Jan 15, 2026

Welcome back to The Varsity. I’m John Ourand. We all know that Tony Dokoupil had a bumpy first week on the job as the anchor of CBS Evening News, and that the Bari Weiss revolution has not gone unnoticed. (You can read my partner Dylan Byers for the specifics.) So now, in a craven and bald-faced play for massive viewership, producers reached out to yours truly for a segment on this NCAA gambling scandal. My interview appeared on tonight’s Evening News and is slated for tomorrow’s CBS Mornings. Before you know it, I’ll be making Gayle King money.

Pod alert: R.S.N.s are cratering, baseball owners and players are bickering, and the hot stove is burning up, which is why I wanted to get The Athletic’s Evan Drellich on the Varsity podcast. You can listen to the episode here or here this weekend.

Mentioned in this issue: Brian Rolapp, Brooks Koepka, Jay Monahan, Charlie Baker, Adam Silver, Antonio Blakeney, Dante Moore, Beats by Dre, Raising Cane’s, Main Street Sports, Eddy Cue, Michael Ratner, Michael Rubin, Casey Wasserman, Tom Brady, Rob Gronkowski, Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, the Philadelphia Eagles, Caleb Williams, Joe House, Bill Simmons, and many more…

Player of the Week: Brian Rolapp

This is about more than Rolapp’s ability to get Brooks Koepka back to the PGA Tour; he also created a path for all the prodigal sons who defected to LIV Golf to find their way back to the Tour—while retaining enough bite to satisfy the rank and file who didn’t take that blood money. Koepka has to make a $5 million charitable contribution and will be ineligible to take a stake in the PGA Tour’s Player Equity Program for the next five years. Keep in mind, Rolapp has been at the PGA Tour only since June. It’s hard to fathom that his predecessor, Jay Monahan, would have delivered the same peace accord.

Down to the J.V.: Charlie Baker

A couple of months ago, Adam Silver told me that sports betting integrity is an issue that keeps him up at night. Today’s college basketball betting scandal—involving at least 39 players, 17 teams, and 29 games—adds another headache for NCAA chief Charlie Baker, who is already busy trying to figure out eligibility rules, transfer portals, N.I.L. payouts, etcetera. Listen to our recent podcast conversation for a taste of Baker’s myriad challenges.

The Starting Five

College hoops betting scheme: Alas, it was a surprise to almost no one when news broke this morning that federal prosecutors had charged 26 men who allegedly shaved points in no fewer than 29 Division I games across at least 17 teams. The 70-page indictment alleges that Shane Hennen and Marves Fairley—both of whom were indicted in federal court in October in a separate NBA gambling case—conspired with former LSU standout and NBA player Antonio Blakeney and others to manipulate games during the past two seasons. Prosecutors claim that the scheme dates back to 2022, when Hennen and Fairley first recruited Blakeney, then playing for the Jiangsu Dragons in China. Blakeney allegedly manipulated his performance, at his co-conspirators’ behest, so they could win bets placed back in the U.S. From there, the operation is said to have shifted to Division I college basketball the following season. (Hennen and Fairley both pleaded not guilty to the previous charges.)

One notable detail: No Power Five programs were named in the indictment. In an era when top college basketball stars earn well into six- and seven-figure N.I.L. deals, it appears that some of their less financially secure peers are taking matters into their own hands and grabbing a slice of whatever pie they can. As betting seeps ever deeper into college sports, it’s hard to imagine this will be the last case of its kind.
Baker’s progress report: On Tuesday, a few days after appearing on the Varsity podcast, NCAA president Charlie Baker addressed reporters at the organization’s annual convention just outside Washington. Despite fires raging on multiple fronts for college athletics—including, now, the betting scandal investigation announced this morning—Baker struck an optimistic tone, pointing to the tangible progress he’s made taming the chaos of the transfer portal. According to Sports Business Journal, Baker noted that entries into the portal for FBS and FCS football have declined by roughly 23 percent—a shift he attributed largely to schools’ newfound ability to negotiate directly with athletes. The news on Wednesday that Oregon quarterback Dante Moore was opting to return to school rather than run the risk of getting drafted by the Jets in the first round could serve as a turning point.

