Kramerica Industries

I would agree with this stuff as well. In fact, in general, I would suggest any play-by-play job with any MLB/NBA/NHL team, at least the television ones and also some of the radio ones as well, are superior gigs to doing, ultimately, a studio program. 

At least, that's what I would say today. SportsCenter used to be a bigger deal back when watching highlights was a tougher thing to do. Now that anyone can watch highlights at a moment's notice...I'll just say that, outside of SVP's version every now and then, I'm not even sure I remember the last time I watched SC. There's really no need. Either I saw what I needed to see already, or I haven't seen it but am still planning to, or I don't care enough about it to see the highlights from anyway. So why would I watch? Besides, a great deal of the sports I watch these days are either hockey or soccer games, and I know SC isn't going to be airing the highlights from (most of them) anyway.

Just to bring the topic back to MNF quickly, although this is a broader ESPN problem really, but one thing that bringing in a new broadcast crew isn't going to solve is ESPN's obnoxious overuse of panning to crowd shots after plays happen. They must do it far more than the other networks do, and the only other network I can think of that tends to use them with any kind of volume - Fox - does it so much better than ESPN does.

As long as this is how ESPN does things, it's not really going to matter who they have in the booth because it makes their production look so amateur-ish. 

It actually happened twice.

So I liked the previous graphics package as it was...and I like it even more seeing this rancid crap.

Pat White got hurt in that Pitt-WVU game and that's where the offense went out of their sails right then and there. I can't remember much about that WVU team these days beyond White, Steve Slaton, and...was Owen Schmitt on that team?...but I do remember them being a fun team to watch and wishing they had a better fate than they did. That being said, 2007's craziness was a blast and we've never had a season come close to repeating that since. Ohio State, LSU, and West Virginia all lost crucial late season game at home and Mizzou at the misfortune of playing Oklahoma in the Big XII Championship (the misfortune mainly being that they had play that kind of game, something Ohio State didn't have to do) and, unfortunately for the latter two, they lost those games after the Buckeyes and Tigers lost theirs. That's what put them over the top more than anything else. Kind of a silly thing in college football but it's always been true; if you're gonna lose a game, the earlier the better. Late season losses, in theory, shouldn't hurt any more or any less, but we all know they do.

EDIT: Oh, Noel Devine too.

2011's was much worse for so many reasons. Appropriately bad title game for the BCS doing what it did.

33 minutes ago, The Six said:

I hope Randy Carlyle takes over. Coach's Corner needs to maintain the truculence.

That's why they have Brian Burke.

On 10/22/2019 at 11:29 PM, Silence of the Rams said:

NHL on NBC: We've been using the same graphics for 4 years. 

 

NBA on TNT:Hold my beer

They've been using their current graphics package since Jan. 1, 2015 so it's really been 4 1/2 seasons entering this one. And since this isn't a Super Bowl season for NBC, odds are any kind of serious change isn't forthcoming.

I reserve the right to add to this list later on, if I can remember to, but whichever day it was - May 23, 2018 if I'm not mistaken - when the Lightning lost Game 7 at home to the Capitals in the ECF definitely ranks towards the very top of the list, more than the other Game 7 ECF defeats because this was at home instead of on the road. It was disappointing but not a huge shock to the system to lose those decisive games in 2011 and '16 in Boston and Pittsburgh, but losing the last two games in 2018 with the decisive game at home, and especially because they were trailing pretty much the entire game at that, was one big wet fart of a way to end a season that they definitely could've won the Cup.

(And 2019 doesn't really end up on any list of mine because of two reasons. 1) It was over the space of a week, not any one day; even if I knew trouble was lurking after the way Game 1 ended, it could've just as easily been an irrelevant footnote as well when it was all said and done, and 2) it was the first round, which dulled the irritation considerably in a somewhat perverse way. Like, it was embarrassing as hell, but at least it was quick and I didn't have my hopes inflated by a deep playoff run preceding it.)

Some disappointment that NBC didn't adapt their NHL scoreboard to the Premier League version. Maybe that's just due to the mutual association with Sky and the PL that doesn't exist with the NHL - that I know of, anyone; I have no clue who holds NHL rights in the UK - but the PL graphics are one of those subtle changes that looks sleeker and more finished when you compare it to what came before it. It makes the NHL graphics look old by comparison. Fine on their own but not as good as they can be knowing what they now have.

Fox has far and away the best graphics package as far as I'm concerned, if we're only talking about what's used for the NFL. I don't care for NBC having a separate package for SNF and doubly so because I think their "standard" package is better even if they have used it for several years by now (I mean, if it's good and works, why replace it?). Fox and CBS are different takes of the same idea, I just like Fox's application better. 

