The Minnesota Timberwolves have had a bit more to cheer about this year compared to their very recent and very dismal past.  Ricky Rubio has given the franchise a shot in the arm, and the team isn't in the Western Conference cellar for once.  Surely though, the best thing to come out of Minnesota this year is the video you'll see below.  It features second year Montenegrin center Nikola Pekovic starring in his version of "Where in the world is Carmen Sandiego?" aptly titled "Where in the world is Nikola Pekovic."  According to the T'Wolves' Youtube video description, it's the introduction to the in-house trivia contest at Target Center. 

Perhaps it's the sucker within me for a very dry, ironic sense of humor, but I have laughed out loud every time I've seen this video.  Who wouldn't hire Nikola Pekovic to be their classic comedy straight man in a heartbeat?  It's long past time for the My Giant remake, right?

As if the original Carmen Sandiego music and lyrics aren't ridiculous enough ("she's a sticky fingered pilcher from Berlin down to Belize"), Nikola Pekovic does everything in his power to perpetuate the awkward foriegn big man stereotype.  The results are phenomenal.  An ESPY has to be right around the corner.

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ESPN will apparently be airing a simulcast of Kentucky's basketball practice on ESPNU today.

Lexington TV station WKYT agreed to air the practice after Kentucky's victory over Vanderbilt on Saturday, when coach John Calipari said he wanted to do something to break up the week, as the Wildcats don't have a game. ESPN quickly jumped on the offer to simulcast the program on ESPNU, as the station wasn't airing any live programming during the timeframe of the practice. The practice is open to all Kentucky students, staff, and faculty.

Now, while this seems pretty cool on the outside, digging in gives me a little bit of a negative view of things. Because it's a simulcast, the ESPN broadcast will be manned by local announcers as opposed to their own crew. Now, while this isn't necessarily a bad thing, imagine the bias. It could get a little ugly. I don't see how watching practice, without unbiased announcing or a floor reporter, is going to give viewers some sort of insight into the inner workings of the Kentucky program. I'd understand if there was some sort of "behind the scenes interview and analysis" but it's just going to be video of the Kentucky practice, with a pair of local announcers narrating it. At least put Digger Phelps there to debate UK fans on how to act during practice to add some sort of spice.

I know ESPNU is hunting for programming, but a simulcast of practice seems to be a little much. Is anyone that's not a Kentucky fan even interested in this? 

[h/t: Kentucky Sports]

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In a very surprising release just coming down, ESPN has announced Ron Jaworski is departing the Monday Night Football booth to go back to the studio.  ESPN will move forward with a two man booth for Monday Nights in Mike Tirico and Jon Gruden.  Along with this news is a five year contract extension for Jaws that will have him appear on both Sunday and Monday Countdown shows and other platforms including his own SportsCenter Specials...

"Jaworski, the former Philadelphia Eagles standout quarterback, will have a greater year-round presence on ESPN in his new role. In addition to appearing weekly on both Countdown shows and Matchup, Jaworski will make regular appearances onSportsCenter (primarily Sundays and Mondays), NFL Live, NFL Kickoff, Mike & Mike, and the PTI’s “Five Good Minutes”. He will also be featured in ESPN’s annual NFL Draft and Super Bowl week coverage, in addition to having his own NFL-themed SportsCenter Special shows highlighting his expert analysis and X’s and O’s film evaluations."

While ESPN is careful not to deem Jaws leaving the booth as a demotion in any sort of way, especially given the five year contract extension, this is a stunning move.  One immediately has to ask whether or not the booth was becoming too small for both Gruden and Jaws?  There is always give and take with a three man booth and there were a few times where I sensed elbowing for position on MNF telecasts, but it wasn't anything drastic.  I always thought Gruden and Jaws worked well together and made an enjoyable team with Tirico even if some of their QB love was redundant.

It's the first time since 1997 that ESPN will have a two man booth announcing NFL games and it aligns ESPN with the other networks in having their top team be a two man booth.  

In the instant analysis, moving Jaws to the studio will greatly help all shows he will appear on.  He's not a yeller or a laughbox and is one of the supreme X's and O's analysts in the game.  Having him appear on SportsCenter and Countdown will make those shows smarter and better.  

It will also put the pressure on Gruden as the lone MNF analyst for the first time in his career.  ESPN is going all-in with Gruden as their top NFL analyst, so maybe this is his chance to move beyond his "this guy" stigma and become one of the top analysts in the sport.  If anything, perhaps having him become the lone MNF analyst will give him the opportunity to be more hard-hitting.

However it breaks down, give credit to ESPN for making a bold move and not being afraid to shuffle their top talent in an industry that too often unequivocally supports the status quo.  This move should make their entire NFL presentation better.

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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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