Recently in Down With ESPN! Category

If I had to guess, Suzy Kolber exited the womb squinting and rocking a pixie cut, and, from then on, was compulsively clad in turtlenecks and neck scarves regardless of the temperature. Whether it's true or not, I kind of enjoy the imagery, so don't spoil it for me. In any case, I don't know how long Suzy has been around but the only thing about her that seems to change as an NFL season progresses is how just how many layers of turtlenecks and neck scarves she can wrap herself in as we get nearer to the Super Bowl. Her seemingly pathological nature with wearing those particular items is actually somewhat fascinating.

But while watching Monday Night Football tonight, she popped on the screen not only wearing some type of business suit from JC Penney but also sporting hair that made her look like a patient on Appalachian Emergency Room:

What on earth could have gone wrong? And no, being in Jacksonville is no excuse.

I know these MNF people like to sample the local flavor - crab cakes in Baltimore, barbeque in Kansas City, buffalo wings in Buffalo, and so on, but rolling down to Appalachia is no excuse to show up on national television looking like two squirrels crawled on your head, built a nest, mated and died. That's simply unacceptable.

Look Suzy, I know you're supposed to be pregnant and all but you've got to get your act together. You're on tv. You can't just be running around looking like you just walked out of a Rush concert. 2 thumbs down.

So while talking to a few co-workers about Troy S. Myth getting dismantled like a man kissed by death, I realized something -- all of my annoyance, anger, and (what developed into) hatred for him had been completely misguided. For the better part of a year, the mere mention of his name has left me seething. I always understood that he was a talented quarterback but he was being treated as if he was the Second Coming. To make matters worse, he'd been touted as this saintly, courageous soul, who fought through adversity to lead his team to the promised land when the reality is that he created his own by snatching booster money and engaging in random acts of jackassery. 

But like all objects of my frustration, I now see that the blame can be traced to one source: the Worldwide Leader of Hype & Bunk.

ESPN/ABC and no one else is to blame for the unending fellatio of Troy S. Myth. That boil on the arse of sports pours fanatical devotion on selected teams and players, sanitizing the corrupt and deifying the unworthy.

We can't blame Myth for the angle taken by the press any more than we can blame Ohio State for being heralded as a 20-point favorite, Notre Dame for starting the season ranked #2, or Boise State for suddenly becoming the greatest team of the modern age. Troy S. Myth didn't ask to replace Jesus as the Messiah - ESPN handled that for him while carefully crafting his Hypeman campaign. Their machine fooled the masses into thinking that a guy who was a talented college quarterback, no more and no less, was a god among men. And now that he has fallen, they have abandoned him for a new savior with a more genuine tale of lament - Chris Leak.

ESPN actively deceives the public for their own gain and then feigns ignorance when it backfires. They have created the culture that fuels the greed and frivolity of the bowl season and no one will hold them accountable. Who's going to do it? You? You, Lieutenant Weinberg? ESPN/ABC will continue on their path, destroying college football with their biased "reporting" and boosterism and we'll all sit idly by without saying a word.

Bah.

In other news, Kim Etheredge, the useless clown that fumbled spin control for Terrell Owens was unceremoniously fired yesterday. Just four months ago, I nearly found myself lending a feeling of sorrow in TO's direction but she stepped in and reminded us that there are 25 million reasons why that was unnecessary. After laughing at her plight, my buddy Coz advised that at least she has her hair care business as a plan B and that got me a'thinkin...

Etheredge is the CEO of Mixed Chicks Hair Products, which are, as one can easily infer, made for biracial women. But how did she get to become the CEO.. what was her business background? Did she simply get a business license and latch on to a product? Like Ms. Etheredge, I am already qualified to become a publicist, so what's stopping me from following her into the world of hair care products?

"But Warner, YOU aren't a mixed chick!" Ah-ha! I am a fine half and half mixture of American Indian and random European white people. I'm not Ms. Etheredge's type of mixed chick but I've got my own little minority working out here. Trouble is, there aren't too many of us running around. Even worse, is that traveling to various powwows and functions to sell my wares to the general Indian populace would be a bust... as a general rule, we have fantastic hair. Whether wavy, curly, or straight, it's always soft, silky, and packs a lustrous shine.

But what about the albinos? Constantly overlooked by the mainstream, the albinic market is, to date, completely untouched! We've gone over my issues with my hair and eyes in the past. You know about my problems. I need this! When I go to the salon, I'm entitled to have products made for people like me.. products that don't leave me looking like a tiger or zebra when I attempt to get my hair darkened. Frankly, I think I've got a winner on my hands.

I'm going to call my line of products "White Heat" - it's gonna be a whole collection of shampoos, conditioners, hair dyes, mousse, and colored contacts. And after I round up the 10,000 albinic souls running around this country, I'm gonna hawk my goods and make that paper... if things go well enough, I may be able to make enough profit to buy new tires for my Wrangler.

Huzzah!

The Chevy Silverado commercial played at every commercial break during the baseball playoffs and four times in the first quarter of Sunday Night Football. I imagine more than a few chumps out there fell for the montage of sacred historical images set to a jingoistic soundtrack and went right out to buy themselves a truck. I suppose I can't blame GM for using flag-waving McPatriotism to force a product upon the masses because hey, it works. But that doesn't make their ad campain any less shameful and foul.

But the worst thing about the ad is that it aired literally every 5 minutes. But even after three weeks of being beaten over the head with that crap, there's still nothing that makes my ears bleed more Tony Kornheiser on Monday Night Football.

