"I always want to stay in sport. But at some point, I have to start thinking about starting a family. That's why I'll start cutting back. I have to take my personal life into account. I can't imagine not being a part of sports in the fall. I see my future [remaining] in TV. The only change coming is to start thinking about my personal life and family. It's kind of time."

Interesting tense. This isn't that surprising a statement, given how crappy her summer was, but it seems to indicate that we'll see less and less of EA in the future after she re-prioritizes. Her contract isn't up any time super-soon (like, not in the next month or anything) but ESPN will probably have to figure out a new way to utilize Erin Andrews as she goes through whatever process she's going through right now.

As far as the baby-making, it's not known if Andrews is planning on marrying anyone (let alone seeing somebody), but I'm sure those are the types of personal details she'd prefer not disclosing at this point. Fair enough.

ESPN has announced that three new localized sites—Dallas, L.A. and New York—will roll out over the next year and a half or so. Network executives say this is "only the 'first inning' of their effort to provide hyperlocal sports coverage in cities across the country." Ominous enough for you?

The goal is not exactly to destroy local media, so much as co-opt it. By pulling local writers, bloggers and photographers into their orbit, all sports coverage—even high school games—can be filtered through the ESPN logo. And if they happen to gobble up a few sports departments when their parent newspapers inevitably die, well ... then maybe you'll feel like they've done you favor. Hey, thanks ESPN!

However, if I end up working for ESPNBinghampton someday just go ahead and end it for me. Deal?

ESPN Aims to Be the Home Team, All Over America [NY Times]
ESPN Los Angeles? I Give It 6 Months Before It's ESPN Oakland [Style Points]
No news is bad news [Sports Business Journal]
Earlier: What Is Up With This ESPNChicago? [Deadpsin]

The Big 5 websites are fairly predictable. Fox Sports, SI.com and Yahoo! Sports and ESPN.com are all going with British Open previews on the front page, while CBS Sports has an MLB first half recap (about a week after the other four ran theirs).

SportsCenter led off with a goofy, time-killing skit hyping the ESPYs, and spent far too much time analyzing the only stories on the radar: Brett Favre, Pedro and Tiger.

Before that, ESPN's primetime programming was a rerun of the Home Run Derby, and the 2008 World Series of Poker. You might realize that 2008 is not the year we currently live in.

ESPN2 went with an NFC Wild Card game from 1998, a half hour on Madden Nation, and the AAA All-Star game. Living vicariously through long-ago games, virtual triumphs and minor league teams? It's like living in Kansas City.

Versus is showing highlights of the Tour de France. Cycling, you'll notice, is not a sport that has highlights.

SpikeTV is admirably trying to fill the void by showing UFC Fight Night, and, um, CSI.

Among my local New York sports channels, I'm forced to choose between a 1994 Stanley Cup Finals game, the Brooklyn Cyclones vs. the Williamsport Crosscutters, a "Yankees Classic" from two months ago, and a game from the women's professional soccer league, helpfully called "Women's Professional Soccer." Of these, I choose death.

On Friday, the financially struggling Globe reported that three locals with millions in loose change had emerged as potential buyers of Beantown's newspaper of record, which The New York Times is actively trying to sell. (Newspapers, if you haven't heard, aren't doing so well.)

Behind Door No. 1: Stephen Pagliuca, managing partner of the Celtics.

Pagliuca's day job as the managing director of Bain Capital gives him the kind of cash to pay for Kevin Garnett and potentially dole out the loot necessary to purchase a far-less-intriguing commodity. No one really knows what the Globe is worth — estimates range from $1 to much, much more — but if Pagliuca scores the newspaper, you would think he would have to immediately address the obvious conflict of interest in his owning the Globe's sports section, once the best in the country and still a veritable powerhouse, while presiding over one of the local teams.

All it would take is a statement resembling NESN's list of 10 values, of which "Integrity" is No. 7 — behind "Adaptability" and "Teamwork" — and concisely defined as: "We are committed to the highest level of ethics and professional standards." Somewhere, Dennis Eckersley nods in approval.

If Pagliuca does add the Globe to his list of holdings, the only Boston team left out of this ethical quandary would be the Patriots. Bill Belichick declined to comment.

3 men with local roots emerge as potential Globe buyers [The Boston Globe]
What Price For The Boston Globe? [The New York Times]
The Last, Best Sports Staff [Deadspin]

As far as I can determine, the videos below were made by Verona, Pennsylvania native Gavin Jenkins, who teaches English at a middle school in Shenzhen, China, where he's been living for about a year. Much of his teaching plan revolves around sports, which is always fun. It's all undoubtedly part of a bigger plan: When our financial overlords eventually come here and put us to work in their sugar mines, they'll have to know how to speak our language. What better source for that than Wilbon and Kornheiser on Pardon the Interruption?

