ESPN's Ryan Ruocco + Traina Thoughts
SI Media With Jimmy Traina
Sports Illustrated
4.6 • 1.2K Ratings
🗓️ 9 October 2025
⏱️ 83 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Episode 576 of "SI Media With Jimmy Traina" features a conversation with ESPN's Ryan Ruocco.
Ruocco talks about calling the WNBA Finals, the constant off-the-court attention that the WNBA receives, controversies involving the refs and the commissioner, Caitlin Clark's impact, ratings and scheduling the Finals against NFL action.
In addition, Ruocco talks about calling less Yankees games, but more Nets games, being in the mix for the Yankees radio job after John Sterling retired, what he loves about calling NBA games for ESPN and much more.
Following Ruocco, Sal Licata from WFAN radio and SNY TV in New York joins Jimmy for their weekly "Traina Thoughts" segment. This week, Jimmy and Sal discuss the Major League Baseball's playoffs, the performance of Fox play-by-play guy, Eric Collins, on last week's Dolphins-Panthers game, Hulu canceling its show about North Carolina football and how Bill Belichick has tarnished his legacy, the Mark Sanchez arrest, a ridiculous betting loss, current movies and more
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome everyone to S-I Media with Jimmy Traynor. Thank you so much for listening. We've got a good one for you this week. Ryan Rucco from ESPN. He's currently in the middle of calling the WMBA finals. He of course calls NBA games for ESPN. He also works for the Yes Network in New York, Yankees and Nets. Talk to him about a lot of things. |
| 0:23.2 | He's going to be having a much bigger workload with the Nets with Iron Eagle scaling back. |
| 0:28.7 | Get into a lot of stuff about the WMBA and how off the court seems to dominate more than on the court. |
| 0:34.3 | And Caitlin Clark and a bunch of other things there with Ryan. And then Salakata from WFAN and SNY, New York, joins me for our weekly trainer thoughts segment. So make sure you check that out. Before we get to it, just a quick reminder. Make sure you subscribe to SI Media with Jimmy Trana. Subscribe, follow, whatever it is, hit that button. And if you missed any recent episodes, going to your archives, check them out. We had Ian Rappaport from the NFL Network on last week, |
| 0:58.8 | Kirk Herb Street two weeks ago, Mina Kimes and Seth Rollins. Three weeks ago, Jim Nance, four weeks |
| 1:04.3 | ago. So if you missed any of those episodes, give them a listen. And again, make sure you |
| 1:07.9 | subscribe slash follow SI Media and Jimmy Traynor wherever you listen to |
| 1:12.9 | your podcast. All right. Let's get to it. ESPN's Ryan Rucco, followed by Trina Thoughts in Salakata. |
| 1:18.9 | All right here right now on S.I. Media with Jimmy Traynor. All right, joining me now. |
| 1:27.4 | One of my favorites to listen to Call a Game, although I do have |
| 1:31.4 | a bone to pick with him because his Yankee schedule is very light this year. |
| 1:36.1 | From ESPN, he's got the WMBA finals right now, Ryan Rucco. |
| 1:41.3 | Ryan has it going. |
| 1:43.7 | That's always good to talk with you, Jimmy. What did you do, |
| 1:47.0 | like 10 Yankee games this year? No, I had, I had, I ended, it ended up being, I think, |
| 1:54.7 | I did like four in spring training. I did three or, I think it ended up with spring training being like 20 or two or something |
| 2:03.9 | like that but it was mostly backloaded like i did five series in the month of august or four series in |
| 2:11.5 | the month of august or something it was a little less it was like i did like five or six series |
| 2:16.6 | instead of like around like eight. |
| 2:21.9 | But some of that was just, so the reason it was backloaded was because my son was born in |
| 2:29.1 | June. And so I had this gap where maybe I would have done a series or two that I, and then, |
| 2:36.6 | and then some of it is just now like the event split with my deal with ESPN and yes compared |
... |
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