Three of New York sports media’s more recently displaced voices are about to share a masthead.
According to Front Office Sports, John Jastremski, Sal Licata, and Jimmy Traina are teaming up for a new sports media venture, reuniting three personalities who have each found themselves on the outside of legacy outlets within the last year.
Jastremski and Licata recently teamed up to launch a New York sports podcast on the BetRivers Network. New York Sports Rush featuring Jastremski and Licata premiered on July 6. New episodes are expected to be released on the New York Sports Rush YouTube channel every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday around 11 a.m. ET, with plans to expand as the show grows.
Jastremski and Licata are used to talking New York sports with each other, as both are longtime contributors to SNY. The new co-hosts also spent most of the 2010s as colleagues at WFAN until Jastremski left for The Ringer. Earlier this year, Jastremski and The Ringer parted ways after five years. Jastremski did, however, take his New York, New York podcast with him, which he still hosts in addition to launching the new show with Licata.
Similarly, Licata continues to build his own YouTube channel, which he launched after being let go from WFAN last December. Despite a successful run in middays on WFAN with Brandon Tierney, their show was a casualty of the station’s effort to make room for Craig Carton’s return.
Additionally, Licata continued to be a frequent contributor to Jimmy Traina’s “Traina Thoughts” segment on SI Media, the weekly recurring bit where the two ran through the sports media news of the week. And speaking of Traina — the longtime Sports Illustrated writer and podcast host — announced his departure from SI after more than two decades at the outlet — saying in a statement that it was “time for me to do something different & evolve with the changing sports media landscape.”
Some sports media news. pic.twitter.com/O28MtXm506
— Jimmy Traina (@JimmyTraina) August 12, 2026
Traina expanded on that decision on his final SI Media podcast, telling listeners the call to leave “was not an easy decision,” but between the rise of Reels, TikTok, and YouTube, he said he’d started questioning whether cranking out columns for SI.com five days a week still made sense.
He was light on specifics about his next venture, which we now know is with Licata and Jastremski, but promised more details and a full announcement in the coming week, while urging his audience to keep an eye out.
“I am going somewhere else; I will not be sidelined long. You’ll see me early in September, before football gets started, for sure,” he said on Thursday’s podcast. “I don’t want to get into what’s coming next, but I will say there will be a podcast with Sal in my future…I will be doing a lot more pods. I’m still going to do an interview media podcast that I do every week here. There’ll be a separate podcast with Sal, and there’ll probably be a third. I’ll still be doing a little bit of writing, just not five days a week.”
Beyond his podcast and “Traina Thoughts” columns, many will remember Traina’s tenure at SI best for creating “Hot Clicks,” which ran from 2007-13 and covered the gamut of announcer gaffes, weird internet trends, celebrities, and whatever else sports fans happened to be talking about that day.
In recent years, Traina has made himself a must-follow by regularly booking some of the biggest names in sports broadcasting for his podcast, including Charles Barkley, Mike Breen, Scott Van Pelt, Mike Tirico, and practically any other A-list sports media talent.
It’s unclear what’s next for Traina, but it appears as if the podcast will continue in some capacity, and he’ll continue to cover the sports media beat.
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