Category Archives: ESPN

ESPN’s new SportsCenter ad: Who’s who of big names does Da-Da-Da thing

Posted on by

ESPN is out with a new SportsCenter ad. Judging by all the coin the network spent to get all these athletes to say Da-Da-Da, it looks like another attempt by the network to reinforce the notion of who’s No. 1 to Fox Sports 1.

What do you think? A highlight: Patrick Kane getting taken out after his Da-Da-Da.

Official rundown below:

From ESPN:

On Saturday, Sept. 21, ESPN launched a new campaign in support of its flagship program, SportsCenter.  Entitled “DaDaDa DaDaDa,” the campaign focuses on the iconic sound all fans associate with the show, and with great sports moments.  The 60-second launch spot features a range of athletes – from professionals to little leaguers – who subtly and not-so-subtly call out their “DaDaDa” moments.  Wieden+Kennedy New York is the creative agency.

“This campaign grew out of research we did in order to better understand the role SportsCenter plays in fans’ lives given all the access points for sports news, information, and highlights provided by new technologies,” said Aaron Taylor, senior vice president of marketing.  “Fans have a strong emotional connection with the show.  And, what we realized is that ‘DaDaDa’ is emotional shorthand for, not only the great moments that happen in sports, but how SportsCenter presents those moments – giving context to them with perspective and personality.”

The TV campaign is running across ESPN networks and beyond, and will include halftime of Monday Night Football when the Denver Broncos host the Oakland Raiders.  Digital creative beings today as well and, after the initial launch phase, will be updated to highlight timely “DaDaDa” moments.  Outdoor digital billboards will run in New York, Chicago and Los Angeles, and can also be updated to drive fans to SportsCenter for breaking news and highlights.

Athletes featured in the spot include:

Chris Chester, Robert Griffin III, Kory Lichtensteiger, Will Montgomery,  Alfred Morris, Tyler Polumbus, Trent Williams – Washington Redskins

Stephen Curry – Golden State Warriors

Landon Donovan – Professional soccer player

Sam Gagner – Edmonton Oilers

Jimmie Johnson – NASCAR driver

Patrick Kane – Chicago Blackhawks

Clayton Kershaw – Los Angeles Dodgers

Andrew McCutchen – Pittsburgh Pirates (highlight called by Greg Brown, the voice of the Pirates)

Jason Pierre-Paul and Justin Tuck – New York Giants

Paul Rabil – Boston Cannons Lacrosse

Maria Sharapova – Professional tennis player

Bubba Watson – professional golfer

Russell Westbrook – Oklahoma City Thunder

ESPN GameDay travels to North Dakota State: Behind-the-scenes video of road show

Posted on by

Very cool decision for GameDay to make the trek to Fargo Saturday. It will provide fans another look of where the game exists beyond Notre Dame, Ohio State, etc…

Hopefully, Lee Corso won’t wind up in South Dakota.

The on-site scene clearly has elevated the show to another level. You could feel the energy of college football when Chris Fowler and the gang hit campus.

“It’s like being part of the Beatles,” said Gene Wojciechowski, who correctly noted, “I’m the back-up drummer.”

ESPN’s Front Row did behind-the-scenes look at the entire production.

From ESPN about Saturday’s show:

ESPN’s iconic college football pregame show College GameDay Built by The Home Depotwill travel off its usual course – visiting two-time defending FCS National Champion North Dakota State in Fargo, N.D., on Saturday, Sept. 21. The show will originate from Downtown Fargo, located near the Fargo Theatre on Broadway.

The three-hour show (9 a.m.–noon, ESPN) of features and analysis will arrive prior to the Delaware State at No. 1-ranked NDSU game (3:30 p.m., ESPN3).

Hosted by Chris Fowler, the GameDay crew consists of analysts Lee Corso, Kirk Herbstreit, Desmond Howard and David Pollack with reporting by Samantha Ponder, Tom Rinaldi, Scott Van Pelt and Gene Wojciechowski.

College GameDay has visited three other FCS matchups in recent history: Hampton at Florida A&M on Nov. 15, 2008 – the shows first HBCU site; Grambling vs. Southern at the Bayou Classic on Nov. 26, 2005; and at Penn for the Harvard game on Nov. 16, 2002.

