Since the NBA/ABA merger, no player has had a better beginning to his NBA career as a starter than Jeremy Lin.

Subtract out his ethnicity, the fact the Knicks are undefeated in that stretch with a depleted team, that he wasn't offered a scholarship out of high school, that he went to to Harvard, and was as fringe as you could be in the NBA. Even without all those crazy storylines, the fact Lin sits atop that list is insane. (I'm not even going to grab the low hanging fruit of calling it Linsane.)

Even if Lin was the top pick of the draft, his run would be a major story and last night's better than Hollywood ending only perpetuates what continues to be one the most remarkable sports stories in recent history.

Regardless, there is a bit of an ominous feeling in the air as skepticism, disbelief, and enthusiastic dissenters of anything and everything seem to be waiting for the bubble to pop.

ESPN and others have covered the initial shock of Linsanity well, but looking to feed the wide spectrum of ESPN platforms with fodder sure to drive up page views, ratings, and fan interest, Lin has now become the target of ESPN producers as the topic du jour. Lin is on SportsCenter, Mike & Mike, SportsNation, First Take, The Herd, ESPNEWS, Numbers Never Lie, PTI, Around The Horn, and everywhere in between. ESPN's well orchestrated content farm is such overkill to many fans that it may turn people against Linsanity within the next two weeks. Just examine all the "tired of Linsanity" tweets already emerging.

There are only so many ways to cover a topic and some of the angles in trying to cover Jeremy Lin are going to smell of being ridiculously phony...

The NBC Sports Network finally has its flagship conference (or something), but it's not the Big East, or the ACC, or the Big Ten, or any major conference.

It's actually.... the Colonial Athletic Association.

The network and the conference announced the deal will start for the 2012-13 season. The deal will provide national coverage for CAA's football and men's basketball games, including the final two rounds of the CAA basketball tournament, and will feature coverage on NBCSports.com for various other sports. The network will show a minimum of 12 basketball games and five football games over the course of the season, with regional Comcast networks showing 39 more men's and women's basketball games.

This deal isn't the game-changer that NBC probably envisioned for their network, and I'm not sure what this means for the deal that Versus (the former NBCSN) had last season with the Mountain West (although it has combined with Conference USA for the ultimate mega mediocre conference). An FCS conference isn't exactly going to move the needle on talk about the network considering NBC was rumored to be in play for more NFL games on Thursday nights before NFL Network stepped in. The CAA had just one team (Old Dominion) winning ten games in 2011. As for basketball, the CAA is a lot more interesting. 2011 Final Four participant VCU is a member of the conference, as well as 2006 Final Four team George Mason. 

The broadcast deal seems like it'll be more beneficial for NBC for basketball as opposed to football, which is what I think they were going for in this situation. I'm pretty sure Versus didn't have very much basketball on prior to this deal, so it'll give the network a foothold in a major sport, no matter how small the CAA is. At some point though, NBCSN is going to have to catch some bigger fish if they want to be a major player.

[h/t: Baltimore Sun]

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Linsanity has struck again. In tonight's Knicks-Raptors game, New York trailed for most of the game, and were down by nine going into the fourth quarter. Jeremy Lin took the game over, and eventually, drained the game-winning three with just 0.5 seconds to give the Knicks the 90-87 victory.

We've been hearing about Lin, who finished with 27 points and 11 assists, ad nauseum over the past few days, especially after he out-dueled Kobe Bryant on Friday at Madison Square Garden. Welp, looks like we're going to be getting a lot more Lin in our lives on sports talk radio and TV tomorrow.

Could you imagine if Skip Bayless wasn't on vacation right now? First Take would be back to being so bad that it's good (as opposed to just being bad), with Bayless and his expected fellating of the Knicks star. 

Face it guys, we live in Jeremy Lin's world right now, and there's not a damn thing we can do about it. We might as well just kick our feet back and watch the impending chaos.

Update: Here's the home call from TSN in Canada with Matt Devlin to go along with Mike Breen's call on MSG above.  Happy VaLINtine's Day!!!

