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MadmanLA

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  1. I haven't posted here in a long while, but I really like the new look that the Clippers are coming with. I'm okay with the primary logo, but I'm happy that the scripted wordmarks are back, and they actually look better than the older scripted wordmark from the Sterling era. The one thing that I would change on the color uniforms is adding a thin outline around "Clippers" and "Los Angeles" to make it show more. Beyond that, I like the rebranding...it sure as hell is better than the soon-to-be former branding. 8/10, if I were to give a grade.
  2. I just can't see how Sarver would be allowed back in the NBA, even if he does the one-year suspension. I'm sorry, but a $10 million fine (for a man worth at least $850 million), a year suspension, and sensitivity training isn't punishment enough--it's a classic, rich people "slap on the wrist" type of punishment. Outside of Devin Booker becoming a superstar-level player and Chris Paul bringing his services to downtown Phoenix in the last few years, Sarver has been a terrible owner for the Suns for the vast majority of his tenure in charge. He's accused of the same transgressions that rightfully got Donald Sterling booted the hell out of the Association, with the only difference was that Sterling (thanks to one of his mistresses) got caught running his mouth about Magic Johnson and not wanting her to bring Black people to his games (among other things said). Let's not forget that Sterling did far more egregious :censored: that David Stern turned a blind eye to for 30 years, but it was an incoming commissioner with three months on the job, a lady of the evening, and ultimately his estranged wife that finally brought Donald Tokowitz down. LOL. I believe the NBA would prefer to quietly have the other partners buy-out Sarver's share (which only is 35 percent), so as to minimize the PR hell the team is already suffering with. Phoenix Magazine has an article for earlier this year that details Sarver's behavior as Suns owner, and how one of the minority owners (Jahm Najafi, the second-largest shareholder in the team) wants to a play to buy-out Sarver. The article came out a couple days after the initial ESPN report about the allegations involving Sarver. Given that Sarver reportedly doesn't have a lot of allies amongst the other owners, and just like with Sterling, the NBA Players Association (whose ex-president plays for the Suns, but still has some pull) may be the real deciding factor in whether Sarver goes.
  3. I can't see leaving the Angels leaving Southern California, and in particular the Los Angeles/Orange Counties media market. Maybe the next potential owner can re-negotiate a legit (i.e. not "greasing the palms") stadium deal with the city of Anaheim, or if all else fails there, Long Beach has been an option that was mentioned as recent as a few months ago. There's an article in yesterday's Long Beach Press-Telegram that reiterated what their mayor said back in May, right after the stadium sale with Anaheim broke down, that he and the city council would be re-open to negotiate a stadium deal there. However, the writers in the article stated that the Angels could even be years away from getting a new owner, leaving to the idea that a potential new owner could still keep the team in Anaheim. After this season, the Angels still have six years left with their lease with Angel Stadium, with the option to extend the lease to 2038--which by then, the current stadium would be 72 years old.
  4. Banc of California Stadium, looking northeast towards the Downtown Los Angeles skyline; the Exposition Park museums and the USC campus are in the left side, and off-picture the Coliseum is just 500 or so feet to the west (left).
  5. Purely for the entertainment value...I've learned over time that pundits like Stephen A. and Skip will simply say things just for effect, even if the points are valid. Trust me, it took me a long time to warm up to both, and I will change the channel if either one (and Max Kellerman whenever he goes on his long-ass diatribes) gets too out of hand. I didn't start watching First Take until the last year or so that Stephen A. & Skip were together, and Cari Champion was the moderator. I don't agree with everything either one says (and throw in Kellerman and Shannon Sharpe for that matter), and certainly (just as an example) what Skip said last year regarding Dak Prescott was absolutely deplorable. However, whenever they talk about race issues, especially with what's been going on in our communities, they're all on the same page on that accord. I felt the same way as you regarding Colin Cowherd, especially going back to his ESPN days, but I've come around on him since he's been at Fox Sports...I think Joy Taylor has been an excellent addition to his show, as she knows her stuff and will challenge him on his weird theories/analogies.
  6. In the mornings, I'll usually flip back and forth between First Take and Skip & Shannon, and that depends on the topic at hand (between the two shows, it's nothing but NBA and NFL talk, and very rarely delve into other sports). Hell, since the pandemic, the days I work from home, my daytime viewing has largely consisted of those two, Colin Cowherd (& Joy Taylor), newscasts, and old sitcoms reruns between Antenna TV, Logo, Decades, and whatever else is on some of the Viacom channels (BET, MTV2, and VH1). Beyond that, I don't watch much ESPN or FS1 outside of certain live events...I more or less tapped out on Around the Horn and PTI awhile ago, and they were my two favorite shows on ESPN.
