Many thanks to Matt Yoder for inviting me to the AA podcast. As you can see from the link, it is time to get a new picture.

Matt and I had a lively chat about Jim Nantz; recapping the Final Four coverage; and in reverent tones, discussing this weekend’s Masters.

It is the most anticipated sports movie in a long, long time. Next Friday, 42, the modern version of the Jackie Robinson story hits the theaters.

Tom Hoffarth of the Los Angeles Daily News writes about a Q/A session Harrison Ford recently had with writers Dodger Stadium. Ford plays Branch Rickey in the film.

Ford looks nothing like himself in the film, which he says is essential.

Q: When you’re getting into character to play the role, you probably studied Branch Rickey’s voice and mannerisms. Was that important for you to imitate and reproduce on the screen?

A: When we talked about his faith, the style of his speech wasn’t based on just where he came from – rural Ohio – but his manner and his bit of  dramatic ways come from his experience of listening to country preachers. The quality of his language and the his voice were one of the things I felt were important. I walk down the street and people as often as not recognize my voice as compared to my face. I thought it would not be of any value to the audience, or to the film, to have Harrison Ford in it in a recognizable way. I wanted to characterize his voice. There was more audio tape available of him and it was revealing to me his sense of drama and his courtliness.

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Ford also talked about the potential impact of the movie.

Q: Robinson, as one of the great social figures of the 20^th century, is still honored every April 15, and it may be surprising that there are a lot of kids who are not that aware of this man. How important is it to get this story out again reaching another generation?

A: There’s the textbook version, which is useful and I’m sure every representation of black history mentions Jackie Robinson and breaking the color barrier in baseball. But there’s nothing like the visceral experience that an audience can have. When they can see, when they can feel, participate in the experience that Jackie Robinson had, that’s what’s most important about this version of it. There’s a thing in film that I’m always railing against, and that’s when the characters ‘talk’ about the story. I call it ‘talk speak.’ What I want in the writing and the film – if I have an influence over it – is to allow behavior to express the character’s feelings, rather than the character talking about how they feel about something. I want the audience to not be told what’s coming, but to have the opportunity through emotional continuity with the people on the screen to what it felt like to be there. And this film does that in a really important way.

As a student attending the University of Illinois in the 1970s, it was natural that Roger Ebert was one of my first journalism heroes. Ebert roamed the Daily Illini offices in the early 60s. He gave us the feeling that if he could make it big, perhaps there was a chance for the rest of us.

In tribute to one of the all-time great film critics, I pulled excerpts from reviews on notable sports films from his site at RogerEbert.com.

In a review of Hoosiers, Ebert reminds us that he actually once was a sportswriter.

Hoosiers: I was a sportswriter once for a couple of years in Downstate Illinois. I covered mostly high school sports, and if I were a sportswriter again, I’d want to cover them again. There is a passion to high school sports that transcends anything that comes afterward; nothing in pro sports equals the intensity of a really important high school basketball game.

“Hoosiers” knows that. This is a movie about a tiny Indiana high school that sends a team all the way to the state basketball finals in the days when schools of all sizes played in the same tournaments and a David could slay a Goliath. That’s still the case in Indiana but not, alas, in Illinois. 4 stars

Bull Durham: “Bull Durham” is a treasure of a movie because it knows so much about baseball and so little about love. The movie is a completely unrealistic romantic fantasy, and in the real world the delicate little balancing act of these three people would crash into pieces. But this is a movie, and so we want to believe in love, and we want to believe that once in a while lovers can get a break from fate. That’s why the movie’s ending is so perfect. Not because it seems just right, but because it seems wildly impossible, and we want to believe it anyway. 3 1/2 stars

The Natural: Why didn’t they make a baseball picture? Why did THE NATURAL have to be turned into idolatry on behalf of Robert Redford? Why did a perfectly good story, filled with interesting people, have to be made into one man’s ascension to the godlike, especially when no effort is made to give that ascension meaning? And were the most important people in the god-man’s life kept mostly offscreen so they wouldn’t upstage him? 2 stars

Hoop Dreams: A film like “Hoop Dreams” is what the movies are for. It takes us, shakes us, and make us think in new ways about the world around us. It gives us the impression of having touched life itself. 4 stars

A League of Their Own: The movie has a real bittersweet charm. The baseball sequences, we’ve seen before. What’s fresh are the personalities of the players, the gradual unfolding of their coach and the way this early chapter of women’s liberation fit into the hidebound traditions of professional baseball. By the end, when the women get together again for their reunion, it’s touching, the way they have to admit that, whaddaya know, they really were pioneers. 3 stars

