Baseball's image problem

Maury Brown is one of the most trusted online sports journalists - it seems demeaning to call him a "blogger" - for his Business of Sports Network, especially The Biz of Baseball. I felt moved to comment on a recent post examining 10 problems baseball faces in marketing its stars, mostly ones out of its control. I wouldn't ordinarily put it here, but I apparently ran up against a mysterious, unadvertised character limit, so here it is. This reads significantly different from a normal blog post because it originated as a comment, but nonetheless touches on residual racism, Doonesbury, ESPN (and the problems thereof), Jackie Robinson, Ball Four, Black Power, the Simpson trial, Barack Obama (race comes up a lot here doesn't it?), and just about everything surrounding the game of baseball today, big and small. I mostly wanted to get up my responses to Brown's second, third, and eighth concerns.

Now You See Me, Now You Don’t –. One of baseball’s biggest problems isn’t about efforts by the league or the MLBPA to market its players, but rather how the players move on and off camera. Consider: with the exception of pitchers, players are shown during their at bats (3-6 times a game), on the base paths, or when a ball is hit to them on defense. There is no sustained face time. Whereas in the NBA, a player may be on the court for most, if not all of an entire game, baseball’s stars are only seen in a limited fashion. Baseball’s dynamic makes showing star players on camera continually nearly impossible.

The whole "athlete face time" argument makes less sense in a post-ESPN era. Also, this is a problem that has always affected baseball and always will affect baseball, and it didn't seem to negatively affect the players of the past.

Lack of College Baseball Coverage – One of the biggest reasons the NFL and NBA does well in marketing their players has to do with young talent being covered on television while being part of NCAA Football or Basketball. For example, ESPN alone will show 300 college football games across their various platforms during the 2009 football season. Given that the transition from college to the pros for NFL and NBA players is a far shorter trek than most college baseball players that often times find themselves in development systems before ever making it to the majors, fans have been following many college football and basketball players for years before they enter the NFL or NBA. When you throw in that college baseball has only the College World Series as its national television platform, it’s difficult for MLB to market its young stars on the level that the NFL and NBA do

This has been a problem since cable TV and ESPN caught on, providing more college football and basketball coverage than ever before (that by far the biggest basketball stars to that point in the 80s were the two star players in the famous 1979 game that started the rise of March Madness is probably no accident), and didn't seem to hurt the 90s stars too much, but it may be changing. The ratings for the College World Series Finals were comparable to the Women's Final Four, suggesting ESPN should give it coverage comparable to women's basketball. Sure enough, the SEC conference championships will be shown on an ESPN network as part of the new SEC-ESPN agreement. Still, a lot of people jump straight from high school to the pros, and unlike in basketball, always have and in very large numbers, so more college baseball alone isn't enough.

But you point to what may be the real answer, which is that the minor leagues (especially AAA) really need (or at least deserve) a LOT more coverage. Basically, the extent of minor league coverage right now is the World-vs.-US game, the AAA all-star game, and the IL-vs.-PCL championship (not, to my knowledge, the individual league championships), all on ESPN2. Minor league teams tend to be in smaller markets but the smallest AAA market (Colorado Springs) is still top 100; the bigger problem is that players jump to MLB the instant they get good enough. College football and basketball have the fandom aspect as well as the "before they were pros" aspect, which the two problems I just mentioned make difficult; the best approach may be for major league teams' fans to also become fans of their AAA teams, which is made easier by the close proximity many of those teams have to their parent teams.

I think MLB Network is really dropping the ball on this one; the metaphor with the former NFL Europe and NBDL isn't really appropriate because of the different role each plays, but even NFL Network and NBATV respectively either had or have shown regular games from each, which MLBN isn't doing to my knowledge, and minor league baseball has a lot more tradition and a lot more central role!

Wall St. Ad Execs Yet to Tap Minority Stars – Baseball can rightfully say that it has the most player diversity starting in games than any other US pro sports league. Some of MLB’s biggest stars are Latinos or from the Far East. The problem is television ad execs have yet to see the full potential of such players. A good example is Albert Pujols, someone that should translate well to the camera, but has not been used as a pitchman. Others include Ichiro Suzuki and David Ortiz. In terms of Far East athletes, maybe ad execs figure Yao Ming is enough. As for the Latin players, it seems a vast demographic isn’t being fully tapped.

THIS IS COMPLETELY INDEFENSIBLE. Michael Jordan and Tiger Woods (I don't count Ali because he probably became too controversial after changing his name and especially dodging the draft) have shown black athletes can have crossover appeal to whites; I see no reason Latinos and Asians should be any different. Asians are especially mystifying to me since they're the richest non-white racial group.

What it'll probably take to change that is the Latino or Asian Jordan or Woods; on the Asian front, both Ichiro and Yao have suffered by being on mediocre teams instead of even contending for championships (Ichiro in 2001 aside, but even he didn't make the World Series). Pujols SHOULD be the Latino Jordan or Woods; he's dominant enough (and I think if he wins the Triple Crown and businesses don't leap all over him I'm just going to throw up my hands and give up) and has the rings (well, ring... well, he's won the NL, I forget how far he's really gotten). It's even less defensible because Oscar De La Hoya might actually be close to, if not a Latino Jordan or Woods, at least a Latino Shaq or Brady. Brown's fourth point is that baseball hasn't had a transcendent player like Jordan or Woods in this decade, with only Derek Jeter coming close and Barry Bonds derailed by steroids allegations. I'd hate to think the only reason Pujols isn't that player is latent racism. Fortunately, it probably isn't. See below.

“Tradition” vs “Flash” – From a younger demo perspective, baseball has lost its luster, in large part due to the ascension of Michael Jordan. Baseball is touted as having a “long and prestigious tradition” which doesn’t exactly compete well with the high-energy tempo of the NBA, NFL, and NHL. As one scribe wrote, baseball is a game of calm, punctuated by extreme action. That sounds great… if you’re older. In an era where kids are looking for ultra-stimulus, baseball’s pace is lost in translation. When 18-34s have the lion’s share of discretionary income, baseball isn’t the first stop for some corporations with a young demo appeal when looking to advertise.

Complaints about the game's pace are as old as the game itself; in fact there's an old Doonesbury from the 70s that makes that joke. This always ends up coming around in circles ("Well, football has short bursts of action too!"). I personally don't find balls and strikes boring, in part because you never know when it's going to result in action (and until I wrote this comment I hadn't thought to look here for the source of baseball's-too-slow complaints and found them completely mystifying). There is the new aspect here that today's youth has lower attention spans than ever before. (By the way, I'm only 21.)

Waiting For Barkley – In terms of studio shows surrounding games, baseball lags woefully behind most of its Big-4 counterparts. There is no “Howie” or “Terry”, or “Barkley”. FOX has dropped their pre-game show, which leaves TBS. And while Cal Ripken and Dennis Eckersley have made a go of it, they haven’t been able to exude the personality that other pre and post-game shows have had to offer. The solution, or at least an attempt at it? TBS has brought in David Wells.

