Picture of the Day

as always, courtesy of deadspin.com

Mike & Mike in the ALL FUCKING DAY

I want to start out this post saying I like Mike & Mike. I think Mike Greenberg is one of the best Sports Center anchors and Mike Golic is a charming personality and reasonably good analyst. They complement each other perfectly - which is exactly why ESPN no longer lets them do ANYTHING seperately.

For instance, last week when they appeared on Letterman (no this blog is not a sponsor of The Late Show, even though on today's pace I'll mention it 60 times in the next month) I made a crack about them being attached at the penis. Purely humorous. But after today's cohosting of a 90 minute/6 p.m. Sports Center, I'm not so sure.

This brings me back to this article about how ESPN (among other things) is straying away from news a bit and treating athletes more like celebrities. And I must say tonight's Mike & Mike-center definitely felt more like Entertainment Tonight, except without the lovely Mary Hart.

The show had obvious low points when they had a montage of activities Mike & Mike had done together, only to be topped when the Grambling marching band came on set and had Mike & Mike dance with them. But one of the smaller details that got to me was when Greenberg 'initiated' Golic into anchordom with his first real reader - an actual news story he read about the Steelers that I have no recollection of what it was about because Greenberg made it a bigger deal that Golic was actually reading a story like an anchor than whatever the story was about itself (sorry, had to vent that in one sentence).

Mike & Mike are fantastic on radio (too bad I'm only up before 10 a.m. about 15 times a year), they were cute at the spelling bee, and I'll even take them together on Letterman. But keep them off Sports Center, please, and leave the news as news.

In reference to co-hosting Sports Center, at one point Golic said to Greenberg "the sad thing is you went to school for this."

I couldn't agree with him more.

Picture of the Day

Courtesy of deadspin.com

The Price is..... I can't bring myself to make the easiest joke in the book

Watching the WBZ 4 News at 6 tonight, the guy who sits next to Sara Underwood reported that Drew Carey will announce on his Letterman appearance tonight that he has been offered and will accept the job as host of the Price is Right (before going on to suggest to Bob Lobel that he host the show - which would be 1,000 times more entertaining - then explaining that Lobel would be great hosting "plungo")*.

ANYWAY, I'm not thrilled about Carey filling in Bob Barker's shoes (although I recall past stories of Carey being a womanizer, which would fit in perfectly)**. I must say I was pulling for Dan Patrick - he has the perfect game show personality and has the dry wit and experience of dealing with people and TV... forget that. As I typed that sentence I realized that the absolute PERFECT choice in my mind would have been Kenny Mayne... but he probably wouldn't take the show seriously enough, which is why for the show itself Patrick would have been perfect. It kills me that he was actually offered the job and turned it down - I think he has too much professionalism left in him. I also wonder how many people were offered the job before Carey.

ANYWAY, the main point of this tangent filled post was Drew Carey, and I'm not quite sure what to think of him. But this probably would have been the case for whoever was named host, since NOBODY has hosted besides Barker. Carey definitely increases the comedy factor of the show, but still should be able to run a tight ship. His voice is significantly inferior to Barker's, and it's hard to imagine the type of people who would show up with a shirt professing their love for Drew Carey... I shudder to think what they would look like. I also can't imagine him holding the crazy 1 inch by 3 foot microphone, especially in comparison to a man of his girth. And now that he's rolling in the lap of luxury with the sweetest gig on TV, what if he balloons up to 300 lbs? Why don't we just get Louie Anderson to host in that case. I also can't imagine he'll continue Barker's war against the pet population, so I don't know how he'll sign off. I'm praying it won't be "Cleveland Rocks!". But here's what I CAN imagine Carey doing: Rod Roddy's old job of calling people down. He'd be perfect.

Nonetheless, I must still look forward to a new era of the Price is Right. I'm sick of watching reruns.


* the actual name of the game is, of course, "Plinko"
** I have no evidence to back up this accusation

Quote of the Day

From tonight's 6 p.m Sports Center:

"...And Michael Vick's world seems to be crumbling around him - first he's indicted on federal charges, and now Nike won't release his new shoe. See what else is happening with the Falcons' quarterback next..."

No more living in the 'Now', please

It's summer! Time moves slow, kids roam the street freely, and the blistering heat of getting into a parked car makes you feel pity on the inanimate objects already inside. There's also only one sport being played: baseball.

That's a problem for ESPN, who at this point basically have two shows (Sports Center and Baseball Tonight) covering one topic. So they needed a filler - and what do they create - a 32 person, full bracket, tournament style vote to determine "Who's Now"!

What does it mean to be now? (more or less transcribed from my memory) It's the athelete who's at the top of their sport, but also has juice (not to be confused with "Jews", which I thought I heard Scott Van Pelt say - in which case the winner would have to be Kevin Youkilis). To be "now" you have to be in the public eye, have hella endorsements, and date a lot of bangin' celebrities or other athletes.

A star-studded panel of Stu Scott, Kirk Herbstreit, Keyshawn Johnson, and Michael Wilbon then sit around and try to form cohesive arguments about popularity, a segment that this article by Devin Gordon likens to "chewing Styrofoam" (I highly suggest reading this article since I stole most of my material, and the photo, from it). Then the public votes on who is more nowier and that athlete advances (something that could be done with ZERO television coverage). Not to mention whenever a real athlete goes up against a filler/nobody athlete like a surfer/skier/snowboarder/skater/etc, the only argument the panel makes for the nobody are the girls he's dated.

Here's an accurate/humorous comparison from firejoemorgan.com, via an emailer:

"I have an idea for what to do after "Who's Now?" is over. It's called "what time is it?" A panel of ESPN experts would sit around and argue what time it was. They would never agree because the time would always be changing. People could vote online and it would all depend on when they voted.

At the end you would have some idea of what time it was."

Maybe we should just make Sports Center 45 minutes.