Category Archives: Baseball

Why replay wouldn’t have fixed the controversial foul ball call in Thursday’s Phillies-Marlins game

August 8, 2010 – 11:36 pm

Bob Davidson’s controversial call in Thursday’s Phillies-Marlins game, depriving the Marlins of the potential game-winning run, has sparked yet another round of calls for baseball to adopt instant replay, even among Phillies fans… except there was nothing replay could have done in this instance, and not just because there wasn’t a camera in proper position to make absolutely certain that, just because the ball bounced fair before the bag and fair after the bag, that necessarily meant it was fair as it crossed the bag.

Once the ball is called foul, the play is dead. The fielders stop going for the ball, the runners stop running the bases, and you can’t make assumptions about what might or might not have happened had the play continued. Yes, the runner on second probably would have scored, but how can you say that for certain? What if there would have been a play at the plate? Every sport with replay has this same problem (think when a completed pass is called incomplete); at best, you could do with tennis does and say the pitch doesn’t count, taking away a strike if there weren’t two strikes already.

There was a similar play in last year’s postseason where a fair ball (more indisputably fair than in this instance) was called foul. But in that case, the ball bounced into the stands for a ground-rule double, making it fairly straightforward to determine the outcome of the play – similar to how baseball currently determines whether a home run was fair or foul. You can’t use replay in circumstances where the actions of the players would determine the outcome of the play if it hadn’t ended.
We all want baseball to get with the 21st century and adopt replay, but let’s not get too carried away.

By Morgan Wick | Comments (0)

Baseball’s image problem

July 25, 2009 – 1:07 am

Maury Brown is one of the most trusted online sports journalists – it seems demeaning to call him a “blogger” – for his Business of Sports Network, especially The Biz of Baseball. I felt moved to comment on a recent post examining 10 problems baseball faces in marketing its stars, mostly ones out of its control. I wouldn’t ordinarily put it here, but I apparently ran up against a mysterious, unadvertised character limit, so here it is. This reads significantly different from a normal blog post because it originated as a comment, but nonetheless touches on residual racism, Doonesbury, ESPN (and the problems thereof), Jackie Robinson, Ball Four, Black Power, the Simpson trial, Barack Obama (race comes up a lot here doesn’t it?), and just about everything surrounding the game of baseball today, big and small. I mostly wanted to get up my responses to Brown’s second, third, and eighth concerns.

Now You See Me, Now You Don’t –. One of baseball’s biggest problems isn’t about efforts by the league or the MLBPA to market its players, but rather how the players move on and off camera. Consider: with the exception of pitchers, players are shown during their at bats (3-6 times a game), on the base paths, or when a ball is hit to them on defense. There is no sustained face time. Whereas in the NBA, a player may be on the court for most, if not all of an entire game, baseball’s stars are only seen in a limited fashion. Baseball’s dynamic makes showing star players on camera continually nearly impossible.

The whole “athlete face time” argument makes less sense in a post-ESPN era. Also, this is a problem that has always affected baseball and always will affect baseball, and it didn’t seem to negatively affect the players of the past.

Lack of College Baseball Coverage – One of the biggest reasons the NFL and NBA does well in marketing their players has to do with young talent being covered on television while being part of NCAA Football or Basketball. For example, ESPN alone will show 300 college football games across their various platforms during the 2009 football season. Given that the transition from college to the pros for NFL and NBA players is a far shorter trek than most college baseball players that often times find themselves in development systems before ever making it to the majors, fans have been following many college football and basketball players for years before they enter the NFL or NBA. When you throw in that college baseball has only the College World Series as its national television platform, it’s difficult for MLB to market its young stars on the level that the NFL and NBA do

This has been a problem since cable TV and ESPN caught on, providing more college football and basketball coverage than ever before (that by far the biggest basketball stars to that point in the 80s were the two star players in the famous 1979 game that started the rise of March Madness is probably no accident), and didn’t seem to hurt the 90s stars too much, but it may be changing. The ratings for the College World Series Finals were comparable to the Women’s Final Four, suggesting ESPN should give it coverage comparable to women’s basketball. Sure enough, the SEC conference championships will be shown on an ESPN network as part of the new SEC-ESPN agreement. Still, a lot of people jump straight from high school to the pros, and unlike in basketball, always have and in very large numbers, so more college baseball alone isn’t enough.