Though I mentioned this a week ago, it bears repeating -- I would rather swallow thumbtacks than suffer Kornheiser's voice. In print, he's fine. But when he speaks, it's like a shrill Larry David without the random shenanigans, sense of comedic timing, and skill for unscripted humor.

The more comfortable Kornheiser becomes in the booth, the worse he gets. Sure, he makes jokes and tosses barbs at Theismann, which, from what I understand, is the whole point of putting him in the booth. But his jokes aren't funny and the barbs (when they aren't going over Joe's head) aren't clever. To make matters worse, he has turned emphasizing the excrutiatingly obvious into an artform and may end up polishing more knob this season than I'll manage in 10.

Tonight, TK took his fellating to the next level - a truly bizarre level that I can only think was inspired by his need to show Joe Theismann just how smart he actually is.

A couple weeks ago, viewers were treated to TK's jabber about Matt Leinart's similarities to Vinnie Chase of Entourage, a show he's likely never seen. And tonight, he fell off the deep-end by comparing Tom Brady's unlikely path to glory to that of Academy-award winning actress, Shirley Maclaine.

Brady marched New England 74 yards over 11 plays for a touchdown just before halftime. While the camera focused on him during the ensuing kickoff, Kornheiser went into fellatio overdrive, noting Brady's role as the understudy who made the most of his opportunity.

It was like "Shirley Maclaine going in for Gwen Verdon in The Pajama Game, though I'm doing broadway musicals here... "In the first big shot he's got, he does as a young man, he wins the super bowl... He's a legend in his own time... He's Paul Revere up there right now."

Forget the Paul Revere comment; it's one of the stupidest things I've ever heard but not annoying enough for me to throw down multiple paragraphs of rant. I have other concerns... well, they're concerns if you're a girl with way too much useless knowledge or a guy who's really into showtunes (and you know who you are). I'm speaking to an incredibly small group right now, and I know that. Bear with me.

Kornheiser has long insisted that he knows nothing about football, so I won't begrudge him making allusions to comparitive situations occuring in other aspects of life. But if you're going to take that road, do us all a favor and get it right.

As sophisticated as you were trying to pretend you were, Tony, Gwen Verdon wasn't in The Pajama Game! Shirley Maclaine was the understudy to Carol Haney in that musical and it was Haney's broken ankle that allowed Maclaine the exposure to get her Paramount contract and become a star. The only time Gwen Verdon took time off from the stage was for the birth of a child. And when she returned, she starred as Charity in Sweet Charity and that musical was eventually made into a movie starring Shirley Maclaine.

Now, I know you don't think anyone watching Monday Night Football actually knows anything about Broadway but there are a few of us out there. And if you're gonna go out of your way act like a tool, get the facts straight before you run your mouth.

Perhaps Kornheiser should bring Tony Reali along for the Oakland-Seattle game. I'm sure he'd have no problem pulling a double shift as Stat Boy once a week.

"Next day on your dressing room they've hung a star, but there's no business like show business." - Tony Kornheiser, screwing up Irving Berlin's famous lyrics, after being bashed by Mike Tirico.

In ESPN's endless coverage of the Cory Lidle tragedy, it looks like they forgot to follow up on one little detail...

Once again, ESPN, nice lookin out. 

I'm going to preface this brief post by saying that Eric Byrnes seems like a really good guy. I watched him and Barry Zito play some shoddy "how well do you know your teammate" game on ESPN a couple summers ago and he told the host that Zito's most odd physical feature was his "womanly, child-bearing hips."

When told of the comment later, Zito blushed and Byrnes giggled like a 15-year-old who knows you're about to sit on a whoopee cushion.

It was cute. I was amused.

But this, boys and girls, is neither amusing nor cute!

(Picture Courtesy of GC at Can't Stop the Bleeding)

Look, I get that Byrnes is probably a free-spirit mountain man type. He probably likes to ride four wheelers around the tundra, eat hearty stews, and thumb through the North Face catalog for the latest in rugged gear. And when you're a guy like this, taming your unkempt locks probably goes against your principles. That's fair.

But when your agent says, "Hey Eric, you're gonna go to ESPN and share your opinions during the playoffs as the resident player/analyst," you make yourself presentable.

You don't want a haircut? Fine. You don't want any mousse or gel or styling product that'll have you looking like Barry Melrose? Okay. But look like you bathed. Look like there isn't a nest of bees hiding behind your right ear. Look like you didn't just wander off the set of Harry and the Hendersons.

I hate to be harsh here, Eric, but we've got to do better. 

As for ESPN, nice lookin out! For years they've managed to tone down Stuart Scott's dead eye from freakish to unnerving, hide Chris Berman's dorsal fin and Killer Whale markings, and make Tony Reali look more like a human being instead of a plastic man.

They clearly care about the appearance of people on their programs. With Byrnes showing up like this, do they mean to tell us that no one on the set was able to pass him a comb, brush, pick, or even a barrette over the commercial break? Now, maybe they tried and it got stuck or broke off at the handle.. I suppose I can accept that. But when I tune in tomorrow, my hope is that they'll have done their due diligence and fixed this issue.

Having said that, when has anyone in Bristol done their due diligence?

All we (or maybe I since I might be the only person caring about this) can really hope is that Eric Byrnes has a girlfriend who bothered to tune in to watch her man in his analyst debut. I can't imagine she was anything other than horrified and embarrassed and will have this turned around in short order.

That is, unless, she's into the Neanderthal thing.