Joe Morgan Memorial Tournament "Elite 8" finisher Skip Bayless has more problems than just his daily arguments with the insufferable Rob Parker. On last night's Conan, The Big Pundit decided that the next episode of Shaq Vs. would be him against that troll, Skip Bayless. This bizarre feud started soon after Shaq's retirement was announced and Skip acted very Skip Baylessy by saying Shaq's career didn't live up to the expectations he had for his career out of college on the sports theater debate show, 1st and 10.

Last night wasn't the first time Neon called out Skip. At his retirement press conference, he also mentioned Skip by name.

This will make me feel dirty, but I support blowhards like Skip Bayless being able to have an opinion on Shaq. I certainly don't agree with Skip at all on Shaq's career being a disappointment, but if only those who are 4x NBA champions or perennial all-stars are able to have a dissenting opinion than that really just doesn't work out for me. There are plenty of well-respected analysts that either did not play professionally or were never stars. Being an analyst and an athlete are two completely different jobs. Obviously having the experience to know what you are talking about first hand goes a very long way, but that doesn't necessarily make you a good analyst.

Whatever. Skip's still awful and on my tournament bracket I had him penciled in to the Final 4. If Shaq is really upset and feels the need to bust out some of his legendary martial arts moves and he Shaq-Fu's Skip off the air, fans of rational thinking would be grateful.

We had such a good time corralling the AA staff together last week to give our writers' picks for the Joe Morgan Memorial Tournament Final that we've reconvened around the virtual AA roundtable once again.  Ryan's article on the new 30 for 30 slate got us thinking about which sports stories we'd like to see given the 30 for 30 treatment.  I'm sure the higher ups at ESPN take note and these ideas will hit the small screen soon...

Question: What sports story of the last 30 years would you love to see made into a 30 for 30 documentary and how would you tell it?

Matt Yoder: As an insane Saints fan, my choice is a bit biased.  The story of the New Orleans Saints and the city of New Orleans, from August 29, 2005 when Hurricane Katrina made landfall in Louisiana to February 7, 2010 when the Saints won Super Bowl XLIV is one of the most remarkable in sports and would be perfect for ESPN's 30 for 30.

The central narrative would be the relationship between the team and the community and how the building of the Saints championship team paralleled the rebuilding of New Orleans.  The Saints and their city have a unique relationship that is rarely seen in the days of franchises continually turning their backs on fans, free agency, and the gulf between fan and athlete becoming wider.  With the Saints returning to New Orleans in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, an already passionate fan base became irrevocably intertwined with their team.  The Saints' uplifting Super Bowl victory may have been one of the most meaningful to a particular community in history.  Because let's face it, if the New Orleans Saints can win the Super Bowl, then anything is possible.

Brady Green: I would really like to see a documentary on Bill James and the rise of sabermetrics in baseball.  For better and worse, baseball hasn’t changed much since its beginnings. Out of all sports, baseball places the highest importance on stats when assessing a player’s value and up until somewhat recently, only a few stats were usually used.

Bill James didn’t agree with this, and took his obsession of baseball to another stratosphere of nerdom by creating an array of new stats in his Baseball Almanac. These Almanacs were largely made for other baseball tri-lambs that obviously represented an extreme minority of baseball fans. Still, those few fans and even GM’s that took the time to read them started to think about baseball in a completely different way. Personally, this reinvigorated my interest in baseball, once again making it my favorite professional sport. I love hearing the debate on both sides (I’m still somewhere in the middle) and I crack up whenever SportsCenter compares a player's WAR (wins above replacement) stat every couple of months. GM’s all over the league (not just in Oakland) have been influenced by sabermetrics. It even landed James a job in the Sawks front office in 2003, which he still has today.

FOX, we may have found Joe Buck's replacement with Mets Kidscaster, Jacob Resnick.  Every year the Mets allow a kid to call an inning of a game and for the second year in a row they were lucky enough to get to use their Home Run call. Below is Resnick's call (THANKS MLB! EMBEDDABLE MEDIA FTW!)

