Those in the main sports media call today the slowest sports news day of the year - because of the lack of games. Not coincidentally, ESPN always holds its “ESPYs” on this day in L.A., while devoting its full day of radio programming to an on-air auction designed to raise money for the Jimmy V. Cancer Foundation.

(Sure hope winning bidder’s neighbors are similar humanitarians)

I missed those “ESPN experience” on-air auctions today, because I only listen to ESPN Radio during football season. (More specifically, when I’m prone over the urinal trough at USC home games.)

(Critical show production costs hopefully built into the bid!)

But an emailer was kind enough to point out the results of the “Mike & Mike Experience” auction. Read more…

If you watch any sports television at all (and if you don’t, how did you end up on this site?) then you’ve seen the NutriSystem commercials featuring a bunch of aging fat sports figures like Dan Marino and Chris Berman (and Larry the Cable Guy?) talking about how it’s OK — and in fact delicious — for dudes to go on a diet.

One of the most prominent spokesmen for NutriSystem on commercials airing on ESPN is their very own Mike Golic, who claims to have lost 51 pounds. Well, TMZ recently caught up with Golic and his morning co-host Mike Greenberg outside of David Letterman’s studio.

As he was signing a few autographs (yes, people actually gathered on 53rd Street to get their autographs), Golic had a few words about NutriSystem that the company may not be all that pleased with…

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This is not a good sign for the state of sports talk radio in Chicago. Dan McNeil, the TV/radio columnist for the CHICAGO SUN-TIMES, says that the most recent Arbitron ratings show a disturbing trend: ESPN’s nationally-syndicated “Mike and Mike in the Morning” has become the top-rated sports talk show in Chicago. Not just in its time slot, but of any show - including the big-shot local guys. And McNeil isn’t happy:

They do a fine show, but it’s best consumed in markets such as Bangor, Maine, or Enid, Okla., or Salem, Ore. In big towns like ours, local sports talk never should lose to a more vanilla national show. Shame on all of us.

Readers in Bangor, Enid or Salem, please contact me to get his email address. For everyone else: isn’t this pretty sad? Friends in Chicago frequently complain about the lack of quality of their sports talk shows, and when one of the big drive-time shows has a segment called “Who Ya’ Crappin’?,” we’re hardly talking Peabody Award-winning work here.

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• Lane Kiffin better be updating his resume, although he’s still currently employed by the Raiders - as of this writing, anyway.

• Ronnie Brown runs roughshod and passes perfectly over the Patriots.

• Brady Quinn may finally get his big break with the Browns next weekend.

• Mike Golic’s son gets caught in Notre Dame underage beer bust.

• SbB writer Scott shares his own special memories of Yankee Stadium, such as taking a leak between Bobby Murcer and Ron Santo.

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Well this should put that big underage drinking bust at Notre Dame in perspective. Mike Golic’s son may be in some trouble for having the audacity to drink during his freshman year of college, but at least he survived the incident.

The same cannot be said for William L. Smith. Smith is the nephew of University of Minnesota head basketball coach, Tubby Smith, and he was attending an off-campus party near Becker College in Worcester, Mass. A fight broke out between Smith and some other uninvited guests, and it ended with a fatal stabbing.

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For whatever reason, boozy trouble seems to follow Mike Golic around. First, the roast for himself and radio co-host Mike Greenberg was overshadowed by Dana “Lenny Bruce” Jacobson’s vodka-fueled escapes. Now the AP reports that his son Mike Golic Jr., a freshman on the Notre Dame football team, was one of 41 people arrested for misdemeanor alcohol charges at a house party in South Bend on Sunday morning.

While that’s some measure of trouble for Golic Jr., it could be really bad news for teammate Will Yeatman, who has played in all three games at tight end for the Fighting Irish this season. It turns out he was arrested in January for allegedly driving drunk on a campus sidewalk. As the CHICAGO SUN-TIMES notes, the charges were only dropped after he agreed to  stay out of trouble for one year. Whoops.

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• SI’s Arash Markazi wasn’t so thrilled with Kat DeLuna’s National Anthem performance Monday night - and neither were the fans at Texas Stadium.

• And YOU BEEN BLINDED shudders to think what Josh Howard’s reaction might have been, since he’s black and “don’t celebrate that sh*t“.

• DEADSPIN hears Mike Greenberg lamenting the low-watt brain power of radio co-host Mike Golic: “It is impossible to have a conversation on a high, intellectual level with a man whose idea of fine literature begins with Doctor and ends with Seuss.”

• THE SPORTS DOLLAR drinks in some comparisons between your favorite sports blog & your favorite alcoholic refreshment.

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For a time I worked at now-defunct KMPC-AM in Los Angeles, which was an all sports outlet in Los Angeles that also served as the USC football and basketball flagship. Former Cleveland Brown and L.A. Raider nose tackle (and Saved By The Bell cast member!) Bob Golic co-hosted the pm drive show on the station with Chris Myers, and I often filled in on the show, appearing on-air with Golic.

It was kinda cool working with Bob, considering I grew up in a Notre Dame family (dad, brother, cousins are alums). I remember well watching him outwit Earl Campbell and the Texas Longhorns in the Cotton Bowl as middle linebacker of the 1978 national champion Fighting Irish.

Even before I worked with him, I always thought Golic had the potential to be a solid sports talk guy, like his brother Mike. But at KMPC, Bob never really seemed to bring the daily intensity needed for the job. I often thought to myself during that time that perhaps Golic’s weight was a factor. Bob was huge, and always seemed to be tired, on and off-air. So I was happy to recently see that Golic, who has since located back to the Cleveland area, has dropped 140 pounds in eight months! The local media is all over the story, both print and electronic (scroll down).

The best part? Unlike his brother Mike, who looks like he lost about 25 lbs for a Nutrisystem endorsement by eating sawdust cereal for a week (and then gaining it all back?), Bob apparently dropped the lbs on his own. (So we’re spared the on-air, slow-motion horseplay with sansabelted Dan Marino.) Read more…

Michael David Smith of FANHOUSE has the find of the day - the latest scene involving ESPN’s Mike Golic and Mike Greenberg on the soap opera “Guiding Light.”

We’re not sure how we missed this, but late last week Charlie Weis weighed in on the Dana Jacobson’s roast remarks and let us really know why ESPN took action against her.

Weis: “I was both personally and professionally offended by her comments. And if the situation were reversed, and that were me saying them, two things would have happened. I would have been the lead story on SportsCenter, and I would have been fired.” Read more…