Welcome to Screen Shots! This is where I tell you what sporting events you should watch on TV every week! Make sure you subscribe so it comes straight to your inbox! Have your own suggestions? Shoot me an email at [email protected]!

No episode yet as I rest up from all of the madness, but be on the lookout soon! In the meantime, let’s get to the sports!

I’m a big draft guy. Not only does it represent the intersection between two versions of the sport that I love, but it’s also an optimism overload. Your high hopes for individual players’ careers collide with your vision of your favorite team winning it all. The NFL splits its draft up, so this is for the first round only. They’ve also adjusted the time each team has to make a selection from 10 minutes to 8 minutes. More time for commercials! Back in my day, it was 15 minutes. Which was absurd, honestly. Make sure you’re subscribed, because I’m going to attempt to live blog it!

We’re going to do some multitasking with the draft the rest of the way. You know what’s amusing about the NFL Draft, specifically? This is a sport where players are expected to have whatever mentality is necessary to run headfirst into each other over and over again until Will Smith asks them to draw a clock. I imagine that requires a very specific personality type. And you know who everybody is fawning over? LinkedIn AI bot Fernando Mendoza. You ask this guy to draw a clock, and I bet he has a million follow-up questions. At the heart of this is football’s view of itself as the seventh branch of the military (don’t forget about the Space Force!), and Mendoza coming across as a “good soldier.” That’s pretty wacky, too!

A little bit of reality to balance out our optimism. These rosters are filled with guys who once had their own NFL Draft dreams. Hell, many of them got drafted! Yet, here they are grinding away in the UFL. And you know what? I respect it! Football seems terrible enough to play when you’re getting paid millions to do it on the biggest stage. To choose to do it at a lower level takes dedication. Watch these guys try to keep the dream alive!

The late rounds are my favorite because it combines the players who will be battling it out in the UFL in a couple of years with the odd outlier who becomes a star. Would we care about Tom Brady’s career if he were the #1 pick? Of course. But the fact that 198 players were drafted before him adds to the legend. Is there a Tom Brady in this bunch? Probably not. But there could be! And that’s why I’m here.

It’s taken me this long to talk about how nice it is to have the playoffs back on NBC because the NBA made the confusing choice of placing a ton of these games on Prime Video. Don’t get me wrong, the Amazon Prime crew does a great job as well, but I’m a firm believer in having your league’s biggest events available to as many potential fans as possible. This feels like an attempt to strong-arm fans into supporting a league partner, which is complete bullshit. The fact that this has to be done in the first place seems to be a glaring sign that streaming services have moved past whatever usefulness they once provided us. You typically don’t have to bully people into using things that are, well, useful.

PCA’s first trip to Dodger Stadium since saying all that. The Dodgers have led MLB in attendance every year since 2013. Lot of pictures being taken, I suppose. It’ll be fun to see how the Dodgers faithful welcome Pete back to LA, where he was born and raised by two actor parents.

Well, this just got a little bit more interesting. After cruising to a win in Victor Wembanyama’s explosive playoff debut, the Trail Blazers showed up ready to battle it out in game 2. The battle got significantly easier when Wemby was knocked out of the game, courtesy of a 2nd quarter concussion. Portland took advantage and stole a game on the road, thanks to a monster performance by Scoot Henderson, who was selected two picks after Wembanyama in 2023. Now, we wait and see when and if Wemby is able to return.

Been a minute since we checked in on some NWSL action. News just broke that Columbus, Ohio, will be getting in on said action beginning in 2028. But it’s 2026! So, for now, check out a match between two of the top four teams in the league. We should get some offensive fireworks, as each features a high-powered attack. Angel City currently leads the league with 10 goals scored, while Portland features Olivia Moultire and Reilyn Turner, who have combined to score 6 so far. Also, get used to watching them this time of year, because reports say players are opposed to flipping the calendar.