This is the problem with ESPN in a nutshell. Sunday Night Baseball should feel really special each week and it really doesn't. ESPN should really think about getting a special crew for Baseball Tonight on Sunday nights and try and get some splash and dash there. (John Kruk? Please.) If it's needed to increase their motivation, maybe they should give up either the Monday/Wednesday games, or the Sunday night games, to another network like TBS. If the Sunday night games are the only games its network has, like with TNT and the NBA, they'll feel more special and there will be more motivation to put on an "Inside the NBA" type show.

TBS' Sunday Afternoon games are a joke and INCREDIBLY buried against NASCAR and golf, not to mention their own inconsistency of start time (really bad on the West Coast), picking behind ESPN, and TBS' lack of punctuality in announcing the games during the season. (I've gotten the impression TBS doesn't announce the game for flex weeks until the FRIDAY BEFORE IT'S PLAYED!) Don't look to that package to be a savior. As far as most baseball fans are concerned, it's Fox and ESPN all season and TBS comes out of nowhere during the postseason. When the contract comes up for renewal, either TBS will steal a package from ESPN or ESPN will take the postseason back from TBS.

Just Let Me Know When It Begins and Ends – Baseball finally got with the picture and realized that by putting World Series games on late Eastern Time, they were potentially losing a generation of baseball fans as kids hit the sack long before games would end. But, baseball’s a game that ends when it ends, as opposed to being controlled by the clock, that makes it difficult for fringe fans to get into when there are competing interests in hundreds of channels to switch to, and video games to play. Another issue that baseball faces – and only NASCAR seems to butt up against – has to due with delay of game due to weather. When a game starts, nothing kills your captive fan base off like a rain delay. Worse are games that are scheduled and postponed due to rain or snow. With families becoming intensely schedule driven, they want to know when the game is on, and when it ends.

How many games that don't go extra innings or are rain delayed last more than four hours? Again, this is a problem that always has and always will afflict baseball. While there are more demands on people's time than ever before, and extra-inning baseball games go longer than OT games in any sport save hockey, in order for this to be a marketability issue it would have to show up in the ratings.

MLB’s Image Problem – There’s the obvious (PED culture) and, the not so obvious (chewing tobacco) when it comes to baseball’s image. Would Manny Ramirez be more marketable if he hadn’t been suspended for PEDs? There’s a case to be made there. And, while it’s legal, few, if any, find a close up of a player with a mouthful of chaw spitting a stream of black tobacco drool appealing. Think Gillette would keep a player like Jeter in their ad campaigns if he chewed?

This is probably the big one. No one thinks Pujols is using steroids... but then, we said the same thing about Alex Rodriguez. MLB's only hope here is for other leagues (especially the NFL) to be similarly chastized for PEDs, but it's a bigger issue in purity-obsessed baseball than in musclebound, depraved, violence-driven football. The alternative? Well, the younger generation of fans (such as they are) don't seem as concerned about the whole thing... I doubt most people even notice baseball players chewing, and it's dumb enough that if baseball players basically refuse to stop chewing it points to deeper baseball-cultural issues that Brown doesn't go into here dating back to Ball Four.

Brown's ninth point is the idea that baseball is for old fogies, and I didn't have much to say about it. His last point ties back into the point of the white eyes in the halls of big business. Remember when I said that it's now proven that blacks can appeal to whites? This is why baseball isn't benefiting from that.

The Declining Interest By African-Americans in Baseball – Whether it has been the rise in the NBA’s popularity due to the Jordan factor; the continued diversity growth in international players; the fact that on average, players can jump to the professional ranks faster in the NBA and NFL, or other factors, there has been a steady decline in the number of African-Americans playing baseball. MLB, late in proactively dealing with this issue, has been pushing the Reviving Baseball in Inner Cities (RBI) program, and working to highlight players such as Curtis Granderson in the latest This is Beyond Baseball ad campaign. But, the damage has been done, and now baseball is digging out from the hole.

Jackie Robinson was a big deal because baseball essentially ruled the sports landscape. But then the 60s and 70s happened, and by the 90s I don't know if black interest in basketball was caused by Jordan or created him - the biggest white superstar after Larry Bird and Bill Laimbeer, who won all their titles before Jordan's first, was John Stockton. (Certainly I don't see many blacks jumping to golf because of Tiger Woods. The stench of whiteness and richness still follows it.) Basketball has really colonized urban playgrounds, especially since it takes up less space than a baseball field.

And then you see what's happening in the South where great young black athletes in more rural areas are seeing college football as a better test of their skills than baseball, probably thanks in part to the tradition of the SEC compared to a lack of real stars (of any kind) created by the Braves during their TBS/AL East-winning heyday. Most black stars, like Ken Griffey Jr., Barry Bonds, or Ryan Howard, tend to go to northern, big markets (it's too bad Griffey was injury-plagued in Cincinatti; Seattle and Pittsburgh may not be that big, or exactly surrounded by urbanity, but they're far from the South where the rural blacks are). Even one of the Big Three markets with their large black populations wouldn't drag rural blacks away from football. (Another reason blacks aren't being drawn to golf after Tiger Woods: golf courses are best suited to rural areas, and the skill set of southern, rural blacks tends to involve speed and athleticism, while the only physical skill golf uses is strength.)

I suspect - though I doubt it's really been studied or floated that much by others - that during the Black Power movement baseball became associated with The Man, especially as the other major human sport of the time, boxing, saw a black icon (and a Black Power icon to boot) emerge in Muhammad Ali that insulated it from being overly associated with whites. (Football was similarly insulated by stars like Jim Brown and OJ Simpson. Basketball wasn't yet a major sport but it was already being colonized by blacks like Bill Russell, which I suspect led to it being claimed by, for lack of a better word, blackkind as their own. Baseball still had some black stars, but most of them were old fogies with Negro League experience, which probably netted them the Uncle Tom label; Frank Robinson is the only black star of the 70s that comes to mind. Spillover popularity from Ali gave rise to such dominant black fighters as Tyson and Holyfield during the 80s and 90s but boxing retreated to PPV, split into gazillions of different organizations, saw the dominant Tyson go batshit insane, and started dying a slow, painful death.)

Another problem might be that blacks don't just blindly support their own the way whites got to thinking during the Simpson trial, and decided to distance themselves from the way Bonds handled the steroid allegations. (I'm sure some, perhaps many if not most, supported him, but was it really inspiring new people to enter that quagmire?) Which really brings us back to the whole steroids issue.

In my view, baseball's problems have less to do with the structural issues that haven't really gone away, and MUCH more to do with the steroids scandal. It may be a problem mostly with the old fogies, but it's the old fogies in charge on Madison Avenue. If they won't get with the program, and the image problem caused by PEDs is as hard to shake with them as it appears, baseball's only hope for becoming "hip" again may lie in Barack Obama's White Sox fandom... pray for a White Sox-Cardinals World Series?

Sorry, @RaysIndex, but you're no better than the other roids speculators.

I'm sorry, Mr. "Professor". But you're reading way too much into Jon Heyman's 2007 "does Sosa belong in the Hall?" piece if you think it makes him a hypocrite now for calling out people who baselessly speculate whether this guy or that guy is using steroids.

You have to keep in mind that Heyman did not start the speculation that Sammy Sosa had used steroids, especially after his disasterous testimony on Capitol Hill. In fact, I think his piece could be read as a defense of Sosa against people who want to keep him out of the Hall against baseless speculation.

