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ESPN’s Kimberley Martin on Bill Belichick: ‘He Knows How to Recruit the Youngins’

There’s a lot of material if you want to make jokes about Belichick coaching college football.

Jimmy Traina

Belichick becoming the head coach at North Carolina seems to be a strong possibility.
Belichick becoming the head coach at North Carolina seems to be a strong possibility. / Bob Breidenbach / USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images

1. Bill Belichick is 72 years old. He’s dating someone who is 24 years old.

Bill Belichick could be the next head football coach at North Carolina.

The jokes are obvious. They’ve been flowing for days on social media. But you wouldn’t expect to hear them on ESPN.

So, we want to heap praise on NFL analyst Kimberley Martin for going there on Wednesday’s Get Up and delivering the shot in a very creative way.

Maybe Belichick and his significant other are in love and maybe they will live happily ever after and have one of the great romances of all time.

But if you’re 72 and you’re dating someone who is 24, it’s going to be open season for mocking.

And if you’re the greatest coach in NFL history and you’re going to take a job at a mid-level football college (at best), there are going to be jokes.

So when you combine those things, you’ve given the world some solid fodder.

2. It was another memorable night for Inside the NBA on Tuesday.

During the recurring bit where the cast members run to the big board, Shaq decided to slap the video board, causing it to glitch out.

This is noteworthy because later in the show, when Charles Barkley slipped in a Jay-Z joke, which rattled the cast to the point where Shaq was walking off the set, Ernie Johnson brought things full circle by telling Shaq to fix the board. Perfectly done by Johnson.

3. When ESPN president Burke Magnus appeared on SI Media With Jimmy Traina a few weeks ago, I told him a lot of fans feared that ESPN would shoehorn Stephen A. Smith into Inside the NBA next season when the show starts airing on ESPN.

Magnus said, “Of course we’re not going to change the show. Why would we take something so successful and so iconic, bring it over and then be like, ‘We know better, we’re gonna change it.’ ”

Magnus added, “We don’t want to change it. We don’t want to interject new talent into it. We don’t want to really do anything to it.”

However, the announcement yesterday that there will be some free-throw shooting contest between Smith and one of the Inside the NBA hosts will do nothing to squash the fears that ESPN will try to force Smith upon Inside the NBA.

4. Here are viewership numbers for the college football conference championship games that took place last weekend:

–Georgia vs. Texas, ABC/ESPN: 16.6 million
–Oregon vs. Penn State, CBS: 10.5 million
–Arizona State vs. Iowa State, ABC/ESPN: 6.9 million
–Clemson vs. SMU, ABC/ESPN: 6.0 million
–Boise State vs. UNLV, Fox: 3.0 million

5. As always, government officials are hard at work on the important stuff.

6. The latest SI Media With Jimmy Traina podcast features a conversation with The Ringer’s Bryan Curtis.

Topics covered with Curtis include why something feels off about the Inside the NBA–ESPN deal; Stephen A. Smith reportedly getting a new six-year, $120 million contract from ESPN; how Tom Brady has progressed, whether the coverage of him has been fair and what we want to see more of from Brady. Curtis also reveals which two networks he thinks do the best job with their NFL game coverage.

Following Curtis, Sal Licata, from WFAN radio and SNY TV, joins me for our weekly “Traina Thoughts” segment. This week, we discuss a Bills-Lions Super Bowl vs. a Chiefs-Lions Super Bowl, an NFL Sunday disaster for a family member, the new season of HBO’s Hard Knocks and much more.

You can listen to the SI Media With Jimmy Traina podcast below or on Apple and Spotify.

You can also watch SI Media With Jimmy Traina on Sports Illustrated‘s YouTube channel.

7. RANDOM VIDEO OF THE DAY: We are exactly two weeks away from Christmas and McDonald’s has been in the news, so this is a good time to hear Bill Burr’s thoughts on both.

Be sure to catch up on past editions of Traina Thoughts and check out the Sports Illustrated Media Podcast hosted by Jimmy Traina on Apple, Spotify or Google. You can also follow Jimmy on X and Instagram.

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Jimmy Traina
JIMMY TRAINA

Jimmy Traina is a staff writer and podcast host for Sports Illustrated. A 20-year veteran in the industry, he’s been covering the sports media landscape for seven years and writes a daily column, Traina Thoughts. Traina has hosted the Sports Illustrated Media Podcast since 2018, a show known for interviews with some of the most important and powerful people in sports media. He also was the creator and writer of SI’s Hot Clicks feature from 2007 to '13.

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