As I was coming of age, ESPN was getting cool. The network itself is two years older than me. We all know how cool juniors and seniors can seem when a 14 year-old arrives at high school. Scott started at ESPN2 when I was 12 and was really coming into his own during my freshman year of high school in 1995-96.

That year UCLA had just won the national championship, Michael Jordan was at the height of his reign, and ESPN was at the height of showing highlights.

Stuart Scott, who passed away Sunday morning, was a bright, shining star. Young, hip, and vibrant, Scott’s highlights, attitude, and delivery set a standard for how young people talked about great feats of athleticism for decades to come.

Music fans of my generation reminisce about days when MTV showed actual music videos. While ESPN’s highlights have given way far more gently to analysis and hyperbole, it wasn’t that way in the mid-90’s. There were still fewer than 50 channels. Sports programming was a fraction of what it’s become. The Internet, for all intents and purposes, didn’t exist as it does today.

To find out how teams did and who won important games, SportsCenter was a must. You could watch for a half-hour or an hour, depending on the show, and you always got excited when your favorite anchors were on and doing highlights fro your team. Any time I had my druthers, it was on in the background. When I was doing homework — Sportscenter. When I was eating — SportsCenter.

I know my experience was the same as millions of young sports fans at the time. For my money, Dan Patrick and Keith Olberman or Stuart Scott and Kenny Mayne couldn’t be beat. Rich Eisen was good, too.

As Scott battled cancer over the past number of years, his attitude never seemed to change. Everyone who worked with him is crushed, which tells you a lot about the kind of guy I’m sure he was. I’m basically in tears this morning over a guy on television, which says something about the impact he had on me and, I think, other sports fans of my generation.

He will be missed.

 Here’s Rich Eisen’s reaction this morning. 

http://www.nfl.com/videos/nfl-network-gameday/0ap3000000453849/Rich-Eisen-remembers-Stuart-Scott

And, finally, some vintage highlights from a guy who loved his Tar Heels:

I’ve not had cable for a few years now, and I’m definitely not missing it. Sure, sports are tougher to come by, but between an antenna on my roof, sports bars, friends’ houses, and the Internet, things are easier to find than one might think.

Today, I came across this video on social media. Segments like these, available freely online, make me pretty happy with the decision I made to cut the cable.

I’ll admit it, Tosh.0 is a show I have enjoyed in the past. ESPN is huge, and is an easy target in lots of places, but this I had to share. While Tosh sometimes says or does things for shock value, he actually seems to have the moral high ground on this one.

The Sports Guy spoke his mind and gave a great take on the frustration fans feel about the NFL. He’s been smacked down for it. By David Shankbone (Own work), via Wikimedia Commons

When Bill Simmons became an ESPN employee, I think all reasonable sports fans who follow the Sports Guy were excited. Simmons does a fantastic job of toeing the line between being a journalist and a sports fan with an opinion. Simmons’ strong takes bring readers who are passionate and excited about their teams. Simmons is able to make deep analysis of multiple sports easily digestible and has one of the most popular sports podcasts out there.

When I first read Simmons years ago, I thought he was an unrepentent Laker-hating troll. I still pretty much think that, but he’s grown on me because he, for the most part, has done a nice job of being transparent about who he actually is. He doesn’t have any kind of fake pretense, which is where he departs heavily from his current employer.

ESPN has gone from becoming something I thought was hip in the late 1990’s to being something that makes me feel icky for consuming.

Here’s a confession: I haven’t had cable at any time over the past two years or so, and I’ve still kept up with sports. In fact, I get my sports news more efficiently than ever. AND, I’m in charge of what’s important in my sports world. I consume sports how I want to, through sources I feel give me the best information. I think I’m pretty savvy about where I get this information and can tell the difference between something being actually reported on versus an agenda a network like ESPN tried to push on me.

I’m pretty sure only ESPN employees I follow at this point are ones related to Grantland. Aside from live sporting events, which ESPN does a great job with, Simmons’ Grantland is the last bastion of content worth consuming on ESPN’s platforms.

