The Sweep: A Guy With a Spreadsheet Talks the Bengals Out of a Trade, Pablo Torre Says Ballmer Threatened to Sue for a Year, Doc Rivers Calls It 'a Compliment,' and Tony Romo Comes Back Through the Side Door

Deadline day's best trade was the one that did not happen, because a man who tracks compensatory picks for fun explained to the internet, and apparently to the Cincinnati Bengals, what the deal would cost them. Everything else today is somebody clarifying, somebody returning, or somebody demanding an apology. Eight items, newest first.

November 10: Nick Korte posts the compensatory-pick maths, and the Bengals' trade for Arnold Ebiketie is off within the hour

Insiders reported Tuesday that Cincinnati would send a 2027 sixth-round pick to Philadelphia for edge rusher Arnold Ebiketie. Korte, who goes by the "Compensatory Picks Guy," posted shortly after, per Awful Announcing's Drew Lerner: "The Bengals lost 3 CFAs and signed 2 (Cordell Volson not qualifying)." Ebiketie signed with the Eagles as a compensatory free agent, so acquiring him would make it three lost and three gained and cancel the 2027 third-round compensatory pick the Bengals are in line for, which Lerner ties to Trey Hendrickson's move to Baltimore. About an hour after that post, reports said the Bengals were backing out. CBS Sports' live file put it plainly: they "called the deal off after realizing it would cost them a third-round compensatory pick." Field Yates suggested "an all expenses paid trip to sit in a luxury box." Mike Garafolo: "The hell with that. Hire him." The Bengals have not said what changed their mind, and that should be noted, since the causation here is the reporters' and not the team's. Our call: if the sequence is what it looks like, a front office agreed to pay a sixth for a player and a third for the privilege, and learned it from a post. Korte's formula is not secret. He publishes it. The embarrassing part is not that a hobbyist knew; it is that the trade got as far as the insiders before anyone in the building checked.

November 10: Pablo Torre says Steve Ballmer's people spent a year telling the NBA he would be sued

In an interview with Maury Povich at the University of Maryland, released on Torre's channel Tuesday, Torre said of the Clippers owner, per Awful Announcing's Matt Yoder: "He was telling via his various representatives that he was gonna sue me," and "For a year, this was being communicated all around the NBA." No suit was filed. The NBA suspended Ballmer for a year over the Kawhi Leonard and Aspiration arrangement Torre reported. Torre's summary of what the episode taught him: "intense wealth does not equate to intense competence," and, when Povich asked what was funny about billionaires, "Sometimes they can be idiots." Our call: a lawsuit that is announced to everyone except a court for twelve months is a communications plan. It is designed to make other reporters hesitate, and its success is measured in stories that do not get written. This one got written, the league acted on it, and the threat expired without a filing. Torre gets to be rude about it. We only have his account of what Ballmer's representatives said, and nothing from them.

November 10: Doc Rivers says "doesn't have a super-high IQ" was "more of a compliment"

Rivers told ESPN's Marc J. Spears that he meant to say "feel for the game" when he said on Bill Simmons' podcast that Giannis Antetokounmpo "doesn't have a super-high IQ," per Awful Announcing's Brandon Contes. His explanation: Giannis "makes unbelievable passes," but his force "gets in the way of his feel," and "It was more of a compliment." He added, "I hate this and feel bad about it. I apologize for the distraction," and said he had texted Giannis an apology. We ran Giannis's "he's not my coach" yesterday. Our call: the apology is real and he should get credit for making it by name and by text. The clarification is worse than the original. "Feel" is the same criticism in a softer word, and a sentence that needs to be reclassified as praise days later was not praise. Rivers went 97-103 with the player. The cleanest version of this was two sentences long and did not include the word "compliment."

November 10: Josh Pate says Notre Dame pulled his crew's field credentials "at the 11th hour"

Pate went to South Bend on Friday to promote Bussin' & Pate on Campus, the ESPN show he hosts with Will Compton and Taylor Lewan, ahead of Saturday night's Miami game on NBC. On his own show, per Awful Announcing's Sam Neumann: "They had a little reversal on the field credential policy at the 11th hour, which sucked," and "There was someone administratively way up the chain at Notre Dame that yanked a bunch of people's field credentials." His crew left before kickoff. He was careful to add that he did not blame "most of the people we normally deal with there." Our call: this is one side of it, and Notre Dame has not been reported as giving the other. We do not know who made the decision or why, and Pate says he does not either. What can be said is that he handled it the way you would want: named the grievance, declined to name a villain he could not identify, and praised the game he did not get to see.

November 9: Tony Romo returns to NFL television on Pat McAfee's ESPN2 altcast

Romo joined Field Pass with The Pat McAfee Show by video during Bills-Vikings for nearly five minutes of game time, per Awful Announcing's Tyler Lauletta. It was his first notable appearance since CBS removed him from its lead booth with Jim Nantz, which followed an OWI charge and the release of video of his sobriety test over the summer. He talked football: "Brian Flores has changed the game with the way that he's blitzing," and "It's so chaotic for the offense." McAfee closed with "We missed the hell out of you this season." Our call: the charge is a legal matter and we are not going to treat it as material. On the media question, an altcast on ESPN2 is the softest landing available, a show where nobody will ask and the format is friends talking. That is a reasonable first step for a person and it tells you nothing about whether a network will put him back in a booth. The appearance that will is the one where someone asks him about the summer and he answers.

