COMMENTS FROM THE PEANUT GALLERY - MIKE IN DA - DECEMBER 10, 2010

COMMENTS FROM THE PEANUT GALLERY

Written by: Mike in DA
Date posted: 12/10/2010


THIS GUY GOTTA BE A SOCCER FAN!

NICE MLS SUBSTITUTION!

FLUB OF THE DAY

The Houston Chronicle continues to flub either due to typos or proof reading. In Thursday's (12/9) Chronicle on Page C2, the pointspread for the three College Basketball games shown were as follows:

FLORIDA 136.5 Kent State

XAVIER    1       Butler

TEMPLE   PK    Georgetown

Looking at those spreads, Kent State over Florida looks like the "Lock of the Millenium".



DOES PLAYING WELL GIVE YOU GOOD CHARACTER?

This past Sunday, I tuned into the Chevron World Challenge on NBC to watch as Tiger Woods was leading at the time. I was curious to see how Tiger, the spectators, and announcers would react if Tiger finally won a tournament. As you may know, that never happened, as Tiger lost to Graeme McDowell in a sudden-death playoff.

It even appeared that the NBC announcers were actually cheerleading for Tiger all day, as if he had just returned from the Afghanistan War as a hero, as opposed to an expensive scandalous divorce.

If Tiger continues to golf like he did this past weekend, as we head into next year, the TV people and much of the media can apply to him the same redeemed-soul bullshit that they have laid on Michael Vick. To them, playing well must be a reflection of a man's character.



WHEN SHELTON SPEAKS, PEOPLE LISTEN!

HMW's leader, Craig Shelton, has several times in his blogs suggested that it would be to SportsRadio610’s (aka KILT AM) advantage to move Houston Sports Talk’s “2010 Rookie of the Year”, Josh Innes, to the drive-time afternoon slot as a replacement for Rich Lord to appeal to a younger crowd, as Rich is getting up there in years for the 25-54 demographic. But it looks like Mr. Lord is a piece of the furniture at SR610 or has pictures of somebody because he keeps on “getting a licking, but keeps on ticking”.


So SR610 did the next best thing and starting next Tuesday (12/14), Josh will be moving to the afternoon as a replacement for the vanilla Robert “Skillet Head” Henslee. Josh will team with Rich Lord, which should be very interesting, as SR610 tries to improve on its afternoon ratings as the “sports leader”.


Henslee will continue in his position as the station’s sports director and will contribute news updates and handle other duties. Mike Meltser will take over Josh’s daily one-hour show 10 to 11 a.m. and Josh’s duties as the sports-flash person on the Morning Show with Marc Vandermeer and John Lopez and as a fill-in co-host when Marc or John are out.

As hard as the Peanut Gallery has been on Josh, we wish him luck, but we will be listening.

LEBRON’S RETURN TO CLEVELAND WAS A JOKE ON THE NBA!

Last week, the airwaves were dominated by “LeBron James Returns To Cleveland” when the Cavaliers would host the Heat for the first time since LeBron left town. After ESPN soiled itself with “The Decision” back in the summer, you might think they would have worried about overdoing this “Return to Cleveland” game. Well, they must not have worried about that at all because that was about all they put on the air for about 36 hours before the game and 24 hours afterwards.

I watched a tape of last Thursday’s (12/2) Heat-Cavaliers game on TNT. The over-the-top WWE-style, screaming, yelling, and pyrotechnics and the too-long, too-loud, and too-childish introductions were an embarrassment to the NBA.


If there was one NBA crowd this season that didn’t need to be artificially and excessively aroused, this was it. The whole night stunk of low-brow, unsportsmanlike, and crude conduct.

It was nice to see the Heat romp, 118-90, giving its financial backers an easy spread-cover.

At halftime of the game, TNT’s  Charles Barkley complimented the Cleveland crowd for its relatively good behavior. “Nothing profane,” he said, in praise. So if being profane is a bad thing, why is Barkley so often profane on TNT? Or is that what TNT pays him for?

KILT'S LEAD IS CUT INTO, BUT IT'S STILL #1

For those who haven't read it yet, the following is from David Barron’s TV-Radio Notebook in Friday’s (12/10) Houston Chronicle:

“As it converts more radio markets to portable people meters, Arbitron says ratings success now hinges more so on getting more people to tune in each day — called cumulative numbers, or cume — than on time spent listening (TSL).


That’s an application of some note in the Houston sports-radio ratings game. As we have discussed over the years, KILT has been the leader in cume among the four all-sports stations while KGOW (1560 AM) has led in TSL. As each monthly ratings report demonstrates, however, TSL isn’t helping KGOW gain any ground on the other three stations. In fact, it continues to lag toward the bottom of the list among men 25-54, the key demo for sports radio.


