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Truly Jeremy Lin's extraordinary explosion to prominence in the NBA is bringing out the best in sportspeople. Writers have been fired for far less, indeed, and as of 11:10 p.m. EST this off-color tweet from Jason Whitlock is still out there. It probably will be in the morning, too, since Whitlock isn't one to back off his comments. But, then, he's employed by the company that promotes his work in a promo that features "Mud Pit Chicks," so expecting sensitivity might be asking a bit much from the folks at Fox Sports. More »
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You may have seen this video of Pats tight end Rob Gronkowski and tackle Matt Light, fresh off of losing the Super Bowl, doing what I would be probably be doing if I just lost the biggest game of my life: getting shitfaced, dancing shirtless, and trying to get laid. But of course, Rodney Harrison doesn't approve of such nonsense: More »
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Jezebel alerted us to this on Tuesday: ESPN's feedback page allows you to pick from a menu of presumably common complaints, sorted by sport. For both men's and women's college basketball, for instance, your choices include "Schedule," "Bands/Halftime Performance," "Technical - Audio/Video," and—until Wednesday—you could select the following: More »
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Bob Lorenz isn't currently a star on the Yankees' broadcast arm, the YES Network. (He does lots of solid studio work.) And judging from what police allege happened early this morning in Westport, Connecticut, Lorenz won't become a star at YES anytime soon. More »
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Here's an ad for Dick's Sporting Goods informing viewers the availability of New England Patriots Super Bowl Champions gear. It ran one and a half times during today's local Comcast SportsNet broadcast of the Grizzlies-Celtics game (the second time through, it was cut off as somebody finally noticed it shouldn't have been running). More »
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Unlike the inexplicable floating fuck in the Greenville News's story on the SEC Title Game, we have a pretty good idea of how the Suffolk Journal ended up running this subhed yesterday. As explained by a red-faced editor's note, it was some joke text meant to be switched out later, only it never was. Let this be a lesson to the young journalists at Suffolk University: stick with lorem ipsum or TK. More »
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There is nothing more predictable than TV Azteca reporter Ines Sainz attending Media Day, except maybe a rush of other reporters commenting on how Ines Sainz is attending Media Day. To illustrate how she's only there for attention, a large number of these reporters either pose for photos with her, or surreptitiously snap a picture without her knowing. These are those photos. More »
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Doing the lord's work, the guys at Sports790 in Houston followed around Televisa Deportes sensation Marisol Gonzalez for a bit. Not to leer, but to see who might be caught leering. They were not disappointed. [via @sportsfeeder1] More »
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Ray Ferraro called TSN's broadcast of Leafs/Penguins tonight, and as sometimes happens with online streams (in this case, the NHL's GameCenter Live), viewers watching during televised ad breaks were treated to a live mic. And while we've heard announcers swear before, hearing Ferraro take a stab at a high-pitched Dion Phaneuf impression was a new one. More »
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Here's the tail end of a package that ran on KSTP-TV in St. Paul tonight about Marlins pitcher Brad Hand, a Minneapolis native fighting for a spot in the Miami rotation. You can see a bit of a giggle in sports anchor Joe Schmit's voice as he realizes the unfortunate turn of phrase in the over-the-shoulder graphic. Not covered in the story: how Hand feels about the prospect of new manager Ozzie Guillen jerking him off the mound after a poor performance. More »
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Jon Heyman, late of Sports Illustrated and Newsday, now of CBS, is a fine baseball reporter. He keeps up with rumors at an impressive clip, and, when he's not the first with a scoop, he'll credit whoever had it first on Twitter. Judging by his TV and Twitter personas, he seems reasonable. But he also seems rich. Really rich. We've noticed this pattern for some time, but Heyman's tweet on Saturday afternoon ensured that we would speak our minds: More »
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This is actually from Wednesday's 6 p.m. newscast on KNTV in San Francisco, during which a CSN Bay Area producer in the background appears to react quite negatively to the Dennis Allen news being delivered by sports anchor Henry Wofford. We're not sure how someone working on TV wouldn't know he is, you know, on TV. But if this is how Allen's being received by the media, we can only imagine how the sane and reasonable Oakland Raider fan base is reacting. More »
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Adam Jacobi: "In the end, CBS had to let me go for the Paterno story going out the way it did, and I understand completely. Thanks, everyone, for reading." [via] More »
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This is purportedly a series of Twitter direct messages sent from Michael Strahan to one Lindsey Koehler after the exchange in the above gallery. More »
