Monthly Archives: August 2012

Updated Saturday flashback: The complete story of Dick and Jeremy Schaap encounters with Bobby Fischer

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Updated: Jeremy just sent me the 13-minute version of his story on Bobby Fishcher. It details the relationship his father had the brilliant, but troubled chess legend. Schaap won an Emmy for the piece.

Earlier this week, I did an interview with Jeremy Schaap. Not surprisingly, two of his most memorable encounters were discussed: His 2000 interview with Bob Knight shortly after he was fired from Indiana; and an epic run-in with Bobby Fischer during a 2005 press conference in Iceland. Schaap eventually walked out on Fischer, but not before basically saying he was nuts, which he was (exchange comes at 2:30 mark of video).

“People ask me about Fischer and Knight all the time,” Schaap said. “At least once a week, I hear about Knight. Probably every other week, I hear about Fischer.”

Schaap was lauded for not letting Knight control his interview. It included this unforgettable exchange:

Schaap: Bob, we came here to do an interview. I’m asking you questions.

Knight: Well, then let me finish the answer. Is that OK, Jeremy, is that fair enough? Have I interrupted your questions yet?

Schaap: Yes.

Knight: No, I haven’t. You’ve interrupted my answers with your questions and then I’ve tried to get back. So let me finish.

Schaap: Please continue.

Knight: You’ve got a long way to go to be as good as your dad. You better keep that in mind.

Schaap: I appreciate that. What’s next? What do you do this year?

Now that Knight works at ESPN, I asked Schaap if he’s ever run into the former coach.

“I’ve run into him a couple of times, but he has not acknowledged that I’m there,” Schaap said. “Now it’s possible, he didn’t notice. I tend to think he is choosing to look the other way.”

 

The beat: Pac 12 Networks set to make debut: Yahoo tops NBCOlympics.com; Nationals announcer finally gets to call winner

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Jeffrey Martin of USA Today reports that Pac 12 Commissioner Larry Scott has a big vision for this new enterprise.

Martin writes:

Some projections have the Pac-12 Networks, along with a 12-year, $3 billion deal with Fox and ESPN, providing roughly $30 million a school annually after a recent period in which some Pac-12 schools received slightly more than a quarter of that and their athletics programs became heavily dependent on university general funds.

“My mandate was, how do you take this storied conference with all of this success but is undervalued, under-leveraged from an exposure standpoint, as well as a revenue standpoint, and help kind of turn it around, build an enterprise that stays true to the values of the conference?” Pac-12 Commissioner Larry Scott says. “How do we blow this thing out?”

Answering his own question, Scott said during the conference’s recent football media day event in Los Angeles, “The idea is Pac-12 content, anywhere, anytime, by any device.”

Jim Carlisle of the Ventura County Star notes how big it will be for the conference to finally have a spot for its games.

It hasn’t always been easy to find the Pac-12 on TV, but that won’t be the  case anymore. Regionalization of football games is a thing of the past. Not only  will the Pac-12 Network show 35 games, but a new $3 billion, 12-year contract  with ESPN and Fox will have those networks showing 44 more games nationally.

UCLA’s first football game on the Pac-12 Network will be Sept. 15 against  visiting Houston and USC’s will be Sept. 22 at home against California.

Every men’s basketball game will also air either on Fox, ESPN or the Pac-12  Networks and there will be much more coverage of women’s basketball and other  men’s and women’s sports that have ignored by television.

Stevenson said 350 events will be shown on all seven networks. In addition,  50 more events per school will be shown regionally.

“Last year, I think across the conference there were might have been five or  six football games that weren’t televised, but probably 70 basketball games  weren’t even on television last year,” Stevenson said. “Thirteen of USC’s  basketball games weren’t on television.”

 

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Yahoo has had more than 2 billion page views during the Olympics, according to Eric Fisher of Street and Smith’s Sports Business Daily. Fisher writes:

Three days after NBCOlympics.com said it has surpassed 1.1 billion online page views for the London Olympics to date, Yahoo said Thursday that it has surpassed 2 billion page views for its Olympic coverage through Monday across computer, mobile and tablet platforms. The Yahoo total, the result of internal metrics, is more than its total coverage of the Vancouver and Beijing Olympics combined.
Yahoo also said it has reached more than 80 million unique visitors globally for its coverage from London.

