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You laughed at its jabs at office drudgery, you chortled at its sassy comparisons of women’s basketball and porn. Ah, it was a great 14 hours. But as is the case with so many new shows, FOXSPORTS.COM’s new webcast, “Cubed,” has been taken down and replaced with a toned down and retooled version, owing to certain complaints (Sample: Brick flies through Fox studio window). Read more…
Jay Glazer is getting plenty of mileage out of his recent motorcycle accident, making the status of his forearm road rash know to all via his Twitter page on FOX SPORTS. This can only enhance his status in the MMA community, I’d guess. Read more…
A couple years ago, after leaving a particularly crappy soul-sucking office job, I made a solemn vow to myself that I would never work in a typical office or cubicle again. No more staring at the portable, thumbtackable walls of a cubicle. No more endless, pointless meetings about nothing at all. I spent the majority of my 20s sitting under the harsh glare of flourescent lighting and decided that I was not going to waste my life as a Dockers-and-polo-shirt-clad cog in someone else’s corporate machine.
Then again, maybe if I’d been working at FOXSPORTS.COM, I’d be singing a different tune. They debuted a new comedy-reality-web-show-thingy this week, a sort of “The Office meets talk radio meets entry-level marketing position” series, that makes the office life look, well, pretty damn fun after all.
After second-generation ballplayer John Mayberry, Jr. launched a home run in his second major league at-bat in today’s Phillies/Yankees game on Fox, Joe Buck and Tim McCarver lavished praise over John Mayberry, Sr. (a 14-year major leaguer) and expressed how proud he must be. The camera lingered over a man in a World Baseball Classic Panama jersey and his two pre-teen children.
(Huge hat tip to Matt P of THE 700 LEVEL for helping to get this screenshot of a very focused Not Senior)
Which probably should have been a clue, really, to the Fox Sports crew on site. They picked up on their mistake an inning later and announced they had shown two minutes of the wrong man. Hey, it’s an easy mistake, right? Right?
(Video after the jump.)
We can’t help it, we love Rick Fox. The man whose career never should have lasted long enough to parachute onto title teams with Shaq never fails to bring intrigue, whether he’s on the set of some preposterous soap opera or on a pre-game show. Lately, the scripts he’s been delivering on Fox Sports West’s “Lakers Live” pre- and post-game shows have been better than soap operas anyway. So we’re begging that his Twitter updates claiming he may quit the whole broadcasting biz are a preliminary overreaction to some out of control criticism.
As SI.com’s FAN NATION first pointed out, Fox’s Monday night routine was pretty bizarre, even if that’s precisely what made it so captivating. First, he unzipped his sweatshirt and screamed “Wolverine!” during the pre-game show. Then, after the Lakers eliminated the Jazz, he went into Mexican celebration mode, screaming out “Orale, orale!” repeatedly, before asking if anyone had “ever seen a Mexican surf?” while he pretended to ride wives and hummed “Wipeout!”
All in all, those were the only two moments of moderately captivating television on “Lakers Live” all week, so we don’t see what’s wrong with increasing Fox’s role on the show.
It’s probably a rough morning for Dodgers fans. After knocking off the best team in the league, they probably thought they had clear sailing past the historically hapless Phillies. But they went out with a whimper, not a bang, and couldn’t even drink off their sorrows at Big Wang’s.
(L.A. fans would never approve of someone whoring themselves for cash.)
But there is a silver lining. At least they won’t have to watch their awful, awful team anymore. But more importantly for the children, impressionable minds, and think-skinned religious folk of L.A., they won’t have to watch any more commercials for a Kevin Smith film.
It’s a bad week to be a Cubs fan. As we noted today, Dutch Vodka maker “Effen” is publicly acknowledging the teams’ lengthy World Series futility with “cheeky” billboards titled “Break. Effen. Curse.” In doing so they’ve dashed the see no evil, speak no evil hear no evil mentality some Cubs fans have towards the streak.
We hate to pile on but there’s another malevolent force working against the Cubs this year: broadcaster Dick Stockton. Rumors and Rants fills us in on the heartbreak.
Being a Fox national game of the week — but not THE game of the week — it was none other than Dick Stockton in the booth. And after Saturday’s loss, the Cubs dropped to 0-3 in games called by Stockton this season. At least if my memory serves me correctly.
According to my charts, that gives the Cubs a six-game losing streak in games announced by Stockton.
Sports talk radio is the place where announcers and analysts take off the masks and tell us how they really feel about the sports they cover and the people playing them — because they really don’t think anyone is listening. Last month, Justin Gimelstob used a D.C. radio show to spew against Anna Kournikova. Now, we get Fox’s lead baseball and football announcer, Joe Buck, admitting to ESPN’s Colin Cowherd that he just doesn’t enjoy baseball as much as he used to.
AWFUL ANNOUNCING has the recorded audio, and is appropriately flabbergasted at the whole mess — because he’s right: this is why fans hate so much of the sports media right now.
Michael Strahan just landed his first TV job - as a football analyst for Fox.
SI’s Richard Deitch reports that the recently retired lineman will be joining Terry, Howie, Jimmy & Curt Menefee in the Fox Studios in Los Angeles this fall. A press conference is scheduled for Tuesday to make the official announcement.
Strahan has been looking for big opportunities on the small screen since jettisoning himself from the Giants roster. And signing with Fox could help Michael achieve his long-term goal - to host a late night talk show.
