media Page 42 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights
Prepare To Welcome Our New Versus/Comcast Overlords
ESPN dynasty melting like the polar ice cap, according to latest ratings. Nobody panic! All is well! [Sports by Brooks]...
49ers Bid A High-Pitched, Frenetic Adieu To Joe Starkey
Joe Starkey is retiring as play-by-play voice of the 49ers. Don't recognize the name? He's the broadcaster who always sounds like his testicles are wired to a car battery, as this legendary clip demonstrates....
Meet Your New Fanhouse Columnist ... Jay Mariotti
Starting Monday, Fanhouse will add ex-Chicago Sun-Times columnist and venerable Around The Horn noisemaker Jay Mariotti to its stable of writers. Fun for the whole family....
Worst Columnist Predictions Of 2008 ... With Gratuitous Jay Mariotti
Sure it made for good copy when Terence Moore of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution wrote back in April that "The Falcons just blew it" by drafting Matt Ryan. Did he think that wouldn't come back on him?...
Waxing Off Writer Scrooged By New England SportsNet
So it seems that one of our Waxing Off writers got into hot water with Comcast New England over something she wrote for us. You fired Cameron! You bastards!...
The ESPN Home Page Redesign Is Here
Soon after Christmas, heading over to the ESPN home page will be a slightly different experience. Hey, who moved the furniture? And where's my ESPN Featured Comment of the Day?...
This Is Why Conlin Rules
Even if he hates the pamphleteers: "If the printed page dies, there is no denying that the fatal wounds have been self-inflicted. There was an elitist smugness even in the press boxes of the 1960s, when Howard Cosell was just a radio nobody hustling for interviews in clubhouses filled with sports wr...
Fascinating Things You Probably Don't Want to Know: Skip Bayless Is Ripped
Skip Bayless is easy to despise for many reasons, most of which stem from the fact that he walked away from a very encouraging career as a print journalist for a new, more lucrative one as...whatever he does by senselessly arguing on "First Take." But would it make him more or less tolerable if you ...
Josh Levin's Fascination With Rick Reilly's Tooth Jokes Is Oddly Captivating
When I initially took over this site there was a lot of discussion amongst former and current editors about doing a weekly feature devoted entirely to Rick Reilly's ESPN column. It would be too easy to just pick apart its contents FJM-style (R.I.P), but given his hubris, his enormous contract, and t...
SI's Dr. Z Recovering After Two Strokes
This is sad news from the sports media world. Paul Zimmerman, the grouchy football columnist better known as Dr. Z, suffered two strokes in late November and is currently on a leave of absence while he recovers. He'll survive, but how it'll affect the rest of his writing career is still undetermined...
Exploring the ESPN Business Model (Hint: It Involves Swimming In Piles of Cash)
By now everyone knows that ESPN paid $100 million more than Fox could afford for the rights to the BCS games beginning in 2009. Cementing, to a great degree, ESPN's status as a post-season college football monopoly (they now control 29 of the 34 bowl games). And we've also noted that this increasing...
The Creative Impasse Between Bill Simmons and ESPN Appears To Be Over
The rumor about Bill Simmons "quitting" his B.S. Report podcast on ESPN due to restrictive over-editing policies were apparently overblown, for today the B.S. Report has miraculously reappeared. The one noticeable change to it is the new pre-show disclaimer from the Sports Fella himself that states ...
ESPN Mag To Get a Sharapova-cized Makeover
Each year, ESPN "The Magazine" trots out special issues like the goofy jocks-are-in-charge issue one when they let a professional athlete play editor for the week. (Remember one year Matt Leinart did this. Yeah, it'll probably be a long time before he gets on the cover again.) This year the mag has...
Chicago Magazine Writer Loves Him Some Jay Mariotti
By his own count, Jay Mariotti wrote more than 3,000 columns in his 17 years as a Chicago Sun-Times columnist. But now that that's all over, and being an ESPN jabbering noggin is his main gig now, how does a professional contrarian stay relevant in a world that's swiftly passing him by? By grabbing ...
Buffalo Sportswriter Dies After Press Box Fall
Tom Borrelli, a sportswriter for the Buffalo News died today after an accident that happened at high school football game. On November 8, Borrelli was climbing up a steep metal staircase (almost like a ladder, really) on the way to the press box at All High Stadium, when he hit his head on a girder ...
Is This The Most Suggestive Sports Headline Ever Written?
When I worked at the Peninsula Times-Tribune in Palo Alto, Calif., (former home of Ray Ratto!) a young copy editor came up with a rather inadvertently amusing headline for a story in the features section: You May Be To Blame If Your Dog Won't Come. That still ranks in my top 10 of funny suggestive h...
What Is ESPN Sports Passport, And Should I Be Afraid?
Surely you've noticed by now that alongside every recap on ESPN.com is an ad for ESPN Sports Passport. But what is this exciting service and how will it affect my daily life? Let's let the WWL itself explain: WERE YOU THERE? Did you attend this game? If so, start chronicling your sports memories tod...
Rick Telander Does Not Fear ESPN's Wrath — But He Does Respect It
In a tough economic market, you'll find many sports writers scaling back on their criticism for the sake of job security. Trying to garner attention through traditional shit-stirring isn't the best way to keep your self afloat right now — piss off the wrong source or anger enough readers and you may...
Fire Joe Morgan: The Exit Interview
Like many of you, my heart sank last week when I learned that Fire Joe Morgan announced they were hanging up their purple spikes after, as they put it, "21 years, and almost 40 million posts." Fire Joe Morgan was one of the reasons I got into this blogging game — and what a game it is! — and I'm sur...
Some Things In The SI Vault Should Stay There
We were all excited when Sports Illustrated announced back in March that they were putting all of their old issues online: "150,000 stories , 2,800 covers, 500,000 photographs!" But for every intriguing journey into the SI Vault, there is also a very dark, disturbing one, as a tipster pointed out th...