The Sweep: Dan Hicks Is Gone at 64, Nick Wright Puts $1 Million on a 2016 Hotel Bar, Dan Patrick Will Trade a Year of Retirement for an Emmy, and Fox Would Sooner Show Knoxville the Packers

A death leads the column today and it is not a drama item. Dan Hicks was the sound of a Sunday afternoon for a quarter of a century, and he died on Wednesday. Everything after that is smaller, and most of it is men arguing on microphones. Eight items, newest first.

November 12: Dan Hicks, NBC's voice of golf, the Olympic pool and Notre Dame, dies at 64

NBC Sports said Hicks died on Wednesday after what his wife, ESPN's Hannah Storm, called "an acute illness." Her statement: "Our family is heartbroken by the sudden and unexpected passing of Dan." His colleague Rich Lerner told viewers on Golf Channel on Thursday morning. Hicks joined NBC in 1992 and had been its lead golf voice since 2000. He worked 15 Olympic Games and called all 28 of Michael Phelps's medals. His best-known four seconds came at Torrey Pines in 2008, when Tiger Woods holed a 12-footer on the 72nd hole to force a playoff and Hicks said: "Expect anything different?" Roger Maltbie, on a Golf Channel call collected by Awful Announcing: "This is losing a pal." He is survived by Storm and their three daughters. The Hollywood Reporter says Jason Benetti will call Notre Dame against Boston College on Saturday. NBC has made no decision on the rest, and should not be hurried into one.

November 12: Nick Wright offers Clay Travis a $1 million bet over what was said at a hotel bar in August 2016

On The Bulwark's podcast this week, Wright said Travis once told him his political opinions were built to entertain and grow an audience. Travis replied on X on Wednesday night: "I guess this is what happens when you start voting Republican." On Thursday, per Awful Announcing's Brandon Contes, Wright posted the particulars: August 2016, during the Olympics, the lobby bar of a since-closed hotel near the Fox lot, a colleague at the table, bosses and a shared agent told at the time. He offered $1,000,000 that he is telling the truth. Travis says he does not recall the dinner, that Wright did not storm out, and proposed a lie-detector bet on different questions. Here is what is not disputed, because Travis has said it himself: he was a Democrat in 2015 and 2016 and first voted Republican for president in 2020. Whether a private remark ten years ago was a confession or a business observation is not something we can settle, and neither can a polygraph. Our call: nobody is going to pay anybody a million dollars.

November 12: Dan Patrick says he will delay retirement a year if his show wins a Sports Emmy

A caller asked on Thursday morning. Patrick: "If we win the Sports Emmy, I'll stay another year." Producer Paul Pabst checked the terms and got: "I would add another year to my contract." Patrick's planned exit is after Super Bowl LXII, on February 13, 2028. He then gave the odds himself: "We're not gonna win the Sports Emmy, we're not. I'm calling it." The show has never been nominated; Patrick won one personally at ESPN in 1997. Our call: it is the safest promise in radio, and the first time an awards campaign has been built around keeping a man at work.

November 12: Preliminary maps have Fox sending Knoxville and Chattanooga the Packers and Vikings in place of the Titans

Awful Announcing's Drew Lerner, reading 506 Sports' early coverage maps, found that Sunday's Titans-Jaguars game is not scheduled to air on Fox in Tennessee's third- and fourth-largest cities. They get Minnesota at Green Bay at 1 p.m. Eastern. The Titans are 1-7. The maps are preliminary and the affiliates can still switch. Our call: stations do not do this to punish anyone. They do it because they think more people in east Tennessee will watch the Vikings and Packers than their own team, and at 1-7 they are probably right.