  7. Plenty of changes around the SportsCenter desks--in Bristol, Los Angeles, and soon-to-be in Washington, D.C. in the coming days (and months)... Firstly, Cari Champion (who was doing the weekday Noon ET SportsCenters with David Lloyd) is leaving ESPN at the end of the month... https://www.si.com/tech-media/2020/01/10/cari-champion-leaving-espn-sportscenter-first-take-sportsnation As a result of that, Matt Barrie and Elle Duncan will takeover the weekday noon slot (Mondays-Thursdays), as well as the Sunday 9am ET shows, while Lloyd moves to early-mornings, splitting days with Hannah Storm (Mondays-Wednesdays) and Antonietta Collins (Thursdays). He and Collins will also do the Tuesday and Wednesday early-morning shows, and Storm and Jay Harris will do the Friday Noon shows, in addition to anchoring the weekend morning editions. Thursday-Saturday early-mornings will be anchored by Nicole Briscoe and Randy Scott. The noon show will also be 90 minutes every weekday, followed by NFL Live at 1:30pm ET as usual. The evening and late-night editions will remain as is, but with one slight change--Scott Van Pelt will be moving his SportsCenter show to his native Washington, D.C., but not until this summer (sometime in August). He'll use the PTI studio at ABC News' Washington bureau, although some functions will still take place in Bristol.
  8. It did at least here in Los Angeles (his hometown), where he hasn't been heard locally since he switched syndicators. The station that was the local "flagship" station of CBS Sports Radio, KFWB, went Bollywood music in 2016 after trying local sports talk for two years, and before that was a general talk/news station (and was all-news for decades). When it was "The Beast 980", the only things they had going for it was the Clippers and Galaxy radio broadcasts, and maybe Rome...the rest of the on-air talent were either old local sports media fogies (Fred Roggin, Jeanne Zelasko, Bill Plaschke) that still want to reminisce about the good ol' days of the Showtime Lakers and the Lasorda-era Dodgers, or nobodies from out-of-town that know little-to-nothing about the local sports scene. I can't speak for KLAC, KSPN or KLAA, I haven't listened to either one of the three in a long time as well...other than KLAC carrying Cowherd's radio/TV simulcast and the Petros (Papadakis)-Money (Matt Smith) show, I couldn't tell you what else on that station, and as a Clipper fan, I've avoided KSPN for years, ever since they took over the radio rights to the Lakers. I tried KLAA in the beginning as well, especially Roger Lodge's show (yes, he of "Blind Date" fame), and once his original co-host got fired, Lodge's sports knowledge, or lack thereof, was greatly exposed. He must have pictures on Arte Moreno or something, because Lodge is a terrible sports talk host. Hell, I can remember him for filling-in for Rome on his radio show several times before the KLAA gig came about...not much different there either. Other than those mid-mornings if I'm home from work, and Colin Cowherd isn't on TV that day, I'll tune in to Rome for a few minutes, and then find something else to watch. I haven't personally listened to his radio show in any length in years, and haven't listened to an entire episode in nearly 15 years.
  9. Sad news from the NBA world... Long-time Cavaliers and Pistons TV play-by-play announcer Fred McLeod died last night, at the age of 67. McLeod's most recent work was calling this summer's Lions preseason telecasts. He had served as the Cavs' TV voice since 2006, and before that spent 22 years calling Detroit Pistons cable telecasts on PASS, and then on Fox Sports Detroit when the latter launched in 1997. He also worked as a sportscaster at Cleveland's Channel 8 (then WJKW) in the late '70s, as a weekend sports anchor, and called Cavs and Indians games for that station until both moved to then-indie WUAB in 1980. In his Detroit years, he was also a sportscaster at WJBK and WDIV-TV. https://www.cnn.com/2019/09/10/sport/fred-mcleod-obit-nba-trnd/index.html LeBron shared his sentiments today...