Steroids speculation is making everyone crazy. But one of them is not Jon Heyman. It's the nameless proprietor of the Rays Index.

If the blogosphere is going to be the mainstream media of the future, it needs to be able to look critically on itself and catch itself when it errs.

Sports Graphics Roundup Part II: Baseball and Other Things

We're on Day 12 of the ESPN BottomLine Watch, and last I checked the BottomLine was still in its old ways. I wonder if anyone has a specific time that the BottomLine reverted to its old ways last Monday the 6th - I'd like to keep a running count.

One reason I didn't like being cut short on my last post was that I still had one graphical matter yet to be taken care of, and it related to ESPN, which has introduced a new NASCAR banner. I had thought the inspiration was Fox's NASCAR banner, but now I suspect the real inspiration was an attempt to get a headstart on making the new banner take after MNF.

The main problem I have with it came to me while I was watching the above race live, and it's the real reason I think this is an attempt to go MNF style: when showing stats like intervals behind the leader, those stats are not shown on a separate line below the scroll, but actually incorporated into the scroll itself, so you might see (for the sake of example) 5. (88) EARNHARDT JR.  -1.24, instead of the "-1.24" being on a separate line. "RUNNING ORDER" is also replaced with "INTERVALS" for this purpose, and the leader just lacks an interval, meaning at the start of the scroll the lengths each driver gets vary WIDELY. I prefer at least the appearance of each driver getting the same amount of space on the scroll. But because of the amount of information that needs to be presented, I can see how it might be difficult to properly convert the NASCAR strip for the MNF-inspired hub. Still, here's a mockup I made; other than being larger than the real thing probably would be, and the rather stunning paucity of driver logos online in any context, and the fact I probably still don't have the exact fonts, I think it came out well enough I'd be surprised not to see ESPN adopt a variant of this, to the extent I may have gotten myself AND ESPN in legal trouble at some point down the road.

On to baseball, and we start on the national level, with a move with an impact on other sports. In something of a surprise, Fox has adopted the new FSN score bug for baseball broadcasts - a score bug I had thought was intended to match Fox's own new graphics. In that sense it's something of a throwback, both to the era when Fox used boxes and not strips, and to those intermittent times when Fox has made a conscious effort to match the FSN graphics. In a more general sense it's also a throwback to the era when replacing the count AND number of outs with the pitch speed all at once was the norm.

The dissonance between the amount of space taken up by the count and number of outs, and the amount of space taken up by the inning, makes me wonder why the count and number of outs didn't get a column to itself. But baseball is probably the hardest sport to create a graphic for, especially one originally designed for another sport, unless you have the simplest of strips, because of the sheer amount of information required - in fact I suspect Fox's move to this was the result of frustration with how last year's strip turned out. In this case I suspect taking a cue from FSN's football and hockey (and soccer) bug was called for; I suspect the lack of use of that for basketball and football points to disillusionment with the new horizontal bug. Again, the fonts and sizes are WAY off in this mockup, and I couldn't quite get the base display to look right.

MLB Network is on the air as well, but I couldn't find an embeddable highlight. This will have to make do:

This is what happens when score bug designers don't have to blend baseball and other-sport priorities. One oddity: Apparently taking a cue from the MNF hub, MLB Network has the bug change to display stats about batters, instead of having a separate graphic at the bottom of the screen, despite the bug being on top. Bit weird, that one.

Comcast SportsNet hasn't changed its graphics, but its current graphics and logo got its start at SNY, Comcast's collaboration with the New York Mets, so it may be in for new graphics since SNY has changed its graphics package. Helpfully, SNY provided a mockup for SportsBusiness Journal for an article that was briefly free before the season, so I don't have to go hunting for a highlight:

The good news is that it adopts a trend I've always liked: adding the team logos to the strip. (What I've really liked is the logo-only approach once experimented with by Fox on its NFL coverage and now only used by NFL Network, but there's a reason Fox didn't stick with it.) The bad news - and it's not really clear on this thumbnail - is that it's rather bulky, with large, separated, square elements embedded in a rectangular banner.

What else? We can look at the new graphics for NESN and MASN. So many team-owned RSNs try to get experimental with their graphics and fail. I'm talking to you, SportsTime Ohio. Neither of these two RSNs fell into that trap. MASN only tweaked its graphics and NESN gave them a nice, professional, parallelogram look. (However, I've seen evidence that the banner is the only thing NESN changed.)

Back to racing: Versus has an excellent banner for IndyCar races but I'm not finding it on the Web anywhere. We can also confirm that ESPN will whip out its new graphics for coverage of the NFL Draft, complete with the new BottomLine, but since the Draft ticker is handled differently than the BottomLine proper I don't read anything into this other than the new BottomLine hasn't been abandoned entirely, which makes it all the more frustrating it's taking so long to come back in full.

Predictions for SportsCenter's "Top 10 Games" of 2008

In case you haven't heard, this was a particularly exciting year in sports. When ESPN's "SportsCenter" does its annual "Top 10 Games" countdown, they could easily extend it to a Top 20. With so many great games, I've taken it upon myself to take my own stab at mimicking the ESPN list and what it might look like.

Between some college football playoff-related features and Da Blog's regular features, I think it's reasonable to schedule the College Football Rankings' release, as well as the bowl schedule, for Thursday.

#10: Beijing 2008 Olympic Games, men's basketball gold medal match, USA v. Spain. The "Redeem Team" lives up to their name in a game Bill Simmons called "one of the 10 most dramatic basketball games of my lifetime. And nobody gave a crap or even knew. The game started at 2:30 in the morning ET and vanished into thin air. Only West Coasters and super-diehards stayed up to see it."

#9: NHL Hockey, Winter Classic, Pittsburgh Penguins @ Buffalo Sabres. Could the NHL have asked for anything less than a shootout from the first (true) Winter Classic?

#8: College football, SEC Championship Game, Florida v. Alabama. If the regular season is a playoff, this was its semifinal - and it certainly played like one.

#7: MLB Baseball, ALCS Game 5, Tampa Bay Rays @ Boston Red Sox. For the moment, just forget about the fact the Sox couldn't come all the way back to win the series.

#6: Beijing 2008 Olympic Games, swimming, 4x100m freestyle relay OR 100m butterfly OR 4x100m medley relay. The first two were dramatic finishes on Michael Phelps' road to Mark Spitz's record. The last was the one that broke it and had an exciting finish of its own. And I only have it at #6.

#5: College football, Texas @ Texas Tech. The Red Raiders came out to an early lead, only to see Texas come storming back to take a lead of its own. In the end, Texas Tech had the play of the year, and as it turned out, the one that kept Texas out of the National Championship Game.

#4: Wimbledon, men's final, Roger Federer v. Rafael Nadal. This and the next two I could have put in any order. A five-set, record-length classic that ended with Nadal finally getting the best of Federer away from clay.

#3: Men's college basketball, NCAA Tournament Final, Kansas v. Memphis. Finally, a National Championship game that lives up to being the culmination of March Madness instead of being a complete anticlimax!