Simmons was reprimanded for not living up to ESPN’s sometimes-enforced standards of journalistic integrity. In a weird way though, he held tight to his real morals. Simmons expressed the anger of so many fans of the NFL, ripping into Roger Goodell and expressing the bad feelings every fan has about the league right now.

By suspending Simmons, ESPN showed itself again as an organization that’s not in touch. ESPN hired Simmons, empowered him to do things like exactly what he did on his podcast this week, and then suspended him. Suspending Simmons is not what’s good for consumers of sports or the NFL and I don’t think that it’s good for the network either.

So, here’s to Bill Simmons. Good job Sports Guy. I hope that when you come back, you can still keep being who you are. Even though I’ll probably read it less now (the site is owned by ESPN after all), I hope that Grantland can still be a thing that I can actually respect — there are some really great people there and the content is still fresh and readable.

ESPN and the NFL are giants of the sports industry. They have both once again failed me as a fan. I’m a fan of neither tonight.

"It's not like Ray Rice bad-mouthed his wife on a PODCAST." — someone high up at @espn, apparently. #FreeSimmons

— Patton Oswalt (@pattonoswalt) September 25, 2014

Worldwide leader in cowardice and hypocrisy @espn #freesimmons

— A.J. Shearon (@PATSbasketball) September 25, 2014

Here's the excellent OTL piece @BillSimmons was talking about. Read it before ESPN disappears it too. #FreeSimmons http://t.co/adau8Av2Nm

— Ted Friedman (@tedfriedman) September 25, 2014

This @BillSimmons suspension is mind blowing. He's the best talent @espn and deserves to be heard. #freesimmons http://t.co/W58BqtezvL

— Tanya (@MissTanya) September 25, 2014

WILD SONG OF THE NIGHT FOR #BillSimmons: "Gimme Some Truth" by #JohnLennon #FreeSimmons

— David Wild (@Wildaboutmusic) September 25, 2014

The Big West Conference will add ESPN3 to its video platform. By Will Parris

The Big West Conference announced today that it will have up to 60 games from various sports on ESPN3 over the next eight years, starting this school year.

The conference already has national deals with ESPN and Fox Sports, who will continue to have first rights to broadcast games nationally, but adding ESPN3 gives the conference a new level of online game coverage. For the past few years, the conference has streamed live video feeds of games via Big West TV. Those will continue for games not covered by ESPN, Fox Sports, or ESPN3, though the BigWestTV feed can vary in production quality. The production quality of the ESPN3 platform will have to match ESPN’s standards.

Each game on ESPN3 will include a three-person team: play by play analyst, color commentator, and sideline reporter.

Games featured on ESPN3 will be broadcast from Southern California locations, including UC Irvine, Cal State Fullerton, Long Beach State, UC Riverside, and Cal State Northridge. While ESPN3 games will not be broadcast from the other four conference schools, it is a conference package and all schools will be featured. For example, the games will probably prominently feature teams like Cal Poly, UC Davis, Hawaii, and UC Santa Barbara on the road against one of the other five schools.

A schedule for basketball has yet to be released, but the first event featured on the new ESPN3 platform will be the semifinal and final round of the Big West Women’s Soccer Tournament, all from Cal State Fullerton’s Titan Stadium.

The semifinal begins on Thursday.

In this ESPN.com piece, celebrated swimmer, Ryan Lochte helps unveil the truth about the abundance of salmon at the Olympic games.

“My last olympics, I had a girlfriend — big mistake,” Lochte said in the ESPN article. “Now I’m single. So London should be really good. I’m excited,” flirted the swimming star, who earlier this week blew America’s shot at gold in the 400 Freestyle relay. His counterpart, Phelps, put the team in cruise control for the win in the middle leg. Lochte looked flat, worn out and exhausted, losing a shot at gold in the final lap.

It seems there is more going on here than just locker room beef between Phelps and Lochte and we absolutely cannot blame the old Mary Jane for our downfall into a silver finishing swim team. What is happening here is an extracurricular exercise with the power to control minds and move mountains.

How do we reconcile sweet efforting athletes like gold winning female gymnast, Jordyn Wieber…..

