owns Page 156 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights
"You Couldn't Help But Think, Where's Bob Costas?" An Ex-Producer On How CBS—And ESPN—Screwed Up Last Night
So CBS really, really shat the bed during last night's 34-minute power outage. How could they have handled things differently? We checked in with Those Guys Have All the Fun co-author Jim Miller, who used to be the senior executive producer of Anderson Cooper 360....
What Was John Harbaugh Ranting About During The Blackout? We Asked A Lip Reader
One of the highlights of last night's Super Bowl broadcast was watching John Harbaugh berate a poor old man during the 34-minute power outage. We don't know who the old guy was (Update: He is the NFL's vice president of game operations, Mike Kensil), but we assume he was some kind of stadium offic...
Watch CBS Herp And Derp Its Way Through The Super Bowl Power Outage
Drew already highlighted how last night's Super Bowl blackout led to some spectacularly bad television. From repeated assertions that the game would resume "in about 15 [or 20] minutes" to sideline reporters fumbling for words, the Tiffany network spread fecal material all over the Superdome and ...
It Took A Blackout To Show You How Truly Useless NFL Broadcasters Are. Let's Blow Up The Studio.
I avoided the pregame shows yesterday. This isn't unusual. I never watch pregame shows for the same reason YOU never watch pregame shows. I showed up at my friend's house just as they were getting ready for Alicia Keys to spend eight minutes doing a national anthem/"Fallin'"/Jazz odyssey medley. And...
Man Interrupts NFL Network Live Shot, Rips Seam In Fabric Of Space And Time
The ramifications may not be felt immediately, but what this man has done cannot be undone. Aimlessly wandering around Bourbon Street, this man—a Ravens fan, way to go Baltimore—stumbled across the NFL Network's camera crew filming a light hearted live segment with Michelle Beisner....
Deion Sanders, On Players Out With Concussions: "Half These Guys Are Trying To Make Some Money"
Deion Sanders, concussion truther. Though the commissioner of of the NFL went on Face the Nation today to deny that his league ever covered up the dangers of football and its potential to induce brain damage—because at this point, denying the dangers themselves is impossible—Deion Sanders isn't co...
"Look At Me, Motherfucker. Look At Me When You Apologize!": Lil Wayne Went Off-Script At The Celebrity Beach Bowl
DirecTV's Celebrity Beach Bowl is, like most sponsored Super Bowl events in the host city, an overblown branding exercise that could only be interesting to the most naive of hayseeds. There are exceptions, though, like when Lil Wayne has a meltdown on a spectator during a trophy ceremony, Desmond ...
This Flaccid <i>Times-Picayune</i> Write-Up Of The Playboy Super Bowl Party Confirms The Death Of The Printed Word
While the most odious piece of Super Bowl journalism was achieved, flagrantly, when Rick Reilly decided it was his place to tell Colin Kaepernick how to run his complicated family life, the silver-medal podium had remained fallow until today. We can all thank the scorched shell of the Times-Picayune...
The Perfect Encapsulation Of The Media's Midweek Super Bowl Coverage, In One <em>SportsCenter</em> Screencap
Yesterday, John and Jim Harbaugh—brothers, dontcha know—held a joint press conference in New Orleans. ESPN apparently recorded it, reviewed it, broke it down, and came away with the above stats. Extrapolated to their logical conclusion, those stats mean...literally nothing, except that ESPN is as c...
Confused Sports Columnist Doesn't Realize A-Rod And Ray Lewis Were In Two Separate PED Scandals
There were two big stories in the world of performance-enhancing drugs, both released on Tuesday. One involved Alex Rodriguez, Nelson Cruz, Melky Cabrera, and other baseball players being listed in the records of a shady clinic in Miami, Fla. The other involved Ray Lewis receiving a deer antler spra...
Adrian Wojnarowski's Latest Column Features A Sick Burn On John Hollinger
Adrian Wojnarowski's latest Yahoo column is a thorough think piece about what the Memphis Grizzlies' decision to trade Rudy Gay to the Toronto Raptors means for the future of NBA free agency. It's a perfectly fine read, but what caught our attention was this paragraph, tucked away near the end of t...
Rick Reilly's Column About Colin Kaepernick Is The Smarmiest Story Of Super Bowl Week
The crux of Rick Reilly's latest column for ESPN.com is this: San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick should take steps to foster a relationship with his birth mother because Reilly's own adopted daughter has a healthy relationship with her birth mother. No, seriously, that's Reilly's argu...
WCBA Finals Game Ends With Referees Being Beaten By Fans
Game 1 of the Women's Chinese Basketball Association championship was yesterday, an event not worth taking note of but for the fact that a bunch of angry fans stormed the court and tried to beat the shit out of the referees at the end of the game. At the 35-second mark of the video above, you can ...
An ESPN Blunder Let Viewers Eavesdrop On Hannah Storm And Mark Schlereth Discussing What Sounds Like Tim Tebow's Doubtful NFL Future
It's no secret the Worldwide Leader loves all things Tebow. We didn't expect to find the Jets "quarterback" to be a topic of off-camera discussion by ESPN talent, though, as appears to be the case when a director cut from a live Colin Kaepernick media day presser to Hannah Storm and Mark Schlereth...
NBC Really Wanted You To Know Last Night's Pro Bowl Was About "Effort"
NFL commissioner Roger Goodell made it clear the Pro Bowl wasn't long for this Earth unless selected players started showing competitive effort in the game. With broadcast rights to the televised cash cow at stake, it was important viewers get the impression what they were watching wasn't just a j...
How Two Newspapers Wound Up Staging The Same Sob Story About The Ray Lewis Murder Case
Richard Lollar was one of two men killed in the 2000 Super Bowl week stabbing outside an Atlanta nightclub that led to Ray Lewis's pleading guilty to obstruction of justice. For 13 years Lollar has been buried in his hometown of Akron, and in those 13 years his mother Priscilla had never been to his...
Charles Barkley Randomly Showed Up On The Phoenix ABC Local News And Attempted To Do The Weather Report
This is... weird. Basketball Hall of Famer and TNT analyst Charles Barkley dropped by the 11 p.m. newscast of Phoenix ABC affiliate KNXV last night and tried his hand at meteorology. We can’t say it went well. It’s not entirely clear what Sir Charles was doing there in the first place, though he di...
Steve Spurrier Gave Reporters Envelopes Full Of Cash Today, For Some Reason
Old weirdo and known media manipulator Steve Spurrier had an improptu chat with reporters at halftime of the Arkansas-South Carolina basketball game today, and did one somewhat odd thing, followed by one extremely odd thing: He asked the reporters a college football trivia question—a self-serving on...
The Most Recent Fainting Spell Over Shabazz Muhammad Distills NCAA Compliance To Its Idiotic Essence
Shabazz Muhammad spent the first three games of UCLA's season—and his college career—sitting on the bench while the NCAA deliberated on whether he'd committed a minor infraction that he'd specifically been advised not to worry about when he committed it. When he was finally reinstated, he got back ...
A Lip Reader Deciphers The Umpire-Manager Arguments Of 2012
Originally published in Baseball Prospectus....