DL545: Birds Chirping, Grass Growing and BASEBALL! A Chat with Kevin Kaduk of Big League Stew

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You smell that? No, seriously, do you smell that? It’s the smell of spring. It’s the smell of rain and flowers and birds crapping on your car (well, my car). But most importantly, it’s the smell of pretzels and peanuts and Cracker Jacks.

It’s the smell of baseball.

Kevin Kaduk of Yahoo’s Big League Stew joins the show to preview the 2011 season. Opening Day — which is suddenly on Thursday and Friday — is a time when every city still has a chance to win it all. It’s a time when Jeff Franceour has finally put it all together. It’s a time where every stadium is sold out (until game two, in some towns).

We talk a lot about the job of a baseball beat writer, perhaps the most difficult job in all of sports media. We laud the work of people like Bob Dutton and Todd Zolecki and Kaduk admits that he’d rather sell insurance than cover a beat…it’s that much of a grind.

As most shows with Kaduk go, we talkREAD MORE

DL544: Is Murray Chass the Westboro Baptist Church of Sports Bloggers?

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Murray Chass wrote something last week that got a lot of baseball writers and other bloggers in a tizzy. We paid attention to it, as a whole, because those baseball writers and other bloggers wrote and blogged about it. Look at this guy! Why do we still pay attention to him?!

Wait…why do we still pay attention to him? If there’s a crazy man ranting on my street corner, do I bring TV cameras over and yell at the cameras that we should ignore the crazy man I just introduced to the world? Or do we calmly ignore the crazy person and go about our day?

What’s the internet equivalent of walking across the street with your head down?

As Nick mentioned on the show, if the news media could find the common sense to ignore the “protesters” of the Westboro Baptist Church, no matter what they did to try and get attention, would they eventually go away? Doesn’t the attention, in some way, justify the method? And, no, we aren’t calling ChassREAD MORE

DL543: Final Four, Sharing Glass Slippers, Best & Worst In Media, More

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Action packed show as Nick and Jon Tannenwald talk (with me) about the most improbable Final Four ever. Here’s a little bit of what we discuss, in bullet form:

• Can a Final Four have two Cinderellas, or did VCU’s win move Butler — who will be wearing white jerseys and got to the title game last year — officially out of that role?

• Is Nick, a Richmond grad, happy for rival VCU or totally jealous of the cross-town success, especially considering VCU beat a Kanas team that beat Richmond the round before.

• Are we waiting for the inevitable title game blowout? Will the mid-major bubble burst in the title game, or can we get a game like last year?

• Who is smarmier: John Calipari of Jim Calhoun? And is Calipari’s run to the Final Four — after losing his entire team to the NBA draft last year — actually the most impressive situation for all four teams there?

• Does Calipari get to say he’s taken three schools to the Final Four?READ MORE

DL542: Will Brinson on NFL’s PR Madness. Plus: Actual Madness (March Style)

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Will Brinson and I talk about the ridiculous PR battle between the NFLPA and the NFL. Is either side winning? How has social media and the instant-reaction media world we live in changed the way this lockout is being covered, and how the participants are acting…and reacting.

Look, you can’t begrudge the players for talking, or Tweeting, about the injustice they feel has been brought upon them and you can’t blame them for hijacking news during the first weekend of the NCAA Tournament when they’re trying to make sure they still have jobs, but you’d think the league, itself, would have more understanding that IT’S NOT ALWAYS ABOUT FOOTBALL. Forcing legalese down our throats isn’t helping.

That said, the more we see football players in suits and not helmets and pads, the worse the PR battle gets for them. We love the guys in our favorite uniforms. The guys in suits, yelling about money? The average fan can’t relate to that.

So there’s a lot of lockout talk, but mostly talking about whyREAD MORE

DL541: Comparing Barry Bonds to A Million Fish Kill! Plus, The Death of TV Cliffhangers

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We talk about how we feel that nobody is talking about the trial of Barry Bonds. Okay, it’s not NOBODY. Obviously, SOME people are covering it and it’s on Twitter a lot, but it doesn’t have the same feel as the Clemens legal situation or the Congressional hearings or, shoot, even Floyd Landis. Why isn’t this the biggest story in sports right now? Why does ESPN have Women’s Basketball and Cricket in their top story rotator and not Bonds?

