2024 STUFF ABOUT SPORTS MEDIA THREAD

[supremebve]

Cheryl Miller is up there with Jim Thorpe as far as people I know were great athletes but I don't think I even know anyone who has seen them play.  Rebecca Lobo was a legendary college player, but was not a good pro.  Honestly, we spent the last 30 years or so acting like the WNBA players weren't that good, but one of the few women's basketball players we can name could not compete at that level.  Rebecca Lobo is the nightmare scenario for Caitlin Clark.  Nancy Lieberman was born about 25 years too early.  She is like George Mikan, I'm sure she was great, but she was great at a time right before everyone who cares about women's basketball was paying attention to women's basketball.  In reality, Cynthia Cooper is the person who should probably be the de facto women's basketball main character, at least when talking about pioneers of the sport.  She may very well be the best women's basketball player, who played against a level of competition that we can verify.  She was 34 in the first WNBA season, and she won two MVPs, 4 championships, and 4 Finals MVPs.  Cooper and Miller were college teammates, which had to have been fun for all the opposing college kids who had to play against the woman everyone claims to be the best women's basketball player of all time and the woman who was the best player in a league that didn't start until she was past her physical prime.  

[odessasteps]

I remember someone showing Cheryl Miller playing in college. I presume CBS may have shown the final. She was famous enough (and telegenic) to become a tv sports personality. And I remember Reggie being “Cheryl’s brother.” 
 

Is Sheryl Swoops the other main person not mentioned? 
 

Also how weird is that Louisiana Tech was a college powerhouse at one point, along with USC and UT before UConn was a big deal.

[supremebve]

8 hours ago, odessasteps said:

I remember someone showing Cheryl Miller playing in college. I presume CBS may have shown the final. She was famous enough (and telegenic) to become a tv sports personality. And I remember Reggie being “Cheryl’s brother.” 
 

Is Sheryl Swoops the other main person not mentioned? 
 

Also how weird is that Louisiana Tech was a college powerhouse at one point, along with USC and UT before UConn was a big deal.

I think Sheryl Swoopes and Lisa Leslie are the two women who need to be mentioned with the above group. They never really reached the level of fame that Miller, Lobo,  and Lieberman reached,  but they were great players that paved the way for the Sue Bird, Candace Parker,  Diana Taurasi generation that paved the way for the current generation. This league only exists because these women insisted on keeping it alive despite it being a part time job for most of them. All of them could have decided to play exclusively in higher paying European leagues, but they all kept coming back. I really hope they don't try to sterilize the personalities in this league,  because I think it is the most unique sporting product that exists. It's the only league where the players regularly date,  breakup,  and then have to interact with each other. It's a fun brand of basketball mixed with a ridiculous mess of personalities and interpersonal dynamics. We need one of those Drive to Survive reality shows that highlights the personalities in the league. It's absurd in way that could be incredibly entertaining if people actually paid attention. 

Edited June 11, 2024 by supremebve

[hammerva]

Screamin A is smart in not having the women of ESPN talking about Caitlin Clark and WNBA in studio because his increased misogynic and holier than thou attitude when talking to them is going to get him some hands.    You can tell that Andraya Carter was not having someone tell her that she basically needs to be more like him in order to have a successful career

[Brian Fowler]

I think it's real simple with Clark. A whole lot of women who have been busting their asses for years aren't happy that a rookie is getting more attention than all of them put together have ever gotten. Throw in some racial issues on top of that, and it's not exactly shocking they are trying to make her feel unwelcome at the moment. There's not really a comparable version of this in any of the major men's leagues because no matter how hyped a rookie is, he's not getting the comparative amount of attention relative to the rest of the league she is.

[odessasteps]

Trying to think what could be close? Crosby? 
 

He was far from a rookie but I wonder if you could compare to Beckham moving to MLS?  In terms of hype. 

[supremebve]

I think the real difference between Caitlin Clark and every other athlete is that she's by far the most popular player in a sport, but she's nowhere close to the best player. Add to the fact that pretty much everyone who is there to watch her was not even a fan of the sport before she got there. I was going to say that the best comparison is Ronda Rousey, but she was legitimately the best woman in the sport when she got to the UFC. Caitlin is not a good enough player yet to really fit that comparison. The crazy part is that 97% of the conversation about Caitlin Clark has absolutely nothing to do with Caitlin Clark. It has everything to do with us as the audience. 

[Dolfan in NYC]

So this story gets the official King Bookah  "WUT THA HELL???"

Scott Hansen confirmed that he was not involved in a crash but witnessed it, and was recording the guy who's filming taking stuff out of the car... for clout? 

