April 29th, 2013 will be remembered as an important day in American pro sports as Jason Collins came out in a Sports Illustrated exclusive as the first active gay athlete in the four major sports.

It will not be remembered as the day the New York Jets replaced Tim Tebow or the day after the 8th seeded Los Angeles Lakers were swept from the NBA Playoffs.

And yet, if you watched ESPN in the minutes and hours after the Collins story was published, you would have thought the reverse was true.  It took SportsCenter 45 minutes after the news hit at 11 AM ET until Chris McKendry broke into a "live" episode of Tebow/LakersCenter with a thoughtful interview with LZ Granderson on the Collins story at 11:45 AM.  The 12 PM ET SportsCenter had another McKendry interview with SI's Jon Wertheim and statements and reaction from around the NBA, but that was sandwiched between in-depth Tebow and Lakers coverage, which dominated ESPN airwaves.  Tebow's release led that episode of SportsCenter, and each live edition that preceded it Monday morning.

In fact, Tim Tebow's name was mentioned 25 times on the 12 PM ET SportsCenter before Jason Collins.  Mark Sanchez was mentioned 10 times before Collins' name was.  Kobe Bryant and Dwight Howard both garnered 14 mentions before the Collins story was acknowledged at 12:17 PM ET.  

The network needed to deliver more perspective and should have listened to their most respected journalist and anchor, Bob Ley.

Today, Jason Collins came out to the world. Not only that, he did so exclusively and in the first person to Sports Illustrated. Collins is currently an NBA Free Agent and has been a center in the league for 12 years, but is the first active player in major American professional sports to be openly gay.

He writes:

The biggest storyline as far as the coverage of the NFL Draft heading into the 2013 version was the commotion about NFL insiders tipping picks.  After a couple years of reporters like Adam Schefter beating television with their reports, ESPN and the NFL Network came to an agreement to not spoil picks ahead of time on television.  No tweets.  No insider flashes.  No draftees on phones in the green room.  In truth, ESPN and NFL Network were listening to the fans as a wide majority wanted to first hear the selections from the podium.  Both networks by and large held firm to that strategy over the three days of the draft and kept fans happy by preserving the drama of those announcements for their viewers.

But tipping picks on television and tipping picks on Twitter should be two separate things.  Just because ESPN hid Adam Schefter's blackberry didn't mean picks weren't being tipped by others.  A number of NFL reporters NOT working for ESPN and NFL Network were free to try and do what they always do - break news.  One of those individuals was Jason La Canfora of CBS, who was under no pressure, edict, or moral obligation to stop doing his job to protect the television product that is the draft.  He even warned followers last Wednesday:

To all the Tweets about people unfollowing me, I have a job to do and if you dont want the info, that's cool. I get it. No one has to follow

— Jason La Canfora (@JasonLaCanfora) April 24, 2013

I'm not trying to win votes and for every person unfollowing, others will want the info. It's about reporting info, not silly Twitter count

— Jason La Canfora (@JasonLaCanfora) April 24, 2013

La Canfora also tweeted the link to an interview at the Sherman Report that specifically said he would be tweeting any and all draft information (aka tipping picks) as often and as soon as possible...

How will I approach covering the draft Thurs nigh, including on Twitter?:shermanreport.com/no-restriction…

— Jason La Canfora (@JasonLaCanfora) April 24, 2013

At this point it should have been clear that La Canfora would be trying to have the draft picks before television viewers.  And it was a great situation for him with his top competition (Schefter, Mortensen, Glazer) not engaged in tweeting picks.  La Canfora had the breaking news space almost to himself, which at any other time of year would be a reporter's dream.

Nevertheless, throughout the entire draft, people on Twitter were angry at Jason La Canfora for doing what he said he was going to do.  Very.  Angry.

Thankfully, we haven't heard too much noise lately from the Bristol underworld kingdom of First Take.  Tim Tebow's NFL career being on life support and the brilliant play of LeBron James have worked against two of the show's long-standing pillars - that Tebow is a winner and James is not.  Instead of building a show on a solid foundation of insight and analysis, ESPN built First Take on the shifting sands of Skip Bayless and his brand of carnival barking and now the show will wander through the wilderness until Bayless finds another pantomime villian or hero to sink his teeth into.

But make no mistake, First Take is still an abomination and this must still be recognized by the public at large.  The New York Post did just that as First Take earned the dubious distinction of being named one of the 20 worst shows on television by the tabloid.  Keep in mind this declaration is coming from the New York Post, which isn't exactly a beacon of journalistic integrity, so it should carry double the dosage of shame:

It's a black day in Bristol as the New York Jets released Tim Tebow the day after the NFL Draft.  Normally, a team releasing a third string QB would not be worth DEFCON 1 status, but this is ESPN, and this is Tim Tebow.  There were air raid sirens going off in Bristol, Connecticut once the news broke and ESPN swiftly relapsed into full blown TebowMania coverage.  That relapse gave the internet the gift of once again mocking ESPN for its TebowMania coverage.  And that never gets old.  As always, these are Real Tweets from Real People...

