90 Seconds: Thursday, April 14, 2011

By JOHN P. WISE
One Great Season

+ Did you watch any of the first night of the NHL Stanley Cup Playoffs on Wednesday? Hockey has the best postseason by far, so if you're not into it, you'd better start following along. Its regular season lacks the excitement of college and pro football and college basketball, but its tournament is outstanding. I say it every year around this time, but I'll say it again: no sport's players try harder in the postseason than hockey's. Sure everyone wants to win a championship, but you won't see NBA guys leave it on the floor the next two months the way NHL's skaters will. If you don't believe me, check any of the three series set to begin tonight ... if you can find them on your television.

+ Speaking of the NBA, its postseason begins with four first-round games on Saturday. Miami's road to the first of their expected seven NBA championships begins at home against Philadelphia. All eyes will be on LeBron, D-Wade and Bosh and every playoff loss or narrow victory will be analyzed and dissected. Watching Miami in the postseason will be almost as interesting as it will be to watch the coverage of Miami in the postseason. Expect the hyperbo-meter and panic-meter to be off the charts throughout April and May.

+ It's been a while since I listened to Jim Rome on the regular, but this time of year is usually when he drops the sarcastic ol' "Wait a minute, we're hearing reports that an NFL expert is going to predict the first round of the draft." There is seldom a larger waste of energy than the one we see from the February combine to what was once called Draft Day. Then, thanks to ESPN's curious NFL Draft boner, it became a two-day event, and last year it became a three-day draftasm. Stupid, though I will give the WWL credit for bringing in many current and former NFL players through its studios to try their hands at on-camera work. Trevor Pryce and another NFL player I wasn't familiar with made appearances on Wednesday.

+ Lastly on the 90 today, did anyone care about the Barry Bonds trial? I sure didn't. Way to be decisive, Bay Area jurors. They returned three deadlock decisions and a mostly harmless guilty verdict on an obstruction charge that yielded no official answer on whether Bonds used steroids. That dude needs to go away.

90 Seconds: Friday, April 8, 2011

By JOHN P. WISE
One Great Season

Welcome to "90 Seconds," where we here at OGS will riff on three quick points in the sports world each morning. We encourage feedback, debate, or even spam in the Comments section. OK, not spam.

1) If LeBron James is 26, then his mother, Gloria, must be at least, 42, right? So she's still young enough that I can't fault her for being out at 5 a.m. at a South Beach hotel nightclub, but it's funny how money changes people. Do you think she ever had a beef with the valet service in Akron 10 years ago?

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Fowler, ESPN Navigate Newton's Bumpy Road

By JOHN P. WISE
One Great Season

Everything seemed to go about as well as expected during Heisman weekend here in New York City.

ESPN's face of college football, Chris Fowler, hosted a solid show Saturday night during which Auburn quarterback Cam Newton won the Heisman Trophy as expected.

Before the live broadcast began, perhaps no one knew whether to expect any awkward moments, but both the live and viewing audiences got exactly that when Fowler referenced the Reggie Bush scandal early in the show, and again when he touched on Newton's father, who, to the surprise of no one, was absent from the intimate ceremony.

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LeBron James: A Sympathetic Figure?

By JOHN P. WISE
One Great Season

NBA star LeBron James was the focus of ESPN's "Outside The Lines" show Tuesday, just hours before his new team, the Miami Heat, opens its season against the squad that could very well be its top competition in the East, the Boston Celtics.

It seems like the Lebron conversation takes a new direction every few weeks since he ended his free agency by signing with Miami in July. In addition to the start of the new season, this week's angle is the new Nike commercial in which Swoosh producers seem comfortable trying something new and fairly difficult: turning Lebron into a sympathetic figure.

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10 Things You Hate About ESPN

He's baaack. Ramzy Nasrallah, star contributor at Bucknuts.com, told me he couldn't participate in last week's OGS Best & Worst of ESPN survey because he had far more than just a few votes in mind. So here's a full-on, very entertaining, anti-WWL rant that Ramzy was nice enough to cook up exclusively for One Great Season readers.

By RAMZY NASRALLAH
One Great Season

Everyone hates ESPN.  Everyone needs ESPN.  The Worldwide Leader is basically the dentist, except you go there daily instead of every six months. You don't necessarily hate ESPN's televised poker, bland radio shows like "Mike & Mike" that have no value or Colin Cowherd because ultimately, they're all avoidable. Out of site, out of mind, right?

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Why Basketball Players Are The Most Marketable Athletes

NBA Players, Fans
Enjoy Closeness Other
Leagues Don't Have

By JOHN P. WISE
One Great Season

I read an interesting note in the current edition of ESPN: The Magazine Saturday morning.

The introduction to Chris Broussard's NBA preview story described the Association as "the league that trumps all others in producing larger-than-life superstars."

