Sports Talk

July 18, 2005 Daniel1 Comment

Good day for sports today.

If you’re a fan of Tiger Woods and the New York Yankees.

Today Tiger won the British Open, upping his major victory total to ten. Today I got thinking about how it’s special that I was old enough to appreciate Tiger when he turned pro, and I’ll be around when hes right there to break Jack Nicklaus’s record of 18 major (professional) victories.

I have to think that Nike, American Express, and Buick executives are popping some Cris right now. Especially if they bought into the Tiger will never be the same hype.

I then thought about how I take a genuine interest in Tiger, which is unusual for me because I often scoff at magazines like People or Us because celebrities are just people, and one celebrity is no more important than an everyday person. This got me to thinking about how I occasionally reflect on the absurdity of the media coverage of OJ Simpson’s murder trial. OJ’s just a guy, right?

Then again, I never saw OJ play in the NFL, except for clips, which aren’t the same. I knew OJ because he covered the NFL for NBC. (I wonder if NBC will bring him back for their new Sunday night package.) But I was never in OJ’s corner. I never rooted for him. But if Tiger were in that position? Yeah, I’d root for him.

In other news, Al Leiter returned from the dead today. Last week the Florida Marlins designated him for assignment along with his 3-7 record and 6.64 ERA this season. Yesterday the Yankees acquired Leiter from the Marlins for a player to be named later and cash roughly equivalent to the remainder of Leiter’s pay for this season. (I am borrowing heavily from ESPN.com’s story on the game, here.) Leiter, a former Yankee, made his first start for the Bombers in 16 years and 82 days, breaking Babe Ruth’s record for time between starts. So what does Leiter do? He pitches 6⅓ innings, allows one run, and strikes out a season high eight batters. Crazy.

Oh, and the Yankees pulled to within a half game of the Red Stinx.

Finally, have you noticed that ESPN.com offers many of its articles in paginated view, but gives you the option to click on a single page view? What is the point of the multiple page format? At first I thought it was so pages will load faster over a slow connection, but loading three pages worth of graphics has got to take longer than loading one page worth. I always click the single page view link. Always. ESPN.com should provide users with a cookie to set preference on this.

And as long as I’m on the subject of article format preference cookies … every web site in the world should look at Wired News and emulate the system it uses for font size selection. The single biggest drawback of a high resolution display is that all the fonts get small, and you either squint or sit closer. With sites like Wired News, you can literally sit back and relax.

Is Anybody Else Tired of Chris Berman?

July 12, 2005 Daniel

The Home Run Derby was on last night. Chris Berman was the master of ceremonies and the host. Joe Morgan was the co-host. Is anybody else tired of Chris Berman? I liked his schtick for the first few years, but it’s almost like he can’t say a normal sentence anymore. It’s all just “BACK BACK BACK!” and “CURTIS MY FAVORITE MARTIN!”

When I turned on the show tonight I actually had one of those, “oh God, not …” moments when I heard Berman’s voice. Can’t they just station him permanently on the Deuce?

So I’m Working On This Enormous ESPN Post

June 4, 2005 Daniel

I’ve been working on a post called “ESPN Hardcore” for days. It’s so long and it’s taking so much thought that I’m thinking about breaking it up.

It’s occurred to me that the Trifecta may be an attempt to address some of the issues I have with ESPN, but I don’t really like the Trifecta. So I’m stuck in the mega-post on the “solution” part. Right now my solution sounds suspiciously like Trifecta, but I dont’ like how that’s turned out, so …

I’m still working on it.

ESPN Gripe

May 6, 2005 Daniel1 Comment

Let me get this straight — as part of the Trifecta, Baseball Tonight gets twenty measley minutes … but Sportscenter gets ninety?

Regarding Sportscenter: First off, they throw in stuff like WNBA draft news to fill ninety minutes. Second, yesterday at 6 PM before the first commercial break, around 6:15, they previewed a story about the new Buffalo Bills quarterback, JP Losman. I wanted to see the story, but for all I knew, it was an hour away!

Regarding BBTN: I want the full hour. I want to see a multiple hit outline of every game that day. Both leagues, top to bottom. I want to see one or more of the following: Harold Reynolds, John Kruk, Peter Gammons, and Tim Kurkjian. And preferably Karl Ravich. Larry Bowa’s okay, but I really don’t want him unless he’s next to Kruk.

