ESPN will begin its 36th season of broadcasting Major League Baseball on Thursday with a special Opening Day broadcast of a Brewers-Yankees game featuring Monday Night Football star Joe Buck in the broadcasting booth. If the network has its way, this won’t be its last season opener with the league. 

Even after a bitter split last month between MLB and ESPN, ending their rights deal after the 2025 season and three years early, and the league quickly looking to resell those rights, the Disney-owned network still holds out hope of reviving its baseball ties. 

It might look irrational given the vitriol involved in the contract split, especially considering ESPN’s desire to substantially reduce its $550 million annual MLB rights fee, and the league’s unwillingness to accept that. ESPN, however, believes its MLB coverage remains unmatched. 

“There are very smart people that are trying to figure out ways to move forward with Major League Baseball,” said Karl Ravech, Sunday Night Baseball play-by-play announcer, on a season-preview press call. “That’s way above my pay grade to negotiate that, but I’m very optimistic about ESPN and Major League Baseball’s future.

“Who else provides any more coverage of baseball—with the exception of MLB Network—than ESPN does?” Ravech continued. “I’m just optimistic because of the platform that ESPN is and will be ‘Flagship.’ When you think about the entities that are [going to be] on that ‘Flagship’ … I don’t want to say it requires [baseball], but my goodness, if you’re a sports fan, you’re going to want to have [it].”

Terms of Engagement

There have been no formal talks between the two sides since the contract split was announced, industry sources told Front Office Sports. There is optimism, however, that conversations will pick up after Opening Day, when MLB and ESPN will be forced to be in more regular contact to coordinate logistics for the weekly Sunday Night Baseball broadcasts and other parts of the network’s rights in 2025. 

ESPN chairman Jimmy Pitaro, meanwhile, conveyed similar sentiments recently, telling The Athletic, “If they are interested in re-engaging with us when the time is right, we’ll be ready to have that conversation.”

In the meantime, ESPN continues to prepare for a full-fledged season of broadcasting MLB in 2025—including a primetime Opening Day showcase featuring the defending champion Dodgers, fresh off a triumphant trip to Japan, against the Tigers and their ace pitcher Tarik Skubal. 

“I just think the platform itself makes itself so valuable, and given this near-four-decade relationship we have with Major League Baseball that, in the end, that’s enough to get us to work something out,” Ravech said. “Whether it happens, I don’t know, but that’s sort of the way I’ve been thinking through it.”

Andrew Luck has made his first big move as GM of Stanford’s football program, a role he began at his alma mater in December.

Luck fired Stanford football coach Troy Taylor on Tuesday afternoon, saying “certain aspects of the program need change” and citing “significant attention” around the university’s investigation into complaints about Taylor’s behavior. Last week, ESPN reported that the coach bullied and belittled female athletic staffers and repeatedly made inappropriate comments about one woman’s appearance.

“After continued consideration it is evident to me that our program needs a reset,” Luck said in a statement. “In consultation with university leadership, I no longer believe that coach Taylor is the right coach to lead our football program.”

Taylor was hired in 2023, and Stanford went 3–9 each of the past two seasons. Since the university is private, Taylor’s contract isn’t publicly available, so it’s unclear how much he was making and how much a buyout would cost Stanford, depending on whether his firing was with cause.

With the firing taking place well after this year’s college-football coaching cycle concluded, Luck said Stanford might name an acting head coach for the 2025 season. 

Calling the Shots

Luck was one of several high-profile names who recently entered college football in the GM role that is becoming commonplace across athletic departments, including former Commanders and Panthers coach Ron Rivera at Cal (his alma mater) and former Browns GM Michael Lombardi at North Carolina alongside new coach Bill Belichick.

Typically, athletic directors hire and fire coaches, although those decisions at top football and men’s basketball programs typically include conversations with the university president and major donors, too.

Still, Luck’s move shows the new landscape of college football, with programs becoming more like their professional counterparts in the NFL.

The first two rounds of the women’s March Madness tournament showcased the upward trajectory of the sport, though, perhaps expectedly, they couldn’t live up to last year’s lofty benchmarks.

First Round

The opening round averaged 367,000 viewers across ESPN networks, the second-most-watched first round since 2013. Those numbers are down 22% vs. last year but up 43% from 2023.

The most-watched first-round game this year was between UConn and Arkansas State, which drew 1.1 million viewers on ABC—the third-most-watched women’s first-round game in history despite the Huskies winning by 69 points. 

This year’s first round was the most lopsided in history with an average victory margin of 26.5 points, the most of any non-title round. Only 7 of the 32 first-round games were decided by fewer than 10 points.

The most-watched first-round game was Caitlin Clark and Iowa’s opener last year against Holy Cross, which drew 3.2 million viewers.

Round of 32

The second round averaged 982,000 viewers, down 30% from the 1.4 million average last year but up 60% from 2023. It’s the second-most-watched round of 32 on record.

UConn vs. South Dakota State led the way with 1.7 million viewers on ESPN. South Carolina vs. Indiana drew 1.4 million viewers on ABC while USC and Mississippi State, Monday’s late-night game on ESPN when JuJu Watkins tore her ACL, drew 1.3 million viewers. The three games were in the top 10 most-watched second-round games on record, with the UConn game in fifth.

The Maryland vs. Alabama game, a double-overtime thriller on ESPN2, peaked at 1.6 million viewers during the second OT.

The top four all came last year. Clark and Iowa drew 4.9 million viewers on ESPN in a close game against Virginia that was tied with under three minutes remaining. UConn vs. Syracuse (ESPN), LSU vs. Middle Tennessee (ABC), and USC vs. Kansas (ESPN) all had more than 1.75 million viewers.

Despite the loss of Watkins for the rest of the tournament, the Sweet 16 will feature a few major matchups, as no team below the No. 5 seed advanced. Notable games include Duke vs. North Carolina, TCU vs. Notre Dame, and UConn vs. Oklahoma.