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I'm not sure where to begin with this column by Rick Telander of the Chicago Sun-Times. The headline says it's about Jay Cutler, but the first half of it has nothing to do with Jay Cutler—it's all about Tom Brady and Eli Manning, since they're in the Super Bowl. By the time Telander gets to telling us about Cutler, he concedes that Cutler is the best quarterback the Bears have had in a very long time. He then faults the Bears for not acquiring a backup in case Cutler gets hurt, which he did midway through the 2011 season. And that's when Telander finally gets to his point: Compared with other quarterbacks—Telander goes on to name five who have won Super Bowls, plus Matt Stafford, you know, just because—Cutler just lacks ... "something." More »
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Wisconsin played University of Minnesota-Duluth in December. The game, broadcast on the Big Ten Network, was a 3-3 tie. Somehow we only got this video now, courtesy of reader Daniel. Hey, beats Joe Micheletti. More »
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Sports Illustrated's Joe Posnanski is in a tough spot. He's a gifted writer and by all appearances a decent guy. His decency is his defining characteristic; he grew up rooting for doomed Cleveland teams and covered the worthless Kansas City Royals, but he never gave in to the urge to be a hatchet man. If Posnanski sometimes scores his work for strings, it's not to play the readers for saps, but because he's gone out of his way to be considerate to his subjects. More »
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The television networks employ former athletes as analysts because of the uncommon insight they can offer from having been there. Those ex-athletes will, on occasion, uphold their end of the bargain by informing us of something we might not have known or understood without the benefit of their perspective. But just as often, we get banality, cliches, or lunges at outright asininity like this, courtesy former tennis great Jim Courier. Novak Djokovic was visibly ill during much of his Australian Open quarterfinal victory last night against David Ferrer, so it was certainly worth asking him how he powered through. But this wasn't the way to do it. More »
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It takes a lot to make one really angry about the Pro Bowl. No one cares about the Pro Bowl—not football fans, not gamblers, not even the players in the game. It's a nice Hawaiian lark before the Super Bowl. More »
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That's Terry Bradshaw being accosted by Ann Mara, widow to the late Giants owner Wellington, after New York's NFC Championship victory. It's believed to be the first time ever captured on video that Bradshaw actually tries to shy away from a woman. [Fox] More »
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It took CBS all of 15 hours to do something more embarrassing than prematurely reporting Joe Paterno's death. Here's a clip from the network's The NFL Today, something we're pretty sure is an advertisement for E*Trade—though we thought FCC rules mandated such things needed to be disclosed to the audience. [CBS] More »
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The Knicks and the Heat are not playing this weekend. They play next Friday—on ESPN. That did not stop Sportsnation from asking if it was the best non-NFL game. Nor did it stop the fine citizens of New York and Florida from responding that yes, of course, it is clearly the best game this weekend. Missouri-Baylor be damned. More »
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The conventional wisdom is that Bill Belichick is the greatest football coach in the history of the world. On this point, conventional wisdom may be right. Who knows, or cares really, it's all so subjective. What is not subjective is that Bill Belichick is one of the greatest football coaches in the history of the world. And if Robert Kraft had listened to the wrong people, he would be doing it somewhere other than Foxboro. More »
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Here's a clip from yesterday's John Thompson Show on ESPN 980 in Washington, D.C., during which a discussion of Ryan Braun's PED incident took place. (Deadspin edited about a minute from the discussion for brevity.) The program quickly moves onto a new topic once Thompson mentions that he doesn't know what herpes is and is informed "it's a venereal disease." More »
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Never heard of Tom Byrne? You mean, you didn't know he hosts a nighttime show on one of Philly's sports-talk radio stations? Come on. What's wrong with you? You're seriously not aware he's been described as "undoubtedly an up-and-coming sports radio personality"? No way. Really? Tom Byrne is a pretty big fucking deal, at least in his own mind. This is from the Philadelphia Daily News, whose own gossip columnist doesn't seem to know who Tom Byrne is, either: More »
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A few months ago, we asked Auburn for all correspondence between the media and the football team's spokesman, Kirk Sampson, during the Tigers' 2010 season. We weren't looking for anything specific; we only wanted to get a sense of what it's like on the inside when the press descends on one story—in this case, a national championship run featuring the best player in college football—and instead finds itself covering something very different—a play-for-play scandal involving the same player. More »