By the way — whatever happened to Dave “Soup” Campbell?

Regarding “The Trifecta:” I don’t care about Between the Lines. I don’t want it for twenty minutes, I don’t want it for sixty minutes, and I sure as hell don’t want it cutting into my BBTN. And I don’t even know what the last part of the Trifecta is. NBA 2Nite? Who cares. Give me the Rockies recap. And give me 6-10 Web Gems every night. Five isn’t enough, and everybody knows it.

ESPN Redesign

March 3, 2005 Daniel

It appears that ESPN.com is in the final stages of rolling out a new site design. You heard it here first. Right this second I’m looking at the golf homepage, and it’s actually a little messed up. A story within the golf site doesn’t display the ESPN logo, and some code is visible. I read an article in the hockey section earlier today, and that’s what really tipped me off. For a couple months now, some articles on the site have featured a new horizontal navigation bar that looks a little bit like Apple.com‘s candy/transparent plastic look. You can see that in the NHL article. I say article because it appears that the rollout (and I noticed this in the last version of ESPN.com) affects articles first, before sport homepages or the main ESPN.com homepage itself. However, I expect that the main page will change before the lesser and offseason sports’ pages catch up.

Go Bills

February 17, 2005 Daniel

Yeah, I saw they’re releasing Bledsoe. I’m a little surprised, but not *that* surprised. It’s too bad. He didn’t live up to expectations, but then again, the Patriots didn’t want him. He was definitely an improvement over Rob Johnson. He was a marquee player, and a number one draft pick.

It’s interesting that the story of the current champion New England Patriots started while Bledsoe was still with the team. I read in a writeup on ESPN.com that Bledsoe started all but one game he played in in the NFL. I’m pretty sure that one game was in the playoffs the first year the Pats won the Superbowl — he played the entire second half against the Steelers or something.

So I guess all of Western New York will be looking at this JP Losman guy for the next couple months … Hopefully he’ll be more Drew Bledsoe than Rob Johnson.

Multiple Topics

August 21, 2004 Daniel

So I just looked at some real old Historical Context entries that are sitting at the really old site. I can’t get over how … good … they are. They’re short and there are multiple entries per day. I talk about drinking coffee, waking up early, and studying for exams.

Nowadays my entries seem more like articles. Well, they are more like articles. I plan them at least a few minutes in advance, sometimes a few days in advance. They’re longer. They’re … less personal? Is that possible?

The Olympics are on. I’d say the best web site to read about the Olympics is NBC’s page. It’s so strange … the Internet allows us to take in information as it occurs; Yet I personally avoid pages like ESPN.com and CNN.com because I don’t want to read the results of Olympic events before I see them on TV. During the next Olympics or even the 2012 games, Americans may be allowed to view on-demand clips of event finals before they are shown on NBC. But when you’re at work, you might not want to spend two hours or even five minutes streaming that race to your computer.

This really brings up several interesting conflagrations: Sports as both news and entertainment, and the damned frustration that no matter where on earth the Olympics are held, the time of day is inconvenient for somebody.

First, sports. When it’s news, we want to find out about it immediately. Whether it’s a political election or a major event in a war or the latest on a hurricane, we don’t want to wait to see it on TV; we want the results right now, even if it means that we have to read them.

On the other hand, when it’s entertainment, we want to see it with our own eyes. If your friend tells you how The Village ends, you’ll poke their eyes out. You’ll record tonight’s episode of 24, but again, you don’t want to know the surprise ending in advance. The same applies to books, whatever.

And then you’ve got sports, which are mostly entertainment, but are covered more or less as news. Some people will record their alma mater’s bowl game and refuse to read or hear anything about it until they sit down and watch the tape themselves. But then some people will get on the Internet and watch the box score numbers update live. Here there is a distinction based on the importance of that day’s match. But I think a lot ties into personal preference. Personally, I would rather watch a gamecast of the numbers of the Yankees in the playoffs than record the game and watch it later.

The importance of the event relates directly to the Olympics. Also, the Olympics serve as the ultimate example of why you might want to watch an event later than read about it live. If it’s a baseball game, you might miss the broadcast of the game that is played while you’re at work, but hey — you can catch a game this weekend or next weekend or even Wednesday night. You might not see another World Series game until next year. Or another bowl game. And the Olympics … you won’t see them for another four years.

