I’m already sick to death of people whining, “Oh, Tom Brady blew off Suzy Kolber for an interview.” Yeah, so? Do you have any idea of the demands on his time? Tom Brady makes $10 million a year for a reason, and it’s not so he can flash a flight attendant’s smile whenever somebody jams a camera into his face.
Think about his relationship with the media over the past year. Everything the guy does is being covered by either ESPN or US Weekly or the Honduran Gay Men’s Journal, Drew’s personal favorite. Dude had armed guards to keep the paparazzi out of his wedding. And keep in mind that he wasn’t even playing for nearly all of 2008. And he comes back last night and nearly loses to the GD Bills [and probably should have, were it not for the heroics of the Bills' Leodis McKelvin], and now he’s supposed to stop in his tracks and spoon-feed the beast? I don’t care if he’s just getting off of work or not; if he doesn’t want to talk to the media, he shouldn’t have to outrun Suzy Kolber to make that point.
That said…damn, Tom. Did you hurt your knee so bad that you couldn’t outrun some 45-year-old woman? But this is a guy that’s already knocked up two of the most beautiful women in the world. After pulling that off, I really don’t see why he should be making time for anyone else. Do you? vid.
Look, podcasts are still too tech-intensive to be considered out of Dork Domain yet. Any given podcast will never be mainstream, because you have to go off the damn stream to find it. I would know, as I host such an on-and-off piece of media that you could find on your own. But podcasts basically lo-fi radio on the internet–and that’s fine–but let’s not pretend that these things are shaping culture or society in any way. Which brings me to Adam Corolla.
Corolla’s podcast, which was spawned after his nationwide radio talk show was canceled, might be Numero Uno on the internet, iTunes, and anywhere else. So you can imagine his surprise when he was told that ESPN would not allow its staple web writer, Bill Simmons, to make an appearance on Corolla’s show.
CAROLLA: Let me just say a little something to the retards who call themselves bosses over there, because we live in a f`cking time where everyone does that, “good call, good call, good call.” You’re running a f`cking business. This is one of the most popular podcasts on the Internet. Your two clients — Bill Simmons does a podcast, popular, probably not as a popular as this podcast but very popular, and Dave Dameshek does a podcast as well, not nearly as popular as Bill Simmons’, but he still does a podcast. Now, you guys generate income via those podcasts. We share the same audience, essentially. White guys who don’t have delicate sensibilities who are in their 30s and like to play fantasy football.
TERESA: There’s no white guy in his 30s who does not read Bill Simmons.
STOP. I don’t know who “Teresa” is, but there are PLENTY of people that either don’t care about Simmons or have given up on his Boston-centric sports ramblings. Because Simmons, whose writing DID admittedly pave the way for other media outlets like this one, has shut himself off from the outside world. Some people still read him all the time. Great. But he is not this all-encompassing figure in sportswriting. Dude peaked. Bill Simmons is too busy being Bill Simmons now, and while that’s not a bad place to be, Teresa Strasser, Carolla, and their circle o’friends need to wake up and realize that, yeah, we don’t really care.
Turns out Simmons wasn’t banned from the show after all. Either way, Craggs transcribed the Corolla rant in full, which is worth reading for the “retard chicken p`ssy coward” alone. That’s amazing, really, because that’s exactly what I had planned for dinner tonight. Maybe the podcasts are catching on…
The only thing more irritating than the summer-long Favre watch was the way ESPN handled the news after FOX Sports’ Jay Glazer beat all 572 of ESPN’s NFL people to the story that, yes Virginia, Brett Favre will be a Minnesota Viking. And a large contingent of ESPN’s on-air talent handled the defeat the way you would expect from a cadre of douchebags camped out in Connecticut–with a total absence of grace or dignity.
I wish I had a dollar for every analyst who said, “I really feel for the quarterbacks that were already in camp.” Oh yeah, POOR SAGE ROSENFELS. Because it was Favre’s fault that Sage turned into Greg Norman in the fourth quarter of every game he started in last year and couldn’t establish himself as a higher-tier free agent. WAY TO HATE ON THE JEWS, BRETT! And Tar-var-is Jackson? Yeah, my heart bleeds for a guy that Childress literally HAD TO HIDE ON THE FIELD the first half of last year because he wasn’t smart enough to grasp the offense–the same offense that Favre ran for 16 of the past 17 seasons. SHAME ON YOU, BRETT! HOW DARE YOU FORCE A MAN TO RELY ON HIS ATHLETICISM!
That backup quarterback angle was the most ludicrous piece of analysis not coming out of Emmitt Smith’s mouth that I’d seen in some time. It’s almost like they got together in a room and decided, “Hey, everyone else hates Favre–we should too! It’ll make us look totally edgy after we totally ignored that Ben Roethlisberger story.” To be fair, the Monday Night crew actually discussed Favre as an addition to the team without any sort of petty angst or vitriol. They must have missed the memo.
Everyone’s favorite sideline reporter Erin Pageviews is in the new issue of GQ, and ta-da! There are pictures. And some words. But mostly pictures. Which is kind of disappointing. I mean, I think we’ve all seen everything Erin has to offer — wink wink, nudge nudge, curl ya hair in the nude much? — so I would have liked a little more than the paltry quarter-page she got. Something in the neighborhood of 5000 words. That included her home address and phone number.
But I digress. Below are some pretty pictures of Miss Andrews, and I don’t wanna brag but one of these is EXCLUSIVE!!! to With Leather. That’s how important this blog is. You can see a slideshow and video from the shoot over at GQ.com. I’ve heard it’s tasteful and non-nude, and that Erin even knew she was on camera. Hence the clothes.
Photos: Martin Schoeller/GQ
The worst thing about all this failed PED test business is that ESPN becomes even less watchable than usual. “SportsCenter” and “First Take” are in the veritable sports news kitchen, baking up their usual recipes of speculation and conjecture, which is kinda redundant for us since I wrote about this yesterday, you read about it yesterday, and it just feels like the monolith is a day behind on this.
And the big angle that ESPN is taking deals with Ortiz’s denial and subsequent tough talk with regard to his thoughts on punishing players that test positive for PEDs. But what else would he do? If he’s on them, he’ll talk the talk and act like he’s not, like his one of the guys whose legacy was besmirched by this whole thing. If he’s not (and since nobody knows for what the players were being tested in 2003), he would have spoken out in much the same way.
By the way, today is baseball’s trade deadline, though it doesn’t seem that Blue Jays pitcher will be leaving Toronto (the Jays are asking for too much). Hey, I know! Let’s talk about steroids some more! Or beat in the side of my skull with an aluminum bat. I can’t tell the difference. Don’t forget to turn that right hand over.
ESPN is joining the rest of the world in covering the Nevada civil suit filed against the prominent white quarterback pictured above. And they’ve got this brevity thing down pat, mastering word economy in covering Ben’s presser just minutes ago:
“I didn’t sexually assault Andrea McNulty,” Roethlisberger said. The Pittsburgh Steelers quarterback said Saturday was the first he learned of the allegations, detailed in a civil suit filed by McNulty.
Roethlisberger said he would “respond to her outrageous allegations in the appropriate forum.”
I always give the athlete the benefit of the doubt. Obviously their skills on the field are so impressive that there’s no way they could screw up in life (or screw “down,” as it were. As for ESPN, I’m declaring the title of “Worldwide Leader in Sports” vacant, at least until ESPN can keep its boardroom out of its newsroom.
