media Page 212 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights

John Tomase Spared Any More Online Ridicule For Now
After last Friday's awkwardly (if not sincere) apologizing to readers of the Boston Herald, Patriot fans, Patriot front office, Bill Belichick, Pat Patriot and anyone else who's ever been remotely affiliated with the team, Rams walkthrough bumbler John Tomase did receive a little bit of grace from t...

Media Approval Ratings: Chris Berman
Even though we've been accused of having some sort of vendetta against Chris Berman in the past, we can honestly say that's not even close to true. We still (mostly) enjoy him on "NFL Primetime," or the "Blitz," or whatever the hell they call that now. He, during our first six months of existence,...

Media Approval Ratings: Woody Paige
We used to have a lot more fun with Woody Paige than we do now because, back when we first started this site, we felt compelled to write about "Cold Pizza" every day, because it was so ridiculous and because we were home all day and the only people watching. (We are certain we were the only people o...

Pats' Beat Writer Attempts To Keep Fans From Yelling At Him For The Rest Of His Life
Boston Herald Patriots beat writer John Tomase promised an apology — and an explanation — after it was revealed that his February 2 story about the Pats taping the Rams' walkthrough before Super Bowl XXXVI wasn't true. (The tape failed to materialize and never existed.) Boy, did he ever come through...

Norman Chad's Not Shedding Any Tears Over Kornheiser's Departure
It's been no secret that Washington Post columnist/ poker rim-shot clown Norman Chad and Tony Kornheiser have a strained relationship. Apparently, this stems back to the WaPo days of yore when a young Chad was mentored by a less bald Kornheiser who took him under his combover'd-wing. Through that ...

Media Approval Ratings: John Clayton
In our book, we said this about John Clayton: "Often resembles the guy in RoboCop after he falls in the toxic waste just before he's squished by the oncoming car." Someone classified this as "mean." We prefer, as always, "cheeky."...

Media Approval Ratings: Jayson Stark
We miss seeing Jayson Stark on "Baseball Tonight," but all told, we think we probably miss the mustache more. Who wouldn't?...

Tony Kornheiser Leaves The World Of Newspapers
Sad news this morning, and we're pretty sure it's the fault of the goddamned blogs: Tony Kornheiser, after nearly 30 years at the Washington Post, has accepted a buyout from the paper....

Media Approval Ratings: Emmitt Smith
We're not sure if Emmitt Smith is going to lose any face time on ESPN now that Cris Carter is hanging around ... but we have our suspicions. Heck, they didn't even let Emmitt be a part of the draft coverage....

Jason Whitlock Could Use Some Time Off
One of the reasons we decided to skip out on the whole sportswriting/beat reporting business, back when we had the opportunity, was the perfectly legitimate fear that we would become burned out on sports. Sports is a diversion, something that should be used as an brief alternative to regular daily l...

The Era Of Hannah Storm's Sports Center Will Blow (In) Soon
On Saturday, SI.com's Richard Deitsch revealed that ESPN was plopping long-time sports-and-news talking head Hannah Storm into the new morning slot for Sports Center. Tomorrow, ESPN will make the formal announcement at upfront presentations, the big-snazzy press conference done to get the advertiser...

Media Approval Ratings: Peter King
We were fortunate enough to meet Peter King once. We introduced ourselves, and he looked us up and down, not malevolently, and said, "How did you end up doing this?" We think he was referring to life as a professional blogger, rather than the fact that we were juggling octopi at the time....

Media Approval Ratings: Tony Reali
We sometimes wonder if old-school on-air sports personalities resent Tony Reali. His "rise" from researcher in 2000 to host of his own show today was ridiculously swift, and, frankly, the type of thing that should scare them a lot more than some silly blog....

Media Approval Ratings: John Madden
Hey, when's a better time to take a look at John Madden in these rankings than the beginning of May? We can't think of a more apt moment in time....

Media Approval Ratings: John Kruk
We remember, when John Kruk left "The Best Damn Sports Show" to join "Baseball Tonight," we worried that it would dumb down the show. At the time, it was pretty much Tim Kurkjian, Peter Gammons, Jayson Stark ... a bunch of smart baseball people discussing the great game. Kruk was a different kind of...

Media Approval Ratings: Norman Chad
First off, don't get our own Rick Chandler started on poker analyst and "comedy" columnist Norman Chad. You really don't want to know....

On Race, Message Boards And Shutting The Hell Up
Of all the panels on "Costas Now" the other night, the one we thought was most effective at tickling the cerebral cortex was the last one, about race, featuring Cris Carter, Michael Wilbon and Jason Whitlock. (It was so absorbing that "Costas Now" is doing a full 90-minute segment just on race down ...

Media Approval Ratings: Jay Mariotti
Of all the Jay Mariotti moments we've chronicled around these parts, our favorite was when he complained to Wikipedia about all those negative words about his page. He is a very sensitive boy....

Media Approval Ratings: John Salley
We felt a little bad about this, considering we were just on the show, but we don't watch The Best Damn Sports Show Period very often. We think it's because we're in New York. It's difficult to keep up with what channel it's even on; we have a lot of sports stations in NYC. But no Big Ten Network or...

Media Approval Ratings: Dan Patrick
Among the many pleasures of "Costas Now" the other night was Dan Patrick explaining how the old "Big Show" was actually named ironically by him and Keith Olbermann. They called it "The Big Show" because they assumed no one was watching and had no numbers or reason to think otherwise. But people were...