Skip Bayless: Washington Post’s Maese captures essence of First Take co-host; sincere in convictions

Posted on by

Rick Maese wrote a long profile of my former colleague. His story included much of what I experienced during my time working with Bayless at the Chicago Tribune.

Maese portrays Bayless as being driven, extremely regimented, and above all, totally sincere in his convictions. Even though people don’t believe it when I tell them, I can’t emphasize it enough: It is not an act with him. He believes everything he says. To the 100th power.

As someone who saw him eat nothing but rice cakes while covering the Masters together, I was amused by Maese’s lede:

The Chinese food deliveryman lights up when he sees Skip Bayless answer the door. “I thought it was you,” he says with a smile, handing over dinner.

Bayless is a regular customer. At his core, he’s a man of routine, and at the beginning of each week, he orders five days’ worth of chicken and broccoli (no sauce), his nightly dinners. Every weekend he stops by the same Manhattan deli and buys five sandwiches to bring back to his weekday home in Connecticut, his daily lunch. He’s a health nut who exercises twice a day. Every Sunday morning is church, every Friday is date night and every evening in between is the same: chicken and broccoli — and sports.

Bayless talked about his father, who he described as “evil”:

Bayless was named after his father, christened John Edward II, but was always called Skip. He was the oldest of three children and his parents owned a barbecue restaurant in Oklahoma City. Both of his parents, he says, were alcoholics, and his father was particularly rough with him. “My father was just an evil man,” he says.

Looking back, Bayless says a cold, distant upbringing might have been essential. “It was all meant to be. . . . I was on my own from the start,” he says. “You have to become self-sufficient and emotionally tough. I wouldn’t have been as good growing up under different circumstances.”

Not a fan:

“Skip was not well-liked. . . . He had an ego like nobody else in the world, and he was very reclusive,” says Dave Smith, the former sports editor of the Morning News. The editor and columnist overlapped for only nine months in 1981 before Bayless left for the rival Dallas Times Herald.

And the essence of Bayless from Stephen A.:

Stephen A. Smith, Bayless’s daily foil, briefly had questions himself. Long before they were paired together on “First Take” they did an ESPN “SportsCenter” segment on which Bayless suggested with a straight face that athletes should have an 11 p.m. curfew. Smith started laughing on air, and Bayless approached him once the red light went off. “Listen,” Bayless told him, “I. Am. Serious.”

“I think he’s insane — and he knows that — with half the things that come out of his mouth, particularly Tim Tebow,” Smith says. “But I know he means it. He means everything he says.”

And from Bayless:

So what is real? That’s the question that seems to dog Bayless. He swears, “from the bottom of my soul and my heart,” that he’s not playing a character and he’s not arguing for the sake of arguing. “That would be against my constitution, against my religion, against who I am,” he says.

At the end, there was this reader comment:

Saying “Bayless just may be the most polarizing figure in sports today” suggest someone likes him.

However, when I checked in, there were 251 reader comments. Like him or not, people definitely are paying attention.

 

Notre Dame-Purdue in primetime? UCLA-Nebraska better game, but ABC won’t pass on Irish

Posted on by

In the no-surprise department, ABC selected Notre Dame-Purdue for its primetime 8 p.m. (ET) showcase game Saturday. It would be a bigger surprise if it didn’t.

With the Irish home games locked in with NBC, ABC/ESPN is going to make the most of its opportunities to exploit its rights to any Notre Dame road game on its menu. So of course, ABC asked them to turn on the lights in West Lafayette Saturday.

It doesn’t matter that the Boilermakers were pummeled by Cincinnati 42-7 in the opener, and then squeezed out a 20-14 victory over Indiana State last week. That’s Indiana State, not Indiana. The Boilermakers are playing Notre Dame. The Irish could be playing at Lou Holtz Middle School and Brent and Kirk would be on the call in primetime.

To be fair to ABC/ESPN, beyond Alabama-Texas A&M, which is on CBS, it is a weak Saturday for college football. It underscores how few good games there are in non-conference play. The big teams are bent on ripping off fans by scheduling easy wins. And they complain about preseason games in the NFL.