In the November report, KILT ranks 22nd among all stations for average weekly cume among men 25-54. KBME (790 AM) is 24th, KFNC (97.5 FM) is 29th, and KGOW is 39th among 43 stations measured. Among persons 12-plus, the only demo in which Arbitron allows specific numbers to be published, KILT’s average weekly cume during November was 316,000 listeners (1.0 share vs. 1.3 in October) to 191,100 for KBME (.6 vs. .5 in October), 170,200 for KFNC (.6 vs. .4 in October) and 54,000 for KGOW (.2 vs. .3 in October).


For comparison purposes, 13 local stations outperform the four sports stations by themselves in that category, led by KODA (99.1 FM) at 1.9 million. It’s one of seven stations with more than a million in average weekly cume in November, according to Arbitron.


As for the financial bottom line, it appears that Houston radio is making a comeback of sorts. Through October, total revenue for the six major station groups - Cox, Clear Channel, CBS, Univision, Radio One, and Cumulus - was up 7.6 percent from last year, to $234.3 million. Clear Channel, which by itself commands about a third of the market, is up 6.2 percent, and CBS is up 10.9 percent, thanks to improved revenue for its FM music stations.


Among the sports stations, KILT is down slightly from a year ago, KBME is up by 12 percent, and KFNC is up 17.6 percent. KGOW does not report financial data to Miller Kaplan, the Los Angeles firm that compiles financial data for the radio industry.” END



HARRISON AIN'T HURTING IN THE POCKET!

Last week, Steelers’ coach Mike Tomlin rose to the defense of one of his players as you would expect him to. Tomlin noted that  linebacker, James Harrison, had been fined four times by the NFL for illegal hits and Tomlin indicated there might be extra scrutiny on his player. That is probably true given that some of Harrison’s hits have been pretty outrageous in light of the league’s focus on “player safety”.

However, Tomlin squandered whatever credibility/sympathy he might have had in this matter when he said that Harrison’s fines now up to a total of $125K might impact his family. Tomlin said: “He’s got two kids. That’s some serious college schooling right there potentially for those kids 16, 18 years from now.”


What Tomlin forgot to say was that Harrison signed a six-year contract extension last year with a total value of $51.75M. I know there is no way that he will ever collect all of that money; after taxes he will probably clear $10-$15M, which is nowhere near $51.75M. Nonetheless, there is no rational basis for suggesting that Harrison’s kids will be having difficulty attending college 16 – 18 years from now due to financial reasons.

And if Harrison should take Tomlin’s comments seriously about the kids' education, assuming that Harrison is a Pennsylvania resident, the state offers a pre-paid college tuition savings option and part of those contributions are deductible on that state's tax return.


IS JAYSON WORTH IT?

To the surprise of many, including our local sports talk hosts, Jayson Werth will play for the Washington Nationals for the next seven years and will collect a reported $126M of their money. 

Werth is a better than average outfielder, so if the Nationals think paying him $18M a year is worth it to that franchise to give it some credibility, then so be it. However, he is 31-years-old and will be 38-years-old when this contract is finished. Does it make sense that he will be making $18M a year seven years from now? Many don’t think so.

Werth of course said all the right things after signing on: “I signed here to win, and I believe that we’re going to win. It’s going to be a challenge; it’s going to take some time.”

The Nationals are a bad baseball team. Last year, the Nats won 69 games. I agree with Jayson; it's going to take some time to be a winner.



DID THE FOOTBALL GODS TAKE DOWN BOISE STATE?

Being a Boise State (BSU) supporter, I’m sure BSU would like to take the last two weeks and put it in a time capsule, so it can pretend the two weeks never happened.

First, the Broncos were watching Alabama beating Auburn, 24-0, in the second period on the day after Thanksgiving. An Auburn loss looked like a very good possibility at that time as 'Bama looked unbeatable that day. All BSU had to do was then beat Nevada that evening as a 14-point favorite and they were on their way to the BCS Championship Game. Wrong!


Then Auburn came from behind to defeat Alabama to stay ahead of Boise in the BCS standings. Then that evening the road Broncos lost to Nevada on a field goal after the Boise State kicker had missed two short field goals, including one at the end of regulation that would have won the game. Hopes for a good bowl game invitation went out the window there.


Do you think that someone at Boise really pissed off one of the football gods? How could that situation get worse for Boise State?

The only way it could have gotten any worse for BSU was for Nevada, the team that knocked Boise out of any meaningful bowl game to get the invitation to play in the Humanitarian Bowl, which is played on the blue turf in Boise. Fortunately for BSU, Nevada will be playing in the “Fight Hunger” Bowl in San Francisco on January 9.


But the bad news didn’t stop there, as TCU announced that it would be leaving the MWC (Mountain West Conference for the acronym-challenged) to join the Big East Conference (Pacific Division???). Boise State opted out of the WAC (Western Athletic Conference) to join the MWC with the idea that having Utah, TCU, and Boise State in one conference might make that new version of the MWC worthy of “automatic qualifier status” in the BCS. Well, Utah is gone to the PAC-10 next year and then TCU jumps ship leaving Boise State in an MWC that is not all that different from the WAC it just left.


