King, Simmons take important stand by not using offensive nickname for Dan Snyder’s team

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My latest column for the National Sports Journalism Center at Indiana University focuses on Peter King and Bill Simmons trying to make a difference.

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Peter King writes about 2.5 million words for his weekly MMQB column, so there’s a chance due to eyes glazing over that I missed an earlier mention. However, since the Washington football team didn’t play (Sunday), his only reference was in a prediction for (Monday’s) game.

“Washington 31, Philadelphia 23. Robert Griffin III and Mike Vick set a land-speed record for number of plays (2,349) in a 60-minute game. I don’t trust the Eagles defense.”

Note that King used the nickname for the Philadelphia NFL team, but not for Washington. And he won’t.

Friday afternoon, King declared on his site that he won’t be using “Redskins” anymore.

“I’ve decided to stop using the Washington team nickname. It’s a name you won’t see me use anymore. The simple reason is that for the last two or three years, I’ve been uneasy when I sat down to write about the team and had to use the nickname. In some stories I’ve tried to use it sparingly. But this year, I decided to stop entirely because it offends too many people, and I don’t want to add to the offensiveness. Some people, and some Native American organizations—such as the highly respected American Indian Movement—think the nickname is a slur. Obviously, the team feels it isn’t a slur, and there are several prominent Native American leaders who agree. But I can do my job without using it, and I will.”

King isn’t alone here. Awful Announcing noticed that another high-profile figure, Bill Simmons, referred to the team as the “Washington D.C.’s” in a recent post.

King and Simmons are two heavy hitters. They have a combined 3.3 million followers on Twitter. So when they decide to take a stand, it gets people’s attention.

Indeed, the controversy over the “Redskins” nickname is getting more intense. It should go without saying that it is incredibly derogatory. Various Native American groups have called for it to be eliminated. I believe if a group of people says they are offended by the use of a nickname, it should be changed.

Washington owner Daniel Snyder could make it easy on everyone and change the nickname, as have many college and high school teams have done when it comes to their former Native American labels. Snyder, though, remains steadfast that “Redskins” will stay, adding to his legacy as one of the NFL’s all-time worst owners.

It continues to present a dilemma for news organizations covering the Redskins. The Washington Post never would refer to a Native American congressman “as the redskin representative from Arizona.” Yet it writes about the Redskins daily in its sports section.

ESPN ombudsman Robert Lipsyte addressed the issue in his latest column.

Lipsyte writes:

So what if ESPN refused to use the R-word?

That quixotic thought has been bubbling for a while in ESPN’s 150-person Stats & Information Group, where vice presidents Edmundo Macedo and Noel Nash collected information on the history of the team and opposition toward the name and then distributed it to network news managers. It was the start of a campaign to have ESPN stop using the name. Macedo told me that he thought the chances of actually succeeding were currently slim and none, but that it was worth the effort to get people thinking about it.

“Think about the name,” he wrote to me in an email. “Think about the stereotypical connotations around color. We would not accept anything similar as a team nickname if it were associated with any other ethnicity or any other race.

“Over the years, the more I thought about it, the less comfortable I became using it. I’m not sure other Americans have stopped to hear the voices of Native Americans. I can only imagine how painful it must be to hear or see that word over and over, referenced so casually every day.”

Lipsyte, though, didn’t go as far as to say ESPN should stop using the nickname, even though he clearly leans that way. He brings up a good point that news organizations shouldn’t make news. Consciously not using the nickname falls under that category.

Lipsyte also points to ESPN’s business relationship with the NFL, which has Snyder as one of its owners.

“I have retired the routine use of the phrase “conflict of interest” when it comes to ESPN – it’s simply inadequate to the nuances of the, um, conflicts of interest,” Lipsyte writes.

Lipsyte seems to settle for a compromise offered by ESPN.com editor Patrick Stiegman.

“To simply ignore the nickname in our coverage seems like nothing more than grandstanding,” Stiegman said. “We can use the name of the team, but our best service to fans is to report the hell out of the story, draw attention to the issue and cover all aspects of the controversy.”

