Archive for the ‘Sports Media’ Category

In case you haven’t heard, there’s a pretty great new Tennessee Football preview annual coming out in only a few short days.  It’s from Maple Street Press and is entitled: “Rocky Top Tennessee 2009.”

I know, I know, you’re probably thinking to yourself “those previews are all the same, a bunch of the same basic statistics and information re-styled to make them appear shiny and new.”  In most circumstances you would be correct, but this preview is a little different than most.  You see, Maple Street Press does not approach these sorts of publications the way that some of the other publishers do.  They turn independent writers and bloggers who are passionate about their team and ask them to write on subjects that are near and dear to their hearts.

The result is a 128 pages of thoughtful insight, analysis, and perspective that the mainstream press simply does not offer.  Furthermore, if your a regular reader here at Gate 21 and other sites across the web, you’ll recognize some of the writers and be pleasantly surprised at the ways Rocky Top Tennessee 2009 differs from the run-of-the-mill preview magazine.

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Somewhere, in front of a chalkboard—his hands coated with chalk dust—Lane Kiffin is smiling…

For the past several months Tennessee fans and the general sports-watching public have heard a near endless discussion about the various secondary infractions which have occurred since Lane Kiffin (a/k/a “the Blackjack General”) took the reins as the head football coach for the Tennessee Volunteers.  Needless to say, some have taken every available opportunity to criticize the University of Tennessee, The UT Athletic Department, Smiling Mike Hamilton, and the Blackjack General himself.  Some of it has amounted to little more than sniping and smack-talk, while others have been decidedly more direct.

Rightly or wrongly, Tennessee has self-reported (or is in the process of investigating with with an eye toward reporting) six secondary violations of NCAA Rules, the most recent coming—as HSH reported just the other day—as a result of the Blackjack General’s recent appearance on ESPN’s “Outside the Lines,” where he discussed, imagine that, secondary infractions with ESPN’s Bob Ley.

A “secondary violation” is defined in the NCAA Manual as follows:

A secondary violation is a violation that is isolated or inadvertent in nature, provides or is intended to provide only a minimal recruiting, competitive or other advantage and does not include any significant recruiting inducement or extra benefit.  Multiple secondary violations by a member institution may collectively be considered as a major violation.

•  2008-09 NCAA Division 1 Manual § 19.02.2.1 (emphasis added)

To put this in layman’s terms, secondary violations are the functional equivalent of talking in the NCAA’s rather large and particularly boring class.  Or, perhaps, in Lane Kiffin’s case, they amount to showing-off for all the girls (or in this case, recruits) in the back of class to impress them and passing notes reading:

I like you.  A Lot.

Do you like me?

Check One:  ___Yes  ___No  ___Maybe

— Lane

While this sort of thing—in both Mrs. Elliott’s 6th Period English Class and in the world of NCAA compliance—are annoying, they are largely harmless.  While it is true (again, with both Mrs. Elliott and the NCAA) that enough of these sorts of minor errors along the way can land you in the proverbial Principal’s office, as long as you say you are sorry after each instance (and UT has self-reported all such violations) and space the occurrences out by a day or two, usually there is little punishment to be meted out, aside from being made a spectacle in front of your peers…

… or by having to stay after class and write on the blackboard.

Kiffin at the Chalkboard

Hence, while Lane Kiffin and the UT Athletic Department are probably getting a little tired of having to deal with the issue of secondary violations, they have been merely a bump in the road thus far.

The Alabama Crimson Tide, on the other hand, is now facing a decidedly more serious situation…

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Over the years, I have often criticized Knoxville News Sentinel Sports Editor John Adams for his excessive fault-finding with the various athletic programs at Tennessee.  Since the ascendancy of Lane Kiffin as the new head football coach of the Tennessee Volunteers, however, it has seemed to me that suddenly Adams had gone soft.

Well, Adams’ recent column on Daniel Hood proves that I am wrong…

In his article, Adams concludes that Hood’s past (at age 13, he was convicted of assisting a 17-year-old in the rape of a 14-year-old) means that the Knoxville native should not be given a chance to play for the Big Orange.  This is classic Adams, complete with his longstanding habit of attacking the Great Punkin for no readily apparent reason.

As for the substance of the article, I cannot say that I entirely agree or disagree with Adams, but I do take issue with his willingness to publicly attack Hood.  I’m not making any excuses for Hood or his past actions (and apparently neither is Hood), but it seems to me to be a bit heavy-handed to walk in as a moral inquisitor standing in judgment over the kid in the way that Adams does.

Furthermore, while Adams appears to clothe the article under the guise of pointing out that Hood’s troubled past does not help with Coach Kiffin’s efforts to instill a new sense of discipline at Tennessee, what the article is really about is taking one more shot at Phillip Fulmer.  Adams writes:

The main problem I had with former coach Phillip Fulmer’s program wasn’t the won-lost record.  It was the arrest record.  There were too many off-the-field incidents and too little discipline in return.

