Josh Elliot is one of the nicest people on the planet and I applaud him (and ESPN) for giving blogs some well-deserved national recognition. And, as you can tell from the video, ESPN won't ignore the stories criticizing them (or former LOUD TALKING employees) if that's what the sports blogosphere is nattering about. Awful Announcing said yesterday that ESPN's actually pulling their buzzometer from a company called Sports Media Challenge, which I assume does full-time blog buzz aggregation. Awesome?

This might be a good thing for the collective egos of the sports blogoshphere (I AM ON TEEVEE!!!!) but is it also a way for ESPN to curry favor in the hopes of more positive coverage?

The one thing that I'd like to see happen before ESPN ditches this experiment is for all blogs to collectively join together one day to talk about Hannah Storm's wardrobe just to see how Elliot handles talking about that: "And the most talked about thing on the blogoshphere this morning...my co-host's revealing farm girl blouse!"

He can do it. He's a pro.

ESPN Surprisingly Takes Blog Buzz Criticism Well [Awful Announcing]

And now for a little stomach-churning media goodness. One of the inevitable downsides of ESPN's new "Live" SportsCenter are some of the slip-ups that occur during live broadcasts which unfortunately make it to air. Case in point — this morning, at approximately 10:28, it appears NFL beat reporter John Clayton was suffering from a bout of uncontrollable flatulence while on the phone with morning host Josh Elliot. Mr. Clayton's unfortunate accident occurred just as Elliot inquired about the status of Derek Anderson in Cleveland. Right after he utters the phrase "Brady Quinn is lurking..." you can hear the distinct sound of a gaseous emission trumpet through the microphone right before Mr. Clayton gives his Browns report. (Smell the junior high irony, if you will.)

ESPN's media relations machine "could not possibly comment about that", but Elliot did say that he asked the newsroom "What the F was that?" after the incident occurred, but denies having personally "dealt it."

Maybe it was Hannah Storm playing a prank? She's a scamp, that one. — A.J. Daulerio

Peter is just the sweetest guy, and he can just indulge his id at any point. ... So the food comes. And this is PK: He said, "I really need to talk to an African-American assistant coach. A guy who really should be a coach in this league, to talk about the percentage of black head coaches in the league. I need to talk to somebody like Ted Cottrell."

His phone rang 30 seconds later and it was Ted Cottrell, and he takes the phone call, and as he takes the phone call, the food arrives. And Flem had gone outside to talk to his wife on the phone, so Peter sees Flem's pizza, and you can see him thinking, "How do I ask the question so Ted will speak for a long time?" So he reaches over, and he grabs two whole pieces of Flem's pizza, eats them in two bites. It was the most staggering thing I had ever seen.

So PK stuffs his face while conducting phone interviews. Makes you wonder what he's swallowing when he's chatting up Brett Favre.

Josh Elliott Calls Morning SportsCenter ESPN's Acknowledgment of the Blogosphere [FanHouse]