You have to turn the volume up a bit, but below is the entire press conference from the Penn State Board of Trustees tonight.  I can't imagine a better job done by vice-chairman John Surma in answering the questions and a more insensitive reaction by some of the "journalists" in the room.  It's unknown at this time who was reacting in what way, whether they were students, or other details so it's unfair to blanketly blame everyone in the room.  However, the scenes of reporters angrily shouting questions at Surma in light of this week shows zero perspective regarding the entirety of the scandal.  It's tough to truly grasp what that full perspective is exactly, but the following is a microcosm of how the fallout is evolving.

H/T PSUcomRadio via Deadspin

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It's hard to recall a sports scandal so encapturing as what has happened at Penn State with Joe Paterno's demise, perhaps the OJ Simpson case was the last time a sports scandal reached these heights as a national story.

There are literally dozens of stories that branch off from the sordid details surrounding Jerry Sandusy, Penn State's reaction, and Joe Paterno's final days as the head coach of Penn State. One of those stories is a pretty poor job by the media to cover the breaking news when the decision was made to oust Paterno.

We'll start with the Big Ten Network, who already took flack from multiple media pundits as they seemed to bury the Sandusky/Paterno story for a pretty extensive amount of time. 

Their defense made some level of sense (they're not a 24 hour news organization) but that didn't really quell the head-scratching. As the story intensified through today, BTN mobilized, but during and after the news of Paterno's firing the below picture is what you found on Big Ten Network.

BTN never cut away from various replays of recent games. The scroll stayed in effect and hours later during commercial breaks, someone in studio did pass on the news to viewers. Again though, BTN was never able to rally any type of live coverage. 

The news was certainly unexpected as things came together quickly, but this is the biggest story in the conference's history and let's be real here.... BTN is no small operation. It seems as if absolutely nobody was on call at their headquarters in Chicago or in State College to cover the ousting of the conference's most revered figure. I would think that given how this thing was spiralling, there should have been a better contingency plan in place if something were to happen. Obviously there wasn't. 

Matt already shared this clip, but here is a better version from CNN's coverage where for about 90 minutes we had this completely out of touch anchor fumble covering Paterno's firing.

I actually flipped to CNN thinking they would be a bit more prepared, but from the 20 seconds I was on the channel and what was said on twitter, CNN really struggled to cover the story adequately.

ESPN had some strong points. Guests were rotated in and out and Steve Levy and hell even Stuart Scott did a pretty solid job. What had most people miffed was that ESPN had absolutely no cameras providing footage of a pending borderline riot that was beginning to take root. In fact, ESPN didn't even get a camera to the press conference. At that press conference (VIDEO here), there were a bevy of unprofessional questions being asked in an unprofessional manner. That's not on ESPN, but bears mentioning given we're bagging on traditional media here. 

As pictures, video, and on the ground coverage proliferated Twitter, ESPN seemed to not be able to surround the story. A media truck was flipped, Paterno made an appearance outside of his house, some students were getting confronted by the police, others were peacefully assembling.

Most of this information was fed to the public by feeds of other networks, after the fact, or via twitter. In fact, multiple times ESPN's coverage would contradict itself as they would report there had been arrests while later on a reporter would claim that there had not been any arrests.

To be fair, this story took off quickly and without much notice. There were multiple places that needed feet on the ground for coverage. ESPN did rally respectable coverage on multiple fronts but that coverage never had live video, was often stale, and was mostly reliant on other outlet's video feeds. There was very little real time visual storytelling to accompany the commentary, and that persisted for hours. 

I do sympathize with the challenge they were faced with. No easy task by any means.

However, given this is ESPN and one of the largest stories in recent memory, the lack of live reports was noticeable considering other media outlets were having success covering the story.  ESPN had Tom Rinaldi at a peaceful rally on the other side of town while they could only muster taped footage from the major hot spots.

Below are some tweets that caught our eye broken down by channel. Overall, the coverage of the unfortunate news was suffice and comprehensive, but severely lacking in some areas. ESPN's inability to get video of the actual press conference stood out.  At times there were certainly newsworthy events popping up, but they were never broadcasted live on the leader.  Yes, it was tough circumstances, but there were several areas these networks could have done better.  I'm not alone as evidenced below...

Joe Paterno is out at Penn State.  President Spanier is gone.  We've seen one of the most bizarre, maddening press conferences in the history of the microphone.  CNN is currently on the ground in State College with the university on the verge of mass riots.  It's the culmination of perhaps the most disturbing story ever associated with college athletics.  But the truth is this story is about much more than Joe Paterno or football.  This story is about a monster that used a charity and his position to rape and abuse young children and the failures of everyone involved along the way to not put an end to it sooner.  It's a heartbreaking story, a maddening scene tonight, and one that will still be evolving as the days go on.

