It must have been a long walk for Will Ferrell to get from North Platte, NE to New Orleans, LA.  After appearing in a secretive Super Bowl Sunday ad for Old Milwaukee, Will Ferrell made another random sports related appearance in New Orleans.  Ferrell is actually shooting a movie in the city and he visited New Orleans Arena to introduce the starting lineups for Wednesday night's Bulls-Hornets game... to predictably hilarious results.

Ferrell took a dig at each of the Bulls players during their introductions and then followed with strange/epic compliments for the home team.  It doesn't beat the starting lineup intros for Jordan's Bulls back in the day (maybe the greatest thing in all of sports), but it's a close second...

Bulls

Carlos Boozer: "He still lives with his mother."

Luol Deng: "He collects rare birds and has a pet dolphin named Chachi."

Joakim Noah: "He's a Scorpio and a horrible dancer."

Ronnie Brewer: "He once ate 20 hot dogs in an hour."

Derrick Rose: "His favorite movie is The Notebook."

Hornets

Gustavo Ayon: "He doesn't speak a lick of English, but we still love him!"

Trevor Ariza: "He still loves to listen to Bell Biv DeVoe."

Emeka Okafor: "6'10" from Connecticut where he majored in econ but minored in loooove."

Marco Belinelli: "from Italy, ironically he hates Italian food."

Jarrett Jack: "After basketball, his dream is to become a rodeo clown!"

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One of sports greatest rivalries had one of its most dramatic endings tonight. An Austin Rivers cold blooded buzzer-beating three decided the Duke/North Carolina game at the Dean Dome as the Blue Devils won 85-84. Rivers' three completed an improbable meltdown by UNC comeback by Duke as they finished the game on a 13-2 run. Rivers finished his fantastic night with 29 points and a shot that will go down in Blue Devil lore. The win was a crucial one as well for the ACC standings as it knotted up Duke, North Carolina and Florida State at 7-2 heading to the stretch of the season.

Frankly, I'm kind of shocked at how relatively tame Vitale's call of the three was. Don't get me wrong, he was excited, but I expected tables to be flipped over and even more hysteria if Duke ever defeated North Carolina in that fashion. Also, I have to give credit to Jay Bilas, a Duke alum, for being professional during the end of that game.

Duke and UNC meet again in Durham on March 3rd which is finale of both their ACC seasons. I'd think it's a safe bet Vitale will be there as well.

UPDATE: Here are Duke and UNC's radio calls of the buzzer-beater.

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Congratulations are in order for Woody Paige. Today he won for the 400th time on Around the Horn. Yes, I think this does mean that some extremely unfortunate intern probably was assigned with the unenviable task of tallying the wins of the various talking heads that have populated the show since its debut back in 2002. Woody's 400th win was celebrated with copious amounts of silly string, his daughter and a pie in the face. Here's the raucous celebration video Around the Horn put together for the occasion.

If for whatever reason this sparked an interest in Around the Horn's history for you, I recommend visiting their wikipedia page. There you can find career results, winning percentages and highlights from notable episodes.  All the stats could just be made up for all I know but it's wild that someone apparently has been keeping track.

Personally, I've always kind of enjoyed Woody on Around the Horn. So, congratulations to him for being on Stat Boy's good side for the 400 time.

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Pitchers and catchers are a mere handful of days from reporting and baseball season is almost upon us.  Here's your preliminary MLB on Fox schedule for the coming baseball season with regional action on Saturdays throughout the season.  Of note in the Fox schedule is ten straight weeks of primetime MLB on Fox windows from May all the way through the All Star Game in late July.  Also, Fox's MLB coverage will take two weeks off in early August for this little thing called the Summer Olympics.