#2: US Open Golf, playoff, Tiger Woods v. Rocco Mediate. 19 holes of pure tension, as basically an unknown gives Tiger every inch of challenge he has, and brings out Tiger's best to put him on top. And Tiger was injured to the extent it's still the last event he's played!

#1: NFL Football, Super Bowl XLII, New England Patriots v. New York Giants. Perhaps the greatest iteration ever of the biggest sporting event of every year? How can it not be #1?

Honorable Mentions: IRL racing, Indy Japan 300 (Danica wins!); Euro 2008 quarterfinal, Croatia v. Turkey (or was it the semis, where Germany beat Turkey? Basically a sop to my soccer-crazed dad anyway); MLB Home Run Derby; ArenaBowl XXII, Soul v. SaberCats (about the only thing that could make it better is if it were the last one); some NBA game I'm forgetting; some obscure game I never heard of or just didn't watch (possibly from MMA, boxing, the LLWS, Fresno State's run, the WNBA, MLS, or the like)

Sports Watcher for the Weekend of 10/25-26

All times PDT.

Saturday
9:30-1 PM: College Football, #24 Kentucky @ defending 2008 BCS titleholder #5 Florida (Raycom Sports). Raycom always seems to get unusually good games from the SEC... too bad that's about to end.

12:30-4 PM: College Football, defending Princton-Yale titleholder #6 Oklahoma State @ #1 Texas (ABC). The Northeast is getting this game. The Rockies are getting this game. Parts of the South are getting this game. But seriously, you couldn't have found some way to get this better national distribution? The Pac-10 and Big 12 really need better contracts; the SEC and Big 10 are almost guaranteed to have their top game going out nationally every week. Surprised the Big 12 resigned almost an identical deal last year after the Big 10 got a reverse-mirror deal.

Alternately: 12:30-4 PM: College Football, #12 Georgia @ LSU (CBS) or Virginia Tech @ Florida State (ABC/ESPN2). You have to live on the West Cosat (like me) to be completely reduced to Georgia-LSU.

3:30-7 PM: College Football, Colorado @ #11 Missouri (FSN). Really just a gapfiller.

7-9:30 PM: Ultimate Fighting Championship, UFC 90 (PPV). Isn't this an awfully quick turnaround from UFC 89?

Sunday
10-3 PM: NASCAR Sprint Cup Racing, Pep Boys Auto 500 (ABC). Does NASCAR need to move the Chase away from NFL season?

5-8:30 PM: MLB Baseball, Rays @ Phillies (FOX). Sorry, no NFL this week.

8-10 PM: IndyCar Racing, Gold Coast IndyCar 300 (ESPN2). Does this really count? I mean, it's so far after the end of the season...

Sports Watcher for the Weekend of 10/18-19

All times PDT.

Saturday
9:30-1 PM: College football, #23 Vanderbilt @ #13 Georgia (Raycom Sports, available free online from Yahoo Sports). When you think about it, the SEC's new deal isn't much different from their old one. They even have Arkansas-Kentucky on ESPNU this week. Except their syndicator is ESPN Plus now, so it's not even available to everyone online. So they're still screwing themselves out of a good third place game getting national exposure. Maybe ESPNU will become less of the ACC Network, I don't know.

12:30-3 PM: College football, #17 Kansas @ #4 Oklahoma (ABC, not available in most markets). I'd say the Big 12 gets screwed by never getting reverse mirrored on ESPN with the Big 10 game when the craptastic ACC does, but it does have Texas-Missou in primetime going to the whole country.

Alternately: 12:30-3 PM: College Football, #28 Ohio State @ #11 Michigan State (ABC or ESPN). I just realized that somehow, the Week 7 rankings aren't on the web site as I thought. Either they got dropped from the backups in Freehostia's ongoing transfer, or I just forgot them. Sure enough, Sandsday is missing a strip now so it's the former. You might have wanted to make your last backup after shutting off the file manager, guys - unless you still have backups and you're sadistically torturing me with the old copy because it's fresh or something. (Man, how ill-timed is this whole voting sequence, with the cold last weekend and the backing-up this weekend?)

5-8:30 PM: MLB Baseball, Red Sox @ Rays (TBS). Well after that comeback I might actually watch and pay attention to this game. A damn shame it's not on broadcast.

9-12 AM: Ultimate Fighting Championship, UFC 89 (SpikeTV). Same on both coasts. I don't think anyone other than diehards cares about the main event match.

Sunday
10-3 PM: NASCAR Sprint Cup Racing, TUMS QuikPak 500 (ABC). I've dropped a lot of NASCAR Chase for the Cup races, haven't I?

5:15-8:30 PM: NFL Football, Broncos @ Patriots (NBC). Hey, remember when the Patriots had a half-decent quarterback for a couple of years?

Sports Watcher for the Weekend of 10/4-5

All times PDT.

Saturday
9-12:30 PM: College Football, Iowa @ #17 Michigan State (ESPN2). Wait, my new "mid-major lineal title" just got created, and all my thoughts were on whether Oregon State had done enough to crack positive B Points next week! (It will depend a LOT on SoS... but why do I keep reading, like from ESPN.com blogger Ted Miller, "what if the Penn State game was the fluke"? Penn State's in my top 5! Didn't the Beavers lose to Stanford as well? Win that game, and their B Rating is probably over 1 even without a better performance against JoePa! And that's the only thing this entry has to do with the entire Big Ten.)

12:30-4 PM: College Football, #6 Kentucky @ defending 2004 Auburn-Utah titleholder #1 Alabama (CBS). Nick Saban is 1-0 this season in games against #6 teams in my C Ratings with the Auburn-Utah title at stake.

6-9:30 PM: College Football, defending Princeton-Yale title holder #4 Missouri @ #8 Nebraska (ESPN). Preceded at 3 PM by Auburn-Vanderbilt, so games REALLY got crammed on ESPN today. Blame the Breeder's Cup, but seriously, this seems like a natural opening for one more college football contract. But the SEC just re-upped and the Big 12 signed last year.
Sunday
10-1 PM: NFL Football, regional action (CBS and/or FOX). The WNBA Finals, below, cleared out space for NFL Football to not be restricted to SNF.

1:30-4 PM: WNBA Finals, Silver Stars @ Shock (ESPN2). Man, the WNBA Finals can't even get an ABC slot on a weekend now? Blame NASCAR, running from 11-3 today with the AMP Energy 500. In other news, even women's basketball players think the WNBA stinks. I really wish supporters of women's equality in sports would put more chips on other sports like golf or softball. Basketball is either boring or incomprehensible no matter who plays it.

4-7:30 PM: MLB Baseball, Angels @ Red Sox (TBS) and 7-10 PM: MLB Baseball, Cubs @ Dodgers (TBS). I suspect some game time changes may occur if the Phillies-Brewers series ends early. Hey, by getting football out of the way earlier in the day we could fit baseball in here (SNF is 5:15-8:30) and have a whole day of college football! Thanks, WNBA, for bumping out the Chase for the Cup! (Baseball would have bumped out a primetime game, not an afternoon game as in past weeks.)

Sports Watcher for the Weekend of 9/20-21

All times PDT.

Saturday
9:30-12:45 PM: College football, Alabama @ Arkansas (Raycom Sports). Look for Alabama to be surprisingly strong when the new ratings come out on Monday.