But you point to what may be the real answer, which is that the minor leagues (especially AAA) really need (or at least deserve) a LOT more coverage. Basically, the extent of minor league coverage right now is the World-vs.-US game, the AAA all-star game, and the IL-vs.-PCL championship (not, to my knowledge, the individual league championships), all on ESPN2. Minor league teams tend to be in smaller markets but the smallest AAA market (Colorado Springs) is still top 100; the bigger problem is that players jump to MLB the instant they get good enough. College football and basketball have the fandom aspect as well as the “before they were pros” aspect, which the two problems I just mentioned make difficult; the best approach may be for major league teams’ fans to also become fans of their AAA teams, which is made easier by the close proximity many of those teams have to their parent teams.

I think MLB Network is really dropping the ball on this one; the metaphor with the former NFL Europe and NBDL isn’t really appropriate because of the different role each plays, but even NFL Network and NBATV respectively either had or have shown regular games from each, which MLBN isn’t doing to my knowledge, and minor league baseball has a lot more tradition and a lot more central role!

Wall St. Ad Execs Yet to Tap Minority Stars – Baseball can rightfully say that it has the most player diversity starting in games than any other US pro sports league. Some of MLB’s biggest stars are Latinos or from the Far East. The problem is television ad execs have yet to see the full potential of such players. A good example is Albert Pujols, someone that should translate well to the camera, but has not been used as a pitchman. Others include Ichiro Suzuki and David Ortiz. In terms of Far East athletes, maybe ad execs figure Yao Ming is enough. As for the Latin players, it seems a vast demographic isn’t being fully tapped.

THIS IS COMPLETELY INDEFENSIBLE. Michael Jordan and Tiger Woods (I don’t count Ali because he probably became too controversial after changing his name and especially dodging the draft) have shown black athletes can have crossover appeal to whites; I see no reason Latinos and Asians should be any different. Asians are especially mystifying to me since they’re the richest non-white racial group.

What it’ll probably take to change that is the Latino or Asian Jordan or Woods; on the Asian front, both Ichiro and Yao have suffered by being on mediocre teams instead of even contending for championships (Ichiro in 2001 aside, but even he didn’t make the World Series). Pujols SHOULD be the Latino Jordan or Woods; he’s dominant enough (and I think if he wins the Triple Crown and businesses don’t leap all over him I’m just going to throw up my hands and give up) and has the rings (well, ring… well, he’s won the NL, I forget how far he’s really gotten). It’s even less defensible because Oscar De La Hoya might actually be close to, if not a Latino Jordan or Woods, at least a Latino Shaq or Brady. Brown’s fourth point is that baseball hasn’t had a transcendent player like Jordan or Woods in this decade, with only Derek Jeter coming close and Barry Bonds derailed by steroids allegations. I’d hate to think the only reason Pujols isn’t that player is latent racism. Fortunately, it probably isn’t. See below.

“Tradition” vs “Flash” – From a younger demo perspective, baseball has lost its luster, in large part due to the ascension of Michael Jordan. Baseball is touted as having a “long and prestigious tradition” which doesn’t exactly compete well with the high-energy tempo of the NBA, NFL, and NHL. As one scribe wrote, baseball is a game of calm, punctuated by extreme action. That sounds great… if you’re older. In an era where kids are looking for ultra-stimulus, baseball’s pace is lost in translation. When 18-34s have the lion’s share of discretionary income, baseball isn’t the first stop for some corporations with a young demo appeal when looking to advertise.

Complaints about the game’s pace are as old as the game itself; in fact there’s an old Doonesbury from the 70s that makes that joke. This always ends up coming around in circles (“Well, football has short bursts of action too!”). I personally don’t find balls and strikes boring, in part because you never know when it’s going to result in action (and until I wrote this comment I hadn’t thought to look here for the source of baseball’s-too-slow complaints and found them completely mystifying). There is the new aspect here that today’s youth has lower attention spans than ever before. (By the way, I’m only 21.)

Waiting For Barkley – In terms of studio shows surrounding games, baseball lags woefully behind most of its Big-4 counterparts. There is no “Howie” or “Terry”, or “Barkley”. FOX has dropped their pre-game show, which leaves TBS. And while Cal Ripken and Dennis Eckersley have made a go of it, they haven’t been able to exude the personality that other pre and post-game shows have had to offer. The solution, or at least an attempt at it? TBS has brought in David Wells.