Also entertaining: Chinese PTI with girls. But for more advanced students, there's the class on NHL trash talking.

It's the sign of a highly advanced educational system when your midterm final includes the sentence: "Flyers fans have the IQ of sweet potatoes."

Chinese Students Learn English Imitating PTI [NESW Sports]
Chinese PTI (Part I) [Douchebagabroad]

ESPN Chicago is just like ESPN.com, except that the content is exclusively about Chicago teams. Yay? Is it that hard to track down stories about Chicago sports teams these? Are there obscure Bulls tidbits that you somehow can't find on the Chicago Bulls team page on regular ESPN.com? What are we getting here that isn't already provided by their website, four networks, or all the other Chicago media outlets that have already run out of things to say about the Windy City? Sure, Chris Berman took five minutes out of his day to record a Chicago-only SportsCenter, but how long do you think that's going to last?

Maybe Scoop Jackson can explain it:

In our minds, this site, one dedicated to all of Chicagoland sports at every level, is long overdue. Because when it comes to the games we all play, watch and love, no one — and I repeat no one — on any corner of any block in any city any place in the world got swagger like us.

Yes, that's true. That's also why everyone else finds Chicago sports fans so annoying. Ok, maybe it's just me, but your Devin Hester obsessions have gone a little too far. We're not laughing with you, Cubbies fans. And seriously ... it's time to let go of Mike Ditka. But I digress from the original point. Why do we need more regional coverage from a national news outlet? Wouldn't most people prefer to get their biased hometown coverage from their own biased hometown sources? Unless the goal is simply to destroy all local sports media by co-opting it, in which case, congratulations to ESPN. You win.

Plus, Chicago is not even the first ESPN local site. They launched ESPN Boston years ago. (Yeah, I went there.)

Scoop Jackson: Why Chicago deserves its own ESPN site [ESPN Chicago]
Welcome to ESPN … Chicago? [Star-Tribune]
Jermaine Dye, Paul Konerko hit 300th homers back-to-back [ESPN Regular]

You remember Michael Kinahan, who sent a quite insane email to parents of his Massachusetts 6- and 7-year-old girls soccer team that got him ousted before the season even began (Excerpt: "I expect that the ladies be put on a diet of fish, undercooked red meat and lots of veggies. No junk food."). I first saw the story at the Quincy (Mass.) Patriot-Ledger, which presented it as their own reporting.

But David Portnoy, the founding editor of the blog Barstool Sports, had it first, and the Patriot Ledger cribbed his post for their story four days later. How does Portnoy know that his was copied? He had changed a couple of the names for privacy reasons, and the Patriot Ledger had those altered names in their piece.

"I don't know that they did it intentionally," Portnoy told me by phone today. "It's not the biggest deal in the world. But the story really took off and got a lot of attention, and it would have been nice to get some credit for it. We don't have an opportunity like that very often."

Portnoy told me that he got wind of the story from "the friend of one of the parents (of the team in question)."

"He forwarded me the email, and we did a post on that. Then a few days later the coach resigned, and I posted on that the next day. Then the Patriot Ledger picked it up and the story caught fire."

The Patriot Ledger ran this story on March 31. Bartstool Sports had this on March 27, and this on March 30. So Wednesday, Portnoy sent an email to the newspaper, asking, 'Hey, what gives?' He got this reply:

Dave,
We had a copy of the email from another parent, but apparently copied the version from your site without credit. That was a mistake and we apologize for that. We should have used our own copy. If it's any consolation, this kind of thing happens to us often. We don't like it, which is another reason we should have been more careful.

AP picked up the story from us, which is we you're seeing the credit on other sites. The LA Times and other sites credited the Herald.

We have gone into our site and added the credit to the original story and the folo, along with links to your site.

Hope that explains what happened.

Ken Johnson
Online editor

So the Patriot-Ledger had an email that was forwarded by a parent.... but copied Barstool's account by mistake. I see.

"The story was on PTI, you guys had it, it went crazy," Portnoy said. "But I soon realized that the reason we weren't getting credit was that the Patriot Ledger didn't mention us. Hey, they did apologize. I was just hoping that somehow a few people would know it originally came from us."

Portnoy, who does this is his only job, has been running Barstool for three years out of his home in Boston. Here is his office. Ha. Oh, and you can commemorate this whole incident with a handsome Green Death T-shirt, available on his site. If Portnoy can find one to send you in that toxic mess.

