Spanning the globe to give you the constant variety of sports media…

Not playing favorites: Rick Morrissey of the Chicago Sun-Times writes the Oklahoma State series shows reporters can’t be fans.

I’m also here to tell you that this is a good example of why sportswriters shouldn’t root for teams, even teams they don’t cover. That will sound unfair, if not draconian, to my sportswriter friends who enjoy cheering for something. It’s not. It’s a way to wall yourself off from people looking for a reason to doubt your fairness.

Months before the Oklahoma State scandal broke, I had a discussion with a sportswriter who, like me, had attended Northwestern. He is a big Wildcats football fan and a big supporter of golfer Luke Donald, who also went to NU. He covers neither of those sports, though I suppose there’s a chance he might down the road. He said if he were assigned to cover Northwestern, he could put aside his loyalties.

He probably could. But as the Oklahoma State scandal has shown, it doesn’t matter what the writer thinks. The public’s perception, given whatever a sportswriter has said in the past on TV shows, written on message boards or put on Twitter as a fan of his favorite school, is that his underwear matches the school colors.

Michelle Beadle: Steve Lepore at SB Nation examines why The Crossover failed.

Here’s where my point comes in: The show didn’t work for a couple of reasons. The first was the lack of chemistry between the hosts, or that Beadle was even forced to have a co-host at all. In my opinion, that was a show that seemed to value having a format more than using the talent available to it. From what I’ve seen Beadle do (and given what NBC is reportedly paying her), it stands to reason that you should find a way to just make “The Michelle Beadle Show.” Just Michelle Beadle talks sports/whatever. Wouldn’t that be better than promising the show will be where sports and pop culture mix?

Value of sideline reporters: Richard Deitsch of SI.com raises the question of whether they are needed.

I’ve thought a lot about sideline reporters this week because it’s one of the questions I asked of our sports media panel below. While the quality of sideline reporting talent is wildly uneven (CBS has gone as far as eliminating the position during the NFL regular season), I support, as a philosophy, the more reporters on the field, the better.

“If I was a network president I would assign a reporter to every game because the ‘high profile-ness’ of a game has nothing to do with what happens during the game,” Kremer said, in an email Sunday. “The fifth best game on a network can still have a catastrophic injury or a blackout or a weather delay.”

John Lynch: Brad Gagnon of Awful Announcing talks to Lynch about his interview with NFL commissioner Roger Goodell.

Awful Announcing: Fox Sports has some experienced people on staff. You’re a bit of a fresher face, having entered the media world in the last half-decade or so. How did you end up landing this interview with the commissioner?

John Lynch: I’ve done features for Fox throughout the years. It’s one thing they’ve had me do in the postseason, for instance. And I think they’ve turned out well. And it’s something I enjoy doing, and so when they started this Fox Sports 1, one of the shows that they were launching was this one-on-one concept. And they came to me, like they did a lot of talent, and said, essentially, we want you guys to think who you would most enjoy talking to, kind of your bucket list. And I thought it would be fascinating to talk to Roger Goodell. And so I’ve had a relationship with Roger over the years, sometimes getting called into the principal’s office when I was a player, but I’ve always — haven’t agreed with him on everything — but I’ve always had a respect. I picked up the phone and called Roger and told him what I wanted to do and he said, “Sure, love to do it.” That’s not something that he does a lot of, so it was very humbling that he said yes. He was more than gracious with his time. It looks like an interview that all happened on one day [but] we were in there and then two days after we filmed, they settled [the lawsuits]. And so we called back to Greg Aiello and everybody at the league and they were very accommodating, allowing us to come back in so we could update it after the settlement.

Frank Deford: Speaking of the settlement, Deford weighs in on the issue in this week’s NPR commentary.

Football is unique in that most players participate in only half the game — offense or defense.

Roger Goodell, the NFL commissioner, plays a more conventional defense in protecting the league from charges that it is dangerous to your head. Effectively, he stands on the Fifth Amendment. The settlement with the former players who were suing the NFL for not caring for them, for not bearing responsibility for the damage done by concussions, included the vital provision that the NFL would ante up the blood money but not have to own up to any responsibility or reveal its files that studied traumatic brain injury.

Woman director: At MMQB, Deitsch profiles CBS’ Suzanne Smith, the only female director for NFL games.

During her 30-year broadcasting career, CBS Sports director Suzanne Smith says she often has been asked the following question: What will happen first—a woman elected U.S. president or assigned to direct a Super Bowl?

Last week she flipped the script and asked the question of a reporter, who answered a female president.

“I think you are right,” says Smith. “A woman in the White House will come first.”

James Lofton: Bob Wolfley of the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel talks to the former receiver about joining SiriusXM NFL Radio.

James Lofton has joined SiriusXM NFL Radio and will co-host a daily weekday show from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. He begins his new role on Friday.

“Looking at the entire NFL and fielding calls will be a little different,” Lofton said during a telephone interview on Wednesday, when his new role was announced. “But I’m looking forward to it. It should be fun. “You are always thinking about the league, what is going on in the league,” Lofton said. “Four hours will whip by. There’s always a lot to talk about.”

Low moment: Jeff Pearlman writes about a Sports Illustrated editor who wasn’t enamored with a Barry Bonds story he wrote in 2000.

I was half asleep in the back seat when my cell phone rang. The number was 212-522-1212—Sports Illustrated. Surely, I assumed, they were calling to congratulate me on snagging an interview with the elusive superstar.

“Hello.”

“Pearlman!”

It was Bevans.

“Uh, yes?”

“Pearlman, are you fucking kidding me with this shit?”

“What do you mean?”

“If we wanted to give Barry Bonds a blowjob, we could have just brought him to the streets of New York.”

Click.