New UT coach Lane Kiffin has been all about discipline.  He has the attrition to show for it.  Four players have been kicked off the team, and another was disciplined before he left of his own volition.

You can’t say, “There’s a new sheriff in town,” because that implies the existence of a previous sheriff.  But by the end of spring practice, you could conclude this wasn’t business as usual.

So much has changed about UT football in the last few months, and virtually all of it for the better. A stagnant program is suddenly pulsating with energy.  Fans are excited and optimistic.

There’s a new offense, a new defense and a new outlook.

Amidst all the newness, this is no time to revert.

• Adams: Daniel Hood not good for UT’s new image | GoVolsXtra.com

I suppose my biggest complaint is that Adams felt the need to so directly attack a high school-aged player in order to justify the swing at Fulmer.  It just does not seem necessary to me since, as just about every article ever written by Adams other than the one he wrote the morning after Tennessee won the 1998 National Championship shows, he has hardly ever held back in going after Tennessee’s former coach.

I guess that would have just been too boring (I know I have been tired of it for years)…

Still, the article is thought provoking.  Furthermore, I suppose that with newspapers folding-up or thinning-down all across the country writers have to do whatever they can to sell papers.

Still, more than anything this one looks like a guy trying to find a story, and when one fails to appear simply reverting to his well-honed tactics of going after an easy target.  I guess even Adams is still afraid to unabashedly go after Kiffin.

Given the support that Kiffin has been receiving, that was probably a smart decision on Adams’ part…

– So it goes

In case you hadn’t heard, the United States Congress has been hard at work lately—tackling the hard-hitting issues that our country is facing.  Our representatives in the House have been addressing monumental concerns impacting the daily lives of all Americans far and wide.  What, you might ask, is the single most important question in the minds of Representatives Joe Barton (R-TX), Neil Abercrombie (D-HI), Lynn Westmoreland (R-GA) and Mike Simpson (R-ID)?

Whether the BCS / Bowl system for determining NCAA football championships needs to be replaced by a playoff system.

As a result, these congressmen introduced a House Resolution in April seeking to have the United States Congress and the United States Department of Justice investigate the Bowl Championship Series.  In particular, this obscenely overstated meaningful legislation resolves that the House of Representatives:

(1) rejects the BCS system as an illegal restraint of trade that violates the Sherman Anti-Trust Act;

(2) demands the United States Department of Justice Antitrust Division investigate and bring appropriate action to have the BCS system declared illegal and require a playoff to determine a national champion; and

(3) supports the establishment of an NCAA Division I Football Bowl Subdivision Championship playoff system in the interest of fairness and to bring parity to all NCAA teams.

• 111th Congress, House Resolution 68

Heavy stuff, that…

As a result of the tireless grandstanding efforts of these shameless self-promoters champions of the common man, the Subcommittee on Commerce, Trade and Consumer Protection held hearings this past week to look into the actions of the BCS in hopes of determining whether something nefarious is afoot.  This included taking testimony from: John Swofford (Commissioner of the Atlantic Coast Conference and Coordinator of the Bowl Championship Series), Craig Thompson (Commissioner of the Mountain West Conference), Derrick Fox (President and CEO of the Valero Alamo Bowl), and Gene Bleymaier (Athletic Director of Boise State University).

For those of you out there that hate yourselves, you can view a streaming video of the entire hearing through the committee website.  Note: Apparently the Congressional muckety-mucks are too busy to hire someone schooled in the basic art of video editing.  Thus, you will want to fast forward to approximately 19:45 to view the hearing (that is, unless you just enjoy watching a blank screen for almost 20 minutes).

During the hearing, the Committee specifically looked into whether the BCS amounted to a monopoly, running afoul of federal anti-trust provisions.  With the great all-encompassing seriousness that can only come from the stuffed shirts of Congress and with the aire of the Watergate hearings, the committee set about digging deep into the bowels of college football’s deep dark secret.  Having watched some of the video of the hearing, it was obvious, in the minds of some of the assembled officials, that they felt the very sanctity of our American Republic hung precariously in the balance.

Right…

Don’t get me wrong, I am not opposed to the idea of a college football playoff, in fact I would gladly support such a system—so long as it is fair.  The disdain that is oozing from this article comes not from my opposition to the notion that college football needs a playoff, but rather from the nauseating belief by those in Congress that they are the answer to this problem.  Oh yeah, there is also the minor fact that the entire nation is passed out from the H1N1 flu in the economic toilet of the world with chunks of last night’s General Motors and Wall Street flavored hot dog still clinging to its mouth while these clueless egomaniacs are wasting their time trying to determine how we end our football seasons.

