Terrell Owens and Joanna Krupa were the first to leave on "The Superstars" Tuesday night, which is a shame, because Ms. Krupa seems to be an even more entertaining teammate-ripping locker room cancer than T.O. is.
(Check out the curse-filled, unedited version of all this on YouTube if you are an adult or ask your parents' permission first. It's much funnier than Joe Frazier trying to swim back in the day on the original "Superstars.")
The Dragons' new owners never wanted to suspend the Arena Football League for 2009 and strongly have favored a return in '10.
The trick is getting everyone else to come along. Not easy.
It says here they moved the Emmy Awards up by a week to Sept. 13 to avoid conflicting with the most powerful force in television: the NFL.
First, Fran Tarkenton ripped Brett Favre.
Now, he's moved on to Marcellus Wiley. This is getting serious!
That's all for today, kids. I'll leave you with this story by Darren (Roslyn) Rovell of CNBC about the Lingerie Football League.
Notice how Rovell plays this ultra-straight. Lighten up, dude! It's only, um, a game.
See you again at 10 p.m. for my live blogging of the Mets-Dodgers tilt.
(No word yet on whether we will be live blogging LFL games.)
Here is the positive review of the first episode of Michael Irvin's "4th and Long" from my Dallas counterpart, Barry Horn.
The 10-part series debuts on Spike Monday night, and features 12 pro football wannabes (six receivers, six defensive backs) competing for the grand prize: a spot on the Cowboys' training camp come mid-summer.
The winner already has been determined, but when I spoke to Irvin Wednesday he refused to admit that, because he is afraid of the Dallas-area media will try to "hunt to find out what's going on."
Click below to read how Irvin came up with the idea, and why he chose Bill Bates and Joe Avezzano to serve as his top lieutenants for the show.
Photo: Getty
Continue reading "Cowboys put roster spot on line in Spike reality series" »
Michael Irvin turned Thursday's premiere party for his Spike reality show, "4th and Long," into a fundraiser for the family of Rich Behm, the Cowboys scouting assistant who was paralyzed in the team's recent practice bubble collapse.
Here is Barry Horn's account of the event, which raised almost $100,000. For further information, see Irvin's Web site here.
Here is what Irvin told me about the fundraiser earlier in the week:
"Of course I understand and empathize with him because I felt that moment of being paralyzed, and the fear that goes through your mind. It’s a paralyzing fear. When I went to see him in the hospital, I said, ‘I admire your spirit, your approach to this whole thing.’
"I laid on that carpet in Philadelphia [in 1999] and I looked up and said, ‘God almighty, what am I going to do?’ And I got up and was able to walk away. I can only imagine what he’s going through, so it touched me."
Hall of Fame receiver Michael Irvin - whose off-field exploits and on-field dedication make him a star of Jeff Pearlman's 2008 best-seller, "Boys Will Be Boys'' - told me Wednesday during an interview to promote his new Spike reality show that he has not read the book.
But he certainly has been made aware of its contents.
Unsolicited, he brought up the passage describing the sordid, early 1990s, Irvin-led orgies on the private plane used by the Hoopsters, the Cowboys' offseason basketball team.
I can't recount all of it on a family friendly blog, but Pearlman quotes Irvin's assistant / gofer, Anthony Montoya, saying:
"To call those flights 'off the hook' doesn't do anything justice. I don't think there's a word for what went on. We filled those planes with more women than we did players, and they were willing to do anything."
Click below for Irvin's (partial) denial.
Photo: AP
Continue reading "Michael Irvin denies organizing private plane orgies" »
It appears Super Bowl XLIV will be played at . . . Land Shark Stadium.
No, really. It's a beer, apparently.
I never have heard of it. Maybe that's the point.
The details behind the naming rights deal are even weirder than the name itself, including the expected duration (one season) and a driving force behind it (Jimmy Buffett).
Read about it here.
