Sely Gallery: COMMENTS FROM THE PEANUT GALLERY - MIKE IN DA

Sunday, January 23, 2011

COMMENTS FROM THE PEANUT GALLERY - MIKE IN DA - JANUARY 23, 2011

COMMENTS FROM THE PEANUT GALLERY

Written by: Mike in DA
Date posted: 1/23/2011

OHIO STATE FAN BULDS OHIO STADIUM OUT OF LEGOS!

HOUSTON RADIO'S PROGRAM DIRECTOR OF THE YEAR – 2010

The Peanut Gallery has selected Gavin Spittle of SR610 as the recipient of its first Houston Radio Program Director of the Year for 2010.

Some of his accomplishments were: bringing in Westwood One NFL football broadcasts along with some college football broadcasts; bringing in ND Kalu as a part-time football analyst; bringing Barry “The Mouth” Warner back to sports talk radio; bringing in Brad Davies as a weekend part-timer; introducing Fan Fest; and putting Josh Innes into a drive time slot and having Josh as a Jim Rome substitute.

This has enabled SR610 to stay on top as the Houston sports leader, despite the fact that Mr. Spittle had to run a station with a turnover of some on-air personnel from the previous year and without a decent network affiliate like ESPN Radio, Sporting News, or Fox Radio.

I'm still waiting for Gavin to initiate a weekly commercial-free hour of sports talk, just like some music stations have with commercial-free music.

RICH RODRIGUEZ: THE JOBLESS COACH WITH THE GOLDEN PLAYBOOK

THE LONGHORN TELEVISION NETWORK WILL SOON BE ON THE AIR!

This past Wednesday (1/19) the long-rumored University of Texas television network finally became a reality, as ESPN is ponying up 300 million dollars over 20 years to get this going. So look for ESPN to be completely impartial when reporting on University of Texas athletics when they have that much loot invested in this team. The long ranging effects of a move of this size may or may not be huge.

The question going around is what the fuck are they going to show on a 24 hour network devoted to just one team? It's been said that ESPN/Fox Sports will still broadcast the Longhorns marquee games to a national audience rather than going on the Longhorn Network. For example, you can expect Texas/Oklahoma to be on ESPN/ABC while the Longhorn Network will get exclusive broadcasting rights for games of the calibre of teams like Little Sisters of the Poor, Cape Fear Community College, Slippery Rock, Beaver University, and Southwestern State University.

Sure, Texas fans will tune in for that latter crap, but is there enough of them to attract advertisers to keep this network financially feasible? Will there be enough of them tuning in for swimming and diving, field hockey, soccer, volleyball, cross country, golf, rowing, or track and field coverage.

These days, the Big Ten Network (BTN) is pretty good after it weathered its initial struggles. Now, the BTN is certainly more stable, but it still struggles with having enough content to fill each day. A typical day usually consists of hours and hours of university programming, replays of old games, and sometimes a live sporting event. Plus, the BTN has the advantage of drawing content from 12 schools instead of just one compared to the Longhorn Network.

During the summer months when the major sports are off, the BTN is extremely dull. Baseball is big at Texas, but that will basically be pretty much the only live sports programming that they will offer from April-August.

It's a pretty scary era of college athletics we are entering. Everything is about money. Billions of dollars are being spent and profited on student athletes. The largest sports network in the world has a 300 million dollar deal with one of the most profitable teams in the nation. It's going to be interesting to see if this will prove to be a huge success or a colossal mistake.

FLUB OF THE DAY: NEWSPAPER CAN'T SPELL "CHICAGO"

FLUB OF THE DAY

About ten days ago, Rich Lord (SR610) was talking about Jeff Bagwell and his shot at the Baseball Hall of Fame. He then wondered how many players from expansion teams have been enshrined in the Hall wearing the cap of an expansion team. He could have looked it up, but was probably too fuckin' lazy to, so he never answered the question.

But he did mention the name of Harmon Killebrew of the Minnesota Twins as one of the expansion guys. Memo to Rich: Minnesota is not an expansion team. It was the original Washington Senators that moved to Minny in 1961. Calling Minnesota an expansion team means that the LA Dodgers and SF Giants must be expansion teams also.

