SBP Snack: Week of 8/4-8/10

Five Interesting, Funny, and Touching Things that Happened in Sports This Week

Author

Alex Abrams
August 07, 2025

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Good Thursday Morning. Bringing you an abbreviated, “snack size” version of SBP this week.

As a heads up, we are going to be off the next few weeks as Mrs. SBP and I are moving to Minnesota. We will be back in action in a few weeks once we are settled in the Great White North!

#1: The NFL officially links up with two of its broadcasting partners

🗯️ My thought bubble: On paper, these deals, particularly the ESPN one, make a lot of business sense. The NFL gets out of the cable game via a soft landing with a long-time partner, and ESPN now has a treasure trove of content and IP that it can use for its cable and streaming packages. And as an added bonus, hot damn am I excited for the idea of a “College Football RedZone” channel, since the name and concept are included in this deal. On the CBS front, the NFL will have access to promote its IP and shoulder programming through the larger Paramount/Skydance ecosystem in addition to the broadcasts on CBS.

All of that being said, I’d be remiss not to point out the obvious conflicts of interest here. The NFL negotiates with multiple partners for its media rights (i.e., NBC, Fox, Netflix), and it just took a major commercial interest in two that are likely going to be competing with those partners for not only general rights but also the quality of games that are allocated to each. The optics of it are not great, and it’s understandable if the other partners are not pleased at this development.

The last, more out of left field thing to watch here is whether the Trump Administration decides to get involved. The ESPN deal needs to go through regulatory approval and the Skydance/Paramount deal is already under review, and given Trump has a long-running feud with the NFL dating back to his USFL ownership days, he may decide he wants to poke the bear one more time.

#2: Max Homa’s son welcoming him home from a golf tournament is the wholesome content we need

#3: ESPN en fuego

#4: The gears of collective bargaining in college football are slowly turning

#5: A great story in MLB

Until next time, sports fans!

-Alex