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Darren Rovell of CNBC is becoming a pretty polarizing figure among sports fans, and we all got a nice chuckle today on CNBC's Power Lunch for Valentine's Day. SI swimsuit covergirl Kate Upton was on the show, when out of nowhere, Rovell gets down on a knee and asks her to be his valentine. (The same Kate Upton that also poses in Rovell's Twitter avatar.) Without even taking a moment to think about it, Upton rejects Rovell, who awkwardly tells his wife that he loves her. You know, his pregnant wife.

There's no word yet on whether or not Rovell will unfollow Upton on Twitter for breaking rule #101 of his 100 Twitter Rules To Live By, "making an ass out of Darren on national TV." At least Darren still has his Friday night show on NBC Sports Network, although it hasn't been doing  that well in the viewership department.

To get back to Kate Upton for a minute, here's a commercial of her promoting MLB 2K12. I'm sure Rovell just wanted to learn how to throw a screwball, or something along those lines.

For the 20% of our readers who have Showtime and more specifically, the 5% of you who have Showtime and really like baseball, I have some good news for you. 

Showtime will be jumping into a second season of The Franchise and has selected an interesting team to feature this year in the Miami Marlins. Yeah, they're not the Florida Marlins anymore. Feel free to make a post-it note if needed here.

Here at AA, we're pretty fond of any all access documentary type program like 24/7, Hard Knocks, The Journey, Game of Honor, and The Franchise, so we're pleased to see Showtime doubling down on the series and finding a rather interesting team for us to follow.

The Marlins win big here as they're certainly on the upswing with a new manager, new talent, a new logo, and a new stadium. They'll get to essentially make overtures to local fans in hopes of ending the putrid reputation of Miami sports fans that includes not selling out an NFL playoff game, having fans arrive late for Heat games, and some almost completely empty Marlins games as recent as last year.

Showtime certainly will have some interesting storylines and characters to feature, but this will be a bit of a challenge as a good chunk of the ratings from last season came from the local Bay Area media market. Fresh off winning the World Series, the Giants fan-base was not only in a fever pitch for all things Giants, but a lot of casual fans and new fans found themselves drawn into the 2012 quest for a repeat. Miami certainly has a lot of good things going for them but I'd estimate their hardcore fans to be a pretty small fraction of the Giants, hence Showtime is going to have a tough time finding similar success ratings wise.

With that said, here's 5 things to watch for in the newest season of The Franchise...

Our Valentine's Day gift to you is a special one day college basketball announcing schedule for this Tuesday, February 14th.  If that picture of Jared Sullinger from Ohio State's famous Party In The USA video doesn't get you in the Valentine's Day spirit... well, then, what will?