 

Come on, you know your soft side enjoyed that. Good tone and pace as well as delivering specifics like "solo shot" "breaking ball" and "left field seats". Getting all those details into a smooth call is probably easier said than done. With that in mind, this was a job well done and something tells me Resnick is absolutely going to dominate his Bar Mitzvah.

The following picture is why I stay away from predicting season records for every team in a sport.  Unless you come out to the exact right win-loss total... you end up looking like a dope.  Enter a man who has his Master's degree in that field - Colin Cowherd.  You see, Cowherd took his intellectually elite and pristine brain, which will one day be reserved for scientific marvel, to prognosticating the upcoming NFL season.  What a waste of a rare gift to mankind.  The only problem is that Cowherd's predictions are as mathematically improbable as finding the last digit of pi.  Observe...



For those of you that enjoy addition, you found that those numbers add up to 268-244, as pointed out by Dan Steinberg at DC Sports Bog.  Since each of the NFL's 32 teams play 16 games, that's 512 possible results.  With a winner and loser in each (who predicts ties?), the league will go a collective 256-256.  That... is... fact.  Unless you count the Eagles of course, who will win 39 games this year.  

***Update: Brady sacrificed for all of us and listened to the corresponding Cowherd audio link that makes this gaffe even more delightful.  Here's Cowherd on the legitimacy of his predictions...

"There's some things I really get into and I like predicting the record of every NFL team.  I go over every schedule in the league.  And, unlike everybody else, I actually believe you can predict things... it's not that impossible, especially this year, to predict where teams are going to end up."

Yea, about that...

[H/T Dan Steinberg]
 

no comments

With the NBA Lockout in full swing, NBA players have been showing up in all sorts of places, even sometimes, playing basketball.  Shocking, I know.  While the Goodman League and Drew League have seen their share of highlights, this video of Kevin Durant in action at famed Rucker Park in New York is by far the best basketball highlight you will see for a long while.  We pick up Durantula in the 4th Quarter of this game as he goes nuts hitting three pointer after three pointer, whipping the Rucker Park crowd into a frenzy until they finally storm the court with his 64th, 65th, and 66th point of the game.  Durant's 66 was 8 points shy of the Rucker Park record and Crossover Chronicles has even more videos of Durant's amazing night.

My question is this - why don't some of the NBA players get together and put this on television during the lockout?  Surely NBA fans would watch Durant and some of the other best players on the planet play ball in Rucker Park or elsewhere.  You can even keep the court announcer ("I AM THE BEST") and the entire playground atmosphere.  An organized tournament at Rucker Park with teams captained by Kobe, LeBron, Durant, Melo, and whoever would be an absolute ratings bonanza... and infuriate David Stern to no end.  Somebody make this happen!



[Crossover Chronicles]

If you follow AA on Twitter, you may have seen me throw a little love the way of Bloguin's new college football site, Crystal Ball Run.  That's because I'm periodically pitching in with the site and all of the Bloguin.com blogs... but also because these guys know their college football like few others in the blogosphere (and they have a sweet banner too).  If you're a fan of the Pammies and college pig, it's a place you'll want to bookmark.  Aaron Torres, who was on staff with us at AA for a little while, leads the new blog and joined me on the latest AA Podcast.  In the pod, we touch on all the major stories of the college football offseason, including some surprising thoughts on the media's intensive coverage of Ohio State's troubles. AA also chats with Aaron about ESPN and #FreeBruce, Joe Morgan Memorial Tournament champion Craig James, the best announcers in college football, and much more.  A great interview that covers a lot of interesting topics with some opinions you may not expect.



Remember, you can also download our episodes straight from ITunes as well.  Hope you give a listen and enjoy.
 

