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Morning Edition

February 28, 2025

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Travis Hunter won the Heisman Trophy playing both receiver and cornerback. The Colorado phenom may be the No. 1 pick in April’s NFL Draft—and if he can do both at the next level, his pay ceiling is sky-high. Here’s the latest from the NFL combine.

— David Rumsey [[link removed]], Eric Fisher [[link removed]], and Colin Salao [[link removed]]

Travis Hunter’s 2-Way Ability Raises Huge Value Potential—and Questions [[link removed]]

The Record

INDIANAPOLIS — Travis Hunter insists he wants to play both offense and defense in the NFL—something that may complicate his professional future as franchises weigh making a major investment in the 2024 Heisman Trophy winner [[link removed]].

“I’m going to play both,” Hunter said at the NFL Scouting Combine on Thursday. Last season at Colorado, Hunter played full-time on offense and defense for a total of 1,443 snaps.

And if a team wants him to choose one or the other? “That’s not my job to figure it out,” he said. “I’d like to play both sides of the ball. If they give me the opportunity to play both sides, I’m playing both sides.”

If Hunter is selected with one of the first five picks of the NFL Draft, where he is widely projected, he’ll receive a guaranteed four-year contract worth between roughly $36 million and $43 million, no matter his chosen position.

But it will be just three seasons before he’ll be eligible for a long-term extension—when the real money will be available. And which position, or positions, he’s playing will be a major factor in how much a franchise will have to pay for his services.

In 2024, the average salary of the five highest-paid wide receivers in the NFL was $32.2 million. That’s more than $10 million above the average salary of the five highest-paid cornerbacks, $21.89 million.

What would a true two-way star in the NFL be worth, though? The idea is a double-edged sword, because while paying Hunter one salary to do two jobs could be extremely valuable, any playing time he misses due to injury (or otherwise) would be twice as problematic.

“Nobody has done it,” Hunter said. “I know I can do it.”

Football in Focus

Hunter is repped by Lil Wayne’s sports agency Young Money APAA Sports [[link removed]] for on-field contracts and SMAC Entertainment for off-field deals, which include many NIL (name, image, and likeness) pacts in college and an existing Adidas ambassadorship [[link removed]].

But Hunter is adamant that he’s 100% focused on his playing career. “It’s all football for me,” he said. “I have nothing else to worry about.”

Shake-Up at the Top?

Fellow top draft prospect Abdul Carter, the star pass rusher from Penn State, is focused only on sacking quarterbacks in the NFL. However, his stock may have taken a hit this week after medical tests revealed a stress reaction in his right foot, potentially requiring surgery. On top of that, Carter had already planned to skip workouts at the combine due to a shoulder injury he sustained in Penn State’s Fiesta Bowl win over Boise State.

But Carter’s agent, Drew Rosenhaus, told ESPN that doctors advised against surgery [[link removed]], and that he plans on working out at Penn State’s pro day on March 28.

Carter has been a top contender for the No. 1 pick, which the Titans currently hold, and he didn’t shy away from the idea when he spoke to the media Wednesday. “I feel like I’m the best player in the country,” he said. “And the best player should be picked first.”

Amazon NFL Games Surged in 2024. Its Secret Weapon: Alt-Casts [[link removed]]

Maria Lysaker-Imagn Images

INDIANAPOLIS — Amazon saw the biggest ratings increase of any NFL media-rights partner [[link removed]] this past season, and the streamer’s game broadcasts looked far different than everyone else’s, too.

As league stakeholders gather at the NFL Scouting Combine to kick off the offseason, Amazon is starting to think about more ways to trend up again in 2025, its fourth season with an exclusive NFL package.

The tech company turned sports broadcaster’s secret sauce, if you will, is its ability to implement on-air features that linear TV channels can’t. This past season, the main TNF feed, led by Al Michaels and Kirk Herbstreit, added the defensive alerts feature [[link removed]], which highlights likely blitzing players, from its “Prime Vision” alternate broadcast.

While that addition was mostly seen as a success, the challenge moving forward is balancing the inclusion of new ideas without overwhelming viewers.

“Nothing needs to be forced,” Amazon’s Sam Schwartzstein told Front Office Sports.