  10. You also had situations where teams (not just in MLB either) had three sets of broadcast teams--radio, over-the-air TV, and cable TV. The Tigers were a prime example in the 80s and 90s--Ernie Harwell and Paul Carey on radio, George Kell and Al Kaline on the WDIV/Tigers TV network, and another set of broadcasters on PASS. The Mets did for awhile as well in the '90s and early 2000s--Gary Throne and Ralph Kiner did over-the-air TV (WWOR, and then the move to WPIX in '99), Howie Rose on cable, and Bob Murphy and Gary Cohen on radio. When SNY was created in 2006, Cohen became the play-by-play man for all local Mets telecasts, although he still will occasionally fill-in on radio. The Yankees, from the early 80s until YES' creation, also had separate over-the-air and cable play-by-play announcers; when Mel Allen returned to the Yankees in 1982, he called five seasons of games on the old SportsChannel New York (which they shared with the Mets until MSG picked up the Yankees in '89), while the Scooter was the #1 play-by-play on WPIX, but also served as a back-up to Allen on SCNY telecasts.
  11. The Clippers, probably as expected, promoted radio voice Brian Sieman to TV starting next season, while Noah Eagle (Ian's son) becomes the team's radio play-by-play man. https://thebiglead.com/2019/07/16/brian-sieman-promoted-to-clippers-tv-play-by-play-noah-eagle-leading-candidate-for-radio/
  12. Allen's been on a bit of a spending spree in recent years, including buying NBCUniversal's share of The Weather Channel, and he's also buying three small-market TV stations in Indiana and Louisiana.
  13. I definitely remember seeing an Angels billboard along Wilshire Boulevard right around that time as well. They and the Dodgers did a joint billboard for Trout and Kershaw back in 2015; this one was at Wilshire and Highland Avenue in the Miracle Mile District...
  14. Another MLB team gets in bed with Sinclair Broadcasting...The Yankees, along with Amazon, Sinclair, and Blackstone Capital are buying the YES Network for $3.5 billion... https://deadline.com/2019/03/yes-network-sold-for-3-5b-to-yankees-amazon-sinclair-private-equity-reports-1202572010/
  15. https://www.latimes.com/sports/angels/la-sp-angels-spring-training-20190218-story.html This L.A. Times article talks about that, and practically everything else about this thread. It's basically a convoluted mess, as far as how the Fox RSNs sale gets situated...a lot of players involved. I saw somewhere else that he wants to buy both of the L.A. Fox RSNs, and Fox Sports' Arizona & San Diego channels.
  16. Keep in mind that as long as the Angels keep collecting that $150 million a year check from Fox Sports (or whomever winds up with the Fox RSNs in the near-future), plus the equity stake in Fox Sports West, they're not leaving Southern California. That contract doesn't expire for another thirteen seasons. They wouldn't even get that much money if they moved to another market...hell, even if they were to become a third NYC team.
  17. Today, the Cubs and Sinclair Broadcasting made it official--Marquee officially launches Spring Training 2020.
  18. The Raiders' original Oakland home was Frank Youell Field (1962-65), which sat on the site of what are now parking lots for Laney College.. Edit: a little factoid about Frank Youell I didn't realize until today...besides a longtime Oakland city councilman, he was also an undertaker.
  19. Sinclair is also reportedly teaming with the Cubs to launch a new RSN, starting in 2020. This upcoming season is the final year of contracts between the Cubs and WGN-TV, WLS-TV (ABC), and NBC Sports Chicago. The other three major teams on NBCS Chicago's roster had just recently locked-up term broadcast deals starting next year, in which now all local Bulls, Blackhawks, and White Sox telecasts will be exclusive to that channel. That in turn means, unless one of the teams sub-license a package of games, or they go all-in on whatever local college sports is still available that doesn't have CBS/ESPN/Fox/NBC exclusivity, this pretty much kills live local sports on WGN-TV. I think even in that scenario, if all three happen to play at or around the same time, and the NBCS Chicago Plus feed being already used, the "odd team out" might be farmed out to either WMAQ (NBC) or its Cozi TV subchannel (some Cubs and White Sox NBCS-produced games were farmed there in recent years, due to conflicts). Chicago was the last major market in the country with still a significant amount of live local sports on broadcast TV...the NBC Sports agreement pretty much puts Chicago on par with the rest of the major markets in the country with local sports almost exclusively on cable/satellite/streaming. Compounding that issue even more is that Tribune is once again in the process of being sold to another broadcast group (Nexstar Media), and this particular broadcast group, from what I've seen and heard, runs their stations lean and cheap like Sinclair, but minus the forced political agenda.
