Kramerica Industries

A quick YouTube search tells me that, at least functionally, TNT has used the same score bug since the 2012-'13 season, which is honestly pretty remarkable. That makes this ten seasons. I can only wonder how many different score bugs/banners ESPN has used in that same time frame. (The answer appears to be "at least seven".)

Shots on goal being a full-time feature on a score bug was never a feature until Fox networks began using them in 2014-'15, which really wasn't all that long ago when you really think about it. How did we survive all those years watching games without that information available at all times? Kinda like the full-time strike zones that are on almost every baseball broadcast these days, come to think of it. Really wasn't an addition we ever actually needed but now people will complain about whenever its missing.

This situation somehow feels like it's been Bobby Petrino on steroids. I don't know how you top resigning by leaving notes on the players lockers after a MNF game, but I won't put anything past Urban at this point.

I had the exact same first impression especially when I saw the second picture. Whether that's a good thing or bad thing is another thing entirely. I will say that I feel like I saw that exact same score bug recently (without the TNT logo, but the concept of it) but I can't seem to place it.

They're straight up ed as long as they blindly keep Ben behind center at this point. As much as the "[Players X, Y, and/or Z] can't be any worse" idea is often oversimplified, it might just be true in this case. Ben can't throw the ball at ALL anymore. He's the poster child right now for "should've retired one year too early vs. one year too late" idea, and maybe it's admirable that he's tried to get every last bit that he can out of his arm, but as long as Tomlin is blindly loyal to him as the starting QB, the Steelers are going nowhere. I mean, yeah, they're probably going nowhere regardless the QB this year, that's the situation they've created for themselves, but at this point, you have a former recent 1st round draft pick QB on your roster, you might as well see if you have anything there, if any part of Haskins has matured after the way his career began in Washington. And you go with Haskins because Rudolph already had his chance in 2019 and clearly wasn't the answer.

For me, this is a hard one of to compromise. If they were wearing blue sweaters primarily, I prefer royal blue. If they're wearing orange with blue trim, I prefer the blue trim to be navy. I'm kinda partial to the orange sweaters more than I probably should be, but ultimately the Oilers are traditionally known for blue-and-orange, not the other way around, so I'd take royal blue over navy blue if forced to choose one or the other. It would be hard to reconcile a hybrid approach and I wouldn't endorse it. Besides, just look at their blue-and-orange, '80s dynasty cousins. Even if the Islanders will never be able to replicate those years, they still look more correct in the lighter blue than they did in navy.

That's fine. I was happy enough that, in a league full of red-and-black teams, the Sens bucked that trend and went black-and-red instead. Black's also personally my favorite color and I'm generally happy to see teams (that have that color already in their scheme) choose to wear it as their primary jersey color. My comment likely falls more under the nitpick department than an actual complaint.

Wish they would've gone back to the 2.0 version of those uniforms, to be honest. Having seen both those uniforms, it makes the black 1.0 version look a bit too empty without the white stripes. For me, anyway.

I had been moderately curious as to why I hadn't seen Liam McHugh on NBC either last Thursday or this past Sunday, since he'd held a role on FNIA in recent years along with a role on Notre Dame broadcasts. In short, it seemed like he had something going with NBC even without the NHL. But I guess this explains why. Maybe he saw the writing on the wall once NBC hired Maria Taylor or something, and thought he was being squeezed out. But my goodness. They've gone almost as far in on reuniting the NBC crew as they possibly can.

I don't know if hosting college football by itself would've been a huge problem - it's not uncommon at all for some NFL stadiums to have weekend doubleheaders - but that the Bucs played on that field on Thursday, then the Florida/USF game, and the Bucs play at home again for Week 2...it might not have been something the Bucs would've appreciated to have that much happening on their home field in that period of time.

I think it's a matter of people finding it unique and cool when Fox first did it during the middle of last season and now it's created something of an arms race that nobody actually asked for. It's spread beyond the NFL and North America as well; I've seen it in Spanish football games back last season.

Sorry to quote you on this now, several weeks later, but this is the first time I've seen this post. Anyway, I do have to ask how you reconcile this view with your very strong views against monochrome football uniforms. Is the aesthetic of baseball and football uniforms that different in order to justify it? Because, honestly, in either sport, what I see are uniforms with a jersey top, a pants bottom that may or may not leave the socks visible (and the pajama pants look doesn't exist in football like it does in baseball, though I suppose the leotard pants/socks combo is a functional equivalent) and either a helmet or hat being worn on top of the head. I suppose a lot of that is common sense and not that different than how people literally dress themselves each day in the name of normalcy and common decency, but I feel like you would've reversed the order of the all-navy and blue jersey/gray pants around if it was something like this: (Obviously those aren't the same teams, but I trust you understand my point here.)

