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We’re puttin’ the Yanks up top, to pique your curiousity. This is the way real sports journalists do it, right?
So the bad boyz of Bronx are out, but, as Harvey Araton points out in The New York Times today, the fun is just beginning.
For SportsMediaWatchers, the annual Yankee blame game is much better
sport than regular season baseball; this year, it’s been an A-rod
bashin’-bonanza. Granted, the Fox commentators didn’t help anything, going beyond the call of duty in Monday’s Game 5 to point out just how poor his LDS play had been. Calls for A-rod’s ousting have echoed through the landscape.
Predictably, many commentators choose to hate the game instead of the player. In this case, that means sticking up for A-Rod and going after George. That’s right, the big man – supposedly in the winter of his reign,
though SMW would like to see some documentation on that – is the
central problem with the Yankee’s repeated failures, according to NYT
columnist Selena Roberts, who compares George’s $200 million payroll
with another expensive vanity project, Waterworld (exclusive SMW factoid: the most under-budget film in Hollywood history). On PTI
yesterday, Wilbon & Kornheiser suggested blame actually be placed
on Randy Johnson, whose failure to perform in Game 3 changed the
momentum of the series. SMW will return to these lovebirds momentarily
– meanwhile; their Post colleague Thomas Boswell penned a eulogy for the Sox/Yanks era, and even in Boston Shaughnessy points out that, around the country, lots of people are happy for the change. SMW would like to point out that no other teams in baseball would receive this much attention after
their exit from the postseason; we have now spent three news cycles
talking about how great it is that we are not talking about the Sox and
the Yanks. SMW: not an irony-free zone. SMW is too busy to mourn. Instead, we are gearing up for this Saturday’s main event: The Contender rematch, Mora/Manfredo II. The Contender was one of the better shows on television during its near-incognito 15-week season last spring; NBC aired it against The Simpsons, thus dooming it within the young male demographic it would most attract. In case you were stuck under something heavy, The Contender was something between Survivor and Rocky:
sixteen aspiring professional boxers eliminated each other in the ring
while audiences sopped up their dreams, goals, and cute children.
Saturday’s rematch pits Sergio Mora and Peter Manfredo in a rematch of
last spring’s season finale, a stopgap publicity stunt geared towards
announcing the show’s return and resurrection. Convinced of
his show’s quality, Burnett shopped the concept around and eventually
landed (you’ll never guess) at ESPN, which will broadcast the second season
(with an option for two more) beginning April 2006. Exec producer Sly
Stallone is sticking around, and Sugar Ray Leonard, who made for some
great TV as Sly’s co-something in Season 1, has been on ESPN shilling for the rematch.
Will Sly and Sugar have as much on-screen love now that the show has
moved from a family network timeslot to to the home of “real sports”? Even for sports guys, part of what made The Contender
fun to watch was the over-sentimentalization, the Burnett-touches, that
make every storyline hyperdramatic and every ending ponderous and
cathardic. No word yet on whether ESPN will let Burnett do his usual
thing, or whether the show will become more “realistic,” using that
term in the loosest of senses. More to the point, what does The Contender mean for boxing as a whole? Given the generally-pronounced sorry state of the sport, does The Contender
have a chance at converting viewers into fans? Certainly this seems to
be one of ESPN’s motivations behind the acquisition. Or, as Burnett
himself puts it, “"Our vision from the onset was to improve the
entertainment experience of televised boxing for the fans.” In other
words, the sport-as-is lacks drama or fun, and The Contender can fix it. SMW suggests that, in its own way, The Contender
is not sounding boxing’s opening bell but rather its final one – you
know, boxing, the one that tolls for thee. SMW suggests a litmus test:
if your sport has a reality series ( The Season anyone?), that’s fine. A little harmless promotion never hurt anybody. But if your sport is a reality series – as The Contender’s massive attention on ESPN.com’s boxing page would suggest – then maybe it’s time to throw in the towel. Returning to our PTI
co-hosts: yesterday on the show Wilbon decided to forgo his usual suave
get-up and opted instead for a White Sox jersey. Kornheiser, even in
the intro, called him on the contradiction – Mike’s a Cubs fan, and has
no business carpetbagging on the South Side. A nice joke, a good
routine, everybody is happy. Until this morning, when SMW discovers the
open letter to Wilbon masquerading as a TK column. While
perspective media studies Ph.D.’s rush analyses of the pair’s
underlying homoeroticism, SMW would like to investigate something we
call the Tony Kornhsier Column Conspiracy. TK has been quite prolific
with the ol’ word processor lately, though the columns are generally
very short and underthought, topping off at two or three hundred words.
It was not so long ago that TK columns would appear maybe once a week,
with no discernible schedule or methodology. Is this the price we pay –
instead of occasional longish underthought TK columns, we get them
every day, only shorter? For SMW this is fantastic news:
it was rare that TK could sustain interesting analysis for more than
several hundred words, and the quick-hit format seems suited to his
current interest level. Moreover, if he is going to continue to send
sports media lovenotes, SMW encourages him to do it as often as
possible. It’s just good material. Tomorrow: panic in Suns camp
as Amare goes under the knife. Plus, it’s about time SMW got around to
some Angels love – who are we to buck a trend?
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Daily Digest 