[Elsalvajeloco]

1 hour ago, supremebve said:

I think the real difference between Caitlin Clark and every other athlete is that she's by far the most popular player in a sport, but she's nowhere close to the best player. Add to the fact that pretty much everyone who is there to watch her was not even a fan of the sport before she got there. I was going to say that the best comparison is Ronda Rousey, but she was legitimately the best woman in the sport when she got to the UFC. Caitlin is not a good enough player yet to really fit that comparison. The crazy part is that 97% of the conversation about Caitlin Clark has absolutely nothing to do with Caitlin Clark. It has everything to do with us as the audience. 

I dunno if Ronda was legitimately the top female fighter especially when I don't think Cris Cyborg had been decisively beaten at that point (save for the Erica Paes fight back 20 years ago now). Top 6 or 7ish? Easily. Plus, the depth in combat sports for female MMA is in no way comparable to women's basketball.  There are probably five or six ELITE female fighters in MMA. Same with women's boxing (Claressa Shields, Katie Taylor, Amanda Serrano, and Seniesa Estrada). There are whole bunch of good fighters. I would say the combat sports comparison would be Kayla Harrison. A few years ago, Kayla was brand new to MMA with a boatload of potential and pegged to be the new Ronda Rousey even though she never had a pro fight. Right now, she's starting to realize that potential. In 2-3 years, Clark could break that ceiling and be one of the best.

[supremebve]

1 minute ago, Dolfan in NYC said:

So this story gets the official King Bookah  "WUT THA HELL???"

Scott Hansen confirmed that he was not involved in a crash but witnessed it, and was recording the guy who's filming taking stuff out of the car... for clout? 

I have so many questions, lol. Did the person flee the scene? How did the half eaten watermelon factor into the accident? Is Scott Hansen trying to exonerate the innocent watermelon? Who eats a watermelon while driving? How did that person know the watermelon was there? 

 

2 minutes ago, Elsalvajeloco said:

I dunno if Ronda was legitimately the top female fighter especially when I don't think Cris Cyborg had been decisively beaten at that point (save for the Erica Paes fight back 20 years ago now). Top 6 or 7ish? Easily. Plus, the depth in combat sports for female MMA is in no way comparable to women's basketball.  There are probably five or six ELITE female fighters in MMA. Same with women's boxing (Claressa Shields, Katie Taylor, Amanda Serrano, and Seniesa Estrada). There are whole bunch of good fighters. I would say the combat sports comparison would be Kayla Harrison. A few years ago, Kayla was brand new to MMA with a boatload of potential. Right now, she's starting to realize that potential. In 2-3 years, Clark could break that ceiling and be one of the best.

Ronda was easily the best woman at 135 when she got to the UFC and proved it pretty decisively. Cyborg very well could have been better,  but she had a hard time making 145 for most of her career and Ronda wasn't about to move up to fight her. I don't think Kayla Harrison fits either,  because the audience for MMA didn't increase to see Harrison fight. The most interesting part of the Caitlin Clark phenomenon is that everyone is there to see her,  and no one really cares that she hasn't given them much to see. The fact that people expected her to make the Olympic team is kind of crazy. You could make a pretty strong argument that the U.  S. Women's Basketball Team is the most dominant team in the history of sports. They've lost 3 times and two of those losses were in the first Olympics that included women's basketball. It's not a popularity contest,  it's an international competition. They're going to go to the Olympics, smash everyone in there way,  and show the world the greatest example of American exceptionalism that exists. 

[Elsalvajeloco]

4 minutes ago, supremebve said:

Ronda was easily the best woman at 135 when she got to the UFC and proved it pretty decisively. Cyborg very well could have been better,  but she had a hard time making 145 for most of her career and Ronda wasn't about to move up to fight her. I don't think Kayla Harrison fits either,  because the audience for MMA didn't increase to see Harrison fight. 

You say that and PFL built their whole promotion around her. Their biggest shows were featuring her. To the point where the co-founder a month is still pissed she went to the UFC and compared her to Durant and LeBron leaving their teams so they can win championships. Caitlin is a huge star, but how many games are airing nationally? Maybe a few a week?

Cyborg was better (in hindsight). Best woman in the sport? It's hard to give that distinction to anyone when ten to fifteen years ago, there was still no good concentration of talent. We found out 115 was the best division for awhile.

[supremebve]

2 hours ago, Elsalvajeloco said:

You say that and PFL built their whole promotion around her. Their biggest shows were featuring her. To the point where the co-founder a month is still pissed she went to the UFC and compared her to Durant and LeBron leaving their teams so they can win championships. Caitlin is a huge star, but how many games are airing nationally? Maybe a few a week?