But there's more, like this from Sports Business Journal's Terry Lefton:
"Sources close to the deal said Buffett will help pay for the deal by playing two shows at the stadium at little or no cost. That would allow the Dolphins to cash in on a huge gate, whereas Buffett normally takes the lions share – one source said 90% – of tickets and concessions for his popular shows."
Arena Football League takes another step toward returning to action in 2010.
As I keep telling frustrated p.r. people: I earned the right to ignore the NFL Draft on this beat by covering it for 10 years on my previous beat. Sorry.
(A brief summary of coverage plans for the weekend: ESPN will do a lot of it, as will the NFL Network, as will Sirius XM radio, as will Newsday.)
Oh, what the heck, I'll do one draft-related post. Here are some interesting statistics from Yahoo regarding searches tied to the big event:
78 percent are by males, 22 by females
Males ages 25-to-34 search the most
Markets that search the most: Denver, Pittsburgh, Buffalo, Cleveland, Columbus
States that search the most: CO, WI, OH, MI, PA, SC, LA, MO
Thanks to Tom Rock for this stuff. I hope the Giants keep the beat writers as well fed over the weekend as they did in my day.
We all will be thinking of the guys and gals in the Giants Stadium press room bunker while enjoying the 85-degree weather this weekend.
(WatchDog kudos to first reader to ID the guy in the picture and what he has to do with this post.)
(UPDATE: One of the aforementioned frustrated p.r. people sent me the following survey from ESPN.com of what sports fans are looking forward to watching this weekend:
NFL Draft - 47 percent
NBA Playoffs - 26 percent
Yankees-Red Sox -13 percent
NHL Playoffs - 11 percent
Talladega NASCAR - 4 percent
total votes: 110,675)
This always is a big day for sports TV writers, when everyone examines the new NFL schedule and analyzes the relative strengths of the prime time packages, the big matches and so on.
Not here. Sorry. Study the schedule yourself, and wake me up in September.
OK, one early prediction: Giants at Cowboys on NBC in Week 2, coinciding with the opening of the Taj MaJones, will do boffo ratings.
Very interesting wrinkle on the NFL's new extended rights deal with DirecTV for "Sunday Ticket" from fellow former Newsday Giants beat writer Peter King:
King reports here that the contract calls for the NFL to get paid its $1 billion from DirecTV even if there are no games in 2011!
Nice leverage for the league in case of labor troubles a couple of years hence.
One of the elements of my Friday newspaper column concerns the recent agreement between the Arena Football League owners and players to alter the collective bargaining agreement, a huge step toward the league returning in 2010.
I spoke to acting commish Ed Policy and Dragons managing partner Steven Silva, who said the team is planning outreach programs in 20 communities across Long Island.
Silva and his wife, team president Shanna, had the unfortunate experience of buying the Dragons from Charles Wang in July, then unveiling a new logo and touting a fresh start, then seeing the 2009 season disappear from under them in December.
Both Policy and Silva said they hope eventually to bring back at least some of the league and team employees laid off in the wake of the '09 suspension.
Photo: Getty
An important step toward the Arena Football League resuming play in 2010: an agreement with the players union.
Seconds before a radio biz tipster told me Westwood One and the NFL finally had agreed to terms, Sports Business Daily/Journal sent word of that very thing from Old Reliable John Ourand.
(This presumably means Marv Albert and Boomer Esiason will be back on the Monday night beat if they want to be.)
Click below for my cut and paste of his report.
Continue reading "NFL eschews ESPN, sticks with Westwood One radio" »
United Football Leaue commissioner Michael Huyghue (Cornell '84) announced Versus would televise a weekly game during the UFL's first season, beginning Oct. 8.
Versus will show the championship game Thanksgiving weekend.
“The UFL’s business model is to align with companies who are willing to grow with us and embrace the UFL’s vision of innovation, accessibility, excitement and entertainment,” the commish said in the news release.
The UFL plans teams in New York, Las Vegas, Orlando and San Francisco.
Jim Fassel will coach the Las Vegas team.
The league has not yet announced where its teams will play.
Please don't ask me a lot of followup questions about the UFL, because I will not know the answers.