And then earlier this week, analysts discovered a flub in the final BCS rankings. The flub caused BCS officials to revise the computer rankings, moving Boise State up one spot to No. 10 and dropping LSU to No. 11. That probably didn’t affect Boise’s final bowl game status, but it makes you wonder how sneaky and sleazy the BCS people are.

And add to that the firing last month of head coach, Dan Hawkins, by Colorado University. It was Hawkins who originally put BSU on the college football map at the beginning of this century.

The above would be enough evidence for me that at least one of the football gods was out to settle a score with Boise State.

SMU DEATH-PENALTY STORY ON ESPN'S "30 FOR 30" SERIES

Speaking of the football gods being pissed off, one football program that must have pissed off the gods was the SMU football program of the 1980's.

For those not familiar with it, the Southern Methodist University football scandal was an incident in which the football program was investigated and punished for violating numerous NCAA rules and regulations. The most serious violation was the maintenance of a slush fund used for "under the table" payments to players from the mid-1970s through 1986. This ended in the NCAA handing down the so-called "death penalty" by canceling SMU's entire 1987 schedule. SMU decided not to field a team in 1988 as well due to the severity of the penalty.

The harshness of the penalty nearly destroyed SMU football. The Mustangs only had one winning season over the next 20 years, and failed to make another bowl until 2009. It was also one of several factors that led to the collapse of the Southwest Conference. To this day, it is the most severe penalty ever handed down to a Division I athletic program.

Saturday night (12/11) on ESPN at 8 PM CT following the "2010 Heisman Trophy Presentation" (7 PM CT), the "30 For 30" documentary series will air "Pony Excess", which is about the SMU death-penalty era. You can check the TV listings for repeats, if you miss it on Saturday night.

WTF IS A “QATAR”?

I wasn’t, but many of the local sports talkers seemed surprised when they heard that Qatar was awarded the 2022 World Cup. I’m sure the first thing they did was google “Qatar”.

First of all guys, the correct pronunciation of Qatar falls between “cutter” and “gutter”, "but not like “guitar”. Its oil and natural gas revenues according to my research source have enabled Qatar to attain the second-highest per capita income in the world - only Luxembourg is higher. You can bet that some of that revenue went to "buying" the 2022 World Cup. Then throw into the mix that Qatar is slightly smaller than the state of Connecticut.

So you have the 2022 World Cup going to a place that: is smaller than Connecticut; is almost 95% sand; has tournament-time temperatures almost as hot as Hell, as it is likely to hit 110-120 degrees Fahrenheit; is ruled by a despotic monarch; has a religious ban on alcohol; and is a place that few outsiders really know how to pronounce. That sounds like the perfect place to hold the World Cup.

The good news is that it is a good thing the U.S. didn't get it. These things are often more trouble than they are worth. I'll be dead of cancer by 2022, but if I was around, I wouldn't care where they held the tournament, just as long as it didn't involve the city in which I happen to be living in.

HE SHOULD HAVE RECRUITED CRIMINAL-TYPES!

In 2007, when Randy Shannon was hired as football coach of the University of Miami, the "experts",  including many of our local sports talkers congratulated the school, as Shannon eliminated the long-standing and well-deserved image of the team as a free-ride sanctuary for young criminals and punks. Last week, after a 7-5 season (28-22 in his four seasons there), Shannon was fired following an OT loss to South Florida, 23-20. Perhaps it was due to not recruiting the right type of guys.

FAVRE IS THE TOUGHEST GUN IN TOMBSTONE!

Despite posting some of the most dreadful stats in his sure-to-be Hall of Fame career, Brett Favre has done more this season to define his career than any other, which is saying a lot considering the man is the NFL’s all-time passing leader, and hasn’t missed a start since 1992.

While posting an insignificant 69.6 passer rating this season, Favre has redefined toughness, which will define the man’s legacy. Favre has battled an assortment of injuries including: ankle, foot, calf, elbow, shoulder, neck, chin, and back. Unlike other athletes, whose legacies were harmed by poor performances in the twilight of their careers, Brett Favre has managed to turn in his most inspiring season while ranking as one of the lowest-rated passers in the NFL.

 

 

Minnesota Vikings coach, Leslie Frazier, calls Favre the toughest QB to ever play in the NFL. I’ll go further than that and call Favre the toughest man ever to play in the NFL. Despite the pre-season waffling, the voice mails, and the alleged photo of the only muscle on his body that hasn’t taken a beating so far this season, Favre gets my respect for refusing to stay down when he had so many reasons to quit and walk away, even though he could barely walk at the time.





MIKE IN DA


HMW


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