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Afternoon Edition

November 12, 2025

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The Pirates are standing firm on keeping Paul Skenes, one of Major League Baseball’s brightest young stars—even as pressure mounts for change.

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

Pirates GM Rebuffs Paul Skenes Trade Talk As Frustrations Mount [[link removed]]

Charles LeClaire-USA TODAY Sports

Pirates ace Paul Skenes is a virtual lock to win the National League Cy Young Award on Wednesday, with betting markets pointing to a more than 99% implied probability of his prevailing. The chances of Skenes remaining in Pittsburgh for the duration of his career are less certain.

Ben Cherington, the team’s GM, reiterated at Major League Baseball GM meetings in Las Vegas that he has no intention of trading his standout talent.

“The question gets asked, and it’s always respectful,” Cherington said. “Teams have to ask the question, right? I suspect that won’t end. But the answer’s been consistent.”

To his point, the latest comments mirror those from last spring [[link removed]], when Cherington said of dealing Skenes in the midst of another lackluster Pirates season, “It’s not at all part of the conversation.”

Losing, Not Spending

The calls for the Pirates to do much more around Skenes, however, are certain to continue. Pittsburgh has posted seven straight losing seasons, has finished in the NL Central division cellar the last two years, and in 2025 had MLB’s No. 27 luxury-tax payroll of $105.4 million—barely a fourth of what the Dodgers spent this year.

Additionally, it’s teams like Pittsburgh—ones that are seen as not necessarily maximizing their resources—that are frequently viewed within baseball as a bigger problem in the game than the Dodgers, back-to-back league champions [[link removed]] through unprecedented levels of spending.

Pinstripe Chatter

As Cherington repeated his intent to keep Skenes in Pittsburgh, NJ.com reported [[link removed]] that Skenes is privately telling his teammates that he wants to be a Yankee and that he has “no confidence” that the Pirates and owner Bob Nutting will develop a winner. Cherington rejected the notion.

“I do dismiss it, but I understand it,” Cherington said. “What we’re going to focus on is just how do we win games with him in a Pirates uniform.”

Skenes, who earned $875,000 this season, is eligible for salary arbitration after next season and for free agency after the 2029 season.

Any consideration of dealing Skenes would be a double-edged sword for the Pirates. Sending away someone who is already one of the top players in franchise history would be a particularly tough blow for a long-pessimistic fan base in Pittsburgh. Any return for Skenes, however, would be massive and could be baseball’s equivalent of the NFL’s Herschel Walker trade, a 1989 deal between Minnesota and Dallas that helped set up the Cowboys’ dynasty in the 1990s.

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Mavs Owner Patrick Dumont Vows to Fix the Mess He Helped Create [[link removed]]

Peter Casey-USA TODAY Sports

Mavericks owner Patrick Dumont expressed regret for the Luka Dončić trade [[link removed]] during a courtside conversation with a teenage fan on Monday night.

“Basically Patrick was like, he feels horrible for the trade. And wants to make it up to us,” said Nicholas Dickason, a season-ticket holder who sat down beside Dumont before the Mavericks game against the Bucks, according to The Athletic [[link removed]].

Hours later, after the Mavericks had blown a double-digit fourth-quarter lead, fans showered American Airlines Center with “Fire Nico” chants, a common refrain in Dallas since GM Nico Harrison traded their franchise cornerstone in February.

The next morning, nine months and 11 days after the trade, Dumont finally succumbed to the fans’ requests and fired Harrison [[link removed]], the brainchild of the Dončić deal. But Dumont bears a level of responsibility for the chaos since his approval carried the trade past the finish line. NBA trades with a fraction of this magnitude are run through ownership.

Dumont, the son-in-law of Mavericks majority owner Miriam Adelson, who purchased the team from Mark Cuban in 2023, remains the team governor. He’s expected to steer the team, currently sitting near the bottom of the Western Conference standings, forward.

