It's been a sad day for SportsCenter as there is now a moratorium on the source of 41% of their material - LeBron James tweets.  King James is taking a break from Twitter and is turning off his cell phone so he can focus on leading the Heat through the playoffs.  After Miami's Game 2 victory over Milwaukee, TNT's Craig Sager cheerfully asked James about cutting himself off from the outside world and unveiled himself as a Carly Rae Jepsen fan in one swoop.  That's why he's the best.

H/T Beyond the Buzzer

If you haven't heard, there's a new intriguing entry to the ever growing sports content space with the recent launch of USA Today's For The Win. What is For The Win and what does the future hold for the evolving USA Today Sports Media Group? Director of Content Development and former Blogfather at Yahoo as well as AOL's Fanhouse, Jamie Mottram was good enough to share some insight into the new venture as well as some about the sports media space in general. Thanks to him for taking the time to answering these questions without the oversight and guidance of any PR suits. 

Ben Koo: You’ve been at USA Today for about 9 months. How long has FTW been in development and what did you and your colleagues see in the general sports content space that led you to believe there was room for a new entry?

Jamie Mottram: I came in last August with the idea for FTW, and it was something we knew we wanted to do, but we didn’t break ground on it until 2013. From there it took about three months to brand, design, build, staff, etc.

We knew we wanted to create a sports news site focused on so-called social content and that it should work great across devices, especially phones. Not really revolutionary stuff, but we didn’t see anything else like that out there.

After watching a mere 38 seconds of Ryan Lochte's E! reality show, "What Would Ryan Lochte Do?" it was clear the journey ahead would be a bumpy ride into the inane depths of a universe that is not our own.  The show's opening of Lochte stumbling over his lines made it clear everyone involved was in on the joke - a reality show centered on an Olympic athlete who doubles as an Olympic meathead.  After a few more minutes of watching the show, the "highlights" already included Lochte not being able to explain his catchphrase "Jeah", saying he lived by the classic philosophical mantra "Go big or go home", and even asking "What is a douchebag?"

Ed Note: This article appears courtesy Bloguin's national NHL blog Puck Drunk Love.

On Monday evening, the Pittsburgh Penguins traveled to Scotiabank Place to take on the Ottawa Senators in their first trip to the Canadian capital since Erik Karlsson’s Achilles tendon was partially severed by Cooke's skate. While the spotlight should’ve been on the Penguins’ 3-1 victory, the main headline became about an interaction between Cooke and Don Brennan, a reporter for the Ottawa Sun. 

Let’s start with the title where Don Brennan refers to himself in the third person:

Time to open another edition of the notebook. Let's go over some of the sports media stories that are circulating this week...

Michael Hiestand of USA Today says the Indianapolis 500 on ABC will have a new host in May, ESPN's Lindsay Czarniak who replaces Brent Musburger. Czarniak once hosted NASCAR on TNT before joining ESPN in 2011.

Sports Illustrated's Richard Deitsch outlines how ESPN and NFL Network will cover this week's NFL Draft.

Sports Illustrated will have a special regional cover for Boston this week.

Staying with the Boston theme, Mike Reynolds of Multichannel News writes that NESN saw big weekend ratings for the Red Sox and Bruins.

Also from Multichannel, Andrea Morabito reports that Golf Channel will begin live streaming its network 24/7 for authenticated cable subscribers.

At the Indiana University National Sports Journalism Center, Ed Sherman writes that Twitter will be front and center during the NFL Draft this week.

We learned on Tuesday that ESPN named former New York Times writer Robert Lipsyte as its new Ombudsman. Lipsyte talks with the New Republic's Marc Tracy about being the independent voice of ESPN.

ESPN.com's Brett McMurphy notes the name of the new college football playoff will be "College Football Playoff." What?

To Sports Media Watch where Paulsen notes that the Oklahoma City Thunder and the Miami Heat had the best ratings among all local NBA markets.

Scott L. Smith from the Stamford (CT) Advocate writes that NBC Sports not only has a state-of-the-art production facility in town, but also some very impressive hardware from various sports.

Super Beta Prostate spokesman Joe Theismann made a guarantee to a DC sports radio station that Washington quarterback Robert Griffin III will be ready when the team kicks off its 2013 regular season. I wonder if Theismann was able to make that prediction while running to the bathroom.

Bob Carlton of the Birmingham (AL) News says sports radio talk show host Paul Finebaum is a free agent and is talking to ESPN about possibly becoming a contributor. Finebaum can be heard nationallly on SiriusXM.