//www.youtube.com/watch?v=0bJ7tYTB4-Y

…. with 2000 U.S rifle team member John Lakatos and his saucy stories about sex and debauchery?

“The next morning [After a drunken night],” Lakatos says, “swear to God the entire 4×100 team of some Scandanavian-looking country walks out of a house, followed by boys from our side. And I’m just going ‘Holy crap,’ we’d watched these girls run the night before.”

This all is beginning to make more sense. Current U.S basketball star Kobe Bryant is 34, a 16-year senior to most of the worlds competing game members.  He’s in a completely different generation and now, at 34, has kids, an ex-wife, hundreds of millions of dollars, mansions, pent houses, an entourage and a trademarked capital element to his name alone.

But Ryan Lochte, Michael Phelps and even sweet souls like Jordyn Wieber are kids with a ravenous river of hormones rushing through their bodies. While Bryant is figuring out how to pay off his beautiful wife half of his enormous estate, Phelps is smoking a doobie poolside at his parents house, playing a first person shooter and checking Facebook for updates. Wieber just got her license.

I would wager to say most of us as Americans define our Olympic experience by our most popular sports, making Kobe Bryant and 27 year old LeBron James the perceived prototype of our American athlete. Lending some from of understanding for kids making mistakes on the largest stage isn’t even in the back of our minds, it’s non-existant. If Bryant and James are focused solely on winning gold, shouldn’t everyone else be?

Well…do you remember when you were 16, 17 and 18 ? I couldn’t be at a beach without fantasizing. Shoot I couldn’t be in church without imaginations swirling through me. That was just the way it was. I would have pickled my left pinky toe and sold it to a Bolivian marketplace for a chance at exploitation. Just sayin’. So while we hope our team wins gold, might I remind you just how young these athletes really are: They’re winning gold in other less popular ways.

This time the one-two punch battled over their own careers, and for two hours dismissed the NHL draft, NFL draft, baseball highlights, Ozzie Guillen story, and many other news-worthy punch lines, in order that they might clear the air when it comes to their current bout over hashtags and tweets. This began during yesterday’s airing of First Take, when Rose reverted to calling the Bayless Water Pistol Pete instead of the Pistol Pete Bayless believed himself to be via twitter, stating:” Tall for age in 9th grade, chosen MVP of state-wide basketball camp over several future D1 players. Decided I was Maravich. Coach disagreed.”

Is it just me or are we all stuck in some derisive vacuum? Why are talking about Skip Bayless in high school? And why does Jalen Rose care?

Rose — pissy over a dispute on the NBA MVP race  — differs from Bayless’ beliefs on Russell Westbrook. And while Rose asserts Westbrook to be a favorable league MVP based upon ability to lead a team and take over a game, Bayless continued his dissent, calling the 21 year-old point guard assertive at the wrong times, a gunner and not a true believer in the greatness of Kevin Durant.

I’m still confused over how this became personal and how the argument devolved into some ego-driven juevo comparison on live television. Without question it argues against the authenticity of First Take and begs whether the show is just another script fueling the fire of a gossip-driven culture.

It seems, in some far fetched make believe world, Bayless’ tweet was in response to his argument with Rose. But why does Bayless think it’s necessary to prop up his defunct athletic career? In order that he might build a better repore with his colleagues, listeners, readers and critics? Does his tweet somehow include Bayless with the likes of NBA stars, as both a man who knows the game from the outside and from the inside? Is Bayless the Michael Jordan who never got his shot?

Likewise, how does playing the game make Jalen Rose more right than one who hasn’t? Should we assume Rose the superior of Red Aurbach? That, according to ESPN insider Andy Katz is absurd when examining and evaluating all the great minds who never played the game at a high level but currently teach it both at the collegiate and professional levels.

The circus malaise got all the more foul, when the more formidable and loud-mouthed, Stephen A. Smith, grovelled his own growls in an indistinguishable banter about his love of sports, his need to tell it like it is, his distaste for Kwame Brown, and the reasons why he alone could build trust with the formerly evasive, Allen Iverson. Smith’s displeasure with Rose rooted itself in insecure cries for professional attention, demanding Rose listen to his arguments as to why former players dream of being journalistic moguls like him.