Schwartzstein is a former teammate of Andrew Luck at Stanford, and is well known for creating the rule book of the 2020 iteration of the XFL. He now works primarily as the analytics expert for TNF, collaborating on aspects of the alternate feed that is somewhat of a testing ground for the main broadcast.

“We’re building for an audience there,” Schwartzstein said of the “Prime Vision” feed. “It’s a more in-depth football fan.” That alternate broadcast incorporates Next Gen Stats into all kinds of features like player tracking and prime targets, and used the ultra-popular Sky Cam angle for the second half of the 2024 season.

All TNF feeds combined—there’s also a Spanish-language broadcast—averaged 13.2 million viewers per game this past season, which was an 11% bump from 2023.

Amazon may or may not expand more alternate-feed features into the main feed in 2025, but the testing ground will always remain open. “We ultimately want to make everyone a smarter football fan, and going into the main broadcast is a big goal of ours,” Schwartzstein said.

Ready for Kickoff

During his time at the XFL, Schwartzstein was influential in creating the dynamic kickoff that the NFL partially adopted in 2024—and is now considering tweaking further.

Schwartzstein thinks the NFL did a nice job with the new kickoff. “It’s a great place to start,” he said. And count Schwartzstein as a fan of more potential changes. “What’s awesome about the NFL is they change the rules every year,” he said. “It’s the only major sport in America that changes the rules every year.”

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NHL’s Momentum Builds: Record Crowd Set for Ohio Stadium Series [[link removed]]

Russell LaBounty-Imagn Images

The NHL is clearly riding a wave of popularity and prominence with the hugely successful 4 Nations Face-Off [[link removed]] quickly giving way to the Capitals’ Alexander Ovechkin and his GR8 Chase [[link removed]]. Next up is an outdoor game in Columbus poised to make its own history.

The league said that a Stadium Series game Saturday between the Red Wings and Blue Jackets at Ohio Stadium, normally the home of Ohio State football, is set to draw more than 90,000 people. Regardless of the actual final count, the game will generate the second-largest attendance figure in NHL history, trailing only the 2014 Winter Classic at Michigan Stadium in Ann Arbor, which drew 105,491.

“This is an iconic place,” NHL president of content and events Steve Mayer said of Ohio Stadium. “I’ve watched some incredible sporting events take place in this building. It’s special to be here and for us to actually look at what will be the second-largest crowd in the history of these outdoor games, and to know that even though it started many years ago, we’re still going strong.”

Team Issues

The Stadium Series game, the league’s final outdoor contest this season, also marks a rise for both franchises—on and off the ice.

The event is the first outdoor game ever in Columbus, completing a long journey for the Blue Jackets to bring one of the showcase league competitions to the Ohio state capital.

The Red Wings and Blue Jackets, meanwhile, currently hold the top two wild-card slots in the Eastern Conference, giving the event additional competitive drama. Detroit, an Original Six NHL franchise that previously dominated the league at several points, is attempting to return to the postseason for the first time since 2016.

Columbus, meanwhile, is looking for its first playoff trip since the 2019–2020 season heavily altered by the COVID-19 pandemic, and is planning to bring its iconic goal cannon to Ohio Stadium for the outdoor game.

The two teams will have a mini-playoff series, of sorts, preceding the Stadium Series game with another clash Thursday night in Detroit. The NHL has used this back-to-back scheduling strategy several times before involving an outdoor game, and is aimed in part at creating a more feisty on-ice atmosphere for the featured event.

Mystics Capitalize on WNBA Surge, Move 4 Games to Larger Arenas [[link removed]]

Brad Mills-Imagn Images

The Washington Mystics showed the growing appetite audiences have for the WNBA once again.

The team announced Thursday that four of its home games for the 2025 season will be moved from its usual home, CareFirst Arena, which has a capacity of 4,200, to two different arenas outside of Washington, D.C. Both venues have more than double the capacity of the team’s home venue.

Washington will play two games against Caitlin Clark and the Indiana Fever in CFG Bank Arena in Baltimore, Md., which has a 14,000 seating maximum capacity. It will also face off against Angel Reese and the Chicago Sky as well as A’ja Wilson and the Las Vegas Aces at EagleBank Arena, home of the George Mason men’s and women’s basketball teams, which has a 10,000-seat capacity. The maximum seating capacity of both arenas is expected to be slightly lower for basketball games, but is still being finalized, MS&E told Front Office Sports.