November 9: Troy Aikman says Drew Brees is "thinking maybe he should come out of retirement," and Joe Buck does not argue

With Carson Wentz on his way to 8-for-25 for 81 yards and two interceptions in a 23-6 loss, Aikman offered, unprompted, per Neumann: "I heard from Drew Brees, and he's thinking maybe he should come out of retirement," and "I told him if he does, Kevin O'Connell will sign him tomorrow." Buck: "There is no doubt about that." The joke has a fact under it. Adam Schefter reported in September that Denver called Brees before last season's AFC Championship Game, and that a brief workout persuaded him his body could not take it. He is on the Saints' reserve/retired list, so New Orleans holds his rights. Elsewhere on the timeline, Matt Verderame wrote that it was "the worst QB play I've ever seen. And I saw Tyler Palko." Our call: Aikman was right about the urgency and wrong about the age by nine years. O'Connell did sign a quarterback the next day, and he is 38, which we wrote about separately. When the lead analyst on Monday Night Football fills a third quarter by recruiting a Fox analyst out of retirement, the broadcast has told you what it thinks of the game.

November 9 and 10: Dave Portnoy wants an apology from Columbus, and a Columbus radio host retracts a word about Jeremiah Smith but not the point

Ohio State lost 41-28 at home to Oregon on Saturday, giving up 38 unanswered points for the first time since 1999 and taking a third loss for the first time since 2011, per Awful Announcing's Yoder. On FS1's Wake Up Barstool on Monday, Portnoy: "I want an apology from every single person in Columbus," and, of Ryan Day, "He's a coward; he can't coach; he was born on 3rd base." Michigan, his team, is 5-4 and just lost at home to Michigan State; Portnoy's proposal is that the loser of The Game be required to keep its staff. Separately, 97.1 The Fan's Jeremy Birmingham had said Smith went "stomping down the field like a petulant child" during the loss. He came back on air, per Kevin Harrish: "That's probably the wrong term. It is the wrong term," then "I'm not going to back down from that," meaning the argument that a captain should be with his team in that moment, and then called Smith "the best player in college football." Our call: two men in the same city's argument, and only one of them did it properly. Portnoy is collecting on a bet he placed with a microphone, which is his job. Birmingham did the harder thing: he withdrew the insult, kept the criticism and praised the player in the same breath. That is what a correction looks like when the speaker still believes what he said.

November 9: Greg Sankey tells Big Ten coaches to schedule the SEC and stop running "to the microphone"

Indiana's Curt Cignetti said after the first playoff rankings that the "SEC gets a lot of love from the ESPN, and all their writers that they don't technically pay but march to their drum." Illinois's Bret Bielema joked that a win over Nebraska would have had his team in the top 15 if it played in the SEC. On Paul Finebaum's show Monday, per Lauletta, Sankey answered: "one of those head coaches cancelled a non-conference game with one of our teams," and "Let's not run to the microphone at a press conference and complain." On lobbying the committee: "I don't call. I don't lobby." The cancelled series is Illinois-Missouri in 2027 and 2028. Awful Announcing notes what Sankey left out: Illinois dropped it to schedule a home-and-home with Notre Dame in the same years. Our call: Sankey's line lands until you read the footnote, and then it is a commissioner criticising a coach for replacing Missouri with a harder opponent. Cignetti's complaint about writers is unfalsifiable and he knows it. The second rankings come out tonight, and whichever conference likes them less will be back at the microphone by Wednesday.

What we are not running, and why

Awful Announcing's column on Dianna Russini. Matt Yoder argues that her People interview and BetUS launch ask the audience to move on without her addressing her own part in what ended her time at The Athletic. It is an opinion piece about a show that has not aired. The Russini Report premieres Wednesday at noon ET. We said yesterday that the test had a date, and we will write about the show when there is a show.

Tom Brady leaving Birmingham City's ownership group. The club's statement thanks him for his "unwavering support for the Club over the last three years" and gives no reason. Birmingham leads the Championship. Every explanation in circulation is a guess about a private business decision, and we do not have a better one.

Dan Le Batard and the "snitch" chant. A funny segment about a detail he put in the 30th paragraph of a Super Bowl story decades ago, prompted by the name of Michael Irvin's Netflix podcast. The underlying events are 30 years old and well documented. There is no item.

ESPN reportedly opposing the 24-team playoff. The Athletic's Chris Vannini and Ralph D. Russo report that the network did not want the format it is now paying about $1.7 billion a year for. We have read Awful Announcing's summary and not the report itself. It belongs with Monday's piece on the format, not here, and it will go there once we have read the original.

The Wentz pile-on as its own item. A quarterback playing badly on national television is a football story. The posts were funny and one is quoted above. Ranking them would be a column about cruelty with a box score attached.