Moore already boasts endorsement deals with Nike, Beats by Dre, eBay, and Raising Cane’s. On3 places Moore 12th in N.I.L. valuation across all of college football. While that won’t yield the eight figures that his rookie N.F.L. contract might have, it’s inducement enough to stay another year. Then again… maybe this was less about N.I.L. economics and more about avoiding the Jets, who were widely expected to take him at No. 2.
The R.S.N. conundrum: The beleaguered Main Street Sports’s final offer to the nine MLB clubs it once carried: three-year deals that run through 2028, with the ability to delay payments until the second or third quarter of this year. In addition to lowering their rights fee, Main Street has added a potential revenue-sharing component that the teams certainly will resist, according to The Athletic’s Evan Drellich.

That leaves the nine MLB clubs—the Braves, Reds, Tigers, Royals, Angels, Marlins, Brewers, Cardinals, and Rays—with a choice: Take whatever money Main Street is offering now while they still can, or just cut bait and tie their fortunes to the MLB’s still-undefined streaming ambitions—or pursue a Goldilocks option. In 2028, when the proposed Main Street Sports deals end, MLB will be on the market with a package of local rights from almost all of its teams that’s likely to garner a ton of interest.
Apple’s fuzzy TV math: On Wednesday, my colleague Julia Alexander scrutinized the year-end letter from Apple TV in which the streamer trumpeted vague viewership milestones without offering clarity about how audiences are actually engaging with the service. “Did you know that Apple ‘eclipsed’ all past ‘viewership records’ in December?” Julia wrote. “It’d make sense if you missed it, buried in a letter from Eddy Cue, the company’s head of services, boasting about a record-breaking 2025 across much of his division.”

Of course, it’s unclear which records Cue is referencing. “As usual, Apple won’t say,” Julia notes, adding that the letter offered no insight into how much time subscribers spent with buzzy titles like Vince Gilligan’s Pluribus, Jason Segel’s Shrinking, and films like Brad Pitt’s F1. Nor did Cue cite any meaningful third-party data. Indeed, that omission is telling. As Julia points out, “In six years, Apple has never exceeded 1 percent of total TV viewing time in the U.S.”
The Ratner–Rubin connection: I had Michael Ratner, the new head of Fanatics Studios, on The Varsity yesterday to discuss his new joint venture with Michael Rubin’s Fanatics—an ambitious play to produce a wide slate of upcoming sports content, including for the Olympic Games. I asked Ratner about his partnership with the Olympics as it returns to U.S. soil in Los Angeles in 2028. “Being bestowed the honor of creating the official Olympic film is something that I don’t take lightly,” he told me.

Ratner continued: “It’s about how we can tell the best global stories around the Olympians and Paralympians. We’ve worked with Casey Wasserman on the L.A. ’28 partnership, and we’re really, really excited to start rolling out content around that—films, TV shows, and docuseries,” he said. “I’m very excited to announce who’s going to be directing that project.” Ratner says the content won’t be exclusive to NBCU, the Olympics’ primary network, and will be more in line with “the Fanatics Studios model at large, so there will be content that could air on all different places”—including a theater near you. “We’re going to have a theatrical release for it,” he said.

And now for more on Fanatics Studios…

The ESPYs White Party

ESPN is moving the ESPYs, its moribund 33-year-old awards franchise, to New York, sandwiched between MLB’s All-Star Game and Michael Rubin’s Fanatics Fest. It’s a savvy play.

John Ourand

Do you remember when Tom Brady threw the Lombardi Trophy to Rob Gronkowski at Fanatics Fest last June, only for it to drop and break? Or when Kevin Durant found out onstage that he had been traded to the Houston Rockets? That happened at Fanatics Fest, too. Michael Rubin’s annual multiday event in New York now routinely and naturally yields the kind of viral, unscripted clips that legacy media companies bend over backward to contrive.