Rocky: His name is Sylvester Stallone, and, yes, in 1976 he did remind me of the young Marlon Brando. How many actors have come and gone and been forgotten who were supposed to be the “new Brando,” while Brando endured? And yet in “Rocky” he provides shivers of recognition reaching back to “A Streetcar Named Desire.” He’s tough, he’s tender, he talks in a growl, and hides behind cruelty and is a champion at heart. “I coulda been a contender,” Brando says in “On the Waterfront.” This movie takes up from there. 4 stars

Caddyshack: Maybe one of the movie’s problems is that the central characters are never really involved in the same action. Murray’s off on his own, fighting gophers. Dangerfield arrives, devastates, exits. Knight is busy impressing the caddies, making vague promises about scholarships, and launching boats. If they were somehow all drawn together into the same story, maybe we’d be carried along more confidently. But Caddyshack feels more like a movie that was written rather loosely, so that when shooting began there was freedom_too much freedom_for it to wander off in all directions in search of comic inspiration. 2 1/2 stars

Raging Bull: Martin Scorsese‘s “Raging Bull” is a movie about brute force, anger, and grief. It is also, like several of Scorsese’s other movies, about a man’s inability to understand a woman except in terms of the only two roles he knows how to assign her: virgin or whore. There is no room inside the mind of the prizefighter in this movie for the notion that a woman might be a friend, a lover, or a partner. She is only, to begin with, an inaccessible sexual fantasy. And then, after he has possessed her, she becomes tarnished by sex. Insecure in his own manhood, the man becomes obsessed by jealousy — and releases his jealousy in violence. 4 stars

I can accept winter in Chicago. What I really hate is spring. It doesn’t come here until about June.

So I’m off in search of better weather. Will return for the start of the baseball season. Hopefully, they won’t have to use the Zamboni for the White Sox opener.

By the way, if you haven’t read it, Pat Jordan’s A False Spring is a classic.

There won’t be any wildfires this year. Skip Bayless, whose nomination in the outstanding studio analyst category in 2012 almost took down Twitter, did not get nominated this year.

However, plenty of other people did as the Sports Emmy nominations just came in. The big night is set for May 7 in New York.

Here’s the rundown of nominations by network groups:

NBC Sports Group: 58

ESPN (which includes ABC): 43

Turner Sports: 27

Fox Sports Media Group: 17

HBO: 17

NFL Network: 16

CBS (includes Showtime): 15

MLB Network: 9

Not surprisingly, NBC’s coverage of the London Olympics received the most nominations with 14. The NBA on TNT and Real Sports with Bryant Gumbel were next with six.

And the biggies:

Outstanding Sports Personality: Play-by-Play

Mike Breen ABC
Mike Emrick NBC / NBC Sports Network
Al Michaels NBC
Jim Nantz CBS

Note: Where’s Joe Buck? Dan Shulman should have gotten a nod.

Outstanding Sports Personality: Sports Event Analyst

Ato Boldon, NBC
Cris Collinsworth, NBC
Jon Gruden, ESPN
Jim Kaat, MLB Network
Mike Mayock, NFL Network / NBC

Note: Jeff Van Gundy is a big omission. So is Ed Olczyk.

Outstanding Sports Personality: Studio Host

James Brown, CBS / Showtime
Bob Costas, NBC / NBC Sports Network
Rich Eisen, NFL Network
Ernie Johnson, TNT / NBA TV
Dan Patrick, NBC / NBC Sports Network /DirecTV

Note: Thrilled to see Eisen get recognized. Chris Fowler needs to be on this list.

Outstanding Sports Personality: Studio Analyst

Charles Barkley TNT / NBA TV
Tony Dungy, NBC
Boomer Esiason, CBS
Harold Reynolds, MLB Network
Bill Ripken, MLB Network
Kurt Warner, NFL Network

Note: Wow, quite a step in class for Cal’s little brother. A lot of big names missing here.

Outstanding Sports Personality: Sports Reporter

Andrea Joyce, NBC / NBC Sports Network
Pierre McGuire, NBC / NBC Sports Network
Lisa Salters, ESPN
Michele Tafoya, NBC
Tom Verducci, MLB Network / TBS

Note: Doris Burke is stellar on NBA. Should be included.

Outstanding Studio Show (Weekly)

College Gameday, ESPN
Football Night in America, NBC
Inside the NBA, TNT
Inside the NFL, Showtime

Note: All three NFL Sunday daytime pregame shows (CBS, Fox, ESPN) fail to get a nomination.

Outstanding Live Sports Series

ESPN Monday Night Football, ESPN
NASCAR on FOX, FOX / SPEED
NBA on TNT, TNT
NFL on FOX, FOX
Sunday Night Football, NBC

Note: CBS’ football coverage gets shut out.