Cyborg was better (in hindsight). Best woman in the sport? It's hard to give that distinction to anyone when ten to fifteen years ago, there was still no good concentration of talent. We found out 115 was the best division for awhile.

I get what you're saying about PFL, but  imagine PFL is only attracting MMA die hards. If she was bringing in a huge concentration of viewers who had no interest in MMA, that would be different.  I'm out of the MMA loop, but unless the PFL became the league for casuals I don't think it's the same.

It's crazy how women's MMA became popular at 135+ lbs. I didn't realize it until Gina Carano and Ronda Rousey were in movies,  but it takes a very large woman to be in fight shape at 135 or 145 lbs.  When they're standing next to an actress you realize how physically imposing they are.  It's also why there have been very few champions in those divisions.  There might be one or two great athletes at that size,  but the majority are going to be fairly limited athletically.  I feel like the 115 and 125 women's divisions are like 155 and 170 in the men's divisions. There is just more depth of talent based on the percentage of the population who are in shape at that size.  

[Elsalvajeloco]

46 minutes ago, supremebve said:

I get what you're saying about PFL, but  imagine PFL is only attracting MMA die hards. If she was bringing in a huge concentration of viewers who had no interest in MMA, that would be different.  I'm out of the MMA loop, but unless the PFL became the league for casuals I don't think it's the same.

Well, the thing is combat sports is a tough 1:1 comparison because men and women share the same space. People were watching the UFC before Ronda Rousey. Rousey brought a different demo to the point where Meltzer did the research and found that Conor and Ronda where drawing significant amounts of people but two different demos. Thus, the UFC was benefitting by hitting multiple demos.

I think Kayla is a better example in that on top of the PFL split after building around her is that once it was confirmed she signed with UFC there was a lot of talk about her not deserving to be in the UFC. MMAFighting had a whole article with female fighters saying she wouldn't do that well in the UFC. Some of that was centering around her not making weight, but none of it had to do with her actual skill level. On the UFC 300 card, her fight was probably most intriguing fight on paper and probably garnered the most pure interest on an absolutely stacked card. That says a lot for someone whose resume wasn't that good. She goes in and mauls Holly Holm and becomes the most talked about thing from that show that wasn't the Max Holloway KO of Justin Gaethje. On top of that, Amanda Nunes basically tweets something that makes people believe she is coming out of retirement to fight her teammate Kayla Harrison. For someone who hasn't accomplished a whole lot, she managed to be polarizing by just signing with the UFC and fighting one fight.

As for the weight class thing, yeah that is what I have saying for several years now.

That is what irks me when people say Laila Ali was the best female boxer just cause they know she is Muhammad Ali's. She was fighting at super middleweight and light heavyweight, which is 168 and 175. She fought an ancient Christy Martin who campaigned most of her career at like lightweight (135) and super lightweight (140). That would be like Tank Davis fighting Canelo. That's absolutely absurd. Hell, when there was someone to fight closer to her size in Ann Wolfe (still closer to 154-160), Laila Ali didn't really want to fight her. She just kept fighting girls who probably just got off their shift at Denny's or teaching aerobics.

The aforementioned women I listed as the best now in boxing all fight between flyweight and junior middleweight. Claressa Shields has won titles at higher weight classes but she also can probably make 147.  And it's essentially the same in MMA. They made a weight class for Kayla Harrison and others in PFL, but Kayla ended up making 135 with very little trouble. You're not going to find a whole bunch of talented female fighters in combat sports fighting above 150+ pounds.

[supremebve]

7 hours ago, Elsalvajeloco said:

You're not going to find a whole bunch of talented female fighters in combat sports fighting above 150+ pounds.

I remember having a conversation with a friend about how if you lowered the heavyweight limit to 185 and put a ceiling on the division at about 230, more current middleweights would be in title contention than current heavyweights. It's a huge skill drop off as fighters get larger. There is no 155 Jon Jones who can go essentially undefeated for 15 years fighting elite competition. Khabib is the best lightweight of all time,  and his title run was only about 2 and a half years. It is impossible to go through the murderers row of the lightweight division for much longer than that without a younger fighter coming along and taking your place. At a higher weight,  if you are truly great, you can stay on top for a long ass time until someone at your all level comes to knock you off. 