Again, it is hard to argue with that line of thinking. Reporters shouldn’t become the story.

Yet in this case, the nickname is so offensive, it warrants people to start taking a stand. It has to begin somewhere.

Last week, Tony Kornheiser, who wrote the word “Redskins” a zillion times during his long career with the Washington Post, noted on Pardon the Interruption that it likely will take the biggest entities to eliminate the offensive nickname.

“I don’t think writers and bloggers and websites can make this happen,” he said, “I do think television networks can make this happen. … To pick two: If ESPN and Fox said ‘We’re not going to use Redskins anymore’ and the NFL tacitly went along with that and didn’t say anything, that would put pressure on CBS and NBC. I think it has to come from the larger institutions.”

I disagree. I think writers and bloggers and websites can effect this change. Especially when the writers and bloggers are as big as King and Simmons.

They carry a ton of influence in this business. Perhaps, it will spark a writer or an editor to think, “You know what? Peter King is right. We’re not going to use Redskins anymore.”

King and Simmons obviously feel enough is enough. Expect others to follow their lead.

No problem with Chris Berman doing tonight’s game

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The Twitter engineers should call in the reinforcements for tonight.

Chris Berman is working Houston-San Diego, the second half of ESPN’s opening Monday night doubleheader.

Berman on play-by-play always sets Twitter on fire. The tweeters use their 140 characters to dump on his schtick.

You know what? Allowing Berman to call one football game really doesn’t bother me.

Now golf is a different story. Perhaps the best part of Fox Sports landing the U.S. Open is that it will end his sorely out-of-place run at this event.

Football, though, is different than golf. All his bombast fits in for a sport where the volume is turned up.

Plus, the guy has been there since they opened the doors in 1979. He has been a faithful soldier for 34 years and made ESPN a ton of money. If his bosses want to throw him a bone, that’s fine. It’s good to see someone get rewarded for loyalty.

So give Berman his one game (or two if you throw in the meaningless preseason game he did). Besides, kickoff is after 10 p.m. on the East coast. ESPN executives will be asleep and totally oblivious to the anti-Berman noise emanating from Twitter.

 

 

 

 

Could ESPN really not use the nickname ‘Redskins?’ ‘Imagine how painful it is’ to Native Americans

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For a minute, can you imagine if during tonight’s Monday Night Football game, Mike Tirico never referred to Washington as “the Redskins?”

What if he just called the team Washington throughout the telecast? Or the “Washington D.C’s,” as Bill Simmons labeled them last week (Awful Announcing with the link) in an apparent protest of the nickname issue.

And then the “Redskins” boycott carried over to the postgame shows, SportsCenter and then beyond? Starting tonight, the offensive nickname never would be uttered again on ESPN.

Just imagine the impact that would have on possibly getting the nickname changed.

Could ESPN do it?

ESPN ombudsman Robert Lipsyte asks that question in his latest column. He writes:

So what if ESPN refused to use the R-word?

That quixotic thought has been bubbling for a while in ESPN’s 150-person Stats & Information Group, where vice presidents Edmundo Macedo and Noel Nash collected information on the history of the team and opposition toward the name and then distributed it to network news managers. It was the start of a campaign to have ESPN stop using the name. Macedo told me that he thought the chances of actually succeeding were currently slim and none, but that it was worth the effort to get people thinking about it.

“Think about the name,” he wrote to me in an email. “Think about the stereotypical connotations around color. We would not accept anything similar as a team nickname if it were associated with any other ethnicity or any other race.

“Over the years, the more I thought about it, the less comfortable I became using it. I’m not sure other Americans have stopped to hear the voices of Native Americans. I can only imagine how painful it must be to hear or see that word over and over, referenced so casually every day.”

Clearly, Lipsyte, like many people, would prefer to jettison the nickname. However, he doesn’t take the ultimate stand here. Instead, he documents the reasons why ESPN will continue to use “Redskins.”