However, from a quality standpoint, No. 16 UCLA at No. 23 Nebraska is a much better game. It also features two well-known programs that have some national appeal.

Yet ABC is airing that game at noon ET.

It should be pointed out that the decisions on early-season primetime games were made in the spring. So it wasn’t a matter of ABC choosing ND-Purdue over UCLA-Nebraska in the last couple of weeks..

But safe to say, ABC would have gone the same way if they made the decision this week. It’s an easy choice for ABC/ESPN. The Irish pull in big ratings, as evidenced by last week’s Michigan-Notre Dame game.

So turn on the lights for Notre Dame. Again.

 

 

 

 

 

ESPN: Whitlock’s statements were “not acceptable” regarding Evans

Posted on by

It didn’t take long for Jason Whitlock to become topic A in Bristol.

This morning, ESPN issued a statement, saying his comments towards Sports Illustrated’s Thayer Evans were “not acceptable.”

“We have discussed Jason’s comments with him. They were personal in nature, they do not represent ESPN and they are not acceptable based on the standards we have set.”

Tuesday, Whitlock went on an Oklahoma City radio station and blasted Evans, who along with George Dohrmann is writing a series of stories about improprieties in the Oklahoma State football program.

ESPN has media policies in place about how its employees should address the competition. As in they really aren’t supposed to comment or criticize other media.

However, they are allowed to weigh in if it warrants discussing media coverage of a particular story. Even then, they are asked to follow certain guidelines.

The policy contains this line: “Comments must not be personal, vicious, dismissive…No cheap shots.”

And then there’s this: “No personal attacks or innuendo toward people, media companies, networks or publications.”

Now you be the judge about whether Whitlock crossed the line with comments about Evans to an Oklahoma City radio station.

“Knowing the lack of competence that’s there with Thayer Evans, knowing the level of simplemindedness that’s there with Thayer Evans, to base any part of the story on his reporting is mind-boggling.”

Does that fall under the category of a personal attack, juror 1?

And then there’s this from Whitlock.

“ … Let me end by saying this and I honestly mean this without malice. It wouldn’t shock me if Thayer Evans couldn’t spell cat and I say in all seriousness.”

Ding-ding-ding. Sound the cheap shot bell. I still love how he insisted that line was meant “without malice.”

Finally, Whitlock blasted “the brand of sports writers who love doing these investigative pieces.”

Yep, didn’t exactly go over well with ESPN’s many sports investigative reporters, who are among the best in the business.

I don’t respect the entire brand of investigative journalism that is being done here.

To add the whole dynamic, Whitlock sought a forum for his comments with a tweet inviting Oklahoma radio stations to give him a call for an interview. Not that he meant any malice.

Obviously, Whitlock veered from ESPN’s media policy on many different levels. The network responded to quell any internal fires as much as anything else.

Several of his new teammates talked about a double standard. They speculated what would happen to them if they went on the same rant.

“I’d be fired,” a staffer said.

Since Whitlock might not be current on ESPN’s policies, he likely received a lecture filling him in on what is acceptable at his new place of employment.

It might be a while before Whitlock comments about the competition again. And if he does, it definitely will be without malice.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Jason Whitlock needs to brush up on Pulitzer Prize winner George Dohrmann’s credentials

Posted on by

When Sports Illustrated broke its story on Oklahoma State yesterday, Jason Whitlock went trolling via his Twitter account for Oklahoma radio stations to call him.

Sure enough, the Oklahoma City Sports Animal found him. Whitlock, as only he can, went to great lengths to debunk SI’s package.

His reason? One of the co-authors is Thayer Evans.

Kelly Hines in the Tulsa World had the diatribe, which included this:

“But then in addition to that, having worked with Thayer Evans at Fox Sports, having followed his work for some time, I am completely and utterly flabbergasted that a legitimate news outlet would allow Thayer Evans to be involved in some type of investigative piece on college football that tears down a program, and particularly one that tears down Oklahoma State when it is no secret what a huge, enormous, gigantic Oklahoma homer Thayer Evans is. This is just incredible. Knowing the lack of competence that’s there with Thayer Evans, knowing the level of simplemindedness that’s there with Thayer Evans, to base any part of the story on his reporting is mind-boggling.

