He’s college basketball’s ultimate insider — with catchphrases. But is Jon Rothstein in on the bit?

NEW YORK — Jon Rothstein makes an abrupt U-turn, reversing course from the restroom back toward his laptop.

“We got something,” Rothstein says, eyes dancing.

He’s due on an adjacent set in less than 10 minutes for the “Inside College Basketball” pregame show on CBS Sports Network, but a power conference head coach just texted with a rather trivial injury update. That’s enough to send Rothstein beelining to his X account, quickly reporting the news to his 400,000 followers. His bladder, and live television, will have to wait.

This is, to be fair, completely predictable. A chalk outcome where the heavy favorite prevails. Rothstein has been on TV as a college basketball reporter and analyst for nearly two decades, but he built his outsized reputation largely on social media, where his steady pace of breaking news and obscure scheduling tidbits are fuel-injected by his now-famous taglines.

Some of these mantras are specific to a head coach or school — “Jon Scheyer. Succession” or “Auburn Basketball. Welcome To The Jungle” — posted with bot-like efficiency after each win. His hallmarks, however, are more universal. There’s “GRAB YOUR NITROGLYCERIN PILLS” posted in all-caps as a game comes down to a heart-racing finish, and the popular catch-all “Anarchy? Nope. Just college basketball.” Inevitably, as the calendar turns to March Madness, his signature slogans are recited as anthems by the sport’s hardliners: “This is March” and “We sleep in May.” Rothstein sells T-shirts emblazoned with the mottos, donating the proceeds to charity.

When the 41-year-old does appear on TV — in studio and as a sideline reporter for CBS Sports, dispelling any suspicion that he’s an AI-generated algorithm — he still cuts a cyborg-ish figure. Suit and tie, always. Clean shaven. Hair meticulously coiffed. Same bottomless vessel of news and minutiae. As Rothstein tweets daily: “Some people have hobbies. I watch college basketball.”

This devotion has helped elevate him to one of the sport’s most prominent insiders. He’s the Adam Schefter of college hoops — with catchphrases.

“If you only knew him from Twitter, you might think he’s a basketball robot,” said Gary Parrish, a reporter and analyst for CBS Sports. “But he’s the best newsbreaker in the sport. He’s as good at it as anybody has ever been.”

It’s a status that stokes a nagging fascination among admirers and critics alike: Who is this guy, really? Is his unique blend of expertise and personality genuine, or is it a carefully crafted, tweet-inflated alter ego who’s laying it on too thick?

Is Jon Rothstein in on the bit?

Tonight’s mid-November broadcast of “Inside College Basketball” includes a segment on the resurgence of St. John’s, but the kicker is a clip of the team’s legendary coach Rick Pitino taking aim at Rothstein. Pitino explains how his son, Richard, the coach of New Mexico, forwarded him an early morning tweet from Rothstein critiquing St. John’s rebounding.

“I texted Jon and said, ‘Jon, why don’t you try hugging your wife in the morning at 7 a.m. rather than texting about my player,’” said Pitino, seemingly tongue-in-cheek. “Jon needs to take that to heart and get a life.”

After the clip, the camera pans back toward a chuckling, four-man broadcast desk.

“Jon, is that true? You’re doing that before you’re hugging Alana or your little girl, Mila?” asks host Brent Stover, offering a brief glimpse behind the Rothstein curtain.

“Look,” Rothstein answers, not missing a beat, “we gotta set the table for the day in college basketball.”

---

Last March, just before the start of the NCAA Tournament, Rothstein and Parrish interviewed Marquette coach Shaka Smart on “Inside College Basketball.” Rothstein asked whether Marquette’s injured point guard would be available for the first round.

“Well should I answer now or should I wait for you to text me every day between now and then?” Smart asked.

Dynamite answer from Shaka Smart when ⁦@JonRothstein⁩ asks about Tyler Kolek playing in Marquette’s opener: “Should I answer now or wait until you text me every day between now & then?” 😂 pic.twitter.com/DNyYGEuq3M

— Noah Coslov (@NoahCoslov) March 18, 2024

The “Rothstein text” is an inside joke in the industry. He’s been known to send coaches and team media contacts a metronomic stream of “good luck” messages before games and “great win” after victories, and he keeps a rotating list of industry sources he reaches out to each day. If he’s chasing a scoop or looking for a particular insight, gird your loins.

“It’s like a dog with a bone,” Xavier head coach Sean Miller said.

Part of it is being a creature of habit. Rothstein gets his hair cut every Sunday. He will proudly tell you (and tweet) that he’s never had a cup of coffee or a glass of wine or played golf. Until a couple of years ago, he had never been to Europe either, his wife finally convincing him to cross that off his reverse bucket list. But beneath this machinelike regimen lies a foundational work ethic.

