The Sports Media Thread

[Red Wolf]

Watching a college football game and now I'm actually super annoyed with the new ESPN bottomline. The scorebug hangs right above where the ad slot on the bottomline is and all I can think is how cool it would be if the scorebug were placed in that spot instead. The ad area is so gigantic it's absurd. And with the height of the damn bottomline now, I feel like they could lay out the scrolling scores with teams above and below instead of side-by-side, which would save room and totally make all of this work.

[DG_ThenNowForever]

3 minutes ago, Red Wolf said:

Watching a college football game and now I'm actually super annoyed with the new ESPN bottomline. The scorebug hangs right above where the ad slot on the bottomline is and all I can think is how cool it would be if the scorebug were placed in that spot instead. The ad area is so gigantic it's absurd. And with the height of the damn bottomline now, I feel like they could lay out the scrolling scores with teams above and below instead of side-by-side, which would save room and totally make all of this work. 

 

The new Bottom Line completely imbalances the whole presentation. It's never not in your field of vision and detracts from the actual game. I get why they changed it, but it's an overall thumbs down.

[Olmec]

On 8/25/2018 at 9:13 AM, BringBackTheVet said:

Does anyone besides college kids watch daytime ESPN?  I tried once on a PTO day, and wanted to throw myself out a window once I realized I couldn't find the remote to change it.  It's literally all the same.  Every single show is the same, they just repeat each other.  I can't even tell you the names of the shows or the hosts, because the just seem like the same.  

 

I kinda think that watching sports discussion on TV is ridiculous because people treat it like it's real news, and we treat some of these guys like they're real journalists, when it's literally nothing more than an entertainment show, though I have to say that I do enjoy PTI and the show that comes before it, somewhat (though I want to punch Woody Hayes repeatedly until my fist is actually going through his face and hitting either the wall behind him or the floor if I'm standing over him, and then I'll rip his lips off because they annoy me.)

 

Brings me back to my college days in between classes, and yes, I wanted to throw myself out a window as well. Fortunately Netflix started taking off and that mindless ESPN afternoon programming was quickly replaced with endless streaming of Scrubs, Seinfeld, and Cheers. 

[Digby]

My college days involved Champions League on those ESPN afternoons. Halcyon days. (Of course then I had to fire up a bizarre P2P app to watch more than one Premier League game come Saturday morning.)

[Kaz]

In addition to Beadle leaving, Jemele Hill will be bought out of her contract at ESPN

[Red Wolf]

20 hours ago, Digby said:

My college days involved Champions League on those ESPN afternoons. Halcyon days. (Of course then I had to fire up a bizarre P2P app to watch more than one Premier League game come Saturday morning.)

This is pretty much exactly how I got into soccer in the first place. I used a sketchy-ass Russian site for extra games, but basically the same.

[The_Admiral]

1 hour ago, Kaz said:

In addition to Beadle leaving, Jemele Hill will be bought out of her contract at ESPN

 

And that's why you never tell your audience to boycott your own sponsors. But she's extremely talented, she'll land at a good writing gig.

[MadmanLA]

Prior to a few weeks ago, as he was reviewing the first episode of this season's Hard Knocks, I've never listened to one minute of Pat McAfee's podcast.  Now, he's taking his show elsewhere else, as he and Barstool Sports are parting ways.  The interesting part of this article from the Indianapolis Star is that McAfee relates the Barstool situation to when he was cut by the Colts in 2016, and the one-on-one conversation he had with now-ex GM Ryan Grigson that led to that McAfee being released.  Apparently, Grigson didn't like one of McAfee's Instagram picture he took in the locker room (him posing a la Mr. Kennedy/Anderson with the overhead mic), and the two had words in which McAfree called out Grigson to his face regarding the offensive line and Andrew Luck not staying healthy.

 

https://www.indystar.com/story/sports/nfl/colts/2018/09/04/pat-mcafee-barstool-sports-colts-ryan-grigson/1192911002/

[goalieboy82]

please no:

http://www.espn.com/boxing/story/_/id/24682880/floyd-mayweather-says-rematch-manny-pacquiao-coming-year

would have been better 10 years ago.

 

[ShutUpLutz!]

I've read that the real reason Beadle left get up is that she CANNOT STAND Mike Greenberg. I've noticed ESPN has released their last two 30 For 30 docs exclusively on ESPN+, which sucks. I fear they will be going that route permanently. I've also heard that awful show with Bomani Jones is tettering on three very wobbly legs and will probably be killed off at the end of the year, as cutting it down to an half an hour has done nothing to increase ratings.

 

Moving over to Fox Sports One, are you kidding me? How can you claim to have a major sports network and the ONLY highlights oriented show you have is the one with the oldest demographic on earth, MLB? Seriously?? How could Jay and Dan not connect with audiences? I know they made some truly horrible choices hiring Regis Philben, but come on.

[DG_ThenNowForever]

I'm not sure about the Ryen Rusilo podcast on the Ringer. I really enjoyed his guest shots on the BS pod, but his solo stuff is a little too cool for school.

[The_Admiral]

Hawk Harrelson retired after 35ish years of being bad at his job. Here's him breaking down in his last moments on air while Steve Stone just ignores him.

 

 

[pmoehrin]

2 hours ago, the admiral said:

Hawk Harrelson retired after 35ish years of being bad at his job. Here's him breaking down in his last moments on air while Steve Stone just ignores him.

 

 

 

He wasn't the worst play by play guy I ever heard. From from it, several of the best calls in baseball over the last 50 years have come from him. I loved the fact that he didn't talk like every other announcer which is one of my knocks with present-day announcers because they're all trained to sound exactly the same.

