Saturday was certainly the interesting day in sports with two sports outside of the major four dominating headlines. Let’s go over them in bullet form.
- In what normally is the start of NASCAR’s Nationwide Series became the sports and also news story of the first part of Saturday when a crash at Drive4COPD at Daytona became more than just a race. As cars were speeding towards the checkered flag, Regan Smith and Brad Keselowski crashed. That caused Kyle Larson’s car to go airborne and hit a support fence. It also caused one of his tires to fly into the grandstand. At last check, 28 fans had been injured from the flying debris from the track.
ESPN which was carrying the race elected to run past its signoff time and run into the North Carolina-North Carolina State college basketball game to cover the situation and get interviews with drivers and NASCAR President Mike Helton to find out what happened.
ESPN’s crew did a solid job in gathering information, but the real spotlight shined on Speed for its coverage for two hours on its SpeedCenter program. Adam Alexander anchored the coverage and it covered all angles from the crash from the drivers to the fans who were injured in the stands updating news as it became available, airing the surreal NASCAR press conference and tapping the NASCAR on Fox crew to report the news. In this case, ESPN gets a B for its coverage of the crash and Speed gets the A+.
- After NASCAR, the focus shifted to Mixed Martial Arts and UFC’s pay per view event which had its first female fight headline the card. As usual, Mike Goldberg set up Joe Rogan as much as he could. Rogan tapped into his comedian inner self by suggesting people leave “flaming poop” at International Olympic Committee headquarters over the decision to remove wrestling from its roster after 2020. It certainly was a strange comment, but it was due to Dan Henderson wearing trunks with a Twitter hashtag seeking to keep wrestling in the Olympics past 2020.
But that was not the main focus of the pay per view telecast, it was Ronda Rousey and Liz Carmouche as the main fight and it did not disappoint. While the fight lasted one round, it had a lot of action has Rousey had to overcome a chokehold and Rousey doing her patented armbar to win her 7th consecutive fight and retain the UFC’s Women’s Championship. Judging by the reaction on social media, there were a lot of buys for the fight and more than the usual attention on a UFC pay per view. Of course, Twitter reaction does not necessarily translate to ratings, but I’m thinking the interest into Rousey may have won UFC some fans on Saturday. And with Rousey’s win, expect her star to rise with interviews on mainstream programs like The View, Live with Kelly and Michael and Today’s 4th hour with Hoda and Kathie Lee.
- One story that quietly surfaced on Saturday was the potential NHL conference realignment worked out between the league and the NHL Players Association. You may remember the league tried realignment before the lockout, but it was rejected by the NHLPA. But this time, the league worked with the players and we have some interesting results.
Detroit and Columbus would both go East. The Eastern half of the league would have two eight team “conferences”. Out West, there would be two seven team “conferences” and an interesting feature as unveiled by CBC’s Elliotte Friedman on Hockey Night in Canada, there would be Wild Cards in the East to offset the higher playoff chances in the West. That could lead to some very interesting playoff potential and ratings for the NHL’s TV partners. If this is approved and Detroit heads back East, it brings back the old Toronto-Detroit Original Six rivalry into play and it also has five of the Original Six in the East. Chicago would remain in the West.
There’s a lot of TV potential with this new realignment. NBC’s focus could remain totally in the East if Detroit moves out from the West. And Hockey Night in Canada wherever it lands could see more Detroit games for its 7 p.m. ET window.
Certainly some interesting news coming out of the NHL on Saturday.
Ok, some thoughts for you on this Sunday. Back later today.
