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If you were in attendance at Citizens Bank Ballpark last night, the first voice you may have heard over the loudspeaker after your team won the championship was that of Jeanne Zelasko. And while I have nothing against Jeanne Zelasko personally, I’m not exactly sure she was the right person to have speaking at that particular moment. Zelasko has all the gravitas of an assistant brand manager reading through a Powerpoint deck at your local Days Inn. More »
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When will the blogs vs. mainstream media debate finally end? Hopefully soon, right? Please? Pretty please? There is perhaps only one man who can settle this once and for all, build that oft-mentioned bridge to the 21st Century. And that man is obviously Braylon Edwards. More »
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We learned last year that John Saunders had been shopping memoir about his rough-and-tumble life on the streets of Toronto. We wouldn't have guessed his life was that rough-and-tumble, but what do we know? More »
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We can say with 100 percent certainty that, of all the people we've mentioned in this Media Approval Ratings business, Terry Bradshaw is the first whose bare ass we have seen. We're not sure which is worse: Having that happen, or admitting that we've seen Failure To Launch. More »
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There's probably no show on earth that we hammer on more than "Around The Horn," and jeez, how could we not? But of all the regular cast of characters — Mariotti, Plaschke, Paige, what not — Michael Smith (who's probably a semi-regular) seems to escape a lot of hatred. More »
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No one has heard much from Sean Salisbury since he was let go by ESPN, and honestly, we kind of hope he's OK. More »
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Right now, we desperately wish we had video handy of Jeremy Schapp in one of the "meetings" on "E-60"'s conference room segments. He is ... saying something ... very serious. More »
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The first time we ever read a book that had the word fuck in it was in John Feinstein's Season On The Brink. Bobby Knight liked to say that word a lot. It was also the first time we had seen the c-word. We were 14 years old. More »
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It seems like an extremely long time ago that David Aldridge was on ESPN. He almost seems the exact opposite of what the network wants out of its NBA coverage. More »
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While searching for photos of Los Angeles Times columnist (and "Around the Horn" regular) Bill Plaschke, we came across this one. How in the world did Plaschke get on that panel? More »
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It is easy to forget sometimes that Bill Walton used to stutter. Remembering that little factoid makes his signature BOLD PROCLAMATIONS a little easier to handle; he wouldn't be Bill Walton if he didn't sound uncertain. More »
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We are pretty sure that most of you would agree that Jeff Van Gundy is an unlikely excellent NBA analyst. We're sure he would have never imagined that's the way his career would go. He's just coachy enough to be a TV preener. More »
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When Gregg Easterbrook's old "Tuesday Morning Quarterback" initially appeared on ESPN Slate, way way way way back in the day, it seemed like a revelation, and we say that not only because of his consistently amusing (and depressing) "Arizona (CAUTION: MAY CONTAIN FOOTBALL-LIKE SUBSTANCE) Cardinals" crack. More »
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ESPN's flashy-suited NFL reporter is the WWL's go-to guy when it comes to the headline-grabbing stories that require an Italian hard news punch. "Sal Pal", as he's wont to call himself, is a Philly boy, who's covered everything from Terrell Owens' driveway meltdown, to Spygate, to Vick's dogfighting trial, and even filled in for Stu Scott on the MNF pregame when Stu was having his little nodule scare. More »
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We would like to repeat our favorite piece of biographical information about Jay Bilas: He once starred in a movie with Dolph Lundgren. The movie was "Dark Angel," and Bilas plays an alien named "Azeck." Man this makes us happy. More »
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It's kind of amazing to think that, at one point, Skip Bayless was one of the top up-and-coming sportswriters in the country. At the age of 25, Bayless was hired as lead columnist for the Dallas Morning News, an amazing opportunity. He embraced this job by constantly claiming Troy Aikman was gay. And they say bloggers are bad. More »
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We've had some fun with Gregg Doyel around these parts — we'd actually forgotten about all that "glog" business, though we think we and Doyel had the world's best ever Glog Feud — but generally speaking, we think he livens the place up over at CBS Sportsline. More »
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We still can't quite get over Daulerio's interview with Frank Deford. This is still our favorite part: More »
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The last week has brought something wonderful: Official football preseason guides! Yesterday we bought the Pro Football Weekly version — which has the Buzzsaw in the playoffs! — and last week we grabbed Athlon's college football version. (Illini in the top 20!) Yep: It really never is too early to talk about college football. More »
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Chris Myers is the guy who came with the "Did You Know?" segment on "SportsCenter." We always liked that segment, particularly when Kenny Mayne did a "Did you know ... about ... sports." More »