(Wait…we know why they have those two sports…because they own the rights…but still, Bonds is relegated to the Headlines box?)

Has Barry Bonds become the sports equivalent to a million fish kill? Is he suddenly not sexy enough for front-page news? And yes, I just basically wondered about the “sexiness” of a million fish dying off the coast of California two weeks ago. I disgust myself, sometimes.

Before we get to our TV segment, Nick and I also about Luis Castillo showing up late for Phillies camp when he’s trying to make the team.READ MORE

DL540: A Look At NCAA Regional Announcer Assignments

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Marv got the worst Region? Reggie Miller is paired with Gus and Len? Nantz isn’t with Duke?

We go over an interesting set of decisions for who is calling what this weekend in the NCAA Tournament. We also talk more about the TV set up and how all the games on four channels has changed the game for live events from now on, compare it to NBC’s work during the Summer and Winter Olympics (and the old NBC TripleCast from the 80s) and wonder if the TruTV bumb will get more people to watch Pawn Stars and whatever else is on that network.

I also bust out my theory that CBS should handle the Final Four like a pitching staff, with Nantz starting the game before handing it off to Verne Lundquist and Bill Raftery at halftime with Gus Johnson getting the closer spot if the game is close after the four minute timeout. It would be amazing.

Thanks as always for listening.

DL539: Weekend Madness, ONIONS, DC Games & Why Chuck Has Been Turrible

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Consider today and tomorrow our two-part look at week one of the NCAA Tournament, the great games, great calls and, yes, some of the stuff we think is not so great.

Tomorrow we’ll cover the assignments for the Regional sites, but today we spend more time looking at the games we watched this weekend.

Nick was in DC and got to watch two phenomenal finishes that had Butler winning both games en route to another trip to the Sweet Sixteen. What was the crazy finish of the Butler-Pitt game like in the arena? We spend a lot of time on how the building felt, as well as what we think the referees should have done in that situation. We also touch on some of the reaction from the sports writing and tweeting types, plus Nick gives an assessment of how the tournament feels when you’re at a site and how that compares to the incredible ability to watch every game at once on TV.

We move around the tournament a bit, talking aboutREAD MORE

Zoe (and Max) Picking Brackets

We do this every year and every year it seems Zoe’s bracket gets better. Well, Morehead State might prove her wrong…or prove ALL OF YOU WRONG.

Here’s Zoe (and Max) picking brackets. Happy basketball, everyone.

DL538: Bias, Chalk and Why I Already Hate My Bracket

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Nick and I run through the bracket and I basically have chalk. And I hate myself for it. Nick has a few more upsets than me. Listen along and don’t forget to join in on the bracket challenge at With Leather. (or follow this line of direction from Zerkle: If you’re hard-up for a bracket pool, join ours. The link is here and the password is “dukesucks”.)

You can’t not beat me.

Before our bracket breakdown we also talk about John Feinstein’s WashPost column ripping the NCAA committee for, well, everything. The lesson here: get better, ACC, so the writers in your area don’t put out columns that rip the selection committee for having a secret agenda, thus exposing the writer’s own secret agenda.

Madness!

DL537: Brackets, Networks, Announcers, Barkley, Bilas, Vitale, GUS, More

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What else today? Brackets!

This show is basically in two parts — the first part with Jon Tannenwald of Philly.com’s college hoops blog Soft Pretzel Logic and the second part with Nick — talking all about the brackets and the media coverage, including what announcers will be calling games on what networks, how we think Charles Barkley will and won’t fit into the telecast, Jay Bilas ostensibly lobbying to get himself on the NCAA Selection Committee, Dick Vitale’s annual rant for those who didn’t get in, Gus Johnson as an indie rock band and a whole lot more.

We get a little bit into the brackets and what we think could be some good matchups — including the Temple Penn State game that is a big deal around here and the balance of watching games live and still trying to catch the other games you care about on TV, something Nick will have to face on Thursday and Saturday in DC.

We also talk about whether you should fill out a bracket that’s chalk,READ MORE