1) ESPN should be covering the news, not making it. Fair enough. The action Macedo proposed would be newsworthy enough to make ESPN a player in a controversy. We’ve been through this before in ESPN’s coverage of NBA player Jason Collins’ coming out. In one case, on “Outside the Lines,” instead of an in-depth look at the implications of Collins’ action, we got a debate on the varieties of religious experience.

Then there was this telling passage:

3) A gesture as aggressive as attacking a famous, long-standing team is antithetical to the ESPN business model. Snyder is a business associate (his Washington radio station is an ESPN affiliate), and the NFL is an important partner. ESPN is a major media corporation with a parent company (Disney) and shareholders. I am still in the early process of exploring the depths and facets of ESPN, but one thing is clear — it is an entertainment company trying to maintain a vigorous journalistic presence. This is no simple matter. This so-called “bifurcation” — business side and journalism side — requires respect and mindfulness.

“I’m from the D.C. area and a fan all my life,” says Rob King, senior vice president of content for ESPN print and digital media, “and I’ve thought about the Generals and the Statesmen as names, even George Washington replacing the Indian on the logo.

“At ESPN, the only thing that really matters is serving fans. NFL fans think of the Washington, D.C.-area franchise as the Redskins. So that informs how we’ll serve them across news, commentary, scores and fantasy coverage. We will use the term Redskins so long as fans expect this to be the nomenclature that drives their rooting experience.

“So hail to ’em.”

The most sensible ongoing strategy I’ve heard is from Patrick Stiegman, vice president and editor-in-chief of ESPN.com, who said: “To simply ignore the nickname in our coverage seems like nothing more than grandstanding. We can use the name of the team, but our best service to fans is to report the hell out of the story, draw attention to the issue and cover all aspects of the controversy.”

Indeed, it seems unlikely that ESPN is going to be a leader here and initiate a boycott. While it is noble to report the controversy, Tony Kornheiser, who wrote the word “Redskins” a zillion times during his long career at the Washington Post, had the most telling observation on Pardon the Interruption:

“I don’t think writers and bloggers and websites can make this happen,” he said, “I do think television networks can make this happen. … To pick two: If ESPN and Fox said ‘We’re not going to use Redskins anymore’ and the NFL tacitly went along with that and didn’t say anything, that would put pressure on CBS and NBC. I think it has to come from the larger institutions.”

Don’t hold your breath, Tony.

 

 

 

Reviews for Ray Lewis: ‘Already better than two-thirds of the ex-NFL-players drawing paychecks as TV analysts’

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I was out Sunday at Soldier Field. Eating unhealthy food at 10 a.m. behind a tailgate is not a bad way to start the new season.

So I will leave it to others to weigh in on the ESPN debut of Ray Lewis on Countdown.

David Zurawik of the Baltimore Sun was impressed:

Overall, Lewis’ greatest contribution to ESPN’s “Sunday NFL Countdown” was the genuine sense of energy, enthusiasm and even joy that he brought to the conversation.

Last year, I thought the show felt flat and, frankly, kind of old. But not today. It was jacked up and juiced from beginning to end with energy, information and insights.

Lewis added to those insights with his keen understanding of the game.

For example, in talking about the pounding that the Ravens took Thursday night from the Denver Broncos, he said, ” “Baltimore will be fine. They’re that type of team, alright. Our pedigree has always been that.

“One stumble in the road ain’t never stopped nothing… In the first half the other night, they played checkers. You see? The second half, you was supposed to play chess.”

At first I thought, “OK, there’s the inscrutable Ray Lewis talking checkers and chess. What the hell does he mean by that, and how many hundreds of thousands of viewers did he just leave scratching their heads?”

But as he went on to explain how Broncos quarterback Peyton Manning reads defenses and how he would move Ravens players out of position to try and confuse Manning with disguised alignments, I thought, “That’s exactly what was going on in the second half: Manning started playing chess with the Ravens, and Baltimore had no one to play against him.”