I'm done. Enjoy L.T. on "Dancing with the Stars."
Oh, and before I forget . . .
Mazel tov to two crazy kids in love.
I thought Gisele and I had a moment in the Giants Stadium elevator 14 months ago, but she evidently has moved on.
Have a nice weekend, everyone.
Enjoy "Party Food" at 7:30 a.m. Saturday on MSG. Featured product: The Magic Bullet Blender.
Photo: Getty
Glauber now is more than two hours into a Newsday-record-shattering live chat.
Wow. Follow it here.
(UPDATE: It's over. Two hours and 14 minutes.)
Yes, I did my duty as an American and watched the Academy Awards Sunday night.
But let's put the event in perspective: When the numbers come in from Nielsen, they will show that the Oscars attracted well under half as many viewers as the Super Bowl, and probably fewer than the AFC Championship Game.
The so-called "Super Bowl for Women" also will have attracted fewer female viewers than the Super Bowl did.
Just sayin'.
Anyway, I'll post the relevant numbers when I have them. The NFL probably is preparing its gloating news release on this as you read this.
Photo: Getty
Legal wagering on the Super Bowl was down 11 percent from last year and was the lowest in five years, Bloomberg reported.
I thought about flying to Vegas and risking the house on a prop bet that Hayden Panettiere would announce her allegiance to the Jets on the pregame show, but I couldn't get a cheap flight.
I talked to Bob Costas Tuesday about the pregame show, which got mixed reviews.
Click below for his thoughts.
Photo: Getty
Continue reading "Bob Costas responds to Boss calling him a 'dummy'" »
For decades, most people figured the United States would elect a woman as President before the Pro Football Writers of America would.
Wrong! And she's from a red state, even!
My Super Bowl roundup (see post below) barely scratched the surface of the story ideas that have been pouring into SportsWatch / WatchDog headquarters this week.
For example, I haven't even gotten around to writing about the soft secondary market for tickets to the big game this year, even with the rabid Steelers fan base involved.
Click below to read some items I sent for the viewer guide that ended up on the cutting room floor in Melville, including interesting stuff for ratings geeks direct from Nielsen.
Most importantly, read the stuff Glauber and Boland are reporting from the site of the big game.
Photo credit: AP
Continue reading "Kansas City enjoys the Super Bowl most of all cities" »
Here is my Super Bowl viewer guide extravaganza, in which the names Joe Torre and Alex Rodriguez do not appear a single time.
Too much material to summarize it all here. There are items on Matt Lauer's sitdown with Barack Obama (not Chesley Sullenberger), NBC's crowded, advertising-challenged pre-game show, radio accounts in Flemish and Hungarian, 450 NBC personnel on the job, John Madden and Al Michaels, and the game's ratings prospects given the less-attractive matchup compared to last year.
One of the accompanying charts lists the seven highest-rated non-Super Bowls. Among the 15 highest-rated TV shows ever, eight are Super Bowls, topped by Super Bowl XVI between the 49ers and Bengals.
Nothing ever will surpass the 60.2 percent of homes the M*A*S*H finale earned in 1983, not in the vastly more cluttered media environment of the 21st century.
But one year soon the Super Bowl will earn a bigger audience than M*A*S*H did, given the growing population. M*A*S*H was watched by an estimated 106 million people.
The second-most watched show ever was Super Bowl XLII, with an average of 97.5 million. That figure peaked at 112 million in the final minute.
Continue reading "Super Bowl features Al Michaels, Bob Costas, Boss" »
Super Bowl XLIII fever grips Gotham! Well, not really.
Newsday's past six back page topics, in reverse chronological order:
Giants, Yankees, Mets, Yankees, Super Bowl, Manny.
Daily News: Yankees, Giants, Yankees, Yankees, Yankees, Yankees.
New York Post: Giants, Giants, Super Bowl, Yankees, Super Bowl, Super Bowl. (Regarding those last two Super Bowl back covers . . . The Yankees were on the front cover!)
Was Super Bowl XLII a peak in the history of the game as a media event, never to be matched again?