And then it gets worse with Whitlock concluding:

“ … Let me end by saying this and I honestly mean this without malice. It wouldn’t shock me if Thayer Evans couldn’t spell cat and I say in all seriousness.”

Oh, I’m sure Evans didn’t see any malice in that statement.

Whitlock also had this statement:

“ … I can’t disparage (other writer George Dohrmann) because I have never worked with him. I have never seen any of his raw copy or anything like that.

Oh yes, George Dohrmann. Take a look at this excerpt from his bio, Jason.

SPORTS ILLUSTRATED senior writer George Dohrmann is the rare sportswriter to have won a Pulitzer Prize. He earned journalism’s top honor in 2000 while at the St. Paul Pioneer Press. The Pulitzer cited his “determined reporting, despite negative reader reaction, that revealed academic fraud in the men’s basketball program at the University of Minnesota.”

Jason, George won a Pulitzer Prize. You know, the same prize that you openly campaigned for last year.

I would say winning a Pulitzer gives Dohrmann fairly solid credentials to tackle this kind of story, especially since that Pulitzer came from his investigation of a college program.

And Jason, Dohrmann wrote the story. The entire package was overseen by SI executive editor Jon Wertheim, who has some impressive credentials in his own right.

In a Q/A with Anthony Slater of NewsOK.com, Dohrmann addressed the reporting that went into the story.

DG: How credible do you think the sources are?

Dohrmann: Very credible, or we wouldn’t write these things. These are players who spoke to us on the record, who we found. They didn’t come to us, they didn’t come and say, ‘Oh, I got a story to tell.’ We had to track them down and go to them and then hear their stories. This wasn’t something where, I think there’s a perception that, a lot of people who talk about their school is bitter because they got kicked off the team or they didn’t start. But you played the game, a lot of guys aren’t bitter at all, sometimes they are just years removed from this experience and you go and see them and they have time on their hands and you show them attention and you’re curious about their experience and they share it with you. Sometimes it’s not a guy sitting their spewing venom about a school he once attended.

Whitlock, though, isn’t impressed with what he calls the “brand of sports writers who love doing these investigative pieces.”

They are not hard to do these days in terms of so-and-so got this money under the table. We’re into this area where unnamed sources can say anything, any of these he-said, she-said stories. I don’t respect the entire brand of investigative journalism that is being done here. It’s not our job to go out and do NCAA policing.

“ … There’s some cute girl on campus who is a hostess who may have slept with one of these players. This has been going on for years and it goes on in the frathouses and the academic corruption they are going to talk about goes on in the frathouses and all across campus. We are singling out these athletes. It’s a good story. It will get you a promotion. It will get you on SportsCenter. It will get you talked about on this radio show and all over Twitter. But it’s bogus. It’s a trick for clicks.

Ah yes, SportsCenter. ESPN has several highly regarded investigative reporters who break stories on college improprieties all the time. Now that Whitlock is back at ESPN, it will be interesting if he has the same assessment when one of his colleagues uncovers dirt on campus. And it becomes the lead story on SportsCenter.

The local radio stations of the school should be sure to give Whitlock a call. He’ll be available for comment.

 

Record opening rating for ESPN: Twitter abuse for Berman

Posted on by

First the good for ESPN:

Last night’s Philadelphia Eagles victory over the Washington Redskins earned an 11.6 overnight rating according to Nielsen, based on the metered markets.  This is the highest rating for ESPN’s Monday Night Football opener ever (eight games, starting in 2006).  The previous best came in 2010, a 10.5 overnight rating for Baltimore vs. the New York Jets.  Last year, the Cincinnati-Baltimore opener earned an 8.1 overnight rating.

And the not-so-good. As expected, many viewers weren’t enthralled to hear Chris Berman on play-by-play for the second game.

A sample of the tweets:

Hopefully Chris Berman goes back back back back back to his 2 minute segment on Sportscentre once a week

#ObamaWasResponsibleFor Chris Berman on MNF between the Chargers and the #Texans

Tried muting the game, but even Chris Berman‘s subtitles were yelling at me.