CNN has expertly covered the live distressing scene in Happy Valley, but allow the following video to add a brief moment of levity to the seriousness of tonight.  CNN anchor Isha Sesay asks a guest, "Do you know when the next college football game with the Nitt-a-ny Lions is to take place?"

Penn State hosts Nebraska Saturday at Noon on ESPN.

H/T @recordsANDradio

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Clearly, Tom Rinaldi has Ohio State on the brain.  After all, why else would he be in Pennsylvania today, reporting on the Penn State scandal, and proceed to reference Ohio State twice!  Some might excuse this as a silly mistake, and one slip up I can understand.  But two in the course of 30 seconds?  Clearly, this shows ESPN's anti-Ohio State bias!  (At least to the rabid Bucknuts that drove Kirk Herbstreit out of Columbus.)  After all, ESPN consistently led the charge to bring down Coach Sweater Vest earlier this season.  But of course, it's insane to compare the situations of Penn State and Ohio State... or Penn State to anything in college athletics.  And yet, it's clear Tom Rinaldi wishes he were on campus in the Buckeye State instead of anywhere near Penn State.  If Tom Rinaldi is this conflicted, I can't imagine what Urban Meyer must be going through now as the future head coach of Ohio St. or Penn St... depending on who you ask.

[via Deadspin]

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While the NBA season teeters on the brink of annihilation today, we can all celebrate the fact that college basketball is here!  The highlight of the first week is obviously the Carrier Classic between #1 UNC and Michigan State played in San Diego aboard the USS Carl Vinson Friday night with Dan Shulman, Dick Vitale, and Jay Bilas on the call.  Mike Breen sees his first college action with a pair of games at Duke alongside Doris Burke.  ESPN has a ton of games with numerous early season tournaments dotting the landscape.  Good luck though comprehending why the Maui Invitational begins Monday... in Ann Arbor.

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NBC has announced that the soon to be rebranded NBC Sports Network (currently Versus), will kickoff 2012 with a pair of new shows featuring Bob Costas. The shows are very similar to his previous shows at HBO with Costas Now and On The Record, which he had to walk away from in order to call games for the MLB Network as HBO was firm in requiring cable exclusivity. From the NYT...

"The first town hall meeting will be shown on the Thursday night before the Super Bowl, which NBC is carrying. “The meetings will attempt to, in a lively way, address for the most part substantive issues, sometimes they’ll be a celebration of aspects of sports,” he said. “Some will be more humorous than others, but the balance will be journalistic.”

The interview program, “Costas Tonight,” will start in the spring. “For lack of a better description,” he said, “it will be like a Larry King-Piers Morgan format."

In a nutshell, I'm game and think it's definitely a shrewd move for NBC Sports Network who continue to be creative in terms of bolstering their original programming. Let's not forget it wasn't too long ago that low rent programming like Fanarchy and The Daily Line were not doing the network any favors.

Growing up in the 80's and 90's, Bob Costas was a major part of my acclimation to sports. A jack of all trades, Costas was a major part of NBC's MLB, NFL, and NBA coverage.

The 90's were a special time for NBC and Costas was the face of the network. This tidbit from Wikipedia really highlights how pivotal both NBC and Costas was to sports fans.

"During the 1995-96 television season, for the only time in history, the World Series, Super Bowl, NBA Finals, and Summer Olympics were telecast by the same network."

Unfortunately for Costas and fans of his work, NBC hit a bit of cold streak on the sports front as MLB, NBA, and the NFL all would find new network partners. The end result - more Joe Buck and in non Olympic years, really very very little Bob Costas. That is unless of course you stalked his many cameo appearances in shows and movies like Baseketball, Pootie Tang, Monk, The Drew Carey Show, Coach Carter, and The Scout.

With a little bit of bandwidth to pursue other endeavors, Costas launched a successful radio show as well doing a lot of thought provocative work for HBO. Although not massive hits, generally speaking his work at HBO was very well received, often bringing new light to a lot of personalities and stories that flew under the radar including the infamous episode covering the role of sports blogs.

While it's definitely good to see NBC Sports Network and Costas ramping up solid programming, I think many sports fans would really prefer to see NBC reclaim the MLB television rights which expire in 2013. The NBA would also be a great addition as well, but I think fans are generally pretty happy with how ABC/ESPN and TNT have showcased the sport opposed to MLB which could definitely use a change of scenery as ratings continue to decline. Plus, Costas has been doing work for MLB Network making it a potentially a better fit.

It'll be interesting to see the debut of both shows and I'm curious who he'll book early on and what topics his townhall show will cover out of the gate. We'll certainly cover those developments when more details become available. Until then, Costas definitely has his dillies on the peppa tane. 

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For the first time all season, Craig James didn't gain a spot in our weekly countdown of the 10 best Pammies quotes.  I'm just as shocked as you are.  Oh well, at least there wasn't a huge Fire Craig James banner spotted on College Gameday that made up for it or anything...  

(Thanks to reader Seth Roberts for e-mailing this pic from Tuscaloosa.)  