  20. Our CBS 2 here in Los Angeles also been an underperformer for decades as well (pretty much most of old-line CBS O&Os for that matter)...at least since the '80s, it's always been either ABC (7), NBC (4), KTLA (5), or Fox (11) at the top of the local news ratings. KTLA, much like WGN in Chicago, is a news-heavy station (has been a somewhat news-dominate station since it signed on in 1947), and their morning news program has dominated the local news ratings pretty much the last 25 years or so, with sometimes Fox 11's Good Day L.A. taking over the top spot, but one or the other always beat the Today Show, Good Morning America, and CBS This Morning no matter what. Sometimes, even the two big Spanish news-producing stations in town, Univision 34 and Telemundo 52, will beat KCBS in the local news ratings.
  21. You and me both...if you really break it down to its core, the Fox-NFL TV deal changed the entire American TV business forever. At the same time you had stations that not only defecting to Fox, but to an lesser extent, ABC and NBC were also either working on keeping its longtime affiliations together as well, and in some cases, locking-up group-wide affiliations between the station groups and networks. I've done my share of reading and research on this stuff for years...of all the NFC markets at the time (and remember that Fox's first year of NFL coverage was also the final season the Rams [and Raiders] played in greater Los Angeles), Phoenix was probably the most affected, because four of its major commercial TV stations were involved, and each of them either swapped, lost, or a gained a network affiliation: KTVK Channel 3: ABC to independent KPHO 5: independent to CBS KSAZ 10: CBS to Fox KNXV 15: Fox to ABC Channel 15 was/still is owned by the E.W. Scripps Company, and Scripps signed a group-wide affiliation deal with ABC around 1994, mainly to keep ABC on its Detroit (WXYZ) and Cleveland (WEWS) stations. This same deal also saw KNXV and two other Scripps-owned Fox affiliates (KSHB Kansas City and WFTS Tampa) go to ABC, while Cincinnati's WCPO went from CBS to ABC. The Scripps-ABC agreement, in turn, also played a huge role in the Big Three network affiliates in both Baltimore and Denver conducting three-way swaps: Baltimore: WMAR-2, NBC to ABC; WBAL-11, CBS to NBC; WJZ-13, ABC to CBS Denver: KCNC-4, NBC to CBS; KMGH-7, CBS to ABC; KUSA-9, ABC to NBC (Scripps-owned at the time) CBS and NBC also conducted business between each other during that same mid-90s time frame, mostly trading stations for each other--Philadelphia's WCAU-10 went from being CBS-owned to NBC-owned, while CBS got back in exchange NBC's Denver (the aforementioned KCNC) and Salt Lake City (KUTV) stations, and the two networks also traded station frequencies in Miami (NBC's WTVJ moving from channel 4 to 6, and CBS' WCIX-6 becoming WFOR-4).
  22. Correct...Entercom also bought the CBS radio stations about a couple years ago, and Radio.com was included in the CBS Radio divestiture to Entercom. Meanwhile, Fox and MLB extend their partnership through 2028, with a 36-percent increase in fees (going from the current $525 million/year to $715 million annually) starting in 2022; the current Fox-MLB deal runs through the end of 2021, and as part of the new agreement, Big Fox will be airing more LDS and LCS games once again, although not full series, with some LDS/LCS games still staying on FS1. MLB also signed a new agreement with new streaming service DAZN (pronounced 'Da Zone'), to offer a new highlight show, plus live game cut-ins on certain nights, not unlike MLB Strike Zone. Also included in this story, Rob Manfred signed an extension to continue as Commissioner of Baseball, through 2024.
  23. George Preston Marshall deserves to be in the "Worst Owners" thread...not only he was a racist piece of :censored:, but his team was only forced to integrate (the last NFL team to do so) because they wouldn't have been allowed to play at then-DC Stadium if he didn't conform.
  24. We can eliminate option 2 off the bat (no pun intended)...there's really no room in DTLA (particularly in that Staples/Convention Center/LA Live area), and the Dodgers play just outside of the western fringes of DTLA (essentially midway between DTLA and Hollywood), but still close enough for them to take issue having another team a just few miles away. Hell, the area around Staples has been construction-hell for the last few years, just with five new highrises being built to the west of Staples, on 12th Street, between Figueroa and Flower Streets. The last time this topic came up, I mentioned before that Ed Roski, after his City of Industry football stadium plan failed, tried to lure the Angels up the 57 freeway to a build a stadium complex on the Grand Crossing site, the closest Arte could perhaps ever get to Los Angeles proper, but still across the county line. Of course, that in part was used in the last negotiations with Anaheim. LMU properly stated why the Angels won't leave the L.A. market--Rupert Murdoch's annual $150 million check to Arte Moreno each spring.
  25. 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/
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