Look at this jerk, he even blocks New Orleans on the map.

As he embraces life without the wonderful Michelle Beadle, Colin Cowherd reminded us yet again that when it comes to spewing opinions about sports, he’s a guy that does that. Cowherd didn’t make any friends in New Orleans earlier this week, after he complained about the prospect of the 2013 NFL Pro Bowl being held in the Big Easy.

Herped and derped ESPN’s popular radio and TV host:

“They have become the default place for everything, and the Pro Bowl is a family event. Players take their families,” Cowherd said. “Players aren’t going to go to New Orleans. New Orleans is not a family destination, it’s a party destination.”

Players aren’t going to go to New Orleans because it’s a party destination. Let that sink in for a minute. But Hawaii and its 12 hookers per square foot is practically a giant Chuck-E-Cheese.

Let’s just get to the meat of Cowherd’s beef:

“It is the least safe major city in the country… not my opinion, statistically the least safe,” he said. “There are only two where locals will tell you, turn around, don’t go that way…Detroit and New Orleans.”

Let’s forget for a second the fact that you can’t invoke statistics and then not offer any statistics, instead saying something as ridiculous as the locals will tell you to f*ck off like, fittingly, in Interview with a Vampire as they’re burning the city to the ground because of the plague. Cowherd’s entire argument boiled down to ignorance, as he eventually added:

“I want a lot of hotel rooms, a great airport, good weather, safety,” Cowherd said. “New Orleans is not top-15 in any of those.”

Naturally, New Orleans officials disagree.

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Yesterday, we shared with you comedian Jay Pharoah’s epic, pitch-perfect takedown of Stephen A. Smith during Saturday night’s Weekend Update segment on SNL. It was the kind of thing they need to do more of, in both “do good impressions of people who aren’t on CNN” and “let Jay Pharoah be on your show” interpretations of a thing.

But the fun doesn’t stop there! SportsCenter made the moment even better by filming Actual Stephen A. Smith’s reaction to the impression as he watched it, and it’s the perfect mixture of SAS brush-off and facepalming to let you know he’s a good sport, but he’s also going to sit somewhere by himself a little later and contemplate how life has brought him here.

The wonderful video is below.

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Every Monday, NBC takes out the weekend’s trash in the form of Saturday Night Live’s Web “Exclusive” clips, which is the show’s nice way of saying, “This sucked so we cut it from the actual show.” Today, the Twitters are going nuts over a cut clip from Weekend Update that features Jay Pharoah as Stephen A. Smith discussing the Miami Heat in the NBA Playoffs. If you’re not familiar with Pharoah, he’s the hilarious impressionist who is rarely used because, “Hey, a 107th Gilly sketch is just easier, bro.”

Pharoah’s previously aired impressions include Will Smith, Jay Z and Morgan Freeman, and they’re all hilariously spot on. Not surprisingly, his Screamin’ A is pretty much perfect as well, from the slowly-building payoff shouting to the shameless name-dropping. But the one little problem with it all is that SNL’s typical studio audience apparently doesn’t know who Smith is. Otherwise, I’m pretty sure they’d be dying over this bit.

It’s a shame, but maybe we can read all about it in Pharaoh’s eventual book, “Here’s My Impression of Me Leaving SNL After Three Seasons.”

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An election year is the perfect time to point out that the people of the United States can’t agree about anything. We can’t agree on whether or not people should have human rights, we can’t agree on what constitutes conception or murder and we let ‘The King Of Queens’ run for 9 seasons and keep shows like ‘Parks And Recreation’ on the cancelation bubble. We’re emotionally and socially f**ked, but the one thing I think we can all agree on is that the NFL Pro Bowl is the most worthless thing we do annually and nobody would be sad if they kicked it in the ribs and tossed it in the garbage.

It looks like garbage day has finally arrived.

Here’s what ESPN’s Chris Mortensen said to Mike and Mike this morning on ‘Mike and Mike in the Morning’:

“The league is moving toward suspending the Pro Bowl, possibly this year. As one person told me last night, it is DOA, Dead on Arrival. At the same time, the league, I believe, will instruct teams to continue to put Pro Bowl incentives in contracts; if players have Pro Bowl incentives, to go ahead and pay them so they don’t have a problem with the union.

“Right now, the Pro Bowl is on the calendar for the week before the Super Bowl, but there’s no game site that is listed, if you look at it closely. The reason why is, after a lot of discussion, I think this commissioner Roger Goodell and other league people, and even some of the players, are basically saying, as Aaron Rodgers criticized last year’s performance, that there’s no reason to play in the Pro Bowl.”

Everyone’s so okay with this that even the commenters at Shutdown Corner have taken a break from demanding the firing of everyone with blogging privileges to post “yeah the pro bowl sucks get rid of it”.

And Aaron Rodgers is totally right — there is no reason to play in the Pro Bowl, unless you want to add a tiny amount of additional money to your Football Guy moneybin. If they’re going to keep doing it, they need to fun it up a little and make it like an episode of ‘GUTS’. Give everybody flags and nerf balls and maybe kayaks and see who can score the most points before Mo blows the whistle. At least then you’d have the aging ironic viewership, and SOMEBODY would be watching.

Just kidding, this is an hourlong podcast with “Bad Ass” Billy Gunn. About fourteen minutes into it I start trying to put my head through the computer monitor and die from blood loss.

But no, welcome to episode 2 of the (thankfully) ongoing With Leather pro wrestling podcast With Spandex. In episode 2 we go from pro wrestlers to people who write about them on the Internet and talk to David Shoemaker, “The Masked Man” of Deadspin’s Dead Wrestler Of The Week column and “David Shoemaker” of Grantland.com. We talk about our favorite and least favorite dead wrestlers, our experiences at WrestleMania 28 and the upcoming WWE Extreme Rules pay-per-view. It’s gonna be extreme~!

You can listen to the podcast below. We’ll have it up on iTunes as soon as they stop finding reasons to turn it down.

A direct link to the podcast for your downloading pleasure: Click here.

Your likes, comments, shares and plus-whatevers are greatly appreciated. Worst case scenario, let’s hear your early predictions for Extreme Rules. It’s gonna be EXTREMELY RULED.

If you’re not familiar with the story of U.S. Senate candidate Craig James, it really is quite a tale of scandal, intrigue and unbridled arrogance. Just to catch you up to speed with a dummy’s version – James was a talented running back and attended Southern Methodist University in the heyday of the program’s paid player scandal, and his NFL claim to fame was being ousted by Peyton Hillis as the last white running back to rush for 1,000 yards in one season.

After his short NFL career ended in 1988, James spent the next 20 years as a college football analyst, bouncing around networks, but always having a connection to ESPN, where he would eventually end up. In fact, he thinks so highly of his broadcasting skills that he founded the Craig James School of Broadcasting. And apparently the first lesson you can learn there is how to coddle your underperforming son and use your TV power as leverage in creating and promoting a scandal against a college football coach like Mike Leach.

In 2009, Leach allegedly forced Craig’s son, Adam, to sit in a dark electrical shed as punishment. Leach was eventually fired, and Adam later admitted that he was never forced to sit in a dark shed, was actually told not to sit in that shed, but he did so anyway because he thought it was “funny.” Alas, that is not a story that Craig will ever tell, because he stands by his version and believes that recaps like mine are pure propaganda in a vast conspiracy against his good name.

Or so he basically said in a recent interview (with his daughter) about his current 2012 U.S. Senate campaign, in which he is polling a whopping 4% among voters. Because if you want people to like you, go back to the ground zero of why people hate you.

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