Despite the fact that ESPN’s various attempts to lure in new talent to the Monday Night Football booth have fallen short this offseason, the Worldwide Leader is reportedly slated to replace the pairing on its signature NFL broadcast. According to Richard Deitsch of The Athletic, ESPN has decided to remove play-by-play man Joe Tessitore and analyst Booger McFarland from the booth, although both will keep roles with the company.

As for who will replace them, that is still unclear, but the individuals will be folks currently with ESPN.

Tessitore, who has received praise over the years due to his work on ESPN’s broadcasts of college football and boxing, replaced Sean McDonough in 2018 following McDonough’s decision to return to calling college games. McFarland, meanwhile, joined the broadcast that same year in an analyst spot on the sidelines, then moved to the booth full-time last year when Jason Witten opted to un-retire from the NFL and rejoin the Dallas Cowboys.

While ESPN’s desire to replace them has been out in the open for some time, the attempts to bring talent into the fold has fallen through on several occasions this offseason: Tony Romo opted to stay with CBS over agreeing to terms with ESPN, Peyton Manning reportedly opted against doing Monday Night Football games, and Drew Brees decided to go to NBC Sports whenever his NFL career ends. In reporting on the Brees news a few weeks back, Andrew Marchand of the New York Post mentioned that ESPN had a handful of names on its potential list of replacements for both Tessitore and McFarland:

As for ESPN, its search to replace Joe Tessitore and Booger McFarland on “Monday Night Football” continues. Internally, Steve Levy is considered a strong candidate for the play-by-play position, though ESPN does have others to choose from in Adam Amin, Dave Pasch and Bob Wischusen.

On the analyst side, ESPN will internally consider Dan Orlovsky, Louis Riddick and Brian Griese, while looking outside at NFL Network/Westwood One’s Kurt Warner and CBS/NFL Network’s Nate Burleson, according to sources.

Should this hold and Deitsch’s reporting come true, Warner and Burleson would be out of the picture, as would Amin, who left ESPN this week to join Fox Sports. As for what’s next for both Tessitore (who will presumably keep doing boxing) and McFarland, hopefully both return to college football — Tessitore’s style works extremely well alongside the absurdity of the sport, while McFarland previously worked as an SEC Network studio analyst prior to his move to Monday nights.

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After sharing his fourth album Zuu last summer, Denzel Curry made a quick return, teaming with Kenny Beats for the joint project Unlocked. Alongside its eight songs was an animated short film, which found them frantically searching for the person responsible for leaking their project. In the months that followed, Curry would appear on a pair of singles, Ducko McFli’s “40 Bandz” and Destructo’s “Bandz,” as well as contribute to Guapdad 4000’s Rona Raps series. Now he’ s returned with a new, surprise freestyle.

Called “Im Just Sayin Tho,” the freestyle pairs Curry with Tommy Swisher. In the YouTube description of the song, Curry revealed his reasoning behind releasing the song, saying, “Just because we need music and happiness at a time like this.” A track he first previewed at the end of April, the freestyle finds him and Swisher speaking about the quarantine as well as their positions in hip-hop.

The freestyle arrives mere days after Curry dropped a remix of Jpegmafia’s “Bald” and revealed that he would retire from hip-hop after three more albums. ““I always liked my album short,” he elaborated. “Ten tracks is enough. Enough to listen to… I just want you to enjoy my music the way you enjoy a film. It’s meant to be consumed that way.”

Listen to the “Im Just Sayin Tho” freestyle above.

Rock and roll lost its architect on Saturday morning. Richard Wayne Penniman, more famously known as Little Richard, died at the age of 87 after a battle with bone cancer. As is oftentimes the case whenever someone as massively influential as Little Richard passes away, tributes have been pouring in all day remembering an icon who made an indelible impact on all genres of music.

