media Page 117 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights

Bob Brenly Doesn't Understand How The Earth's Rotation Works
If there is one thing baseball announcers love talking about, it's shadows. "Boy I tell ya, these shadows are going to play havoc on the hitters this afternoon!" Given how much the shadows get talked about, you'd think most announcers would have a solid understanding of how the earth's rotation wo...

ESPN Goes With A "KKK-Rod" Headline, Quickly Changes It After Common Sense Intervenes
Last night, Wallace Matthews of ESPN needed a headline for the note about Alex Rodriguez striking out three times in his Rapid Response blog. What to go with? Something silly like "A-Whiff"? Maybe even something plainly informative like "A-Rod's bad start"?...

Did TBS Crap Out On You During The Playoffs? Blame The Sun.
Ah, the sun. Giver of life. Grower of crops. Sworn enemy of the MLB Playoffs on TBS. For Cardinals fans watching their team begin a championship defense, and for Nationals fans watching their first playoff game ever, yesterday's broadcast was a frustrating one. On multiple occasions, TBS's feed froz...

Minnesota Vikings Beat Writer Wanted Mike Munchak To Sound The Rusty Trombone
Matt Hasselbeck had kind of a rough day against the Vikings and probably deserved to get yanked, but I think we can all agree that Vikings beat writer Tom Pelissero was probably referring to the "sad trombone" or maybe the old vaudeville gimmick of pulling a guy off the stage with a cane when he sen...

Kansas City Royals Broadcaster May Have Written The Next Great Love Song
To my mind, the most important part of a love song is a memorable first line. It's also the hardest part. So it was with great admiration and not just a little jealousy that we viewed Royals pre and post-game man Joel Goldberg's sneak peek into the writing process....

Come Chat With The <em>SF Weekly's</em> Joe Eskenazi, Author Of That Terrific Story About Bleacher Report
Earlier this week, the SF Weekly published a lengthy story by Joe Eskenazi about the rise and inner workings of Bleacher Report, purveyors of flavorless, pre-fabricated, market-based sports news. We thought the piece was great. Others thought the piece was not so great....

Source Of Robinson Cano PED Rumor Says He's Sorry, TV Station Makes On-Air Apology
Charlotte reporter Dan Tordjman offered a Twitter apology yesterday and his employer, ABC affiliate WSOC, issued an on-air mea culpa in the aftermath of his spreading a false rumor about Robinson Cano being busted for performance-enhancing drugs by MLB....

People Watch The Red Sox, Even When They Suck, And Other Things About MLB TV Ratings
Attendance is up, but local TV ratings were down six percent across Major League Baseball in 2012. Sports Business Daily has the full rundown of winners and losers. The Tigers were tops in average rating, with 9.13 percent of Detroit televisions tuned to FS Detroit during Tigers games, up 41.6 perce...

Venezuelan Man Is Good At Baseball, BBC Is Shocked To Report
The BBC headline (above) describes Miguel Cabrera's triple crown in just about the most British way possible. Despite Venezuelans playing in Major League Baseball since 1939, and Venezuela's finishing ahead of the U.S. in the last World Baseball Classic, Cabrera still gets treated like a gold-medali...

Michael Wilbon Just Can't Decide How Much He Hates DC Sports Fans
Michael Wilbon has a problem. There's been all this winning and fun times going on with DC sports this year, so some major magazines are starting to tout DC's merits as a Great Sports Town. Problem is, when ESPN The Magazine rolled out its DC lovefest this week, we learned that Wilbon supplies the ...

Right After Bobby Valentine Gets Fired, ESPN Runs A Segment About Why He's Still The Manager Of The Red Sox
ESPN was covering the breaking news of Bobby Valentine's firing when the network accidentally aired a pre-recorded Tim Kurkjian segment, one that was presumably meant to air under the (unlikely) condition of Valentine returning as the Red Sox's manager for 2013. Oops. Chris McKendry did her best to ...

"Are We Live? Oh Shit." Liam Neeson Appears On <em>SportsCenter</em> And Has Absolutely No Idea What He's Being Asked
Liam Neeson dragged himself onto SportsCenter yesterday to pimp Taken 2 and wow. Has there ever been a guest on SportsCenter who was so unprepared to be a guest on SportsCenter? Neeson didn't like where it was headed from the get-go—he was being asked about the Jets—and wanted to start over. But w...

This Is How Your Bleacher Report Sausage Gets Made
On Wednesday, we pointed you in the direction of the SF Weekly's long, excellent story about the rise of Bleacher Report. That piece discussed at length the process whereby Bleacher Report reverse-engineers its content based on data collected by an "analytics team." In short, the analysts divine the...

The Replacement Ref Disaster Was The Most Watched <i>Monday Night Football</i> So Far This Season: Last Week’s TV Ratings, In Context
A weekly feature wherein we contextualize TV ratings for national sports broadcasts. Data via Nielsen and Sports Business Journal's John Ourand. Viewership numbers represent approximate number of persons tuned to a given program; ratings share refers to the percentage of all households using a telev...

"Bleacher Report Is The Worst Thing In The History Of Journalism" Is The Headline Bleacher Report Would Write For This Story
The SF Weekly just published a massive piece about the Borg-like rise of Bleacher Report, and it is a doozy. The Weekly's Joe Eskenazi talked to a host of former and current writers, editors, and columnists to try and figure out how Bleacher Report became the third-most-read sports site in the worl...

A Red Sox Fan Pulled A Jeffrey Maier And Gave The Yankees A Home Run
We thought last week's minor kerfluffle, on Bobby Valentine's game of employment chicken, would be the last Red Sox update we'd have to do this season. No sense piling on. But the Red Sox can't seem to stop doing terrible things....

In Least-Professional Broadcast Ever, ESPN Announcers Mock Wrecked Rallycross Driver As He's Taken To Hospital
ESPN's live broadcast of the Global Rallycross event in Las Vegas Saturday night turned bizarre as the feed—being recorded for later tape-delayed broadcast—revealed a series of bizarre comments by announcers in the aftermath of a driver's devastating accident....

The New York Knicks' Sad Media Day In 10 Tweets And One GIF
Thanks to Twitter, NBA fans can now get up-to-the-second quotes and information from the various beat writers who cover their favorite team. That's not necessarily a good thing for Knicks fans, though, as is evidenced by the tweets coming out of the team's media day today....

ESPN Repeatedly Identifies Random Man As Former NFL Running Back Fred Taylor
Former Florida and Jaguars great Fred Taylor has a son, Kelvin, who like dad plays running back and is committed to play for the Gators. Kelvin's Glades Day squad made the trip up to Yulee for a battle of Florida high school heavyweights, and the ESPN broadcast focused mostly on Fred Taylor, who w...

Rick Reilly Fell Asleep At The Ryder Cup
As tweeted out by Sports Illustrated writer Alan Shipnuck. Shhh, Alan! He's working!...