ESPN keeps changing the MNF package and they keep not getting it right. The best package they probably had, for my money, was the one circa 2009-'10. I was fine with that one. The next one was fine enough, but every one since 2015 has been a gradual downgrade from the previous one.

6 hours ago, McCarthy said:

Gladwell's ignoring a key detail in order to defend Paterno (Penn State Jopologists do this too) - They all mistake (or willfully misconstrue) the McQueary report as the first time Paterno had heard of an incident like this and he was too old and simple to do anything about it and also he did all he could. He's saying that Paterno was a football obsessive for 50 years before McQueary came to him in 2002 and it's unreasonable to expect him to know how to handle that properly. In that story it's fair to say that Paterno did everything right. EXCEPT that's not how it happened, Malcolm! Paterno knew about Sandusky as far back as the late 1970's, he forced the guy into early retirement, for crying out loud!. Despite this he still let him coach with the team for another two decades and continued to allow Sandusky to bring kids to the facility. When Mike McQueary came to him that was not the first time JoePa had encountered Sandusky being Sandusky with a kid. He had more than MANY opportunities to get Sandusky away from Penn State football and never did. 

I thought his Eugenics Basketball team thing was the lowest point he could go on that podcast. 

Hold on a minute...what?

On 9/16/2019 at 7:43 PM, the admiral said:

 over dated production music

I'll be curious to know what Sky Sports graphics looked like. I know that there was some change-ups between which networks - Sky and BT - have which windows of games this year, so I don't know which of those two had tonight's game, but I'm sure I'll find out soon enough if Sky is in-sync with NBCSN or if they're keeping their own score bug and related graphics.

About the only advantage I can think of that radio crews have over their TV counterparts is that they get to continue broadcasting as long as their team is playing, whereas TV crews either don't do playoffs at all (MLB) or only the first round (NBA/NHL). Other than that, I feel like you would have to really prefer the radio medium if you were to have the choice of radio or TV and chose radio. Speaking from personal experience, about the only times in the last several years where I've listened on the radio to any sporting event has been when I'm leaving work, will be home in less than 10 minutes, and the Lightning game would have only just started. Otherwise, there's only been one occasion I can think of in the last several years where I listened to a large portion of any sporting event on the radio; odds are, if I'm not gonna be able to see it, I'm either just gonna skip it entirely or watch it later. 

The I-4/I-75 interchange is about 10 miles east of downtown Tampa. Which isn't nearly as bad as the current situation is, where the Trop is more like 25 miles away from the downtown Tampa area, but it's probably not ideal. As far as Orlando goes, that's about another 70 miles off from that same interchange, a negligible difference when talking about the impact of Orlando attendees (which, lets be honest, you're not gonna get a whole lot of anyway due to the distance, not to mention traffic on I-4 during those hours is absolutely awful).

My brother lives in Orlando, and we've both made drives to and from Orlando and southern St. Pete all the time. He's a bit eccentric about this IMO, but he refuses to drive through downtown Tampa and that stretch of 275/4 during the daytime hours unless he has no choice. He'll take the longer route southward, over the skyway, and connect at the 275/75 junction down there and take that up to 4 than the alternative. 

On 5/8/2019 at 6:47 PM, Tracy Jordan said:

Is it just me or does anyone else miss the simplicity of the old ESPN scorebugs from the late 90's to mid 2000's?

The ESPN graphics package from ~2004-2006 was always my personal favorite as well.

18 hours ago, Still MIGHTY said:

 

Thankfully, he's not any now. Lozo left Greg Wyshynski on Puck Soup and left Down Goes Brown on Biscuits. And now, Down Goes Brown (and Yahoo's Ryan Lambert) have joined Greg Wyshynski on Puck Soup. Lozo now is just a writer for Katie Nolan's ESPN+ show. (And onto the specific point, Puck Soup is entering a sort of cross-branding agreement with the Athletic.)

Wyshynski is also an insufferable hack. I saw that he published a book a while ago in the same vein as Pat Kirwan's (very good) book about watching football, but from the digital library source I had access to, only a limited sample was available to read from. So I figure I'll see what is in the limited sample, and it's an endless barrage of "witty" jokes and nonsense and, I mean, if you're going to write a book that's supposed to help discuss actual hockey strategy, then give me a book about ing hockey strategy. I could screenshot any two random pages from that book here and I bet each page contained at least two jokes per.

