NBC: 2026 Olympics Most Watched Winter Games Since 2014

Hey there, alright, let's get to it. Now for your sports news, we're joined by NTD's Dave Martin. Dave, we've got some college basketball news as well as some big boxing news. But let's start with the Olympics. NBC announced that this was the most-watched winter game since 2014, averaging 23.5 million viewers. Does that include the numbers for Sunday's hockey final? You know, it does not, which you would figure would only make the numbers higher, of course. Now, I can already tell you that 8.7 million people in Canada were watching the game. That's out of a country of 41 million people. Of course, hockey is the biggest sport in Canada. The U.S. is their biggest rival and vice versa. It's becoming a pretty big deal here, too. And Canada normally beats the U.S. in hockey, but not on Sunday, which is what made this win so special. Now, these two have played 20 times in the Olympics. The U.S. has won just five of those times. There have been three ties. Meanwhile, Canada has come away the victor 12 times. So all that excitement is the reason why President Donald Trump invited both the men's and women's hockey teams to the White House and to attend tonight's State of the Union Address. Now, only the men's team will be able to make it. Meanwhile, these players are going to be on a very tight schedule. The NHL resumes play tomorrow night after pausing their season for nearly three weeks to allow the players to play in the Olympics. So they don't get much rest here after winning. Wow, that's some blood, sweat and tears. Well, mostly just blood. Yeah, mostly just blood. Yeah, exactly. That guy getting the high sticking there in the third period. Oof, that was rough. Tough guys. Lost his front two teeth for the Team USA. Business as usual. All right, elsewhere in the games, one of the more enduring and tragic images was skier Lindsay Vaughn being airlifted from the mountain after her crash in the downhill competition. What's the latest on her condition? Yeah, Vaughn is finally out of the hospital after that crash was just a couple weeks ago. Now, she's had multiple surgeries on her leg after suffering a complex tibia fracture on her left leg. Now, a complex fracture is a severe type of broken bone where it shatters into multiple pieces. Let's listen to what Vaughn said yesterday about her complex fracture. The reason why it was so complex was because I had compartment syndrome. And compartment syndrome is when you have so much trauma to one area of your body that there's too much blood and it gets stuck and it basically crushes everything in the compartment. So all the muscle and nerves and tendons, it all kind of dies. And Dr. Tom Hackett saved my leg. He saved my leg from being amputated. He did what's called a fasciotomy where he cut open like both sides of my leg, kind of filleted open, so to speak. Let it breathe and he saved me. And, you know, I always talk about everything happens for a reason. But if I hadn't torn my ACL, which I would have torn anyways with this crash, if I hadn't done that, Tom wouldn't have been there. He wouldn't have been able to save my leg. So I feel very lucky and grateful for him for the six hour surgery he put in on Wednesday to rebuild it, which went amazingly well. So Vaughn also revealed that she broke her ankle in her other leg in that same crash. So she is in a wheelchair right now. She said she'll soon graduate to crutches. She anticipates she'll be on those for a couple of months. So we definitely wish her the best as she rehabs. Yes, that's right. She's a trooper. She's a trooper. Shifting gears to Boxing Day. Former champions Floyd Mayweather and Manny Pacquiao have both recently come out of retirement and have now agreed to a fight for this September. Do we have any details like what weight class they'll be fighting at? You know, we don't know the weight class. We don't know how many rounds it's going to be. We do know it's going to be on September 19 in Las Vegas. It'll be held at the Spear and it's going to be televised by Netflix. And this is going to be a rematch of their 2015 bout. Promoters say that's still the most profitable fight ever. They set pay-per-view records. Now that one was won by Mayweather who had been retired since 2017 with that perfect 50-0 record. Now Mayweather actually turns 49 today and announced his unretirement just a few days ago. Now the 47-year-old Pacquiao, meanwhile, came out of retirement last summer. He earned a draw in a welterweight title match then. But the question of weight class is a very interesting one. Mayweather fought at five different weight classes during his career. Pacquiao won titles at eight different classes. So I'm sure they'll find some common ground somewhere. Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee. Any predictions? I'm going to go with Mayweather. I mean, his defense was just impenetrable. But I definitely want to watch this fight. Oh man, that's nerve-wracking. Moving to college basketball, we have a number of ranked teams in action tonight, including the new number one team in the country, Duke. Yeah, Duke, fresh off their big win over Michigan on Saturday, became the new number one yesterday. They play at Notre Dame tonight. That game starts very soon, 7 p.m. Eastern time. We actually have the top four teams in action playing tonight, just not playing each other. We've got number two, Arizona, plays at Baylor. That game starts at 9 p.m. Eastern time. Number three, Michigan hosts Minnesota. That game starts at 8.30 Eastern time. And number four, Iowa State plays at Iowa starting at 9 p.m. Eastern time. Meanwhile, in the game that started just really a few minutes ago, number 21, Miami of Ohio is playing at Eastern Michigan. Now Miami of Ohio, this is the Red Hawks. They play in the MAC Conference. They are the only undefeated team left in college basketball, 27-0 record. Counting tonight's game, they have four more regular season games, and then they've got the conference tournament. Should they make it through without a loss, it will be just the 21st team ever to enter the NCAA tournament with an undefeated record. Depending on the school, those college ballers, they're the cool guys. They are definitely the cool guys. They are the kings of their campus. Nowadays, now that they get the NIL money, it must be really awesome to do that too. That's great. Thanks for keeping it real, Dave. Thanks, Kevin.