Sunday and Monday Night Booth Changes?

Still another job impacted by the Astros cheating scandal, except that this time it involves a member of the sports media. Jessica Mendoza, known much more for her role on ESPN Sunday Night Baseball in recent years than for her employment as a "special advisor" to the Mets, has made changes.

In addition to resigning from her role with the Mets, the NY Post reports that Mendoza is officially out of the Sunday Night Baseball booth. This comes after Mendoza guested on three separate ESPN shows to repeat specific opinions about the Astros scandal including pointing a finger at pitcher Mike Fiers.

While Mendoza received a contract extension from ESPN and is expected to continue her analyst role, such as making appearances on SportsCenter and the rarely produced "Baseball Tonight". There had already been rumblings of ESPN making changes in the Sunday Night Baseball booth again.

Although Alex Rodriguez will be back, it is still not certain if Matt Vasgersian will return to handle play-by-play or not. Unfortunately, Vasgersian has not been able to maintain a natural flow as the Sunday Night voice, often coming up far below his excellent play-by-play skills demonstrated elsewhere over the years. The recent threesome spent more time trying to be clever and blend together than focusing on the game at hand.

With spring training telecasts only a couple of weeks away, an announcement should be coming soon. Possibilities include Karl Ravich or Jason Sciambi moving over.

On the NFL side, reports continue that ESPN is considering a much needed change in its Monday Night Football crew. While rumors of the network making a play for Tony Romo to come over as lead game analyst, reports have former QB Jay Cutler having meetings with ESPN. Cutler was going to join Fox in 2017 when he was signed by the Dolphins for one last season as a player.


NBC has announced that three of its Notre Dame football telecasts later this year have been moved to prime time. The first one will be on Saturday October 3rd with Notre Dame vs. Wisconsin. What makes this special is that the telecast will come from Lambeau Field in Green Bay. Many fans forget that Curly Lambeau played his college football at Notre Dame.

The other two prime time games announced will be Oct. 10th vs. Stanford and Nov. 7th vs. Clemson, both from South Bend.


SAN FRANCISCO: The Giants' TV plans have been announced, with Mike Krukow calling 103 telecasts this season along with Duane Kuiper. This includes all home games, plus 22 road games against N.L. West opponents. However, Krukow, wishing to cut back his travel (he and Kuiper have worked together for more than 25 years), will be in the TV studio calling the road games while Kuiper will be at the stadium.

By doing so, Krukow will be able to call almost as many games (six fewer) than he did last year.

Meanwhile, KSFN-AM 1150 is turning to Spanish language sports radio this month. In addition to full-time sports programming, the station will air play-by-play of English Premier League soccer.


CHICAGO: The retirement of Kyle Long from the NFL's Chicago Bears just might lead to following his father's (Howie) footsteps once again. Long auditioned as a co-host on WMVP ESPN 1000 this week on its late morning local show with David Kaplan and did an excellent job.

Former WSCR The Score 670 morning co-host Brian Hanley has joined WMVP ESPN 1000 in a part-time role. Hanley has been off the air in Chicago since being forced out of WSCR's morning show in July 2018 after 26 years with that station. He starts this weekend (Feb. 8th) as a co-host of the station's hockey show, focusing on the Blackhawks, airing at 9 AM each Saturday.