This is the problem with ESPN in a nutshell. Sunday Night Baseball should feel really special each week and it really doesn’t. ESPN should really think about getting a special crew for Baseball Tonight on Sunday nights and try and get some splash and dash there. (John Kruk? Please.) If it’s needed to increase their motivation, maybe they should give up either the Monday/Wednesday games, or the Sunday night games, to another network like TBS. If the Sunday night games are the only games its network has, like with TNT and the NBA, they’ll feel more special and there will be more motivation to put on an “Inside the NBA” type show.

TBS’ Sunday Afternoon games are a joke and INCREDIBLY buried against NASCAR and golf, not to mention their own inconsistency of start time (really bad on the West Coast), picking behind ESPN, and TBS’ lack of punctuality in announcing the games during the season. (I’ve gotten the impression TBS doesn’t announce the game for flex weeks until the FRIDAY BEFORE IT’S PLAYED!) Don’t look to that package to be a savior. As far as most baseball fans are concerned, it’s Fox and ESPN all season and TBS comes out of nowhere during the postseason. When the contract comes up for renewal, either TBS will steal a package from ESPN or ESPN will take the postseason back from TBS.

Just Let Me Know When It Begins and Ends – Baseball finally got with the picture and realized that by putting World Series games on late Eastern Time, they were potentially losing a generation of baseball fans as kids hit the sack long before games would end. But, baseball’s a game that ends when it ends, as opposed to being controlled by the clock, that makes it difficult for fringe fans to get into when there are competing interests in hundreds of channels to switch to, and video games to play. Another issue that baseball faces – and only NASCAR seems to butt up against – has to due with delay of game due to weather. When a game starts, nothing kills your captive fan base off like a rain delay. Worse are games that are scheduled and postponed due to rain or snow. With families becoming intensely schedule driven, they want to know when the game is on, and when it ends.

How many games that don’t go extra innings or are rain delayed last more than four hours? Again, this is a problem that always has and always will afflict baseball. While there are more demands on people’s time than ever before, and extra-inning baseball games go longer than OT games in any sport save hockey, in order for this to be a marketability issue it would have to show up in the ratings.

MLB’s Image Problem – There’s the obvious (PED culture) and, the not so obvious (chewing tobacco) when it comes to baseball’s image. Would Manny Ramirez be more marketable if he hadn’t been suspended for PEDs? There’s a case to be made there. And, while it’s legal, few, if any, find a close up of a player with a mouthful of chaw spitting a stream of black tobacco drool appealing. Think Gillette would keep a player like Jeter in their ad campaigns if he chewed?

This is probably the big one. No one thinks Pujols is using steroids… but then, we said the same thing about Alex Rodriguez. MLB’s only hope here is for other leagues (especially the NFL) to be similarly chastized for PEDs, but it’s a bigger issue in purity-obsessed baseball than in musclebound, depraved, violence-driven football. The alternative? Well, the younger generation of fans (such as they are) don’t seem as concerned about the whole thing… I doubt most people even notice baseball players chewing, and it’s dumb enough that if baseball players basically refuse to stop chewing it points to deeper baseball-cultural issues that Brown doesn’t go into here dating back to Ball Four.

Brown’s ninth point is the idea that baseball is for old fogies, and I didn’t have much to say about it. His last point ties back into the point of the white eyes in the halls of big business. Remember when I said that it’s now proven that blacks can appeal to whites? This is why baseball isn’t benefiting from that.

The Declining Interest By African-Americans in Baseball – Whether it has been the rise in the NBA’s popularity due to the Jordan factor; the continued diversity growth in international players; the fact that on average, players can jump to the professional ranks faster in the NBA and NFL, or other factors, there has been a steady decline in the number of African-Americans playing baseball. MLB, late in proactively dealing with this issue, has been pushing the Reviving Baseball in Inner Cities (RBI) program, and working to highlight players such as Curtis Granderson in the latest This is Beyond Baseball ad campaign. But, the damage has been done, and now baseball is digging out from the hole.

Jackie Robinson was a big deal because baseball essentially ruled the sports landscape. But then the 60s and 70s happened, and by the 90s I don’t know if black interest in basketball was caused by Jordan or created him – the biggest white superstar after Larry Bird and Bill Laimbeer, who won all their titles before Jordan’s first, was John Stockton. (Certainly I don’t see many blacks jumping to golf because of Tiger Woods. The stench of whiteness and richness still follows it.) Basketball has really colonized urban playgrounds, especially since it takes up less space than a baseball field.