One such tribute came in via Spike Lee, who recalled a commercial he shot with Little Richard back in 1991. As was the case for many ads Lee shot during that era, this was for Air Jordan, with Lee in the Mars Blackmon character that he portrayed in the film She’s Gotta Have It. While Michael Jordan does make a cameo a little later in the commercial, Little Richard pops up as a genie who grants Blackmon a wish to become the Chicago Bulls’ superstar.

It is a wonderful commercial that fits that era of Air Jordan ads while also using Little Richard perfectly as a larger-than-life genie. One thing that we’ve seen over and over in The Last Dance is how Jordan existed at the intersection of sports and popular culture, and while Lee’s ads were oftentimes an excellent example of this, it’s hard to highlight that better than by doing one with someone as influential as Little Richard.

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As the NBA works to figure out a plan to safely restart the 2019-20 season, one of the league’s most prominent former player made it known that they find the Association’s attempts to resume play misguided. In an interview with the New York Post, Shaquille O’Neal expressed his belief that the NBA ends this campaign altogether.

“We should scrap the season,” O’Neal told Zach Brazille. “Continue to care about the safety of the players and the people, let the government figure out how they’re going to get rid of this thing forever. I hate hearing this statement, oh it’s going to come back, it’s going to come back.”

Shaq’s comments came on the same day as NBA commissioner Adam Silver’s reportedly wide-ranging phone call with players about the COVID-19 pandemic, where Silver told players that if play were to resume, it could be in an isolated environment like Las Vegas or Orlando. Silver also made clear that games would occur without fans, something that could be the case until there is a vaccine for the virus.

That last point is something that Shaq, at the very least, believes would negatively impact his performance if he was still playing.

“I would absolutely play horrible with no fans,” O’Neal said. “Oh my God. I would be the worst center in NBA history, because I need to feed off the energy of the crowd, I need to get my adrenaline boosted. You know how many games I won just by going into opponents’ arenas and fans look at me crazy? Every time I missed a free throw they laughed. I would go, ‘oh you think it’s funny? Watch this.’ I would definitely need that.”

It’s a tricky line for the NBA to walk, because while everyone wants basketball to come back, it’s really hard to justify it if it cannot be done safely, and while canceling this season would be the league’s last resort, it is not hard to see how we get to that point sometime in the future. If Shaq has his way, canceling the season won’t be a last resort, but rather, the common sense solution.

Considered one of the founding fathers of rock ‘n’ roll, Little Richard passed away Saturday morning at the age of 87. His death was confirmed by his son, Danny Jones Penniman, to Rolling Stone, who also confirmed through his music lawyer, Bill Sobel, that the cause of death was bone cancer.

Born Richard Wayne Penniman, the musician’s career took off in the mid-’50s, with him churning out such instant classics as “Tutti Frutti,” “Long Tall Sally,” “Rip It Up” “Lucille,” and “Good Golly Miss Molly” — all before the decade was over. Little Richard would find himself on the same pedestal as fellow rock icons including Elvis Presley and Jerry Lee Lewis. However, he would eventually give up rock ‘n’ roll in 1957, only to return in 1959 to play gospel music. In 1964, he returned to the genre that made his name, but he failed to reach the same level of success as he achieved the prior decade.

Richard’s work became essential to the rock ‘n’ roll community, his songs covered by The Everly Brothers, The Kinks, Creedence Clearwater Revival, Elvis Costello, The Scorpions, among untold more. In the later years, Richard would become one of the tenn original inductees into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1986, and in 1993, he received the Lifetime Achievement Award at the Grammy Awards.

One of the many acronyms for Wu-Tang Clan is “Witty Unpredictable Talent And Natural Game.” Ghostface Killah, who turns 50 today, personifies that mantra. Even as one-ninth of a group full of indelible personalities, the man born Dennis Coles is an outlier.

