Tag: espn

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All Other Sports

Odds and Ends: Around the Blogosphere


Two great stories in the blogosphere today. The first from There’s Your Karma, Ripe as Peaches: “I couldn’t wrap my brain around the possibility that a person I once revered as more than a man could get in a dancing competition and proceed to out-gay Mario Lopez…”

The second is from Can’t Stop the Bleeding. We don’t know what the story is actually about but he managed to make a reference to Roland Przybylewski AND use the word effect as a verb correctly. Well done, sir.

In other news…

[CNN Money]: Why I hate Monday Night Football

[ESPN]: Here’s an idea – how about Bonds just leaves baseball period?

[USA Today]: Average college coaches salary up to $950k a year

[ESPN]: LPGA to start drug testing… cause you know, everyone was so up in arms about steroids in womens golf

[The Offside]: The High Cost of being a WAG

[Awful Announcing]: Dissecting Jemele Hill’s first ESPN Page 2 Column

Categories
NBA General

LeBron James makes perfect sense



we need more logos

Shaq has complained about it. Steve Nash complained about it. Even a nobody named Matt Harpring complained about it. But it isn’t until now that someone has made an argument so simple and so clear. LeBron James on the new ball:


You can shorten our shorts, tell us how to wear wristbands, things like that. Change the dress code. But the one thing we care about is the basketball. When you start changing the thing we play with every single day, it doesn’t make sense to me — at all.

By the way, the ESPN anchor when reporting this story asked which one of the LeBrons ™ provided this quote. Hmmmm… could this have been some prompting by the most shameless advertorial in the history of ESPN? Shouldn’t they be busy promoting a new drama on Dominoes or something?

Links:

[SI]: LeBron, NBA stars speak-out against new game ball

Categories
NFL General

Hey… where’s Sean Salisbury?



I suck

We’re a little heavy on the ESPN news today but ProFootballTalk.com is reporting that Sean Salisbury was recently suspended for a week but is now back on the air. No one really noticed but the smug-terrible-ex-athlete quotient was down all last week owing to the absense of Salisbury.

Michael Irvin was suspended for a week last year for failing to tell ESPN about his arrest on chages of possession of drug paraphernalia but no one knows why Salisbury was suspended. Excessive smirking into the camera perhaps?

By the way, how is it possible that Salisbury didn’t make this list of Worst Sportscasters on TV?

Categories
General Sports

Harold Reynolds wants at least $5M

The Smoking gun has a copy of the Connecticut lawsuit filed by Harold Reynolds against ESPN where he’s suing for breach of contract. According to Reynolds, he was never told why he was fired and in response to the allegations of sexual harassment, he claims that he gave a “brief hug” to the intern and she never expressed any discomfort and they even went to dinner at the classy Boston Market that evening.

Reynolds said that in March he signed a new six year contract with ESPN that paid him $1M per. “During negotiatons for any contract, ESPN raised no specific concerns about any past conduct or performance, and ESPN indicated no reservations whatsoever about Mr. Reynold’s continue employment with it.” Reynolds also claimed that ESPN did not adequately investigate the alleged misconduct and still has not given him a copy of his personnel file as required by CT law.

All this adds up to “at least $5 million, including interest and lost past and future earnings.” Ouch.

As one ESPN insider told us, interns can be related to pretty powerful people in the sports community, so we have to wonder who this intern was whose complaint will result in ESPN losing a decent baseball announcer and at least $5mil.

Links:
[The Smoking Gun]: Announcer Sues ESPN Over “Hug” Firing

Categories
College Football

"That’s kinda… that’s kinda gay"

What would we do without YouTube?

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New York Giants

Michael Irvin and Tom Jackson respond to Tiki


After being called an idiot for the 5,608,874th time, Michael Irvin has decided to address Tiki Barber’s rant. In the New York Post today, Irvin defended his criticism of Tiki’s retirement announcement.


It kills his ability to lead. He is the leader of that football team. If I am a young guy and we are in a battle and we are banging heads and we are fighting. I’m out there getting hit and being hit and we are in a tough spot in a football game.

If I am in the line of battle and Tiki comes to me and says, ‘Come on, give me what you have!’ I’m going to look at him and say, ‘Aww, shut up. What are you talking about? You are quitting on us.’ This stuff will come out on the sideline.

Tom Jackson, for his part, said, “I thought that the name-calling seemed a bit unnecessary.” You gotta love Tom Jackson. It’s a shame he has to be paired alongside the unbearable Chris Berman.

To a man, the Giants have all said that Tiki’s retirement announcement has not been a distraction. Antonio Pierce said, “There is no quit in that guy. He is still our leader on offense.” And Plaxico Burress said, ” don’t feel it has been a distraction at all. I’m sure everyone can see the way he is playing, the way he is running.” Having Plaxico Burress commenting on anyone quitting is ironic since he’s liable to quit at any point in the season. At least with Tiki, you know you’ll get his all for the rest of this season.

