SI

The Long, Strange 'Farewell' to 'Good Morning Football'

Also in Traina Thoughts: Catching up; Fan's questionable negotiations with Shohei Ohtani; Kudos to the Boss and more.

Jimmy Traina

NFL Network

1. Hello, hello. Remember me? I hope you do. This is the first Traina Thoughts since March 21, so if you're reading this, I appreciate you sticking around.

You may have read reports in recent weeks about some turmoil regarding Sports Illustrated. To make a very long and convoluted story short, SI now has a new operator, Minute Media, which is a GREAT thing. The transition from the old operator to the new operator was rough, but not because of the new operator.

I will spare you the details and just tell you that Sports Illustrated is not dead—by a long shot. The magazine is alive. The website is alive. Our social channels are alive. My column is alive and my podcast is alive. Any reports of SI's demise are 100% wrong.

We are doing our best to return to normalcy and part of that is me doing my thing in this space every day, so let's get into today's Traina Thoughts.

One of the many weird things about being sidelined the past couple of weeks because of turmoil above me was watching the same thing happen to Good Morning Football and not being able to write about it. That will change today.

Longtime Traina Thoughts readers know I've been a huge fan of GMFB since it debuted in 2016. The show is now, inexplicably with the NFL Draft coming up, on hiatus as it prepares to move from New York City to Los Angeles.

We also don't know what the future is for three of the four hosts. We know that Jamie Erdahl is making the move out west. We still have no official word on Kyle Brandt, Peter Schrager and Jason McCourty.

However, all of the hosts said goodbye in recent weeks. What was strange is that they weren't saying a goodbye to the show, but a goodbye to New York City. It felt as if the hosts were trying to convey that even if they remain with the show when it returns in the summer, it's going to be completely different.

While we don't know yet about changes to the on-air staff, we do know the production team for GMFB won't be moving to L.A. So the NFL is taking a popular show that works extremely well and stripping it of its support staff and moving it from the exciting and gritty New York City to laid-back L.A. and making the hosts go live on the air at 5 a.m. local time.

Jared and Trent in L.A. at 5 a.m. just isn't going to work.

It was hard to watch the "farewell" segments from Schrager, Brandt and McCourty and not think it was the end of an era.

All you have to do is watch those clips to see why GMFB was a hit with so many viewers. The hosts are as authentic as it gets when it comes to sports television. They don't talk down to you. They don't do fake fights. They treat viewers with respect and have conversations that you and I have with our friends.

They have built something special with viewers, yet the NFL Network doesn't care because they need to save a few bucks on renting a studio in New York. While the NFL Network and NFL Media are separate entities from the league and the owners, it's hard to watch the league cry poverty at every turn and act like we need to hold a telethon for a league that gets $110 billion in television rights deals.

In fact, the NFL Network made talent cuts this morning.

The news broke that the NFL was going to move GMFB from New York City to Los Angeles on March 6. It's been a month and the move makes as little sense now as it did it then. And the only thing that has become a little clearer is the Good Morning Football we all loved is going to be very different. And that's a bummer.

2. Since I haven't written a Traina Thoughts in a couple of weeks, I want to post some things I saw over that time that is worth you checking out if you missed them.

• The Ringer's Bryan Curtis wrote an outstanding feature on the great Ian Eagle.

• Gayle King pulled a prank on Oprah and Charles Barkley that led to Barkley having an absolutely hilarious reaction.

• This dude replicated Roman Reigns's entrance for his wedding.

• Since I didn't tape a new SI Media Podcast last week, I appeared on Sal Licata's WFAN podcast and we did our usual "Traina Thoughts" segment there.

3. I'm a big fan of Awful Announcing, but this I just don't get. Ryen Russillo, and any other human being, is allowed to turn off or not watch anything he wants. There are a lot of horrible things about X, formerly Twitter, but near the top of the list is the "Sports TV Police" who question you about your sports viewing. Let people watch or not watch whatever they want in peace.

4. The fan who caught Shohei Ohtani's first home run ball as a Los Angeles Dodger does not seem like a good negotiator.

5. The New York Post has always given us the Tiger Woods coverage we need.

6. Not only was the last Traina Thoughts column posted on March 21, but that was the date of the last SI Media Podcast.

Since I didn't have the opportunity to promote it much, let me tell you the guest was The Ringer's Bryan Curtis and he was outstanding. If you missed it, it’s out.

The episode before Curtis, ESPN's Dan Orlovsky was the guest and he was excellent as well.

You can also listen to the SI Media Podcast on Apple and Spotify.

7. RANDOM VIDEO OF THE DAY: I've been dying to post this all week. I'm not even a Bruce Springsteen fan, but I was blown away by how great he was on last week's Curb Your Enthusiasm. This was the best scene of the season.

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 Twitter, Instagram and TikTok. 

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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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