“Jon may text or call you five, six times in a row, and at some point that could be annoying to you, but you have to understand that he’s trying to be fair, trying to tell the truth,” Miller said. “That pursuit is what I really respect about him.”

It dates to March 30, 1991, the day 7-year-old Jon from Mahopac, N.Y., fell in love with college basketball. His dad, Barry, was the catalyst, bailing on dinner plans with friends that evening because he wanted to watch Duke vs. UNLV in the Final Four.

“My mother was livid, but my father wasn’t missing that game,” Rothstein said.

Neither was he, able to count on one hand the times he had witnessed dad put his foot down like that. He watched intently as Mike Krzyzewski and Duke ended UNLV’s 45-game win streak on the way to the 1991 national title, the sport grabbing hold of him.

Rothstein grew up an hour north of New York City, the younger of two boys in a middle-class Jewish family. Mom, Andrea, was a special education teacher, dad a guidance counselor who picked up extra teaching gigs at a yeshiva and a prison. Rothstein wasn’t a natural athlete — “I was known more for my personality,” he claims — but he bought copies of Sports Almanac to read about John Wooden and Bob Knight and memorized the NCAA Tournament bracket his dad clipped out of the newspaper and tacked to the fridge each March.

He majored in sports media at Ithaca College and eventually interned with the YES Network. He’d stay up late watching movies like “Wall Street,” “Cocktail” and “The Secret of My Success,” dreaming of his own big-city future in Manhattan covering college hoops.

Rothstein had zero connections in the industry, but in 2004, after graduating college, he won a contest to do on-air reporting for ESPN Radio in New York. Between that and making cold calls for a friend’s private mortgage company, he cobbled together enough money to purchase air time at a radio station in New Rochelle, just outside the city. Once a week, 11 a.m. on Tuesdays, he hosted his own sportstalk show.

“The station was like 500 watts,” Rothstein said. “I’m convinced the local synagogue and dentist office were the only places that picked it up.”

He leaned on his Rolodex from ESPN Radio to land interviews — even finagled a segment with former Florida coach Billy Donovan after the Gators won the national championship in 2006 — but he also had to go door to door searching for advertisers in hopes of offsetting the cost of the show.

“That was the most humbling part,” Rothstein said. “But I also learned that the world does not always meet you halfway. You have to will your way into the opportunities you desire.”

He never found any ad buyers, but the show allowed him to put together a reel. After a stretch of rejections and just-misses, he was hired by MSG Network in early 2007.

That’s when Frank Isola, a veteran New York City basketball reporter, first met Rothstein, hanging around media availability before Knicks games at Madison Square Garden. Even then, Rothstein always wore a suit and tie, wanting to look the part. Isola would regularly bust his chops, but was impressed at how Rothstein asked questions and studied the veteran reporters. During the summers, Rothstein traveled to basketball tournaments to network with college coaches, following up with handwritten notes.

“He knew how to build relationships,” Isola said.

In 2010, Rothstein got his next break. He was hired by CBS during the NCAA Tournament as a studio analyst for March Madness on Demand, which streamed games online in the days before each one aired over traditional TV. It led to a full-time offer from CBS Sports.

“That’s the pinnacle,” Rothstein said. “And I knew I had to take it to the next level.”

March 21, 2013, became another seminal date in that climb. After a last-second layup secured an NCAA Tournament win for 3-seed Marquette over 14-seed Davidson, Rothstein tweeted: “This is March. Brace yourselves.” It was a typical reaction from a high-volume tweeter who was not yet omnipresent in the sport. But the engagement was good. So he embraced it.

Eventually, others did too, amplifying his hoops-mad persona and its growing collection of taglines. The Tao of Rothstein was born.

---

It’s a modest, second-floor production bullpen next to the CBS Sports studio here in Hell’s Kitchen. But to Rothstein, it’s Shangri-La. Twelve screens, each tuned to various college basketball games on this Monday evening. Rothstein is eyeing all of them at once, like the launch director tracking a shuttle from mission control.

The experience of watching college hoops with Rothstein isn’t dissimilar from following him on social media: Less caps lock, same stream-of-consciousness commentary, right down to him muttering “epitome of brutality” under his breath as Wisconsin labors against the UT Rio Grande Valley Vaqueros.

Given a pop quiz on the Vaqueros — a barely .500 squad in the Southland conference — Rothstein rattles off that first-year head coach Kahil Fennell is a former assistant at BYU and Louisville as matter-of-factly as he’ll discuss title contenders Auburn and Iowa State on the air later that evening.

“This team was really competitive against Creighton a couple weeks ago,” Rothstein says. “They’re no cupcake.”

Memory is one of his greatest assets. He has a knack for recalling names and dates, even box scores from years ago.