To answer Rich's question, there are nine players from six teams wearing caps of expansion teams in the Hall of Fame, as follows:

Kansas City - George Brett
Montreal - Gary Carter, Andre Dawson
NY Mets - Tom Seaver
San Diego - Dave Winfield, Tony Gwynn
Texas - Nolan Ryan
Milwaukee - Paul Molitor, Robin Yount

Please note that I called in for five days in a row with the answers for Rich, but was told by the producer (aka paid-intern) each time that they were talking football at the time and not taking any baseball calls. I could see that, if they had a football guest on at the time, but that was never the case. All of a sudden these guys don't talk baseball.

PROOF THAT QUICK WEIGHT LOSS DIET REALLY WORKS!

I have always been a skeptic when it comes to the Quick Weight Loss Diet craze that almost every overweight Houston sports talker or deejay seems to be on. But now, I'm a believer.

Last Tuesday night (1/18) on SR610 at 7:05 PM, Barry Warner told us that he dropped 37 pounds on the diet. Then at 7:28 PM, he did another Quick Weight Loss spot and told us that he had dropped 39 pounds since he started the diet.

Wow! He dropped two pounds in less than 25 minutes while sitting at the mike. That is an amazing diet.

WALMART WORKER IS A PADRES' FAN

BIRTHDAY SCHMIRTHDAY!

One of the running pet peeves here is SR610’s ridiculous “Celebrity Birthday” segment on the Afternoon Show with Rich Lord and Josh Innes. (Excuse me., I mean with Josh Innes and Rich Lord aka J&R). Last Tuesday (1/18), Rich read off Monday’s (1/17) birthdays. After the first birthday, which was Betty White’s 89th, Josh realized it was Monday’s birthday list, but lazy-ass Rich instead of googling for Tuesday’s birthdays continued the entire segment reading off Monday’s birthdays.

The SR610 Morning Show with John Lopez and Mark Vandermeer discontinued their birthday segment a couple of months ago, but somehow will still sneak in a few birthdays near the end of their show. On Friday (1/21), among John Lopez’ birthdays was Benny Hill and Wolfman Jack. They’re both dead. When someone dies, you don't honor that person on the date of their birth, but on the date of their death just like most other people and religions do.

Charlie Pallilo and Matt Thomas (Sports Talk 790) don’t do daily birthdays. Neither do John and Lance (KGOW 1560). Mike and Mike (ESPN - 97.5 FM) don’t. The Houston Chronicle doesn’t do it in its Sports section and when it does do it in its Lifestyle/PopCulture, etc., section (Section E), its birthday list only includes the living.

So why does SR610 continue to waste air time with this routine while afternoon callers are kept on hold for another 15 or so minutes? Are we supposed to be impressed at all the heavy "research" involved in getting a list of today's birthdays. An eight-year old kid could do that.

REX AND REMUS (aka ROB) RYAN: THE COLLEGE YEARS!

THE NFL’S ECONOMIC PROBLEMS WILL CONTINUE IF BOTH SIDES CONTINUE THEIR GREED!

I remember way back in Professor Soudek's Economics 3 class when we learned about the Law of Supply and Demand. Well, it looks like it's alive and well in Tampa. The Buccanneers did not sell out a single home game this season; all eight home games were blacked out in the home market.

According to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, the unemployment rate in Tampa as of November 2010 was 12.6%. In that environment, the Bucs have recognized the superiority of the Law of Supply and Demand and announced a ticket price decrease for next season. The team said that “tens of thousands” of tickets will drop in price by 20%. The cheap seats will start at $35 for adults and $17.50 for kids.

The Bucs’ attendance woes this year were striking. The team was not mathematically eliminated from the playoffs until the last week of the season. Nevertheless, the Bucs drew less than 52,000 for a rivalry game against the Super Bowl champion New Orleans Saints in Week #6 and only cracked 60,000 just one time against the Steelers with a shitload of Steelers’ fans in the stadium estimated at around 15-20% of the total crowd.

There are more than a few other teams that have had difficulty in the past several years selling out every home game. My Oakland Raiders, for example, played two home games in front of crowds of less than 40,000 fans. Those kinds of numbers were unheard of ten years ago.

