Thankfully, we haven't heard too much noise lately from the Bristol underworld kingdom of First Take.  Tim Tebow's NFL career being on life support and the brilliant play of LeBron James have worked against two of the show's long-standing pillars - that Tebow is a winner and James is not.  Instead of building a show on a solid foundation of insight and analysis, ESPN built First Take on the shifting sands of Skip Bayless and his brand of carnival barking and now the show will wander through the wilderness until Bayless finds another pantomime villian or hero to sink his teeth into.

But make no mistake, First Take is still an abomination and this must still be recognized by the public at large.  The New York Post did just that as First Take earned the dubious distinction of being named one of the 20 worst shows on television by the tabloid.  Keep in mind this declaration is coming from the New York Post, which isn't exactly a beacon of journalistic integrity, so it should carry double the dosage of shame:

It's a black day in Bristol as the New York Jets released Tim Tebow the day after the NFL Draft.  Normally, a team releasing a third string QB would not be worth DEFCON 1 status, but this is ESPN, and this is Tim Tebow.  There were air raid sirens going off in Bristol, Connecticut once the news broke and ESPN swiftly relapsed into full blown TebowMania coverage.  That relapse gave the internet the gift of once again mocking ESPN for its TebowMania coverage.  And that never gets old.  As always, these are Real Tweets from Real People...

Let's set the stage.  It's the final day of the season in England's League One, which is two divisions below the Premier League.  2nd place Doncaster is on the road at 3rd place Brentford.  The top two finishers in League One earn automatic promotion to the Championship while 3rd place must try to earn promotion through a 4 team playoff.  Doncaster needed only a draw to clinch promotion while Brentford needed a victory.

In the final minute of the game, with the score 0-0, Brentford earns a penalty kick after a handball in the box.  Marcello Trotta steps up to take the penalty kick and blasts his shot off the crossbar.  With almost every outfield player near the penalty area, Doncaster clears the ball to midfield where a 2 on 1 break develops and James Coppinger pokes the game winner home at the opposite end of the ground.  Doncaster wins the game 1-0 and wins promotion as League One champions while Brentford stays in 3rd place on the table.

Considering the stakes involved and the once-in-a-lifetime sequence of events, it's one of the most improbable endings to a soccer game you may ever see, or any sporting event for that matter.

After A.J. Clemente dropped the f-bomb heard round the viral world, he then made his rounds on pretty much every talk show you can name off the top of your head. 

One of those shows was David Letterman's, in which Clemente expresses an interest in working for ESPN. Dave, ever the realist, tells him, "that aint gonna happen."

RUDE!

Mistakes happen, mistakes on live television happen, and everyone always moves on. At the very least, Clemente should find another job SOMEWHERE, because as Letterman points out, people who have been in the business far longer than Clemente have done the same thing and come out unscathed.

Dave obviously forgot about Lee Corso dropping an f-bomb on College Gameday and a thousand other people who have swore on ESPN airwaves and only had to issue a forced apology. (Scott Van Pelt, Ron Jaworski, Neil Everett, etc. etc.) Surely ESPN could consider hiring Clemente, who has humbly admitted to his mistake and apologized more than once. In fact, he may be a perfect fit there.

H/T Sportsgrid

All Times Eastern

College Football
College Football Live -- ESPN, 3:30 p.m.

College Softball
Virginia Tech at Virginia -- ESPNU, 7 p.m.

English Premier League
Aston Villa vs. Sunderland -- Fox Soccer, 2:55 p.m.

Kelly Nash, the Tampa Bay Rays reporter for Sun Sports was in Boston's Fenway Park over the weekend to do some advance reporting for her network. On Saturday, she decided to go to Fenway's famed Green Monster seats to take some pictures from the park to show to her family.

Nash was in the seats during batting practice and as she put in her own words: 

"(My producer) had called out 'heads up!' a few times while I was taking pictures around the left field section, but none of those balls actually fell close to me, so I took my chances turning my back on batting practice for a picture."

As she felt it was safe, Kelly turned her back to the field and quickly snapped a pic. As she would find out later, a ball came quite close to hitting her square on the ol' noggin. The odds of snapping that picture at that exact moment are astronomical, so astronomical in fact that Nash will be on GMA tomorrow morning to talk about the self-portrait.

She adds:

"I laughed pretty hard when I saw such a surreal picture that I had no idea I took. I thought, you have got to be kidding me, maybe there ARE really angels in the outfield. I actually brought the movie with me on the trip and had it in my bag at the game."

Kelly is pretty lucky that she didn't get hit. And the moral of the story, kids? Never turn your back on batting practice especially if you're standing on top of the Green Monster 

[Fox Sports Florida]

All Times Eastern

College Baseball
Purdue at Michigan State -- Big Ten Network, noon
TCU at Kansas State -- Fox College Sports Atlantic, noon
Texas Tech at Oklahoma -- Fox College Sports Atlantic, 2 p.m.
South Carolina at LSU -- ESPN, 3 p.m.
Stanford at Oregon -- ESPNU, 3:30 p.m.
North Carolina at North Carolina State -- ESPNU, 7 p.m.

College Lacrosse
Men's
ACC Championship, Chapel Hill, NC
Virginia vs. North Carolina -- ESPNU, 1 p.m.

Patriot League Championship, Bethlehem, PA
Bucknell vs. Lehigh -- CBS Sports Network, 3 p.m.

Women's
Atlantic 10 Championship, Amherst, MA
UMass vs. Duquense -- CBS Sports Network, 1 p.m.

College Softball
Iowa State at Oklahoma -- Fox College Sports Central, 1 p.m.
Michigan at Nebraska -- Big Ten Network, 3 p.m.

Leave it to Don Cherry to spice up a dull Saturday night. During his regular appearance on Hockey Night in Canada, the bombastic curmudgeon opened his weekly CBC segment commenting on the controversy over Chicago's Duncan Keith who snapped at a female reporter in Vancouver earlier this week. Cherry forgetting that women have had access to locker rooms for a couple of generations now, said they should not be allowed in. 

The Washington Nationals have initiated new MASN field reporter Julie Alexandria to the team. How you ask? By giving her the postgame Gatorade bath. 

San Jose Sharks announcer Randy Hahn received a puzzling letter in the mail from a rental car company in Edmonton. Hahn had recently rented a car from the company while the Sharks were visiting the Edmonton Oilers, but he wasn't sure why they were contacting him after his trip. As it turns out, Hahn was driving a bit too fast on Wayne Gretzky Drive in Alberta and was caught speeding by a traffic camera. 

The result? A humorous and pretty ironic $99 ticket that matches The Great One's sweater number.