I'm reasonably sure the Jags would make sure to have plausible deniability all lined up if they were doing this. Certainly, if there were two players who they rated equally who were on the cutline and one is vaxxed and the other isn't, it wouldn't be unreasonable for vaccination status to be a tiebreaker.

It's not that they don't care, it's that there's clearly no reasonable way out of that contract this year, so they're stuck with him and his nonsense whether they like it or not. And with vaccination, Cousins isn't the only problem child they have in Minnesota. Harrison Smith, Adam Thielen, and supposedly even Dalvin Cook are also anti-vax, so that's only four of your most important players who are leading that particular faction. I fear for Zimmer's health with the headaches those guys are causing.

I'm having a hard time thinking this would happen (even though I'm guessing you're just joking). While I suppose technically the Coyotes had their greatest season in that uniform set, the fact is that they wore those uniforms full-time from 2003-'04 until 2019-'20 - 16 seasons - and only made the playoffs four times in that timeframe (and they wore Kachina for their "home" games in the bubble in 2020). They never got past the first round in the Kachina set, but at least they were usually a playoff team during that time. Not to mention that Kachina has that instantly-recognizable '90s theme to them, while the Howler set is just (especially post-2007), well, plain and boring, which isn't something that is confined to any time period. I have no reason to think Howler is ever coming back.

Don't need to think too hard about it. Chuck's unfiltered, everyman persona has much to do with that.

Thought the trouble they got in was for sharing that video to Taylor when the video itself was illicitly recorded by someone and spread from there. I would argue everybody involved in that particular chain should've been punished - and maybe they were - for that kind of gossipy nonsense. A video like that obviously wasn't meant to be recorded, contains sensitive information, and should've been referred to someone to be properly handled. Oh well, not gonna pretend I'm surprised with what actually happened. I want to make it very clear that I find Rachel Nichols rather insufferable and have no particular affinity towards her, but my personal feelings are irrelevant. Was she bumped from a gig she clearly values (and claims was contractually agreed to) for performance-related reasons, or something different? You can support diversity; that doesn't mean you need to be ok with someone else being given an assignment over you that you had every reason to think was yours. Did the swap occur for diversity (race) related reasons? Evidence is only circumstantial so who knows for sure, but I also don't think you can fault Rachel for thinking that way, either, and especially when it's done (she thought) in private and was just kind of venting to someone she obviously trusts. I mean, who hasn't said something about their job or possibly a colleague in private that isn't exactly the most friendly? Anyone who says they haven't is a liar. I will say that the response of some of Maria's colleagues on the show - at least Woj, anyway; really shouldn't be surprised that the other black athletes will support a black person in this scenario - is a bit telling. Wonder if Rachel isn't terribly popular at least with some of her colleagues and, well, if that might've been a possible reason for a change as well. I suppose it would be a bit difficult to tell someone that the reason they're being replaced is because their colleagues don't like them. Who knows. What a mess. Who knows the sincerity of Rachel's attempts to apologize, and who knows Maria's level of pettiness if she isn't going to give her a chance to tell her side of the story. Comforting to know, as @the admiral so strongly alludes to, that sports media personalities act in a way towards each other that is really no different than the way teenagers act towards each other.

From what I've read, it's likely that either Sean McDonough or Steve Levy will get that #1 gig. Don't mind McDonough and think he got a really raw deal with MNF (and that's even without hindsight and Joe Tessitore), but seeing as how Ray Ferraro is also expected to be part of that crew, I'm disappointed that Gord Miller once again isn't getting the chance to call a SCF in either country (I have no clue who the NHL International crew is for that, and unless Gord is on that, I'm not terribly interested). Miller and Ferraro is probably the best broadcast crew in the NHL and have a great deal of experience working together. They've even done a few NBCSN games over the years including the playoffs. It would've been a good duo to keep intact. Speaking of Kenny Albert, I have a higher opinion of him for the NHL than you do, but you likely won't be pleased to hear that he's probably the #1 play-by-play for Turner beginning next year, so he's going to be calling four of the next eight SCF's when you include the final year of the NBC contract this year.

I just stumbled onto those two French and Italian-language forums I pretend to go to regularly but in reality never end up using and never end up learning those languages. I joke but this is the skin those two forums also have.

My goodness. I try not to use this standard internet phrase very often, but a Champions League without Barcelona or Juventus? Inject that right into my veins. Of course, it would be even funnier if Juventus failed to qualify anyway, to be honest. (I would include Milan as well, but they've been failures at qualifying for years now. I'm used to them not being in there.) As far as people having a moral dilemma trying to decide which is better to hope wins, Man City or Chelsea, you could just hope it ends up going to penalties and do what I do in those situations, and treat it like nobody's a proper winner at that point. If I don't consider shootouts in hockey to be proper ways to decide games, there's zero reason I should view penalty kicks in soccer any differently. Even the sport itself doesn't recognize them that way. It's always "X-X AET, [Team A] wins on penalties [Y-Z]". If it happens prior to a championship game, replace "wins" with "advances".

