Yes, yes, yes, it's been a while since we've checked in on AA's favorite political punching bag, Craig James.  The analyst turned Senate candidate is still chugging along in Texas well behind the front of the field.  Recently, we told you about his front-running endorsement of Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum... hasn't really helped James in the polls.  Then, there were the questionable comments James made towards homosexuals.  Now, surprisingly, it's someone else who is in the news because they are supporting James' Senate run.

I know, it's shocking to me, too.  Someone actually thought it was a good idea to publicly support James' fledgling political career.  Even more surprising is that the endorsement for James has come from a fellow football analyst.  Of course, this time it's none of James' former coworkers at ESPN that would be crazy enough to come out in public support.  Instead it's FOX NFL analyst, and fellow Texan, Daryl "Moose" Johnston.  Moose has switched his support from Tom Leppert, the former mayor of Dallas, to James.  

And just how does Johnston explain his support of James?  

“I knew him as a man. I knew him as a husband and father. I’ve always respected his integrity. And I really, really respect him for doing this.”

“When we talk, we come from the same perspective. So for me, it was pretty simple.”

It certainly seems that Johnston knows a different Craig James than those that know him in the blogosphere.  Integrity?  Respect?  Same perspective?  Did Moose Johnston also try to get his child's college coach fired?  Perhaps Daryl Johnston has been hanging around Tony Siragusa too long and it has clouded his judgment.  Oh, and don't worry, I'll resist the easy jokes about Johnston (the fullback) leading the way as a blocker for James (the halfback).  Crap, does that count?

[Dallas Morning News]

Those of you that follow this site closely will know my admiration for nearly everything Aussie, especially their sports and commentators.  I'm more of a rugby union and Aussie Rules football fan myself, but this video from the NRL, Australia's National Rugby League, is too good not to share.  The following clip takes us to the rivalry game between the Sydney Roosters and South Sydney Rabbitohs in the opening week of the 2012 NRL season.  

Sydney find themselves trailing by two with the final hooter approaching and one last gasp chance to rescue the game.  Just listen to the Aussie commentators go absolutely bonkers as Sydney string passes together and break through the South Sydney line of defense.  In a dramatic finish, Anthony Minichiello races behind the defense and latches on to a grubber kick from Boyd Cordner to win the game in heroic fashion for Sydney, 24-20.  Here's the outstanding call from Triple M radio in Australia...

[H/T Techster_54]

The Miami Heat-Los Angeles Lakers game on Sunday, March 4th, drew a record amount of viewership for a non-Christmas, regular season NBA game on ABC. The game averaged 7.037 million viewers, and drew a 4.3 rating, tied for the highest all-time with a Lakers-Celtics game from last January.

Interestingly, the game received a higher rating in Miami (13.9) than it did in Los Angeles (9.6). Could this be a sign that the Lakers are losing some of their local market to the Clippers this year? Perhaps.

National interest in the game was high after Heat star Dwayne Wade broke Lakers icon Kobe Bryant's nose in the All-Star Game a week and half ago. Bryant has been wearing a facemask since the incident, including during Sunday's game. The game was also marketed as one of the NBA's "Latin heritage nights" with the teams branded as "El Heat" and "Los Lakers." If you're going to be that transparent with a PR attempt, at least translate the teams' names too. "El Heat" just sounds ridiculous.

[h/t: LA Times]

Last night was a great night for buzzer beaters in the NBA.  The most notable was reigning MVP Derrick Rose's step back jumper to lead the Chicago Bulls to a victory at the Milwaukee Bucks.  Rose got the ball with 18.1 seconds left and the game tied at 104 and nailed the game winner over Brandon Jennings.  

In looking at buzzer beaters, it's always fun to see both sides of the coin.  There's the jubilant reaction of fans and announcers for their team that scores an exciting victory... and the depression and misery of fans and announcers seeing their team lose in one of the most crushing ways possible.

Let's get the bad news first with Bucks announcers Jim Paschke and Jon McGlocklin...

The call of the losing end of the buzzer beater is high unintentional comedy.  Rarely is the shot ever actually called as it happens.  McGlocklin bemoaningly asks, "Is that the first jumper he's made tonight?  I think it is..." as if it's a surprise that the MVP of the league would do such a thing.  Paschke rather matter of factly states Rose got to 30 points and the Bulls won the game.  All that's missing is the sad violin music.  

Now for the good news with Bulls announcers Neil Funk and the always colorful Stacey King, who takes over the call of the game winner with his trademark shouting and nicknaming...

For this buzzer beater, it's all about the euphoric, screaming analyst that takes the reigns from his play by play man.  "LET ME STEP BACK AND KISS MYSELF!!!  MVP TIME!!!  WINDY CITY ASSASSIN DOES IT AGAIN!!!"  Stacey King follows that up with a subtle dig at LeBron James talking about superstars taking and making clutch shots (bravo) and makes smooching noises.  That's the difference in being on the winning and losing side of a buzzer beater.

