Katie Nolan, the NFL and Sports Media

Could she take Bomani Jones' spot on Highly Questionable? Seems like she'd play well off Papi and fit the sensibilities of the Le Batard circle.

 

Bitter old man, bitter old man.

 

Jesus, dude.

 

sorry, should have included the link that the quote was from.

Katie Nolan officially joins ESPN

 

I'll give her show a shot - presuming she has one - on ESPN.

My immediate thought - and this is true of a lot of comedians on TV - is that I'm wary of being lectured to on politics. (In this case, how it intersects with sports.) Political satire is hard - most nights, Stephen Colbert tells one or two jokes too many, while Jimmy "Man Show" Kimmel fancies himself a new Conscience of America - and it only gets harder when trying to weave sports and politics. Is Nolan going to be riffing and goofing on sports and athletes -- athletes have become something close to sage deities on ESPN, especially NBA players -- or is it going to be rants on how much the NCAA sucks, Trump/kneeling commentary, Goodell being horrible, etc?

Part of what's been lost at ESPN is the sense that its on-air talent and even its writers have any sincere connection to fans. (Twitter, BTW, amplifies this. I wonder how often sports journalists who work anywhere think about how they relate to fans on Twitter (by constantly arguing with them) vs. kissing the rear ends of the athletes they cover.)

The closer Nolan stays to being a sports smart ass, the better. (Even if some will define that kind of persona as "limiting.") The more ESPN pushes her to flatter and appease athletes over her viewers, the more trite it'll be.

But maybe I'm underestimating her, and she's a sports Samantha Bee.

 

As someone who has worked for the WWL, I can venture a guess that they won't let her be as edgy as she envisions. Simmons was seen as some kind of ESPN bad boy, which is laughable. But still, they clip the shit out of just about everyone's wings. Will be interesting to see if she can be an exception.

 

Well, she can liberal edgy. If she wants to do a 10-minute takedown on all the dumb ways we use the American flag, ESPN would be down for that.

 

But then she'll have to face Hank Williams Jr. at the Christmas Party!

 

shit, just burn these responses down. I didn't realize she was making a funny about the ESPN official announcement. The SI piece doesn't give context at all.

 

I only saw Nolan on Fox Sports once or twice (more than most Americans), but her schtick struck me as more on the goofy-wacky side than edgy.

 

I think one of the sources of Nolan's appeal is that she is remarkably at ease in front of the camera. I always felt that several of the bits on Garbage Time succeeded specifically because she wasn't taking them so seriously that the silly/hokeyness of it was distracting. The shot-for-shot Lemonade remake after the Brady suspension was hilarious. She appears to have an unusual crush on Rob Ryan. The "Papi's bench in Central Park" and "Future Katie" things could have been painful if not handled by someone who wasn't letting them breathe. And whether it was her or a writer, "Kentucky Derby horse or hipster band?" was absolutely brilliant. And once you've got the audience's attention like that, you can do the Greg Hardy stuff because you're speaking straight to them instead of just preaching through the TV.

I just hope that ESPN doesn't keep her from doing another Drunk History show. I rewatched her one on Teddy Roosevelt saving football at the turn of the century five or six times.

In the interest of full disclosure, dark hair/brown eyes/witty/sports fan is basically my archetypical woman, but I'm not one of those people that is stupid enough to think I'd be able to shop in that department, even if I wasn't located in roughly the middle of nowhere comparably. But if they send her to the Super Bowl this year, and all the hotels in the Cities are full, and all the hotels outside the Cities are full ...

 

The network that kowtowed to Tagliabue by cancelling Playmakers is not going to let her go off on Goodell for Deflategate. Her wings have already been clipped. But they were never flying that high anyway. She's a good self-promoter who took on low-hanging fruit. It's 2017, if you are in this business, you are surrounded on a daily basis by women opining on far meatier sports topics.