And then you see what’s happening in the South where great young black athletes in more rural areas are seeing college football as a better test of their skills than baseball, probably thanks in part to the tradition of the SEC compared to a lack of real stars (of any kind) created by the Braves during their TBS/AL East-winning heyday. Most black stars, like Ken Griffey Jr., Barry Bonds, or Ryan Howard, tend to go to northern, big markets (it’s too bad Griffey was injury-plagued in Cincinatti; Seattle and Pittsburgh may not be that big, or exactly surrounded by urbanity, but they’re far from the South where the rural blacks are). Even one of the Big Three markets with their large black populations wouldn’t drag rural blacks away from football. (Another reason blacks aren’t being drawn to golf after Tiger Woods: golf courses are best suited to rural areas, and the skill set of southern, rural blacks tends to involve speed and athleticism, while the only physical skill golf uses is strength.)

I suspect – though I doubt it’s really been studied or floated that much by others – that during the Black Power movement baseball became associated with The Man, especially as the other major human sport of the time, boxing, saw a black icon (and a Black Power icon to boot) emerge in Muhammad Ali that insulated it from being overly associated with whites. (Football was similarly insulated by stars like Jim Brown and OJ Simpson. Basketball wasn’t yet a major sport but it was already being colonized by blacks like Bill Russell, which I suspect led to it being claimed by, for lack of a better word, blackkind as their own. Baseball still had some black stars, but most of them were old fogies with Negro League experience, which probably netted them the Uncle Tom label; Frank Robinson is the only black star of the 70s that comes to mind. Spillover popularity from Ali gave rise to such dominant black fighters as Tyson and Holyfield during the 80s and 90s but boxing retreated to PPV, split into gazillions of different organizations, saw the dominant Tyson go batshit insane, and started dying a slow, painful death.)

Another problem might be that blacks don’t just blindly support their own the way whites got to thinking during the Simpson trial, and decided to distance themselves from the way Bonds handled the steroid allegations. (I’m sure some, perhaps many if not most, supported him, but was it really inspiring new people to enter that quagmire?) Which really brings us back to the whole steroids issue.

In my view, baseball’s problems have less to do with the structural issues that haven’t really gone away, and MUCH more to do with the steroids scandal. It may be a problem mostly with the old fogies, but it’s the old fogies in charge on Madison Avenue. If they won’t get with the program, and the image problem caused by PEDs is as hard to shake with them as it appears, baseball’s only hope for becoming “hip” again may lie in Barack Obama’s White Sox fandom… pray for a White Sox-Cardinals World Series?

By Morgan Wick | Also posted in Classic Da Blog | Comments (0)

Sorry, @RaysIndex, but you’re no better than the other roids speculators.

June 11, 2009 – 3:39 pm

I’m sorry, Mr. “Professor”. But you’re reading way too much into Jon Heyman’s 2007 “does Sosa belong in the Hall?” piece if you think it makes him a hypocrite now for calling out people who baselessly speculate whether this guy or that guy is using steroids.

You have to keep in mind that Heyman did not start the speculation that Sammy Sosa had used steroids, especially after his disasterous testimony on Capitol Hill. In fact, I think his piece could be read as a defense of Sosa against people who want to keep him out of the Hall against baseless speculation.

Steroids speculation is making everyone crazy. But one of them is not Jon Heyman. It’s the nameless proprietor of the Rays Index.

If the blogosphere is going to be the mainstream media of the future, it needs to be able to look critically on itself and catch itself when it errs.

By Morgan Wick | Also posted in Classic Da Blog, Internet adventures | Comments (0)

Sports Graphics Roundup Part II: Baseball and Other Things

April 17, 2009 – 1:58 pm

We’re on Day 12 of the ESPN BottomLine Watch, and last I checked the BottomLine was still in its old ways. I wonder if anyone has a specific time that the BottomLine reverted to its old ways last Monday the 6th – I’d like to keep a running count.

One reason I didn’t like being cut short on my last post was that I still had one graphical matter yet to be taken care of, and it related to ESPN, which has introduced a new NASCAR banner. I had thought the inspiration was Fox’s NASCAR banner, but now I suspect the real inspiration was an attempt to get a headstart on making the new banner take after MNF.