And while Smith pearled his glories like a great philosopher, the middle man Jay Crawford sat steadfastly puzzled, perplexed and shamelessly amused. Crawford called himself “a fly on the wall listening to great sport knowledge,” using the barometer of his 12 – inch black backed lap top computer to announce their trending stats and the network’s desire to continue on with the battle between the two egos, in order to maximize viewer attention.

That, alone, tosses a greater curve ball in the mix, one I do not have the time for and would take two thousand pages to explain. Are we as fans, to blame for the current misery known as American Sports media? Our lust for entertainment, tweets, gossip and reality television pushing us to a point of intellectual irrelevance? One jackass listening to another jackass, and the other jackass just smiling?

What if El Loco had made his tournament larger or had been reminded of some other great commercials.

With the tournament going on, I’m not going to play an “NIT” here, but I will talk about a few of the “bubble” commercials/music videos that didn’t make it. Bare with me here. Things might get a little ugly. Hope you get some laughs out of it. Be sure to cast your vote for your favorite in Loco’s tournament too!

SportsCenter Commercials

My earliest memories of SportsCenter commercials are from middle school and early high school. I loved sports and would have watched the show anyway, but in the mid-90’s, ESPN started to advertise their flagship show more and more. Along with “hip” broadcasters like Dan Patrick and Keith Olberman (later Kenny Mayne, Stuart Scott, etc…), SportsCenter was all I watched before school and before I went to bed. A bowl of cereal and SportsCenter was how I started and ended my day. Below are a few of my favorite SportsCenter commercials. I love them all, but here are a few.

In the League there’s something brewing, you can see it in Patrick Ewing.

When it’s an extra step he’s taking – it’s a rule he is breaking…

You have to pause it on the Scrabble board. The words are amazing. Shaq is top-5 greatest entertainers of all time.

Pot head. He’s not funny but I have to dig at the Giants where I can.

Blake Griffin. Love him. K-Love gets to show his skills too. It’s really fun to do this to people by the way. Shout out to Jeff Laing and Nate Brown.

Grant Hill used to be able to dunk so good. Also he’s a piano player… Apparently a good one.

This would be funnier if it was Will Ferrell and not really Robert Goulet.

Keyshawn and Kobe. Awesome.

And, finally, Manny being Manny.

Tracy Morgan commercials for Video Games

This guy reinvents funny. The “Every day I do” line is one that can be used in so many connotations. The Warren Sapp one is the best, but Tracy Morgan is a hurricane of hilarity. Love it.

Hahahaha EVERY DAY I DO.

Two freakazoids. Ben Wallace and Tracy Morgan have more in common than is probably healthy….

Manning Commercials

The Manning brothers are all-time greats, when it comes to commercials. Especially Payton. Have a look.

Take a hike!

Loving the ‘stache!

And the brothers acting like… brothers.

All of these videos are funny and should have been considered. Most of Loco’s are probably funnier, but some of these should have had a shot. Much like bubble teams who didn’t get into the tournament, these “players” deserved a shot. Hope you enjoyed looking at them as much as I liked finding them.

OM

Who? Yea I know, I know. For most of the sports world a name like McNamara means nothing. That is unless you are talking about the Central Coast realty agency. But for March Madness Maniacs like myself, the name McNamara takes  on a life of its own.

This is the best time of year. A time when college athletes from all over the country battle it out for supremacy. Conference tournaments do one of two things. If you come from a mid-major conference (Big West, Missouri Valley, etc.) winning your conference tournament is your only shot at recieving a birth come March. If you are from a power conference (ACC, Big East, Big 12) this is a time to settle the nay-sayers and establish yourself as a legitimate seed come playoff time.

The one-and-done atmosphere is like electricity to the veins of its viewers. March Madness Maniacs live for the David vs. Goliath matchups–1 vs. 16, 2 vs. 15, 3 vs. 14–because within the human heart we all root for the underdog. All of us at one time or another have felt completely overmatched whether it be in our business, collegiate academics, married life, health concerns, and the list goes on. And when we overcome incredible odds, the certainty of miracles grows stronger, more steadfast, more golden.

