I’m Guessing This Was a Mistake

Honestly, there are few things more jarring than a good akward silence – but this clip simply seperates the men from the boys.

Well, it seems as if the World Wide Leader, ESPN, wasn’t exactly happy with his comments.  They decided to promptly suspend him for one game.

Another shining example of what not to say during a broadcast.  My favorite part is how he started tailing off at the end of his comment, almost as if he was finally thinking, “Wait, maybe I shouldn’t be saying this…”.

Unreal.

Monday Night Snark

Tony Kornheiser.  You might have heard of him – stud sports columnist for The Washington Post, co-star of the hit TV show Pardon the Interruption and, starting this year, a new member of the Monday Night Football broadcasting trio of Joe “I Changed the Pronunciation of my Last Name to” Theismann, Mike Tirico and Kornheiser himself.

Thus far, Kornheiser, ESPN and the broadcasting trio as a whole have come under fire from the sports community for a few football broadcasting cardinal offenses.

ESPN has opted to shift the focus of the broadcast team from the X’s and O’s and providing insightful analysis on the game at hand to a more entertainment centered program.  It’s not just a football game – it’s sports entertainment.  Wait – isn’t this what professional wrestling is?

What’s interesting is that, on the eve of the first Monday of the new football season, ESPN had a Monday Night Doubleheader, as they advertised it – two different games with two different broadcast teams.  The “A Squad” of Kornheiser, Theismann and Tirico covered one game, with the “B Squad” of former NFL coach Dick Vermeil and former NFL Quarterback and ESPN employee Ron Jaworski providing the color commentary with Brad Nessler handling the play by play.

The A Squad focused on the entertainment angle, trying to conjure up a laugh here and there yukking it up about nothing in particular, while the B Squad focused on the X’s and O’s, the crux of the game itself, and told you not only how things appeared to them on the field, but why they happened.

Guess what?  The B Squad was infinitely more enjoyable, interesting and bearable than the recycled garbage we here from Theismann and Co. every week.  Revelation of the week – when you focus on the game itself in a broadcast, good things happen!

Kornheiser, himself, has come under fire from the circle of sports journalists for being tentative and tight-lipped – something he readily admits in the link above.  Something has been lost in the transition to Monday Night – whether it’s because he’s still getting his feet wet or for some other reason, I don’t know, but this broadcasting team, Kornheiser, hype and all, is floundering big time.

Perhaps it’s time ESPN sent Squad A on an all expenses paid vacation to the film room, meanwhile promoting Vermeil and Crew to talk about what really matters – the game.

Sports Bloggers and You!

Deadspin is an internet hub buzzing with blogging activity. Deadspin is primarily the Kingpin of all sports blogs – it gets the best stories and has the most exclusives. Hilarious, socially pertinent (at least in the sports world), and, according to Sports Illustrated, “the talk of locker rooms”, Deadspin’s services to the reader doesn’t stop there – they also link to many pertinent individual sports blog links of the day, in effect, seperating the junk from the blogging treasures for the reader’s to then discover.

Another up and coming sports blog site is the newly renovated AOL Sports. In developing their new site, AOL placed an extreme importance upon blogging and thus set out to bring in the absolute cream of the crop – talent wise – to write blogs for the site. Jayson Whitlock, formally of ESPN and a longtime columnist for the Kansas City Star, is an example of the talent being brought in for AOL Sports.

From a design standpoint, these sites have much in common – they’re clean, not overly gaudy, and are easy to read and navigate. This, I believe, is a decidedly proper way to go about developing a sports blog – the information has to be readily available, easy to find and, most importantly, pertinent. After all, there is a lot of competition out there.