This Televising Drafts Stuff Has Gone A Bit Too Far.

Methinks ESPN has gone a bit off the deep end and figured one draft is as good as another when it comes to deciding whether to televise them or not. Basking in the afterglow of the usual bonanza in NFL Draft ratings, where you had me and every other NFL obsessive watching a six-hour first round a week ago, now the WWL has decided that the Major League Baseball entry draft will make good television for the Deuce.

Let's quickly go over why this won't work AT ALL:

1) 50 rounds. 'Nuff said. It's not like ESPN2 will show all of them, but still...
2) Sometimes, there are #1 picks that wind up flopping in ways we don't get to track. Such is the nature of baseball. Players that look great in high school and college get trapped in the minors. Part of the innate appeal of the NBA and NFL drafts is that you will see the players in the League or Association right away (in the NFL's case, the majority of the first day players fall under this rubric.) So, if someone's a bust in those leagues, we get to see it on a bigger scale. That kind of dynamic is part of the appeal of the draft.
3) Also, a player can be drafted, and opt to go to college, I believe, delaying the gratification further.
4) Drafts for sports with established farm systems aren't as thrilling or interesting to watch. The stakes are lower by nature. Teams aren't filling immediate holes -- the fun of the NBA and NFL drafts lies in the fact that teams have holes they need to fill NOW. Baseball and hockey drafts are about developing talent to fill holes down the line, developing a team strategy.
5) You really want to watch a first round full of Bud Selig?

None of that really makes for the analyst overkill, instant response, and psycho fan attendance that defines the NFL and NBA drafts. Of course, putting MLB's draft on ESPN2 is kind of a tacit admission in itself.

Ms. Schreiber And The Schrutebag.

As promised, new ESPN ombudswoman Le Anne Schreiber has written a missive regarding the disruption of The Big Lead by Schrutebag last week, and does not mince words:

Some of the politer terms my correspondents used to describe Cowherd's behavior were immature, irresponsible, arrogant, malicious, destructive and dumb. I agree. The official response from ESPN's communication department was: "Our airwaves should not be used for this purpose. We apologize." It is the kind of bland public statement that does little to assuage the anger and distrust of ESPN's audience over an episode like this.

I'm impressed.

"We talked to Colin Cowherd, and we talked to all our radio talent, making it clear that you cannot do this," [ESPN Radio President Traug] Keller said Friday. "Our airwaves are a trust, and not to be used to hurt anyone's business. Such attacks are off limits. Zero tolerance. I can't say it any stronger." Keller said that he had not formulated a policy about such attacks on Internet sites until now because he had never imagined the possibility of them...Now that ESPN Radio has such a policy, I presume such attacks will be treated as an offense that warrants suspension. In determining penalties for his airwave players, perhaps Keller should exchange notes with NBA commissioner David Stern and NFL commissioner Roger Goodell.

I'll take that at face value, for now. You can't necessarily predict your hosts will do something that stupid or petty. However, the real test is if Schrutebag or someone else does it again -- will that host actually be suspended or fired? I don't have any reason to take ESPN at its word unless something like that actually happens. Essentially, all we can take from this is the mild comfort that the head thinks this was an unacceptable act, but if it were that bad to them (and it was), why not a suspension right off the bat? It shouldn't require another DoS attack to see if the policy works.

I'm also concerned that Schreiber didn't address whether Schrutebag's actions were potentially illegal (an anonymous commenter left this link on federal law about the matter); maybe a quick call to legal would be nice. However, it's at least an acknowledgment that this was completely unacceptable. I can deal with that -- for now. Let's hope we never have to see what the new "zero tolerance" policy on this would actually entail.

(Aside: Schreiber's first column said she would only pop in once a month after her initial few columns, much like her predecessor -- I think this is a bad idea, actually. A weekly or every-other-week reader's rep column would be better.)

UPDATE: It's worth it to link to a couple lists of those of you who posted entries about Schrutebag's behavior, and I bet a bunch of you probably wrote Ms. Schreiber. Good on you if you did that.

Theismann Takes Another Sack.

Via Off Wing Opinion, I find a Washington Post tidbit that seems to confirm reports at Deadspin, the Fanhouse, and Awful Announcing that Joe Theismann will be gone from Monday Night Football next year (the original rumor came from Pro Football Talk).

So much of last year's suck surrounding Monday Night Football isn't necessarily due to Theismann, as I'm sure having unrelated celebrity guests in the booth wasn't his bright idea; he just went along to get along and earn a paycheck. However, it didn't help that he and Tony Kornheiser (who ought to be next) had absolutely no chemistry as far as broadcasting went, and was less likely to talk about or explain what was actually going on with the game than a semi-irrelevant tangent.

This won't fix much, though -- it's treating the symptoms rather than curing the disease.