Wide receiver Donte Stallworth agreed to a deal with the Washington Redskins last week, inciting this awkward tweet from former Redskins' quarterback and famous tongue-slipper Joe Theismann [H/T SportsGrid]:

This would be immediately chalked up as an innocent mistake if, you know, Donte Stallworth wasn't convicted of DUI manslaughter a couple years ago. Theismann corrected himself, tweeting shortly thereafter that he meant Stallworth could be a "difference maker," blaming the mix up on his 'big fingers.'

I'm sorry, I'm not buying that, Joe. I would've been much more inclined to believe you if you said it was "Smart Type" or Autocorrect's fault, like what really happened to Aziz Ansari that one time he upset his gay friend Greg. I just hope Donte is as understanding as Greg.

I just celebrated a birthday which has only confirmed the well known fact that I am getting old. The biggest hangup about that realization is I'm becoming more and more of a cynic which means my love for new music that you'd hear on the radio has dwindled. With that in mind I spend the bulk of my time in my whip listening to sports talk radio and of late, the newly launched local Sporting News affiliate. Just as I was learning the various promotional jingles Sporting News Radio plays, they've decided to rebrand the network as Yahoo! Sports Radio (don't forget the exclamation mark, they hate that). 

"We’re aligning with the No. 1 sports media web company in the world,” Gow said. “We’re picking up one of the most recognizable brand names in the world. We’re getting access to some of the best sports journalism in the country, and we get to link ourselves together in a way that will accelerate the growth of our digital business.

“When you combine the sports experts of Yahoo and Rivals with our on-air talent and analysts, we believe we will have the best roster in sports radio. And we can take that combined roster and create compelling sports radio, grow our affiliate base and audience size and take our company to much greater heights.”

Unlike NBC, the rebranding has been swift and efficient. Google Sporting News Radio and both their former site and their Wikipedia page are already replaced with the proper Yahoo! Sports Radio pages. Yahoo seems to have given the network a nice hub page as you'll see below.

From a programming and promotional perspective this is really smart. The various writers and bloggers at Yahoo have a larger following than the Sporting News' editorial talent. Yahoo's built in web following can much more easily promote selected relevant programming to help bring in new listeners. On the flip side, Yahoo will be be able to tap into the built audience of Sporting News Radio and get folks to adopt things like Yahoo fantasy sports, Sportacular, The Post Game, and the Y! Sports blogs.

A lot of sports fans continue to clamor for a "true" ESPN competitor although the majority of those fans spend hours and hours consuming ESPN content on some platform. NBC/Comcast remains the most viable candidate as entities like Sports Illustrated and Yahoo Sports have traditionally been segmented to one platform. With solid positions across online, television, print, and radio, ESPN has long been able to dominate the space.

However as Yahoo moves to radio, you can maybe see a scenario where ESPN has to become defensive fighting a two front war and things open up a bit more although I think that is more wishful thinking. Yahoo affiliates usually hold some local radio rights (A's games locally) and then fill in the rest of the day with shoulder programming and syndicated programs. I don't believe the network has any national rights for any major sport, which is where ESPN holds a major advantage.

For The Sporting News, there is no way to spin it. Awhile back they reached their big partnership with AOL to rent the Fanhouse brand and AOL.com promotion. As a combined digital entity they really promoted the fact that they were now a top 10 sports entity according to Comscore. Since then they've fallen out of the top ten and have other media entities closing in their rear view mirror. This surely won't help their digital efforts nor help promote the magazine and other print products. 

With XM/Sirius, podcasts, Westwood One, ESPN, and now Yahoo Sports, you have to wonder if the space is a bit overcrowded but for now it seems like all these entities are holding their own. I'd imagine my planned MTV Challenge Duel/Gauntlet/whatever they called it podcast will really shake up the industry.

If you're a regular visitor to Awful Announcing, you may notice something different today.  A new face is on our Mount Rushmore, ESPN college football analyst Craig James.  Senator James was the surprise champion of our Joe Morgan Memorial Tournament, in which one current sports media personality would replace Joe Morgan on AA's Mount Rushmore.  

