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Football, Media Morons

Scratchbomb Salutes a True American Hero

As I wrote in a recent post, the word “hero” is thrown around a bit too freely in the sports world. However, I heard a true sports hero this weekend.

As I was scooting around on Super Bowl Sunday, I listened to Mike Francesa’s “The NFL Now” program in the car, because my brain hates my ears. My beef with Francesa is well documented. Up until this year, most of that beef was confined to his agenda-driven conduct during the baseball season. I still found his football work to be at least listenable.

But as the Jets made an improbable playoff run, he dismissed all of their accomplishments in the same snide, condescending manner he uses to talk about the Mets. When they made the postseason, it didn’t count because the Colts and Bengals didn’t try in weeks 16 and 17. When they beat the Bengals on the road, it was because of Cincinnati’s mistakes. When they beat the Chargers on the road, again it was no big deal the Jets had taken down one of the best offenses in the NFL on their home turf.

Did the Jets draw an enormous amount of luck to get as far as they did? Of course. But who cares? The sheer improbability of all should have been enjoyed for what it was by anyone unlike Francesa, who traffics in misery for a living. It was a sickening, transparent attempt to both tweak Jets fans and get fans of other teams to cheerlead him.

The most frustrating thing about Francesa is that his medium (radio) doesn’t allow for any kind of counterpoints he doesn’t want to hear. If he wrote for a newspaper or a web site, you could comment on his completely faulty reasoning. Instead, he only welcomes callers who will kiss his ring.

On the rare occasion someone who disagrees with him gets on the air, Francesa merely screams at the poor guy until he gives up. I heard one call a few weeks ago where a reasonable caller accused Francesa of discounting the Jets because he didn’t like them, and because their continued success made him look stupid. Francesa’s voice got louder and louder with each response, and his counterpoints made such insane logical leaps they could only be explained by quantum physics. Eventually, the man on the phone couldn’t get a word in edgewise and had to abandon ship.

Radio also being an ephemeral medium, Francesa doesn’t get called out when he makes off-the-cuff, borderline slanderous remarks. Or when he just gets things wrong, like mispronouncing the name of Colts head coach Jim Caldwell. Throughout the football season, Francesa has referred to the Indianapolis coach as CaRdwell. Not once, or twice, or even a few times. All season long.

But yesterday morning, some brave, genius soul managed to get on the air with Francesa. This man not only called him out on his idiocy, but also made Francesa look like even more of an imperious buffoon than usual, as he mumbled he didn’t “have time” to bother with getting Caldwell’s name right because it was early on a Sunday morning. Yes, you work a whole 30 hours a week–when could you possibly look up the actual name of the AFC champion’s coach?

God bless you, Rich in Massapequa. A man can stand up!

Hat tip to the hilarious @MikeFrancesaNY for the YouTube link.

Warm Thoughts for a Cold Winter

Warm Thoughts for a Cold Winter: Steve Phillips (or Lack Thereof)

For other Warm Thoughts for a Cold Winter, click here.

Last night, I finally took a tour through my site’s stats for the first time since I did a ground-up reboot in December 2008. (My first “new” post was on December 7, a date which will live in infamy.) I was surprised by two things. The first was the amount of unique hits I’ve gotten since then (which I won’t reveal because I’m afraid it’s not actually a big number at all and you’ll all laugh at me).

For the first time, I saw concrete, non-anecdotal evidence that people are reading this thing. So thank you, mostly anonymous well-wishers. I am truly grateful. I’m pretty sure at least 55% percent of you aren’t pron bots, and those of you who are have been very tasteful about your Britney vids and bang buses.

So I dug deeper to suss out some other details hitherto unknown to me. For instance, the most often used term on this site is “Tom”, thanks to The Best Show Logs, which reference that name quite frequently. The four next most popular keywords are “scratchbomb”, “christmas”, “joe”, and “baseball”. Where does “joe” come from? Your guess is as good as mine.

phillips2.jpgBut what really knocked my socks their ass? The number one search term on this site since its reboot a year-and-change ago: STEVE PHILLIPS. Yes, that Steve Phillips. Ex-Mets GM, ex-Baseball Tonight “analyst”, current unemployment line occupant. I knew I’d raked him over the coals a time or two on this site, but I had no idea my not-at-all disguised contempt for him would be so popular.

