Digby

No idea what's happening but Barstool and Kirk Minihane are fighting. Never have I rooted for the meteor more than now.

I don't miss the days of the only beer options at a ballpark being Bud or Bud Light (or their Coors equivalents, whatever). If I'm paying $15 for a beer it better be the finest fancypants craft brewed up in tanks made of crystal. For a while the only reason I was going to Revolution games in Foxboro was that it was the only place in MA to find Heady Topper.

It's been pretty common in soccer for a while now, to have announcers call the game based on a feed in a remote studio. Particularly outside of the big matches and tournaments. Of course, some folks do find it makes for less insightful commentary without announcers being able to see the entire field outside the monitor, for reasons stated above. I'm not sure I'm wise enough to catch the difference, though.

Palm Springs has a hockey arena?

As expected, many of the SBN furloughs are becoming buyouts today. Whenever sports comes back, I'll be damned if I could tell you who will be writing anything interesting about them.

I can't decide if COVID will pop the podcast bubble (target market won't be commuting much for many months) or is good for it (class of advertisers that aren't screwed the way newspaper advertisers are).

3 hours ago, JayMac said:

I remember his sappy call of the United States defeating Portugal in the 2002 World Cup.

 

"My eyes have seen the glory. The United States has defeated Portugal!"

 

I didn't even know he was still around.

He is, but I guess "SportsCenter anchor" to "Bruins play-by-play guy" is a career downgrade by any stretch, even if NESN/Boston is probably one of the better places to land as far as it goes. But he seems to enjoy it and is semi-beloved by the fanbase. Figures that the 2006 lead WC announcer who sucked at it too, Dave O'Brien, also ended up a Boston PxP local yokel. Thank goodness American soccer broadcasters eventually conceded that it's better to just have a boring soccer voice doing those games.

A funny thing about The Last Dance was seeing vintage footage of Jack Edwards on Sportscenter. I liked him better back then, before he tried his damndest to wreck every Bruins game with wizened passion or whatever.

The thing about a white uniform is that the trim on that and the trim on the home “field” design will always match up, anyway, so you can’t go wrong and in most cases it does make the other team look more out of place. It does happen that two teams’ color schemes are a perfect match, but that’s more rare than it seems.

(Does not apply to modern NBA where who knows where the random wheel of jersey and court designs will land that day) 

I saw the Orlando Rays amongst a crowd of about 50 in however big thst stadium is, how does that scale?

18 minutes ago, infrared41 said:

 

You haven't lived until you watch a baseball game with 3500 other people in a stadium that seats 80,000. 

digging deep on this one... I saw both Toronto and Atlanta (old stadium) but both, I believe, pre-97 so crowds weren’t swallowed up. 
 

been to like 20 Revolution MLS games through the years to get that idea, though.

EDIT: I should say old old stadium for Atlanta. Can’t keep up!

Yeah, I don’t miss the days of cavernous multiuse ballparks, but I don’t love the excuse of “more intimate” as a dog whistle for “more luxury seats”. Something tells me we’re gonna go the wrong way on that particular issue in the coming 1-3 years, though.

3 month furloughs for just about everyone at SB Nation. 

We've basically got a couple big-name writers left, and The Athletic, and that's it. Bad times if you like to read about sports.

“Deadspin” coming back now is the Aristocrats punchline that I need right now

Corporate drama between YouTube TV and Sinclair, who now own YES and the Fox regional sports networks. I'm sure this too shall pass, though I'm feeling lucky I don't have to deal with this inconvenience as a YouTube TV subscriber (Boston's a NESN and NBC market).

https://www.theverge.com/2020/2/29/21159033/youtube-tv-sinclair-fox-regional-sports-networks-yes-network-extension

Barstool as content-marketing arm for low-rent casino chain makes the most sense of anything I've heard in months.

8 minutes ago, Gothamite said:

And because Anaheim paid them to.  Don’t forget that part of it. 

I actually don’t mind that if Anaheim taxpayers were on the hook for the stadium renovation. Other than the fact that the team should’ve paid for all of it anyway.

I think it’s useful to go back to why the name has changed to start with; as far as I know “California Angels” was just fine and they only changed to “Anaheim” because Disney was trying to synergize. That’s not a good enough reason!

Foxborough/Gillette is still like that! Maybe worse!

1 hour ago, Hat Boy said:

Is there any metric or statistical evidence that demonstrates one way or the other the impact of the Angels using "Los Angeles" in their name? 

If I were in charge I’d be most interested in media mentions and merch sales.

at any rate I don’t think any useful metrics are ones we would have access to! So instead we all fight about it subjectively.

8 hours ago, NicDB said:

None of those places have Disney.  I think a lot of people making this argument are sleeping on what a game changer that is.  It makes Anaheim more comparable to Orlando than Pontiac.

I'm not saying Anaheim is necessarily what the Angels should call themselves (I'm Team California, FWIW), and I know they'll probably never be anything but Los Angeles because there's too much of a financial incentive.  It doesn't change the fact that they have almost no fans in LA proper.

Disney’s been trying to make Anaheim a thing of its own for what, 50? 60 years? If it hasn’t happened yet, not sure what’ll ever change. 

I saw the Hayward thing unfortunately, but the Andre Gomes ankle injury in that Everton/Spurs game a few weeks back might be the new worst I was watching. Eeesh.

$13 for ESPN+ and Hulu seems like a good deal, and maybe there will even be something on Disney+ I want to watch (unlikely though). That said the coordinated tweets from talent are amusing. It will change lives!

Some useful further tidbits in this twitter thread from Tannenwald. Overall it's probably mostly a matchup thing. I think a Saturday primetime kickoff would probably be best but MLS needs TV partners who aren't invested in CFB for that to happen.

I may be one of the few in the center of that Venn diagram of interests. Don’t let me down SLC!