He wore a mask during the crew’s initial run (while on the run from “doin’ dirt”), and fulfilled fan intrigue as the first verse we heard on the Clan’s iconic 36 Chambers album:

Ghostface catch the blast of a hype verse
My Glock burst, leave in a hearse, I did worse

From that gripping couplet, he was off to the races on crafting a catalog full of cinematic stories, trials of love and loss, and bafflingly brilliant nonsequiturs like “elbows unique now meet the new me” from Supreme Clientele’s “Buck 50.” In a genre full of rappers embracing their inner comic book character, Ghostface Killah, AKA Tony Starks, is a one-of-one. From RZA’s Wu-Tang Manual recollection of him warding off four men wrapped around his arms during a ‘90’s concert fight to his wardrobe of flowing robes, two-tone wallabees and iconic jewelry pieces, he’s inimitable — even to a genre of underground MCs baring his sonic DNA.

The Wu-Tang Clan’s unlikely conception is underscored by the Wu-Tang: An American Saga’s revelation that he and his partner-in-rhyme Raekwon (of Park Hill projects) were once enemies at opposite sides of a drug beef during the tumultuous ‘80s and early ‘90s. Wu-Tang founder RZA has said that the two initially met to make music with guns drawn, but tensions cooled as Rae and Ghost realized how much they had in common.

Hip-hop heads every day should rejoice that they did, as they’re undoubtedly a top-tier duo in hip-hop history. Ghost showed out all over 36 Chambers, but it was as the “guest star” on the iconic Only Built 4 Cuban Linx where he began to find his voice. The album is revered as a soulful suite of Shaolin Scarface narratives cloaked in cryptic slang and five-percenter ideology that’s intentionally exclusive (hence the title). On “Criminology,” he tore through RZA’s churning drums with an action-packed battle verse “trapped by sounds, locked behind loops / throwing n****s off airplanes ’cause cash rules.” On “Rainy Dayz,” he weaved a histrionic lamentation of the drug trade, noting, “Waiting on these royalties takes too long / It’s like waiting on babies, it makes me want to slay thee.”

He showed more of his artistry on his blaxploitation-scored Ironman project, specifically on “All That I Got Is You” with Mary J. Blige, one of rap’s most heartfelt moments. Over sentimental strings, he culled through the struggles his mother and two brothers had growing in detail, pondering, “Sometimes I look up at the stars and analyze the sky / And ask myself was I meant to be here, why?” That vulnerability was a stark contrast to the impenetrable figure he portrayed on previous records. “Wildflower” was a similarly new chamber, where he called out an unfaithful lover over a twangy RZA production, letting her know, “I’m the first n**** that had you watching flicks by DeNiro.” Those highlights of those two projects were the springboard for the Ghostface sound, with ‘70s/’80s soul and relentless breakbeats serving as the backdrop for his unrivaled parlance and unforgettable stories like Wu-Tang Forever’s “Impossible,” where he perfectly captured the fear of a friend’s impending doom during a frantic verse. By the time Wu-Tang had become a worldwide sensation in the late ‘90s, Ghost was a key player.

There’s a hoard of amazing musicians who don’t replicate their magic outside the booth — but that’s not Ghostface. There’s a reason he’s played himself in 12 TV shows and movies throughout the years — including a stint on VH1’s Couples Therapy. His magnetism doesn’t just lie in his truck jewelry and colorful, draping robes that defined his turn-of-the-millennium aesthetic. He’s one of the game’s best interviews, delivering raw truths in a manner that’s quintessentially New York and usually hilarious. While most MCs long to assert their realness in front of every recording device (to their detriment), he hilariously griped to Hip-Hop Connection in 2009 that, “I ain’t shot nobody in like.. since the early 90’s, man.” And his six-minute takedown of Action Bronson’s appropriation of his style over Teddy Pendergrass’ “Be For Real” is one of the most classic moments of the 2010s.

His personality shone through most impressively on Supreme Clientele, his 2000 treatise in rap linguistics. Ghost fought off hip-hop’s universal “everyone’s saying the same things” criticism as literally as he could, interweaving words and phrases that no one before or after had even fathomed. Supreme Clientele is a warm, technicolor universe of crime tales and surreal fragments like “Duncan Hines monument cakes,” “Swing the John McEnroe, rap rock’n’roll,” and “Starks with the Parcheesi face, measly paced, old face Ghostface,” that form his distinctive mosaic of a bygone New York. Even for a gifted lyricist, it was a lightning-in-a-bottle moment.