He has proven business acumen as the president of Las Vegas Sands Corp., and will be essential in the NBA’s pursuit to once again reconnect with the Chinese market [[link removed]], but his mishandling of the Dončić trade has shown his inexperience in the sports world.

In the wake of the deal, Dumont defended the team’s decision, undermining Dončić in the process, seven months removed from a trip to the NBA Finals.

“In my mind the way teams win is by focus, by having the right character, by having the right culture, and having the right dedication to work as hard as possible to create a championship-winning outcome,” Dumont told The Dallas Morning News. “And if you’re not doing that, you’re going to lose.”

He then named superstars that exemplified his vision, leaving out Mavericks icon Dirk Nowitzki, while mentioning Shaquille O’Neal, who, by his own admission, was a lackadaisical participant in practice during his playing career.

Both Dumont and Harrison also failed to read the pulse of their fans before making the trade.

“If we lost any of our fans’ trust, it was hard and I apologize, but I hope over time we can regain that trust through hard work,” Dumont said during an interview [[link removed]] less than two weeks after the trade.

Harrison acknowledged his own misjudgment of the team’s fans [[link removed]] in April during Mavericks exit interviews after the 2024–25 season.

“I did know that Luka was important to the fan base,” Harrison said. “I didn’t quite know it to what level.”

Dumont is already attempting to rebuild trust with fans, not only through his courtside conversation Monday. He married the announcement of Harrison’s firing with a six-page letter thanking fans for holding the organization “accountable.”

“No one associated with the Mavericks organization is happy with the start of what we all believe would be a promising season. You have high expectations for the Mavericks, and I share them with you. When the results don’t meet expectations, it’s my responsibility to act. I’ve made the decision to part ways with General Manager Nico Harrison,” Dumont wrote.

He added: “I understand the profound impact these difficult last several months have had. Please know that I’m fully committed to the success of the Mavericks.”

The letter did not reference the Dončić trade.

Dumont will likely need to engineer an on-court turnaround [[link removed]] to recoup the fans’ trust, especially while Dončić and the Lakers sit near the top of the Western Conference.

He does have the fortune of moving forward with 2025 No. 1 pick Cooper Flagg, a new franchise cornerstone, who they could potentially pair with another star teenager in the 2026 NBA draft if they remain in the league’s doldrums this year.

Disney–YouTube TV Blackout Opens Door for CBS, Fox CFB Ratings Boost [[link removed]]

Matthew O'Haren-Imagn Images

In the second weekend of the ongoing Disney–YouTube TV carriage dispute [[link removed]], ABC still had the most-watched college football game of the Week 11 action, as 7.54 million viewers tuned in to Alabama’s 20–9 victory over LSU on Saturday night.

But Fox and CBS had noticeably strong performances, with ABC and ESPN networks unavailable for the No. 4 U.S. pay-TV provider’s 10 million subscribers.

Here were the five most-watched games of the weekend:

LSU-Alabama: 7.54 million (ABC) Indiana–Penn State: 6.02 million (Fox) Oregon-Iowa: 5.37 million (CBS) Texas A&M–Missouri: 4.87 million (ABC) BYU–Texas Tech: 3.98 million (ABC)

Oregon’s 18–16 win over Iowa is the second-largest college football audience for CBS this season, and it helped the network beat ABC in the Saturday 3:30 p.m. ET window for the first time this season, edging out the audience for Texas A&M’s 38–17 victory over Missouri.

The audience for Indiana’s thrilling 27–24 comeback win over Penn State was up 6% from Fox’s noon window viewership average in 2024. The network also drew 2.32 million viewers for Iowa State–TCU, which ranked No. 7 on the weekend, just behind NBC’s 3.2 million viewers for Navy–Notre Dame.

On Saturday night, Fox drew 1.67 million viewers for an Arkansas–Michigan State men’s basketball game and 2.22 million for the Nebraska-UCLA football game.

Inside the Numbers

ABC’s Saturday tripleheader averaged 5.46 million viewers, which is down 12% from 6.22 million for the network’s all-SEC tripleheader of Alabama-LSU, Georgia–Ole Miss, and Florida-Texas in Week 11 in 2024.