Tuesday, February 14

7 PM- Florida at Alabama (ESPN, ESPN3) Brad Nessler, Jimmy Dykes, Shannon Spake

7 PM- Texas A&M at Texas Tech (ESPN2, ESPN3) Dave Armstrong, Paul Biancardi

7 PM- Virginia at Clemson (ESPNU, ESPN3) Carter Blackburn, Jay Willis

7 PM- William & Mary at Drexel (Comcast Sports Group) Mike Corey, Joe Lunardi

7 PM- Buffalo at Kent State (STO, ESPN3) Michael Reghi, Steve Mix

7 PM- Illinois State at Indiana State (Comcast Chicago+, ESPN3) Kurt Pegler, Bob Morris

7 PM- Saint John’s at Seton Hall (Big East Network, ESPN3) Mike Gleason, Bob Wenzel

7 PM- Georgia State at James Madison (ESPN3) Ted Sarandis, Pat Kennedy

7 PM- Virginia Military Institute at Liberty (ESPN3) Patrick Kinas, Nate Ross

7 PM- Loyola (Chicago) at Butler (WNDY, Lakeshore Public TV, ESPN3) Anthony Calhoun, Ralph Reiff

7:30 PM- UNLV at TCU (Mtn.) Tim Neverett, Bob Donewald

8 PM- Texas at Oklahoma (Big 12 Network, ESPN3) Doug Bell, Bryndon Manzer

8 PM- Cleveland State at Milwaukee (TWC Sports 32) Jim Barbar, Joel Cornette

8 PM- Creighton at Southern Illinois (KMTV, ESPN3) Travis Justice, Nick Bahe

9 PM- Ohio State at Minnesota (ESPN, ESPN3) Mike Tirico, Dan Dakich, Samantha Steele

9 PM- Mississippi State at LSU (ESPNU, ESPN3) Dari Nowkah, Dino Gaudio

9 PM- Virginia Commonwealth at George Mason (Comcast Sports Group)

9 PM- Northern New Mexico at New Mexico State (Aggie Vision, ESPN3) Glen Cerny, Jeff Matthews

11:59 PM- New Orleans at Hawaii (OC Sports) Kanoa Leahey, Tony Sellito, Artie Wilson

H/T Daniel!

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On Friday, we brought you the news of Clint Eastwood founding a new golf network. Today, we bring you this clip from the Pebble Beach Pro-Am this weekend. Eastwood was in the booth with CBS's Jim Nantz and Nick Faldo, and in the midst of Faldo explaining something with Eastwood staring at him, a light explodes. It looked like the light blew up just as Eastwood was about to say something too.

Eastwood has routinely made appearances in the CBS booth at the tournament and is an investor in Pebble Beach. I don't know if they actually let him talk about the new network or not, but I'm guessing that they wouldn't. Given the details of some of the network's programming ideas so far and CBS's relationship with Golf Channel through the PGA Tour, that's probably a good thing. Although, Clint Eastwood making random things blow up with his icy gaze could be a fun thing to add for more golf telecasts down the road. At least he didn't tell the golfers to get off his lawn. 

H/T Jason!

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Terrell Owens is not happy these days. He's a thirty-eight-year-old receiver that's out of the NFL recovering from a serious knee injury that he might have suffered while filming his VH1 show. Many would argue his questionable injury status, diminishing stats, age and negative reputation make it quite obvious why TO's future NFL prospects are bleak. According to Owens, those aren't the reasons why he's not in the NFL, instead this is what he had to say to Dallas radio station KESN-FM on this subject,

"(The reason) I didn't get picked up was that a lot of general managers bought into the fact that the media thinks that I'm this bad guy, this rebel guy, this disruptive guy that divides and messes up team's chemistry."

And who could blame him? Didn't you SEE him dominate in the 2012 Celebrity Beach Bowl? He looked fantastic! He made those celebrities out there look like amateurs!

Sure, it does look like David Arquette might be bringing him down in that picture, but how soon do we forget that David Arquette was once a wrestling world champion?

Wait, scratch that entire thing. That's the media's Merril Hoge catching a ball in front of Owens. If you allow Hoge to get open/intercept a pass in front of you in the Celebrity Beach Bowl then you probably shouldn't be taking up a roster spot in the NFL next year. Also, I feel like we are throwing around the word "celebrity" too much if Merril Hoge apparently qualifies as one.

You gotta hand it to Owens though. The stunning naivety of going on a media station and explaining that the media are to blame for his situation doesn't even faze him. With Randy Moss announcing his return to the NFL, the market for malcontent aging WR's who missed the 2011 season is heating up.

[Dallas News]

Like a kid at Christmas time, I'm overjoyed each week to find a new Youtube video documenting the latest Gol TV telecast and the commentary of one Ray Hudson.  Ray's announcing is so unique and magisterial that he deserves a themed post (and the lame extent of my crappy photoshopping skills)... also the fact that Ray is an announcer that lives on another planet at times helps too.  Just this year he's offered up gems like "brilliance on steroids," "like Dracula onto a plate of liver," and "Warp speed, Doctor Spock!!" Therefore, welcome to Ray's World, where you never know what to expect.  It's kind of like Journey 2: The Mysterious Island, except actually worth your time.  As always, we'll have the highlight package from the game and the transcript of Ray's goal calls.  This week, Barcelona and Osasuna take a trip into Ray's World...

