JOSE ALTUVE and JJ WATT are SPORTS ILLUSTRATED's SPORTSPERSONS OF THE YEAR. I'm a sucker for legacy media and the award still matters to me. Picking a winner is like trying to sum up the past sports year with one last note. There's a meaning to each selection. Watt raised $37 million for HOUSTON after HURRICANE HARVEY. Altuve won the city a WORLD SERIES TITLE with the ASTROS and then the AL MVP. Watt is a symbol of philanthropy and civic consciousness. Altuve a symbol of athletic excellence. But doesn't it feel a little anodyne after the year we've had? 2017 has been a year of movements and protest. It's been about substance vs. rhetoric. #METOO. It's been about taking a stand and a knee. For gender equity and social justice. Against sexual assault and systemic racism. About trying to upend norms. Do Altuve and Watt reflect that? Maybe SI didn't want to get political or create controversy. It also put ROGER GOODELL locking arms with STEPH CURRY on its cover in September. DAVE ZIRIN suggested COLIN KAEPERNICK and MCKAYLA MARONEY instead. What about MALCOLM JENKINS and ERIC REID? MAYA MOORE? By choosing Watt, SI picked an NFL player who had nothing to do with the biggest sports story of the year. It's been hard to keep politics out of sports this year, so how can it be ignored altogether? SI's award does mean something. The mag has given us an album to remember the last 63 years. How will we remember 2017 in 25 years? Will you think of Altuve and Watt? SportsSET: "Best of the Best: SI’s Sportsperson of the Year"... What is DISNEY buying if it acquires FOX's regional sports networks? It would double-down on live sports rights. ESPN has national NBA, NFL, NHL, and college sports TV rights. Fox's 22 RSNs broadcast hockey, basketball, college sports, and hockey locally. The deal would give the company more content for ESPN's eventual OTT app. Up until now it seemed that ESPN was only going to offer a subpar package of games on its app. It didn't seem worth paying for. But if viewers can get access to the local TV games for the 44 MLB, NHL and NBA teams all in one place, that app becomes extremely enticing. A catch-all app for large portions of three different leagues. It could make consumers less likely to pay for NBA LEAGUE PASS or MLB TV as well. This is all conjecture but there could be large ramifications for how we watch sports. If the deal goes down, Disney and ESPN are going to have large control over that -- more so than before. ERIC JACKSON and MAURY BROWN break down the reported deal... RUSSIA is banned from the 2018 WINTER OLYMPICS. A harsh punishment but would the IOC have burned its credibility completely if it let Russia go to PYEONGCHANG? Will this deter systemic doping in the Olympics?... TOM IZZO tries to blend into the background on daytime TV... Isn't there a mercy rule?