mediameltdown Page 97 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights
ESPN's Sources Are Awfully Chatty Today
Tipsters Amos and Miles alerted us to the "Headlines" section of ESPN.com. We await the Poynter Institute's 76,000-word monograph on why Adam Schefter really just needs to sleep. [ESPN.com]...
Where NFL Rumors Are Born, Pat Devlin Is In The Details
We got an email last night from "prism" with the subject line: How Sports Media Blows, and it was a series of links in chronological order....
Don't Dream It's Over: Disney Permanently Cancels ESPN: The Weekend
Last week, we mentioned, barely suppressing our glee, that ESPYs ratings had hit their lowest point in 16 years. With similar exuberance, we gave you ESPN's condom-obsessed in-house standards bible. Death knells....
Everybody Feared The Worst When Old Man Brent Musburger Went Rogue In Vegas For A Spell
Your morning roundup for July 23, the day after we learned that high-school tennis coaches really might want to stay away from strip-club ownership....
ESPN's Cringing, Persnickety, Condom-Obsessed Standards And Practices Manual, Presented Unabridged
Below you'll find ESPN's editorial and advertising guidelines as of 2010, sent to us by a tipster. They are the sort of guidelines one finds beneath coffee mugs at any typical media company: binder with laminated cover; nice paper stock; a general air of scolding, constipated didacticism that's like...
Former Phillies Reliever Ricky Bottalico Is Worried About Roy Oswalt's Bulging Dick
Crossing Broad brings us another highlight to add to the already lengthy reel of sports broadcasters talking about bulging dicks....
ESPN Is Going To Think About Considering Making Sure Nothing Like What Didn't Happen To Bruce Feldman Ever Happens Again
"The recent flap over Bruce Feldman's non—suspension..." wrote ESPN's Poynter-approved ombudsperson, Kelly McBride, and already with that one jargony semi-word, "flap," we were in the Klein bottle of journalism about journalism by journalists for nobody. "To date, this is the most complicated ESPN i...
Sports Media Celebrate Equality By Accusing Hope Solo And The USWNT Of Choking In World Cup Final
The U.S. women lost in the World Cup final to Japan on Sunday in Frankfurt after relinquishing leads in the waning moments of both regulation and overtime, then whiffing on its first three penalty kicks, the second of which went soaring off toward Lower Bavaria. In reductive, knee-jerk sportsworld...
You Can Say "Circumcising Mosquitoes" On <em>PTI</em>, But You Can't Say It Thrice
The gentlemen on Pardon The Interruption exceeded the quota for the amount of times one can say some variation of the phrase "circumcising mosquitoes" on live television today. Cowlishaw, quoting (and imitating) Cowboys owner Jerry Jones, gets in two mentions, but Wilbon never gets his chance. The...
Rejoice: ESPYs Ratings Hit Their Lowest Point In Sixteen Years
We wrote this morning about the brewing anti-ESPN revolution the "Free Bruce" campaign exposed. No longer was ESPN everyone's mostly benevolent overlord—now it was the Soviet Central Committee, purging ne'er-do-well reporters wherever they might pop up....
ESPN Inexplicably Whitewashes Rick Reilly Column To Remove Rupert Murdoch Reference
In the Reilly column we dissected earlier, there was a throwaway line, a very Rick Reilly sort of pop culture reference....
Mike Leach: "ESPN Isn’t Going To Let Little Inconvenient Details Like Facts Get In The Way Of Their Agenda"
Every morning, the fine folks at Sports Radio Interviews sift through the a.m. drive-time chatter to bring you the best interviews with coaches, players, and personalities across the sports landscape. Today: Leach is the only one not under a gag order....
Today In Great Ledes
"Sports historians will look back on what happened at ESPN's ESPY awards the other night and pinpoint it as the broadcast that signaled the rise of soccer and the death of football." [Chicago Tribune]...
Soccer Analysts Find Many, Many Ways To Call The Japanese Short
On Sunday, the US Women take on Japan in the Women's World Cup Final. It will be a "tall order" for the Japanese, who have a "height disadvantage." Nay, a "major size disadvantage." The "small Japanese" will "lack height" against the Americans. But despite a match pitting "the smaller Japanese again...
Rick Reilly Goes Union-Busting
Rick Reilly popped another reheated turd out of the microwave. It's a variation on his standard deification of golf as the world's most perfect sport. But here's the twist: this time those blue collar heroes of the links are contrasted with the greedy millionaires of the NBA and NFL....
College Football Writer Mike Bruce Feldman Is Persona Non Grata In Bristol
Sports by Brooks is reporting that ESPN college football writer Bruce Feldman "has been banned from writing for any ESPN entity, is forbidden from appearing on any ESPN platform, is not allowed to Tweet from his Twitter account nor participate in any promotion of a recently-released book in which F...
BBC Mistakenly Confuses Media Gadfly For Baseball Expert, Substantial Awkwardness Ensues
Ben Walker writes about baseball for the Associated Press—you'll see his byline, or, perhaps, his words fairly often. Michael Wolff is not Ben Walker. Wolff is a media writer for Vanity Fair, which would never have heard of baseball were Michael Lewis not on its masthead....
Hope Solo Headlines Spring Eternal
Hope Solo and her teammates will play in the Women's World Cup final on Sunday afternoon — largely thanks to Solo's heroics in goal. The worst things to come out of this very exciting thing, though, are the headlines. Here they are, in ascending order of awfulness....
The Seth Meyers-Lynn Hoppes Pre-ESPYs Bro-Down Skewers ESPN
Last we checked in on Page 2's Lynn Hoppes, he was breathlessly name-dropping third-tier celebrities, en route to this whole thing. (Of note: ESPN has since pulled the offending Hoppes video from its YouTube account. Did Brock Lesnar's attorneys complain?) Hoppes is ESPN's expert in the macho-tinged...
My 3,000th Hit
Derek Jeter gave me the only baseball I ever got at a game. It was spring training in Tampa, and I was watching the Yankees practice from behind the dugout. Jeter jogged in with a ball, about to give it to the crowd. At first, I started to wave for it, but then, noticing the other 20 similarly aged ...