media Page 17 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights

How Roger Goodell And ESPN Use Each Other
The NFL Network may not be the monolith the league once envisioned, but Roger Goodell likes having it around for what it forces others to do, particularly ESPN. Goodell alluded to this on Monday while speaking to Hearst employees—Hearst owns 20 percent of ESPN—during the media company's regularly he...

NBC Sports Network Cancels NRA-Sponsored Elephant Hunting Show
NBC Sports Network is dumping the show that featured a guy shooting an elephant in the face. The show—hosted by NRA lobbyist Tony Makris—isn't being canceled for that episode with the elephant shooting, exactly (though that didn't help). Instead it's because Makris compared his critics to Hitler ea...

Michelle Beadle's <em>Crossover</em> Is Finished
Crossover, the troubled NBC Sports Network studio show hosted by Michelle Beadle, is "donzo," tweets Beadle. Beadle: out. Shooting elephants in the face: in....

Knicks Owner Takes Beat Reporter's Question For First Time In 6 Years
According to Bleacher Report's Howard Beck, history was made at an otherwise routine press conference announcing New York as the host city for the 2015 NBA All-Star Game....

9 Things You Should Know About Skip Bayless, According To Skip Bayless
Skip Bayless told Michael Smith and Jemele Hill yesterday that he gave a Washington Post journalist a list of bullet points of "how I would try to capture me." (The Post recently published a profile of Bayless.) ...

The New <em>SportsCenter</em> Commercial You're Going To See Everywhere
It's been a rough stretch for ESPN and SportsCenter. Ratings for ESPN's flagship show have been sagging, bringing in about 828,000 viewers this year, down from about 1 million last year. Primetime ratings for ESPN and ESPN2 have seen declines too. ESPN's gotten really defensive about it, especially...

"Football Rain Delay" Drew Higher Ratings Than <em>MNF</em> And <em>60 Minutes</em>
The 49ers-Seahawks rain delay—a weather delay—was the second-highest-rated block of programming this week, according to Nielsen. The hourlong delay drew 17.84 million viewers, five million more than the viewership for 60 Minutes and nearly double that of America's Got Talent. Six of the week's seven...

Why Howard Beck Left <em>The New York Times</em> For Bleacher Report
"I understand the reactions," Howard Beck said over the phone, "because of where I have been working for the last nine years and because of where I'm going." ...

The NFL Wants $1.5 M. From M.I.A For Flipping The Bird At Super Bowl
Remember when M.I.A. flipped the bird at the Super Bowl halftime show? Yeah, it's sorta fuzzy for me, too. The NFL apparently does remember, and being that this is the NFL, the offense will not go unpunished....

Bleacher Report Poaches Howard Beck From The <em>Times</em>
Well, then. Six weeks after Bleacher Report poached Mike Freeman, Turner's flagship sports site has gone and hired New York Times basketball reporter Howard Beck. ...

How An MMA Fighter Faked His Own Death
The Times has produced another intimidatingly pretty story this morning, in the "Snow Fall" vein. This one concerns a low-rent mixed martial arts fighter in Michigan, and unlike with "Snow Fall," you will actually read this and enjoy it immensely and not merely pretend to. ...
![OK State Registrar: <em>Sports Illustrated</em> Still Hasn't Called Us [Update]](https://images.deadspin.com/tr:w-900/19026rd6xv6vgjpg.jpg)
OK State Registrar: <em>Sports Illustrated</em> Still Hasn't Called Us [Update]
Over the last day, one of Sports Illustrated's main sources for the second part of its five-part investigation into Oklahoma State has been under attack. Fath' Carter claimed that he graduated from the university with a degree in education, and, more significantly, that he and former Cowboys runni...

Ron Morris Again Allowed To Cover Steve Spurrier And South Carolina
A day after Jim Romenesko reported that Steve Spurrier had bullied The State into banning Ron Morris, a columnist often critical of Spurrier and the Gamecocks program, from writing about South Carolina football, the newspaper has backed off its stance....

College Team Limits Media Access. Paper Says <em>OK, We Won't Cover You.</em>
This is the exact reverse of the Steve Spurrier/The State kerfluffle that saw the newspaper bowing to the coach's wishes and taking a critical reporter off the beat. But where in the world does a local newspaper have more power than the football team? The SWAC, obviously....

ESPN: Whitlock's Thayer Evans Comments "Not Acceptable."
Jason Whitlock torpedoed SI's Thayer Evans on Tuesday—"It wouldn’t shock me if Thayer Evans couldn't spell 'cat'"—and now he's running into trouble with his persnickety soon-to-be employers at ESPN. ...

Serena Williams Finally Has A Real Rival: Vika Azarenka
Over the past week, it's been tempting to compare Roger Federer with Serena Williams, two tennis greats approaching the same bad end of the aging curve in very different ways. Federer, 32, lost last week to Tommy Robredo in a three-set blowout in the fourth round. Federer didn't win a Grand Slam thi...

The Bryan Brothers Quest For Golden Slam Ends In Semifinals
The Bryan Brothers, two wins away from winning the golden Grand Slam, lost today in the men's doubles semifinals to Leander Paes and Radek Stepanek, 6-3, 3-6, 6-4. Bob and Mike Ryan were on the verge of becoming only the second men's doubles team to win all four Grand Slams in a single year. It happ...

Why Did ESPN Cut 10 Minutes From A Podcast Of Keith Olbermann's Show?
Keith Olbermann made his much-anticipated return to ESPN this week, and if you've missed any episodes of his new show, audio podcasts can be found on the Worldwide Leader's website. But if you were to listen to the podcast from Wednesday's program, you'd notice that significant portions are missing....


Did Disney's General Counsel Urge ESPN To Wimp Out On Concussion Doc?
So why did ESPN end its relationship with Frontline less than two months before their co-reported, two-part documentary on the NFL and concussions was set to air? We know that ESPN president John Skipper found the trailer for Frontline's documentary to be "sensational" and "over the top." We know t...