The statement was presented quite matter-of-factly, nearly buried oh-by-the-way style in the back half of the third sentence of a seven-sentence

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Safety First: Fix The Rule, Then Worry About Video

NFL + Violence =
Great ESPN Highlights

By JOHN P. WISE
One Great Season

It's slightly comical this week reading countless columns about NFL helmet safety, some by writers calling for the league to prohibit ESPN and other broadcasters from including hard hits in their highlight packages.

Aren't we talking about the most popular professional sport in a country whose current No. 1 movie is "Jackass?"

I'm not trying to be clever here. Americans love car wrecks. We can't get enough of collisions and

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The Best & Worst Of ESPN

By JOHN P. WISE
One Great Season

Welcome to the first annual Best & Worst of ESPN. I recently asked some writer friends to give me a list of their favorite on-air people at the WWL, as well as a list of those they like the least.

There were no restrictions, really; voters could pick "SportsCenter" anchors, in-studio analysts, game analysts, color commentators, sideline reporters, any on-camera personality. Even Jenn Brown got a vote, and this wasn't even a bikini contest. (It was a "worst" vote, by the way.)

So without further adieu, after the jump you'll find a look at our ESPN favorites, with a quote or two from our voters:

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Rece Davis Loves The Anticipation Before College Football Season

Why is the anticipation prior to college football season more nerve-wracking than any other sport? ESPN host Rece Davis shares his thoughts with OGS:

Rece Davis Explains Why He Loves Autumn Saturdays

ESPN host Rece Davis told OGS Wednesday what makes college football season so special.

Rece Davis: Mark May More Like Teddy Bear, Less Like Glenn Close

By JOHN P. WISE
One Great Season

ESPN host Rece Davis had a very nice answer Wednesday to the age-old question, "Does anybody have a bigger bag of hate mail at ESPN than Mark May?"

Can Rece Davis Do A Lou Holtz Impersonation?

By JOHN P. WISE
One Great Season

After the Capital One Cup announcement Wednesday, the advisory board members were nice enough to make themselves available for one-on-one interviews. Thank goodness for that, because otherwise I'd never have learned that ESPN host Rece Davis can do a decent Lou Holtz impression.

Davis, who seemed a quite likable fellow, doesn't stay with the impression too long, but shared some other tidbits about Dr. Lou's game-day footwear and his preferred smoking apparatus.

Douche-Off: Stuart Scott vs. LeBron James

ESPN Screamer Still
Gets His Weak On

By JOHN P. WISE
One Great Season

Bless my mother's heart.

I'll always consider Sports Illustrated to be the Bible of sports magazines, but I terminated my subscription to it this year because, like most people, I read everything online nowadays.

But for my big birthday that you -- yes, you -- never sent a card for two weeks ago, she was sweet enough to get me a subscription to ESPN The Magazine. And it only took until the early pages of the second edition to remind me why I stopped picking this one up some years ago: Stuart Scott's Two Way.

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Joe Schad: A Q&A With ESPN Reporter

One Great Season is marking its one-year anniversary this week with interviews of several sports media personalities. Today's subject is ESPN college football reporter Joe Schad, who does in-studio work as well as sideline reporting for the Worldwide Leader. Feel free to suggest future interview subjects by clicking here.

By JOHN P. WISE
One Great Season

One Great Season: You've covered the NFL and both major college sports. It seems you've found a home with college football. What is it that you love so much about it?
Joe Schad: A lot of people would ask, "How did a guy from Queens, New York, end up covering college football for the biggest sports media entity in the world?"

It goes back to when the Orlando Sentinel sent me up to Gainesville. It was the first Division I game I ever attended. It was Florida vs. Florida State at The Swamp and it really opened my eyes. It was great to see 100,000 people descend upon one stadium, make a lot of noise and really cheer on a bunch of 18-to-21-year-old kids. There are many things about pro sports that are great, but they don't have the rivalries, traditions or the pageantry of college football.

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Ryan Burr: A Q&A With ESPN Anchorman

One Great Season is marking its one-year anniversary this week with interviews of several sports media personalities. Today's subject is Ryan Burr, who anchors "SportsCenter" and other shows on ESPN, and hosted the network's in-studio preview show before LeBron James' "The Decision" on July 8. Feel free to suggest future interviews by clicking here.

By JOHN P. WISE
One Great Season

One Great Season: You were part of ESPN's studio pre-show for "The Decision." What was your reaction when your superiors told you earlier that week that you'd be hosting that studio show?
Ryan Burr: Obviously I was excited, first and foremost. Whether I agreed with LeBron having a one-hour show for himself or not, I knew there would be a lot of eyeballs on that show. Just like a player who wants to play in the big game, as an anchor, my goal is to be in the biggest spots that are out there, and as far as I knew, that was going to be the biggest of my career so far.

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