The main problem I have with it came to me while I was watching the above race live, and it’s the real reason I think this is an attempt to go MNF style: when showing stats like intervals behind the leader, those stats are not shown on a separate line below the scroll, but actually incorporated into the scroll itself, so you might see (for the sake of example) 5. (88) EARNHARDT JR.  -1.24, instead of the “-1.24″ being on a separate line. “RUNNING ORDER” is also replaced with “INTERVALS” for this purpose, and the leader just lacks an interval, meaning at the start of the scroll the lengths each driver gets vary WIDELY. I prefer at least the appearance of each driver getting the same amount of space on the scroll. But because of the amount of information that needs to be presented, I can see how it might be difficult to properly convert the NASCAR strip for the MNF-inspired hub. Still, here’s a mockup I made; other than being larger than the real thing probably would be, and the rather stunning paucity of driver logos online in any context, and the fact I probably still don’t have the exact fonts, I think it came out well enough I’d be surprised not to see ESPN adopt a variant of this, to the extent I may have gotten myself AND ESPN in legal trouble at some point down the road.

On to baseball, and we start on the national level, with a move with an impact on other sports. In something of a surprise, Fox has adopted the new FSN score bug for baseball broadcasts – a score bug I had thought was intended to match Fox’s own new graphics. In that sense it’s something of a throwback, both to the era when Fox used boxes and not strips, and to those intermittent times when Fox has made a conscious effort to match the FSN graphics. In a more general sense it’s also a throwback to the era when replacing the count AND number of outs with the pitch speed all at once was the norm.

The dissonance between the amount of space taken up by the count and number of outs, and the amount of space taken up by the inning, makes me wonder why the count and number of outs didn’t get a column to itself. But baseball is probably the hardest sport to create a graphic for, especially one originally designed for another sport, unless you have the simplest of strips, because of the sheer amount of information required – in fact I suspect Fox’s move to this was the result of frustration with how last year’s strip turned out. In this case I suspect taking a cue from FSN’s football and hockey (and soccer) bug was called for; I suspect the lack of use of that for basketball and football points to disillusionment with the new horizontal bug. Again, the fonts and sizes are WAY off in this mockup, and I couldn’t quite get the base display to look right.

MLB Network is on the air as well, but I couldn’t find an embeddable highlight. This will have to make do:

This is what happens when score bug designers don’t have to blend baseball and other-sport priorities. One oddity: Apparently taking a cue from the MNF hub, MLB Network has the bug change to display stats about batters, instead of having a separate graphic at the bottom of the screen, despite the bug being on top. Bit weird, that one.
Comcast SportsNet hasn’t changed its graphics, but its current graphics and logo got its start at SNY, Comcast’s collaboration with the New York Mets, so it may be in for new graphics since SNY has changed its graphics package. Helpfully, SNY provided a mockup for SportsBusiness Journal for an article that was briefly free before the season, so I don’t have to go hunting for a highlight:

The good news is that it adopts a trend I’ve always liked: adding the team logos to the strip. (What I’ve really liked is the logo-only approach once experimented with by Fox on its NFL coverage and now only used by NFL Network, but there’s a reason Fox didn’t stick with it.) The bad news – and it’s not really clear on this thumbnail – is that it’s rather bulky, with large, separated, square elements embedded in a rectangular banner.

What else? We can look at the new graphics for NESN and MASN. So many team-owned RSNs try to get experimental with their graphics and fail. I’m talking to you, SportsTime Ohio. Neither of these two RSNs fell into that trap. MASN only tweaked its graphics and NESN gave them a nice, professional, parallelogram look. (However, I’ve seen evidence that the banner is the only thing NESN changed.)

Back to racing: Versus has an excellent banner for IndyCar races but I’m not finding it on the Web anywhere. We can also confirm that ESPN will whip out its new graphics for coverage of the NFL Draft, complete with the new BottomLine, but since the Draft ticker is handled differently than the BottomLine proper I don’t read anything into this other than the new BottomLine hasn’t been abandoned entirely, which makes it all the more frustrating it’s taking so long to come back in full.
By Morgan Wick | Also posted in Classic Da Blog, Sports TV Graphics | Comments (0)

Predictions for SportsCenter’s "Top 10 Games" of 2008

December 12, 2008 – 11:06 pm

In case you haven’t heard, this was a particularly exciting year in sports. When ESPN’s “SportsCenter” does its annual “Top 10 Games” countdown, they could easily extend it to a Top 20. With so many great games, I’ve taken it upon myself to take my own stab at mimicking the ESPN list and what it might look like.

Between some college football playoff-related features and Da Blog’s regular features, I think it’s reasonable to schedule the College Football Rankings’ release, as well as the bowl schedule, for Thursday.

