1. We had two NCAA tournament play-in games last night and get two more tonight. The play-in games, as has always been the case, air on TruTV. These games being played on a channel not known for sports coverage ended up creating one of the more prominent sports-media traditions in which every single year at this time, social media is flooded with “What channel is TruTV?” and websites looking for any piece of search traffic they can get put together “What channel is TruTV?” posts.

However, there is a much more entertaining TruTV tradition at this time of year: ESPN’s Scott Van Pelt and Stanford Steve trying to guess which TruTV shows are real.

The concept is simple, yet so effective. The fellas are given four show titles. Three are fake, one is real. They need to guess the real one. And then hilarity ensues because the fake ones are somewhat believable given TruTV’s programming.

On a very inside sports media note, I’m going to guess ESPN doesn’t 100% love that SVP mocks another network because all of the graphics for the game say, “Real or Fake TV Shows” and it conveniently leaves out the TruTV portion, which is a very important aspect to the whole bit.

But I digress. The point of featuring the game is that it’s phenomenal content and it needs to be shared with all of you. Enjoy.

2. I already ranted about Fox’s pathetic coverage of the Dodgers-Cubs season-opening two-game series in Tuesday’s Traina Thoughts, but I have more.

Fox made it clear that it didn’t really care about making the series a big deal since it didn’t have its No. 1 crew of Joe Davis and John Smoltz call the game. They also made it clear that they didn’t care about the series because they had its broadcasters call the game remotely instead of sending them to Tokyo. The network finished off its shoddy treatment of MLB by sticking Wednesday’s game on FS1 instead of airing it on Fox.

Also, absolutely nothing about this video replay is “insane.” It’s actually useless.

3. Remember former NFL quarterback Rodney Peete?

He was in attendance at Wednesday’s Dodgers-Cubs game in Tokyo and pulled a Steve Bartman on L.A. outfielder Max Muncy. What was even worse was that Peete was actually wearing a glove.

4. The Twitter parody account NBACentel has claimed a lot of victims across sports media thanks to its fake news posts. The latest person to get Centel’d is Timberwolves play-by-play guy Michael Grady, who repeated a “report” about Pistons coach Bernie Bickerstaff “getting fined” $100,000 “for criticizing” Shai Gilgeous-Alexander.

5. Netflix has dropped the trailer for Season 2 of Quarterback, which will debut in July. This edition of the series will feature Joe Burrow, Kirk Cousins and Jared Goff.

6. The latest SI Media With Jimmy Traina podcast features a conversation with CBS college football and college basketball studio host Adam Zucker.

Zucker talks about what it’s like for him to replace Greg Gumbel as NCAA Men’s Basketball Championship Selection Show host and what Gumbel meant to Zucker as a mentor.

In addition, Zucker goes in-depth on what it’s like to host the Selection Show, handle studio duties for the first weekend of the NCAA tournament and to work with Charles Barkley and Kenny Smith for the tournament.

Zucker also reveals whether he’d have interest in covering the NFL, how he got into broadcasting and why he once got suspended from doing in-school announcements.

Following Zucker, Sal Licata from WFAN radio and SNY TV in New York joins me for our weekly "Traina Thoughts" segment. This week's topics include Twitter going down during the peak of NFL free agency, having alerts/notifications on your phone,The Wire" vs. The Sopranos, and much more.

You can listen to the SI Media With Jimmy Traina podcast below or on Apple and Spotify.

You can also watch SI Media With Jimmy Traina on Sports Illustrated‘s YouTube channel.

7. RANDOM VIDEO OF THE DAY: Beginning at the six-minute mark, Bill Burr rants to Conan O’Brien about how attending sporting events has changed over the years, and not for the better.

Be sure to catch up on past editions of Traina Thoughts and check out the Sports Illustrated Media Podcast hosted by Jimmy Traina on Apple, Spotify or Google. You can also follow Jimmy on X and Instagram.


This article was originally published on www.si.com as Scott Van Pelt’s ‘Real or Fake TruTV Shows’ Is Amazing Television.