Sunday’s News and Notes segment on CBS. pic.twitter.com/LGMpcVMzh9

— Jon Rothstein (@JonRothstein) January 27, 2025

“He’s not a nerd, but he is. He’s a nerd about college basketball,” Isola said. “But don’t let the silly one-liners or the schtick distract you from the fact that he knows what he’s talking about.”

He puts it to use across multiple platforms, writing for his own website, hosting a weekly podcast and partnering with FanDuel sportsbook — a Rothstein for every part and parcel. Yet in an era when “influencer culture” has muddied the waters of authenticity, it’s natural to wonder if we’re getting the Real Rothstein from any of it.

“Oh yeah, it’s pretty close,” said his wife, Alana Rose. “The quirkiness that you see, that is him.”

The two met in 2017 at a bar in New York City, a serendipity Rothstein compares to a 16-seed upsetting a 1-seed. Naturally. Rose, a New England native and USC alum, has always been a sports fan but recognized him only as a chatty guy seated next to her. They got married in 2021 and have an 18-month-old daughter, Mila, whose dad loves to make up nicknames and taglines for her.

“He’s just a goofy, fun-loving guy who lives and breathes his job,” Rose said. “When it gets to March, he will literally walk around our place and repeat, ‘This is March. This is March.’ I’m like, I know it’s March. Just say it in your head.”

She, better than anyone, can vouch for the Rothstein Of It All. Every spring, the New York Athletic Club hosts the Winged Foot Award, presented to the coaches of that year’s men’s and women’s NCAA champions. Rothstein usually attends the ceremony, and Rose will occasionally tag along. She thought that was the plan in May 2019, until they made a stop at the Four Seasons bar, where Rothstein surprised her with a proposal.

“He waited until after basketball season, of course,” said Rose, who assumed at that point the ceremony was just a ruse.

“But he’s like, ‘Well, we should still stop by,’” she added, laughing. “So there we were, telling (former Virginia coach) Tony Bennett that we just got engaged.”

This is, in fact, Jon Rothstein. He’s committed to it, but there is no bit.

“I’m covering the greatest sport, because it has the greatest tournament we have in society. It should be fun,” Rothstein said. “So yes, the neighbor in my apartment building has complained to management because I’m up late screaming about the Mountain West. All the stuff you see on social media is just an extension of my life.”

---

In 2016, Gary Parrish and his wife lost a baby late in the pregnancy. Stillbirth, no heartbeat. Parrish, in New York working for CBS Sports, rushed home to Memphis. In hindsight, he realizes he should have taken more time off, but after a week or two, he flew back to New York as college basketball revved toward its postseason.

When he landed, Rothstein had made a dinner reservation for the two in a private room.

“I always interpreted it as him knowing that for the first time since everything happened, I was going to be by myself, away from my family. And he didn’t want me to be alone,” Parrish said.

“That’s the Jon Rothstein that I hope people know.”

For so long, Rothstein was singularly focused on living in Manhattan and covering college basketball. But dreams, even realized ones, can provide perspective. There was a car wreck in 2017, Rothstein driving to work a UConn game when he hit a patch of black ice and spun out on the Merritt Parkway. He avoided tragedy, but suffered cracked ribs, a totaled Honda Accord and a haunting experience.

Marriage and parenthood have provided happier but similarly resonant experiences. Beyond Rose expanding Rothstein’s horizons — from sushi to Broadway shows — she and Mila have also made him more present and appreciative.

“Even if I attain everything I want in my career, that’s not going to make me more complete,” Rothstein said. “I’ve learned to be grateful for what I have. To enjoy it.”

It doesn’t mean he’s less committed to the job. (Or tweets less.) This past offseason, Rothstein visited 35 campuses for practices. He’s in contact with dozens of coaches each week. During the trip to Europe in 2022, a pandemic-delayed honeymoon, Rothstein had to be convinced by Butler coach Thad Matta not to detour and visit his team while it was in Italy for an exhibition. There’s still a responsibility, maybe even a heightened one, for Rothstein to be the “hardest working, most-informed, lowest maintenance” insider possible. But there are also reminders to be fully himself, regardless of the opinions it elicits or the status it attains.

“What did Shakespeare say? ‘Things won are done, joy’s soul lies in the doing,’” Rothstein said. “The doing is what I love, every single day.”

On many of those days, his favorite part isn’t watching a game, or being on TV or the high of chasing a big scoop. It’s when he picks up Mila from daycare. Rothstein shouts his daughter’s name in a sing-song voice, Mila giggling and waving her arms in response.

It’s one of those joys of parenthood that can’t be adequately expressed in words. By most people.

“It’s like being a bubble team,” Rothstein said, “and seeing your name pop up on that bracket on Selection Sunday.”

(Illustration: Will Tullos / The Athletic; Photos: Porter Binks and Mitchell Layton / Getty Images)

This post was originally published on this site be sure to check out more of their content.