WHY THE HELL IS THERE A GARBAGE TRUCK MAKING SO MUCH NOISE OUTSIDE MY WINDOW AT THIS HOUR forget it, that’s Chris Berman

Not much sleep.. Had horrible nightmare that Chris Berman was doing the play by play of my meal at Applebee’s

Chris Berman is yelling about time zones and suddenly all human achievement seems meaningless.

No problem with Chris Berman doing tonight’s game

Posted on by

The Twitter engineers should call in the reinforcements for tonight.

Chris Berman is working Houston-San Diego, the second half of ESPN’s opening Monday night doubleheader.

Berman on play-by-play always sets Twitter on fire. The tweeters use their 140 characters to dump on his schtick.

You know what? Allowing Berman to call one football game really doesn’t bother me.

Now golf is a different story. Perhaps the best part of Fox Sports landing the U.S. Open is that it will end his sorely out-of-place run at this event.

Football, though, is different than golf. All his bombast fits in for a sport where the volume is turned up.

Plus, the guy has been there since they opened the doors in 1979. He has been a faithful soldier for 34 years and made ESPN a ton of money. If his bosses want to throw him a bone, that’s fine. It’s good to see someone get rewarded for loyalty.

So give Berman his one game (or two if you throw in the meaningless preseason game he did). Besides, kickoff is after 10 p.m. on the East coast. ESPN executives will be asleep and totally oblivious to the anti-Berman noise emanating from Twitter.

 

 

 

 

Could ESPN really not use the nickname ‘Redskins?’ ‘Imagine how painful it is’ to Native Americans

Posted on by

For a minute, can you imagine if during tonight’s Monday Night Football game, Mike Tirico never referred to Washington as “the Redskins?”

What if he just called the team Washington throughout the telecast? Or the “Washington D.C’s,” as Bill Simmons labeled them last week (Awful Announcing with the link) in an apparent protest of the nickname issue.

And then the “Redskins” boycott carried over to the postgame shows, SportsCenter and then beyond? Starting tonight, the offensive nickname never would be uttered again on ESPN.

Just imagine the impact that would have on possibly getting the nickname changed.

Could ESPN do it?

ESPN ombudsman Robert Lipsyte asks that question in his latest column. He writes:

So what if ESPN refused to use the R-word?

That quixotic thought has been bubbling for a while in ESPN’s 150-person Stats & Information Group, where vice presidents Edmundo Macedo and Noel Nash collected information on the history of the team and opposition toward the name and then distributed it to network news managers. It was the start of a campaign to have ESPN stop using the name. Macedo told me that he thought the chances of actually succeeding were currently slim and none, but that it was worth the effort to get people thinking about it.

“Think about the name,” he wrote to me in an email. “Think about the stereotypical connotations around color. We would not accept anything similar as a team nickname if it were associated with any other ethnicity or any other race.

“Over the years, the more I thought about it, the less comfortable I became using it. I’m not sure other Americans have stopped to hear the voices of Native Americans. I can only imagine how painful it must be to hear or see that word over and over, referenced so casually every day.”

Clearly, Lipsyte, like many people, would prefer to jettison the nickname. However, he doesn’t take the ultimate stand here. Instead, he documents the reasons why ESPN will continue to use “Redskins.”

1) ESPN should be covering the news, not making it. Fair enough. The action Macedo proposed would be newsworthy enough to make ESPN a player in a controversy. We’ve been through this before in ESPN’s coverage of NBA player Jason Collins’ coming out. In one case, on “Outside the Lines,” instead of an in-depth look at the implications of Collins’ action, we got a debate on the varieties of religious experience.

Then there was this telling passage:

3) A gesture as aggressive as attacking a famous, long-standing team is antithetical to the ESPN business model. Snyder is a business associate (his Washington radio station is an ESPN affiliate), and the NFL is an important partner. ESPN is a major media corporation with a parent company (Disney) and shareholders. I am still in the early process of exploring the depths and facets of ESPN, but one thing is clear — it is an entertainment company trying to maintain a vigorous journalistic presence. This is no simple matter. This so-called “bifurcation” — business side and journalism side — requires respect and mindfulness.