 

That said, Hawk could be unbearable to listen to at times. His criticism of Sabermetrics is the baseball equivalent of a scientist questioning the existence of global warming. Nobody working in a front office is questioning the usefulness of advanced statistics as an evaluation tool and hasn't in quite some time.

 

What's ironic is that for all his criticism of modern front office decision making, his tenure as White Sox GM was an unmitigated disaster. People think that all you need to be a good baseball GM is just knowing the sport. But that's only half of it. The other half is knowing how to deal with people and who to hire to carry out your philosophy. In this aspect Hawk was maybe the most clueless GM in major sports history over the last 40 years.

 

He grated on virtually everyone in the organization to the point where if Harrelson didn't leave as GM, a third of the front office was going to quit. The relationship he had with Tony La Russa is the ugliest I've ever read between a GM and a manager. Hawk was not shy about telling the media that La Russa was being forced on him by Reinsdorf and that was before the season started. The two didn't speak for nearly a decade after Harrelson fired La Russa. Although the two have since patched things up, that should be all you need to know about how well those two got along with each other.

 

A funny side note from that is that one of the managers on Harrelson's short list to replace La Russa was Billy Martin. Obviously, he wasn't hired and to my knowledge never even interviewed for the position, but I could only imagine the headlines and news stories about those two egos trying to coexist.

 

I'll miss Hawk the announcer, but I am not going to miss Hawk the personality.

 

[The_Admiral]

You blame Hawk for being a terrible GM, but acknowledge that he was in an untenable situation with a manager he didn't hire and didn't want, basically a precursor to Kenny Williams not hiring nor wanting Ozzie Guillen. There's a through-line here...

[pmoehrin]

2 hours ago, the admiral said:

You blame Hawk for being a terrible GM, but acknowledge that he was in an untenable situation with a manager he didn't hire and didn't want, basically a precursor to Kenny Williams not hiring nor wanting Ozzie Guillen. There's a through-line here...

 

Harrelson was not the first GM to have a manager forced on him that he didn't want and didn't hire. But he is the only one I can ever recall all but openly complaining about it to the media before Spring Training ended.

 

It was a red flag that pointed to someone who didn't know how to deal with being put in a difficult situation, but there were plenty of other reasons Harrelson’s GM tenure was just one year. The idea of having two pitching and hitting coaches with contradicting philosophies. Trying to turn Carlton Fisk into a left fielder. Trying to overhaul the front office with loyalists. (Why current Red Sox GM Dave Dombroski was fired) The fact that Harrelson was all set to fire La Russa's replacement Jim Fregosi after the '86 season which would mean the White Sox would have been on their fourth manager in less than two years.

 

There is nothing positive to be said Harrelson's tenure as GM. He was an outside the box thinker in all the wrong ways, didn't know how to handle adversity and was more interested in golf than the necessary due diligence of day to day operations.

[The_Admiral]

Okay, that's all true, now for the part where the White Sox have an owner who seems to thrive on discontent for him to mediate.

[pmoehrin]

2 hours ago, the admiral said:

Okay, that's all true, now for the part where the White Sox have an owner who seems to thrive on discontent for him to mediate.

 

One thing about Reinsdorf you will hear from most anyone that has worked for him is that he is very loyal to the people around him.

 

Neither the Bulls and White Sox have a lot of turnover and that’s the way Jerry likes it. So when you do get drama, a lot of I think is Reinsdorf trying to keep everyone happy without getting rid of anyone. The Bulls dynasty effectively ended because he wouldn’t fire Jerry Krause. But everyone forgets Krause had been with the Bulls since ‘85. You add that part of the equation in and Reinsdorf’s stance to keep Krause suddenly makes a bit more sense. He wasn’t keeping around some no name executive he hired yesterday. Whether or not it was the right decision is a different story altogether.

 

I’m not saying it’s a good or a bad thing. It’s just what it is.

 

Loyalty is a double edge sword. It can save you just as well as it can burn you and there’s plenty examples of both in Reinsdorf’s tenure.

 

[dfwabel]

Editor of cleveland.com writes staff email regarding recent defections to The Athletic.

Quote

 I want to say a word about The Athletic, which suddenly seems frantic to raid our staff because of its inability to groom talented sportswriters on its own. Most of you know Joe Vardon is headed there, and they do not appear to be finished in their recruiting efforts.

 

This has the feeling of desperation to me. As I’ve mentioned since this thing started, it’s financial model is not sound. In the print days, the Daily tried it. In the digital era, Patch tried it. Each time someone tries it, an investor kicks in a huge amount of money to get the thing launched but because the financial model is so unsound, it always fails. If you could sustain an experienced staff on digital subscription revenue alone, we’d have gone that way a long time ago. To produce the kind of content we produce takes more than digital subscribers.

 

But suddenly, across the nation, the Athletic seems intent on raiding the top sports reporting staffs of each major city. This has the feeling of a last-ditch effort at survival, a strategy to try to savage the reigning sports voice quickly and try to steers fans to their site. Again, I feel certain the effort will fail. We not only lead the region in sports audience, but we continue to grow it. No one is knocking on our door. And, frankly, the Athletic is pretty awful. The writing is bloated, seemingly unedited wheezing, not at all what our sports audience has made clear it wants.

https://m.clevescene.com/scene-and-heard/archives/2018/09/24/clevelandcom-editor-chris-quinn-sends-angry-rambling-internal-email-after-the-athletic-poaches-cavs-beat-writer

[The_Admiral]

STDs flare up less persistently than Deadspin versus Barstool, they're back at it again

[dfwabel]

17 minutes ago, the admiral said:

STDs flare up less persistently than Deadspin versus Barstool, they're back at it again

I don't think anyone uses the words "hit piece" more than Portnoy & Co. and his stoolies.