The Beat of Sports

Sports evolves, everything evolves. News broke this week that Major League Baseball was exploring making radical changes to the playoff structure and allowing more teams to qualify. Marc talks about some players (Trevor Bauer) are outraged by this change but this is what sports need to do to grow.

Marc talks about how this day 30 years ago was one of the greatest days in sports that featured the Tyson-Douglas fight and the NBA All-Star Game with the greatest collection of players ever.

Today is the day that politicians are getting the chance to speak for NCAA president Mark Emmert and several conference commissioners about name, image, and likeness for student athletes. But Marc brings up how they are completely botching this moment by not understand the situation at all.

As ESPN/ABC look to increase their partnership with the NFL one of the newest ideas would be to flex games for Monday Night Football during the second half of the season. Marc talks about the inconvenience factor this would be for the fans but when it comes to the television partners it all for getting more attention as they look to secure a Super Bowl.

They say that competition is good and will bring out the best in everyone but what would happen if a competing golf tour was formed. Well thanks to some big dollar investors golfers could have choice between the PGA Tour and the Premier Golf League.

In a matchup of two top teams in the ACC as Duke took on FSU at Cameron Indoor but the biggest story was a controversial call that went in the Bluedevils favor. Marc talks about how a fight over a loose ball should have resulted in free throws for FSU but at the end of the day the refs got intimidated by the crowd and swallowed the whistle.

The run to the playoffs for the Orlando Magic is starting to get more and more challenging as the team has fallen to the 8th seed in the east. Marc talks about at their current win pace they would be tying a record for the fewest wins by a team that qualified for the playoffs.

The newest spring football league has finally kicked and now we know what it looks like. Marc gives his thoughts on the XFL and talks about the innovative things he saw that he likes and wonders what ideas the NFL might try to incorporate.

John Feinstein the author of "Season on the Brink" shares his thoughts on Bob Knight's return to Indiana. He and Marc talk about why Knight picked this weekend to make his return appearance and how the end of Knights career should have gone.

Jared Diamond the Wall Street Journal National Baseball writer broke the latest story on how the Astros cheated. He and Marc discuss the details behind the computer program that started it all and how it got out of control. Plus they talk about the AJ Hinch interview and if he deserves more of the blame.