#10: Beijing 2008 Olympic Games, men’s basketball gold medal match, USA v. Spain. The “Redeem Team” lives up to their name in a game Bill Simmons called “one of the 10 most dramatic basketball games of my lifetime. And nobody gave a crap or even knew. The game started at 2:30 in the morning ET and vanished into thin air. Only West Coasters and super-diehards stayed up to see it.”

#9: NHL Hockey, Winter Classic, Pittsburgh Penguins @ Buffalo Sabres. Could the NHL have asked for anything less than a shootout from the first (true) Winter Classic?

#8: College football, SEC Championship Game, Florida v. Alabama. If the regular season is a playoff, this was its semifinal – and it certainly played like one.

#7: MLB Baseball, ALCS Game 5, Tampa Bay Rays @ Boston Red Sox. For the moment, just forget about the fact the Sox couldn’t come all the way back to win the series.

#6: Beijing 2008 Olympic Games, swimming, 4×100m freestyle relay OR 100m butterfly OR 4×100m medley relay. The first two were dramatic finishes on Michael Phelps’ road to Mark Spitz’s record. The last was the one that broke it and had an exciting finish of its own. And I only have it at #6.

#5: College football, Texas @ Texas Tech. The Red Raiders came out to an early lead, only to see Texas come storming back to take a lead of its own. In the end, Texas Tech had the play of the year, and as it turned out, the one that kept Texas out of the National Championship Game.

#4: Wimbledon, men’s final, Roger Federer v. Rafael Nadal. This and the next two I could have put in any order. A five-set, record-length classic that ended with Nadal finally getting the best of Federer away from clay.

#3: Men’s college basketball, NCAA Tournament Final, Kansas v. Memphis. Finally, a National Championship game that lives up to being the culmination of March Madness instead of being a complete anticlimax!

#2: US Open Golf, playoff, Tiger Woods v. Rocco Mediate. 19 holes of pure tension, as basically an unknown gives Tiger every inch of challenge he has, and brings out Tiger’s best to put him on top. And Tiger was injured to the extent it’s still the last event he’s played!

#1: NFL Football, Super Bowl XLII, New England Patriots v. New York Giants. Perhaps the greatest iteration ever of the biggest sporting event of every year? How can it not be #1?

Honorable Mentions: IRL racing, Indy Japan 300 (Danica wins!); Euro 2008 quarterfinal, Croatia v. Turkey (or was it the semis, where Germany beat Turkey? Basically a sop to my soccer-crazed dad anyway); MLB Home Run Derby; ArenaBowl XXII, Soul v. SaberCats (about the only thing that could make it better is if it were the last one); some NBA game I’m forgetting; some obscure game I never heard of or just didn’t watch (possibly from MMA, boxing, the LLWS, Fresno State’s run, the WNBA, MLS, or the like)

By Morgan Wick | Also posted in Blog News, Classic Da Blog, College Basketball, College Football, Golf, NFL, NHL, Olympics, Sports, Sports Watcher, Tennis | Comments (2)

Sports Watcher for the Weekend of 10/25-26

October 24, 2008 – 5:00 pm

All times PDT.

Saturday
9:30-1 PM: College Football, #24 Kentucky @ defending 2008 BCS titleholder #5 Florida (Raycom Sports). Raycom always seems to get unusually good games from the SEC… too bad that’s about to end.

12:30-4 PM: College Football, defending Princton-Yale titleholder #6 Oklahoma State @ #1 Texas (ABC). The Northeast is getting this game. The Rockies are getting this game. Parts of the South are getting this game. But seriously, you couldn’t have found some way to get this better national distribution? The Pac-10 and Big 12 really need better contracts; the SEC and Big 10 are almost guaranteed to have their top game going out nationally every week. Surprised the Big 12 resigned almost an identical deal last year after the Big 10 got a reverse-mirror deal.

Alternately: 12:30-4 PM: College Football, #12 Georgia @ LSU (CBS) or Virginia Tech @ Florida State (ABC/ESPN2). You have to live on the West Cosat (like me) to be completely reduced to Georgia-LSU.

3:30-7 PM: College Football, Colorado @ #11 Missouri (FSN). Really just a gapfiller.

7-9:30 PM: Ultimate Fighting Championship, UFC 90 (PPV). Isn’t this an awfully quick turnaround from UFC 89?

Sunday
10-3 PM: NASCAR Sprint Cup Racing, Pep Boys Auto 500 (ABC). Does NASCAR need to move the Chase away from NFL season?