1-0 Lekic (:12)

"Wonderful from the Serbian international, but again Barcelona hesitant and this underdog comes out and shows its big fangs.  It's a lovely ball through to Lekic who makes no mistake, there's no chance for Valdes this time.  It's his defense that are caught napping.  And it started way deep with a bad giveaway early.

I'm tellin ya man, the conditions and the pitch and the attitude always feeds in to an underdog like this... The ball's played into Garcia I believe, who knocks it onto Lekic, Phil.  But again, that's quality buildup.  That little touch there sets the table and he is absolutely unhesitant.  Detonates it.  And absolutely sends a serious question now to FC Barcelona."

2-0 Lekic (1:58)

"CATASTROPHE FOR BARCELONA AND AGAIN IT'S BIG LEKIC THAT COMES IN AND PUNCHES THE LUNGS OF BARCELONA WITH CLASS!!!  This is good football!  This isn't down to the conditions, or the hard surface, or anything else.  This is focused football from a red team that's knitting their team together with impressive style.  This is a quality goal again from the big #9..."

2-1 Alexis (4:50)

"It's a magnificent finish from the Chilean international but it's the stardust of Cuenca who is starting to turn this game!  Isaac Cuenca is absolutely brilliant, he's been superb since he's got in and he's been stitchin beautifully and Roberto again is involved.  The kids come through for Barca, these beautiful babes.  Set away from Thiago is Isaac Cuenca and a lovely, considerate, triggered in ball.  Dani Alves goes over the top and I tell ya what, that's not an easy finish although it looks it and the adams apple goes bonkers..."

3-1 Raul Garcia (5:42)

"Raul Garcia uses the upright as his kisshole point and again it's quality football from the Reds.  Knitting it together.  Barcelona has one chance to get it out of dodge and they don't take it.  This one needed to be whacked into the stands I believe when they had half a chance to clear the lines.  But again, the Reds capitalize beautifully.  Raul Garcia attacks this ball that's triggered into him..."

3-2 Tello (8:04)

"Good BALLL... MAGNIFICENT FROM TELLO!... ABSOLUTELY WONDERFUL!... Cesc Fabregas has a lot to do with this, nicely finds Tello, but it's all down to the kid.  Again, wonderful calmness and a killer touch on the kid with the cherub face...  There's the release, he puts lovely, wonderful spin on this.  He puts Nino on his back like a turtle right there and then hammerblows it home into the only area he could get it through!"

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On Saturday, College Gameday was in Vanderbilt for their game with Kentucky. The Commodores lost the game 69-63 despite the homecourt edge, but UK fans were rubbed the wrong way before the game started thanks to ESPN analyst Digger Phelps's pre-Gameday speech to the crowd, which had a large Kentucky contingent throughout.

"We've been with you at Kentucky.  This is Vandy's home game... listen to me... listen to me... it's their home game, you are a part of it, but you show respect for Vandy.  I don't want any nonsense, I don't want any incidents.  Don't ruin this for College Gameday."

As you see in the video, Phelps told the Kentucky fans that, essentially, they needed to behave and be respectful to Vanderbilt, because it was their home game and he didn't want Big Blue Nation to "ruin" their show. Well what fun does that make things? Could you imagine if before the Iron Bowl, Kirk Herbstreit grabbed a mic and told the Auburn fans who were assembled at Bryant-Denny Stadium that they needed to respect the Tide and not "ruin this for College Gameday?"

What a sanctimonious, ridiculous move from Digger Phelps. I also like how he decided to drag the serviceman out after his little speech to gain favor from the entire crowd. If you try to control a fanbase that's invading a road game, all you're going to do is rile them up even more and cause more issues. Did Digger honestly think UK fans would hear this speech and think, "he's right. We need to respect Vandy and keep our emotions in check. This is THEIR court and HIS television show!" Please. 

[video via Lost Lettermen]

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