Sports Media Should Cover Conclaves
With the second official vote of the 2025 Catholic Church Conclave, the College of Cardinals selected Robert Prevost from The Augustinian Order. Prevost will be henceforth known as Pope Leo XIV.
In a good and honorable world, sports media would have covered the conclave instead of news media. Our collective consciousness (i.e.: social media) had been making this joke ever since Pope Francis died. Might as well make it a reality.
In this good and honorable world, we would have gotten TNT’s Inside the NBA crew would have set up a desk in the middle of the Vatican City crowd and broadcast live. Barkley and Shaq would fixate on the fact there was an Italian priest by the named Cardinal Pizzaballa with a good chance of being elected Pope. Here’s a transcript:
SHAQ: What’s his name, Chuck?
BARKLEY: Pizzaballa.
BOTH: *Snickering*
Kenny “The Jet” Smith would try to inject the show with something vaguely resembling a serious analysis by relating something that Hakeem Olajuwon said when they both played for the Rockets. Shaq would ask what Hakeem liked to get on his Pizza.
When Pope Leo XIV was finally announced, Ernie Johnson would give details on Prevost’s career while his highlight reel played. Making conversions, giving confessions, leading the faith in communion.
Johnson would have revealed that Prevost is the first American Pope, and Charles Barkley would refuse to believe this guy was from Chicago. He would be convinced, just like many of the College of Cardinals were before arriving in Rome this month, that he was actually from Peru, and that he wouldn’t believe The Pope was from Chicago until he excommunicated “da Bears” and replaces the communion wafer with deep dish.
Being an American, Prevost was more than just a dark horse candidate. The rule of thumb has been that the Church would never select an American for its highest office. The United States is an empire. The political hegemon of the world. It ought not be the spiritual hegemon too. But now that it’s collapsing, I suppose that rule doesn’t apply anymore.
Draft analysts who are paid to go on TV and opine like to focus on rules of thumb and meta-narratives like this one, so it would inform their television appearances where they spout off about who the Church will elect Pope. “Oh, they’ll pick Pietro Parolin. He’s the moderate continuity candidate and close to Francis.” “Oh, they’ll definitely pick Luis Antonio Tagle. He would be the first Asian pope, and just look at the numbers he’s putting up. That’s the region with the fastest growing Catholic population.” “Forget Tagle. His stats are high, but he’s a system priest. Cardinal José Tolentino Calaça de Mendonça of Portugal is the future.”
Whenever an unexpected player gets drafted, what usually happens is that the analyst is like, “I do not like this pick AT ALL!” If it’s an extremely unexpected player, you can practically hear the analyst scouring his notes for anything useful about the guy other than when and where he went to college, and if he can’t find anything, he’ll riff in platitudes. “This guy is a hard worker. He’s the first guy in the Vatican in the morning and the last one out at night. Always grinding scripture. A real lunch pail kind of Pope. ”
ESPN’s NFL Draft Analyst Mel Kiper Jr., though, would react a little differently. He’d throw a tantrum after Pope Leo XIV was announced. He would pound the table and shout about how they should have picked Shedeur Sanders first overall.
College GameDay is the one ESPN property I would want to cover the conclave more than any other. But it would have to be the old College GameDay. The pre Pat McAfee College GameDay, when the show was hosted by Rece Davis, Desmond Howard, Kirk Herbstreit, and Lee Corso. The show is known for its picks segment, where its hosts and usually one or more guests predict the outcome of the week’s games. Corso would do so by putting on the team’s helmet or mascot head and saying something semi-inappropriate.
I’m not sure who Davis or Howard would predict would be named Pope, but I feel extremely confident that Kirk Herbstreit would have gone to bat for Cardinal Péter Erdő of Hungary because Erdő would be a real throwback pope. He’s a guy who believes in tradition and doctrine and opposing Francis’s call for churches to take in migrants.
I don’t know who Lee Corso would pick but I do know it’d involve him putting on a replica pope hat.
The other thing I know would happen in this parallel universe is that Bill Simmons, the firebrand ESPN writer turned podcast power broker, would get into a feud with the Pope. I don’t know what about, I just know that it would happen.
Simmons has beef with or has beefed with, in no particular order, Doc Rivers, Cris Collinsworth, Nick Wright, Adam Silver, Isiah Thomas, JJ Redick, Ian Rapoport, Jonah Keri, Doris Burke, Rich Eisen, Roger Goodell, Jerry Remy, and Dave Portnoy. The only person on the planet he has not feuded with is me because he has no idea I exist and I hope he never does because he’d probably win the feud.