media Page 72 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights

D.C. Station Remembers The Good Times, When Radio Guys Could Say "Fag"
WJFK, a CBS-owned sportstalker serving the D.C. market, made a big announcement last week. LaVar Arrington, the former Washington Redskins star and longtime co-host of the station's afternoon show, LaVar and Dukes, had moved to Los Angeles to join the NFL Network. Instead of hiring a big-name replac...

ESPN's <em>First Take</em> Opens With Horseshit Apology From Stephen A. Smith
This morning's Very Special Edition of First Take began with a scripted and seemingly pre-recorded apology from panelist Stephen A. Smith regarding the very dumb things he said about domestic violence last week. It was ... unconvincing....

ESPN On Stephen A. Smith Firestorm: Tune In To <i>First Take</i> On Monday
ESPN has issued a response following Stephen A. Smith's rant on/enabling domestic violence from Friday's episode of First Take. Here it is, in full:...

Stephen A. Smith Leaving ESPN Radio For SiriusXM Mad Dog Radio
In an interestingly-timed move, the New York Daily News is reporting that Stephen A. Smith will be leaving his ESPN Radio gig in New York and head to the uncensored airwaves of SiriusXM. And, also interestingly, he will be joining Chris "Mad Dog" Russo's stable of hosts on Mad Dog Radio. ...

Denver Sports Anchor Can't Help But Notice All This Alzheimer's
Here's 9NEWS Denver's Drew Soicher with maybe not the best lead-in to today's sports report: an Alzheimer's joke....

How <em>First Take</em> Poisoned ESPN
This is exactly what First Take was designed to do. That's not hyperbole. First Take's reason for existence is to reduce every subject, from the incredibly complex to the totally uncontroversial, down to a binary issue that can be debated. Is Tim Tebow a good quarterback? Is LeBron clutch? Should Ra...

ESPN Spent The Past 24 Hours Carrying Water For The NFL Over Ray Rice
On occasion, the invisible hand of the NFL taps ESPN on the shoulder and reminds the Worldwide Leader who really runs the show. We saw it with Playmakers. We saw it with the Frontline concussion documentary. More often than not, though, what you see is something like the video above, taken from the ...

<em>First Take</em> Discusses A Woman's Responsibility To Avoid Being Beaten
First Take panelists Stephen A. Smith and Skip Bayless continued to discuss the Ray Rice suspension on this morning's episode, and Smith seized on the opportunity to say some deeply stupid things about the responsibility women have to not provoke men into violently attacking them....

NFL Network On Ray Rice Suspension: "The Iron Fist Of The NFL"
Nearly every sane sports fan is offended by the leniency of Ray Rice's two-game NFL suspension for domestic abuse, but don't let anyone at NFL Network know that. They described the suspension today as "dealing with the iron fist of the NFL."...

We Live In The Golden Age Of Sports Documentaries
A piece in this week's SportsBusiness Journal is nominally about how HBO Sports has lost its preeminence in the sports documentary biz, and sure enough, it has gutted its in-house doc unit in recent years. But it's heartening to realize that even as the former biggest player scales back, the sports ...

Tennis Writer Neil Harman Is Guilty Of Weapons-Grade Plagiarism
Earlier today, we told you about tennis writer Neil Harman admitting that at least some portion of the official Wimbledon yearbook he publishes every year was plagiarized. The full breadth of The Times of London's chief tennis correspondent's plagiarism is now beginning to come into focus, thanks to...

Respected Tennis Writer Cops To Plagiarism; There's Likely More To Find
Neil Harman has been The Times of London's chief tennis correspondent since 2002, during which time he has been awarded the Sports Journalist Association's "Sports News Reporter of the Year" award, as well as the ATP's Ron Bookman Award for Media Excellence. He is also, as he admitted in a letter ...

Idiot's Apology To Erin Andrews: "15 Lbs. Heavier, She'd Be A Waitress"
WEEI/NESN personality Kirk Minihane apologized on-air today for calling Erin Andrews a "gutless bitch," only to immediately follow it up with the assertion that "if she weighed 15 pounds more, she'd be a waitress at Perkins."...

The Top 200 Ways Bleacher Report Screwed Me Over
A month before I turned 21, I returned home from the Bay Area, where I was attending college, to celebrate Thanksgiving with my family in Minnesota. On a Tuesday evening, I was sitting in the living room, about to head upstairs to go to bed, when my phone buzzed with a text from Dave Finocchio, fo...

How To Legitimize Bigotry: Embrace Debate
This morning, Stephen A. Smith and Skip Bayless shouted at each other about Tony Dungy's comments that Michael Sam's sexuality would be an overriding distraction in an NFL locker room, and whether it was a bigger distraction that Michael Vick's return from prison. I'm sorry, that's the worst sente...


OK. I Think We've All Had Enough.
Send stories, photos, and anything else you might have to [email protected]....

How Rupert Murdoch Could Go To War With ESPN
The blockbuster news that Rupert Murdoch bid $80 billion for Time Warner—and was at least temporarily rebuffed—points to an impending seismic shift in the media landscape. And, as the New York Times points out today, nowhere would that shift be felt more than in the business of televised sports. A F...

Nick Saban's Press Conference Enlivened By Off-Camera Snoring
Even on a day completely bereft of sports, I can't really think of anything that would have me less enthused than SEC Media Days. So I really feel this dude who can be heard snoring (Or just breathing really heavily? I sincerely hope not.) while Nick Saban drones on about whatever the fuck....