Too soon to tell. But the numbers clearly are trending down this year.
Glauber talks of the thinner than normal journalist horde, and Editor & Publisher writes of a dip in media credentials requested of and issued by the NFL.
By the way, Amani Tooomer got into the Torre spirit and popped off today about the Giants. Glauber was there.
Photo credit: AP photog you're our man, if you can't do it, no one can!
Cuba Gooding Jr. keeps turning up on the fringes of this year's NFL playoffs.
In his role as former fictional Cardinals star Rod Tidwell, he is expected to attend Super Bowl XLIII.
And before the divisional round, his character in the 2000 film "Men of Honor" inspired a T-shirt Tom Coughlin handed out to his Giants players.
Tom Rock wrote about it at the time.
A sneak peak at much-anticipated Troy Polamalu "Mean Joe Greene" remake ad debuting Sunday.
Thanks, Awful Announcing!
Speaking of the Super Bowl, Media Day and Rod Tidwell . . . Check out this scathing piece in Slate that dissects the recent articles lauding the journalistic objectivity of Larry Fitzgerald Jr.'s father.
(I have written about this topic on a couple of occasions, but it appears the writer of the Slate story was unaware of my efforts, thank goodness.)
Josh Levin on the sportswriter-father of the hottest receiver in the NFL:
"Fitzgerald Sr.'s column in the Minnesota Spokesman-Recorder, a weekly African-American newspaper, is less a work of journalism than a proud parent's scrapbook."
Ouch!
What with all this Joe Torre book stuff, I can't keep up with all the interesting Super Bowl-related links I normally would offer.
So I'm leaving the job to Darren (Roslyn) Rovell, who in the past couple of days has posted important information on a chicken wing shortage, cancelled Super Bowl parties, weird proposition bets and a planned appearance in Tampa by Rod Tidwell himself, perhaps the most famous Cardinal of all time.
Among the parties biting the dust are Playboy's, which I never got to attend, and Sports Illustrated's, which I attended last year.
Did I ever mention I spoke to Marisa Miller there?
(Photo credit: Thanks for the extremely tasteful picture of Ms. Miller, AP.)
The Lingerie Bowl has been cancelled, in a dispute with the nudist resort scheduled to host the event over players and spectators wearing . . . too much clothing?!
It will be difficult for a Super Bowl-related story to top this one.
Photo credit: Getty Images, your work is appreciated.
A loyal reader just pointed out that in my newspaper column I wrote the Cowboys had not made the playoffs in 12 years when obviously what I meant to indicate is they have not won a playoff game in 12 years.
I apologize for the error and the confusion. Inexcusable.
My Friday column includes a small item on the latest from the Cowboys circus: a reality show starring Michael Irvin whose winner will earn an actual training camp roster spot from the Pokes. It must be true, because Jerry Jones is a judge!
Here is a longer story on the subject from AP.
And here is Tony Romo's take on the matter of whether he cares enough about winning and losing.
When I was a Giants beat writer a bunch of us discussed the toughest beats in the business, and the general consensus was the Yankees were No. 1, the Cowboys No. 2.
Whatever is in third place is a distant third.
Earlier today I celebrated the 25th anniversary of the most famous Super Bowl ad ever.
Here is news related to the second most famous Super Bowl ad ever.
Today is the 25th anniversary of the most famous Super Bowl ad ever.
Darren (Roslyn) Rovell is on it.
I don't know whether Al Michaels studied up on this in advance of a Super Bowl preview conference call Tuesday or whether it was off the top of his head, but I was impressed by his recall of the three Cardinals games he worked for ABC's version of "Monday Night Football" during the franchise's Arizona era.
Each was eventful in some way.
Click below for the list.
Continue reading "Al Michaels and Arizona Cardinals go way, way back" »
The 2008 Cowboys were one helluva mess.
I believe it's fair to say Larry Fitzgerald Jr. officially has surpassed former Met David Newhan as the best pro athlete produced by a sportswriter father or mother.
