Tag: TV

Everything is bigger in Texas!

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A week and a half ago while on a business trip to the fine city of Dallas, TX, I was able to score some tickets to a Dallas Mavericks v Phoenix Suns game (thanks Stub Hub). I don’t know if all the games that happen at the American Airlines Center are that good, but for me, it’s 100% accurate so I’m just going to assume all games are similar.

Giant TV at the AACFirst off, there is the American Airlines Center which is a large television screen covered and wi-fi enabled arena sponsored by Mr. Mark Cuban. I’m not joking about thebeing covered in TVs. The main entrance has 2 moving screens that flank the big screen above the doors. Oh, and there was another one before you got to those 3.

One of the moving TVs at the AACOnce we got past all the screens, we went into the arena and sat down in the Jack Danial’s restaurant by the buffet and watched the Celtics get their third loss. The view from where I was sittingThe close game and sad outcome for the boys in green left a bad taste in my mouth. Entrance to the American Airlines CenterThat was quickly remedied but a delicious pile of smores. ??????? ??? ??? After I had had my fill of deliciousness, it was time for some basketball, and we headed to our seats — as far back and away from the floor as possible. ???? ????????? ??? ????????? Read More

Roll the Blogosahedron: Let’s Dance!

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Meghan the Patriots CheerleaderSo I rolled the ol’ 20-sided Blogosahedron this week and I think I rolled a critical hit, but you should be the one to decide that. We have recently enjoyed some wild card baseball. Some people may think that this wild card thing has been around for quite a while, but that’s not true – it’s only been around for 10 years. Way back in 1993 the owners voted to add the wild card into baseball. There was only 1 dissenting vote…

For a little bit of science, there is the new super-high-tech NHL jersey. And if you think those jerseys are stupid, check out what Dallas considers professional journalism.

Tim McCarver may be professional, but it turns out that it took him until ALCS Game 4 to realize that to get multiple runs, getting 1 run is better than getting 0 runs:

Believe it or not, Joe, in 2007 when a team led off an inning with a home run, it led to more multiple-run innings than when a team led off an inning with a lead-off walk! It doesn’t seem like that would be the case.

Now that the science is out of the way, I can move to the fun stuff. Read More

TVlog: 5 Minutes of ESPN Firsttake

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Since Jonathan Lee Riches decided to give me a day off by suing Martha Stewart for the benefit of Rachael Ray, I had to come up with a new subject. So, in a first for NerdsOnSports, I’m going to write running commentary on what I’m watching on TV. At 11 AM. I don’t have a job to go to until Monday. So I watch things like “Firsttake” (f/k/a “Cold Pizza”) on TV. It really is this bad.

All times EDT.

11:00: OK, They’re talking about Steve Spurrier’s history vis-a-vis LSU. Interesting, perhaps, but I tuned in right in the middle, so I’m really not sure what the operative thesis is here. I think it’s something about how Spurrier’s had a great coaching career and has performed well against LSU, or hasn’t, either way he’s a football coach. Read More

This is Casey McCall, alongside Dan Rydell

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I credit a lot of my interest in sports to a little show called Sports Night, which had nothing to do with sports.

Sports NightBefore Aaron Sorkin was lecturing us from Ararat on his wildly successful show The West Wing, he had a half-hour comedy/drama set behind the scenes at a cable network’s evening sports show. Peter “Six Feet Under” Krause and Josh “Dead Poets’ Society and Nothing Really Good Since” Charles played the head writers and broadcasters, Casey McCall and Dan Rydell (as American a pair of names as you could hope to read on TV). Felicity Huffman played the show’s director, and Robert “Benson” Guillaume its executive producer.

Sports Night gave me a better look at the haphazard chaos that goes into putting together the glossy melange of CGI transitions that is a cable sports show. Each episode of the fictitious TV show has a certain number of segments. Their currency is minutes, and the writers and producers have to fill those minutes with video segments and commentary.

The Sports Night CastActual sports content appears pretty rarely in the show. In typical Sorkin fashion, the focus is more on controversial players than interesting games. There’s the football player who roughs up women (“Mary Pat Shelby”), the college players from a Tennessee school who refuse to play under a Confederate flag (“The Six Southern Gentlemen of Tennessee”), or a baseball player who disses his new team’s hometown on the air (“Shane”). It’s heavy on the preachy melodrama, which you wouldn’t think a show about sports would merit.

But the good thing about an Aaron Sorkin show is that, occasionally, the dialogue has some snap to it. ????? ???? ????? Read More

Obscure Sports (Quarterly? Annual? Whenever?)

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And now, selected news from the ‘lesser’ sports!

WOMEN’S LACROSSE!

US U-19 Team threepeats as World Champs! Too bad Mike Nifong wasn’t around to give them some publicity. Lacrosse will hit the popular media only once more, but by then it will be too late.