Granted, this could very well mean nothing. Because I also discovered that the top three search terms of the last week were “rudolph the red-nosed reindeer”,  “danzig”, and “shaved dick”. This last one baffled me, but a quick Google search by the wife showed me that I have a post with one sentence ending with “shaved” and the next with “dick”. I sincerely hope this is the explanation, because if it isn’t, I don’t want to know what the real one is.

Nevertheless, seing Steve Phillips’ name so prominently featured caused me to grumble about his feckless, agenda-driven analysis. But then I remembered: We won’t have to see Steve Phillips at all this year!

Yes, now that the hair-helmeted philandering douchenozzle has been kicked to the curb by ESPN, we won’t have to hear him expound on how much he knows about baseball and how to build a winning team. You know, all those things he failed miserably at when he was the GM of the Mets. With Phillips gone, ESPN’s baseball coverage upgrades from Unwatchable to Merely Insufferable.

And who’s in his place at The Worldwide Leader this year? None other than Bobby Valentine, the genius manager who was run out of New York when he couldn’t cover up for Phillips’ failures. Oh sweet irony!

I don’t know about you, but this thought caertainly warmed me up this cold January morn.

Boob Tubery

NBC Explains its Jay Leno Strategy

jayleno.jpgSimply put, Jay Leno is one of the most compelling entertainers in the world today. We defy you to think of a more immortal comedy routine than Jaywalking. Iron Jay is perhaps the most beloved character of all time. And when the history of humor is written, the works of Mark Twain and James Thurber will pale in comparison to The Dancing Judge Itos.

Jay Leno is a resource we can not afford to lose. If we don’t cater to his every whim, we have to assume he would take his classic cars and race track and march over to ABC or FOX, and take his entire audience with him. We also have to assume said audience includes the tens of millions of Americans currently avoiding his 10pm show in droves.

Therefore, we are reinstating Jay Leno into the 11:35pm slot. His program will run until 7am, preempting the first two hours of The Today Show. But don’t worry, Matt Lauer fans. Matt will get his own breakfast-time segment on Jay’s show, where Jay and him show you how to prepare eggs from the inside of a 1932 Ford roadster.

But this is only the first phase of our new Jay Leno-based programming schedule. Jay will appear in current the NBC programs Chuck, Mercy, and Heroes. Not in cameo appearances, but as a regular character named Jay Leno, who will deliver monologues at critical junctures during each episode. He will also receive 15 minutes of live airtime during each episode of Parks and Recreation to do whatever he wants. Headlines, Mini-Jay, change sparkplugs on one of his Hudson Hornets–the possibilities are endless!

And there’s even more good news, Jay Leno fans! Starting this fall, Jay will star in a new, 90 minute drama, Jay and the Jalopy, in which he and a talking robotic Stutz Bearcat solve mysteries.

As for Conan O’Brien, we had high hopes when we asked him to take over The Tonight Show. However, the ratings have been somewhat disappointing, and we feel these low ratings have adversely affected the audience for Jay’s show. It’s our theory that people aren’t watching Conan, and thus aren’t keeping their TVs tuned to NBC throughout the following 21.5 hours until Jay’s show is on. There really is no other explanation for people refusing to watch Jay Leno!

However, we greatly appreciate Conan keeping the seat warm for Jay during this past year. And we will recognize that appreciation with a special ceremony in the NBC commissary, where we will give Conan a very nice watch and a gift certificate to Bed Bath and Beyond.

Some may say this strategy is short-sighted, that it ignores the younger, more connected audience that loves Conan and will not watch Jay Leno under any circumstances. To these concerns, we would like to respectfully plug our ears with our fingers and yell loudly LA LA LA WE’RE NOT LISTENING!!