CBS Sports Network will re-air some of Floyd "Money" Mayweather's previous fights in advance of his May 4 bout with Robert Guerrero.

And that will close this edition of the notebook.

What in the superficial nonsense hell was CBS Houston thinking when they allowed this anonymous craptastic mess to be published? The Houston Rockets are playing the Oklahoma City Thunder in the playoffs right now and the local affiliate in Houston took it upon themselves to single out an OKC cheerleader by asking if she was "too chunky" in a poorly written, humiliating embarrassment to civilized society.

The answer is no. No, she is not too chunky.

Seriously though, why why WHY did this get published? How could this anonymous hot garbage make it through presumably multiple human beings to see the light of day? In a time when no one is ever satisfied with anyone else's appearance, this is the last thing we need to be reading. 

All Times Eastern

Boxing
All Access: Mayweather vs. Guerrero, Episode 3 -- Showtime, 10 p.m.

College Football
College Football Live -- ESPNU, 3:30 p.m.
CFB Daily: Spring Blitz -- ESPNU, 4:30 p.m.
Inside College Football: Draft Special: On the Clock -- CBS Sports Network, 7 p.m.
Inside College Football: Draft Special: Mock Draft -- CBS Sports Network, 8 p.m.

College Softball
Michigan State at Ohio State -- Big Ten Network, 4 p.m.
Michigan State at Ohio State -- Big Ten Network, 6:30 p.m.

Golf
School of Golf: Chapter 11: Golf's Invisible Secret -- Golf Channel, 7 p.m.
On the Range: New Orleans Classic -- Golf Channel, 8 p.m.
Equipment Insider -- Golf Channel, 9 p.m.

Mixed Martial Arts
UFC 159: Jones vs. Sonnen-Preview -- Fuel, 7 p.m.
UFC Ultimate Insider -- Fuel, 7:30 p.m.

On Monday, the presidents of the ACC school approved a grant of media rights for the conference through the 2026-2027 season. What that means is that until the expiration of the contract, each school's media rights (revenue included) for each home game will remain with the ACC, no matter which conference the school is a member of. For example, if UNC jumps ship to the Big Ten, all of their media rights revenue will end up in the coffers of the ACC as opposed to the Big Ten.

Essentially, what this agreement does is ends the possibility that other conferences will be able to poach schools from the ACC to expand. The Big Ten, Pac-12, and Big 12 all already have these agreements in place, but oddly, the SEC doesn't have one (yet). So for any conference to expand, they'd need to look at the mid-major conferences: the AAC, MAC, Conference USA, Mountain West, and Sun Belt. The SEC remains in play for expansion, but I think it goes without saying that it would take an act from above to make a team bail on that conference, especially with the pending announcement of the SEC Network.

Chael Sonnen was in Bristol on Tuesday going through the ESPN car wash to promote his light heavyweight title fight with Jon Jones on Saturday at UFC 159. At the end of his interview with Sage Steele on SportsCenter, Sonnen went into hard sell mode, and it all began with him asking to feel Steele's hair. After confirming that the anchor's hair was real and that he loves it, Sonnen admitted he doesn't hate anyone, especially women...and then looked towards the camera in the style of The Rock, raising his eyebrow towards the camera.

The sales pitch for the fight was even more impressive, considering that Sonnen is a 6:1 underdog and that Jones isn't too much on his end to promote his title defense. Just with his words, Sonnen is coming off as the more confident, favored fighter, even though the common belief is that he's going to get smashed by Jones. 

Fighters everywhere could take a lesson from Sonnen's brash, albeit eccentric, personality. His ability to push the fight like no other is something that is invaluable to the UFC, and him overcoming the odds and winning the title would be a huge boon towards fight cards for the rest of the year for the company.

During Game 2 of the Clippers-Grizzlies NBA playoff series on Monday night, Memphis was making a comeback late in the fourth quarter. Darrell Arthur broke free of Los Angeles defenders, dunked the ball, and was fouled by Lamar Odom.

Of course, play by play commentator Dick Stockton completely ignored the dunk, saying that in fact, Odom prevented Arthur from making the basket. In such a close playoff game with a minute and a half to play, two points isn't that big of a big deal, right? This seems to be par for the course for Stockton, and you wonder how many more years TNT is going to stick with him calling playoff basketball.

[CJZero]