The Joe Morgan Memorial started with 32 of the most awful sports media personalities around - from Joe Buck and Joe Theismann to Skippy and Stephen A. to Cowherd and Berman.  Being honest, I have to give credit to my broski Ryan for coming up with the idea (he always was the smarter Yoder), but it was an awesome experience that was hopefully as much fun for you as it was for us.  Thanks to everyone who took part in the tournament, especially to the folks that took the time to leave comments, tweets, and especially vote.  We had over 50,000 votes in the semifinals and finals alone!  

Brian Powell started AA back in 2006 as an open forum for fans to voice their feelings on announcers and as the place to go for news, information, and opinion on announcing and the sports media.  That's why we gave you the decision for Joe Morgan's spot on Mount Rushmore (and who knows, maybe we'll do it for the other spots in the future).  When it all started, Craig James was nowhere near the list of favorites to be etched in Awful Announcing immortality.  However, your votes carried James to an overwhelming victory in the JMMT.  

James defeated his broadcast partner Mike Patrick in Round 1 and was never tested along the way, also beating out some of the biggest names in AA lore - Rick Reilly, Stephen A. Smith, Chris Berman, and Joe Buck.  His victories over Berman and Buck were astoundingly ginormous.  77% of the vote against Berman and 85% of the vote against Buck (over 21,000 votes in the Final were cast for Craig James).

So how did we get to this point where average college football announcer/pundit Craig James became an unstoppable force that made Joe Buck look like Marv Albert and took him to the top of AA...

It's a Yanks/Sawx kind of weekend as Friday-Sunday see the AL East rivals go head to head on three networks, MLBN, Fox, and ESPN.  Buck & McCarver and Sunday Night Baseball take a visit to Fenway.  And in case that's too much Yanks/Sawx, you can also catch either team on Monday, Wednesday, and Thursday on national TV.  In fact, the only day free of those northeast tyrants is Tuesday, when St. Louis visits Milwaukee on MLBN.  Don't worry though, Yanks/Chi Sawx is an alternate.  

Monday August 1

Cleveland Indians @ Boston Red Sox (ESPN 7PM) Sean McDonough, Aaron Boone, Rick Sutcliffe

Tuesday August 2

St. Louis Cardinals @ Milwaukee Brewers (MLBN 8PM) Local Broadcast [Alt: NY Yankees @ Chi White Sox]

Wednesday August 3

New York Yankees @ Chicago White Sox (ESPN 8PM) Dave O'Brien, Nomar Garciaparra

Thursday August 4

Texas Rangers @ Detroit Tigers (MLBN 1PM) Local Broadcast
Cleveland Indians @ Boston Red Sox (MLBN 7PM) Local Broadcast [Alt: Chi Cubs @ Pittsburgh]
New York Yankees @ Chicago White Sox (WGNA 8PM) Ken Harrelson, Steve Stone

Friday Augsust 5

Cincinnati Reds @ Chicago Cubs (WGNA 2PM) Len Kasper, Bob Brenley
New York Yankees @ Boston Red Sox (MLBN 7PM) Matt Vasgersian, John Smoltz [Alt: Oakland @ Tampa Bay]

Saturday August 6

New York Yankees @ Boston Red Sox (FOX 4PM) Joe Buck, Tim McCarver
Philadelphia Phillies @ San Francisco Giants (FOX 4PM) Kenny Albert, Eric Karros
Chicago White Sox @ Minnesota Twins (WGNA 7PM) Ken Harrelson, Steve Stone
Atlanta Braves @ New York Mets (MLBN 7PM) Local Broadcast [Alt: San Diego @ Pittsburgh]

Sunday August 7

Atlanta Braves @ New York Mets (TBS 1PM) Brian Anderson, John Smoltz, David Wells
Chicago White Sox @ Minnesota Twins (WGNA 2PM) Ken Harrelson, Steve Stone
New York Yankees @ Boston Red Sox (ESPN 8PM) Dan Shulman, Orel Hershiser, Bobby Valentine

H/T Sammy!