The stupidest tradition in college football:
Clemson taking a lap around the stadium before kickoff and sprinting down a hill.
Why would you warm up, leave the stadium and get on a bus, take a lap, and then go back on the field?
ECU is a try-hard, glorified JUCO who have wasted all 3 of their best arms to beat Tennessee. Every fan seems insufferable. The players are performative dorks. And the coach looks like an abusive alcoholic.
Novak Djokovic to the cameraman during his match against João Fonseca at Roland Garros:
“Can you come more in my face? For God’s sake make some space”
😭😭😭😭😭😭
Something we can all agree on:
Doris Burke is the absolute worst broadcaster in all of sports.
I know she knows basketball. She played point guard at Providence, averaged 17.6 points and 7.2 assists, set the Big East record with 602 career assists, and is in the Basketball Hall of Fame with a Curt Gowdy Media Award. Nobody is questioning her knowledge of the game.
The problem is that knowing basketball and being good at calling basketball on television are two completely different things. And Burke has spent over 20 years proving she is great at one and bad at the other.
In August 2023, ESPN gave her the biggest job in NBA broadcasting. They put her on the lead Finals team alongside Mike Breen, replacing the beloved trio of Breen, Jeff Van Gundy, and Mark Jackson, who had called 15 NBA Finals together. In 2024, she became the first woman to serve as a TV analyst for a championship final in a major North American men’s professional sport. That is a real achievement.
The broadcast was not.
She is monotone when the moment calls for energy. She over-explains plays the audience can see with their own eyes. She lectures instead of narrating. Fans have called her style “sluggish, overanalyzed, and heavy-handed.” Others have compared it to a “TED Talk” instead of a basketball game. She calls players by their first names like she is reminding you she knows them personally. The broadcast feels like it is talking down to you rather than bringing you into the game.
The specific moments are worse. During the 2011 Western Conference Finals, she said “fangul,” an Italian profanity, on live television before Game 3 of Mavericks-Thunder because she thought the cameras were not rolling. During Game 5 of the 2024 NBA Finals, she used airtime to compare a hard foul on Kristaps Porzingis to the Caitlin Clark media discourse. It was the NBA Finals and she was making a point about a WNBA rookie’s coverage. During a Celtics broadcast, she blurted out “Kiss me I’m so pretty JJ Redick” out of nowhere. During the Celtics-Knicks playoff series in May 2025, she said Porzingis “looks like a guy who hasn’t had consistent minutes” and was “a step slow” without knowing he had missed 11 games in a 14-game span due to illness. That is not an opinion problem. That is a preparation problem.
Every fan base thinks she is biased against them. Draymond Green said it publicly: “She will always ignore things happening to me and only half mention the good. And take shots when they are available. Been that way for a while.” Thunder fans accused her of bias after she called Shai Gilgeous-Alexander a “free throw merchant.” Celtics fans think she favors them. Knicks fans think she hates them. Lakers fans think she is dismissive. Her response to all of it was “Usually, I can tell I feel like I’m doing a decent job when multiple fan bases are pissed off at me.”
That is not the flex she thinks it is. When every fan base thinks you are biased against them, either you are the most fair broadcaster alive or you are bad at masking your opinions and your commentary sounds judgmental no matter who is playing. Mike Breen does not have this problem. Kevin Harlan does not have this problem. Only Burke.
And ESPN agreed. In August 2025, after just two seasons on the lead team, ESPN demoted Burke from the Finals booth. They replaced her with Tim Legler on Breen’s crew and moved her to the No. 2 team with Dave Pasch. She signed a multi-year extension, so it was not a money issue. ESPN looked at the product and decided it was not working.
Two seasons. That is how long the biggest experiment in NBA broadcasting lasted before the network pulled the plug. When ESPN replaces you on the Finals after two years, that is the network telling you what the fans already knew.
Doris Burke is in the Hall of Fame. She has three decades of experience. She knows basketball as well as anyone holding a microphone. And she is still the worst broadcaster in sports.