That’s an astonishing insight. I think someone might have coached Lewis and told him he has to translates those kinds of insights into language that even the least football savvy viewer can understand.

Richard Deitsch at SI.com:

Clearly, Lewis is not a game-changing television hire at this point but he was more than adequate on opening morning. He’s got a charismatic manner and had moments where you drew closer to the screen to hear what he had to say. He was particularly interesting when explaining how to stop the read-option and the importance of New Orleans coach Sean Payton. “When that guy walks back in, that’s the brain of that operation,” Lewis said. “He is to New Orleans what Bill Belichick is to the Patriots. Without that, without him, you saw last year they had a great imbalance of what leadership looked like.”

However, both Deitsch and Bob Raissman of the New York Daily News note Lewis has to make a big change. Writes Raissman:

When referring to the Ravens on ESPN’s “Sunday NFL Countdown,” Ray Lewisused a lot of “we,” “our” and “us.”

Awful!

Whoever produces the show should have told him he is in the media now, not a player anymore. Then again, maybe those responsible for such duties are scared to mess with Mr. L.

Why Eminem acted so bizarre: ‘He was just messing with everyone’

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Richard Deitsch of SI.com has the back story on Eminem’s bizarre appearance during halftime of Saturday’s Notre Dame-Michigan.

Bonnell said Eminem arrived at Michigan’s Big House with a small group in the second quarter, and hung out on an ESPN bus for 10 minutes before ESPN escorted him to a room next to the broadcast booth. Prior to the interview, Bonnell described Eminem as “legitimately nervous doing a live interview.” The rapper spoke with Herbstreit and Musburger before the interview started and told them “How do you guys do live TV week to week?”

Bonnell said what viewers did not immediately recognize was that Eminem took on the persona of his Berzerk character in the video. “He was just messing with everyone,” Bonnell said. “We had no idea he would do that, but if you see the music video, it’s him looking into the camera and doing a throwback to the ’80s. You clearly saw after the video was over, he became Marshall Mathers again. He was goofing around.”

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Whatever, by Monday morning, the above video had nearly 800,000 views. Mission accomplished.

 

 

A good read: Before NFL was ‘NFL’; ‘Less structure than intramural weekend on frat row’

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My old Chicago Tribune colleague, Richard Rothschild, has an interesting NFL history piece at SI.com. On the first Sunday of the new season, he looks back to a time when the league was an afterthought in the days of leather helmets.

Rothschild writes:

Imagine an NFL with less structure than an intramural weekend on fraternity row, a league devoid of divisions, whose membership shifted from year to year and whose teams played a different number of games.

That was the NFL during its first 13 seasons.

As with today’s English Premier League in soccer, there was only one division with the regular season deciding the league champion.

There were no playoffs. If fans wanted postseason football there was always college football’s Rose Bowl, which since New Year’s Day 1902 had matched a top team from the West Coast against a challenger from east of the Rockies.

The NFL started with 14 teams in 1920. It reached a high of 22 in 1926, following Red Grange’s popular barnstorming tour in late ’25 and early ’26, but dropped to 12 teams in ’27 and had sunk to eight in ’32, as the tsunami of the Great Depression drowned U.S. businesses and made leisure time scarce for most Americans.

Winning didn’t guarantee survival. Four of the NFL’s early champions, the Akron Pros (1920), the Canton/Cleveland Bulldogs (’22-24), the Frankford Yellow Jackets (’26) and the Providence Steam Rollers (’28), were all gone by ’32.

Then there was the schedule. In 1929 the champion Packers played 13 games, the runner-up New York Giants played 15 and third-place Frankford played 19. The cellar-dwelling Dayton Triangles took the field only six times.

An extra game gave the Chicago Cardinals (11-2-1) the 1925 NFL title over the Pottsville (Pa.) Maroons (10-2), who had had their schedule suspended after they played a non-sanctioned exhibition game in Philadelphia.

