Category Archives: General

Viral video: Ian Eagle says he and Fratello were just joking

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There’s a video making the rounds showing a somewhat heated exchange between Ian Eagle and Mike Fratello during Saturday’s New Jersey Nets-Boston game. All of which begs the obvious question: You mean, people are actually watching Nets games?

Somebody noticed and the video went viral.

In the video, Eagle scolds Fratello over a previous discussion about slip screens. It certainly sounds as if Eagle is ticked off.

However, Eagle tells Bob Raissman of the New York Daily News that the pair were just joking. Eagle said:

“Every bit of that was a put-on. Not 40%. Not 70%. It was 100% busting each  other’s chops. We do it every game. What happens sometimes is the  local audience knows what we’re up to, but when something like this goes viral  the unfortunate part is the familiarity goes out the window. There are people  who just don’t get it, they’re not in on the joke. . . . Sarcasm is hard to  comprehend, especially when you can’t see the broadcasters.”

Do you believe him? Matt Yoder, who did an initial analysis of the alleged spat at Awful Announcing, writes:

While that’s a good story, and it’s nice that Eagle addressed what happened, I’m not buying it…

I will say this: Calling Nets games would be enough to make anyone cranky.

 
 

 

Reporter wins Pulitzer Prize for Penn State coverage

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One day on the beat, and we’ve already got a Pulitzer Prize winner for a sports-related story.

Sara Ganim and the Harrisburg Patriot-News were cited for their coverage of the Penn State-Jerry Sandusky saga. They were awarded a Pulitzer for local reporting.

From the Patriot-News:

Ganim broke the news in March 2011 that Sandusky was being investigated by a grand jury. Hundreds of journalists descended on State College after Ganim’s story drew national attention following Sandusky’s arrest in November.

“What really struck me about this story and about Sara’s work is that this was not a case where we uncovered some big issue or wanted to look at some big issue or did a massive investigation. This was a case of a reporter doing her job,” Patriot-News editor David Newhouse said.

Congratulations to Ganim and the Patriot-News, although it is a little bit of good news-bad news for the paper. Winning a Pulitzer at age 24 means Ganim will be in high demand.

 

 

 

Facing the inevitable in LA: Replacing Vin Scully

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It was great to see Vin Scully return to the booth Sunday after missing the Dodgers’ first five home games with a bad cold.

Everyone in LA hopes Scully will go on forever, and he just might. However, the reality is that he is 84-years old. At some point, somebody will take his place.

Tom Hoffarth of the Los Angeles Daily News examined life after Scully in a recent column. He writes the team doesn’t really have a plan for a successor.

Scully, at 84, with a cold, sends a chill down everyone else’s spine. Enough to where you’d think by now the Dodgers, as they are currently constituted amid an ownership change, would have a security blanket ready to wrap everyone in, either for the short term or long term.

They really don’t, according to a variety of sources who spoke off the record about it. That by itself should be unsettling.

While Scully has stayed in bed at his Hidden Hills home the past three Dodgers games, the hope is that he’ll be back sometime this weekend for a Prime Ticket telecast at Dodger Stadium between the San Diego Padres and Dodgers, and we can all breathe easier.

But there are no guarantees. He’s day-to-day, the team says. “Aren’t we all?” Scully once said in what has become a famous line attributed to him.

He also is fond of saying that if you want to make God smile, you tell Him your plans. But that shouldn’t preclude the team to begin accounting for the time when (gasp) Scully disappears like Cheshire Cat, as he said recently, and all that will be left is his smile.

They can keep using a combination of Charley Steiner, Steve Lyons, Eric Collins or Rick Monday, but all that seems to be is a scripted fire drill.

 

 

 

Gehrig biographer takes on heavy hitters in Chicago

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There probably are easier and perhaps smarter things you can do than try to battle ESPN, Comcast Sports Net, and the major newspapers in Chicago. But that’s the challenge being taken on by Jonathan Eig.

Eig, who wrote bestselling books on Lou Gehrig, Jackie Robinson, Al Capone (which one of those three subjects doesn’t fit in with the other two?) has launched Chicagosidesports.com. Despite several sports site dedicated to covering all things Chicago sports, Eig thinks there is room for another one.

In an interview I did with him for my blog at Crain’s Chicago Business, he said:

“I just felt there’s a great appetite for sports news that isn’t being met on  the Internet. The Tribune and Sun-Times have good sports  coverage, but they haven’t really packaged it for the web. ESPN is the 800-pound  gorilla, but ESPNChicago hasn’t made the effort to make it look Chicago. It  doesn’t look any different than ESPNLA. It’s not something people are talking  about.”

Basically, Eig’s site is running one feature/analysis piece per day. Case in point is a story by former Bulls player Paul Shirley on his realization that his playing career was over. Thursday, Eig and James Finn Garner spoofed the Ozzie Guillen debacle in Miami.

The site also has links to the other Chicago sports site on important stories of the day.

“We’re not looking to replace ESPN and the Tribune for getting the scores,”  Eig said. “We think we can be a road map to tell people what’s out there.”

Here’s why it might work.

Writers will receive a small fee upfront with the chance to receive a portion of  the profits at the end of the year, assuming there are profits. He said  ChicagoSide will be running “a lean operation,” which will help keep it  sustainable.

Given his work as an author, Eig brings a high level of credibility to this endeavor. Can he pull it off? If he does, look for versions of ChicagoSide to pop up in other cities.

 

 

 

CNN: New media hastened resolution of Petrino case

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It wasn’t the New York Times, Sports Illustrated or even a local newspaper in Arkansas which broke the story that led to the downfall of Bobby Petrino. Nope, it was a somebody who goes by the handle of “Hoggrad” who first started to mention that the coach had an accident with his motorcycle on Woopig.net, an unofficial site that covers the Razorbacks.

Terrance Moore, writing for CNN, says journalism has come a long way from the days of Walter Cronkite. He writes that new media definitely accelerates the process in these cases.

Moore quotes Georgia Tech athletic director Dan Radakovich:

“All of this (instant reporting of scandal) in regards to how it relates to the electronic media has certainly heightened the information and interest and lessened tolerance…(Electronic media) certainly has sped up the process. Before, it may have taken a lot longer to make a decision (on whether to fire somebody). You had to talk to a number of different people before you felt like — or the organization felt like — they had gathered enough information to be able to make a reasonable or rational decision.

 

Now I think that all comes a lot quicker. And, in some ways, there’s an expectation that the decision should come quicker. I just hope that in these circumstances that the gathering continues to be thorough and that all sides of the issue are being reviewed.”