Bill Belichick is returning to media as a guest analyst on ACC Network’s National Championship pregame. Plus: a Fanatics-fueled relocation of the ESPYs; an ex-ice dancer loses her NBC Olympics gig weeks before the Games; and more.
Belichick returns to media on ACC Network National Championship pregame
North Carolina head football coach Bill Belichick will serve as a guest analyst on the ACC Network studio show “ACC Huddle” prior to Monday’s College Football Playoff National Championship, it was announced Friday. Belichick will appear alongside Jimbo Fisher, Eric Mac Lain, Eddie Royal and host Taylor Tannebaum.
The guest appearance marks a return to television for Belichick, who after his exit from the New England Patriots in 2023 took on a number of on-air roles — including with Peyton Manning’s Omaha Productions, where he was a permanent guest on the “Manningcast” alternate presentations of “Monday Night Football” and co-hosted an Xs and Os breakdown show alongside Manning. He also served as an analyst on “Inside the NFL,” a regular guest on “The Pat McAfee Show” and even a contributor to a fantasy sports app.
But those media roles ended when Belichick was named coach of North Carolina in December 2024. Between his subpar first season with the Tar Heels and increasing scrutiny regarding his personal life, Belichick has largely avoided media in the past year — with plans for a “Hard Knocks” style documentary series about his debut season being scuttled before it could be announced.
A notable and somewhat disastrous exception was an interview with “CBS Sunday Morning” last April in which his girlfriend, who was present at the taping, appeared to object to certain lines of questioning.
New Fanatics Studios to co-produce ESPYs, which will move to NYC
The newly-announced Fanatics Studios will co-produce this year’s ESPY Awards, it was announced this week, with John Ourand of Puck reporting Thursday that the event will relocate to New York City in order to be in proximity to the annual Fanatics Fest taking place the same week. The show is scheduled for its usual date on the night after the MLB All-Star Game — July 15 — with Fanatics Fest set to begin the following day.
Full Day Productions, the studio created by ex-ESPN executive Connor Schell that has produced the past four ESPY Awards, will remain as co-producer.
Fanatics Studios — a joint venture of Fanatics and the OBB Media studio — has also reached a broader partnership with ESPN that will include “hours” of programming over the next two years, including a one-hour special about Fanatics Fest.
The ESPYs had taken place in Los Angeles dating back to 2001, save for the COVID-affected years of 2020 and 2021. It was originally based in New York, with a two-year pitstop in Las Vegas before the move to Los Angeles. Notably, Ourand wrote that the ESPY Awards will air on ESPN this year. If so, it would mark the first time since 2014 that the show aired on ESPN rather than broadcast network ABC. (That again excludes the COVID year of 2020).
NBC drops former ice dancer Papadakis over criticism of ex-partner
NBC Sports has abandoned plans to have former Olympic ice dancing gold medalist Gabriella Papadakis contribute to its coverage of the upcoming Winter Olympics due to comments she made about her former partner in a recent book, the network confirmed to multiple outlets.
Papadakis went public about the decision in an interview with the French media outlet L Equipe, saying (per the Associated Press) that NBC “considered that the perception of my neutrality was compromised and that I could not commentate on the Olympic Games.”
In a statement to multiple outlets, NBC said that Papadakis’ book “creates a clear conflict of interest. Our responsibility is to deliver coverage that our audience can trust to be free of bias — whether actual or perceived — and we regret that is no longer possible given the circumstances.”
Papadakis is said to have described her former partner Guillaume Cizeron in unflattering terms in the book, which he has described as a “smear campaign” of “false information,” including statements he “never made.” Cizeron is competing in the upcoming Olympics.
Plus: Marcus Freeman, Spring Training, Pam Ward, Olympics
- Notre Dame head football coach Marcus Freeman will serve as a guest analyst on ESPN’s “College Gameday” leading into the CFP National Championship Monday night, it was announced Friday. Notre Dame chose to skip the bowl season entirely after being left out of the playoff in favor of Miami.
- ESPN is scheduled to carry four-straight days of Major League Baseball Spring Training games in the first week of March, per the network’s advance schedule. The upcoming MLB season is the first of a new rights deal in which ESPN will carry a weeknight-heavy 30-game regular season slate. While ESPN has carried Spring Training games for years, it was not clear whether that would continue in the new deal.
- Former ESPN broadcaster Pam Ward told Edward Lee of the Baltimore Sun that she still wants to work WNBA games “whether for a team or whoever” and is “in some talks” to that effect. Ward, who was the #2 WNBA play-by-play voice for ESPN, retired from the network late last year.
- NBCUniversal will screen live daytime coverage of next month’s Winter Olympics in AMC Theaters across the country, repeating an initiative that debuted during the 2024 Summer Games, it was announced Friday. The screenings will take place in 150 theaters, about 40 more than during the 2024 Olympics.
