The Athletic’s inaugural “Golden Clickers” are designed to highlight the good, the bad and the monumental from the 2024 Sports Media year.
So, without further adieu, the first envelope please …
Golden Clicker Sports Media Person of the Year
Caitlin Clark
There is a lot of debate about Clark in this divided age fueled by social media. She lifted the TV popularity of NCAA women’s hoops and the WNBA to new heights. As Michael Mulvihill, Fox’s president of insights and analytics, told The Athletic, “There’s Jordan, Tiger and Caitlin.”
She has had a generational sports media impact. Two record-crushing data points stand out:
Women’s college basketball: Clark’s appearance in the 2024 women’s college basketball National Championship game drew the largest TV audience in the history of women’s college basketball. The game’s 18.9 million viewers was more than 4 million than tuned in for the men’s championship game – a first in sports TV history.
WNBA: Clark’s arrival in the WNBA coincided with the league’s biggest TV ratings ever in 2024: A league-record 23 regular-season games went over 1 million viewers – 19 featured Clark. According to Nielsen, Clark’s games averaged 1.19 million viewers – WNBA games without Clark averaged 394,000. Going head-to-head with the NFL on a Sunday afternoon with a WNBA playoff game, Clark’s Indiana Fever drew 1.84 million viewers.
With that, after all her accomplishments and accolades, Clark now earns the highest achievement in all of sports, a Golden Clicker from The Athletic.
Golden Clicker Dealmaker of the Year
Adam Silver, NBA commissioner
The 11-year, $76 billion TV deals the NBA negotiated with ESPN and newcomers Amazon Prime Video and NBC/Peacock were the culmination of years of planning. Silver was able to command more money ($2.45B per year) from NBC/Peacock per year than NBC currently pays for the NFL ($2B). NBC’s NFL deal includes Super Bowls, while its NBA contract has no Finals and only six conference finals. Meanwhile, ESPN’s $2.6B per season contract is just a shade less than the $2.7B it pays per year for the NFL. Plus, Amazon is at $1.8B per season compared to a billion it pays for the NFL.
Besides the money, the structure of the deal is better, as there will be more exposure on broadcast TV with ABC and NBC, while ending up with – so far – the most powerful non-traditional sports streamer in Amazon.
While TNT Sports had an amazing run and, in combination with Max, may prove to be important, if you were to rank the four platforms (ESPN/ABC, NBC/Peacock, Amazon Prime Video, TNT) for the future, TNT would be at the back of the line. Add it all up and Silver wins the equivalent of the Larry O’Brien Trophy for sports media.
Golden Clicker ‘Gold Medal’ Award
Stephen A. Smith, ESPN
Smith wins this title because he is about to collect the most gold ever for a non-ex-athlete sports commentator. He is soon going to become a $20M-a-year man, which, quite frankly, is crazy. But Smith has done it by working hard, being omnipresent and developing a style that is loved and hated. Ultimately, he is being paid for the eyeballs he brings to his main program, ‘First Take.’ He guarantees he will be a main focus of sports media into the 2030s.
Golden Clicker ‘Dreaded Glitch’ Award
Tony Romo
In honor of USA Today’s legendary sports media columnist, Rudy Martzke, who passed away this year and whose ‘Dreaded Glitch’ portion of his weekly Monday sports-media column provoked agita among TV executives, we give this award to CBS’ lead NFL game analyst.
The end of the Super Bowl was one of the worst performances in sportscasting history. The Chiefs had just won the big game, and Romo was going on and on about Andy Reid’s play-calling. He and Jim Nantz’s lack of fundamentals together showed up at the worst time. They have worked on it this season, which has resulted in a more subdued broadcast that may prevent this type of error ever happening again.
Golden Clicker ‘Microscope’ Award
Tom Brady
Brady is the winner of this one because, well, he is Tom Brady. His debut on Fox as the $375 million NFL TV game analyst will always be a landmark in media history. He has improved as the season has gone on. Ultimately, he will be judged on how he performs on Super Sunday in February when he and Kevin Burkhardt will be on the call from New Orleans.
Golden Clicker ‘Free Fall’ Award
Robert Griffin III
The fall of RG3 at ESPN was incredible. It was just three years ago that I reported that his auditions for both Fox and ESPN were considered maybe the best ever. Both wanted him. ESPN won. He started with strong reviews. He was put on the ‘Monday Night Football’ pregame show. He was considered for the No. 2 college football game analyst role. Then he was gone, goodbye. It was a simply incredible rise and fall.
Golden Clicker ‘Next Level’ Award
Ian Eagle
Eagle has become the preeminent basketball play-by-player. While Eagle probably deserved this title after Marv Albert retired, he now has the assignments to back it up. He succeeded Nantz on the men’s college basketball Final Four, and CBS’ coverage improved. Eagle is set to be Amazon Prime Video’s No. 1 NBA play-by-player. (Notably, Eagle was also hired as play-by-play announcer for one of Netflix’s two Christmas Day NFL games.) Besides his accurate, enthusiastic and often humorous calls, what separates Eagle is the rare quality of actually making his analysts better.
Golden Clicker ‘Flip-Flopper’ Award
Charles Barkley
Barkley is the greatest TV studio analyst ever, but he flip-flopped about his NBA TV analysis future. He looked into testing free agency before he was going to retire. Then he was back with TNT. Finally, ESPN/TNT announced that the iconic ‘Inside The NBA’ will live on on ABC/ESPN. But Barkley then said he still wants to hear what Amazon and NBC have to say, even though he has seven years left on his current deal that he said is for $21 million a year. Is there one last flip-flop to go? Two? Three?
Charles Barkley’s future in TV is an open question following TNT losing rights to the NBA in 2024. (Photo by Megan Briggs/Getty Images)
Golden Clicker ‘Merry-Go’ Award
ESPN top NBA broadcast team
ESPN’s NBA top broadcast team has been in constant flux since the network let go of Jeff Van Gundy and Mark Jackson in the summer of 2023. While Mike Breen remains the stalwart on play-by-play, the network has cycled through Doc Rivers and JJ Redick to pair with Doris Burke as the lead analysts. Rivers left to coach the Milwaukee Bucks, then his replacement Redick left to coach the Los Angeles Lakers. Now, Richard Jefferson may be on-deck, but it could be just a one-year replacement before a new grouping with holdovers. This has put the onus on Breen to make his partners jell quickly.
Golden Clicker ‘On The Way Up’ Award
Laura Rutledge
ESPN’s Rutledge has the Bristol DNA that propelled the network to its heights. She works – and then works some more. She hosts the daily ‘NFL Live,’ ‘SEC Nation’ on Saturdays and then is on the sidelines for many ‘Monday Night Football’ and top college football games.
Golden Clicker ‘Lifetime Achievement’ Award
Adrian Wojnarowski
The sports media shocker of the year was the ultimate “Woj bomb!” as Wojnarowski added to his legendary insider career by announcing his retirement at 55 to become the GM of his alma mater St. Bonaventure’s Men’s Basketball team. While there were some hints looking back in hindsight, it was a complete surprise that Woj stepped away from the NBA insider games.
There have been others who have it done at a high level, but Woj at his peak at Yahoo Sports!, writing biting columns and breaking nearly every story in the face of his rival at the time, ESPN, was the apex of the business. ESPN eventually had enough, recruiting him back to his hometown of Bristol, where the network eventually paid him $7.3 million a year to be on-call 24-7.
Combined with a prostate cancer diagnosis, revealed in a Sports Illustrated article months later, and the constant barrage of texts and information gathering, Woj felt like it was time to put his phone down.