This week, it's last season's Pammies winner Chris Spielman that takes top spot this week with Brent Musburger and his drinking jokes coming in at second place.  Cowboy James still holds top spot, but Matt Millen continues to close the gap.  The envelope please...

10) "Redshirt freshman Ronald McCombs well over 100 yards on that last drive." -Pam Ward (via sctvman)

9) "Intercepted! Wait... no... caught by LSU!" - Verne Lundquist (via GB330033) saying LSU intercepted their own pass.

8) "You can throw or run here, those are your options" - Gary Danielson (via sctvman)

7) "Wonder where the beef is, here it comes." - Matt Millen (via TheSportsHernia)

6) "Jimbo Fisher knows how to get QBs ready for the NFL; when he was at LSU, he had JaMarcus Russell 1st Overall" - Jesse Palmer (via AlexFromBuffalo) Yup, that's a positive reference about JaMarcus Russell's NFL career.

5) "You live your life like a field goal into the wind." - Matt Millen (via cptmintz)

4) "Floyd getting the last word... for now." - Mark Jones (via Dascenzo)

3) "This is probably exactly what the Wisconsin coaching staff wanted to see today. After those two heartbreaking defeats, you come back and you just explode all over somebody." - Mike Patrick (via DevsFan30)

2) Regarding the earthquake that took place in Oklahoma at 2:12 AM...

Kirk Herbsteit: "Did you feel anything?"
Brent Musburger: "It might have been last call" (via Chris Schenkel)

1) "Stick it up in there hard and with power!" - Chris Spielman (via DomoBENesis)

Week 10 Top 5 -

1) Craig James 95 pts

2) Matt Millen 70 pts

3) Pam Ward 46 pts

4) Gary Danielson 44 pts

5) Chris Spielman 32 pts

Others receiving votes - Brent Musburger 28 pts, Lou Holtz 21 pts, Mike Patrick 17 pts, Mark Jones 16 pts, Beth Mowins 13 pts, Brett Favre 13 pts, Sean McDonough 13 pts, Jesse Palmer 12 pts, Artrell Hawkins 9 pts, Warrick Dunn 9 pts, Dan Hawkins 9 pts, Jenn Brown 9 pts, Andre Ware 8 pts, Gus Johnson 7 pts, Lee Corso 7 pts, Wendi Nix 7 pts, Steve Martin 7 pts, Tom Cole 7 pts, Rod Gilmore 6 pts, Dave Pasch 5 pts, Bill Land 5 pts, Alex Flanagan 4 pts, Mike Morgan 4 pts, Joe Tiller 3 pts, Keith Jones 3 pts, Desmond Howard 3 pts, Shaun King 3 pts, Charles Davis 3 pts, Verne Lundquist 3 pts, Danny Kanell 2 pts, Steve Beuerlein 2 pts, Scott Van Pelt 2 pts, Kevin Kugler 1 pt, Eric Collins 1 pt, Todd McShay 1 pt, Ray Bentley 1 pt.

The Full Week 11 Announcing Schedule will be coming soon, where you can find the dates and times of games and all the announcing pairings as well.  Then, make sure you check back every Saturday for the Pam Ward Chronicles and another week of the Pammies!

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Thanks to @DarrenRovell, you can see a Lingerie Football player get depantsed... as Sean Salisbury provides the color commentary.

I feel like there is quite the Sean Salisbury joke to be had here, but maybe we just shouldn't go there. Instead, let's just all laugh at him for what his career has become. From ESPN to announcing Lingerie Football games, well, that kind of joke really just makes itself. Were there no announcing job openings in Major League Soccer available?

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In September, we brought you Arizona Cardinals Spanish announcer Gabriel Trujillo's call of Cardinals WR Larry Fitzgerald's 73 yard touchdown reception vs. the Redskins. It was bueno.

Now, thanks again to the Sports Mashup, here's Trujillo calling Patrick Peterson's walk off 99 yard punt return for a touchdown from this past Sunday. It's also good:

Don't understand a word, but think it sounds pretty awesome? Here's a few more minutes of Trujillo: 

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The Jerry Sandusky scandal at Penn State is one of the most horrifying, disgusting stories in sports in quite some time.  As time has passed, the news coming out of State College has only gotten worse as more and more details become available.  There have been so many emotional reactions to the shocking story varying from rage to anger to sadness that it's hard to comprehend the full scope.  Words fail to express the hurt and anguish one feels for all of the victims involved and the disbelief that something like this could happen on such a large scale.

As a former Nittany Lion, Matt Millen's appearance on SportsCenter this morning showed the gravity and the human element of this story.  He visibly choked up and broke down when discussing the news that has been reported in the last week regarding his alma mater and his former coaches, Joe Paterno and Sandusky.  The inner conflict within Millen, and all of those emotions, were on full display live on SportsCenter this morning.  Here's video of the full segment, the moment of Millen choking up begins at the 4:00 mark...

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