January 12, 2024

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Breaking news this afternoon: Alabama has reportedly picked its replacement for coach Nick Saban, Washington’s Kalen DeBoer. Elsewhere, the Kansas City Chiefs are normally one of the NFL’s most popular franchises. However, tickets for Saturday’s wild-card game against the Miami Dolphins don’t reflect that popularity—they’re now dirt cheap due to dangerously cold weather. … The Australian Open begins this weekend and is poised to set the tone for tennis this year … The New England Patriots were able to use an exception to the standard NFL interview requirements in order to hire Jerod Mayo as Bill Belichick’s successor rapidly. … And ESPN certainly has had better weeks than this one.

— Eric Fisher [[link removed]]

Succession: How the Pats Did What Logan Roy Couldn’t [[link removed]]

Bob DeChiara-USA TODAY Sports

New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft was already part of NFL team ownership when the Rooney Rule went into effect in 2003, and he has supported it in the years since. But the succession plan that led to his hiring of Jerod Mayo as the Pats’ next coach on Friday morning allows Kraft to leapfrog over those rules, which typically require at least two interviews of minority or female candidates for head coaching jobs.

Kraft is poised to name [[link removed]] Mayo—previously a star linebacker for the Patriots and more recently the team’s linebackers coach—as the successor to Bill Belichick, who departed [[link removed]] on Thursday after a celebrated 24-year run that included six Super Bowl titles. Mayo will be the first Black head coach in Patriots history and, at 37, the youngest NFL head coach, beating the Los Angeles Rams’ Sean McVay by one month.

The rapid promotion of Mayo, arriving less than 24 hours after Belichick’s departure, results from a clause within the Rooney Rule [[link removed]] that allows teams to bypass that minority interview requirement with a written succession plan. If a team has such a contractual plan in place prior to the season in which the vacancy occurs, hires and promotions can be made immediately.

Mayo was the center of the Patriots’ succession plan when he received a contract extension a year ago. Other examples of NFL succession plans permitted within the Rooney Rule:

The Baltimore Ravens transitioned from GM Ozzie Newsome to Eric DeCosta in 2019. The Indianapolis Colts moved from coach Tony Dungy to Jim Caldwell in 2009. The Seattle Seahawks turned from coach Mike Holmgren to Jim Mora in 2009.

Much of the Patriots’ brand and $7 billion franchise value is tied [[link removed]] to the winning culture Belichick created, and Mayo will be tasked with carrying that into a new era.

“Jerod is an individual that, I think, has no ceiling for his ability to grow and how competent he is,” said Kraft at a March 2023 NFL meeting. “We had the privilege of having him as a player, and I saw how intense he was and his leadership skills that he had. And then I saw him leave us and go into private industry and learn the Xs and Os of business, and then come back to be a coach and do that with us.”

Between Mayo’s retirement as a player in 2016 and returning to the Patriots as a coach three years later, he worked [[link removed]] in a variety of business ventures, including angel investments and healthcare—developing a background very different than many other NFL coaches’.

🗣️ LOUD AND CLEAR

The Moon and Earth and Sun and Bill Belichick 🌕🌍☀️🏈

“It’s the solar eclipse of coaches.”

—Former NFL executive Michael Lombardi on The Bill Simmons Podcast [[link removed]], discussing the generational opportunity available at the moment to hire big-name football coaches like Bill Belichick, Pete Carroll, Mike Vrabel, and potentially Jim Harbaugh.

Want To See Dolphins-Chiefs? It’s Now Super-Cheap. (But Bundle Up) [[link removed]]

Jay Biggerstaff-USA TODAY Sports

It turns out there is something of a limit to NFL fandom, and it exists somewhere near potentially-life-threatening cold weather.

After a banner 2023 season that included gains in both domestic viewership [[link removed]] and attendance [[link removed]], the secondary ticket market is crashing [[link removed]] for the Kansas City Chiefs’ home playoff game Saturday night against the Miami Dolphins. The reason: projected wind chills of -30°, which would represent one of the coldest postseason games in NFL history. Despite the perennial popularity of the Chiefs and star quarterback Patrick Mahomes, not to mention the playoff setting, tickets for the game could be obtained Friday for less than $40 each.

The only two NFL postseason games with colder wind chills:

The 1981 AFC Championship Game between the Cincinnati Bengals and San Diego Chargers, dubbed the “Freezer Bowl,” with a wind chill of -59°. The infamous “Ice Bowl” 1967 NFL Championship Game between the Green Bay Packers and Dallas Cowboys, with a wind chill of -48°.