Eight hours of live Tour de France coverage, long a cornerstone of NBC Sports Network programming when it was Versus and the Outdoor Life Network, will be moving from NBC Sports to NBC this summer. NBC will also be airing taped coverage of the first and final stages of the Tour.

All of the Tour coverage will take place on weekends, with the taped events coming in two hour blocks on July 1st and 22nd, and the live events happening on July 7th and 8th. The two live races, the seventh and eighth stages of the Tour, will take place from 8 AM until noon. The first stage will be aired in a condensed tape delay from 4 to 6 PM, and the final stage will air on a condensed tape delay from 1 to 3 PM.

NBC Sports Network isn't totally screwed though, as the network will continue to air a whopping near 14 hours of coverage during each stage of the race. I honestly don't know how in the hell they'll be able to squeeze 14 hours of coverage out of each stage, but this is an experienced team covering the event.

At first, this seems like a pretty big blow to NBC Sports Network, but at the end of the day, it's only two live stages that they're losing. The problem is that those two stages are coming on a weekend, where more people would be likely to tune in. Exacerbating the point is that the two stages are both mountain stages, which are more competitive and as a result, more entertaining.

This move can only benefit the Tour de France though, as the event will sure draw more viewers on broadcast TV as opposed to a second-tier cable network. As for NBC's logic behind the move... maybe they wanted to give the Tour a nice push by featuring some of its more entertaining stages on NBC, with the hope that more people will click over to NBCSN during the rest of the Tour to watch more stages, and give the struggling network a ratings boost.

[h/t: TV By the Numbers]

This monstrosity took place on the 11 PM SportsCenter. With coverage of Peyton Manning absolutely dominating the ESPN airwaves, the producers of SportsCenter felt it was necessary to have Stuart Scott read a... love letter or sorts to Peyton Manning from the point of view of a generic team looking to sign Manning. Note the lovely piano music in the background as Scott shifts between fangirl, hero-worshipping child, and desperate GM in his note to Manning. 

Oh lord, this was painful. Can we get another poetry jam or two? At least Stu isn't doing this at live events to athletes' faces. Could you imagine if he started dropping his poetry jam skills in front of Kobe or delivered a sonnet to Peyton Manning about how great he is? Actually... that could be very entertaining TV, and would probably give us fresh material for a couple of weeks. MAKE IT HAPPEN!

Earlier this week, you met high school basketball announcer Brian Snow from Chicago, who gave us this incredible call on a game-winning 3-pointer from Marist High School's Lexus "Hot Rod" Williams in its regional final game against Curie Metropolitan.  Snow received nationwide attention for his high-pitched, excitable screams of jubilation.  Believe it or not, underdog Marist pulled out yet another incredible upset as they advanced in the state tournament, defeating fourth-ranked Bogan in amazing circumstances Wednesday night during the Argo Sectional Semifinal.

In this game, Marist overcame a 10-point deficit with 1:10 left in regulation.  The clip below picks up the action with Marist down five with just over 20 seconds remaining.  That's when the insanity begins.  First, Marist forces a turnover.   Then, L.J. McIntosh makes a long three.  After another steal, Nic Weishar completes the miraculous comeback with a layup, forcing overtime.  Naturally, Marist eventually pulled out the victory in overtime, winning 68-63.

And once again, all of the action is accompanied by the passionate screams of Brian Snow, who has quickly become the most famous high school basketball announcer in America.  Listen to him shriek, "WE ARE TIED!  WE ARE TIED!  I DON'T BELIEVE THIS!!!"  "MARIST HAS COME ALL THE WAY BACK AGAIN!!!  DO YOU BELIEVE THIS?!?!" and my favorite, "IT AIN'T MIDNIGHT YET, Y'ALL!!!"

How could you not love this guy?  The second video is almost as good as the first and definitely takes a run at breaking the sound barrier once again.  So once more, be careful if you're trying to listen with headphones.  

[H/T BupsJones]

Given the popularity of sports conversations on Twitter, this was probably inevitable. As USA Today's Michael Hiestand notes and Sports Business Daily expands upon, Fox has announced plans for "a dedicated social media reporter" who will pop up on-air to comment on relevant tweets and other social media postings during live sports events. The network has designated Laura McKeeman (who fortunately has a Twitter presence) to fill that role during their coverage of the Pac-12 basketball tournament. McKeeman, who was named Miss St. Petersburg in Florida last year, has been working for Fox, but her previous role mostly focused on college recruiting in the Southeast. 