November 11: Van Lathan answers The Dan Le Batard Show, at volume

Le Batard's show played a clip from The Ringer's college football show Tailgate in which Billy Gil, a former Le Batard producer, mocked Miami fans after the Hurricanes' 31-24 loss at Notre Dame. Le Batard teased the cast for talking over one another and co-host Jonathan Zaslow asked, "Who are these guys?" On Wednesday's Tailgate, Lathan took that question personally on behalf of colleagues Tate Frazier and Joel Anderson, said the dismissal carried racial and class condescension, and closed with an invitation Awful Announcing printed in its headline and we will not. Gil's own read was the sharpest thing said: his co-hosts were catching "strays" meant for him, and by answering they were "giving them what they want." Our call: Gil is right. Two podcasts that share an alumnus have found a way to promote each other.

November 11: Adam Schefter says he would treat a Dianna Russini scoop "like everybody else"

Hours after Russini's BetUS show went up late, WEEI asked Schefter whether he would trust her reporting. "I would treat her like everybody else," he said. "I'm not reporting it until I know that it's true, period." NBC's Mike Florio has taken the other line, saying Pro Football Talk will ignore her scoops unless someone else confirms them. Our call: Schefter's answer is the correct professional one and also the only one available to a man who once sent an unpublished story to a team executive for approval. The more telling fact is that her first report back pointed the right way: she had Kirk Cousins's name coming up in Minnesota on the day the Vikings traded for him.

November 11: Stephen Curry's PSA: "you don't have to like & subscribe to all podcasts"

On the day he was hurt in Houston, which we cover separately, Curry posted an Instagram video about the podcasters who had been discussing his wife's kiss with a co-star in a Roku holiday film. LeSean McCoy had accused Ayesha Curry of "seeking attention." Gilbert Arenas called her "the only blemish in the family." Curry: "Any time Ayesha Curry shows up in your headline, I kindly suggest you just give the happy hands, the congratulations." He thanked them for the "free pub." Nick Young apologised on air: "I'm sorry, Steph." Arenas doubled down first and then offered a conditional one. Our call: Curry won this the way he wins most things, from distance and without seeming to exert himself. A grown man's opinion on whether another man's wife may have a job is not content.

November 9-11: Greg Sankey's complaint about announcers second-guessing his referees turns out to have two addresses

The SEC commissioner went on Paul Finebaum's show on Monday and, without names, called it "unacceptable" for "somebody on a Saturday night who's announcing a game between Oklahoma and Florida" to criticise his referees. CBS Sports' Brandon Marcello reported the target was SEC Network analyst Aaron Murray, who had commented on the replay reviews in Texas-Missouri from another booth. Finebaum then told Jimmy Traina a second shot was meant for ESPN's Sean McDonough: "Now McDonough is the unicorn here. He will say anything about anybody at any time." Our call: a commissioner complaining that announcers on the conference's own network are too candid about officiating has told you which of the two he would fix first. The better news in the interview was that the SEC is looking at opening its replay audio, as the ACC and Big 12 do.

What we are not running, and why

Jemele Hill's "receipts" and the Ed Aschoff anecdote. Two additions to the Wright-Travis story. Hill says she has proof she will not share, which makes it unverifiable by definition. Joel Anderson relayed something he says the late Ed Aschoff told him in 2018. Aschoff died in 2019 and cannot confirm or correct it. Neither belongs in an item that is already one man's memory against another's.

Wright Thompson on a Mississippi election. An ESPN writer was emotional about a political result. It is a political story with a sports byline attached and we have nothing to add to it.

The Massachusetts Gaming Commission chair on proxy betting. Jordan Maynard told a House subcommittee on Wednesday that proxy wagering is "not harmless; it's illegal," with the Bill Simmons and FanDuel matter in the background. We covered the commission's vote on November 5. A quote at a hearing is not a development in the case.

Jordon Hudson reportedly suing Airbnb hosts. It sits in Awful Announcing's most-read box with "reportedly" in the headline and no date we could see. We did not open a filing, so it stays out.

Aaron Rodgers praising Mike Tomlin's television work, Paul Finebaum declining a job nobody offered, and Charles Barkley's reaction to Kenny Smith's phone. All real, all in Thursday's file, none of them an argument.

The Titans item's obvious joke. We ran the fact. The team's fans have had enough.