Outstanding Live Sports Special

The 96th Indianapolis 500, ABC
The 108th World Series, FOX
The Army-Navy Game, CBS
The Masters, CBS
Super Bowl XLVI, NBC

Note: Interesting that the Army-Navy game made it into this category.

Outstanding Sports Documentary

26 Years: The Dewey Bozella Story, ESPN2
Dream Team, NBA TV
Klitschko, HBO
Namath, HBO
The Announcement, ESPN

Note: All good, and plenty of others deserving.

No surprise here. It’s all LeBron, all the time now through June.

From Bloomberg:

If 2010 gave us “The Decision,” 2012 brought “The Redemption.” In a year in which he claimed his third NBA Most Valuable Player award, his first NBA championship, his second Olympic gold medal, and two multimillion-dollar endorsement deals, the Miami Heat’s LeBron James can add another accolade to his ever-growing list: the top spot in the Bloomberg “Sportfolio”/Horrow Sports Ventures 2013 Power 100.

Three former Power 100 No. 1’s follow James in this year’s rankings: golfer Tiger Woods (No. 2); Denver Broncos quarterback Peyton Manning (No. 3); and New Orleans Saints quarterback Drew Brees (No. 4). Tennis star Roger Federer rounds out the top five.

And more on LeBron:

With a first NBA title under his belt and in the hunt for a second, the sky is the limit for James. He’s in the midst of arguably the best season of his basketball career, and is backed by a blue-chip endorsement portfolio that includes Nike, Coca-Cola, McDonald’s, Samsung, and State Farm. All this basketball and business bounty came after James’ Nielsen/E-Poll N-Score, a measure of marketability used for this study, reached the lowest point in his career following the Heat’s loss to the Mavericks in the 2011 NBA Finals.

James can also claim another distinction from his Top Five Power 100 peers: he’s the only one in that grouping who’s younger than 30.

“Longevity is the key to this year’s top grouping. From Peyton to Federer to Kobe to Brady, these athletes are on the backside of their historic careers yet still command on and off field attention and respect,” notes Gerry Philpott, CEO of E-Poll Market Research. “It will be interesting to see if the young stars of today can hold up over the years like these pros.”

And here’s a link to the entire list.

Sarah Spain, who also works at ESPN 1000 in Chicago, examines the stereotypes and  makes her case:

Sideline reporting, reading highlights at an anchor desk, co-hosting a studio show — people have come to expect and accept seeing women do these jobs. But it’s still a rarity to see a woman host a sports-talk radio show or do play-by-play or color commentary for a men’s pro game.

When it comes down to it, it’s about being seen and not (really) heard.

The stereotypical male sports viewer is OK getting postgame scores and sideline updates from a woman — he gets to admire her appearance while she provides some info he may or may not be listening to. But a radio host or a play-by-play announcer is rarely, if ever, seen on camera. The job is just about what’s being said; all that matters is the content provided.

On Doris Burke working as an analyst on last week’s Bulls game:

The questioning of “credentials” often comes into play when people criticize female analysts covering a men’s game. The same rules don’t seem to apply to men.

Burke played college ball at Providence College, where she was named the school’s female athlete of the year and inducted into its hall of fame. She has been calling games for more than 23 years now — women’s college hoops since 1990, men’s college hoops since 1996, the WNBA since 1997 and the NBA since 2000.

Unlike Burke, the following prominent, well-respected, male NBA play-by-play announcers never played a minute of college basketball: Marv Albert, Dick Stockton, Bob Costas, Mike Breen, Dan Shulman and Al Michaels.

And finally:

These days, sideline reporters are almost exclusively female, female studio hosts are commonplace and a female duo can anchor “SportsCenter” without anyone noticing. With women like Burke and Beth Mowins calling men’s games and Anita Marks and Amy Lawrence hosting major-market and nationally syndicated radio shows, views may continue to gradually shift.

With any luck, the next generation of sports fans, which will grow up seeing and hearing women in every role, will be as nonchalant about a woman calling an NBA game as our current generation is about a woman doing sideline interviews at an NFL game.

Let’s hope so.

Thanks to Keith Thibault and Ken Fang for having me on as a guest this week. Obviously, the big news is the launch of the new Fox Sports 1. We have a lively discussion.

Here is the link. It is time well spent.

In honor of Joe Garagiola retiring this week at the age of 87, here are some vintage posts.

The open for Game 1 of the 1973 World Series.

Garagiola chatting with David Letterman in 1993.

Opening an NBC Game of the Week with Vin Scully in 1984

Many thanks to Jim Romenesko for asking me to do a Q/A on his site. I’m not sure I’m worthy of his attention, but it was an honor to be featured. Judging by the feedback I received, you could see the popularity of jimromenesko.com.

Here’s the link for those who want to spend even more time with me.