TSN SportsCentre anchors Jay Onrait and Dan O'Toole appear to be the first anchors hired for Fox Sports One. A report surfaced earlier today from Toronto Sports Media signaling that the popular duo would be leaving TSN for Fox, and a press release from TSN confirmed the news but kept Fox's name out of it, instead saying that the pair would be "heading to Los Angeles for exciting new broadcast opportunities on U.S. television."
Editorial Note: We're proud to announce Dave Warner as an addition to Awful Announcing. This article appears courtesy Dave's site, What You Pay For Sports. We'll be syndicating some of Dave's work at AA and feature original pieces in the weeks to come.
Do you live in SEC Country? Do you pay for cable or satellite TV? Congratulations! Your cable bill is going up yet another 80 cents per month next year!
Of course, if you’re an alumnus or fan of an Southeastern Conference school, you probably won’t mind, as that 80 cents will pay for the new SEC Network, which was formally announced today in conjunction with ESPN. The new network will launch in August of 2014, and ESPN president John Skipper insisted that it would be a “national network” on par with ESPNU, which is currently in 74 million homes.
Getting the SEC Network into that many homes, of course, will require a bit of massaging. After all, this channel won’t be able to fetch nearly as much money in Michigan or California as it will in Alabama and Mississippi. The bulk of the SEC Network’s viewership will be in the 11 states where SEC schools are located. That’s where the subscriber fees will be the highest.
On Wednesday night, I flipped my TV over to ESPN at 7 PM to watch the Nationals-Braves game. I was planning on writing a review of ESPN's experiment with commentators at field level, but lo and behold, I was treated to a block of ESPNEWS instead. I immediately realized I was getting blacked out, which makes sense (since I'm in Washington's viewing area), but makes no sense at the same time since I was able to watch Monday's Nationals-Braves game on ESPN with no issues whatsoever.
That's right, two games in the same series fell under different blackout rules.
Earlier this week we all had a good laugh when CSN Chicago reporter Susannah Collins had a slip of the tongue and said the Blackhawks had a tremendous amount of "sex" this season. It was a harmless Freudian slip that happens dozens of times on dozens of networks around the country. And yet, for Susannah Collins, her brief blooper led to a series of events that caused CSN Chicago to fire her thanks to a past life on the internet.
First, it was Erin Andrews. Then, it was Michelle Beadle. Next, it was Rachel Nichols and Jenn Brown. Now, it's Charissa Thompson that's leaving ESPN, continuing a trend over the last year of female talent abandoning the Worldwide Leader for greener pastures. According to The Big Lead Thompson will reportedly be landing at Fox, her employer prior to joining ESPN two summers ago.
The 2013 NHL regular season was a tremendous one for NBC. In a recent release the network says that more fans watched the NHL regular season on NBC Sports Network this year than in any previous year since they started broadcasting games in 2005-06.
Australian Rules Football
North Melbourne Kangaroos vs. Port Adelaide Power -- Fox Soccer Plus, midnight
Boxing
Mayweather vs. Guerrero: Weigh-In -- CBS Sports Network, 6 p.m.
College Baseball
Arkansas at Kentucky -- Fox College Sports Pacific, 6:30 p.m.
Alabama at Mississippi State -- ESPNU, 7 p.m.
Oklahoma State at Texas Tech -- Fox College Sports Atlantic, 7:30 p.m.
Kansas State at Texas -- Longhorn Network, 7:30 p.m.
San Jose State at New Mexico State -- Fox College Sports Pacific, 9:30 p.m.
Stanford at Arizona State -- ESPNU, 10 p.m.
College Football
College Football Live -- ESPN, 3:30 p.m.
College Lacrosse
Johns Hopkins at Army -- CBS Sports Network, 7:30 p.m.
The Warriors tried everything humanly possible to throw away Game 6 and possibly the series against the Nuggets Thursday night, somehow escaping an epic choke job with a 92-88 victory. After the game, TNT showed a brief clip from the Golden State locker room of analyst Reggie Miller joining Warriors coach Mark Jackson. Folks are mildly up in arms about seeing an analyst and coach together in such a celebratory mood, but remember that Jackson and Miller were teammates for a long while in Indiana.
What is noteworthy about this clip is Reggie Miller swearing and having it get past the Turner censors, although I think Mark Jackson is more effective at stamping out foul language than whoever is behind the switch at TNT.
And, randomly, it caught the attention of one of the authorities on swear words - Samuel L. Jackson.
Did I hear "where all that Shit came from" outta Reggie Miller?!!!
Montreal Canadiens center Lars Eller is currently in a hospital after suffering a concussion, facial fractures, and dental fractures after a brutal hit from Eric Gryba of the Ottawa Senators. So what does the Ottawa Sun do? Put a picture of a stricken Elder lying on the ice in a pool of his own blood! Oh, and they also add the oh-so-clever caption "First Blood Sens" after a 4-2 Ottawa victory.
There's questionable tabloid newspaper covers. There's tasteless tabloid newspaper covers. Then there's this. How something like this gets published is just baffling. Concussions and head injuries are something we should TOTALLY be writing punny headlines about, you guys.
Days after blowing up Twitter and creating quite the controversy by suggesting that female reporters shouldn't be allowed in men's dressing rooms, Don Cherry defended his stance during the first intermission of the Leafs-Bruins playoff game Wednesday night on CBC, stating that "things that go on in the dressing room when the women are in there are disgusting."
Cherry alluded to a Cathal Kelly column in last week's Toronto Star, in which Kelly referenced a recent incident in the Boston Celtics dressing room at Air Canada Centre. "I watched a Boston player briefly dance around the room with a long, Styrofoam roll pad between his legs as a young woman tried to interview Jeff Green," wrote Kelly. But the strange thing is that Kelly actually took the opposite side of the argument in his column.
Grapes then attempted to cite recent polls that revealed the public agreed with his stance, but he was jumping all over the place. His point was that he's not alone here, and he's right about that.
But why should women who are willingly entering rooms be banned? They're adults and it's their choice, right? Cherry is right in that there are clearly some bad apples in pro sports locker rooms who are rude and sexist and disrespectful, but his solution is to punish those who are already being victimized. As Ron MacLean said in the above exchange, "the players have got to obey the law."
So if anything, pro sports teams and leagues should crack down further on the athletes, rather than altering the system and ruffling feathers in order to placate those who are at fault.