“I’m from the D.C. area and a fan all my life,” says Rob King, senior vice president of content for ESPN print and digital media, “and I’ve thought about the Generals and the Statesmen as names, even George Washington replacing the Indian on the logo.

“At ESPN, the only thing that really matters is serving fans. NFL fans think of the Washington, D.C.-area franchise as the Redskins. So that informs how we’ll serve them across news, commentary, scores and fantasy coverage. We will use the term Redskins so long as fans expect this to be the nomenclature that drives their rooting experience.

“So hail to ’em.”

The most sensible ongoing strategy I’ve heard is from Patrick Stiegman, vice president and editor-in-chief of ESPN.com, who said: “To simply ignore the nickname in our coverage seems like nothing more than grandstanding. We can use the name of the team, but our best service to fans is to report the hell out of the story, draw attention to the issue and cover all aspects of the controversy.”

Indeed, it seems unlikely that ESPN is going to be a leader here and initiate a boycott. While it is noble to report the controversy, Tony Kornheiser, who wrote the word “Redskins” a zillion times during his long career at the Washington Post, had the most telling observation on Pardon the Interruption:

“I don’t think writers and bloggers and websites can make this happen,” he said, “I do think television networks can make this happen. … To pick two: If ESPN and Fox said ‘We’re not going to use Redskins anymore’ and the NFL tacitly went along with that and didn’t say anything, that would put pressure on CBS and NBC. I think it has to come from the larger institutions.”

Don’t hold your breath, Tony.

 

 

 

Reviews for Ray Lewis: ‘Already better than two-thirds of the ex-NFL-players drawing paychecks as TV analysts’

Posted on by

I was out Sunday at Soldier Field. Eating unhealthy food at 10 a.m. behind a tailgate is not a bad way to start the new season.

So I will leave it to others to weigh in on the ESPN debut of Ray Lewis on Countdown.

David Zurawik of the Baltimore Sun was impressed:

Overall, Lewis’ greatest contribution to ESPN’s “Sunday NFL Countdown” was the genuine sense of energy, enthusiasm and even joy that he brought to the conversation.

Last year, I thought the show felt flat and, frankly, kind of old. But not today. It was jacked up and juiced from beginning to end with energy, information and insights.

Lewis added to those insights with his keen understanding of the game.

For example, in talking about the pounding that the Ravens took Thursday night from the Denver Broncos, he said, ” “Baltimore will be fine. They’re that type of team, alright. Our pedigree has always been that.

“One stumble in the road ain’t never stopped nothing… In the first half the other night, they played checkers. You see? The second half, you was supposed to play chess.”

At first I thought, “OK, there’s the inscrutable Ray Lewis talking checkers and chess. What the hell does he mean by that, and how many hundreds of thousands of viewers did he just leave scratching their heads?”

But as he went on to explain how Broncos quarterback Peyton Manning reads defenses and how he would move Ravens players out of position to try and confuse Manning with disguised alignments, I thought, “That’s exactly what was going on in the second half: Manning started playing chess with the Ravens, and Baltimore had no one to play against him.”

That’s an astonishing insight. I think someone might have coached Lewis and told him he has to translates those kinds of insights into language that even the least football savvy viewer can understand.

Richard Deitsch at SI.com:

Clearly, Lewis is not a game-changing television hire at this point but he was more than adequate on opening morning. He’s got a charismatic manner and had moments where you drew closer to the screen to hear what he had to say. He was particularly interesting when explaining how to stop the read-option and the importance of New Orleans coach Sean Payton. “When that guy walks back in, that’s the brain of that operation,” Lewis said. “He is to New Orleans what Bill Belichick is to the Patriots. Without that, without him, you saw last year they had a great imbalance of what leadership looked like.”

However, both Deitsch and Bob Raissman of the New York Daily News note Lewis has to make a big change. Writes Raissman:

When referring to the Ravens on ESPN’s “Sunday NFL Countdown,” Ray Lewisused a lot of “we,” “our” and “us.”

Awful!

Whoever produces the show should have told him he is in the media now, not a player anymore. Then again, maybe those responsible for such duties are scared to mess with Mr. L.