Empty seats in title games:

The 1936 NFL Championship Game between the Boston Redskins and the Packers had to be moved from Boston to New York due to the lack of interest in the Redskins’ hometown. The ‘Skins had drawn poorly all season and nearly everyone in Boston knew that Marshall was planning to move the team. Boston Herald columnist Bob Dunbar wrote: “[A]ll the Boston football followers lose by the transfer of the Redskins-Packers championship game is the right to stay away.”

Green Bay beat the Redskins 21-6 before a crowd of nearly 30,000 fans at the Polo Grounds, far more than would have shown up in Boston. Four days later, Marshall announced the team was indeed moving to Washington. NFL football would not return to Boston until the Patriots joined the league with the 1970 NFL-AFL merger.

And Rothschild makes a point of remembering the significance of the NFL title games prior to the Super Bowl era:

When ESPN rated the top 20 coaches in NFL history, the list was heavily weighted toward coaches from the Super Bowl era. Weeb Ewbank, who won those NFL two titles with the 1958-59 Colts and then led the New York Jets to a stunning Super Bowl III win over Baltimore, was omitted. Yet Marv Levy and Bud Grant, Super Bowl-era coaches who never won pro football’s ultimate game, were selected.

Paul Brown, usually regarded as one of the top two or three coaches in NFL history, couldn’t crack the top five.

How often have TV networks displayed graphics highlighting an achievement by an NFL team or individual, with a qualifying line at the bottom saying “since the 1970 merger”?

Was there no pro football before 1970? Did NFL used to stand for the National Federation of Lacrosse?

Football historians can debate which season created the most lasting impact on the NFL. Perhaps it was 1946, when the league integrated, established a permanent base on the West Coast and shattered attendance records. What about 1950, when the NFL absorbed the powerhouse Browns and the up-and-coming 49ers from the All-America Football Conference?

The 1958 season featured the overtime title game between the Colts and Giants that helped ignite pro football’s mass appeal. In 1960 Pete Rozelle began his landmark tenure as NFL commissioner, the upstart American Football League opened play and the Lombardi Packers appeared in their first championship game.

The 1966 season culminated with the first Super Bowl, leading to the full NFL-AFL merger in ’70. In 1978 the NFL expanded to 16 games and liberalized its passing rules, opening up offenses that had become too stagnant.

But there’s a strong case to be argued for the 1933 season. Those historic reforms that created the postseason and liberated the passing game continue to resonate in the NFL, 80 years later.

 

Random football card: Dick Butkus; ‘People named dogs after him–out of respect’

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It’s football. It’s Butkus.

Perhaps the best pairing of a name and player in the history of the game.

In a new book, Black Sox & Three Peats: A Century of Chicago’s Best Sportswriting, Ron Rapoport, the editor, selected a vintage 1979 column on Butkus from Don Pierson of the Chicago Tribune, a legend in his own right.

Pierson wrote:

“Butkus. He was as Chicago as Daley, as Illinois as Grange. Some people are born to play football. Football was born for Dick Butkus. Some people name their children after heroes. In Chicago, people name their dogs after Butkus–out of respect. He symbolizes the ferocity of his sport. He is in the Hall of Fame now, and a thousand NFL players are oh so glad he’s there and not still on the field.”

 

 

 

 

Weekend wrap: Aikman says NFL should have disclosed what it knew about concussions

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

Concussions: Tom Hoffarth of the Los Angeles Daily News talks to Troy Aikman and others in the aftermath of the NFL concussion case.

Aikman, who has said back problems rather than migraine headaches were more related to why he retired, pointed out this week that he was not one of the plaintiffs suing the league. But he called the settlement “another win for the NFL … that’s a lot of money (paid out), but relatively speaking, in terms of what could have been paid, it’s not that much.

“There are guys who will be able to benefit, and some money will be put into research. (But) the one thing I’m disappointed about is that the NFL didn’t have to acknowledge what they knew and when they knew it (concerning brain injury research). It’s not about tarnishing the NFL, but I think full disclosure would have been the best way to go.”