12:45-4 PM: MLB Baseball, regional action (FOX). As usual, this is the only place baseball can fit.

4-6 PM: WNBA Basketball, New York @ Connecticut (NBATV). Now the playoffs are in full swing.

6-8 PM: WNBA Basketball, Sacramento @ San Antonio (NBATV). Man, the schedule really gets cramped this week and next with all the stuff I have to squeeze in.
Sunday
9-3 PM: Ryder Cup, final round (NBC). Is it just me, or does it seem like only sports journalists and groups that cover sports (ie ESPN) care about the Ryder Cup? And gee, it seems a lot bigger now that ESPN is covering the final round...

Honorable Mention: 10-3 PM: NASCAR Sprint Cup Racing, Dover race (ABC). When I looked, both this race and the next one were identified as the "Camping World 400", but with different "presented by" sponsors.

5-8:30 PM: NFL Football, Dallas @ Green Bay (NBC). Obligatory NFL game that has to be SNF.

Sports Watcher for the Weekend of 9/6-7

All times PDT.

Saturday
10-1 PM: College Football, New Hampshire @ Army (ESPN Classic). I chose this game almost completely at random. (Hey, Troy-LSU got postponed due to Gustav and would have interfered with tennis anyway, Missouri would also interfere with tennis, and all three lineal title games aren't even on regional television. FSN South and SunSports for the Central Michigan-Georgia game doesn't count.)

1:30-5 PM: College Football, West Virginia @ East Carolina (ESPN). Yes, Fox baseball will probably fall off the face of the earth with college football season in full swing.

5-7 PM: US Open Tennis, Women's Final, S. Williams v. Jankovic (CBS). Rather than the all Williams final YOU demand, you get Williams versus a nobody!

7-10 PM: Ultimate Fighting Championship, UFC 88 (PPV). Eighty-eight, eighty-eight, eight eighty eighty-eight... why isn't this being held in China? Okay, I'm in an odd mood this week, you can tell because I didn't even mention Couture v. Lesnar...

Sunday
10-1 PM: NFL Football, NY Jets @ Miami (CBS). OMG it's the debut of Brett Favre! Let's watch every single Jets game with such rapt attention our eyes come out of our sockets! (NASCAR or WNBA also possible.)

1-4 PM: US Open Tennis, Men's Final (CBS). I know nothing about this! NOTING!

Honorable Mention: 12:30-3 PM: IndyCar Racing, PEAK Antifreeze and Motor Oil Indy 300 (ABC). It's the last race of the season! The championship all comes down to this! (Er... ignore that little Australian race in the corner coming in a month and a half...)

Second Honorable Mention: 11-3 PM: PGA Tour Golf, The Barclays BMW Championship, final round (NBC). More of the playoff that's nothing like a playoff! Why is this even on here?

5-8 PM: MLB Baseball, Philadelphia @ NY Mets (ESPN). I like cookies.

Sports Watcher for the Weekend of 8/23-24

All times PDT.

Saturday
11-9 AM: Beijing 2008 Olympic Games, baseball bronze medal game, women's handball gold medal game, baseball gold medal game, water polo semifinal, table tennis semifinals, men's field hockey gold medal game (USA). Yes, that's TONIGHT, in just one hour on the East Coast. If I were keeping track of any of this I'd give you pithy analysis, but all I can offer is: Can the Americans avenge their softball cousins? (I heard they lost to Japan in the gold medal game, is that right?) Oh, and pretend 6-7:30 AM isn't part of this, that's when the water polo semifinal is on.

9-5 PM: Beijing 2008 Olympic Games, medal finals in women's basketball, rhythmic gymnastics, synchronized swimming, boxing, canoe/kayak, and women's volleyball (NBC).

5-8:30 PM: NASCAR Sprint Cup Racing, Bristol race (ESPN). We just don't have NASCAR on here enough.

9-11 PM: Beijing 2008 Olympic Games, men's basketball bronze medal game (CNBC). Why the hell is Lithuania so good with no players I've heard of?

Sunday
12:30-2:30 AM: Beijing 2008 Olympic Games, medal finals in table tennis, mountain biking, boxing, and track and field (NBC). Alternately, there's a women's volleyball match at midnight on Telemundo.

2:30-5 AM: Beijing 2008 Olympic Games, men's basketball gold medal game (NBC). Warning: West Coast viewers get screwed again, because this is same on both coasts! In fact the semifinal game this morning was delayed even in the Central time zone, at least in Chicago! It seems the Olympics are indeed more popular on the West Coast than on the East, though that may just be because they always HAVE gotten delayed broadcasts. Some commenters on Awful Announcing suggested putting either the live broadcast or the delay on one of NBC's cable networks, to get around the problem of people not being home at the right times. I have a better idea: We've been talking about digital TV and subchannels all week, why not stick the live feed on there? It's likely to take away "Weather Plus" time, but it's better than insulting a wide swath of your audience by telling them New York really is the center of the universe and actually making people beg for ESPN to save them, even people who are normally ESPN haters. I'm watching this, the Closing Ceremony on CBC, and then I'm done with the Olympics. (ESPN is on record as saying they would never think of delaying events for the West Coast.)

5-9 AM: Beijing 2008 Olympic Games, Closing Ceremony (CBC). I do have to say, NBC seems to treat the Olympics as more of a special event. They play the Olympic Song and CBC just has this weird, almost-offensive, almost-more-appropriate-in-India opener. And CBC uses their own regular sports graphics instead of coming up with something unique.

10-12 PM: Major League Lacrosse, NB ZIP Championship Game (ESPN2). The worst part? This isn't even the only lacrosse league in North America. And you probably haven't heard of the National Lacrosse League either. Apparently it's semi-big in Canada. Who knew? (Just barely interferes with the Olympics on USA on the West Coast.)

12:30-3 PM: Little League Baseball, Little League World Series (ABC). Does it seem a little odd that we pay so much attention to the LLWS for basically no reason? I mean, other than to be reminded about "sportsmanship" that's basically a no-thing anyway? And why do the other three divisions have their World Series on Saturdays while neither Little League WS ends on that day?

Honorable Mention: 12:45-5 PM: National Pro Fastpitch, Championship Series (MLB.TV, second game if needed). It's a league with a grand total of six teams. One look at their website shows how far behind they are. They don't even have TV for their championship series, even, by all appearances, on tape delay. And this coming from one of the more popular non-football-or-basketball NCAA sports. What's going on here?

(Oh, and perfect timing. Aren't all your good players in the Olympics?)

5-8 PM: MLB Baseball, LA Dodgers @ Philadelphia (ESPN). I've banned NBC's Olympic coverage from this space!

Next week, the first weekend of the US Open, and can you feel the football start?

Sports Watcher for the Weekend of 8/16-17

All times PDT.

Saturday
12:30-6 AM: Beijing 2008 Olympic Games, diving and the medal final in the women's 10km track race (12:30-2 AM), plus primetime replay (2-6 AM) (NBC). Same on both coasts. You could watch USA on the East Coast to get closer to the start time of the next item.

