The Sports Media Thread

[Digby]

Stoolies making a show of some Deadspin editor's 12-year-old comments is like some kind of dollar-store Gamergate, which is kind of an ironic turnabout considering the proponents this time are slacker lawyers and finance bros instead of underemployed gamers.

[The_Admiral]

1 hour ago, Digby said:

Stoolies making a show of some Deadspin editor's 12-year-old comments is like some kind of dollar-store Gamergate, which is kind of an ironic turnabout considering the proponents this time are slacker lawyers and finance bros instead of underemployed gamers.

 

It's such a fool's errand. All these people at Deadspin, Barstool, and any internet publication with more readers than mikesthoughts.blogspot.com all grew up at the same time in the same place, which is early-2000s Something Awful, 4chan, and sundry Internet Wrestling Community forums. All these places operated on sort of a performance-art approach to writing that was all about playing an amplified version of yourself and competing to be the meanest and funniest to each other and to innocent bystanders. Petchesky was a 4chan guy, Jeb Lund was a SA/IWC guy, all the people who live in Brooklyn and do podcasts for $5 a month grew out of Something Awful and FOAD in specific. (I'm not an esteemed writer, but I grew up in that world, too.) The circa-2005 Deadspin comment section, where you had to audition to have your comments posted and only then be selected to join the elite and have your one-liners tacked underneath Drew Magary's poop jokes, was basically the East Coast prep school circuit of messageboarding. It's no surprise that communication-as-competition forum culture would go on to spawn so many writers, especially since most of them were already at good schools while they were screwing around like this, but they've all cut their teeth being what we've come to call in the last five or six years, Bad People. (It's always struck me as a very kindergarten construction: you're a Bad Person! And that's Not Okay!) So you're always going to find dirt on any of these people, but it's never really meaningful dirt, it's just verbal jousting for approval.

 

I don't think that Barry Petchesky is a monster for making fat jokes about women in Deadspin posts, nor do I think that Portnoy is some sort of monster for whatever it is he does. It's all just dumb competitive performance art. Pretending to be above it all, which Deadspin has been doing in its moral-scold iteration, is really the only losing play -- at least until everyone who grew up on those message boards ages out of the business and cedes it to the next generation that grew up on Tumblr drowning in feelings.

[DG_ThenNowForever]

Or you could read The Ringer, which has no discernable edge at all.

[Digby]

16 hours ago, DG_Now said:

Or you could read The Ringer, which has no discernable edge at all.

 

Gotta wonder how long Simmons will keep pumping money into that site. Losing Grantland was unfortunate but all the best parts of it went elsewhere (even the ESPN mothership) which really takes the edge off. Nobody under 30 (maybe 35) knows or cares who Bill Simmons is. And the Ringer has never had the apparent capital or talent to be a big deal.

[Digby]

16 hours ago, the admiral said:

 

It's such a fool's errand. All these people at Deadspin, Barstool, and any internet publication with more readers than mikesthoughts.blogspot.com all grew up at the same time in the same place, which is early-2000s Something Awful, 4chan, and sundry Internet Wrestling Community forums. All these places operated on sort of a performance-art approach to writing that was all about playing an amplified version of yourself and competing to be the meanest and funniest to each other and to innocent bystanders. Petchesky was a 4chan guy, Jeb Lund was a SA/IWC guy, all the people who live in Brooklyn and do podcasts for $5 a month grew out of Something Awful and FOAD in specific. (I'm not an esteemed writer, but I grew up in that world, too.) The circa-2005 Deadspin comment section, where you had to audition to have your comments posted and only then be selected to join the elite and have your one-liners tacked underneath Drew Magary's poop jokes, was basically the East Coast prep school circuit of messageboarding. It's no surprise that communication-as-competition forum culture would go on to spawn so many writers, especially since most of them were already at good schools while they were screwing around like this, but they've all cut their teeth being what we've come to call in the last five or six years, Bad People. (It's always struck me as a very kindergarten construction: you're a Bad Person! And that's Not Okay!) So you're always going to find dirt on any of these people, but it's never really meaningful dirt, it's just verbal jousting for approval.

 

I don't think that Barry Petchesky is a monster for making fat jokes about women in Deadspin posts, nor do I think that Portnoy is some sort of monster for whatever it is he does. It's all just dumb competitive performance art. Pretending to be above it all, which Deadspin has been doing in its moral-scold iteration, is really the only losing play -- at least until everyone who grew up on those message boards ages out of the business and cedes it to the next generation that grew up on Tumblr drowning in feelings.

 

I think you're spot on about the origin stories -- but I think what Barstool does and is, that's quite a ways beyond the :censored: internet oneupsmanship game of a previous era. I think it's worth outlets (not Deadspin) taking stock of Barstool at a deeper level, the way Daily Beast did, as long as they're going to be the top lifestyle brand for a certain type of modern bro.

[Sport]

Portnoy publishes home phone numbers and private emails so his fans can harass (mostly) women who write stories about Barstool that aren't favorable, which makes him objectively worse than the people pointing out the other crappy things they do at Barstool. That's a very irresponsible thing to do when you have that fanbase. 

 

Deadspin is just cranky and cynical about everything. 

 

 

The Ringer has way too much Bill Simmons influence and is too insular, which you can really see in March and April when it's basically a Boston Celtics blog. Right now they're doing a podcast that's just about "Halloween", a 40 year old movie that did what, led to some other mostly bad horror movies? WHO CARES? They do that a lot where they misinterpret the interests in their office to be the interests of the public at large and sometimes they're way off and it makes them look out of touch. 