ESPN's management of Monday Night Football so far has been a joke -- mostly due to the apparent premise by producers and the network that it ought to be an entertainment spectacle first and a football game second. If you're trying to attract viewers to a broadcast channel, I get that a bit more. But this is ESPN, specialized and oriented towards the sports-addicted -- if anything, this would have demanded more specialization, more analysis, not less, and the proof provided in the first week, where Brad Nessler, Dick Vermeil, and Ron Jaworski (Theismann's rumored replacement) outdid the so-called A team was enough validation.

why is this moron on my TV?

ESPN must have all its regular NFL analysts on vacation. There's really no reason to give Paul Maguire a half hour on NFL Live to pontificate and wax stupid while Suzy Kolber and Michael Smith watch on helplessly unless you are desperate for people.

a portrait of the sideline reporter as a young dazzler.

The Big Lead is disseminating the video of Erin Andrews in her U of Florida Dazzler days that the ESPN crew snuck in on her during the Florida-UK game:



I should note that I'm still getting hits from the ombudsman letter and passing along Erin's greatest hits montage.

sisters are doin' it for themselves.

So, I'm watching Wizards-Hornets, just to see if I luck into some of the awesome that is Gilbert Arenas (I'll probably write my man-crush post on him at some point; this isn't his best game, but I'm totally buying into any Wizards game being an automatic view because of him), and I'm kind of fading in and out, but I'm wondering whom the lady is doing color. I catch a first name and run the Google, because the WWL has been doing some serious affirmative action when it comes to bringing in ladies in the studio and on the sidelines for men's sports lately, which is kind of weird to observe. When it comes to men's sports, women are often consigned to the bin of sideline reporters, not game or studio analysts.

Kara Lawson did color for the game and held it down even though Gilbert had a day best described as less than Zero. He wound up with 20+ points instead of 30+ in the loss, and he's not taking his usual quota of shots or dominating (I blame the ugly-ass alternate unis; plus, the Wizards just didn't stop Desmond Mason.) Googling Ms. Lawson only listed her as a sideline type; I presume this was her first night on color. ESPN's been raiding the WNBA ranks for ladies to analyze men's sports lately. I'm seeing a lot of Swin Cash on ESPNews and occasionally on Shootaround and Fast Break, plus Stacy Dales is doing analysis in studio and sideline for men and women's college ball. (Obligatory nod to Pam Ward for calling college football on the Deuce, but if someone like, say, Erin Andrews wants to call games eventually, she should take Pam as a "how not to call it" primer.)

Maybe others have gotten to it before, but this is a quiet story to me, the kind that doesn't really get a lot of attention but deserves more -- there are plenty of female beat reporters throughout sports, and we crack jokes about the comeliness of sideline reporters such as Ms. Andrews, but this is a very subtle paradigm shift for sports analysis going on here. Call it "breaking the glass booth," to pervert a phrase.

Despite my love for the Marv Albert/Charles Barkley experiment that went on last week, I'm now kind of curious to see what Cheryl Miller would do alongside Marv -- your move, TNT.

(Extra tangential announcing bit: Tirico, Jon Barry, and Bill Walton are on Rockets-Nuggets, which means fun watching AI, and I have to go on record with my enjoyment of Bill Walton, especially for the anecdote that he got from Mutombo about George Karl checking out of a Denver hotel back in '93 when his Sonics went 2-0 on the Nuggs in the first round of the playoffs:

"Dikembe said, 'As soon as we knew George had checked out of the hotel, we knew he had checked out of the series.'" Priceless stuff.

1/13, 1:15 pm - Welcome to those of you coming from Deadspin.)

a letter to the ombudsman.

Mr. Solomon,

As a regular viewer of the WWL, I also happen to be a fan of yours, particularly for the way you smacked down everyone's least favorite crackhead alum of the U. for his Tony Romo comments (even though there was so much more you could have critiqued) and for your unheeded call for calm when everyone got revved up over T.O.'s faux-suicide attempt. However, I'm writing today to address a problem with ESPN's coverage that I believe desperately needs to be brought to your attention.

While watching last night's Ohio State-Wisconsin college basketball game, many of us noticed the unwillingness or inability to put one of the network's best assets on display as often as possible. When sideline reporter Erin Andrews was called upon to do one of her pieces, more often than not, viewers were treated simply to voice-overs over the game action, save one point in the second half where the camera was on her the whole time and when she interviewed OSU alum Michael Redd. I don't need to tell you that this is a highly questionable decision by the producers of the telecast.

This ought to be brought to the attention of the higher-ups at ESPN; Andrews is, as I mentioned before, one of the network's best and brightest, and she ought to be rewarded with the proper face time. We have to take the pleasure we can get out of broadcasts of college sports, especially when it seems ESPN would prefer to dilute Ms. Andrews' work by saddling her with a crew that includes either Dick Vitale or Paul Maguire.

Sincerely,

- C.

(P.S. Welcome Deadspinners and Mondesi's House guests; have a look around the place, won't you?)