It's no secret that Twitter conversations can add to live sports coverage, but it's up for debate how well reading tweets on-air works. When the tweets add to the story, as with Brad Keselowski's in-car tweeting during the Daytona 500 stoppage or any of the numerous cases where athletes have discussed trades, injuries and the like on social media, they're absolutely worth referencing on-air; that brings value to the broadcast and helps viewers who aren't following the athletes in question learn the complete story. Similarly, it's well worth it for a broadcast to have someone keeping an eye on Twitter; if a big trade breaks in the middle of a game or injury news comes out, that can be useful information for the announcers. However, as people who look at team hashtags know, there tend to be plenty of tweets from fans during live events that don't add much, and Twitter commentary on a game often doesn't translate well when read out loud on-air. From a tweet of McKeeman's, though, it sounds like that's what they're going for:

Approaches along these lines have been tried before. The Phoenix Suns have done something similar with "social media reporter" Kayte Christensen on their radio and TV broadcasts, various broadcasters have tried displaying some tweets on-air during games in a scrolling banner at the bottom of the screen, and the "let's read viewer comments on-air" school of thought has been done in Canada with CBC's I-Desk on Hockey Night In Canada and The Score's English Premier League coverage. By and large, this hasn't worked terribly well, as most of the viewer comments aren't all that notable or insightful and they tend to just be a distraction from the broadcast. If McKeeman can pick only the interesting tweets and find a way to get them to translate on-air, maybe she can change that pattern, but it's going to be a tough task.

[Sports Business Daily/USA Today]

I didn't want to write anything about the BountyGate coverage knowing I could never give an unbiased, fair assessment of the scandal as a lifelong Saints fan.  I've always been curious what it'd be like to have my team at the center of a scandal big enough it got its own "Gate" attached to it... now I know, it sucks.  This is worse than going through the years of Billy Joe Hobert AND Billy Joe Tolliver.  The actions of Gregg Williams, Sean Payton, Mickey Loomis, the players, and everyone else in BountyGate have taken a team whose story was admired and embraced by a nation - from the depths of Hurricane Katrina all the way to a Super Bowl triumph - and blotted it with an ugly scandal.  They've hurt their organization, their league, and their fans in a drastic way.

Make no mistake, the Saints organization and those involved should pay for what transpired, if for nothing else than their sheer arrogance and stupidity in lying to the league and thinking they would never get found out.  With Roger Goodell's emphasis on player safety (more on that in a bit), they had to know the risk of getting caught giving out bounties to knock players out of games would far outweight the petty cash and/or symbolic reward.  They had to know the hammer would come down hard when that day of reckoning would come, especially after attempting to cover up their activities.  The parties involved deserve every bit of likely punishment that's coming (fines, suspensions, draft picks) because of that reality.  

Are bounties wrong?  Of course.  Unethical?  Absolutely.  But as you've heard this week, bounties and pay for performance schemes aren't exclusive to New Orleans.  Of course, that in no way excuses the elaborate and cringe-inducing scheme run by Gregg Williams though.

But it's also true that in any "Gate" level scandal or controversy, the media by nature is bound to circle like hungry sharks smelling blood in the water.  When this type of story erupts, levelheadedness too often gets thrown out the window.  Rushes to judgment are made.  Sweeping comparisons are a dime a dozen.

The competition of "Who Can Be The Most Appalled And Horrified This Could Happen" among sportswriters over BountyGate has been a story worth watching in its own right.  But in the end, the hyperbole therein hides the true scandal of BountyGate.  Just take a look at these examples...

Last January we told you about the sexism controversy that led to the firing of Sky Sports soccer pundit Andy Gray (pictured at right above).  Obviously, the news wasn't the biggest here stateside, but it was a national controversy in England.  Gray was the equivalent of John Madden in the UK as the nation's foremost soccer analyst.  Along with Martin Tyler, Gray formed one of the most well-known announcing partnerships in the world, and became household names to soccer fans here in the U.S. for their work on the FIFA video game series from EA Sports.

However, when video of Gray and co-presenter Richard Keyes were shown to be making lewd comments towards a female co-worker and a female referee, the two were unceramoniously fired. And while the pair have landed on their feet at a talk radio station in the UK, a revealing story in The Guardian sheds light on the darker side of a media controversy.

In the article, Gray is asked point blank if he considered taking his own life at the depths of his despair over his firing, his response is chilling.

"Yes. I would be lying if I said I didn't. I had never felt like I have felt from January 25th [last year] onwards."

In this day and age it's easy for fans and media alike to crucify those in the public light who have done wrong.  And yes, if you go back and look at Gray's offenses, he certainly deserved to lose his job.  In the end, he has nobody to blame but himself.  But, the stunning admission shows there is another side to these controversies that involve analysts.  

If nothing else, Gray's admission is a cautionary tale in every way possible.  Gray's haunting words should be remembered when the next firestorm approaches.  There is a darker side to scandal when a person not only loses their job, but their reputation as well.

[UK Guardian]