But the great music didn’t stop. Ghost is one of the game’s most consistent, prolific acts, dropping 19 solo and collaborative projects in the 2000s alone. Work like the R&B-exploring Ghostdini: Wizard Of Poetry In Emerald City and Twelve Reasons To Die showed veteran acts the balance of evolution and placating core fans years before 40-year-old rappers were the norm. Twelve Reasons To Die with Adrian Yonge joins the 2005 Put It On The Line and 2012 Wu-Block projects, with Trife Da God and Sheek Louch respectively, as collaboration albums early to a trend that now runs the underground. The specific brand of lavish crime rap that he forged with Raekwon are in the sonic DNA of everyone from Westside Gunn to Rick Ross to Pusha T, who declared “to all of my young n****s, I am your Ghost and your Rae” on 2018’s “These Are The Games We Play” from Daytona.

In 2008, after disappointing sales of his Big Doe Rehab album, Ghost warned fans, “you gon’ make me leave the game” if they kept illegally downloading his music. The artists who reflect his impact clearly appreciated him, but fans didn’t at the time. Perhaps now, as Ghost crosses the half-century mark, is as good a chance as any for fans new and old to celebrate his legacy as an influential MC, fashion icon, and beacon of hip-hop’s golden era.

After their 2018 album Iridescence debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard album charts, Brockhampton returned the following year with their fifth album Ginger. While Ginger failed to have the chart success of their previous album, it did produce their most successful single to date, “Sugar,” a track that was later remixed by Dua Lipa. While Brockhampton continues work on their upcoming album, reportedly titled Technical Difficulties, the group decided to surprise fans with a pair of singles.

First came “N.S.T.,” which was the polar opposite of “Sugar,” finding the group heading down the hip-hop lane for the track. A more collaborative effort, the track boasts vocals from Bearface, as well as production from Jabari Manwa, Kevin Abstract, and Matt Champion. Later in the day they dropped “Things Can’t Stay The Same,” an even bigger departure from Ginger. A bit shorter than “N.S.T.”, “Things Can’t Stay The Same” clocks in at just under two minutes and features verses from Kevin Abstract and Matt Champion. The song also contains a sample of “Trouble Will Remain” by Amnesty. Whether the songs will appear on their upcoming Technical Difficulties remains to be seen.
Watch the videos above to hear “Things Can’t Stay The Same” and “N.S.T.”

UFC 249 will take place on May 9, but there will be one fewer fight on the card than originally planned. The middleweight bout between Ronaldo “Jacare” Souza and Uriah Hall was pulled late on Friday night after word got out that Souza, along with two of his cornermen, tested positive for COVID-19. All three are, as of Friday, asymptomatic.

“UFC’s medical team examined Souza and his two cornermen and found them to be currently asymptomatic, or not exhibiting the common symptoms of COVID-19,” the UFC said in a statement, according to ESPN. “As per UFC’s health and safety protocols, all three men have left the host hotel and will be self-isolating off premises, where UFC’s medical team will monitor their conditions remotely and will provide assistance with any necessary treatment.”

Hall took to social media after the news dropped and wished Souza well.

The event is slated to take place in Jacksonville, and Souza, a native of Brazil, drove up from his home in Florida. When he arrived on Wednesday, he mentioned that a family member may have come in contact with someone who had a confirmed case of COVID-19, and soon after, he was tested. Several hours after going through weigh-ins on Friday, where Souza wore a mask and gloves before participating in a distanced stare down with Hall, the word came in about his positive test.

According to the UFC, the other 23 fighters on the card tested negative. UFC 249’s preliminary card will begin at 6 p.m. on ESPN before moving to ESPN+ for its main card at 10 p.m. The event will be headlined by a lightweight bout between Tony Ferguson and Justin Gaethje.