This common strand that interlinks our societal consciousness is lost when players go professional. Money becomes the central driving point, and before you know it, the competitor is lost to a swirling world of popularity. No longer can we revel in the that moment in time–that one moment in March–when the man we watched on TV was a strungout kid proving his greatness on the largest stage.

Which is why memories haunt college basketball fans. We only get the innocence of our loved competition for two to four years. Watching kids graduate, go pro, or overseas is less a culmination of success, and more a feeling of uncertainty for a game split down the seams between its two largest entities: collegiate and pro.

I am not surprised that our fastfood sports junkies have so quickly forgotten greatness wrapped in its stocky, awkward, out-of-nowhere form. A package wrapped with an outlying vanilla colored goatee, instead of a pretty form of wrapping paper that screams “ME!”

“Draft ME! Look at ME!”

His name is Gerry McNamara. One of the greatest players to ever adorn a Syracuse Orange jersey. A guy who played with the likes of current pros Carmelo Anthony and Hakeem Warrick.  The 6’2, 185 pound pride of Scranton, Pennsylvania, gloried in a four year run at Syracuse, leaving Orange fans and March Madness Maniacs with some of their greatest memories in tournament history.  Who as a freshman co-led with Carmelo Anthony, the Orange to their first basketball title in 2003. Had he been endowed with four more inches of height, he would still be tearing through defenses like a cavalier slicing and dicing foes to the bone.

Here is a nice clip of McNamara to ‘Melo. Pure beauty.

The true Mighty Mouse drove the lane with a poised abandon that made his knock-off, Damon Stoudamire, look like a cheap version bought at Wal Mart.  His ability to hit the step back three meant a defender had to body up at all times. If his defender did, G-Mac would stagger his off shoulder, drop a Tim Hardaway crossover then finish with a tear drop in the key.

2005-2006, McNamara’s senior year, left fans with his image inked in their minds forever. For much of the season McNamara was ridiculed with “too slow” and “undersized,” by pro scouts. The pinnacle of this type of media hit hard when Sports Illustrated published a featured story on McNamara being the most “overrated” player in the country. G-Mac bore the brunt of his teams off kilt 19-12 regular season record. Facing the Big East Tournament, the Orange needed to roll through its entirety to have any hope of earning McNamara and the Orange their fourth birth in March.

What he ended up doing was pure greatness. Fueled by the Sports Illustrated reports, and hobbled by a deep leg bruise, McNamara’s Orange upset Cincinnati in the first round of the tournament 74-73, in which he hit a one handed three point shot at the buzzer. The following day, he hit a fading three-point shot to tie number one ranked U Conn and send the game to overtime. There McNamara scored five more of his team high seventeen points to close out the country’s number one team.  In the conference semi-finals, McNamara hit five three-pointers in the second half against Georgetown to win their third game in three days.  Things culminated when G-Mac and the Orange upset Pitt in the Big East title game, 65-61. The Orange was the first team in Big East history to win four games in a row in the tournament. McNamara as you would expect, was Conference Tourney MVP.

His play was so superior to his foes, that the great and quiet natured Jim Boeheim went on a tirade like this:

McNamara adorned this t-shirt in mockery for a media more in love with big money athleticism than with the heart of a competitor…

G-Mac finished his Syracuse career starting every game (135). His 2,009 career points ranks him fourth all-time in Orange history, 4,781 minutes first, 258 steals second, 648 assist third, and 400 three-pointers first. He also owns the record for the most three-point field goals in Big East Tournament history (183).

So where in the world is Gerry McNamara?

After three years of bouncing between NBA training camps and professional ball in Greece, McNamara now leads shooting clinics near Syracuse University at Onandaga Community College. He has become a primetime guest on a popular radio station, and as of 2009, has been an assistant coach for Boheim and Syracuse. Despite never making the pros, McNamara left fans with memories of why college basketball’s March Madness is superior to the NBA’s take-a-night-off-and-nap seven game series.