Both of those games occurred before the development of the modern secondary ticket market. Several more recent contests with extremely cold weather—such as the 2007 NFC title game between the Packers and New York Giants, which famously turned [[link removed]] the face of then-Giants coach Tom Coughlin a deep red—have similarly seen ticket resale markets plummet [[link removed]] below $50.

The Chiefs have issued an advisory [[link removed]] on game conditions and will operate warming stations around Arrowhead Stadium. The severe cold, meanwhile, should provide some unique visuals for the exclusive streaming presentation [[link removed]] of the game on Peacock.

Wild Card, Wild Weather

That isn’t the only NFL Wild Card game, though, set to face extreme weather. The Buffalo Bills’ contest against the Pittsburgh Steelers on Sunday afternoon could be affected by a projected seven inches or more of snow.

The NFL denied a report from Pittsburgh radio station KDKA suggesting that the playoff game could be moved to Cleveland because of the weather, saying [[link removed]] “there have been no discussions about making a change to the game’s status.”

SPONSORED BY AUTOTRADER

The End of an Era in CFB, NFL

Bill Belichick is leaving the New England Patriots after 24 years. Nick Saban announced his retirement as head coach at Alabama. Pete Carroll is no longer a Seahawk. Andrew Brandt joins Front Office Sports Today to discuss why there’s a sudden outflux of coaching talent, and how 25% of NFL teams found themselves without a head coach.

🎧 Listen and subscribe on Apple [[link removed]], Google [[link removed]], and Spotify [[link removed]].

MEDIA

ESPN’s Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Week

In Bristol, the reprieve of a long weekend will be welcomed with open arms—especially after five days of PR hell. A look back at the soap opera that is As the Worldwide Leader Turns:

🫤 Monday: Jimmy Kimmel delivers a scathing late night monologue [[link removed]] ripping Jets QB Aaron Rodgers and, by association, ESPN host Pat McAfee (who the previous week beefed with ESPN exec Norby Williamson), for Rodgers’s insinuation on The Pat McAfee Show that Kimmel had ties to convicted pedophile Jeffrey Epstein.

🙄 Tuesday: Rodgers, in his regular TPMS appearance, unleashes [[link removed]] a 10-minute retort, ripping ESPN exec Mike Foss, arguing that he doesn’t care about Kimmel and never accused Kimmel in the first place, and blaming the media for the whole flap: “This is what they do … they try and cancel.”

😧 Wednesday: On TPMS, McAfee announces that Rodgers won’t return this season, admitting, “There’s going to be a lot of people that are happy with that, myself included. …. The way it ended, it got real loud.” Crisis avoided—temporarily. Then fellow ESPN host Stephen A. Smith goes on a headline-grabbing 40-minute podcast rant [[link removed]], attacking another media personality, Jason Whitlock, whom Smith calls “ a devil” and “a bastard … worth less than a damn cockroach.”

🤯 Thursday: In the morning, The Athletic [[link removed]] publishes a damning report from Katie Strang about rampant and years-long Emmy fraud at ESPN, detailing how the network made up fake names to secure trophies for high-profile but ineligible on-air talent. … And by midday Rodgers is back on ESPN, if only briefly, talking on TPMS about Bill Belichick’s exit from the Patriots.

😞 Friday: Stay tuned.

Australian Open Serving Up a Big Purse Increase [[link removed]]

Mike Frey-USA TODAY Sports

The Australian Open begins this weekend, and the first Grand Slam of 2024 looks to set the tone for the biggest tennis events of the year.

Players at Melbourne Park will be competing for about $60 million after the Australian Open made a record 13% increase to its overall prize fund for this year’s tournament. That’s a bigger purse than last year’s French Open and Wimbledon, but still less than the U.S. Open. And once the other three tennis Grand Slams approach, each likely delivering their own annual financial boosts, the Australian Open could still be near the bottom of the prize pool.

Here’s what 2023 looked like:

U.S. Open: $65M (up from $60M in 2022) Wimbledon: $57M (up from $50M) French Open: $53M (up from $46M) Australian Open: $53M (up from $49M)

Rafael Nadal isn’t competing in Melbourne this year due to injury, after initially hoping to play the Australian Open. And the tournament is expanding from 14 to 15 days in what organizers are calling an effort to better spread out matches after recent editions have seen many run into the middle of the night. But ESPN tennis analyst John McEnroe sees it otherwise. “It’s a money grab as far as I’m concerned,” he said ahead of the tournament. “They just found another way to make some money. I don’t agree with it.”

McEnroe will be back with ESPN at the Australian Open after the network opted to not send him and many other commentators to Melbourne for last year’s event, resulting in some harsh criticism [[link removed]] of ESPN’s remote broadcasts, which were seen mostly as a cost-cutting move.

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