Culture
ESPN to name Mike Greenberg host of 'Sunday NFL Countdown'
Mike Greenberg will be the new host of “Sunday NFL Countdown” as ESPN sets up its lineup for its first Super Bowl in 2027, a source briefed on the matter told The Athletic on Tuesday.
Greenberg replaces Sam Ponder who was fired last week with one-year and more than a million dollars left on her contract. While she will be paid in full, ESPN made the move to tidy up its books with the fiscal year concluding at the end of September.
However, the Ponder decision was also designed to promote Greenberg, a long-time favorite of ESPN executives. As the host of daily “Get Up” on TV and “Greeny” on radio, Greenberg is already a ubiquitous presence on the network. Greenberg had a brief run as the lead NBA host before relinquishing those duties to Malika Andrews last season. He also hosts the NFL Draft on ESPN, which is considered a prestigious assignment.
Greenberg, 57, receives the job over Laura Rutledge, an up-and-coming star at the network. Although on the rise, this marks the second time in the last year that Rutledge, the host of the daily “NFL Live,” has lost out to a longtime ESPN anchor.
Just before last season, Scott Van Pelt was named the host of Monday Night Football’s “NFL Countdown” over Rutledge. Van Pelt’s Monday program has also been revamped as Jason Kelce replaced the recently fired Robert Griffin III. Kelce joins analysts Marcus Spears and Ryan Clark on Mondays.
On Sundays, Greenberg’s main set will include Randy Moss, Tedy Bruschi, Rex Ryan and Alex Smith; as well as insider Adam Schefter.
ESPN and ABC will have the Super Bowl for the first time in 2027, and the network executives are designing its weekly sets for that big moment in the company’s history.
Required reading
(Photo: Joe Murphy / NBAE via Getty Images)
Welcome to Literary Quotable Quotes, a quiz that tests your recognition of classic lines. This week’s installment highlights observations from future or alternate worlds depicted in popular science fiction. In the five multiple-choice questions below, tap or click on the answer you think is correct. After the last question, you’ll find links to the books if you’re intrigued and inspired to read more.
Welcome to Lit Trivia, the Book Review’s regular quiz about books, authors and literary culture. This week’s challenge tests your memory of books that made huge impacts on society after they were published — some of them even spurring changes to American laws. In the five multiple-choice questions below, tap or click on the answer you think is correct. After the last question, you’ll find links to the books if you’d like to do further reading.
Where do you turn when you need advice? A chatbot? A life coach? A wise and trusted friend?
How about a poet? Poets may not be famous for making the best life choices, but because they subject the mess of human existence to the discipline of language, they can be as helpful as any therapist or mentor.
Good poets know the rules and when to break them, which is something they can teach the rest of us.
To wit:
Giving advice is a peculiar literary undertaking. It flourishes in certain popular genres — graduation speeches, newspaper columns, country and western songs and poems like this one — but what, in these contexts, is it really for?
I’m thinking of situations when you don’t urgently need help but nonetheless enjoy reading answers to questions you may not have thought to ask. What interests you isn’t the content of the advice — you could get all the life hacks you want from A.I. — so much as the voice of the person dispensing it.
Wendy Cope is an English poet, born in 1945, who has been a fixture of her country’s literary scene since the 1980s. More recently, her short, buoyant poem “The Orange” has been widely memed online, bringing her to the attention of new readers beyond Britain.
Cope favors rhyme, meter, brisk jokes and tart aperçus. She addresses romance, friendship and the petty absurdities of modern life with disarming good humor. The last line of “The Orange” is “I love you. I’m glad I exist.” Somehow she makes it the opposite of cringe.
This isn’t the kind of poetry you would describe as “confessional.” And yet …
Question 1/7
Stop, if the car is going “clunk”
Or if the sun has made you blind.
Don’t answer e–mails when you’re drunk.
Tap a word above to fill in the highlighted blank.Want to learn this poem by heart? We’ll help.
Fill in the missing words below. You can always refer to the reading by A.O. Scott and full
text above.Let’s start with the first stanza.
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