Report. Reflect. Respond.
Thursday, August 20th, 2026
Welcome to Thursday’s edition of The Pennant. To listen to this newsletter, click the “Listen Online” link in the top right corner of this email.
On this day in 1920, teams met in a Canton, Ohio, auto showroom to found the NFL's precursor — the city now hosts the Hall of Fame.
Vance takes his economic pitch home to Middletown Friday, and Ohio scraps the form used to change gender on IDs, both at the top of the fold.
And, remembering Bill Rasmussen, who put softball on at 2 a.m. and turned March into a national obsession.
Top of The Fold
Vance To Pitch Economic Agenda In Hometown Friday
MIDDLETOWN — Vice President JD Vance returns to his hometown Friday evening to speak at Cleveland-Cliffs Middletown Works, his office said.
Energy Secretary Chris Wright will join him for remarks on the Trump administration's America First economic agenda.
The visit comes as polls show growing disapproval of the economy, with inflation and gas prices high amid the war with Iran and tariffs.
Ohio's House, Senate and governor's races could draw national attention.
Ohio Makes It Harder To Change Gender On IDs
COLUMBUS — The Ohio Bureau of Motor Vehicles will no longer accept BMV Form 2369, long used by transgender Ohioans to change the gender marker on a driver's license or state ID.
Applicants must now update their birth certificate first.
The bureau said the form conflicts with state law added in the latest budget, which recognizes only two unchangeable sexes.
Advocates said the change came overnight with no notice or transition period, calling it a deliberate attempt to make life harder for transgender residents.
Ohio Social Media Consent Law Stays Blocked As NetChoice Heads To Supreme Court
CINCINNATI — Ohio's law requiring parental consent before minors under 16 can create social media accounts will remain blocked, the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled Monday.
The court had previously upheld the statute 2-1, finding tech industry group NetChoice failed to prove a First Amendment violation.
But NetChoice plans to petition the U.S. Supreme Court, and the appeals court agreed to withhold its mandate until the justices weigh in, barring enforcement for now.
Page One
National
TEHRAN — Iran warned Persian Gulf states against aiding U.S. forces and rejected a ceasefire short of ending the war, as the UAE suspended all trade with Tehran.
HARRISBURG, Pa. — Gov. Josh Shapiro signed an executive order imposing the nation's strictest data center rules, stripping projects from fast-track permitting and requiring local approval before state review.
ISSAQUAH, Wash. — Costco has partnered with nonprofit insurer SCAN Health Plan to sell Medicare Advantage plans and other senior-focused insurance products at its stores, pending regulatory approval.
Statewide
PIQUA — Commissioners voted 3-1 to clear the way for a Meta data center that would bring $8 million in emergency services equipment and personnel, over residents' objections.
COLUMBUS — Tyrone Noling, who has spent 30 years on death row for a double murder he says he did not commit, appeared before the Ohio Parole Board Tuesday for the rare opportunity to request a full pardon.
BELLEFONTAINE — A new film shot entirely in rural central Ohio, which its makers call "a love letter to Ohio," aims to draw attention to the region's opioid crisis.
PARMA — Fourteen years after Dawn Pasela died of alcohol poisoning, her parents continue to push for a new investigation, saying the circumstances of her death remain suspicious.
COLUMBUS — Delaware County renewed its 0.5-mill property tax rollback for a fifth straight year, providing nearly $7.1 million in relief and pushing the total to almost $32 million.
HARRISON COUNTY — Researchers and a watershed district built a "bat condo" at Clendening Lake to rehouse more than 1,000 brown bats before their marina roost is demolished.
Sports
When ESPN was ESPN - Bill Rasmussen, 1932–2026
By The Pennant Sports Staff
If you were around in 1979, you remember how strange it was. A channel that was only sports, out of Bristol, Connecticut, running slow-pitch softball and Australian rules football at two in the morning.
Bill Rasmussen had been let go by the New England Whalers the year before, talked RCA out of a satellite transponder, and went on the air September 7 to 1.4 million homes. A couple of guys named Lee Leonard and George Grande opened the first SportsCenter.
Chris Berman, Bob Ley, and a coach the Detroit Pistons had just fired named Dick Vitale all turned up within months, most of them figuring it out as they went.
What made it work was college sports. Athletic directors around the country, at schools that had never been on national television, saw a network with endless airtime and said: "We're in." The NCAA gave Rasmussen a contract. In the spring of 1980, ESPN did what nobody had bothered to do and televised the early rounds of the basketball tournament. NBC had the Final Four. ESPN had all sixteen first-round games, and that is how March became a national obsession.
College basketball gained the most, and the Big East was the gift. Providence athletic director Dave Gavitt built the league in 1979, the same year ESPN signed on. Between the two of them, all boats were raised. Suddenly there were games on a Monday night in January, revolutionary when basketball had lived on Saturday afternoons.
You watched John Thompson and Lou Carnesecca and Rollie Massimino and Jim Boeheim work the sideline like characters in a serial, because that is what they became: characters. The violence under the basket was kind of cool, too, back when a forearm in somebody's spine was just part of the possession.
Patrick Ewing. Chris Mullin. Pearl Washington, Ed Pinckney, Mark Jackson. By 1985, three Big East teams reached the Final Four, and Villanova beat Georgetown for the title.
Rasmussen left day-to-day control in October 1980, barely a year after launch. Everything that came after was built on what he had already imagined.
He died Tuesday at 93. ESPN has changed a great deal since. Louder, more political, more cultural. His idea never did. We just wanted the games, and thirty minutes of SportsCenter before bed – we still do.
The Back Page
TRIVIA: What is Ohio’s official state mammal?
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