5-8:30 PM: MLB Baseball, Rays @ Phillies (FOX). Sorry, no NFL this week.

8-10 PM: IndyCar Racing, Gold Coast IndyCar 300 (ESPN2). Does this really count? I mean, it’s so far after the end of the season…

By Morgan Wick | Also posted in Classic Da Blog, College Football, NASCAR, Sports Watcher, UFC | Comments (0)

Sports Watcher for the Weekend of 10/18-19

October 17, 2008 – 5:00 pm

All times PDT.

Saturday
9:30-1 PM: College football, #23 Vanderbilt @ #13 Georgia (Raycom Sports, available free online from Yahoo Sports). When you think about it, the SEC’s new deal isn’t much different from their old one. They even have Arkansas-Kentucky on ESPNU this week. Except their syndicator is ESPN Plus now, so it’s not even available to everyone online. So they’re still screwing themselves out of a good third place game getting national exposure. Maybe ESPNU will become less of the ACC Network, I don’t know.

12:30-3 PM: College football, #17 Kansas @ #4 Oklahoma (ABC, not available in most markets). I’d say the Big 12 gets screwed by never getting reverse mirrored on ESPN with the Big 10 game when the craptastic ACC does, but it does have Texas-Missou in primetime going to the whole country.

Alternately: 12:30-3 PM: College Football, #28 Ohio State @ #11 Michigan State (ABC or ESPN). I just realized that somehow, the Week 7 rankings aren’t on the web site as I thought. Either they got dropped from the backups in Freehostia’s ongoing transfer, or I just forgot them. Sure enough, Sandsday is missing a strip now so it’s the former. You might have wanted to make your last backup after shutting off the file manager, guys – unless you still have backups and you’re sadistically torturing me with the old copy because it’s fresh or something. (Man, how ill-timed is this whole voting sequence, with the cold last weekend and the backing-up this weekend?)

5-8:30 PM: MLB Baseball, Red Sox @ Rays (TBS). Well after that comeback I might actually watch and pay attention to this game. A damn shame it’s not on broadcast.

9-12 AM: Ultimate Fighting Championship, UFC 89 (SpikeTV). Same on both coasts. I don’t think anyone other than diehards cares about the main event match.

Sunday
10-3 PM: NASCAR Sprint Cup Racing, TUMS QuikPak 500 (ABC). I’ve dropped a lot of NASCAR Chase for the Cup races, haven’t I?

5:15-8:30 PM: NFL Football, Broncos @ Patriots (NBC). Hey, remember when the Patriots had a half-decent quarterback for a couple of years?

By Morgan Wick | Also posted in Classic Da Blog, College Football, NASCAR, NFL, Sports Watcher, UFC, Web site news | Comments (0)

Sports Watcher for the Weekend of 10/4-5

October 3, 2008 – 5:00 pm

All times PDT.

Saturday
9-12:30 PM: College Football, Iowa @ #17 Michigan State (ESPN2). Wait, my new “mid-major lineal title” just got created, and all my thoughts were on whether Oregon State had done enough to crack positive B Points next week! (It will depend a LOT on SoS… but why do I keep reading, like from ESPN.com blogger Ted Miller, ”what if the Penn State game was the fluke”? Penn State’s in my top 5! Didn’t the Beavers lose to Stanford as well? Win that game, and their B Rating is probably over 1 even without a better performance against JoePa! And that’s the only thing this entry has to do with the entire Big Ten.)

12:30-4 PM: College Football, #6 Kentucky @ defending 2004 Auburn-Utah titleholder #1 Alabama (CBS). Nick Saban is 1-0 this season in games against #6 teams in my C Ratings with the Auburn-Utah title at stake.

6-9:30 PM: College Football, defending Princeton-Yale title holder #4 Missouri @ #8 Nebraska (ESPN). Preceded at 3 PM by Auburn-Vanderbilt, so games REALLY got crammed on ESPN today. Blame the Breeder’s Cup, but seriously, this seems like a natural opening for one more college football contract. But the SEC just re-upped and the Big 12 signed last year.
Sunday
10-1 PM: NFL Football, regional action (CBS and/or FOX). The WNBA Finals, below, cleared out space for NFL Football to not be restricted to SNF.