[Elsalvajeloco]

1 hour ago, supremebve said:

I remember having a conversation with a friend about how if you lowered the heavyweight limit to 185 and put a ceiling on the division at about 230, more current middleweights would be in title contention than current heavyweights. It's a huge skill drop off as fighters get larger. There is no 155 Jon Jones who can go essentially undefeated for 15 years fighting elite competition. Khabib is the best lightweight of all time,  and his title run was only about 2 and a half years. It is impossible to go through the murderers row of the lightweight division for much longer than that without a younger fighter coming along and taking your place. At a higher weight,  if you are truly great, you can stay on top for a long ass time until someone at your all level comes to knock you off. 

Timing is the key to everything. A truly elite fighter at any weight has the potential to do a whole lot of things if every just falls in his or her's favor. So I don't really rule out anything. In MMA, it's a bit different because you don't have the same type of evolution you have for someone like a Bernard Hopkins over a literal fifteen year span which includes him breaking Carlos Monzon's middleweight title defense record. In MMA, you just get slightly better at what you were already great at. Hopkins literally came out of prison and becomes a boxer later in life when most guys start as pre-teens and teenagers. He loses his first fight and takes a long break. Comes back, becomes a pretty good boxer-puncher, and makes his way up the ranks fighting on like BET when BET had a brief foray televising boxing. Somewhere along the way, he gets his first title shot and loses a pretty tough fight to Roy Jones Jr. giving Roy the first of many titles in his career. Comes back from that and faces Segundo Mercado for a crack at the title Jones won against Hopkins (and then vacated when Jones moved to beat James Toney up a weight class) in Mercado's home country of Ecuador in perhaps one of the most bizarre and crooked fights you're ever going to see pulled off. Then, somewhere between that and the second Mercado fight back in the states in 1995, he goes from boxer puncher to absolute devastating people. There was a reason he had the name "The Executioner". That second Mercado fight was downright gruesome itself. Just eight or nine rounds of Bernard administering sheer punishment. We also got a great Butch Lewis promo afterwards where Butch, Bernard's promoter then and early in his career, cuts the best 40 second wrestling promo on Mercado's promoter Don King in the ring telling him Bernard is going to beat all of Don's champions.

Hopkins just went on a 2-3 year run where he is just dispatching people frighteningly. The Raul Frank KO. The Joe Lipsey KO on the ABC prelim portion of the Bruno-Tyson II undercard. Then later on in the 90s heading into the 2000s, he decides to just turn into a more crafty fighter. Save for him utterly embarrassing Tito Trinidad in 2001, there isn't a whole bunch of Bernard Hopkins that looks the guy from five or six years early before he held a middleweight title. Maybe he did a lot of that to make him seem less threatening cause he did ultimately become undisputed champion in that four man tournament Don King put together with the two other titlists and Felix Trinidad. A lot of those guys post Roy Jones Jr. and before he ended up losing to Jermain Taylor in that first fight with Taylor in 2005, were simply not better than Bernard Hopkins. That's not to say they were not good. For example, all those guys from the Beltway/DMV area like William Joppy, Keith Holmes, Simon Brown, Andrew Council, and Vincent Pettway up and around 154 and 160 pounds were all solid and good fighters. You better pack a lunch to beat them. There was no way in hell there they were beating prime Bernard Hopkins though. Not when he just outbox you 85% of the round and then just simply move, tie up, hold on the inside, and clinch the remaining 15%. Then, in the 2 or 3 years preceding finally losing the middleweight titles, he virtually took very little risk in almost every fight. Even against a smaller Oscar De La Hoya where he stopped him on an awesome body shot, there isn't much toe-to-toe action where you believe that he is going to show any real aggression. In that twelve years from losing to Roy in his first title fight in 1993 to winning his first title in 1995 in the 2nd Mercado fight to finally losing to Jermain Taylor in 2005, we saw Bernard Hopkins got through a half dozen stages of finding different ways to win. The latter stages were "I am going to not get caught with a lucky punch and use all my experience and craft to win". There were some complete snoozers that were very difficult to watch because of that. Yeah, that RARELY works in MMA and definitely not something you're going to do for years on end like Bernard did. Maybe you can argue Jose Aldo did in his last fight he just won recently and a couple fights before. However, Jose Aldo is a goddamn generational talent in MMA. They ain't rolling motherfuckers like that off the assembly line.

[hammerva]

Charles Barkley announced yesterday that last year of Inside the NBA will be his last as he is retiring.  Sure this is a huge blow to ESPN and other networks

[odessasteps]

If you’ve never heard the whole version

 

 

[supremebve]

On 6/15/2024 at 10:07 AM, hammerva said:

Charles Barkley announced yesterday that last year of Inside the NBA will be his last as he is retiring.  Sure this is a huge blow to ESPN and other networks

ESPN would hire Charles Barkley in a second,  but would immediately fuck up everything that makes him special as a broadcaster. Inside the NBA works because of all the space they get to do the random nonsense they do outside of basketball.  ESPN's NBA show doesn't work because they don't let anything breathe,  so it's all 20 second sound bites about basketball. Then they add 6 extra people who are visibly on their phones while others are talking and no one says or does anything interesting. It's the worst sports show on television. 