Links:
[NY Post]: TV ‘IDIOTS’ FIRE BACK AT BARBER

Categories
New York Giants

Tiki Barber takes Michael Irvin off Christmas card list



idiot

We’ve always kind of liked Tiki Barber. As far as NY players go, he’s the one you least want to kill. So it comes as no surprise that he actually gets it and isn’t afraid to lash out at the retarded media and ESPN.

I will call them ‘idiots’ because they have neither spoken to me nor any one of my teammates or any of my coaches, yet all they do is criticize me for being a distraction with this retirement thing.

That includes [Daily News columnist] Gary Myers, that includes Tom Jackson on ESPN, that includes the ultimate character guy, facetiously speaking, of course, Michael Irvin [of ESPN], please get a clue how to be a journalist. Don’t make blanket assumptions about it.”

Barber then sarcastically wondered whether he looked distracted in helping the Giants beat the Cowboys Monday night.

Did Tiki really have to add “facetiously speaking, of course”? You’d have to be some kind of idiot to think that anyone would call Michael Irvin a character guy and be serious. Well, some kind of idiot or Deion Sanders. In the NFL version of hell, you’d have Deion, Irvin and Sean Salisbury doing the pregame.

Links:
[Newsday]: Tiki calls critis “idiots”

[Newsday]: Irvin: Retirement makes Tiki quitter

Categories
MLB General

Odds and Ends: It must be Thursday – Scoop Jackson plays the race card



“bad Nat X impersonation”

Scoop Jackson wrote an article today complaining (surprise, surprise) that there weren’t enough minorities in Sports Illustrated’s Oct 9th cover of baseball’s all time dream team. Of course, with every passing column, we are reminded about how accurate Jason Whitlock’s words were in an interview with The Big Lead.


…there’s a big dropoff from being associated with Ralph [Wiley], Hunter [S. Thompson] and Bill [Simmons] than being linked to someone doing a bad Nat X impersonation. It pissed me off that the dude tried to call himself the next Ralph Wiley and stated some [bleep] about carrying Ralph’s legacy. Ralph was one of my best friends. I hate to go all Lloyd Bentsen, but Scoop Jackson is no Ralph Wiley. Ralph was a grown-ass man who didn’t bojangle for anybody. Scoop is a clown. And the publishing of his fake ghetto posturing is an insult to black intelligence, and it interferes with intelligent discussion of important racial issues. Scoop showed up on the scene and all of a sudden I’m getting e-mails from readers connecting what I write to Scoop. And his stuff is being presented like grown folks should take it seriously. Please.

In other news…

[St. Petersburg Times]: Chris Simms turned down $10M in guaranteed money before this year… ooops

[Adfreak]: Make your own Cowboys cheerleader ad

[DC Sports Chick]: For the trashy chick you know

[Fox Sports]: Stephen Jackson booked and released

[Indy Star]: Police report from Stephen Jackson incident

[FloydLandis.com]: Floyd Landis defense is now online

Categories
General Sports

Finally! Mobile ESPN is dead

It’s been quite some time since we’ve seen that floppy haired jackass hawking Mobile ESPN around every corner. Since we don’t miss things that make us angry (except football in the offseason), we didn’t notice that the commercials have been pulled.  Well, we won’t ever see it or any stupid ESPN Mobile commercial again.  Proving that consumers aren’t completely retarded, the folks behind a $150M money losing pig-fuck have called it a day and will shut down operations.

For the 20 of you who got suckered into buying one of these phones (ESPN employees), the service will work until the end of the  year and you can get a refund on the purchase price of the phone.

We don’t know what exactly caused the service/product to fail.  Some would say that it’s the fact that ESPN made people switch to Sprint to get Mobile ESPN.  Or perhaps it’s the cost of $200 for a phone on top of a monthly charge of $35 to $225 and a 2 year contract.  Or perhaps it’s the fact that the phone only received ESPN-approved content.  Or perhaps they had a spokesman that actively made everyone HATE the product.

Good work Mobile ESPN.  Better scale back plans for that ESPN-only TV…

Links:
[Reuters]: Mobile ESPN to close down operations: WSJ

[Forbes]: Mobile ESPN Bites The Dust

Categories
NFL General

Sep 7 in Sports History: Pro Football Hall of Hame Opens in Canton


In 1963: The Pro Football Hall of Fame was dedicated in Canton, OH., where pro football originated. The original class had 17 members, including Red Grange, George Halas, Bronko Nagurski, Jim Thorpe and Sammy Baugh. There are now 235 members enshrined. A new class is selected each year the day before the Super Bowl, and is inducted in August.

In 1979: Although some thought the idea was ludicrous (Ron Burgundy included), The Entertainment and Sports Programming Network (ESPN) made its debut on cable television. ESPN started as a small operation showing off-the-wall sports like Aussie Rules football and strongest man competitions, but is now a global empire that includes MLB, NBA and NFL telecasts. It’s available in over 80 million homes and has dozens of networks, including ESPN2, ESPN Classic and channels on each continent.