LeBron James has turned back the clock, but who knew he turned it all the way back to 1954? If you’re a fan of the Hoosiers, you should love this year’s Lakers team. Luka Doncic goes down? No problem, here’s Austin Reaves to lead the way. Uh oh, now Reaves is hurt. Here comes Luke Kennard. And they still have Jake LaRavia and Dalton Knecht waiting in the wings in case of emergency. Wait till Indiana Fever fans hear about this! Los Angeles is up 2-0 behind Kennard’s 25 points per game, but surely the Rockets can make this a series at home.

No matter who starts for either side, we’re guaranteed to see a pitcher’s duel. The Lady Vols lead the nation in ERA. Not a huge shock considering they have star flamethrower Karlyn Pickens, whose 1.42 ERA is 9th in the country. But what if I told you that she actually has the third-best mark on her own team? Well, I’m telling you right now. Erin Nuwer and Sage Mardjetko are second and third, respectively, in all of Division I.

The Crimson Tide’s pitching staff isn’t too far behind, at an impressive 3rd in ERA, and the Alabama bats also have some pop. They are 12th in the nation in homers, led by Brooke Wells’ 19. Those bombs give their pitching staff plenty of run support, but can they do it against the Lady Vols’ rotation?

I honestly have no idea about what these two teams are doing or are going to do. It’s like a Murakami book. You know what’s going to be there: a cat, a weird sex dream, Rudy Gobert (hopefully, not all together), but you don’t know how it’s going to end. Which feels like reason enough to tune in.

Braves DH Dominic Smith has very quickly risen up my rankings of guys to pull for. A former first-round pick of the Mets, Smith has been fighting to stay in the league since his time in New York ended in 2022. This year’s battle was even tougher than usual. Smith didn’t have a contract until the Braves signed him a week after spring training began. Then, in the middle of trying to make the roster, he had to leave to be with his dying mother. She passed after he returned to the ball club, but, not feeling comfortable leaving again, he remained with the team. With a little help from Jurickson Profar’s PED suspension, Smith made the Opening Day roster. Then, he made history. In his first start with the Braves, he became the first player ever to hit a walk-off grand slam in their debut with a team. A real-life Angels in the Outfield moment.

Smith is one of several hot bats in this Braves lineup. They’ve stormed out to an early NL East lead and are a fun team to watch. Especially with Profar gone again. He cheated, by the way. Did I mention that?

Not everybody wants to be picked first. At least, not by Tampa Bay. Following a senior season at Auburn that saw him take home the Heisman Trophy, Bo Jackson was the top prospect in that year’s NFL Draft. Makes sense, right? Bo was a star baseball player for the Tigers as well, and much of the talk leading up to the draft centered around which sport Bo would play professionally.

Since he was already projected to go #1 overall and was still in the middle of his final collegiate baseball season, Bo decided to skip the combine. Tampa Bay did want him to take a physical because, hey, they’re going to make him their franchise cornerstone, right? So they flew him to their facility for the exam, but had him back in Auburn for that evening’s baseball game. One problem: the trip, which included the use of the Bucs’ owner’s private jet, had not been cleared by the SEC. In an even more absurd move now that we’re in the NIL Era, the NCAA allowed athletes to be professionals in one sport while retaining their eligibility in another, but the SEC did not. They declared Bo ineligible for the remainder of his college baseball season.

Actually, there was a second problem too: Bo said the Bucs told him that it had been cleared by the SEC. While we’re at it, there was a third problem on top of all of it: the Bucs owner who provided the plane, Hugh Culverhouse, was an Alabama grad. That’s a lot of coincidences. Bo knows coincidences. He quickly came to believe that in an effort to both sabotage the rest of Auburn’s baseball season and force Jackson to choose football, Culverhouse lied about clearing the plane ride. A quick perusal of Culverhouse’s Wikipedia page paints a picture of a guy who would do all of that. Bo told Hugh straight up that if he followed through with plans to draft him, it’d be a wasted pick because he was going to play baseball. And Bo stuck to that plan. He was re-entered into the 1987 NFL Draft, where he was selected by the then-Los Angeles Raiders, whose owner, Al Davis, was supportive of Bo playing both sports. To this day, he remains the only professional athlete to be named an All-Star in two major sports.

As always, thank you for reading! Make sure you’re subscribed so you get this in your inbox first thing Thursday mornings! Also, share with your friends! See you next week!