Saturday April 7 4PM

St. Louis Cardinals @ Milwaukee Brewers

Boston Red Sox @ Detroit Tigers

Kansas City Royals @ Los Angeles Angels

San Francisco Giants @ Arizona Diamondbacks

Saturday April 14 1PM

Los Angeles Angels @ New York Yankees

Chicago Cubs @ St. Louis Cardinals

Texas Rangers @ Minnesota Twins 

Saturday April 21 4PM

New York Yankees @ Boston Red Sox

Chicago White Sox @ Seattle Mariners

Saturday April 28 1PM

Milwaukee Brewers @ St. Louis Cardinals

Los Angeles Angels @ Cleveland Indians

Kansas City Royals @ Minnesota Twins

Saturday May 5 4PM

Chicago White Sox @ Detroit Tigers

Arizona Diamondbacks @ New York Mets

Milwaukee Brewers @ San Francisco Giants

Saturday May 12 1PM

Los Angeles Angels @ Texas Rangers

Chicago Cubs @ Milwaukee Brewers

New York Mets @ Miami Marlins 

Saturday May 19 7PM

Boston Red Sox @ Philadelphia Phillies

Chicago White Sox @ Chicago Cubs

Texas Rangers @ Houston Astros

Baltimore Orioles @ Washington Nationals

Arizona Diamondbacks @ Kansas City Royals

Saturday May 26 7PM

Philadelphia Phillies @ St. Louis Cardinals

Tampa Bay Rays @ Boston Red Sox

Chicago Cubs @ Pittsburgh Pirates

Los Angeles Angels @ Seattle Mariners

Colorado Rockies @ Cincinnati Reds

Saturday June 2 7PM

New York Yankees @ Detroit Tigers

Chicago Cubs @ San Francisco Giants

Minnesota Twins @ Cleveland Indians

Arizona Diamondbacks @ San Diego Padres

Cincinnati Reds @ Houston Astros

In this extended discussion with Rece Davis and Hubert Brown on Monday night, Digger Phelps started talking about the Syracuse Orange and how they were going to dominate once center Fab Melo's academic issues were cleared up for good. One problem: Digger didn't call Melo by his name, instead calling him Thad Matta. Matta is of course the coach of Ohio State, who plays in the Big Ten, and not the Big East.

In Digger's defense, Fab Melo kind of sounds like Thad Matta. Well, I guess it does a little bit at least. But the two really don't have much in common, being more than 20 years apart and not even having the same job or playing in the same conference, let alone on the same team. Maybe the fact that both teams have white jerseys is what threw Digger off. Or, maybe Digger was just having an off night, which happens sometimes. At least his underlying point was good, and not a giant load of garbage.

[h/t: Lost Lettermen]

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In the fifteenth AA Podcast, we talk with Kevin Harlan fresh off his experience calling the Super Bowl on Dial Global/Westwood One radio to a nationwide audience. The Super Bowl was one of three games he worked in the middle of a typically busy stretch for one of the most well-known voices in sports. Kevin tells AA what Super Bowl Sunday is like from the broadcaster's perspective as well as touching on many other topics including...

-His most memorable play and call from Super Bowl XLVI 
-What one fact in his preparation helped him most in the Super Bowl broadcast 
-How a six hour roundtrip to South Bend was involved his Super Bowl weekend 
-The story of Eli Manning as the perfect narrative for the NFL season 
-Whether or not he agrees with Charles Barkley on the quality of NBA play this year being down 
-The job former partner Doug Collins is doing in Philly 
-What it's like to work with Bill Raftery on CBS college basketball 
-Which event is his favorite to broadcast

All that and even more on the newest edition of the Awful Announcing Podcast.

In case you've missed any of our podcasts featuring guests ranging from Ian Darke to Bruce Feldman to Tony Dungy, check out all of our podcasts on ITunes.

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Tuesday night, the New York Rangers trailed the New Jersey Devils 1-0 in the final seconds.  As the Rangers rushed Martin Brodeur's goal, Marian Gaborik crashed into the Devils goaltender while Rangers captain Ryan Callahan appeared to score the tying goal.  Even though it appeared Gaborik was helped into Brodeur by Devils defenseman Anton Volchenkov, the goal was disallowed.  Here's video of the play below...

Veteran broadcaster Al Trautwig was hosting the MSG postgame show after the Rangers telecast.  You might know Trautwig from his nationwide work with NBC's Olympics coverage and other sports.  In this case, the broadcast journalist within Al Trautwig was overcome with Rangers fan rage.  His postgame intro begins quite normally before exploding with fury over the "BRUTAL CALL!!!!!"  Then, Al goes back to the normal postgame intro before offering a befuddled groan and shake of the head.  The instantaneous metamorphosis of Al Trautwig is really quite interesting.  Don't get Al Trautwig angry.  You wouldn't like him when he's angry.