CBS’ Boomer Esiason, who suffered such a severe concussion while playing quarterback for the New York Jets in 1995 that he was one of the first to undergo an extensive concussion study during the season while unable to play, said he’s “grateful” for the 4,500 players who went forth with the lawsuit and “I may fall under this fund if I need it.”

Broadcaster draft: Matt Yoder of Awful Announcing conducted his annual college football fantasy broadcasting draft.

Round 1

1) Ourand: Chris Fowler, ESPN, studio host 

With so many games on TV, the best way to stand out is with a pre- or post-game show. College GameDay is the best show covering college sports today, and Fowler is the best anchor. This is the easiest pick of the draft.

2) Deitsch: Kirk Herbstreit, ESPN, game analyst

Luck or RGIII? Fowler and Herbstreit were going 1-2 in this draft in some order and with the GameDay host going first overall, this was an easy selection. Herbstreit is versatile enough to excel in either the studio or game format, and he’ll do both for my network.  

3) Kenney: Rece Davis, ESPN, studio host

I was hoping to get either Davis or Fowler, because the gulf between these two and the remaining studio hosts is huge. Davis has the misfortune of being paired with the clownish duo of Mark May and Lou Holtz on ESPN’s wrap-up show, which means I generally don’t see that much of him on Saturdays. There has to be a better way to utilize his considerable talents.  

4) Yoder: Mark May, ESPN, studio analyst

No wait, that’s a joke…

4) Yoder: Gus Johnson, Fox, play by play

My lead play by play man was an excruciating pick, but I went with Gus over Brent Musburger & Verne Lundquist. I don’t know how much longer I’ll have some of those other top names so I’m looking both short and long term with this pick. Gus has received much more hype for his college basketball and soccer work (for better and worse) but his enthusiasm and style is a great fit for college football.

NFL broadcasting guide: Richard Deitsch of MMQB has an extensive guide of the networks’ game coverage for 2013.

It’s a simple question with a complex answer. What makes a successful NFL game broadcast?

“I think a successful game broadcast is one where everyone is working in concert together to tell a story,” says CBS Sports broadcaster Jim Nantz, the network’s lead NFL play-by-play voice since 2004. “It is an effort of about 250 strong for our crew, and everybody has an important part to play to make sure the story is told accurately. The art of it, when you boil it down, is storytelling, and not just anecdotal stuff. It’s about why a play did or did not work, or why a player or coach made that decision. It’s storytelling whether from a play-by-play man or analyst, or the producer having the right sequence of replays, or the director visually showing you what happened.

Sunday Night Football: I’m not exactly sure what this is, but Neil Best of Newsday says Sunday night’s game will be featured on FreeD TV.

Starting with Sunday’s Giants-Cowboys game at AT&T Stadium and continuing with Notre Dame vs. Arizona Oct. 5 and Redskins vs. Cowboys Oct. 13, every NBC game at the Cowboys’ building will feature “FreeD” TV.

The plan, fashioned by a company called Replay Technologies, is to mount a total of 24 high-speed cameras — 12 on each end — covering every angle in both red zones to provide a seamless 360-degree arc of replay possibilities.

“FreeD,” short for “free dimensional video,” also will be shown on the Cowboys’ famously mammoth in-stadium video board.

Fox College Saturday: Ken Fang at Awful Announcing thought the season debut was much better than last year’s version.

Does it work? Well, there are segments where Klatt takes the lead and the show truly becomes his. Andrews has improved after her shaky start with Fox College Saturday last year. There’s only been one show in 2013, but Andrews does better handing off to this crew than when she had to carry George and Harrington in 2012. There is definitely better chemistry in this year’s cast and it helps that Klatt has been brought in to co-host.

Peyton Manning, TV analyst: Richard Deitsch of SI.com speculates on the great QB’s future as an analyst, if he goes that route.