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Big Lead has an interview with Washington Nationals play-by-play man Charlie Stowes. After years of calling games for losing teams, he finally has a winner.

Stowes said:

Unfortunately, lots of practice with this one with some bad clubs in the NBA, an expansion baseball team in Tampa Bay, an expansion-like team moved from Montreal to Washington.  But you always approach a game fresh and in your mind, feel like the game you are broadcasting is the “Game of the Day.”  When a team isn’t playing well, trying to entertain with your partner on air can be important to keep an audience.  If you can get people to listen when your broadcasting a bad club and like you,  they’ll love you when they win.

 

 

 

My first job: Bob Ryan covers Celtics for Boston Globe at 23: Intern class of ’68 included Gammons

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Bob Ryan is hanging it up as a regular columnist for the Boston Globe after the Olympics. It’s been a great run. Ryan has been a distinctive voice in the Northeast for more than three decades.

I remember a long night at Runyon’s in New York with Ryan, Malcolm Moran of the New York Times and Jackie MacMullan of the Boston Globe. Moran had a train to catch to get back home, but thanks to Ryan, the conversation was so lively, Moran kept saying, “I’ll catch the next one.” Not sure if he ever made it home.

In honor of Ryan’s last columns for the Globe, it seems fitting to look back at how it all started. I had a chance to talk to him a few years back for a project about sportswriters.

It turns out Ryan didn’t have to wait long to get the plum assignment that eventually defined his career.

Here’s Ryan:

*********

My real beginning is that I always was interested in the idea of the newspaper being the validation of a sporting event.

I grew up in Trenton, N.J. It was a very good sports town. It was a big high school basketball town. My father was involved in sports. He was a promoter and publicity man-type. He was an assistant AD at Villanova. My whole orientation was sports.

I liked to read too. If we went to a high school basketball game, I didn’t think it was validated until I read about it the next day. It’s just the way my mind worked. From (a young age) I was interested in newspapers.

I started as a summer intern at the Boston Globe on June 10, 1968. There was this other guy named Peter Gammons. That’s when we met.

As an intern, I did sidebar stories at the ballpark, feature stories on off beat stuff. Boston had a soccer team in the North American Soccer League. Dick Walsh was the new commissioner. He had been a longtime baseball executive. He comes to Boston on a publicity tour and is available for an interview. Who do they send? The lowest man on the totem pole. Me. He laughed about it. He said, “This is what I’ve become.”

(Eventually), they brought me back as an office boy with a verbal promise that I would get the next opening. I got married in May, ’69. I was making the princely sum of $72.50 per week. My wife was teaching school.

By October, the sports editor came up to me and said, ‘You probably thought I forgot all about you.’ The guy who had been covering the Celtics left. That created an opening.

The next night on a Friday, I was covering the home opener for the Celtics against the Cincinnati Royals and their new head coach, Bob Cousy. It was the first year of the post-Russell era. Tom Heinsohn was a rookie coach, and I was the rookie beat man.

Despite all their titles, the Celtics still were on the backburner in Boston compared to Bruins. I did mostly home games. We didn’t travel much.

I was 23. I was exactly the same age as the rookies and not that much younger than the key guys. They took me under their wing. It was a tremendous thrill.

There was a whole different set of circumstances when it came to access. We had almost unlimited access. You could come in and go to practice. You could hang out and sit in the locker room and shoot the breeze for an hour. You’d hang out after practice. You might even go have lunch with them.

I knew how to write, I thought, but I needed to learn the NBA. Nobody taught me a thing about how to cover a team. You have to figure that out yourself.

Heinsohn thought it was to his benefit to fill my head with what he wanted me to know, and it was my benefit to listen. I spent many hours hanging out with him. I got a crash course in learning the NBA.

I know during the first year all kinds of stuff went on. Until this day I have no idea what happened. Later on, I would know automatically, but back then I didn’t have a clue.

I became the beat man in 69-70. It was the first of seven years on the beat. I wound up doing it three different times.