[odessasteps]

I’d hate to see him lower himself to being on one of those shows with SAS or Skip.
 

Now, Charles on PTI, maybe, where I’d have more faith in Erik and Matt to use him correctly. 

Edited June 17, 2024 by odessasteps

[Elsalvajeloco]

46 minutes ago, supremebve said:

ESPN would hire Charles Barkley in a second,  but would immediately fuck up everything that makes him special as a broadcaster. Inside the NBA works because of all the space they get to do the random nonsense they do outside of basketball.  ESPN's NBA show doesn't work because they don't let anything breathe,  so it's all 20 second sound bites about basketball. Then they add 6 extra people who are visibly on their phones while others are talking and no one says or does anything interesting. It's the worst sports show on television. 

I dunno about worst (several way tie for worst maybe) because basically all the major sports talk shows on ESPN, FS1, etc. have a similar set up now. It's crazy how the phone/laptop set up has made its way from news to TMZ to sports where folks are always on standby for breaking news as if they don't have a pre-existing format for that day. Everything is hinged around that especially this time of year where NFL is not going on, baseball hasn't reached the All Star break yet, hockey and basketball are about to be done. If the US Open for golf wasn't happening, somebody didn't bodycheck Caitlin Clark, and two basketball legends didn't die back-to-back, they would be fucked cause they would have nothing to discuss.

Something happened where these networks went all in on sports talk, hired a whole bunch of personalities, and didn't figure out that you would need something to discuss.

[odessasteps]

With my biases acknowledged, Erik realized that you need to “sports entertinament” these talking head shows to mak them watchable. Sports Reporters and Sports Writers on TV were good because you had the same people (more or less) and got to know who they were, even if they were as unctuous as Mike Lupica. 
 

I don’t think PTI would have been as great without both the clock format and them some of the silliness to show that Tony (and to a lesser extent Mike) were in on the fun. 

[hammerva]

1 hour ago, supremebve said:

ESPN would hire Charles Barkley in a second,  but would immediately fuck up everything that makes him special as a broadcaster. Inside the NBA works because of all the space they get to do the random nonsense they do outside of basketball.  ESPN's NBA show doesn't work because they don't let anything breathe,  so it's all 20 second sound bites about basketball. Then they add 6 extra people who are visibly on their phones while others are talking and no one says or does anything interesting. It's the worst sports show on television. 

The first game of the NBA Final had maybe 2 minutes of dialogue during halftime and almost double the people talking about it.   Could you imagine how pissed off Barkley would be.  

[supremebve]

The most important thing a sports show can have is interesting talent. The format should fit the talent.  PTI works because Wilbon and Kornheiser are fun to watch bicker, the format works so they don't run out of steam on one subject. Inside the NBA works because Charles and Kenny are great together. I hated when they are Shaq at first,  but he found his space and fit in. Ernie is just there to keep the train on the tracks,  which is an incredibly important role in that show. The trick to all sports television is that the sports don't matter that much. Sports happen everyday,  but there are plenty of days where nothing interesting happens. The reason Stephen A. Smith gets paid what he gets paid is because it doesn't actually matter what he is talking about. He can summon a passionate argument about anything. The people matter much more than the sports. The ESPN show doesn't work because it does a terrible job at letting the people shine,  and therefore the basketball feels less important. 

[odessasteps]

PTI was to some extent just them filming the banter between the two of them that had been going on for 10-20 years in the WaPo newsroom. Natural chemistry.

[Mister TV]

1 hour ago, odessasteps said:

With my biases acknowledged, Erik realized that you need to “sports entertinament” these talking head shows to mak them watchable. Sports Reporters and Sports Writers on TV were good because you had the same people (more or less) and got to know who they were, even if they were as unctuous as Mike Lupica. 
 

I don’t think PTI would have been as great without both the clock format and them some of the silliness to show that Tony (and to a lesser extent Mike) were in on the fun. 

I rewatched some Sportswriters on TV during the pandemic and they still hold up, mainly because they had conversations about the topics instead of everyone stating their opinion and then shouting down anyone with a different opinion. 

Everyone was SO full of themselves on the Sports Reporters, god some weeks you'd have Lupica, John Feinstein, Frank DeFord and Mitch Albom!