinctly different takes on the same story. Inside Higher Ed ran a…

It appears the FCC is finally set to the pull the plug on the NFL blackout rule, which prohibits a local team from being televised in its home market unless the game is sold out. Initially, the NFL blacked out all games in a local market, something which President Nixon…

Today’s story from Brooks Boliek at Politico quotes former Pittsburgh Steelers star Lynn Swann, who is acting as spokesman for the Protect Football on Free TV campaign thustly: “The bigger loser becomes those 60 million people, and all the fans out there, who would not be able to get their…