Well, as I said in another post on this page, I never really care to watch studio shows anyway, so if you're asking me personally, I don't particularly care. That NBC is super generic deserves a little credit just because ESPN had one non-pre or post-game studio show back in the day, on ESPN2, and that was pretty much it. That NBC has always done pre- and post-game shows with their coverage can either be seen as a sign of how little useful programming they really have otherwise, or how many times ESPN felt the need to jam SportsCenter editions down our throats. Or both, I suppose. Regardless, me dismissing the question with an "I don't care" response doesn't help the discussion. I dunno, John Tortorella will probably be out of a job in a few weeks. He did some work with HNIC for a time when he was between coaching jobs with the Lightning and Rangers many years ago. The players might not provide much in the way of personality, but Brian Burke was a hit when he was working for HNIC. Of course, you could get a Burkie or you could get a Milbury in the process of doing that (and I'm guessing most people these days think of Milbury more as a horrendous executive than him as a player or coach even). You're also fighting a more basic problem of that fewer people in America care about hockey than they do about basketball. You'll get enough basketball fans who will say "sure, I'd love to see what nonsense Chuck is up to tonight" to get justifiable ratings. Will you get that with hockey? If the answer is no - and the answer definitely isn't yes - then you aren't going to waste money, chasing some great studio commentary team, that isn't going to get the results you want it to get. I'd love a studio show that allowed for a little bit of focus on strategic breakdowns and allowing ex-players or coaches to explain certain things that happened and why they did, personally. I'd watch the hell out of a show like that. But that show will never be a ratings success, so to hope for something like that is just wasting time. Even NHL Network doesn't do that stuff; it's mostly just reruns of the previous nights games, reruns of On The Fly, simulcasts of RSN broadcasts, and (if you count the original, live On The Fly), three actual hours in total of live, original programming. And there's probably a really good reason for that.

Well, for starters, I would die of shock to see any ex-NHL'ers - or any current NHL'ers for that matter - talking on social matters in the way that the ex- and current NBA players do. Without trying to take this into a political realm, all I'll say is that it's not exactly a secret that the average NBA player, and the average NHL player, tends to see these things in different ways. I mean, sure, they'll tweet their support when it's the correct PR move, but look through some of these guys' Twitter likes and follows and a great majority of them don't practice what they retweet.

Chuck has spoken about his interest in hockey many times before. Him making cameos on any kind of Turner studio programming is, yes, predictable, but given that interest, I don't think it would be a bad idea. In theory, at least. Obviously if you oversaturate it then the appeal will likely be quickly lost. Otherwise, just because Turner has Inside the NBA doesn't mean there's any obligation to try and create a hockey version of it. Pre- and post-game shows in general aren't exactly the kind of programs that people tend to watch very much or very often. About the only time I've ever kept NBC or even local Lightning post-game shows on has been when there's either nothing else worth watching on television, or if it's the playoffs. And it's hardly a known secret that people don't watch Inside the NBA for much in terms of actual basketball analysis, either. It's the personalities that have sold that show, and that's always been the case. The day Chuck calls it quits is the day that shows loses a lot of it's caché. (And don't forget the flip side of this equation when it comes to Turner. This is the same company that, in more recent times, was responsible for probably the worst bit of studio-related programming I can remember when they had the Champions League rights. Between the studio, the manner in which they used their analysts, and other stuff related to that, it was a trainwreck. I have plenty of irritation with how CBS shunts games in favor of...some show involving Tiki Barber...but their studio programming is 10x more professional than what Turner and B/R were producing, and that's not even hyperbole.) We probably know how most of this ends up. A few of the current NBC commentators and studio crew will end up with ESPN, more of them at Turner, the rest settling with their current RSN agreements, and any kinds of pre- and post- shows, should there really be any - you know ESPN isn't going to bother with this - will probably be as generic then as NBC's are now. "Hockey player" and "personality" don't belong in the same sentence, and to insinuate that any of them have a personality would generate a green squiggly line underneath like the kind you get in Word when your sentence makes zero sense. A hockey Charles Barkley, or even a hockey Kenny Smith, don't exist, so don't waste your time trying to force one into existence.

Like everything Bally Sports is associated with, these graphics absolutely suck.

Considering the Cavs went to three straight Finals, including winning one of course in 2016, just what exactly was the rationale for redesigning the uniforms back in 2017-'18, anyway? I know it's not unprecedented in sports to sometimes change uniforms even when a team has just won a championship or two in them - sometimes it's because a redesign was already in the works and there wasn't much that could be done to reverse it at that point anyway - so I guess I need to assume that was the case with the Cavs? Otherwise, changing from the uniform you won a championship in 2016 with just 16 months later fails to make any sense on any level.