Last week, Fanatics announced the launch of Fanatics Studios, a partnership with Michael Ratner’s OBB that would, among other projects, produce this year’s ESPYs—the forlorn ESPN tentpole awards show that has long worked exceedingly hard to mint its own cross-cultural sports moments. In a further nod to that reordering of the guard, I’ve learned that ESPN is moving the awards to New York this year, right in Fanatics Fest’s draft. The show, which has been in Los Angeles for the past 25 years, is scheduled for Wednesday, July 15. That’s a day after MLB’s All-Star Game and a day before Fanatics Fest begins its four-day run from July 16-19. The following day, Sunday, July 19, is the World Cup final at nearby MetLife Stadium. Fanatics Fest will take place at the Javits Center; ESPN has not settled on a venue yet for the ESPYs, but both events hope to generate content that will surely transcend their fixed New York location. (For the record, Connor Schell’s Full Day Productions will continue to produce and showrun the ESPYs alongside Fanatics Studios.)

“I don’t care where you were in the world, you could not avoid Fanatics Fest last year,” Ratner, who is also C.E.O. of Fanatics Studios, told me on yesterday’s Varsity podcast. “That was really thought through. How do we bring excitement for the fans into something that was taking place in the Javits Center?”

Beyond Javits Dome

Last year’s ESPYs were less than memorable. Shane Gillis hosted. Shai Gilgeous-Alexander took home the award for best athlete. The Philadelphia Eagles won the best team award. “If I asked you your favorite moment from the ESPYs last year, you might not be able to say,” Ratner said. “That’s not because great content doesn’t happen. We need to make sure we’re getting it to you. That’s part of our goal.”

Fanatics has already proven it can bring sports celebrities to a Midtown convention center for an event that, originally, had all the glamour of a car show. Of course, it doesn’t hurt that many of those athletes have deals in place with Fanatics, pretty much guaranteeing they’ll be in attendance to sign autographs, take pictures, and participate in panel sessions. The idea now is that whoever is obliged to attend Fanatics Fest will be willing to arrive a day early for the ESPYs. Scheduling has long proven troublesome for the awards show: Every year, ESPN has had to persuade presenters and honorees to fly to Los Angeles for a one-off event. Snuggling up to Fanatics Fest can be viewed as a savvy move, with the two events working side by side instead of competitively to attract stars.

Other than moving it across the country, Ratner doesn’t envision making huge changes to this year’s event, which will run on ESPN. But he does plan on tapping into the energy that comes out of Fanatics Fest. He’ll also be focused on trying to find unscripted moments that might become viral, and on possibly creating new awards categories. “Like anything that runs for decades, it just needs a rethink and a freshen-up,” Ratner said of the ESPYs. “I’m thinking through how we can create some noise around it to make it even better. Can we think about social media? Can we think about opportunities surrounding it to make it a more exciting experience?”

From the Cheap Seats

On WNBA’s labor negotiations: “Adam [Silver] needs to end this foolishness with the WNBA. Maybe he should be the commish for both leagues. Doesn’t everything run through him already? If I were commish, I would surround myself with people who are straight talkers and listen. I would also travel to multiple WNBA games during the season and attend college games. That means more than just going to the Final Four weekend when there are WNBA team meetings at Final Four sites.” —A former ESPNer

On the strength of the NFC ratings: “The NFC games smoked the AFC games in the wild card round, and very likely will again in the divisionals. Pendulum is swinging back to the NFC.” —A media executive

[Ed. note: Sure enough, NFC games averaged 33.5 million viewers last weekend, and AFC games averaged 30.2 million. A quick breakdown: 49ers–Eagles had 41 million viewers on Fox Sunday, Rams–Panthers had 28 million on Fox Saturday, and Packers–Bears had 31.6 million on Prime Video Saturday. On the AFC side, Bills–Jaguars averaged 32.7 million on CBS Sunday, Pats–Chargers had 28.9 million on NBC Sunday night, and Texans–Steelers had 29.1 million on ESPN Monday.]

On the ESPYs: “I enjoyed your podcast with Michael Ratner. The ESPYs’ energy in New York will be different.” —A media executive

On Caleb Williams’ alma mater: “I always learn something new from your newsletter, but today’s was a shocker. For all the years I’ve been listening to Joe House on Bill Simmons’ podcasts, I knew he was from D.C. But I never had any idea that he also went to Gonzaga.” —A Gonzaga alum from the class of 1995

On the job carousel: “The Steelers coach (three since 1969) and Newsday sports media writer (three since 1978) jobs both turn over in the same year! Hmmm.” —A former Newsday sports media writer

Have a great weekend. See you Tuesday,

John

This issue was assembled with the help of Curtis Rowser.

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