BOWLING!

New Sponsor for the PBA! Bowling’s not obscure, per se, but its prominence in the firmament of broadcast sporting events seems to have been compromised. Used to be bowling was on all the time, on the ABC or the CBS networkBowler or Koechner; I would see balding men in neatly pressed pants hurl weighty objects every time Grandpa dozed back off during ‘Muppet Babies,’ because I couldn’t muster the strength to turn that gigantic atomic-age channel selector wheel, and thank the good Lord he at least finished chewing the donut this time. Anyway, bowling had a certain I don’t know what in French back then, with national TV coverage, kids having birthday parties at the local lanes (Joey, I know, it’s cool, my invite was lost in the mail) and the widespread availability of Carling Black Label and Schaefer, the beer of choice for guys who bowl and/or look like David Koechner.

Anyway, this article’s pretty upsetting, because the PBA is really, really excited about a sponsorship deal from CLR. You know, that stuff that you’re supposed to put in a comically oversized lab beaker and drown your shower head in, and then they expect you to use it to shower again, even though there’s obviously now a tremendous amount of patently toxic chemicals in every last drop coming out of that… that awful thing, and damn it we have to move again, don’t we. It was like this in Topeka, it was like this in Nashville. You need treatment.

SECRET HAVING!

PostSecret:
Arandano
Man, is that tragic. The deceased probably had to get all her Mexican antioxidant goodness from el jugo de pomegranate.

HIGH SCHOOL WRESTLING! SPECIFICALLY, 96 LB FINAL MATCH AT THE NEW YORK STATE DIVISION 2 WRESTLING CHAMPIONSHIP!

This lengthy YouTube clip–well the part where the kid’s face is being pressed into the ground– is pretty much how I remember high school gym class, but, 96 pounds at age 14? These guys are huge! Seriously, what a pair of fatties! Also, they apparently are very interested in having their heads in each others’ asses. Don’t bother watching beyond the first minute unless you’re one of these kids’ mothers (and if you are, might be a good idea to spring for some better youth wrestling shoes).

(Spoileralert: the kid in blue wins, both are then aggressively wedgied by the guys in the 160 pound division.)

(Last bit: There is an adult-spam comment on the YouTube page; this creeps me out.)

CATS WANTING THINGS!
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My Buddy: Thor

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Thor (Eric Byrnes) vs. Captain Marvel (??)Today I want to tell you about another one of my favorite baseball players: Thor. Now you probably know him by his real name – Eric Byrnes, but I (and my friends) call him Thor. The reason for this name dates back to May 2005 and his time on the Oakland Athletics. I was at Fenway park with a friend or two and we were watching the A’s batting practice. ????? ?? ???????? ????? There was one player with blond locks enjoying himself, making some catches, saying hi to the fans, and throwing some of the balls he caught into the stands. I asked around if anyone knew who that was – no one knew, but one answer was “I don’t know, but he looks like Thor.” So Thor was the hero of batting practice. ???????

Byrnes needs a little powderDuring the game, we got to see Thor made some great catches and have a good night at the plate (1 for 3, 2B, 2BB, 2Runs), Macha was thrown out, and the Sox were up by enough that Fenway emptied out by the eighth allowing me to move right up behind the plate. So from then on I have started to follow Thor. ?????? ???????

Well, Thor and his dog, Bruin, have now hit the big time: They went to the All-Star Game. No he wasn’t selected to the team; he was out in a kayak in McCovey Cove as a player-commentator for FOX (insert stupid robot sounds here). So Thor like to ham it up and be on TV. Another example of this is this short video clip: Read More

Sox Appeal for the Lonely Red Sox Fan

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Hot Ortiz ShirtThe Red Sox cable network (NESN) is making a new show (no, not a Cold Pizza spinoff — Warm Beer) called Sox Appeal. It is a reality show slightly based on the core demographic of your channel… it worked for MTV. (Does MTV show any music? I haven’t watched MTV since 2000.) It’s a televised version of speed dating. From the website:

Each episode a single fan (man or woman) is sent on three blind dates over the course of one Red Sox game. Everybody involved better bring their “A” game because each date only lasts two innings. During the seventh inning stretch, our single fan chooses the date he/she wants to continue dating. ????? ??????? (And maybe, just MAYBE, they get to experience something at Fenway that most fans would kill for. ??? ???? ?? ????? )

Will our hero win and his choice join him for the rest of the game? Or will he suffer the agony of defeat. Alone. In his single seat.

I don’t know about you, but I don’t think that I would be willing to kill to date someone a second time, but I guess there are some rabid redsox fans. Also, why in the first paragraph did they say “he/she” but in the second paragraph go with his, him, and he? Read More