Tommy Boswell once told me when you’re talking about spreading your wings, never be shy about having an expertise in something.

I got two titles out of that run and three in the Bird years. I’ve done many things, but people always identify me with the Celtics. I’m proud of that.

 

 

 

 

Update: NYT public editor calls Jones’ piece “harsh”

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Arthur S. Brisbane felt compelled to weigh in on Jere Longman’s controversial piece on LoLo Jones.

He writes:

In this particular case, I think the writer was particularly harsh, even unnecessarily so.

I queried the sports editor about it, and his response was that “One person’s harsh is another person’s tough minded,” and that the writer, “while acknowledging Jones’s accomplishment and qualities of perseverance and candor, thinks this female athlete fell short.”

I believe writers like Jere Longman, who does have a long and worthy track record at The Times, should have some room to express their hard-earned perspective. But this piece struck me as quite harsh and left me, along with others, wondering why the tone was so strong.

If I was Longman, I’d be pretty ticked off. Wonder if Mr. Brisbane will weigh in on whether Times Op-Ed columns are too harsh?

 

Gallup poll: Americans want live and tape delay for Olympics

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Are you listening NBC?

From a USA Today/Gallup poll:

Americans who say they are watching the Olympics “a lot” are most likely to want the most popular events televised both live during the day as they happen and on tape delay in the evening. Seven in 10 (71%) of these Americans want the most popular events televised live and on tape delay, as do a majority (57%) of those who are watching a little of the games and 43% of those who aren’t watching at all.

So would the 43% who aren’t watching at all tune in if the events aired live?

Wonder what NBC’s polls say?

 

 

Longman wasn’t alone: Chi Tribune’s Hersh also questioned hype surrounding Jones

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A reader pointed out that my old colleague, Philip Hersh, also raised the excessive hype issue about LoLo Jones on May 24, long before London.

Hersh wrote:

I have to hand it to Lolo Jones, her marketing agent, Brandon Swibel, and the edgy promotional gurus at Red Bull.
I can’t think of another athlete with such a slim competitive resume becoming such a pre-Olympic star and attracting such an impressive portfolio of sponsors, including Red Bull, BP, Proctor & Gamble, Asics and Oakley.

And more:

Jones is the subject of an ESPN documentary.  She was on the cover of February’s Outside magazine – which called her “Comeback Athlete of the Year” –  in a rather unusual swimsuit.  Featured in an HBO “Real Sports” segment that aired Tuesday in which Jones followed up on a Twitter revelation (to her 64,000 followers, 1,000 added since earlier this morning) of her virginity by saying that achieving her goal to be chaste until marriage is harder than graduating from college or training for the Olympics.  (Jones has been tweeting relentlessly for a couple years about what she characterizes as a luckless love life.)
Wednesday morning, there was a blog on MTV’s web site – linked from Lolo’s personal site – titled, “Breaking Babe: Olympian and Virgin Lolo Jones.”  A rewrite of the HBO 29-year-old virgin story on People.com had drawn 95 pages (95!) of comments in four hours.  And the new issue of Rolling Stone splashes her picture across two pages.
“I’m always amazed that people are so willing to give up their personal life to strangers,” Mary Carrillo, who did the Jones story for HBO, told me Wednesday morning.
And what is the most noteworthy moment of Jones’ athletic career in outdoor track?
A seventh in the 100-meter high hurdles final at the 2008 Olympics.

And Hersh had a classic finish:

“But imagine what happens if Lolo has a great race in London,” Carrillo said.
I figure Virgin Airlines will become another of her sponsors.
And we all know what Madonna song will be used as background music.

 

New York Times’ Longman in center of storm after Jones’ article

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Jere Longman is an accomplished writer and a veteran of many Olympics. Yet I’m fairly certain he will have a different set of memories from this year’s Games.

The New York Times reporter has been a target after writing a fairly scathing piece about LoLo Jones. He said she was more hype than substance.

He wrote:

 Jones has received far greater publicity than any other American track and field athlete competing in the London Games. This was based not on achievement but on her exotic beauty and on a sad and cynical marketing campaign. Essentially, Jones has decided she will be whatever anyone wants her to be — vixen, virgin, victim — to draw attention to herself and the many products she endorses.

