I’ll give you the megalinks in two parts today. Part I comes out now. Part II will come out tonight.
As usual, I give you the Weekend Viewing Picks.
Football dominates the viewing this weekend with a little college basketball sprinkled in.
For the NFL, CBS has the doubleheader for the second consecutive week and has both Manning brothers on its air. Among the early games, the defending champs, the New York Football Giants host Baltimore and Indianapolis hosts Houston are both on CBS. Then at 4:15 p.m., CBS carries San Diego at Pittsburgh and Tennessee at Jacksonville. Fox’s regional coverage includes Chicago at Green Bay. And on Sunday night, NBC has another NFC East battle, this one pits the Cowboys at the Redskins. Sunday’s schedule is in the NFL Viewing Picks.
To the colleges, College Gameday will be live from Tallahassee, FL for the Hampton-Florida A&M game. And after that, there’s not much to showcase. There’s Notre Dame vs. Navy on CBS at noon. Versus has USC at Stanford at 7 p.m. And in primetime on ABC, Boston College is at Florida State and Oklahoma State at Colorado. The College Football Viewing Picks have the entire national coverage.
For college basketball, ESPNU has a quadrupleheader on Sunday, Bradley at Florida at 2:15 p.m., my Rhode Island Rams at Duke at 4:30 p.m., LeMoyne at Syracuse at 6:30 p.m. and UMKC at Kansas at 8:30 p.m.
NASCAR’s final event of the season, provided that ABC doesn’t cut off the end of the race in favor of America’s Funniest Home Videos, is the Ford 400 at 3:45 p.m. Sunday.
HBO’s World Championship Boxing has Jermain Taylor taking on Jeff Lacy and you can see the replay of Joe Calzaghe’s win over Roy Jones, Jr. on the program that starts at 10:15 on Saturday night.
The Golf Channel has the Lorena Ochoa Invitational from Mexico over the weekend at 3:30 p.m.
And the ATP tennis tour finishes its season with the Masters Cup from Communist China. FSN has the semi-finals live on Saturday morning at 6:30 and again on tape at 1 p.m. The finals can be seen Sunday at 1 p.m.
Now let’s get to your links.
National
USA Today’s Michael Hiestand reviews the NFL TV partners’ rookie analysts, gimmicks and other features.
This comes from The Big Lead. It’s always sad to hear when brothers-in-blogging decide to stop posting and the excellent Fire Joe Morgan blog has done just that. Hopefully, the guys at FJM will reconsider and come back every once in a while.
Guest blogging for Darren Rovell, CNBC sports producer Tom Rotunno writes that Justin Timberlake becomes the first non-golfer to endorse Callaway Golf products.
Mike Reynolds of Multichannel News says the YES Network starts a series of sports business specials tonight.
Larry Barrett of Multichannel writes that ESPN scored with the finale of the World Series of Poker.
The great Christopher Byrne of the Eye on Sports Media blog looks at the migration of sports from network TV to cable.
Thanks to Awful Announcing, ESPN stopped a casting call for a commercial full of ethnic stereotypes.
Steve Lepore’s Puck the Media has part 2 of its NHL Tournament of Announcers. And Steve has video of the good Jack Edwards calling Wednesday’s Bruins-Chicago game. If you need a reminder of the bad Jack, Steve has the video of him calling the Stars-Bruins brawl from earlier this month.
The Sports Media Watch has some ratings news from this week. And the SMW looks at the NFL primetime ratings for Week 10.
East
Nancy Marrapese-Burrell of the Boston Globe talks with ESPN’s and my fellow Rhode Islander Doris Burke about her expanded role with the NBA.
Phil Mushnick of the New York Post writes about the slew of no-shows shown during the Grizzlies-Knicks game.
Also from the Post, Justin Terranova has five questions for the new #1 CBS college basketball analyst Clark Kellogg. And Justin talks with MSG Network’s Mike Breen about the Knicks.
Bob Raissman from the New York Daily News says NFL fans in the surrounding areas of Boston and New York were shut out of last night’s Jets-Patriots game.
Newsday’s Neil Best says it might have been weird for both Giants and Jets fans to hear Giants voice Bob Papa call last night’s Jets-Pats game for the NFL Network. In his blog, Neil says SNY will replace studio analyst Lee Mazzilli with Bob Ojeda. Neil reviews the NFL Network telecast which technically was not up to par in my opinion. And Neil says WPIX added a “C” to Erik Boland’s name during the Giants pregame show.
Pete Dougherty of the Albany Times Union also provides a review of last night’s NFL Network (to which I agree 100 percent). Pete also lists his Top 10 NFL TV game analysts. In his column, Pete suggests that NBC’s John Madden is no longer ready for primetime.
Laura Nachman says legendary Philadelphia sportscaster Bill Campbell will be honored next week.
From the Baltimore Sun, Ray Frager tells readers not to feel slighted by the national media.
Jim Williams from the DC/Baltimore Examiner says Notre Dame-Navy headlines the college football action and college basketball begins on MASN tonight.
South
Doug Nye from The State says new coaching eras for both of the University of South Carolina’s basketball teams will on display this weekend.
Dave Darling in the Orlando Sentinel likes ESPN.com’s Mayne Street web series.
Ray Buck of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram looks at a new book by former Cowboys defensive lineman Bob Lilly.
David Barron in the Houston Chronicle says the Astros will remain on their radio flagship station for the foreseeable future.
Barry Horn of the Dallas Morning News says Mavericks analyst Bob Ortegel was dead on last night. And Barry interprets Fox Sports’ NFL analyst Jimmy Johnson’s answer.
From the Oklahoman, Mel Bracht reminds us not to call former media critic Bob Knight a member of the media now that he’s expanded his role at ESPN. Mel says Oklahomans won’t be watching high school football for the next few weeks. And Mel writes that Cox Communications will be showing MLB Network when it launches on New Year’s Day.
That concludes Part I of the Friday Megalinks. I’ll have Part II coming up this evening.