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Randy Patrick was mysteriously absent from tonight's 10:00 news on WKRG in Mobile, but anchor Mel Showers stood in and briefly noted that as we reported on Deadspin earlier today, Randy's son Patrick Setterstrom is a co-star of the now-famous video of the Alabama teabagging incident. More »
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Here's a clip from today's Daily News roundup program on CSN Philly, where a discussion of the Minnesota Wild team members bringing their fathers on a trip to play the Flyers tonight is brought to a grinding halt by columnist Marcus Hayes's "It's a good thing they don't do that in the NBA." More »
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Consider how many people are involved in the production of a simple weather forecast on CNN. You have the meteorologist, for sure, but you also have the producer who loads the "wx" into the script/rundown, and the graphics techs who run the system that creates what you see on your screen. More »
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Maybe I'm missing the story. Maybe the story is that Heather Cox worked Tim Tebow, LeBron James, and Rick Ross into a single sentence. While previous ESPN on-air rap recitations have gone pretty smoothly, this instance (during last night's Heat-Nuggets battle) felt...wrong. [ESPN] More »
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Franklin, you will recall, was fired by ESPN after a condescendingly sexist exchange with his colleague, Jeannine Edwards—referring to her as "Sweet baby"—before last year's Chik-fil-A Bowl. More »
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This slip-up came at the tail end of a conversation on TNT about Twinkie-maker Hostess declaring bankruptcy, an entirely reasonable topic for a studio show previewing a night of NBA action. I assume it's that bankruptcy filing Shaquille O'Neal means by "that shit," but we were all sent to commercial before learning the answer. This is cable, of course, so Shaq can say whatever he wants—but given Sir Charles's slip-up last week it's cause to worry some suit may soon be stepping in to regulate the Inside The NBA circus. [TNT] More »
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We all got a kick out of watching Holly Rowe bust out the sharp elbows to establish her turf after last week's Sugar Bowl. We were amused again to discover it wasn't the first time Rowe had thrown around some muscle in the name of postgame journalism. But there's a reason Rowe does this, and it's not simply because she's some badass from ESPN who's out to to big-time some well-meaning reporter from the Daily Backwater. More »
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Robert Griffin III's nickname is RG3 because he's the third consecutive Robert Griffin in his family—hence the III. While this has been a problem for ESPN before, it's never created so many issues as it did for Linda Cohn tonight on SportsCenter, who despite dropping several "RG3" references continued to call the Heisman Trophy winner "Robert Griffin Jr." We imagine the Baylor quarterback—who announced plans to enter the NFL draft Tuesday—would reply with a smile and a "Please, Linda, call me RG3. Robert Griffin Jr.'s my father's name." [ESPN] More »
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I mean, it is, but that team should have that much and that team should have that much. Close enough. The production truck's only half paying attention; field goals will do that. More »
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We brought you video last week of Holly Rowe giving the Worldwide Leader's Elbow to an as-yet-unidentified reporter after the Sugar Bowl. It's no secret Rowe can be aggressive in protecting her employer's interests (ESPN uses its own monetary muscle to shut out other media outlets from the best post-game interviews) and that's just one of the qualities that's made her such an important asset to the company. Plus, she does sideline reports about pickles. More »
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ESPN makes plenty of graphics errors, but this one (from today's BBVA Compass Bowl) is a doozy reminiscent of the golden era of ESPN chyron failures. More »
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With all this business about Jim Rome leaving ESPN today, we figured we should check in with Jim Everett, the Rams, Saints, and Chargers quarterback whom Rome repeatedly called "Chris" on ESPN2 in 1994. Everett charged Rome. The video endures on YouTube. Everett is now a financial professional in California. More »
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Charles Barkley wasn't the only one caught last night talking into a hot microphone that was picked up by NBA.tv during a TNT commercial break. Here, play-by-play man Kevin Harlan makes an eloquent case for how well he thinks the New Orleans Saints play at home. More »
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So Jim Rome is going from ESPN to CBS Sports Network even though the Worldwide Leader had offered him a multi-year extension for Rome Is Burning. According to a source, Rome wanted out at least in part because of comments made by an ESPN executive in Those Guys Have All The Fun, the oral history published last year. More »
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