The piece ran last Saturday. However, it exploded on Wednesday when a tearful Jones called the column unfair in a Today Show interview.

I sent Longman an email asking for his reaction to Jones’ reaction. He sent the following reply: “Thanks for writing. I’m going to let the column speak for itself.”

Several of Longman’s colleagues in the sportswriting fraternity stood behind Longman. I received this email from Christine Brennan of USA Today:

“There is no male journalist I know who has done more thoughtful, introspective and respectful work on women in sports than Jere Longman. He brought up some very valid points in his piece on Lolo Jones. It’s because of his time spent covering women and women’s sports issues that he writes with such authority on the subject.”

On Twitter, Fox Sports’ Jason Whitlock called the story, “Good stuff.”

Runblogrun said: “A tough but honest piece by Jere Longman not hatchet job, LoLo Jones is everywhere.”

Yet predictably, most people sided with Jones and aimed their Twitter arrows at Longman.

CNN’s Roland Martin tweeted: “I just read Jere Longman’s piece on LoLo Jones in the nytimes. She’s right, it was a nasty, spiteful piece. The Times should be ashamed.”

Darren Rovell, in his first week at ESPN, defended Jones in a piece on ESPNW.com.

He writes:

If you think her name is cheapened by some strategy to be relevant, to constantly be in the news — most prominently the open talk about her virginity  — then shouldn’t she get some credit for the fact that it worked?

Credit for the fact that in this world of clutter, she got into the heads of marketers who, for whatever reason, wanted to attach their brands to her?

Credit to her creating her own relevancy. Is that cheap? Is that undeserving?

Rovell writes that Jones made you look at her when she appeared on TV. He is right there, but that also plays into Longman’s point.

As a casual fan of this kind of stuff, I was more than a bit surprised to learn Jones wasn’t the favorite in the hurdles. In fact, she received a ton of attention for someone who wasn’t even the top American contender in the event.

Longman makes valid arguments. However, people were turned off by the mean-spirited nature of the piece. He writes:

She has played into the persistent, demeaning notion that women are worthy as athletes only if they have sex appeal. And, too often, the news media have played right along with her.

In 2009, Jones posed nude for ESPN the Magazine. This year, she appeared on the cover of Outside magazine seeming to wear a bathing suit made of nothing but strategically placed ribbon. At the same time, she has proclaimed herself to be a 30-year-old virgin and a Christian. And oh, by the way, a big fan of Tim Tebow.

If there is a box to check off, Jones has checked it. Except for the small part about actually achieving Olympic success as a hurdler.

Harsh, yes. But this is big leagues. If you put yourself out there, you better be prepared to take some shots, especially if you don’t deliver.

Luckily for Longman, Jones finished fourth Tuesday. It served to validate his story.

 

Agree? CBS’ McManus and Barrow not concerned about slow play in golf

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Slow play has been a big issue in golf this year.

Listeners to my Saturday morning golf talk radio show on WSCR-AM 670 in Chicago know I hate slow play worse than taking four shots out of a bunker. Believe me, that’s not an unusual occurrence during one of my rounds.

The biggest slow-play culprits are the pros, some of whom have turned the game into a molasses fest.

The gridlock pace could get really bad at this week’s PGA Championship. If Pete Dye’s Kiawah course plays extremely difficult as forecast, the potential is there for marathon rounds.

During a conference call, I asked CBS Sports Chairman Sean McManus and golf producer Lance Barrow if they were concerned about slow play this week, and golf in general. To my surprise, they weren’t.

McManus:

 I’m not terribly concerned about it. Having watched a lot of golf this year, I know (slow play) has been a topic of discussion. But I haven’t seen it affect too many of the broadcasts. If they play slow because of the course conditions being tough at Kiawah, it adds to the drama.

Barrow:

 I know about what happened with Kevin Na (struggling to pull the trigger at the Players Championship). But I haven’t seen tournaments where slow play has been an issue.

It’s amazing when we have to finish at 6 or 7 (ET) how close they come to hitting that time. A lot of things come into play why players play slowly or quickly. I think a lot has to do with the weather. The wind will be a factor here, but I don’t worry about slow play.