1:30-4 PM: WNBA Finals, Silver Stars @ Shock (ESPN2). Man, the WNBA Finals can’t even get an ABC slot on a weekend now? Blame NASCAR, running from 11-3 today with the AMP Energy 500. In other news, even women’s basketball players think the WNBA stinks. I really wish supporters of women’s equality in sports would put more chips on other sports like golf or softball. Basketball is either boring or incomprehensible no matter who plays it.

4-7:30 PM: MLB Baseball, Angels @ Red Sox (TBS) and 7-10 PM: MLB Baseball, Cubs @ Dodgers (TBS). I suspect some game time changes may occur if the Phillies-Brewers series ends early. Hey, by getting football out of the way earlier in the day we could fit baseball in here (SNF is 5:15-8:30) and have a whole day of college football! Thanks, WNBA, for bumping out the Chase for the Cup! (Baseball would have bumped out a primetime game, not an afternoon game as in past weeks.)

By Morgan Wick | Also posted in Classic Da Blog, College Football, College Football Lineal Title, NASCAR, NFL, Sports Watcher, WNBA | Comments (0)

Sports Watcher for the Weekend of 9/20-21

September 19, 2008 – 5:00 pm

All times PDT.

Saturday
9:30-12:45 PM: College football, Alabama @ Arkansas (Raycom Sports). Look for Alabama to be surprisingly strong when the new ratings come out on Monday.

12:45-4 PM: MLB Baseball, regional action (FOX). As usual, this is the only place baseball can fit.

4-6 PM: WNBA Basketball, New York @ Connecticut (NBATV). Now the playoffs are in full swing.

6-8 PM: WNBA Basketball, Sacramento @ San Antonio (NBATV). Man, the schedule really gets cramped this week and next with all the stuff I have to squeeze in.
Sunday
9-3 PM: Ryder Cup, final round (NBC). Is it just me, or does it seem like only sports journalists and groups that cover sports (ie ESPN) care about the Ryder Cup? And gee, it seems a lot bigger now that ESPN is covering the final round…

Honorable Mention: 10-3 PM: NASCAR Sprint Cup Racing, Dover race (ABC). When I looked, both this race and the next one were identified as the “Camping World 400″, but with different “presented by” sponsors.

5-8:30 PM: NFL Football, Dallas @ Green Bay (NBC). Obligatory NFL game that has to be SNF.

By Morgan Wick | Also posted in Classic Da Blog, College Football, Golf, NASCAR, NFL, Sports Watcher, WNBA | Comments (0)

Sports Watcher for the Weekend of 9/6-7

September 5, 2008 – 5:00 pm

All times PDT.

Saturday
10-1 PM: College Football, New Hampshire @ Army (ESPN Classic). I chose this game almost completely at random. (Hey, Troy-LSU got postponed due to Gustav and would have interfered with tennis anyway, Missouri would also interfere with tennis, and all three lineal title games aren’t even on regional television. FSN South and SunSports for the Central Michigan-Georgia game doesn’t count.)

1:30-5 PM: College Football, West Virginia @ East Carolina (ESPN). Yes, Fox baseball will probably fall off the face of the earth with college football season in full swing.

5-7 PM: US Open Tennis, Women’s Final, S. Williams v. Jankovic (CBS). Rather than the all Williams final YOU demand, you get Williams versus a nobody!

7-10 PM: Ultimate Fighting Championship, UFC 88 (PPV). Eighty-eight, eighty-eight, eight eighty eighty-eight… why isn’t this being held in China? Okay, I’m in an odd mood this week, you can tell because I didn’t even mention Couture v. Lesnar…

Sunday
10-1 PM: NFL Football, NY Jets @ Miami (CBS). OMG it’s the debut of Brett Favre! Let’s watch every single Jets game with such rapt attention our eyes come out of our sockets! (NASCAR or WNBA also possible.)

1-4 PM: US Open Tennis, Men’s Final (CBS). I know nothing about this! NOTING!

Honorable Mention: 12:30-3 PM: IndyCar Racing, PEAK Antifreeze and Motor Oil Indy 300 (ABC). It’s the last race of the season! The championship all comes down to this! (Er… ignore that little Australian race in the corner coming in a month and a half…)

Second Honorable Mention: 11-3 PM: PGA Tour Golf, The Barclays BMW Championship, final round (NBC). More of the playoff that’s nothing like a playoff! Why is this even on here?

5-8 PM: MLB Baseball, Philadelphia @ NY Mets (ESPN). I like cookies.

By Morgan Wick | Also posted in Auto racing, Classic Da Blog, College Football, Sports Watcher, Tennis, UFC | Comments (0)