The Sports Blogosphere…As Muppets. A Farewell And Whole-Hearted Thank You.

I loved doing our show for the last 550 odd episodes. Not every episode was great, but we think most of them were pretty darn good, and hopefully a little show called On the DL left some mark on the sports blog world.

The coolest thing about doing this show has certainly been the number of people I’ve had the opportunity to meet and talk with, from the show regulars to the once-in-a-lifetime guests, all done by barking into a $20 microphone plugged into a USB jack in my computer and having the foresight to press record. It’s been amazing.

For those who never listened to the show, or just caught an episode here or there when we had a big-name guest, I’ll let a message I just got from Jack Kogod explain what the show was:

MY NAME IS DAN LEVY AND I HAVE OPINIONS ON OTHERS I’D LIKE TO SHARE WITH YOU.

So, there you go. My name is Dan Levy. I have opinions on others I’d like to share with you. They’re mostly about Muppets.

THE MUPPETREAD MORE

DL554: Josh Elliott On Leaving ESPN for GMA. Daulerio On Past, Present & Future of Deadspin, Blogs

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We’ve interviewed a ton of great guests during this run, but no show had as many downloads as our conversation with ESPN’s Josh Elliott. It wouldn’t be right to end the show without having him on again (in hopes that traffic magic returns with him, of course.)

Elliott is leaving his gig as the morning host of ESPN’s SportsCenter to take a job as the news reader (or news anchor depending on who he’s trying to impress) at Good Morning America.

The conversation is a lot about how a guy can go from Sports Illustrated to Good Morning America in two simple steps (step one, be handsome; step two, be really really good). We talk about how different the world of sports blogs has been in the last three years since live AM SportsCenter came into our lives and how Twitter has somehow made news break backwards. Trust me, the idea makes sense, even if the concept doesn’t.

Mostly we talk about Josh’s love for news and how he is, “equally interested inREAD MORE

DL553: Tackling Women In Locker Rooms (Not Literally). Plus: Manny and the HOF

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Nick and I do one last show before the two last shows, talking about Tara Sullivan’s treatment at the Masters, her subsequent tweet heard round the world and the fallout from what she said…and what a security guard did.

Here’s her blog post about it. Here’s another take we discuss.

Also, if Manny Ramirez, Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens don’t get into the Hall of Fame, what exactly is the Hall of Fame?

Thanks for listening, as always.

DL552: Josh Zerkle & Bethlehem Shoals On Why We’re All Quitting This Week

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This show has always served as somewhat of a living, breathing therapy session for me. I honestly and truly believe that there’s a 50% chance I go insane on Friday. Until then, we have a few shows left and this one is one I hope you download and stick into some kind of time capsule to play in two years when the internet is, once again, completely different than it is right now.

Josh Zerkle of KSK and With Leather and Bethlehem Shoals of Free Darko are both on the show to talk about recent announcements that they, both, are transitioning to new things. Zerkle is stepping down from the helm of With Leather to focus on other, non-sports projects. He’ll still be around the site, writing a few times a month, and he’ll still be doing his podcast and contributing to KSK, but by the sound of it, it was time for him to do something new…even if that wasn’t really anything specific, yet.

Shoals is a little different, in thatREAD MORE

550: Wyshynski on Rasslin’, Media, Blogs, NHL Playoffs, Twins, Canada & Fun

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I told my wife last year, or maybe two years ago, that if it ever got to the point where Nick had obligations that precluded him from doing the show on a daily basis, the first person I’d ask to co-host with me would be Greg Wyshynski from Yahoo’s Puck Daddy. Something about two jerks from Jersey talking about sports, media, blogs and life always felt like the kind of show people would love.

Everytime he’s been on the show, that’s how I’ve felt about it…THIS is the show. This is the show we wanted to make, talking with big names in our industry — there is no debate that Wyshynski has made himself (and Puck Daddy) one of the leading hockey voices in the country — about sports, life, media and whatever else we want.

Now, let’s not forget that Wyshynski has his own daily radio show talking about a lot of this same stuff (though decidedly more hockey than I’d feel comfortable with) and hasn’t once had me on the program.READ MORE

DL549: Well, At Least It Was Close

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Nick and I talk first about the NCAA Title game, the commentators, the Tweeters and recap a pretty lackluster finale. We do talk about Jim Nantz’s inexplicable “dog fight” reference during the game and I pat myself on the back for almost nailing the Nantz-ism that ended the game.

Then Jon Tannenwald joins the show to talk more about the game and talk about the legacy Butler has created for itself. We use Butler to talk about the leveling of the NCAA basketball playing field, and how in now way are the Bulldogs anything like the Green Bay Packers, despite NFL PR head Greg Aiello trying to convince us of that.

Oh, yeah, I do break down the studio show in “basketball math” terms. It might be more entertaining than the game was.

Congrats to UConn. Thanks for listening.

DL546: Talk Radio v Teenage Writers, Terrible MLB Predictions, Top Chefs as NFL Quarterbacks

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Quick recap today.

• Nick talks about hearing Mike Missanelli of Philly sports talk radio’s 97.5 The Fanatic rip a Bleacher Report article, written by a 14 year-old kid. Here’s that article, and here’s a rebuttal by another B/R scribe chiding Mikey Miss.

The issue, of course, is less about the quality of Bleacher Report and more about the fact that Philly.com has no ability to control what gets put on their site through the B/R pipeline. And, for what it’s worth, I’ve read worse articles by people who actually get paid to write at Philly.com, so I’m not sure why this became an issue at all. That said, if sports talk radio hosts are ripping your brand – the genre is the lowest common denominator of sports discourse — it’s time to take our advice and change your name (or at least create a “pro” level that gets linked to the big sites.)

Yes, when the show ends, Nick and I are going to start a site giving out free advice to sports organizations. We’reREAD 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

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