You know when you go in, Keegan Bradley and Jim Furyk (part of the final pairing last Sunday) are not quick players. But you know their mannerisms. You can go to another hole and get another player.

Now, I respect both men and have been a long-time fan of Barrow. But I disagree with them here.

It routinely takes threesomes five hours or more complete a round during a tournament. Is that exciting to watch?

I remember they used to figure 3:50 for the final pairing way back when. Not anymore. It’s in the 4:20-4:30 range for a twosome that’s in contention during the weekend.

Does that make for good television? It’s like watching a movie. A good film at two hours will feel like it is dragging at 2:45.

Let’s hear from somebody other than me.

Earlier in the year, Annika Sorenstam said,  “You watch golf on TV, and it’s very slow.  It’s not moving.”

NBC’s Dottie Pepper was more blunt in her assessment.

“I think the PGA Tour is burying their head in the sand,” Pepper told USA  TODAY Sports. “The PGA Tour has more potential to change the pace of  play because they have more eyeballs on them day in, day out than any of  the other organizations, and they are the ones that can take the lead  on this.”

Pepper then said: “Nobody wins when play is slow.”

I think that’s my new slogan for golf.

For more on how slow play is ruining golf, check out GeoffShackelford.com. He’s got an entire file on the issue.

 

 

 

 

Ebersol speaks: In a surprise (not!), defends NBC tape delay strategy for Olympics

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For those covering this beat, there are a couple elusive interview subjects in London. One is Dick Ebersol and the other is Joe Posnanski.

While Posnanski has yet to discuss his upcoming book about Joe Paterno in the wake of the Freeh Commission findings, he did land the one and only chat Ebersol is doing during these Olympics.

I’m guessing it hasn’t been easy for Ebersol to turn down interview requests. Highly accessible, he always loved the spotlight during his tenure running NBC Sports.

But his day is past, as he is working these Olympics as a consultant. This show now belongs to Ebersol’s successor, Mark Lazarus. Out of proper respect, Ebersol has remained in the background.

However, he did grant an interview with Posnanski. It was posted on the Sports on Earth site that is getting a soft launch during the Olympics.

And surprise, surprise, Ebersol defended NBC’s policy of saving the best events for tape delay on prime time. Of course, Ebersol used that strategy when he oversaw NBC’s coverage of the Olympics.

From the story:

But Ebersol, in what he says will be his only interview at these Games, tells me that those critics have it all wrong. The Olympics, he believes, are not to be treated like other sports. “That’s just nonsense,” he says. “The Olympics are the biggest family television there is. The Olympics are some of the last events where a whole family can gather around a television set and spend the night together.

“People talk about how we should treat this like sports? You know, we’re getting an 18 rating some nights. Do you know what rating we would get if this was not under the banner of the Olympics? We’d be lucky to get a 1 rating for some of these sports. … This is our business model. The newspaper people have their own business model. We’re in the television business. We’re here to make great television.”

Ebersol has an interesting take on the BBC’s coverage compared to NBC’s:

“This year, really for the first time, I have had some time to watch the host country’s television,” Ebersol says. “I’ve been watching the BBC, which is one of the most respected entities in the world, right? Well, they will cut away from races to show a British athlete who is finishing fifth. They openly root for their athletes on the air. It’s a different approach, but we have never done that. Nobody ever uses the word ‘we’ in our coverage, and if they did they wouldn’t last long.

“I believe our coverage is different from anyone else’s in the world. We do as many features on foreign athletes as American athletes. We tell the best stories, wherever we can find them. There’s a great tradition in American television of professionalism in coverage, and I believe we live up to that tradition.”

As for how Ebersol is dealing with these Olympics, Posnanski writes:

Ebersol says that the London Games have been bittersweet. Part of him misses the tension and crackling energy of being in charge, of making instant and critical decisions. And part of him is happy that it is winding down. He doesn’t know what comes next. But, for the first time in his life, he says he’s not too worried about it. There are opportunities, a lot of them. There are also books he wants to read, friends he wants to see, trips he wants to take and family time that was all but impossible in all his years at the top.

Good stuff, Joe. It’s your turn next. The book comes out on Aug. 21.