10-6 PM: Little League Baseball, Junior League, Senior League, Junior League Softball, and Big League Softball World Series...es (ESPNU). Not necessarily in that order. The Little League Softball World Series ended back on Wednesday. That's the only LLWS that doesn't end on the weekend. Get with the program! Is it just me, or does the marquee age division of the LLWS seem arbitrary considering it's the youngest group? We completely lose sight of these kids as they move up through Junior, Senior, and maybe Big League, then we regain sight in the College World Series, then we lose sight of them again until they get called up to the bigs because we pay no attention to AAA whatsoever.

7:30-12 AM: Beijing 2008 Olympic Games, track and field and swimming and the awarding of medals in both (NBC). Same on both coasts, so there's interference with Little League on the East Coast. I had been thinking about writing a post about the rising tide of discontent on the West Coast at being told events are "live" when they're still tape-delayed. Then I saw that more than half of the top five highest-rated major markets, and almost half of the top 17, are in the Pacific and Mountain time zones, and almost all the largest markets in those two time zones (eight of the top nine, with Seattle's ratings depressed by being able to see events truly live on CBC) are averaging at least a 21 rating for the Olympics, which I believe is higher than NBC's nationwide average. Which means one of two things: people on the West Coast are more into the Olympics than people back East, and I see no reason why that should be so, especially in Mountain time; or NBC's decision to tape delay events is HELPING ratings in the Pacific and Mountain time zones. I have a feeling NBC may decide they're never pulling strings to get events live in primetime for a non-American Olympics again (starting in 2012, that is). On another note, this is the last medal Michael Phelps needs to pass Mark Spitz, and it's also women's marathon day.

Sunday
12:30-6 AM: Beijing 2008 Olympic Games, beach volleyball, track and field, and the primetime replay (NBC). Same on both coasts. I'd put USA here but it interferes with NBC's primetime coverage.

11-2:30 PM: NASCAR Sprint Cup Racing, Michigan race (ESPN). Because the Sprint Cup Series isn't on here often enough.

3-5 PM: Little League Baseball, Venezuela v. "Saudia Arabia" (ESPN2). Yes, that's how it actually appears on ESPN's own web site.

5-8 PM: MLB Baseball, Philadelphia @ San Diego (ESPN). The Phillies may be in NL East contention, but you can tell this game was decided on before the season started.

9-11 PM: Beijing 2008 Olympic Games Softball, United States v. China (CNBC). Looking back over what I said last week about CNBC's coverage, I'm not sure what they think their audience is. I accused them of misreading their audience last week, yet that was for a time slot that included tennis, which fits right in with the rich-snob demographic. I was focusing on boxing, yet that so often gets called the "sweet science" and seen as so much superior to the supposed bloodlust and chaos of MMA, as though boxing was as tame as golf. And then there's softball, and the only way I see this fitting in with CNBC's "male demographic" is if they're thinking "Ooh! Boobs!" Yet at the same time, the fact that it's softball and not some other female sport tells me it's an old male demographic that remembers when baseball was the national pasttime (AS IT SHOULD BE!) and isn't into all this football stuff the whippersnappers are into. Which... adds up to a pretty disturbing demographic.

11-11 AM: Beijing 2008 Olympic Games, water polo, synchronized swimming, canoeing, kayaking, field hockey, basketball, and table tennis, including the table tennis gold medal match (USA). Prepare to march back into work on Monday and fall right asleep, stay there till quitting time, sleep all the way home, and sleep the rest of the day.

Sports Watcher for the Weekend of 8/9-10

All times PDT.

Saturday
2-1 PM: Beijing 2008 Olympic Games, soccer, shooting, badminton, fencing, equestrian, beach volleyball, basketball, and weightlifting, including the awarding of shooting and weightlifting medals (USA). Same on both coasts. According to NBC's olympic site, "the first gold medal awarded at the Beijing Games could come in" either the shooting or weightlifting events. Aren't they both scheduled for a certain time? Could you not just look at the schedule?

1-3 PM: Little League Baseball, Senior League Softball World Series (ESPN2). No, they're not just making random shit up to tide people over for the big shebang.

3-5:30 PM: IndyCar Racing, IndyCar 300 at Kentucky (ESPN2). A moment of silence for the IRL's impending move to Versus.

7-10 PM: Ultimate Fighting Championship, UFC 87 (PPV). So it turns out the UFC does space out its PPVs after all. I apologize for suggesting otherwise. Interferes with Olympic primetime coverage on the West Coast.

Sunday
11-11 AM: Beijing 2008 Summer Olympics, basketball, tennis, soccer, archery, and weightlifting, including the awarding of medals in archery and two in weightlifting (USA). Same on both coasts (if that causes a problem, coverage is on NBC from 12:30 to 6 AM). Because real men stay up all night watching the Olympics!

11-4 PM: PGA Golf, PGA Championship, final round (CBS). If golf were to become part of the Olympics, what would happen to the PGA Championship?

5-8 PM: MLB Baseball, St. Louis @ Chicago Cubs (ESPN). Hey, I need to get baseball in somewhere. I should have NBC's primetime coverage next week.

11-1:30 AM: Beijing 2008 Summer Olympics, boxing and tennis (CNBC). NBC has said that they're putting stuff on CNBC that fits with its male demographic. Um... not the UFC, bloodlust-filled male demographic... more like the wimpy, pass-the-caviar, rich-snob demographic...

Sports Watcher for the Weekend of 8/2-3

All times PDT.

Saturday
11-1:30 PM: Little League Baseball, Big League World Series (ESPN). Yep, it's Little League World Series season again! And August is only now starting...

3-6 PM: NFL Football, Hall of Fame Induction Ceremony (ESPN/NFL Network). Art Monk is the only interesting guy in the class and he should have gone in a few years ago. Wasn't Cris Carter supposed to be a lock this year back in 2004? And now, a brief acknowledgement of the X Games...

6-8 PM: Action Sports, X Games 14 (ESPN). ...that was it.

Sunday
10-12 PM: LPGA Golf, Women's British Open, final round (ABC). Gets the nod over the PGA event below because it's a major and the Bridgestone isn't (ditto for valuing the US Senior Open over the Bridgestone). Would get the nod over the US Senior Open, if there were an actual conflict, because I actually consider the LPGA the top level of competion for its gender-sport combination. Golf Channel covering the final round of the McDonald's LPGA notwithstanding. Grr. (Incidentially, I was amazed to find out this only became a major in 2001. What was the fourth major before then? The event now known as the Canadian Women's Open. Canada was once important enough to hold a major? And back then it had the rather dense name of "du Maurier Classic"...)

12-3 PM: Champions Tour Golf, US Senior Open (NBC). Wait, the senior tour has two majors in a row?

Honorable Mention: 11-3 PM: PGA Golf, WGC Bridgestone Invitational, final round (CBS). Jesus Christ, all three original major networks have huge golf tournaments on this weekend! They have an event this big right before a major? Well, at least it's not two majors in a row like the senior tour. And the PGA Championship isn't the only big event next week, even with the Olympics starting...

5-8 PM: MLB Baseball, Philadelphia @ St. Louis (ESPN). Because I haven't had my Recommended Daily Allowance of major sports yet. And I'm not even mentioning the NFL Hall of Fame Game. I have a moratorium on NFL preseason games.