(Fitzgerald's father, Larry Sr., writes for the Minnesota Spokesman-Recorder, a weekly newspaper that covers the African-American community. David's father, Ross, was a baseball writer for the L.A. Times.)
So, to review, here is the list:
1. Larry Fitzgerald Jr.
2. David Newhan
3. Umm . . . a little help here? Am I forgetting somebody?
Why is the NFL conference championship that is being played in a Western city with a warm climate (and a retractable roof!) scheduled for the early slot Sunday, while the conference championship in an Eastern city with a cold climate is at night?
Fair question. But much as that order makes no sense from a fan comfort view (as if that matters) and plenty of TV sense - Ravens-Steelers is a bigger ratings grabber than Eagles-Cardinals - neither factor is relevant here. The order was set well in advance.
CBS and Fox take turns getting the later slot, giving the opposite network a chance to make plans for other prime time programming. That makes sense, to a point, but in a kinder, gentler world the Steelers would be playing at 3 and the Cardinals at 6:30 ET.
Speaking of the conference title games, in these belt-tightening times the NFL axed the parties for journalists and other assorted game-related visitors that traditionally are held in the two host cities Saturday night.
So Glauber's column in Monday's newspaper should be better than usual, because we can assume he got a good night's sleep in Pittsburgh.
Continue reading "Cardinals fans will be warm early, Steelers fans cold late" »
Speaking of interesting stories in rival publications (see post below), I was planning to look smart by doing a post Sunday on how we'd be reading a lot leading up to the SBXLIII about the World War II mergers of the Steelers and Eagles and later the Steelers and Cardinals.
But the Times jumped the gun, writing the story before the conference championship games. Here it is.
Another new media milestone: Former Jets public relations intern Roger Goodell speaks to popular sports media blog The Big Lead.
Good for both of them.
Jerry Rice doesn’t customarily share his deepest fears with me, so he must have really meant it when he admitted he was “scared to death’’ about Tuesday’s DVD release of the flick “Without a Paddle: Nature’s Calling.’’
That’s DVD as in straight-to-DVD, an indication that Rice’s acting debut playing someone other than himself is not quite Jim Brown in “The Dirty Dozen,’’ or even Alex Karras in “Blazing Saddles.’’
“Teammates and other people are going to laugh and are going to say, ‘How did they get you to do that part, man? You look stupid,’’’ Rice said.
Um, yes, that question could come up. Rice has only one scene, late in the movie, as “Hal Gore,’’ who as he described it lives “in the wilderness for about 30 years searching for a cure for global warming."
“The costume really scared me to death,’’ he said. “I’m used to having a football uniform on, and my football uniform always was nice and neat. I had this big beard, this big, old coat made of squirrels. I look like a mountain man.’’
Rice had only one day to learn the script. “That old, crazy man Terry Bradshaw was supposed to do it, and his back went out on him, so they called me,’’ he said.
Continue reading "Jerry Rice says he is 'crazy, and might be a little insane'" »
It's STILL college football season. Zzzzzz.
I don't know what to do with these NFL ratings stories anymore. Readers of my newspaper column are sick of them. So I'll mostly bore blog readers.
For example: Saturday night's Colts-Chargers tilt drew the best "overnight" rating in major markets (18.3 percent of homes) since prime time wild card games were instituted in 2002.
The rating peaked at 21.6 at 11:30 p.m., during OT.
Top 10 Markets (rating/share):
1. Indianapolis, 45.3/64; 2. San Diego, 38.6/63; 3. Nashville, 29.8/42; 4. Baltimore, 25.1/39; 5. Portland, 24.5/36; 6. Ft. Myers, 22.8/35; T7. Phoenix, 21.8/36; T7. New Orleans, 21.8/31; 9. Charlotte, 21.6/33; T10. Kansas City, 21.2/34; T 10. Las Vegas, 21.2/31.
Have to write a Tuesday newspaper column now. Enjoy "Gossip Girl" on Ch. 11 tonight. And remember, kids, do not try that sort of behavior in real life.
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