Thinking of McNamara brought up a few more past greats…

Leading his team to back-to-back title games (winning one),  former Arkansas Razorback guard Scotty Thurman took a set of bad advice and declared early for the 1995 NBA draft, where he went undrafted. Thurman was a do-it-all guard with a wide wingspan. His ability to hit the deep shot was on full display when he drilled a three-point shot in the final minutes of a title win over Grant Hill’s Duke Blue Devils 76-72. Thurman played overseas for a few years, but never stepped foot in the NBA. He is now a real estate agent in Little Rock, Arkansas.

How about the 5’10, 202 pound tank, Khalid El-Amin? El-Amin was the driving force with Rip Hamilton to U Conn’s title in 1999. Rip went on to a nice NBA career, but El-Amin left after his junior year citing financial troubles. Playing just fifty games in the pros, El-Amin has had quite a nice career overseas. He was a back-to-back all-star in Turkey from 2004-2005, averaging 20.5 points per game, and in 2007, El-Amin won the Ukranian league MVP award and led his team to the Ukranian title.

Most of you remember Brevin Knight, the former great who played point guard for the Stanford Cardinal teams in the late nineties. But what about Brevin’s brother Brandin Knight of Pittsburgh? Knight was a standout point guard for the Panthers who helped establish their recent string of success. He was co-Big East player of the year in 2002, and is currently first all-time in assist for the Panthers, and first in steals. Knight played two years in the NBDL before blowing out his knee, and is currently an assistant coach for the Panthers.

Another past name is Joseph Forte, former standout guard for North Carolina. In his sophomore season he averaged 21 points per game and shot 38 percent from the three-point range. Still considered one of the great guards to ever roll through North Carolina, Forte left early for the NBA draft. Drafted by the Celtics late in the first round, Forte never got the PT and currently plays overseas.

Power forward John Wallace of Syracuse left Orange fans with great memories. A bruiser in the paint, Wallace led the Orange to the 1996 championship game, where they lost to a deep Kentucky team filled with Tony Delk, Walter McCarty, Jeff Shepherd, Ron Mercer, Derek Anderson, and Antoine Walker. Wallace is one of fifty-six players to finish his collegiate career with 2,000 career points and 1,000 rebounds. Drafted 18th overall in the 1996 draft to the Knicks, Wallace bounced around the league for eight years before retiring in 2005.

Before Buckeyes like Greg Oden, Evan Turner, and Jared Sulinger,  Scoonie Penn was the god of Ohio basketball from’98-’00. Born with a forty-inch vertical, the alt-athlete–a blend of both finesse, strength, and speed–led the Buckeyes with current pro Mike Redd to the 1999 final four. An inch under six feet, was the only knock on Scoonie’s Chauncey Billups like game. Because of that Penn was drafted 57th overall to the Hawks in 2000, and never played a minute in the NBA. Penn currently plays ball in Italy.

Checkout this video of Scoonie’s greatness and how about the young Ronald Artest?

The “fab five” for the Michigan Wolverines went to back to back final fours in 1992 and 1993. With Chris Webber, Jalen Rose, and Juwan Howard, it was easy to dissapear. But the “other two,” Ray Jackson and Jimmy King were no slouches. Both were high school all-Americans and top one hundred recruits. King had the ability to drive to the hoop, acting as a safe zone offensively when Rose or Webber was in foul trouble. Ray Jackson was a defensive stopper and a captain, a guy who acted as the glue in tense situations. Once the other three left for the pros, both King and Jackson combined for 30.5 points per game their senior season. King was drafted 35th overall to the Raptors in 1995, and played a total of sixty-four games in his pro career. Retiring in 1997, King now works for Meryl Lynch in New York City.  Jackson was the only one of the five who went undrafted in the NBA, though he played three years in the CBA, winning the Rookie of the Year in 1996. He now runs a non-profit in Austin, Texas assisting underpriveledged kids.

As the gift of March Madness enfolds in the coming weeks with game winners and upsets, players will establish themselves in the ranks of tournament greats. These players will leave us with their legacies in the backdrops of our minds, haunting us with the need to replay their moments over and over. Which is the very reason, why college basketball’s march madness is the greatest playoff atmosphere in the world.