Data like these will be brought up as the NFL owners and the union negotiate the next CBA (“collective bargaining agreement” for the acronym-challenged). Television revenues drive the bus these days. The Monday Night Football contract alone reportedly exceeds $1B per year and will increase about 70% starting next season.

It would be tempting to suggest to the owners that they pay far less attention to the “live fans” in the future, except the attractiveness of the NFL as a television product might be greatly diminished if some teams were playing to stadiums only 50% full. Compare the “energy” of a minor college bowl game with the stands mostly empty with a typical Saturday afternoon college football game. You can tell the difference just watching on television.

The last time the NFL and the NFLPA (National Football League Players' Assocation for the acronym-challenged) negotiated a CBA, there was no economic turmoil of this size to consider. Today, that turbulence is reality and it is not going away in the next year. Both the owners and players need to have their representatives take a sober, unemotional, and analytic look at the economy of the country and the economics of the NFL to be sure that the new CBA does not do damage to the league.

In addition, they should all pay attention to the following fable that makes a lot of sense, especially in these times:

"A cottager and his wife had a Hen that laid a golden egg every day. They supposed that the Hen must contain a great lump of gold in its inside, and in order to get the gold they killed it. Having done so, they found to their surprise that the Hen differed in no respect from their other hens. The foolish pair, thus hoping to become rich all at once, deprived themselves of the gain of which they were assured day by day."

Just like the couple that killed the golden goose, the owners and players have it in their power to embark on unprofitable courses motivated by greed; neither should exercise that power.

FLORIDA PANTHERS FAN OBVIOUSLY LIKES TO WHACK IT! WONDER IF HE PLAYS ON THE SAME LINE WITH #0, FELLATI?

DIVERSITY TALK

Last Monday (1/17) was Martin Luther King Jr. Day in the US. So on Monday night’s show on SR610, Barry Warner and Shaun Bijani talked some about the advancements in sports for “minorities” over the years since Martin’s death. That’s not what MLK Jr. Day is for. It has very little to do with sports.

The idea that marching and protesting for the basic, fundamental rights to vote, eat at a lunch counter, get a good education, and use the same stinky toilet as everyone else is somehow comparable to how many head coaches are black is - to use a technical term – fuckin’ absurd. One was an often-times life and death struggle for equality. Those rights affected millions of people, and the authorities would sick attack dogs on those protestors and fire-hose them. More black head coaches is, at best, a "nice to have", but absolutely pales in comparison to the work of Dr. King and many others.

On that same show, the question came up as to who was the first quarterback in the NFL. A caller said it was Willie Thrower with the Chicago Bears. Barry then dropped the name of a teammate of Willie’s, J. C. Caroline. Upon further review, Willie Thrower played in one game in 1953 as a backup for George Blanda going 3-for-8 in passing with one interception in that game vs. the SF 49ers on October 18. J.C. didn’t join the Bears until 1956, so these two guys were not only never teammates, but probably never met.

Actually, Fritz Pollard was the first QB in the NFL in 1920 with the Akron Pros. He played in 49 games and threw five touchdown passes, which shows that passing was not a big part of the game in the 1920’s.

FYI - After the 1926 season, Blacks were banned from the NFL until after WW2. At that time, there were nine Blacks in the NFL.

CRIER’S CORNER

BASKETBALL ACTION

Yesterday’s Record ATS: 7-7
Cumulative Season Record ATS: 272-176

Today’s Action (for reading purposes only):

NBA

DENVER* (-8.5) over INDIANA
The Pacers need to be sharp for four quarters at 5,200 feet altitude in the second of back-to-back road games, post-Portland and a flight outta there late last night, playing against a rested home team that has revenge for a 144-103 loss at Indiana in the second week of the regular season. Good luck to them with that. DENVER, 110-94

COLLEGE HOOPS

KENT STATE* (-6) over MIAMI-OHIO
Now that Carlton Guyton is back in harness for the Flashes, anticipate Kent will again consistently exceed market expectations for the near term. The added offensive options Guyton facilitates are key, especially vs. an opponent with so few of them. KENT STATE, 66-53.

THEY'RE BACK BY UNPOPULAR DEMAND!