I haven't read DGB's recent book, but at least the premise of that book allows for a more jokey style. Besides, McIndoe does humour better anyway. Wysh and his brand of writing and "analysis" can go to hell. 

The transformation of Tom Ricketts into Ted Cruz continues. 

Not sure if it's been posted, and if I can find literally anything of higher quality I'll post it, but Islanders in their fishsticks-designed uniforms against the black-and-red Sabres.

Would've been even better to find the Gorton's crest Isles but it appears they may have been able to ditch the logo by the time the Sabres went black. 

On YouTube, there's several of those NHL-produced VHS recordings from postseasons back in the late '80s and early '90s, and last well, a couple of July's ago now, I was watching the 1990 edition and, during their brief recap of the Whalers-Bruins first round meeting, I heard a voice I didn't expect to hear - Rick Peckham. Turns out he did the Whalers from '83-'95 before coming to Tampa, where he's been ever since. 

I was surprised, because I can't really remember ever hearing Peckham talk much about the Whalers. Not even recently after the Hurricanes did their Whalers Night promotion (incidentally, Carolina is Tampa Bay's next opponent; off chance there might be some talk only because that promotional event was still a pretty short time ago). If I hadn't stumbled across that video I might've never realized that part of his background. I guess there was something marginally appropriate about that the Lightning were the last team to play the Whalers in Hartford, meaning Peckham would've been in the building for that game, assuming that the Lightning's television partner(s) - the main one of which, it appears, has remained a constant throughout seeing as how Sun Sports, nee Sunshine Network, was their partner in the link above - aired the game to begin with. 

John Kelly, huh? Looks like even I can figure out some of the dominoes here. Kelly left Tampa to go to Denver when the Nords moved, and Peckham moved from Hartford to fill Kelly's vacancy. Thus creating an opportunity for John Forslund to enter the ranks. 

On a non-Lightning note - I came across the CBC broadcast in Windsor and Western Canada of the final original Winnipeg Jets game. Apparently Brian Heyward did color commentary for CBC once upon a time. Who knew? 

EDIT:

Quote

-Fox will show 11 games this season including: the all-star game,
  2 regular season games, 6 playoff games, and 3 Stanley Cup final games.
  There are no home market blackouts on Fox games.

Not 11 individual games on 11 individual Sundays, but 11 games in regional coverage beginning in April. And while I know this was the 48-game season, I'm assuming based on how every other broadcast schedule that this was based on an 82-game season, so, yeah. This was a national television partner 25 years ago. That package sure feels pathetically weak. 

I really don't like people physically abusing other people.

What I really don't like almost as much is this mentality that has overtaken sports in that if someone makes the worth-strong-punishment mistake of physically abusing other people, that they deserve to be tarred and feathered and kicked out of the sport forever. You don't have to like people who do something disgusting like that but jeezus mother  Christ the idea of anyone ever getting a second chance might as well not even exist anymore. One strike (pun not intended) and that's it.

And I hate that I have to write this paragraph I'm writing right now because I know if I didn't there would be some moron(s) out there who would interpret this as if I don't think domestic abuse is a problem. Which it is! Of course it is. And serial abusers absolutely deserve to be kicked out of their leagues. But, my g-d, we get the pitchforks out and want these people gone when they've committed one mistake and I just think it's absurd, gross overreacting. We can want these people to get duly punished without stripping them of their livelihoods. At least, I would think we could.

On 7/26/2018 at 4:57 PM, chrispw12 said:

I recall a recent stretch where like 4-5 years straight the team that played the Eagles in their first home game that year went on to win the Super Bowl that year.

2009: Saints

2010: Packers

2011: Giants

2012: Ravens

bonus points for the Packers beating the Eagles in the Week 1 season opener and then beating them again in the first round of the playoffs.

On 5/11/2018 at 4:05 PM, jmac11281 said:

My gut would definitely say Tocchet. I feel like he has already killed a man.

you tell me which one is Rick Tocchet and which one is the PTSD-laced veteran from a Seinfeld episode.

 



 



 

2 hours ago, WSU151 said:

 

A couple years ago, when I think the current ESPN website was designed, they didn't have an "NHL" dropdown in the top banner next to the other three leagues.  NHL was included in "Other Sports".  I think a few thousand tweets complaining about it made ESPN realize it was a pretty stupid mistake. 

About two years ago, ESPN changed the look of their scoreboard pages; you can click on MLB or NBA or whatever. 

Two years later, the NHL scores page remains unchanged. Pretty much tells me all I needed to know.