Sports Watcher for the Weekend of 7/26-27

All times PDT.

Saturday
10:30-12 PM: Champions Tour Golf, Senior British Open, third round (ABC). If we're putting up the third round of a golf tournament - of a SENIOR TOUR golf tournament - we are scraping the bottom of the barrel to put up something, ANYTHING.

1:30-3 PM: AVP Volleyball, Men's final from Long Beach (NBC). Yes, we are really scraping the bottom of the barrel.

9-11 PM (both coasts): EliteXC Mixed Martial Arts, Saturday Night Fights (CBS). I'm still waiting to see what the ratings are for Saturday Night Fights Mark II, but hey, there's nothing else on, other than a re-air of UFC 84 on Spike.

Sunday
10-11 AM: Cycling, Tour de France (CBS). See a bunch of doped-up freaks motor their way to the finish line! Er... on second thought...

10-12 PM: Champions Tour Golf, Senior British Open, final round (ABC). It's your chance to see Greg Norman all over again!

Honorable Mention: 10:30-1:30 PM: MLB Baseball, Hall of Fame Induction Ceremony (ESPN Classic). Goose Gossage and a bunch of people who never played a game.

12-3 PM: Arena Football League, ArenaBowl XXII (ABC). Down in the dumps because there's no football? Get yourself revved up for the new season! (Who says the NFL season is short? I think the Hall of Fame Induction Ceremony and associated Game is next week, which means the NFL plays from August into February. The NFL shoves football down our throat for half a year and keeps at it the rest of the time! If you go from the HoF to the Draft, we have nine months where we obsess about football!)

In all seriousness, I'm actually going to be watching the Arena Bowl - try and get myself into it.

5-8 PM: MLB Baseball, NY Yankees @ Boston (ESPN). GAA-GAA IT'S THE SOX AND THE YANKEES GAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!!!11!111!!111!!!!!!111!1!!eleven!

Because as Woody Paige would say, I am a solutions-oriented guy!

Josh Hamilton had a fantastic performance in the Home Run Derby - but didn't win. As a result, there are now a lot of calls to reform the HRD.

I don't support making home runs from the first two rounds carry over to the final. In this year's Derby, there would have been no reason to keep watching after the first round. Hamilton would have had the title pretty much in the bag already. Nonetheless, it is true that the Derby tends to be anticlimactic. By the time of the supposedly pivotal final, everyone is worn out and barely hits anything.

The Small White Ball blog appears to have a promising solution: carry over first and second round totals to the final, but have second round balls count double and final round balls count triple. Hamilton would have been able to benefit from his first round performance, but the final round still takes on momentous importance.

Thoughts? Criticisms?

Sports Watcher for the Weekend of 7/19-20 (UPDATED)

All times PDT.

Saurday
11:30-1 PM: AVP Crocs Tour, AVP Crocs Slam Brooklyn, men's final (NBC). Yes, despite the British Open we're scraping the bottom of the barrel this week.

1-4 PM: MLB Baseball, regional action (FOX). Tune in immediately upon the end of volleyball. Because it didn't end in a tie I originally wasn't going to comment on the All-Star Game, until people on TV started commenting on it anyway. The "this time it counts" era was supposed to prevent this sort of thing, and it's obvious that it didn't. Now there's a lot of hand-wringing about adding more pitchers to the roster, but how about tackling the problem at its source? Here are the problems with the ASG and their sources:

• The players and managers treat it like an exhibition, instead of as a source of pride for their league. "This time it counts" was supposed to fix that problem, and strangely, it's being credited for fixing that problem. We may be able to attribute to "this time it counts" the fact we could have gone into the 16th whereas 2002 ended after 12, and the managers were prepared to use position players to pitch instead of ending the game in a tie.
• The managers feel obligated to use every player that's willing, to mollify them but even more to mollify their fans. In the old days, it wasn't uncommon for position players to play the whole game.
• Teams' concerns about overworking pitchers.
• The rise of middle relievers and closers. Have a look at the 1968 All Star Game, the year before saves became an official stat. You see the same pitching carousel we see now, with a few more multi-inning pitchers - but every last pitcher was a starter, in an age where it was rare for pitchers to fail to go seven innings. The 1967 All-Star Game went 15 innings with no problem; Catfish Hunter pitched the final five innings for the AL (and ultimately lost), a feat that seems inconceivable today. Now teams protect pitchers more and gobble up large chunks of their rosters with relievers. Now pitching is not a position where players are interchangable at will - replacement pitchers have specific roles in theory - and thus is not a position well suited for all-star games. The NBA All-Star Game may well be the best all-star game, followed by the NHL, because their games actually feel like real games, unusually strong offense notwithstanding.

I'm not sure if anything can be done about any of that at this point, but if anything can, it's worth thinking about.

6:30-9:30 PM: NASCAR Nationwide Series racing, Gateway (ESPN2). Because I rarely get a chance to put up a Nationwide Series race and there's no Sprint Cup action this week.

UPDATED 7/19: ALTERNATE: 6-9 PM: Ultimate Fighting Championship, Fight Night (Spike TV). Not sure how highly to rate this since it's not what would normally be considered a PPV, but I don't want it to go unmentioned. Live on both coasts, so 9-12 on the East Coast.

Sunday
5-10:30 AM: PGA Golf, British Open, final round (ABC). If there's a golf tournament, and Tiger isn't playing in it, does it make a sound?

10:30-1 PM: IndyCar Racing, Honda Grand Prix at Mid-Ohio (ABC). Last year ratings were inflated by the British Open. Look for history to repeat itself.

12-2 PM: LPGA Golf, State Farm Classic, final round (ESPN2). Girl Power Sunday again!

2-4 PM: US Open Series, Bank of the West Classic, women's singles final (ESPN2). Girl Power Sunday and Scraping the Bottom of the Barrel Weekend again!

6-8 PM: The ESPY Awards (ESPN). Because there can exist nothing for which there is not an awards show of some kind. And no network should have to go without an awards show.

I need a job. You need to fill one, whether you know it or not.

I have a little memo for Fox:

If Joe Buck doesn't want to call baseball games anymore, can I take his spot?

Despite not having any consistent and truly private Internet connection with which to do so, I'm still looking for ways to take one game each week, load it up on MLB.tv, and call the game like I'm a broadcaster. And I'm probably a more excited broadcaster (even on baseball) than the infamously-dull (even on football) Buck. Not to mention I would probably brainfart on the rules less than a good many of the broadcasters out there on baseball and football, despite having no real training at it.

Once I can work up the equipment needed for it, I might put up some samples of me calling games on YouTube and on Da Blog.

Sports Watcher for the Weekend of 6/21-22 (UPDATED)

All times PDT. Sorry about the bare bones nature of this when it first went up!

Saturday
11:30-2 PM: UEFA Soccer, Euro 2008, Netherlands v. Russia (ABC). Because Dad will kill me if I don't mention this. There is something very interesting about this quarterfinal game, which I will mention next week.

4-7 PM: College baseball, College World Series, Fresno State v. North Carolina (ESPN). Ignore what I said on the previous version of this post about this being the second semifinal game. Due to a rainout, it's now the first. If a second is needed, it will be on ESPN Classic tomorrow.