How likely is Manning to go into the booth after he’s retired? For as many interviews and studio appearances he’s done over his 15 NFL seasons, the Broncos quarterback has never indicated that he’ll pursue broadcasting after his career ends. (Worth noting is his father, Archie, a broadcaster for CBS Sports, told the Indianapolis Business Journal in 2011 that he was not sure if Peyton’s heart was into broadcasting.)

In an interview with SI.com last week, though, Manning’s former coach, Tony Dungy, predicted Manning would be a broadcaster five years from now. “I would say he would,” said Dungy, an analyst for NBC’s Football Night In America. “He enjoys the game so much and it is a way to keep yourself involved. He would also be phenomenal. He has everything you are looking for. I joked with [NBC Sports executive producer] Sam Flood awhile back: If we hired him at NBC, it would triple Sam’s workload. Peyton will be so prepared and not leave a stone unturned. He would put 30 hours a week into it because he will want to be the best. Whoever hires him, they have to know what comes the territory. But if he did this he would be phenomenal.”

Dan Wetzel: The Yahoo! Sports columnist does an interview on APSE’s site with Dan Wiederer on the art of column writing.

For me, I think it’s important that I report out every column as much as possible. We have a great NBA reporter, Adrian Wojnarowski, and Jeff Passan, another of our columnists. We have a lot of great people and we talk a lot about reporting every column. Needless to say, there are times when you can’t always report out a column. Something breaking and there’s no access. Like Tiger Woods smashing his car into the fire hydrant. You’re not getting Tiger Woods on the phone. At that moment, nobody is. So sometimes you don’t have the choice. But for 99 percent of columns, how can you report it out? What can you give the reader that they’re not getting without your reporting eye? So you have to zero in on using your access and asking the right questions.

Georgia Tech announcer: Mike Tierney in the New York Times writes about the unusual hire for the voice of Georgia Tech football.

Less than an hour later, after a swig of water that would stay in his system for a while, Gaudin delivered his first unrecorded words to the Georgia Tech audience: “Live from Bobby Dodd Stadium. Welcome, everybody. I’m Brandon Gaudin.”

There was no telling how many listeners heard that and said, “Who?”

Football is a young man’s game, but the art of describing it on the radio has largely been the purview of those middle-aged and older. Georgia Tech athletics is affiliated with IMG College, which holds the multimedia rights to the football programs of 80 universities, making it the largest such network. On average, two jobs within that group become available each year, and 15 of the current IMG announcers have been calling games from the same campus for at least 30 years, longer than Gaudin, 29, has been alive.

Namath and Bryant: Sports Books Review Center reviews Rising Tide, a new book on Joe Namath’s years in Alabama with Paul “Bear” Bryant.

Bryant was waiting for him, even having him up to his fabled coaching tower when Namath arrived. We forget what a great athlete Namath was in those pre-knee operation days, but he was a standout in all sports (he could dunk a basketball without a running start) and had excellent speed.

The authors do capture the atmosphere that greeted Namath in Alabama. This is someone who had black friends back home, and who therefore wasn’t used to the idea of separate drinking fountains and bus lobbies. We couldn’t see what was  Joe did what he wanted – being a special athlete always has had its advantages –  and while it ruffled some feathers he was good enough and friendly enough to make it work.

Most of the book is devoted to a game-by-game account of Namath’s seasons there. There’s some good research involved here and the story moves along, although it is a little difficult to make football games from 50 years ago fresh and interesting. It’s striking how much the game of football has changed since then. Namath had games where he only threw a handful of times, something of a waste of his talent. But, when he had to throw, he was a sight. Namath did more than enough for people to realize he was something special.

Podcasts

Big Lead-Jason McIntyre: Jay Glazer

Awful Announcing: Darren Sharper, NFL Network.

Sports-Casters: Dave Dameshek (NFL Network, NFL.Com), Richard Deitsch (Sports Illustrated, SI.Com) and Jeff Duncan (Times-Picayune, NOLA.Com)