I’d love to sit around in a fancy conference room with hospitality service and get paid to talk football all day as much as the next guy, there’s no denying that.  The thought that our Congressional leaders have nothing better to do than just that, is more than a little bothersome.  The fact that they can do it with a straight face while purporting to represent the best interests of their constituents, makes me think of three words: “explosive projectile vomiting.”  I suppose that this sentiment is precisely what led CBS Sports.com’s Dennis Dodd to note that “Retching is common for these kinds of mundane Capitol Hill gatherings.”

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Yes, friends and neighbors the NCAA Tournament is upon us.  Thus, we all get ready for the mayhem that accompanies that grand old tradition.  For what seems like forever, that has included watching endless hours of basketball courtesy of CBS Sports.  Now, generally, I am a huge fan of CBS Sports, and I favor their web presence when it comes to sports content on the internet. **

All that said, last year’s NCAA tournament almost drove me mad.  Actually it wasn’t the tournament, but the way that CBS covered the tournament on television.  That led me to fire off at the mouth a bit.  Since it is that time again, I figured it would only be appropriate to take a stroll down memory lane and look back on what I had to say about CBS’s coverage.  I do this for two reasons.

First, this seems relevant as we all get ready to become couch potatoes for a month.  This may be minimized a little bit due to the fact that CBS will be broadcasting all games online free of charge once again, but the fact remains a big flat screen is infinitely better than even the best computer monitor.

Second, I have been so busy that I haven’t yet gotten a chance to finish up my thoughts on the Oklahoma State Cowboys…

Thus, without further adieu, we go back in time to my post entitled simply:

CBS = Complete Bull Sh*t

The following is an excerpt from an archived post on Gate 21 which originally appeared on 31 March 2008.  To continue reading the original post in its entirety, simply click the title above, or the “Continue Reading” link at the foot of this post

I intentionally waited a few days before airing this complaint, mainly because I didn’t want my vitriol to be mistaken as nothing more than “sour grapes” over the BasketVols loss to the Louisville Cardinals.

Trust me, this has nothing to do with Tennessee, Louisville, or any other specific team…

For the past … well, it seems like quite a long time, now … CBS has been the exclusive home of the NCAA Tournament. I vaguely remember ESPN covering first and second-round games during the 1990s, but CBS is all we have had for a while. Either way, CBS has held a stranglehold on the Final Four since Billy Packer conned James Naismith himself into signing over the rights some time during the 1920s — back when Billy Packer was in his 50s.

First of all, I do want to applaud CBS Sportsline — CBS Sports’ internet division — for their ambitious decision to broadcast every tournament game for free on the web. Similarly, the CBS “Game Center” on the internet for each game — displaying myriad stats and information in real time — is amazing. It is as artful as it is impressive. Any fan can get up-to-the-second information on every facet of the game — including points, fouls, assists, shooting trends, whether a player is taking bribes to throw the game, which boosters the cute little cheerleader next to the basket is sleeping with, and so much more — via one of the best interfaces I’ve ever seen for statistical information of that kind.

Despite the minor fact that the bandwidth draw for the “March Madness on Demand” service has been so obscenely high that it has — at times — nearly crashed massive trunk lines on the web, I salute these efforts of CBS’s internet division. For reasons which will become clear in a second, in the future I may choose this as the only way I’ll watch the tournament — even if it is in a 5″ x 5″ low resolution streaming window.

Continue Reading >>

**Disclosure: While lawvol is a voting member of the CBS Sports Football Blog Poll and the CBS Sports BasketBlog Poll, neither this site, its editor, nor publisher receives any payment or other compensation of any type or kind in return for participation. Furthermore, neither Gate 21 nor lawvol received any benefit of any kind for this article, which was neither requested nor solicited by CBS Sports. This article represents the actual opinion of the author (for what that is worth) and was in no way influenced by any other person(s).

In light of all the controversy surrounding whether Lane Kiffin told Alshon Jeffrey that he would “end up pumping gas for the rest of his life” if he chose to play for the South Carolina Gamecocks—which Kiffin adamantly denied in a follow-up interview with ESPN’s Chris Low—Coach Kiffin will appear on ESPN’s Pardon the Interruption tonight (13 March 2009) at 5:30.  I am sure that Kiffin will have … interesting … comments to share with Tony Kornheiser and Michael Wilbon.

I am sure that the Public Relations department at Tennessee is already hard at work on this one…

• HT to: Basilio

Here’s an interesting and long (27 minute) clip of Lane Kiffin speaking to the Big Orange Tip-Off Club from — of all places — USA Today.com.  He discusses recruiting, commitment, and where the program is going, among many other things.

Video:  Lane Kiffin Speaks to Tipoff Club

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