9-12 AM: Ultimate Fighting Championship, The Ultimate Fighter Finale (SpikeTV): Same on both coasts. I can't remember if TUF is a Contender ripoff or if the Contender is an Ultimate Fighter ripoff.

Sunday
10-12:30 PM: IndyCar Series, Ethanol IndyCar 250 at Iowa (ABC). Talk about odd timing...

2-5:30 PM: NASCAR Sprint Cup Racing, Toyota/Save Mart 350 (TNT). At one point I was planning on having an Arena Football game and a baseball game here - and three of the four teams, including both home teams, would have been from Chicago. I only excluded the Battle for the Windy City because this interferes with that, just barely.

Thus ends a Sports Watcher mainstay until fall - well, it would be a mainstay if I had re-started the Watcher sooner - the NCAA championships. But fret not! The Arena Football League playoffs start next week! That doesn't excite you? One word: Wimbledon!

Sports Watcher for the Weekend of 6/14-15

All times PDT.

Saturday
8:50-11 AM: UEFA Soccer, Euro 2008, Sweden v. Spain (ESPN2). Because my dad will kill me if I don't mention this quickly.

1-3 PM: College track and field, national championship (CBS). I find it strange that not all NCAA Championships are on TV somewhere. The real surprise was finding out that the golf championships are not nationally televised. CBS College Sports televises the women's water polo final but not the golf final? Let's get with the program! (I wonder if this has anything to do with golf not being an Olympic sport?)

4-7 PM: College baseball, College World Series, Georgia v. Miami (ESPN). I recently saw a discussion on "Around the Horn" wondering why the MLB draft isn't as big as the NFL and NBA draft. Two factors I didn't hear in that discussion: going straight from high school to the pros is WAY more popular in baseball than it ever was in the NBA, which depresses the popularity (and quality) of college baseball. And second, THE MLB DRAFT OCCURS BEFORE THE COLLEGE WORLD SERIES PROPER HAS EVEN STARTED! That makes it more of a crap shoot, no?

Sunday
11-2:30 PM: NASCAR Racing, LifeLock 400 (TNT). Ah, what's two and a half hours off of US Open coverage? It's been a while since I mentioned the stock cars.

12-6 PM: PGA Golf, US Open, final round (NBC). It's golf in primetime! Wait, it's not the Masters? I don't care if it's still a major, I'm only watching the Masters! Wait, it's got Tiger in it? I don't care that when he leads a major, he wins so easily it's boring; count me in! Casual golf fans might be the most fickle in sports.

6-8:30 PM: NBA Basketball, Boston @ LA Lakers (ABC). Story of the Finals: Team A leaps out to a big lead. Team B comes roaring back. One team wins. Lather, rinse, repeat.

Sports Watcher for the Weekend of 6/7-8

The first time I filled out most of this schedule, including all the comments on the French Open women's final, the second paragraph of the UFC write-up, and all the college baseball and IndyCar stuff, I lost it all because I pre-scheduled all the posts with pre-qualified championship info, once a post is scheduled Blogger stops autosaving drafts, and the Internet connection I'm using is fritzing out all of a sudden. DSZGFJBD JGGHFXGDFMS HVCJHJXGD!!!!!!!~!!!~!!!!!

It's moments like these that are the ONLY reason I keep strongly considering getting a job and moving out of my mom's place and into a place where I can have my own Internet connection instead of stealing a neighbor's.

Ahem.

As I was saying. All times PDT.

Saturday
6-9 AM: Tennis, French Open, includes women's final, Dinara Safina v. Ana Ivanovic (NBC). Okay, I've heard some things about these two, but really, do you really think either one of them is really a household name in the US? Most people are going, "Dana Sana wha? Ana Vana wha?" At least it doesn't involve 3-seed Jelena Jankovic. Who? Exactly.

9-12 PM: College baseball, NC State v. Georgia or Wichita State v. Florida State (ESPN2). Wait, is ESPN regionalizing the super regionals? And Coastal Carolina plays North Carolina on ESPNU at the same time as well!

12-3 PM: Ultimate Fighting Championship, UFC 85 (PPV). It's a bit odd for UFC to be running events every other week, and then not necessarily show the same people each week. Oh wait, this is in London. Odd schedule placement might be to be expected. Well, I'm still keeping an eye on things.

While we're on the topic of MMA, the verdict is in from EliteXC, and, well... whether or not it outperformed the Stanley Cup Finals depends on your definition. But expect it to tumble in the future after Kimbo Slice lost his aura. Meanwhile, look for World Extreme Cagefighting - essentially UFC's equivalent to the Nationwide Series (see below) - to potentially make an appearance in future Watchers; I missed their show on Sunday, which most MMA-heads would say put EliteXC to shame. Of course, that "cagefighting" bit can't be good for building legitimacy.

3:25-4 PM: Horse racing, Belmont Stakes (ABC). Skip the mindless pregame and cut straight to the race. I'm not sure if they'll be off before or after 3:30; if I had to guess, it'd probably be after, but you might want to tune in a little early just in case. WILL BIG BROWN WIN THE ELUSIVE TRIPLE CROWN OR WILL HE JOIN THE SCRAP HEAP OF A GAZILLION PREVIOUS OVERHYPED DERBY/PREAKNESS WINNERS THAT FLOPPED IN THE BELMONT JUST SINCE AFFIRMED OR HELL JUST IN THE LAST TEN YEARS?

4:30-7:30 PM: College baseball, Arizona v. Miami (FL) or Stanford v. Cal State Fullerton (ESPN). Yes, I know it conflicts with the event below. I would have done the Nationwide Series race but I'm not doing the Sprint Cup race. The nearest ESPNU games' start times are 3 and 6 PM. Sue me.

7-9:30 PM: IndyCar Series, Bombardier Learjet 550 (ESPN2). Last week's race was on ABC coming out of the Indy 500 in a year where ratings are up because of the merger. The ratings: .8. Did I mention that USA Today ran an article around the time of the Indy 500 saying that IndyCar could very well run down NASCAR?

Sunday
6-11 AM: Tennis, French Open, includes men's final, Roger Federer v. Rafael Nadal (NBC). How many times have these two squared off just at the French? How about some dap for Gael Monfils making it all the way to the semis before running headfirst into FederTron 2000? I remember when he was a sensation in the boys' tournament...

1-4 PM: LPGA Golf, McDonald's LPGA Championship, final round (Golf Channel). WTF is the final round of a MAJOR still doing on the f'ing Golf Channel? I mean, I knew it was on the Golf Channel a few years ago, but I thought they'd corrected that injustice! Virtually every PGA Tour event has its final round on broadcast; what does it say that one of the top four women's event is considered less important than, well, ANY men's event? When can this come up for renegotiation? The LPGA needs to correct this injustice... back when it happened in the first place!

(Incidentially, it appears to technically be the "McDonald's LPGA Championship Presented by Coca-Cola". That's as bad as the "Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim". Also, what the hell is with the sports news cycle acting like the US Open is THIS weekend?)

6-8:30 PM: NBA Basketball, LA Lakers @ Boston (ABC). Obviously, I shouldn't have to say anything more.