The NFL seems to conjure lucrative, new media rights out of thin air. Look for the league to eventually open bidding on another possible new package: professional flag football.

In his annual state-of-the-league address during Super Bowl week, commissioner Roger Goodell said the NFL is considering the establishment of a pro flag football league—or potentially, two pro flag leagues for men and women.

During an interview with Front Office Sports, NFL media czar Brian Rolapp confirmed the league could sell new media rights to flag football beyond its current 11-year cycle of rights worth a monster $111 billion.

“We do believe as it grows in popularity, that there is room for more leagues, including a professional league, and that would clearly have a media package as well,” Rolapp told FOS editor-in-chief Dan Roberts. “We’re very early in this. The commissioner talked about it. … So I think we’re pretty bullish on it.”

The NFL is smartly using flag football as a way to sell the sport to women and girls, notes ProFootballTalk. Rolapp, the NFL’s chief media and business officer, noted his league has several reasons to be intrigued by the potential of pro flag football.

First, flag football will make its Olympic debut in 2028. That’s a big opportunity for the NFL to plant its brand around the globe. Second, the league has attracted millions of new female fans, many of them “Swifties” following the romance between pop superstar Taylor Swift and Chiefs star Travis Kelce. The NFL wants to keep those newcomers happy and interested.

“We’re big believers in flag football for a lot of reasons. It’s clearly going to be an Olympic sport. So we think it has international potential. One of the greatest things about flag football is half of our fans right now are female—but don’t really have access to playing the game competitively. We are now providing that,” Rolapp said.

For more on the NFL’s ambitions for men’s and women’s flag football, you can read Michael McCarthy’s full story here.

WWE is adding another element to its developmental funnel, as WWE Evolve launches on the Tubi streaming platform March 5.

The pro wrestling promotion has long used NXT as its developmental platform, and has reached a point where it has more performers in the pipeline than there is available TV time in the weekly two-hour show on Tuesday nights on The CW.

“This is something that as we continue to look at the future health of WWE talent, it’s incumbent on us to find the best and the brightest out there, train them at the Performance Center in Orlando, and take WWE into the future,” WWE senior VP of talent development creative Shawn Michaels told Front Office Sports.

Peter Rosenberg will be the play-by-play broadcaster. He has been a host for WWE studio programming since 2016, and he is also a radio host at Hot 97 and ESPN New York. It’s been about 15 years since he called play-by-play for independent promotions around the tristate area like Pro Wrestling Syndicate.

WWE is partnering with Tubi at a time when the Fox-owned streaming platform is growing fast. As media has become more fragmented and consumers weigh which content subscriptions are worth it, the fact that Tubi is free for anyone with an internet connection has made it a palatable option for where to spend screen time. In the recent Super Bowl, Tubi had a 13.6 million viewer average minute audience (a number used to measure how many people watch a program), a 27% gain from last year’s Super Bowl streaming numbers.

Evolve is being booked (the wrestling terminology for scripting the show) by longtime promoter Gabe Sapolsky, who Michaels touts as having “actually traveled the country looking for some of the best independent talent out there.”

The show will be a mix of independent wrestlers who are in the WWE ID program (meaning they are in the mix in WWE’s developmental pipeline but not exclusive to the company), former Division I athletes whom WWE is seeking to mold into pro wrestlers from scratch, and current NXT performers.

For all three groups but especially the raw athletes, Evolve will be vital in helping the wrestlers get on-air reps as they grow toward the goal of reaching the WWE main roster.

Read the full story about the WWE’s new show and developmental strategy from Ryan Glasspiegel here. 

• Social media accounts had an absolute field day over the confrontation between NFL insiders Jordan Schultz of Fox Sports and Ian Rapoport of NFL Network at a Starbucks inside the JW Marriott in Indianapolis on Wednesday afternoon. ProFootballTalk writer Myles Simmons posted a photo of the fateful Starbucks entrance with the heading: “Head on a swivel.” Pat McAfee’s X/Twitter feed dubbed it the “Starbucks Showdown.” Our personal favorite was ProFootballTalk’s Mike Florio calling it “The Thrilla in Vanilla (Latte).” As PFT noted: “We’ll see where it goes from here, if anywhere. But it has provided an unexpected shot of espresso to an otherwise sleepy week in Indianapolis.”
• The NBA’s most valuable team is the Warriors, according to CNBC, at $9.4 billion. The Grizzlies are the least valuable at $3.2 billion. The average NBA franchise is worth $4.66 billion. “According to team executives, the biggest reason for the rising tide in NBA valuations has been the increase in national media rights, which are divided equally among the league’s 30 teams,” writes CNBC. 
• The $2 billion deal between ESPN and Penn Entertainment to create ESPN Bet is under pressure. The full story by FOS colleague Eric Fisher has made waves in the betting world. During an earnings call with analysts, Penn president and CEO Jay Snowden speculated Penn could exercise an opt-out clause in its 10-year ESPN deal, which becomes an option in 2026.
• When the King speaks, people listen. LeBron James raised eyebrows while addressing Anthony Edwards’s comment that he does not want to be the next “face” of the NBA. “Why do you want to be the face of the league when all the people that cover our game and talk about our game on a day-to-day basis shit on everybody?” asked James. “To have that responsibility, it’s just weird. It’s weird energy.”
• Speaking of sports media talents negotiating in public, Pat McAfee said on his show that his contract to do a College Football Playoff simulcast might be done after two seasons. “Actually, that contract is up. We don’t know if that’s ever going to happen again,” McAfee told Nebraska head coach Matt Rhule via On3. “It was a great time.”
• Former Top Rank “fixer” Billy Keane alleged in a lawsuit that the boxing promotion’s president, Todd duBoef, advised him to “pretend to work for ESPN and assure” disgruntled fighter Teofimo Lopez “that ESPN was very happy with him and excited to continue working together.”

2.5 million

TNT Sports’ average viewership for its telecast of the first game Luka Dončić and the Lakers played against Dončić’s former team, the Mavericks, on Tuesday night. Fueled by off-court drama, it generated TNT’s biggest hoops audience since the NBA’s opening night.

“I think Barkley and Shaq are the guys that are like, ‘Why aren’t you playing?’ I want a show that is hard and has teeth and bites into the players. They’re not PR firms.”

—Colin Cowherd of FS1, praising Inside the NBA’s cast for their willingness to rip NBA players for load management or coasting during their performance at the All-Star Game.

There are very few personalities we write about in sports media who get nearly a 100% positive reaction from readers. One is Scott Hanson, host of NFL Network’s NFL RedZone. The second is Greg Olsen of Fox Sports. The third, as we have learned, is Laura Rutledge of ESPN. 

We got a hugely positive reaction to our Wednesday story that ESPN had signed the host of NFL Live to a multiyear contract extension. “Finally, ESPN got something right,” wrote @T_Khan24 on X/Twitter. Johnny McMahon agreed: “L-Rut’s tremendous, she does awesome work.” Rick Gellato simply tweeted: “@LauraRutledge best in the business.”