Morning Cup Of Joe
January 20th, 2026
Welcome to your Morning Cup of Joe, an eye-opener to help Joe’s readers ease into their busy workday with a few football links, wacky news and a pleasant distraction.
Lamar Jackson and the Raiders? [PFT]
Top candidates to replace Sean McDermott in Buffalo. [CBS]
Did the Bears get jobbed Sunday night? [Yahoo!]
Winners and losers from Sunday’s playoff games. [NFL]
Bill Cowher is not a fan of Lane Kiffin. [TikTok]
C.J. Stroud has never been the same quarterback since Houston canned offensive coordinator Bobby Slowik. [New York Post]
Even women rappers are fed up with BSPN. [Outkick]
Like many, Joe has grown weary of hearing the forced opinions of ex-referees during games. Most of them add little to the game and often they are just slurping their buddies. BSPN (naturally) is the worst of the lot where these guys opening cheer for — Joe shats you not — “Good call!” Ugh. Mike Pereira and Dean Blandino are actually good. So too is Terry McAuley who will blast referees. Gene Steratore is OK but he’s forced upon listeners every other play (guess that’s better than listening to Tony Romo grunt and say, “I don’t know, Jim.”) The rest of these clowns can just go away. Joe would like to punch John Parry. [Awful Announcing]
It’s pretty simple. He won. Google him. Curt Cignetti leads Indiana — Indiana!? — to the national title. Maybe the greatest turnaround in sports history this side of the”Miracle on Ice.” From the losingest college football program to the national title in two years. Memo to Mike Norvell, Lincoln Riley, Luke Fickell and Dabo Swinney. If Cignetti can turn around a program from absolute trash, no history, no facilities and win a title in two years, you guys at these storied programs with championship facilities and plenty of revenue have zero excuses. Joe is looking right at you, Norvell! [Bloomington Herald-Times]
In the latest college basketball gambling scandal, texts have been revealed by the feds between the conspirators. Among the fun things: Players on the take could pocket as much as $20,000 a game; the ringleaders would leave six figures of cash in a Florida storage shed for middle men to distribute to players on the take; the ringleaders also once dropped $200k on a Chinese Basketball Association game they had rigged — gee, that wouldn’t raise a red flag to a book, would it? Also seems like the wise guys lost a helluva lot of “fixed” games. Players must not have been scared of the muscle. [Front Office Sports]
Incredible Hulk vs. gorilla. [TikTok]
Uh Oh: Patriots legend Matt Light explains why the NFL has a major problem and why the sport is losing all of its diehard fans…
"The league has a legit problem on their hands. The average and rabid fan has left the game in droves."
The NFL needs to make some massive changes. pic.twitter.com/DiTNYKsmFz
— Dov Kleiman (@NFL_DovKleiman) January 17, 2026
Live TV can take you in a lot of directions. Sometimes, news breaks in real time. Here is how the news that the #Bills fired coach Sean McDermott ended up on @GMFB. pic.twitter.com/wRLQIBmWVp
— Ian Rapoport (@RapSheet) January 19, 2026
January 20th, 2026 at 1:26 am
Slowik is interviewing for the Philly OC job. After getting launched by Houston, he worked as the pass game coordinator for Mike McDaniel down in Miami.
January 20th, 2026 at 5:43 am
I sort of could see Lamar with the Raiders.
Felt bad for the Bears and Bills. Was rooting for both of them. Ya, to the there-there in the games. The refs this year have not been all that great. Seems like many calls are all over the place, different day-different teams.
Kubiak could be a good fit for the Bills. But they are still keep their GM, who really should have been fired. So unsure if anything changes. However, still thinking Harbaugh should have waited. The Bills would have been the perfect fit for him along with Josh. And he would have chosen his own GM to replace Beane.