Let's set the stage.  It's the final day of the season in England's League One, which is two divisions below the Premier League.  2nd place Doncaster is on the road at 3rd place Brentford.  The top two finishers in League One earn automatic promotion to the Championship while 3rd place must try to earn promotion through a 4 team playoff.  Doncaster needed only a draw to clinch promotion while Brentford needed a victory.

In the final minute of the game, with the score 0-0, Brentford earns a penalty kick after a handball in the box.  Marcello Trotta steps up to take the penalty kick and blasts his shot off the crossbar.  With almost every outfield player near the penalty area, Doncaster clears the ball to midfield where a 2 on 1 break develops and James Coppinger pokes the game winner home at the opposite end of the ground.  Doncaster wins the game 1-0 and wins promotion as League One champions while Brentford stays in 3rd place on the table.

Considering the stakes involved and the once-in-a-lifetime sequence of events, it's one of the most improbable endings to a soccer game you may ever see, or any sporting event for that matter.

After A.J. Clemente dropped the f-bomb heard round the viral world, he then made his rounds on pretty much every talk show you can name off the top of your head. 

One of those shows was David Letterman's, in which Clemente expresses an interest in working for ESPN. Dave, ever the realist, tells him, "that aint gonna happen."

RUDE!

Mistakes happen, mistakes on live television happen, and everyone always moves on. At the very least, Clemente should find another job SOMEWHERE, because as Letterman points out, people who have been in the business far longer than Clemente have done the same thing and come out unscathed.

Dave obviously forgot about Lee Corso dropping an f-bomb on College Gameday and a thousand other people who have swore on ESPN airwaves and only had to issue a forced apology. (Scott Van Pelt, Ron Jaworski, Neil Everett, etc. etc.) Surely ESPN could consider hiring Clemente, who has humbly admitted to his mistake and apologized more than once. In fact, he may be a perfect fit there.

H/T Sportsgrid

All Times Eastern

College Football
College Football Live -- ESPN, 3:30 p.m.

College Softball
Virginia Tech at Virginia -- ESPNU, 7 p.m.

English Premier League
Aston Villa vs. Sunderland -- Fox Soccer, 2:55 p.m.

Kelly Nash, the Tampa Bay Rays reporter for Sun Sports was in Boston's Fenway Park over the weekend to do some advance reporting for her network. On Saturday, she decided to go to Fenway's famed Green Monster seats to take some pictures from the park to show to her family.

Nash was in the seats during batting practice and as she put in her own words: 

"(My producer) had called out 'heads up!' a few times while I was taking pictures around the left field section, but none of those balls actually fell close to me, so I took my chances turning my back on batting practice for a picture."

As she felt it was safe, Kelly turned her back to the field and quickly snapped a pic. As she would find out later, a ball came quite close to hitting her square on the ol' noggin. The odds of snapping that picture at that exact moment are astronomical, so astronomical in fact that Nash will be on GMA tomorrow morning to talk about the self-portrait.

She adds:

"I laughed pretty hard when I saw such a surreal picture that I had no idea I took. I thought, you have got to be kidding me, maybe there ARE really angels in the outfield. I actually brought the movie with me on the trip and had it in my bag at the game."

Kelly is pretty lucky that she didn't get hit. And the moral of the story, kids? Never turn your back on batting practice especially if you're standing on top of the Green Monster 

[Fox Sports Florida]

All Times Eastern

College Baseball
Purdue at Michigan State -- Big Ten Network, noon
TCU at Kansas State -- Fox College Sports Atlantic, noon
Texas Tech at Oklahoma -- Fox College Sports Atlantic, 2 p.m.
South Carolina at LSU -- ESPN, 3 p.m.
Stanford at Oregon -- ESPNU, 3:30 p.m.
North Carolina at North Carolina State -- ESPNU, 7 p.m.

College Lacrosse
Men's
ACC Championship, Chapel Hill, NC
Virginia vs. North Carolina -- ESPNU, 1 p.m.

Patriot League Championship, Bethlehem, PA
Bucknell vs. Lehigh -- CBS Sports Network, 3 p.m.

Women's
Atlantic 10 Championship, Amherst, MA
UMass vs. Duquense -- CBS Sports Network, 1 p.m.

College Softball
Iowa State at Oklahoma -- Fox College Sports Central, 1 p.m.
Michigan at Nebraska -- Big Ten Network, 3 p.m.