Tag: fox sports

Categories
General Sports

Odds and Ends: The Worldwide Runner Up in Online Sports!



The new king

Duh duh duh… duh duh duh. It seems that FoxSports has overtook ESPN.com in the Nielsen NetRatings. The 800 lb gorilla has been stepped over. This story is getting a ton of play in the blogosphere because bloggers hate ESPN. While Fox Sports, The Sporting News, and especially AOL Sports embraced bloggers, ESPN gave them the finger.

This news that ESPN.com has been dethroned might have been the reason why ESPN.com’s Editor in Chief was relegated to a lesser role yesterday. Seems that the bad karma associated with stealing scoops finally caught up with them. Now if only Versus would get their shit together, we might have an alternative to Sportscenter and Stu “Boo Yah” Scott.

In other news…

[Techdirt]: Why Blacking Out March Madness Online Doesn’t Make Sense

[SignOnSanDiego]: when a Terrell Owens or Michael Vick or Antonio Gates jersey is sold, each of the 32 NFL teams gets about 11 cents.

[isporty]: Top 10 Dirty Sports Names (How is Lucious Pusey not #1?)

[Farther Off the wall]: Which Dodgers monkey/intern designed this tshirt?

And finally, we have two random items. First is this excellent video of Ricky Gervais being brillaint. And second is this tidbit from the New York Post: “New York Ranger Brendan Shanahan was blindfolded and ball-gagged as trannies danced around him.” Sounds like a great time.

Categories
NFL General

The reports of Terry Bradshaw’s demise greatly exaggerated



I’m alive dammit!

We kinda like ProFootballTalk.com but they really screwed the pooch this time. On Thursday, they ran a story with the headline “Terry Bradshaw Dead?” which said, “We’re picking up some unconfirmed reports from diverse sources that… Terry Bradshaw died in a car accident on Thursday.”

Listen, PFT, just because you put a question mark in the headline and say it’s from “unconfirmed sources” doesn’t mean it’s any less irresponsible. PFT makes a good living making up shit… er… reporting on rumors… but you can’t post a rumor that someone is dead. (For the record, Terry Bradshaw isn’t dead, he’s just on vacation.)

One possible source of the rumors is that a TV station in Louisiana reported an accident on the Terry Bradshaw Passway and it was interpreted as Terry Bradshaw passed away. How about a little fact checking? And people wonder why traditional journalists hate bloggers.

By the way, the guy who publishes PFT ran a post where he actually ends up blasting traditional journalists for blasting him cause he screwed up. Now that, friends, is chutzpah… or self-delusion.

Links:
[Philly Daily News]: Blogged to Death

Categories
MLB General

Fox fires Steve Lyons for no good reason


Tom Brenneman (unwittingly) makes fun of a blind guy wearing a device that helps him see the game, issues an apology the next day, and all is well. Steve Lyons says something about a wallet after saying something about espanol and gets fired. Nevermind that the two statements were completely unrelated.

After Lou Pinella said something about Marco Scutero’s production being akin to finding a wallet on Friday and expecting it to happen again the next Friday, he added that the A’s were “frio” and needed to get “en fuego”. Steve Lyons said that Pinella was “hablaing espanol” and he still couldn’t find his wallet. From this, Fox made the connection that Lyons was claiming Lou (and other hispanics) steal wallets. If anything, the execs over at Fox are the ones who are racists. Most people watching it took it to be a friendly jab at Lou Pinella, his broadcast partner, not a racial remark. As far as we know, no hispanic leaders complained about the remarks.

For his part, Lyons apologized but said that the comment was not racially motivated and that Fox jumped to conclusions.


My joke was about a wallet. It had nothing to do with race. We were all laughing at the time. I’m being painted as a victimizer of Lou. At dinner later (with Fox announcers and production staffers), we all thought it was one of our better exchanges… I’m happy to apologize to anybody who took it that way. But it seems like a real stretch to lose your job over. It’s hard to understand.

So the moral of the story is this: you can make fun of the handicapped all you want as long as you apologize but don’t even think about linking two statements together if one of them has anything to do with race. Someone at Fox needs to take Logic 101. For example, here are two statements: 1) Tim McCarver sucks as an announcer. 2) Tim McCarver is white. The execs at Fox would conclude that white people suck at announcing. Meanwhile, most people would just conclude that Tim McCarver sucks — which is pretty much just a universal truth by now.

Links:
[Orlando Sentinel]: Fox Fires Lyons for Insensitive Comment
[USA Today]: Lyons defends honor after dismissal by Fox
[YouTube]: partial video of Steve Lyons comments