 

 

[Still MIGHTY]

On 9/27/2018 at 7:01 AM, McCarthy said:

The Ringer has way too much Bill Simmons influence and is too insular, which you can really see in March and April when it's basically a Boston Celtics blog. Right now they're doing a podcast that's just about "Halloween", a 40 year old movie that did what, led to some other mostly bad horror movies? WHO CARES? They do that a lot where they misinterpret the interests in their office to be the interests of the public at large and sometimes they're way off and it makes them look out of touch. 

 

This.

 

Look, I do enjoy Ringer podcasts, a fair amount of them. But here are A LOT that I delete almost sight-unseen. I skip the first 5 minutes of every single BS Podcast because all it is is saying what's on their website, which I just flat out don't visit, ever.

[alxy8s]

The official sponsor of the Bill Simmons Podcast:

I could be counted on to listen to every episode until the accumulation of "Patriots week" + the presentation of Simmons as an expert in any field simply because he consumes its content + the recurrent segment in which his child talks about what she watched on Netflix solidified my transition from enjoyable "hate listening" to flat out hating. The whole enterprise is so self-indulgent that it's unbearable. I still follow him on Twitter to see, and never click, the links to Ringer posts that I'd assume were parodies if I didn't know better. 

[DG_ThenNowForever]

You're missing out. The Simmons podcast is reliably good and professionally done. Yes, he's big time now and has big time friends, but he knows his roots and his audience. Plus, heaven help me, it's been a fun football season so the podcast has been fun as well.

 

Also, Rewatchables is a good listen. So is the Larry Wilmore show. And some of the Ringer NBA show.

[DG_ThenNowForever]

Jason Witten seems like the kind of guy who has a difficult time reading social queues. Like when people want him to stop talking.

[Sport]

13 hours ago, DG_Now said:

Jason Witten seems like the kind of guy who has a difficult time reading social queues. Like when people want him to stop talking.

 

People are complaining about Witten a lot and I agree with them, but I also find Joe Tessitore incredibly annoying. Like he's turned up to 11 on every play, losing his mind over unremarkable 3rd down conversions. It doesn't feel genuine and if it is genuine then I'm worried for his mental health. It's like he feels like he needs to cover for Witten and really you just need to call the game. 

 

The past couple weeks they've been a Watch The Game on Mute While Listening to Music broadcast team. 

[Crabcake]

It seems like ESPN had a great thing going with Tirico and Gruden (and Jaws at one point), and once they messed with that they could never find a combination that worked. 

[Still MIGHTY]

2 hours ago, McCarthy said:

 

People are complaining about Witten a lot and I agree with them, but I also find Joe Tessitore incredibly annoying. Like he's turned up to 11 on every play, losing his mind over unremarkable 3rd down conversions. It doesn't feel genuine and if it is genuine then I'm worried for his mental health. It's like he feels like he needs to cover for Witten and really you just need to call the game. 

 

The past couple weeks they've been a Watch The Game on Mute While Listening to Music broadcast team. 

 

Yeah, I like Tess generally, but he was much more suited for college, especially because whatever game he had always was some crazy, lose-your-mind situation.

[DG_ThenNowForever]

Cues. Not queues. Embarrassing.

 

I'm so old I remember when MNF, even on ESPN, was such a big deal that it needed marquee broadcasters. That's definitely changed -- likely for the better -- so that it kind of doesn't matter who's on.

 

ESPN doesn't really want to spend money on those guys anymore, which is probably a smart decision. Though I guess I do miss the idea of them needing to test bad ideas like Kornheiser or Limbaugh on their football programming. Is Bob Costas done with sports after he leaves NBC?

 

[dfwabel]

27 minutes ago, DG_Now said:

Is Bob Costas done with sports after he leaves NBC?

 

Costas has said he still wants call a weeknight game on MLB Network. Obviously, we know his favorite sport is baseball, but his son, Keith, is a producer for the channel.

[The_Admiral]

3 hours ago, McCarthy said:

People are complaining about Witten a lot and I agree with them, but I also find Joe Tessitore incredibly annoying. Like he's turned up to 11 on every play, losing his mind over unremarkable 3rd down conversions. It doesn't feel genuine and if it is genuine then I'm worried for his mental health. It's like he feels like he needs to cover for Witten and really you just need to call the game.

Did you read the profile of him on The Ringer? He's the most Scorsese-Sopranos Dad who ever lived.

[dfwabel]

I knew this was going to occur yesterday.

 

Monday:  Peter King writes he'll no longer appear on Barstool content due to The Daily Beast profile in September.

 

Tuesday: Portnoy "wishes death on King".

 

[Sport]

19 hours ago, the admiral said:

Did you read the profile of him on The Ringer? He's the most Scorsese-Sopranos Dad who ever lived.

 

I just did. I'm almost never a fan of people who try to impress you with intensity. To me it's either an act or you're insane and then I imagine how exhausted I would be around such a person. Also, as a somewhat picky eater with weird food aversions the idea of someone shoving food at me makes me uncomfortable. 

[dfwabel]

Two health related issues.

 

Ernie Johnson will not be working for TBS this MLB postseason due to blood clots.

 

And Matt Millen will take time off the Big Ten Network to Amyloidosis

[Sec19Row53]

On 10/2/2018 at 10:57 AM, Crabcake47 said:

It seems like ESPN had a great thing going with Tirico and Gruden (and Jaws at one point), and once they messed with that they could never find a combination that worked. 

I didn't realize anyone actually liked Gruden the announcer in the last 5 years. He was awful, calling every player the greatest thing ever.