So Olympics seem to be more like entertainment than other sports, but in a kind of backwards way. Just like you wouldn’t want to read ahead of time that Rachel and Ross got back together, you might not want to read ahead that Paul Hamm won the individual all-around gymnastics gold medal. One is weekly fiction, the other is quadrennial nonfiction. Well, sports, anyway.

Oh … was I going to say something about how someone, somewhere is screwed because the Olympics are held just far enough away from their timezone? I don’t think any additional commentary is needed on that one.

Update

September 21, 2003 Daniel

I haven’t posted in a month. I started a post a few weeks ago, but decided to can it. It was about the RIAA’s amnesty letter … what a bunch of BS. In that killed post I was actually going to drop an f-bomb. It’s just totally ridiculous. Anyway …

The Bills are outstanding so far. Go Buffalo! The Dolphins are actually favored for the Sunday night game. It’s hard to believe, seeing as how the Bills wiped the floor with the Patriots and the Jaguars. But I’ll admit — it’s still too early in the season to tell who’s really good, whether teams have just played against stinkers, etc, etc. But I think the fact that the Bills have put up 30+ in both games says a lot. They also shut out New England and allowed 17 against Jacksonville … and that 17 should be 10 or even 3. Jacksonville’s last touchdown was against Buffalo’s second string defense, and their first touchdown came after Buffalo blew a fake punt (the only real complaint of the season). So … I’m looking for Buffalo to beat Miami 27 – 10.

What else … Summer 2003 is wrapping up and I’m still in Allegany. Dear Mr. Bush … I don’t need a tax cut – I need a job. You know, there might be something to the whole idea that the economy was good when Clinton was President because of things Reagan and Bush enacted, and the economy slowed because of things Clinton enacted … but there is a serious trend over the last century showing that when a Democrat is in office, things tend to be good. Demand side economics? Socio-economic debate, anyone?

Cup … Weather

June 1, 2003 Daniel

I wanted to make a post, but I couldn’t think of anything interesting to write about. Yeah, there’s the Stanley Cup Finals, and I’m rooting for Anaheim, and they won tonight. Boy, Brodeur let a laugher get by him.

But what else? It’s June already. It’s really getting close to summertime. Thursday it was sunny in A-Town so I went out for a drive. I had all the windows down and the sunroof open in the Jetta … it was a beautiful day. Fast forward 48 hours to Saturday: Rain all day; miserable, cold conditions. It seems like the temperature just refuses to get above 71 degrees. Take a look at Weather.com for Allegany, NY (or Jamestown, NY … outrageous) — Rain probably all week with highs between 68 and 71. WTF? I need to get my tan on.

Rome is Burning

May 1, 2003 Daniel

I keep meaning to address this in a post. Jim Rome is coming back to ESPN with Rome is Burning. I assume that The Final Word is no longer on Fox Sports Net. I always liked Romey’s radio show better than The Final Word. I wonder if Rome is Burning will be better, worse, or more of the same? It can’t be any worse than Mohr Sports. And at least ESPN decided not to bring back Beg, Borrow and Deal (which originally was called Beg, Borrow and BS).

I went to Rome’s web site a week or two ago because I wanted to listen to the radio show. You now have to pay to listen. What a bunch of crap! Here in A-Town, none of the (three) local stations carry The Jungle, and AM stations don’t carry all the way from Buffalo or Rochester. I’m pissed. But I am looking forward to watching Rome on ESPN. I wonder if Jim Everett will be Rome’s first guest.

One problem I have is that here in C-Monk, we don’t get cable TV because we live “on the other side of the Indian Reservation.” Until I was in 8th or 9th grade, we only got NBC and CBS. At that point we got Primestar. We didn’t get MTV until I was in 11th grade. A few years ago, DirecTV bought out Primestar, so now we have DirecTV. It’s a blessing, but if you want it in more than one room, you’ve got to pay additional charges each month. So, if we want to watch two programs that are on at the same time, that’s too damn bad. This is a problem because Rome’s new show is on ESPN at 7 PM, and my dad watches … Jeopardy … each night at 7 PM. Pardon the Interruption replays later each night on ESPN2, and I hope that Rome is Burning will also have a later encore. But as of two minutes ago, I couldn’t find a single mention of Jim Rome on ESPN.com. WTF? Anybody know if they’re going to replay it nightly?