ESPN’s trio of games Saturday averaged 1.41 million viewers:

Georgia–Mississippi State: 2.3 million Syracuse-Miami: 1.2 million Wake Forest–Virginia: 734,000

That average is down nearly 35% from the 2.16 million viewers ESPN averaged for its three games in the same time slots last season in Week 11 (Miami–Georgia Tech, Clemson–Virginia Tech, and Mississippi State–Tennessee).

Both ABC and ESPN comparisons are using Nielsen’s Big Data + Panel figures for this season’s games, and Nielsen’s panel-only figures for the 2024 games (which were the standard reporting method last year).

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FRONT OFFICE SPORTS TODAY Could Project B Take Down Unrivaled?

FOS illustration

The Mavericks have fired Nico Harrison, but he’s just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to Dallas’s struggles under its new ownership group. FOS reporter Alex Schiffer joins to explain how a team that was in the NBA Finals just two years ago has so quickly fallen from grace and why everything starts with the owners.

Meanwhile, new upstart European league Project B is looking like a major threat to Unrivaled after signing Phoenix Mercury star Alyssa Thomas, says FOS women’s sports reporter Annie Costabile. She joins Baker Machado to explain why this league could be a major disruptor in women’s basketball and who else could join Thomas and former WNBA MVP Nneka Ogwumike overseas.

Plus, YouTube TV and Disney’s standoff is heading in the wrong direction, says FOS newsletter writer Eric Fisher. He joins to explain.

Also, Giants star edge rusher Kayvon Thibodeaux joins to talk about his season and the impact he’s making off the field.

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

STATUS REPORT Two Up, One Down, One Push

Kirby Lee-Imagn Images

NFL international games viewership ⬆ The league said Wednesday that it garnered an average audience of 6 million viewers on the NFL Network for the game Sunday in Berlin between the Colts and Falcons [[link removed]]. That figure ranks as a top-five viewership for an international game on the NFL Network.

NBA All-Star Game format ⬆⬇ As expected [[link removed]], the league unveiled a U.S.-vs.-World format for the upcoming 2026 All-Star Game. The midseason showcase will be a round-robin tournament featuring two teams of American players and one team of international players. The basketball retooling comes amid declining interest [[link removed]] in not only the NBA’s All-Star Game but also similar restructurings [[link removed]] in other top leagues. For the NBA, it could be a further spotlighting of its global presence, as many of its top players hail from outside the U.S.

Daryl Johnston ⬇ The UFL has decided not to renew the contract of its EVP of football operations. Johnston has been an avid supporter of spring football, serving in various roles in the prior iterations of the USFL, XFL, and Alliance of American Football. Johnston is also a longtime NFL game analyst for Fox, which is an investor in the UFL, but likely had its ownership stake reduced when Mike Repole bought into the spring football league [[link removed]] earlier this year.

SEC ⬆ The conference has five teams in this week’s projected College Football Playoff bracket [[link removed]], up from three last week, following Tuesday’s rankings reveal: Texas A&M, Alabama, Georgia, Ole Miss, and Texas. If these rankings were to hold, the Big Ten would place three teams in the CFP, while the ACC, Big 12, and AAC would each get one, alongside independent Notre Dame.

Editors’ Picks Paul Finebaum ‘Very Close’ to Leaving ESPN [[link removed]]by Michael McCarthy [[link removed]]A source says Finebaum will decide after the college football season. What Does Nico Harrison’s Firing Mean for Mark Cuban? [[link removed]]by Alex Schiffer [[link removed]]Cuban was out of the loop when Dončić got traded in February. Excel Sports Valued at Nearly $1B in Sale to Goldman Sachs [[link removed]]by Ben Horney [[link removed]]The talent agency represents Caitlin Clark, Derek Jeter, and more. DAILY TRIVIA Factle Sports

Can you rank the top five PGA Tour players with the most all-time tournament wins?

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