Good morning. is Friday, July 26th. It's a big day. It's opening ceremonies for the Paris Summer Olympics. Now, we split today's podcast into categories, All Things Olympics and Not Happening in Paris. So let's cover Paris first. Opening ceremonies, as I mentioned, start at 9 a Pacific time, 12 Eastern. You can watch it live on Peacock, but you can also watch it in prime time Friday night on NBC. Of course, we already know flag bearers are LeBron James and Coco Goff.
They'll be sporting their Ralph Lauren alongside their teammates. Remember, the opening ceremonies is on the Seine River on barges. That will be interesting. We still don't know who the special guests are. It's a toss -up between Celine Dion, Lady Gaga. There's a lot of rumors of different performers who might be there, so stay tuned. Here's who you won't see at the opening ceremonies. Canada's head soccer coach after she was fired for using drones to spy on opponents.
Also not going to be there, seven -time gold medal winner, Katie Ledecky, that US swimmer, she's competing starting on Saturday, so she needs to get her rest. On Sunday, the US men began their campaign for the fifth consecutive gold medal versus Serbia. They're going to be playing three -time NBA MVP, Nikola Jokic, so it will be very interesting to see how that goes. Game starts at 11 a Eastern time. Now, not happening in Paris.
While softball isn't in the Olympics, there is some major news around the sport. Former softball pitcher, NiJaree Canady Kaneti, is headed to the Big 12 for reported $1 million in name image likeness money.
Now, she was the USA softball player of the year and she announced that she'd be transferring to Texas Tech from Stanford, receiving a deal rumored to have around $1 million from the collective that comes out of Lubbock, Texas, which is home of Texas According to someone who knows a bit about negotiations, the highest name image likeness deal they had ever heard of previously for a softball pitcher was $175 ,000. So this is a game changer.
Now we've also heard that the NBA, well, they've made some media rights deals and it might means that inside the NBA might be coming to an end. It's TNT's big show featuring Shaq, Chuck, Kenny, Ernie. Well, it looks like Amazon and ESPN might be interested in hiring the entire Inside the NBA crew. from TNT since they obviously won't have the NBA rights anymore after 2025. So very cool to see that those, that crew may have a job somewhere else.
And last but not certainly, not least, this is a really interesting story. The UFC, they're playing, UFC 304 is taking place in the UK with two British champions defending their titles. Walter Lightweight, Leon Edwards and heavyweight, Tom Aspinall Now what they're doing is really interesting. It's starting at 3 a local time due to an American audience because that's 10 o 'clock Eastern time in the U .S., which is our traditional time for pay -per -view.
Now the UFC has really understood to stick with this because they want to maximize those pay -per -view sales. It means that this big matchup, this key matchup may begin at around 5 a and then there's another fight after that. it looks like Aspinall will take his... That means that Aspinall will likely be defending his title in Manchester around 5 a with Edwards taking to the octagon even later than that. So talk about pulling in a whole nighter.
Okay, for more on the Olympics, check out lastnightsgame .com. We have our Olympic guide up and ready to run for you. There's so much content up there. We have some great blog posts about the Olympics, a couple of podcasts, some great videos. So stay tuned, check that out, lastnightsgame .com. And of course, follow us on social. Have a great weekend.