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Costas Town Hall

Discussion in 'Sports and News' started by Fenian_Bastard, Apr 28, 2008.

  1. D-3 Fan

    D-3 Fan Well-Known Member

    Cousin Jeffrey, that statement above is what perked my ears up when Costas was getting sunshine blown up his ass by Tirico and Van Pelt on ESPN radio this afternoon. Costas thinks that blogs and the internet are full of shit, in which he's right in a way, with respects to various websites that tend to slam people, eh, athletes. He said that people who utilize blogs and websites are nilihistic and delusional.

    I second playthrough with the feeling that if Costas really cared about how the proliferation of sports media is today, Sullivan, JoPo, Fred Mitchell, Terry Pluto, and the ones who isn't in front of a television would have given authentic thoughts. If he cared about knowing how influential or informative blogs are, why get Leitch from Deadspin, when he could have gotten Mr. Blog himself, Mark Cuban? I would be interested in Costas inviting a number of bloggers/writers who run damn good sites that are not juvenile and provide interesting angles, stories, and observations about sports.

    But, in typical Costas style, he brought in the big names because, well, he's a big name too. He thinks that their status would automatically deem them as intelligent and offer salient points. Not gonna happen.

    Damn, I would have done anything to see Big Sexy put Kellen Winslow and his arrogant ego in his place.

    Strahan, as much of the public limelight he craves for in NYC, should have known that Fatso and Fruit Loops loves to crush people after making nice. You have to be a fucking idiot not to know before picking up that phone to talk to those two clowns.

    Bissinger should stick to writing books if he's going to act like a fool. He's too smart for that. Did the clubhouse lawyer (Tiki) offer anything of substance?
     
  2. BYH

    BYH Active Member

    Because he made a fellow buffoon look like, well, a buffoon?

    Sorry, Whitlock is still a fucking joke.
     
  3. dooley_womack1

    dooley_womack1 Well-Known Member

    Useless fact of the day: Kellen Winslow Sr. was a member of the East St. Louis High chess team.
     
  4. Simon_Cowbell

    Simon_Cowbell Active Member

    Finally... a second vociferous disagreement.
     
  5. NightOwl

    NightOwl Guest

    Deford definitely was on top of his game back around 1984.

    Unfortunately, the top of his game was back around 1984.

    Loved his writing back then. Don't like to read his frothy stuff now.

    But I give him his due. He was one of the great ones in his prime. And it's understandable that later on you wanna wax more poetically and write more of the flowery stuff. But I prefer Deford back when he was writing hard-hitting gamers and all the stuff inherent to the week in progress.

    His Sports Illustrated gamers were so great, if I recall.

    But I also recall Tex Maule, too. Great name, and great gamers.
     
  6. VJ

    VJ Member

    Aside from Buzz acting as immature as the Deadspin crew he was calling out, that was some of the best and most provocative television I've ever seen.

    That being said, I'm sure it scored a 0.00000005 rating and 20x more people were watching the Dukes of Hazzard on HBOW.
     
  7. Joe Williams

    Joe Williams Well-Known Member

    Lots and lots of comments and points made about how sports media people are jealous of athletes' money. This, while Costas, Albom, Buck, Patrick and Wilbon are part of the media "team." No, no gated communities or vacation homes in their portfolios.

    (wait, does that mean that some sports media people are jealous of other sports media people's money?)

    And I came away with this, especially from Selena Roberts' portion of panel: Lots of hand wringing from media people over decline in access, which gets in way of telling the public more about the athletes-as-persons. Seriously, though, how many athletes are that almighty interesting anymore . . . especially when they have a sameness of bank account, lifestyle, limos and gated communities. I'm not buying the notion that Tiger Woods is as interesting as Muhammad Ali, if only you could scratch his surface.

    What in the world makes us think that athletes need to be explored as these fascinating personalities apart from their games? Apart from their games, they're, hmm, maybe . . . average Joes? Media people don't strive -- and whine -- nearly as much to know what makes the local pediatrician or hedge-fund manager tick.
     
  8. dooley_womack1

    dooley_womack1 Well-Known Member

    I would love to know what makes a pediatrician and a hedge-fund manager tick.
     
  9. gingerbread

    gingerbread Well-Known Member

    I don't have HBO. Any other way to see the show?
     
  10. If you'd opened your window, anywhere in America, you could have heard Bissinger. Jesus, talk about hitting the ground running.
    My head started to spin early on when Mitch Albom was waxing sonorously about the "standards" he had to abide by in print and nobody -- N-O-B-O-D-Y -- called him on his rather famous, ah, lapse regarding those standards.
    What bothered the living hell out of me was that the whole thing took place in a bubble. There isn't one problem these guys discussed that isn't general throughout the entire media. Talk to political reporters about their access problems. Even Bissinger went off the rails here. He may not like blogs but, on the political side, Josh Marshall was ahead of everyone on Abramoff and the US Attorneys scandal, Greenwald ahead of everyone (except Charile Savage and Dana Priest) on the civil liberties stuff. FireDogLake covered the hell out of the Libby trial after almost singlehandedly keeping the issue alive. The Powerline guys brought down Dan Rather. These aren't stupid people. Duncan Black, who writes Atrios, is a Ph.D. in economics. The PL guys are all lawyers. So's Greenwald. Moreover, Costas obtusely insisted on not knowing the difference betwen "posts" and "comments." Leitch was no help there at all. Bissinger just buried him under a pile of invective.
    The whole thing was an exercise in starfucking, except the race panel, which did not have a single white participant after Wilbon had just said that it's important that writers of all races discuss this. Costas made some fluffery point about how white reporters can write about race in the context of obvious injustices, but don't feel comfortable writing about bad "behavior." Complete bullshit, but right in Whitlock's wheelhouse and he didn't swing for it. (He was strangely muted throughout the presentation.)
    Basically, this was Costas putting together a world of which he could be king.
    Also, no one mention of this site.
    Bastards.
     
  11. In Exile

    In Exile Member

    I thought it was interesting that in a discussion of the "sports media landscape" (whatever the hell that is) there was no segment at all on print per se, (but TV, radio, and blogs) yet every segment had to have at least one writer to provide a map for that landscape so everyone else didn't get lost.
     
  12. jgmacg

    jgmacg Guest

    And why the "town hall" format if you're never going to wade into the audience for questions?
     
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