Tuesday, May 19, 2009

Yanni is stronger than pro wrestlers - who knew?

The Monday Night Football announcer booth revolving door has spun again, with Tony Kornheiser leaving and Jon Gruden stepping in to join Ron Jaworski and Mike Tirico. Kornheiser in the booth never felt right to me. He's excellent on PTI and when he writes, but him trying to be irreverent during an actual game came off as forced more often than not. Whether his leaving is about his fear of playing and the difficulties it presented with the job or something else really doesn't matter. Gruden in the booth will be interesting. The guy can be funny, charming and he certainly knows football. He also pumps out truckloads of BS on a regular basis. If Gruden's candid, he could be really good. If he pulls punches while trying to position himelf for every open coaching job, that'll stink. By doing this for the next two years, Gruden can avoid having to move his family while collecting tons of money from the Bucs owners for doing nothing. Sounds like a good plan to me.

There was more good news yesterday from the broadcast world, as Fox and MLB announced they would begin World Series and ALCS games at 7:57 rather around 8:30. There's no reason for major sporting events to consistently end after midnight. Now the Dodgers and Angels will make it to the World Series and cause MLB to move it back so that their fans have time to get to the games.

As budget issues continue to mount throughout the country, it's interesting to see which places are being affected athletically. FSU has floated the idea of campus wide furloughs of staffers, which would inclde the football coaches. Now LSU could be going down that path as well. The end result of Les Miles and his coaches being furloughed for one week would save the school just over 108 thousand dollars. Maybe the belief by those in power is that the threat of some sort of disruption in Tiger recruiting is the only thing enough to get Louisiana residents to take the financial crisis seriously.

The outstanding Capitals-Penguins NHL playoff series was disrupted early this month by an outside presence: Yanni. Games 4 and 5 were played back to back because the new age musician had a concert scheduled at Pittsburgh's Igloo and Yanni would not be moved. Now it's the WWE's turn to try and hold off intruders, as their Denver show will be dislodged to make room for Game 4 of the Lakers-Nuggets Western Conference finals. Not sure what stunts Vince McMahon has in mind to attract attention to his roided up grapplers, but you can rest assured he'll milk this for all its worth.

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