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Our first field trip ever for this here site was our trip to "Quite Frankly With Stephen A. Smith," back when it was on the air. This ended up causing a tiff in the pages of the Chicago Tribune, of all places. More »
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We vowed once never to mention Mr. "Schrutebag" on the site again, but these are the Media Approval Ratings, and we must be comprehensive. So therefore, with nose held: More »
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Honestly, we will never, ever get tired of seeing Peter Gammons rocking out on his guitar. It makes us legitimately happy. More »
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Yes, yes, we know: Keith Olbermann isn't exactly a "sports" personality anymore. (Though he's still breaking sports news from time to time.) But Olbermann not only still does plenty of sports — it just doesn't seem like it right now, because the NFL's in the offseason and the politics world, most definitively, isn't — but he's such a large figure in how people consume sports now that he's still pretty towering. More »
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Whatever your thoughts on Marv Albert, it's rather impossible to deny that he is resilient. Honestly, it was only 11 years ago when those whole biting charges came around. We really thought he was done. Toast. Over. We mean, look at the Wikipedia wrapup. More »
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Charissa Thompson has gone from yappy, distracting eye candy to the Dibble seat on Fox's "Best Damn Sports Show Period." This fall, we'll also see her every Sunday as Fox's new NFL sideline reporting princess. Even though she's equipped with a striking visage and obviously knows her way around a spin class, she's also very knowledgable and articulate when it comes to all things damn sportsy. More »
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Mike Breen, it seems, almost came out of nowhere to take over as the lead NBA broadcaster. It took an odd confluence of circumstances for the guy to go from ski jumping in 2002 to the NBA Finals in 2008. More »
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We're not sure we're going to still be doing these Media Approval Things in October, which is why we have to do Tim McCarver now. Because fans' opinions of McCarver are never more polarized than in October. More »
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Even though we've been accused of having some sort of vendetta against Chris Berman in the past, we can honestly say that's not even close to true. We still (mostly) enjoy him on "NFL Primetime," or the "Blitz," or whatever the hell they call that now. He, during our first six months of existence, he was barely mentioned around here. And then, of course, YWML hit. More »
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We used to have a lot more fun with Woody Paige than we do now because, back when we first started this site, we felt compelled to write about "Cold Pizza" every day, because it was so ridiculous and because we were home all day and the only people watching. (We are certain we were the only people on earth to catch the time Woody ate dog food on air.) More »
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In our book, we said this about John Clayton: "Often resembles the guy in RoboCop after he falls in the toxic waste just before he's squished by the oncoming car." Someone classified this as "mean." We prefer, as always, "cheeky." More »
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We miss seeing Jayson Stark on "Baseball Tonight," but all told, we think we probably miss the mustache more. Who wouldn't? More »
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We're not sure if Emmitt Smith is going to lose any face time on ESPN now that Cris Carter is hanging around ... but we have our suspicions. Heck, they didn't even let Emmitt be a part of the draft coverage. More »
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We were fortunate enough to meet Peter King once. We introduced ourselves, and he looked us up and down, not malevolently, and said, "How did you end up doing this?" We think he was referring to life as a professional blogger, rather than the fact that we were juggling octopi at the time. More »
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We sometimes wonder if old-school on-air sports personalities resent Tony Reali. His "rise" from researcher in 2000 to host of his own show today was ridiculously swift, and, frankly, the type of thing that should scare them a lot more than some silly blog. More »
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Hey, when's a better time to take a look at John Madden in these rankings than the beginning of May? We can't think of a more apt moment in time. More »
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We remember, when John Kruk left "The Best Damn Sports Show" to join "Baseball Tonight," we worried that it would dumb down the show. At the time, it was pretty much Tim Kurkjian, Peter Gammons, Jayson Stark ... a bunch of smart baseball people discussing the great game. Kruk was a different kind of baseball person, we'd say. More »
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First off, don't get our own Rick Chandler started on poker analyst and "comedy" columnist Norman Chad. You really don't want to know. More »
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Of all the Jay Mariotti moments we've chronicled around these parts, our favorite was when he complained to Wikipedia about all those negative words about his page. He is a very sensitive boy. More »
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We felt a little bad about this, considering we were just on the show, but we don't watch The Best Damn Sports Show Period very often. We think it's because we're in New York. It's difficult to keep up with what channel it's even on; we have a lot of sports stations in NYC. But no Big Ten Network or NFL Network! More »
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