One Arrogant Sportcaster Takes Over For Another

You may have heard this earlier this week: Bob Costas has signed a deal to join the new MLB Network this upcoming season. Costas will "host original programming and serve as play-by-play commentator" for some of the live games broadcast by the network this season. He actually had some airtime today, as an interview Costas did with Joe Torre aired.

Costas will keep his job at NBC, but will give up his show on HBO called "Costas Now."

I suppose this is a good move for the MLB Network, as the move brings a big-name announcer to its lineup. The down side is that along with the knowledge and love of the game that Costas will bring, the MLB Network will also have to make room for his tremendous ego and arrogance, which has the potential to overshadow some of the other things on the network.

Of course, my cable provider is yet to add MLB Network. Fucktards.

Anyway, since HBO had an opening for a small, nerdy announcer, it decided to fill it with the only announcer more arrogant than Costas: Joe Buck. According to the announcement, HBO is still deciding on the content and format of Buck's show, and when it will begin. Buck will keep his job at FOX doing NFL and MLB games.

Buck is knowledgeable, and he's certainly a good play-by-play announcer. However, he's easily the most arrogant one out there. I'm sure that will be more than apparent on his new HBO show.

An Olympic Grab Bag

Ah, the Olympics.

NBC's coverage has had its moments. Here are some of the bad ones:

1. Go U.S.A.! Can the NBC announcers root any more openly for the American athletes? I understand that the primary audience is America, but announcers should be at least a little bit objective. It almost got to the point where the NBC announcers started using personal pronouns like "we" and "us," which is the ultimate no-no.

2. Go U.S.A.! And if the U.S.A. doesn't win, we were screwed! This has been dreadful, especially in gymnastics. In the finals of the uneven bars, Tim Daggett and Elfi Schnagel could not have whined any more if they were five year-olds. To refresh your memory, American Nastia Liukin and Yang Yilin of China ended up tied. Because of the tiebreaker rules, Yilin ended up with the gold medal. Initially, Daggett made few, if any, comments criticizing the scoring of both Liukin's and Yilin's routines. After the scores were announced, however, Daggett became more and more bold in saying that Liukin should have won. It was if he was told to be more pro-American.

Also, it took Daggett and Schnagel more than an hour to adequately explain the tiebreaking procedure used, which made it seem pretty clear they didn't know the procedure (they kept referring to "what the computer came up with," which made no sense once the procedure was explained since it's merely dropping an additional score). Back in the studio, Bob Costas then criticized the tiebreaking procedure as being "confusing" and "unclear." This was especially true when the men's vault event also needed a tiebreaker. Costas made a huge point to talk about that tiebreaker being more straightforward. Could it be he thought that because there was no American affected by the tie?

Here are the tiebreaking procedures for the women's uneven bars. You be the "judge":

Gymnasts are judged by 6 judges. Top and bottom score is dropped.

If two gymnasts are tied, the next lowest score is dropped for each. If this does not resolve the tie, the next lowest score is dropped until tie is resolved.

Each gymnast then must make her best attempt at drawing an aardvark freehand (Okay, I made that part up).

Pretty confusing, eh?

3. Go U.S.A.! If you don't win the gold, then you're a complete fucking failure! I'm going to let the video do the talking here. Context: American gymnast Alicia Sacramone fell off the balance beam, which may or may not have cost the U.S.A. the all-around gold medal. Andrea Joyce, remind Alicia over and over how much she sucks!

And for good measure, we have Lolo Jones in the 100m hurdles. The race starts at about 3:20. Note how long it takes NBC to show a replay that actually includes the winner.

I know that these failures were part of the story, and of course they should be told. But the overall attitude that the Americans "lost" the gold (instead of winning the silver) has permeated throughout NBC's Olympic coverage. And in the case of Lolo Jones, another American won the gold, but NBC wanted to focus on someone's failure rather than someone else's triumph. They interview Dawn Harper almost as an afterthought, and not until they'd already spoken to Jones (who, by the way, was extremely classy in a tough moment).

I don't want to get all Kumbaya on you, but winning any medal at the Olympics is an amazing feat, even if you were favored to do better. Winning a bronze means you're the third best athlete in the world in your particular event. Is that not an accomplishment? The Olympic ideal is to do your best. If you do and that results in a medal, great. If not, you should still be proud. The U.S.A women's swim team gets it, after their performance in the medley relay (interview with team starts at 10:10).

Perhaps NBC should take notes.

Costas "Then": Why Journalists Aren't Much Better Than Bloggers

I'm a little behind on this one, but hell, we just got started on this whole enterprise.

Bob Costas, on his HBO program "Costas Now," aired a live, town hall-type program show on April 29. The theme of this show was "the State of Sports Media." There were several topics explored, including racial coverage in sports media, talk radio, and new media.

I want to address the conversation about blogs. (The link doesn't show the real video from the program, but the audio is intact.)

The panel discussion about new media included Will Leitch of Deadspin.com, Buzz Bissinger (the author of Friday Night Lights and other bestsellers), and Braylon Edwards of the Cleveland Browns. In the exchange, Bissinger basically went off on Leitch and other bloggers, saying that blogs have no standards (journalistic or writing in general) and that blogs are responsible for "dumbing down society." In short, Bissinger looked like an idiot, Leitch came off rather well, and Edwards looked like he was thinking, "why the fuck am I here?"

There were some valid (and some not so valid) points raised by Costas and Bissinger on the program concerning bloggers and their ilk. I want to address the issue of journalistic integrity.

(Let me note here that for this exercise, we at LomHenn.com are NOT bloggers. Not really. Yes, we're writing a blog on the Internet, so I get it that we are bloggers. But we're not out covering stories and doing "citizen journalism." We may get to that someday, but not now. My point is that I'm not taking Bissinger's point personally--it has nothing to do with us.)

Bissinger made the point that bloggers have no "journalistic integrity." Others have made this same point, including Michael Wilbon of ESPN and the Washington Post, who did so during the same episode of "Costas Now." What they mean is that unlike newspapers and broadcast journalists, there are no "checks and balances" for bloggers. Newspaper writers have to deal with editors; broadcast journalists have producers. Bloggers have...well, no one. In print and broadcast sports, someone else has to okay the story. What Bissinger and others have said is that the lack of accountability in the blogosphere takes away the credibility of blogs. Also, bloggers are less likely to have any formal journalistic training, so bloggers will be less likely to have any journalistic integrity (in regards to fairness, ethics, using sources, etc.).

Here's the problem: the sports media--both newspapers and television--no longer use good journalistic principles themselves. Think about all of the stories you read or see on TV that have "an unnamed source" as the primary (or only) source for the story. It wasn't very long ago that as a reporter, your story wouldn't sniff the newspaper or the broadcast without two sources--and at least one of those a named source. Now, we get unnamed sources for damn near every sports story, no matter how unimportant or trivial the story.

Using unnamed sources means there is no accountability for the source. Sure, the reporter knows who the source is, and presumably the editor/producer does, too. But if the story ends up to be false, like this one, your organization looks dumb.

Also, another basic tenet of journalism is to represent all sides of a story. We've already covered a story where the number one sports columnist for a large newspaper failed to do that.

With the use of unnamed sources and failure to do accurate reporting, the traditional sports media have been "dumbing down" (as Bissinger might say) their journalistic standards to the point that there really is no difference between the media and bloggers. I understand that traditional sports media still have better access and more organization, but they keep breaking their own rules.

Instead of making elitist statements about bloggers, perhaps traditional sports media should go back to practicing good journalism--or, at least, acceptable journalism. Then they wouldn't need to tell us the difference between themselves and bloggers--a difference that is getting smaller all the time.