The UFL announces the schedule for its second season; NBC’s pregame show is headed on-site for the season finale. Plus: a new Golf Channel morning show, illegal streaming sites are shut down, and Neil Funk is returning to the Bulls.
UFL announces 2025 season schedule
The United Football League has announced the schedule for its 2025 season, the second following the merger between the USFL and XFL. The season will kickoff on Friday, March 28 with a matchup of the St. Louis Battlehawks and Houston Roughnecks at 8 PM on FOX. One game will air on FOX on Friday night every week of the season, with the rest of the games scattered across the weekend on FOX, ABC, ESPN and one game each on FS1 and ESPN2.
The Week 9 game between DC and Houston will get a direct lead-in from the Indianapolis 500, which is airing on Fox this year for the first time as part of a new multi-year deal.
The season will conclude with two semifinal games on June 8 before the UFL Championship game on Saturday, June 14, in primetime on ABC.
FNIA heading to Detroit
NBC Sports announced this Sunday’s Football Night in America will be a road show from Ford Field in Detroit ahead of the season-ending Vikings-Lions matchup. Although NBC regularly presents portions of the primetime studio show live from the game site, this will be the first full road show for a regular-season finale since 2006.
Vikings-Lions will be Detroit’s second game to attract a network pregame show this season, after their December 15 matchup with the Bills brought CBS Sports’ The NFL Today to town.
The game, in which the winner will earn the NFC’s #1 seed in the playoffs, features the highest combined incoming win total for a regular-season game in NFL history, a feat made more possible by the NFL’s expansion to a 17-game regular season in 2021.
FNIA will air at 7 PM on NBC and Peacock, and feature host Maria Taylor alongside Jason Garrett, Devin McCourty, Chris Simms, Tony Dungy, and Rodney Harrison. Mike Tirico, Cris Collinsworth, and Melissa Stark will call the game beginning at 8:20 PM.
Plus: Golf Channel morning show, illegal streaming sites, Neil Funk
— ESPN basketball analyst Jay Bilas will be a regular contributor to a new morning show on GOLF Channel hosted by longtime GOLF Channel personality Gary Williams beginning January 6. The one-hour show, which will air Monday-Wednesday a 8 AM, will be produced by the “5 Clubs” golf content company and will be titled “5 Clubs on GOLF Channel”. Joining Williams will be a rotating cast including Bilas and the other 5 Clubs analysts: Johnson Wagner, Brendan De Jonge, Gil Hanse, and Emma Carpenter.
— Two popular illegal streaming websites, Methstreams and Crackstreams, have been shut down without explanation. The sites, which had been maintained anonymously for years, had provided free, unauthorized streams of live sports, including the NFL and NBA. Estimated viewership of the sites is not known, and viewers watching the sites do not contribute to viewership counts of the content’s original platform (ESPN, etc.). Whether law enforcement was involved in the takedown is not known.
— Play-by-play announcer Neil Funk will call Saturday’s Knicks-Bulls game on Chicago Sports Network as part of the Bulls’ “Derrick Rose Night”, the network announced Thursday. Funk previously served as the Bulls’ radio voice for the teams six championship runs in the 90s before moving to TV in 2008. Funk retired from the team in 2020.