Reader Email – Would You Want Your Daughter To Play For "Green Death" In The Girls Under 8 League In Scituate? [Barstool Sports]

I've always been fascinated by the Sports Center opening; especially the graphics, which seem to be assembled from components from a technology we know nothing about. That thing fits where? Why is that gizmo revolving? Hey look, it's a line that goes nowhere! The only item I recognize is that round thing in the photo to the left, which I believe is what R2D2 plugged into whenever Han needed a hatch opened on the Death Star. Yes, Sports Center has a new opening (video here), and new fun graphics, as seen above. And as Awful Announcing points out, it all coincides with the grand opening of their Los Angeles broadcast facility on April 6. Hey, Stu Scott will live in LA now. Booyah, dude.

But is the new graphics look unnecessary? Most cosmetic changes like these are designed to draw in more viewers, right? Does this do that? I liked the old graphics just fine. Wake me when they start broadcasting in 3D; that would be cool.

Sports Center Is Getting A New Makeover, Intro [Awful Announcing]

Check out the video below, in which Miller is featured in an early ESPN remote — Berman must have been busy that day — a few years before becoming the star point guard for his father John's Blackhawk High School team in Chippewa Township, Pennsylvania. He also went on to become Big East Freshman of the Year in 1988, leading Pitt to three NCAA Tournament appearances before becoming a coach.

The Panthers knocked Miller and his Xavier Musketeers out of the tournament last night, 60-55.

Of course ESPN was about seven years late with this story; Miller appeared on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson when he was five, doing pretty much the same tricks.

Xavier Coach Sean Miller Was A Basketball Phenom, ESPN, Video [NESW Sports]

It was toward the end of the 24-minute segment on the Dennis and Callahan Show on WEEI, just after Simmons had made his seventh movie-or-TV reference (he compared Doc Rivers to Michael Douglas in Falling Down). That's not a record, in case you're wondering. Then, this happened:

Dennis, or Callahan: "He's afraid every time he comes on we're going to ask about Rick Reilly. Do you have any questions you want to ask him about Rick Reilly?"

Simmons: "Oh stop it."

Dennis, or Callahan: "You get ..."

Simmons: "No, he's a colleague. I'm going to have him on the podcast soon."

Dennis, or Callahan: "Do you guys talk? Do you have desks next to each other, do you have your little cubicle next to his?"

Simmons: "We exchange story ideas all the time."

Dennis, or Callahan: "Was Mt. Rushmore one of your ideas?" (laughter)

Simmons: "I was trying to finish the basketball book, so I've had my head in the sand about Mt. Rushmore."

Meanwhile, the great Rick Reilly Celebrity Golf Experiment appears to be over; Reilly's name is not on the list of participants for the 2009 American Century Championship at Lake Tahoe. However, among newcomers this year will be Matt Cassell and Chuck Liddell! Lidell for Reilly? That's a pretty decent trade.

Player Acceptance List [American Century Championship]
The Sports Guy Bill Simmons [WEEI Radio]

Watney bravely takes camera in hand to not only show America where she lives (a dubious move), but also a small alligator which is lurking on the bank of a canal near her Florida condo. She won't let her dog out, she says, because it could "become a snack." It's all really the worst Man Vs. Wild episode I've ever seen. Will no one from the Red Sox go poke that gator with a stick to shoo it out of there? (Come on Papelbon; you know you want to).

So speaking of small dogs as potential snack food, this is as good a time as any for the Wiener Dog story. I lived in a condo in South Lake Tahoe a few years back that had two large garbage dumpsters at the end of the parking lot next to the forest. Bears would often frequent the dumpsters at night for a free buffet, but one afternoon a particularly brazen one showed up for lunch. A family in the condo across from mine had a wiener dog, who saw the bear through the screen door. The dog somehow got the screen door open and sped toward the dumpsters, barking madly, and the bear, startled, took off. They both disappeared into the woods.

About three minutes passed, in which the only sounds were the gentle rustle of the pine trees in the wind, and an occasional blue jay. Then, from out of the forest, comes the wiener dog running headlong back toward the condos, being chased by the bear. I can only surmise that somewhere deep in the woods the bear thought to itself "Wait a minute; I'm being chased by a freaking wiener dog." The dog sped back to his house and nosed inside through the screen door.

The funniest part to me was that when the wiener dog flew back into the house — and I swear, I don't know how this happened, because no one was home — the wooden door slammed shut behind him.

Gator Bait [NESN]
Hero Wiener Dogs — The Legend Grows [Dave Barry's Blog]