H/T LevityNYC

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The NFL has a neat little trick in which they announce big news close to the Super Bowl that at times can ruffle some feathers, but is often lost in the hoopla of the Super Bowl. Cris Carter snubbed by the Hall Of Fame? A football game in Mexico? More Thursday Night Football? In a regular week, this could be fodder on Around The Horn, PTI, Twitter, and the blogosphere. But in a Super Bowl week coupled with a 24/7 Peyton Manning PR battle in addition to the game hype, these news items seemed to just come and go without much analysis.

With that in mind, we've taken the liberty to build out a comprehensive winners and losers of the additional games that may or may not becoming to your television set this fall on NFL Network's Thursday Night Football.

Winners:

NFL Network

You don't have to be Richard Sandomir to realize the NFL Network is the biggest winner. Going from 8 games to 13 games extends the window of NFL Network's relevancy from just November-December to nearly the entire season with games now in September and October as well.

The added games are nothing to sneeze at. It means more advertising dollars, higher carriage fees, and more television markets being on the channel. The additional games and eyeballs gives the network not only more revenue, but also additional leverage to bend over negotiate with cable operators like Time Warner and Cablevision who are still engaged in trench warfare with the network.

Fans

Generally speaking, football has been nationally televised on Thursday Nights for a half season. Now it's on for almost a full season. For those without the NFL Sunday Ticket on DirectTV, you're now getting access to more football and obviously that's a good thing for fans...

ESPN has to get something out of the millions of dollars they're paying Rick Reilly, so they gave him a pulpit after the Super Bowl in Indianapolis. As usual, nonsense started spewing out of his mouth as soon as he opened it. You can check the video for yourself at the link, for some reason ESPN chose to not make it embeddable. Hmm... Sunday night's genius statement: the NFL should make Giants-Patriots the permanent Super Bowl game, in the vein of people talking yearly about a permanent Super Bowl site.  

How ridiculous is this? Reilly, as facetious as he may be, is talking about making the regular season and playoffs meaningless and letting the Giants and Patriots play in the Super Bowl every year. Ok, then. He follows that up by making this claim:

"The Patriots are sort of the Washington Generals to the Giants Globetrotters."

You know, the Patriots who have won three Super Bowls with Tom Brady at the helm... are the Washington Generals, the ones that have lost tens of thousands of games to their competition. That makes perfect sense, doesn't it?

Anyway, Reilly then says Patriots and Giants games always end the same: with the Giants walking away with the Lombardi Trophy. Just like they did when the two teams met in a regular season game in November, right? And when the Giants lost to the Patriots in Week 17 of the 2007 season? Sure, the games have all been good... but to make these broad, sweeping statements based on two Super Bowls the Giants won on last minute touchdowns is ridiculous. But then again, do you really expect much more from Rick Reilly?

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Yes, a star was born Monday across the pond when a kitty cat invaded the soccer pitch at Liverpool's Anfield during their EPL game with Tottenham.  Don't believe me that a cat can become a star overnight?  Just check out the Anfield Cat Twitter account, which now has almost 30,000 followers and growing!  That's more than Awful Announcing's Twitter page (insert cheap plug for @awfulannouncing here).  

But, as crazy events like this tend to do, the Anfield Cat got us to thinking about other moments when animals invaded our sporting events.  Here's 10 of our favorite moments in our most ridiculous, yet most adorable countdown yet.  Well... except for the animals who didn't quite survive their moment in the spotlight, they might not see this as an adorable list.

(10) A bear walks the course at the U.S. Senior Open
-One of the best qualities of golf is the enjoyment of nature while playing the game.  As an outdoor sport, it's not uncommon for golfers to come across all sorts of critters from squirrels and birds, to deer and aligators.  But, at the U.S. Senior Open, a black bear might have caused a bit of panic when it decided to play through.  How this clip lead to a Tim Kurkjian breakdown of man vs. bear is beyond me though.

(9) Bird meets its demise at tennis match
-I don't know how old this clip is, or who the tennis players are involved, but it was clearly a bad day to be a bird.  The only thing missing is the tennis player saying "Cerrano kill a living thing?!" as he kneels and prays over the bird.  Let's hope it got a decent burial!  Ah, who cares it's a rat with wings! (If you don't get these references please go watch Major League II... right now, I'll wait.)

(8) Rabbit races for Touchdown at Michigan
-Here's another old clip where it would be great to know more information.  A rabbit runs the length of the field at Michigan to score a TD while an unknown announcer calls the action like a modern-day Gus Johnson.  Who was that announcer?  What ever happened to that rabbit?  At least there's a modest tie-in here to announcing.