The schedule of the moved games is as follows:

EagleBank Arena

July 8 vs. Chicago Sky July 10 vs. Las Vegas Aces

CFG Bank Arena

May 28 vs. Indiana Fever Sept. 7 vs. Indiana Fever

However, despite the announcement, Mystics chief business officer Alycen McAuley told FOS the team is not exploring a permanent move to a larger home venue. “Right now, we’re not contemplating [a move],” McAuley said.

What About Capital One Arena?

Last season, the Mystics moved four of their home games to Capital One Arena, the home of the NBA’s Wizards, also owned by MS&E, which pushed its final year average home attendance to more than 6,500, nearly 50% more than the previous year. The Sept. 19 game against the Fever drew 20,711 fans— a WNBA attendance record [[link removed]].

However, despite selling out every home game last year, the team still finished third to last in attendance [[link removed]], per Across the Timeline, due to the limited capacity of CareFirst Arena.

McAuley told FOS the team will not be able to use Capital One Arena in the 2025 season due to renovations. Last March, after teasing a potential move to Virginia [[link removed]], MS&E CEO Ted Leonsis agreed to a deal to keep the Wizards, Mystics, and NHL’s Capitals in D.C., which included a $515 million renovation of Capital One Arena [[link removed]].

But Thursday’s announcement shows that MS&E is still looking to integrate D.C.’s surrounding cities, which aligns with Leonsis’s desire [[link removed]] for Baltimore, Richmond, and D.C., to turn into a “supercity.” In an interview with Bloomberg Business, earlier this month, Leonsis said supercities are economic hubs, have top universities, and major sports teams [[link removed]].

McAuley said that because Capital One Arena is unavailable, the Mystics explored other options in the area, reiterating that the team is positioned for fans in the DMV (D.C., Maryland, and Virginia).

“That really presented an opportunity, truthfully, for us to start to think about the broader market area that the Mystics have support from,” McAuley said. “[And] the Mystics are the team of the DMV.”

FRONT OFFICE SPORTS NETWORK

Winning a National Title, Overcoming Adversity, and Beating Ohio State

Michigan head coach Sherrone Moore sits with Adam Breneman for an exclusive interview. Coach Moore shares his incredible journey from graduate assistant to leading one of the most storied programs in college football. He opens up about the moment he got the head coaching job, the lessons he learned from Jim Harbaugh, and the challenges of stepping into this high-profile role.

Coach Moore breaks down his approach to recruiting, what it takes to build a winning culture, and how he evaluates coaching staff. He also shares his thoughts on NIL (name, image, and likeness), the transfer portal, and the future of Michigan football. Plus, he reflects on beating Ohio State, the mindset it takes to win a national championship, and what drives him as a leader.

Watch the full Next Up episode here [[link removed]].

Editors’ Picks NFLPA Report Cards: Steelers, Patriots Stay Low, Falcons Rise [[link removed]]by Colin Salao [[link removed]]The Steelers finished 28th, and the Patriots were 31st. What’s Next for Kevin Durant After a Likely Suns Split? [[link removed]]by Alex Schiffer [[link removed]]ESPN’s Brian Windhorst expects Durant to be traded this summer. Why the Race to Cut College Athlete Taxes Creates a Recruiting ‘Prisoner’s Dilemma’ [[link removed]]by Amanda Christovich [[link removed]]Experts say the potential pitfalls of such legislation could outweigh the benefits. Question of the Day

Should Travis Hunter go No. 1 overall in the NFL Draft?

YES [[link removed]] NO [[link removed]]

Thursday’s result: 37% of respondents think the Luka Dončić trade makes Lakers-Mavericks a must-watch rivalry.

Advertise [[link removed]] Awards [[link removed]] Learning [[link removed]] Events [[link removed]] Video [[link removed]] Shows [[link removed]] Written by David Rumsey [[link removed]], Eric Fisher [[link removed]], Colin Salao [[link removed]] Edited by Matthew Tabeek [[link removed]], Or Moyal [[link removed]], Catherine Chen [[link removed]]

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