ESPN To Advertisers: It's Fine! It's Fine! Everything's Fine!

ESPN opened its annual upfront presentation to advertisers in New York earlier this week with a full brass band performing a New Orleans funeral march. It was tempting to read too much into it—ESPN poking fun with some gallows humor about its subscriber losses and recent layoffs of 100 employees—but it revealed itself…

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ESPN Cleveland Radio Personality Fired After Saying Browns Players Were On Drugs

Yesterday, ESPN 850 Cleveland contributor Sabrina Parr went on daily radio program The Really Big Show and delivered a blistering take about how the Browns’ newly drafted safety Jabrill Peppers was going to fail because he was “on the lean and the molly.” Parr was challenged on her claims by her co-hosts, but didn’t…

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I Can't Decide What To Get David Brooks For His Wedding

I mean obviously the first and most important point is: Mazel tov! After a few years of harrowing personal crisis for America’s Foremost Moral Decay Diagnostician, our boy David Brooks has at last found love, and gotten married (to his 23-years-younger former research assistant)!

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NFL Network Talent In Open Rebellion Against NFL

NFL Network draft coverage hosts have had it with the NFL turning this weekend into a circus, with Mike Mayock only half-jokingly threatening to walk off the set due to repeated orangutan coverage and Rich Eisen later vetoing the Oakland Raiders’ “pretty harsh” decision to make all their selections from Las Vegas,…

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Local Columnist Whining About Blazers' Culture Gets Roasted By GM Neil Olshey

The Portland Trail Blazers were swept by the Golden State Warriors last night, 128-105, although practically speaking, Game 4 was over after the first five minutes. Though the Blazers got rocked, they lost to the most dominant team in basketball. It was a bit of a down season, but Damian Lillard and C.J. McCollum are…

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This Is The Story About Robert Kraft's Casino Holdings That Rupert Murdoch's Paper Never Ran

It goes without saying (hey there, Las Vegas Raiders!) that the NFL’s gambling policy is a hypocritical mess. But now that I no longer work for Rupert Murdoch, I can plainly state that every word out of Roger Goodell’s mouth about legalized sports betting for the past 20 months has been nothing but lip service.

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Get A Load Of The Washington Post Toting Water For Dan Snyder's Upcoming Stadium Scam

Nothing in this fawning Washington Post profile of Bruce Allen, team president of D.C.’s NFL franchise, would seem so much as a hair out of place in a glossy gameday program handed out by team employees inside the home stadium. To the extent it contains a thesis more complex than Bruce Allen is good, its thesis is

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Boston Sports Radio Host Gets Into Heated Argument With Coworker Who Used Paternity Leave

Michael Felger, a radio host at Boston’s 98.5 The Sports Hub, has an issue with paternity leave. He’s griped about it before with Celtics player Al Horford and this week with Red Sox pitcher Eduardo Rodriguez. Felger recently went after his coworker, CBS Boston sportswriter Michael Hurley, whose wife had a kid. Hurley…

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We Listened To One Of The "Lost" Mike And The Mad Dog 9/11 Tapes

On Sept. 12, 2001, Mike and the Mad Dog host Mike Francesa drove to his local gas station to fill up the tank before coming into work. The station was owned by an “Arabic family,” and he said he could tell that the man working was understandably nervous given the previous day’s events, so he “gave him a slap on the…

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World's Worst Columnist Under Police Investigation For Racist Article

English tabloids are honestly the worst purveyors of media in the world. They make the New York Post look like a goddamn academic journal by comparison, and this is coming from someone who respects and works for a self-described tabloid. Of all the English tabs, though, The Sun is the absolute worst. Therefore Kelvin…

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ESPN Columnist Accuses Fellow ESPNer Bill Barnwell Of Secretly Consulting For The Browns

Tony Grossi—a former longtime Cleveland Browns beat writer and current talking head on ESPN 850 WKNR and contributor to ESPN Cleveland—wrote this morning on ESPN.com about the Browns’ upcoming decision with the number one draft pick, and how “analytics complicate it.” Minutes before the publication of this post the…

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CNN War Propagandist Promotes Syrian Attacks: "This Is Not Like Kentucky Basketball"

Resident CNN war flack James “Spider” Marks excitedly promised an extended war against Syria, as the visibly engorged retired U.S. Army major general contrasted tonight’s use of more than 50 Tomahawk missiles against John Calipari’s Kentucky basketball program, stating that “this is not […] one and done.”

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The Ringer's Mike Lombardi Claims Seven Insights Into Good Quarterbacks, Actually Has None

Michael Lombardi is a former football executive with the San Francisco 49ers, Philadelphia Eagles, Oakland Raiders, and Cleveland Browns; now he writes a football column for his good buddy Bill Simmons’s website The Ringer. If you would like to know why he failed in the former career, look no further than the article…

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Columbus, Ohio Viewers Miss Entire Kentucky-UNC Finish Due To Tornado Warning

Columbus, Ohio CBS station WBNS went black for six minutes as its weather staff delivered ominous news of a tornado warning in Franklin and Madison counties. Those six minutes just happened to encompass the entirety of Malik Monk’s three to tie it up, and Luke Maye’s eventual winner for UNC (as well as the time out…

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Charles Barkley Offers To Kill Skip Bayless On The Dan Patrick Show If He Becomes Terminally Ill

Former Space Jam actor Charles Barkley hung out with Dan Patrick on the Dan Patrick Show this afternoon where he talked about Michael Jordan’s wild gambling habit and attempted to puncture the narrative that Michigan went on their NCAA tournament run because of the plane crash they were in.

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Fake Strongmen Fool Morning News Shows, Create Deeply Stupid TV

Local morning news shows have a lot of air to fill each day. So when a pair claiming to be an inspirational strongman duo blasted out a press release—citing a nonexistent tour and an America’s Got Talent appearance, and offering no video or documentation—they were immediately booked by seven different shows across the…

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Sports Columnist Invents Unfortunate Acronym

Chicago Tribune sports columnist Bernie Lincicome has been at this for a long time, and after so many years spent writing takes, he probably has trouble coming up with ways to keep his column fresh. In his latest piece about new Bears quarterback Mike Glennon, Lincicome tried to put together a cute acronym and came up…

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Can You Guess What Jay Williams Was Trying To Draw Here?

ESPN and ESPN 2 featured wall-to-wall NCAA tournament coverage yesterday, and when you’ve got that much time to fill, the programming can get a little weird. For example, early this morning, various ESPN personalities played a game of March Madness-themed Pictionary. As you can see in the GIF above, Jay Williams…

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What Does This Profile Make You Think About Jim Nantz?

Last year, minutes after Villanova defeated North Carolina on a buzzer-beater to win the NCAA title, CBS play-by-play man Jim Nantz took the tie from around his neck and gave it to Villanova senior Ryan Arcidiacono. At the time we called Nantz—who explained that it was a tradition to honor his father, who taught him…

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