The Bocker.com

Going into this weekend, the Patriots’ ultimate game in their pursuit of the perfect regular season was going to be played without national television coverage. The game versus the New York Giants this Saturday was to be broadcast on NFL Network, a channel not carried on most cable plans. While Pats-Giants was to be showed locally on basic cable channels, the vast majority of football fans would not be able to see the Pats chase professional sports’ greatest team record. This was until Roger Goddell and the NFL stepped up and got NBC AND CBS to pick the NFL Network feed of this game nationally. This savvy decision making in this instance is just another example of why the NFL is the most popular and profitable sport in America.

By having NBC and CBS pick up the NFL Network (NFLN) transmission of the Patriots-Giants game, the NFL wins on every level. The league keeps the fans happy, because in the NFL’s initial decision to only broadcast the game on NFLN, much negative reaction was expressed by fans nationwide. Secondly, the NFL gets a free platform to show America their new media venture, NFL Network. This simulcast will put NFLN on the country’s two largest television networks all night this Saturday and if NFLN does a great job, the cable companies will get more pressure from fans to get the football channel added on their standard cable lineup. Lastly, on Saturday, the NFL will be showing their most hyped storyline of 2007 on three networks (including NFL Network) in every single television market. staying in this Saturday night will be hard pressed not to watch GQ Tom Brady (makes me sick), especially with Saturday Night Live still off the air due to the Television Writer’s strike. In the New York market, the nation’s largest, FOUR channels carry the game Saturday, as the Giants have an agreement with my9 (WWOR) to carry cable broadcasts of Giants games. Apparently, this extra exposure more than doubled the value of the 30-second commercial spots to be aired during the game as the NFL will charge $200,000 a spot instead of its NFLN rate of $85,000 a pop.

I personally don’t like the NFL. I think the salary cap was implemented to force parity by lowering the overall quality of teams. I hate the “No-Fun” League rules regarding on-field celebrations. I think its hypocritical to label a player a rebelrouser and a lockerroom cancer when he holds out for his contract demands while cutting him after an injury is just part of the business. That said, no league knows how to win in business like the NFL.

If MLB had been given the same predicament (or opportunity in the NFL’s eyes), I’m fairly certain that Bud Selig would have managed to not only prevent most fans from seeing a historic game, he probably would have allowed said game to end in a tie. And baseball would lose money all while doing so. A bit of a cheap shot from a 5-year old incident, but the point remains the same.

The above picture is from the NFL. The story on the commercial rates is from Media Week.

While various news sources and talking heads spend this December neatly packaging 2007 into a series of person of the year awards and top ten lists, the Pantone Color Institute has taken the bold step of prognosticating 2008, as it is announced that the color of the year 2008 will be Iris Blue. We here at The Bocker have been using Iris Blue, or Pantone No. 18-3943, in our design scheme since our inception and believe that based on this announcement, we are primed for and excellent 2008.

Experts at Pantone say that Iris Blue combines the reliable aspects of blue with the soul-searching elements of purple. Sounds like a good fit with the overall mentality of The Bocker.

Last year’s color of the year was Chili Pepper Red, which clearly does not mesh will with our publication’s overall emotion or humors.

This story and lovely color samples come from the New York Times and the Pantone Color Institute.

Let’s ignore the fact that I called out Pitt coach Jamie Dixon before the game. It’s not like I said Pitt would lose.

Honestly, though, I did not expect to see what happened at Madison Square Garden last night. Pitt beats Duke on a last-second shot after trailing by 12 at halftime? That’s exactly the sort of situation where I expected Pitt to fold. It looked like the Panthers were on the verge of being knocked out after a big run by Duke in the first half, but they played tough and kept themselves in the game.

I know that recent Pittsburgh teams are known for “playing with emotion,” but they aren’t necessarily known for playing with “being careful with the ball,” “taking smart shots,” or “rebounding.”Anyone, Pitt fan or otherwise, who watched Aaron “The Ghost” Gray fumble his way through the last two seasons should be rejoicing right now. It is great that the Ghost is gone to haunt the NBA, but even more amazing is that Pitt acquired DeJuan Blair, the homegrown talent who dropped 15-and-20 on the Blue Devils last night. Pitt hasn’t seen that kind of effort in the post since the departure of Chevon Troutman. It might be enough to get Pitt over the Sweet Sixteen hump (Note: not a reference to Jamie Lynn Spears; I hope they are over that already).

Props to Fields for hitting the game-winning shot. That was huge–much bigger than the shots missed in recent years by Carl Krauser and Antonio Graves. Congratulations as well to Coach Dixon, who got his first big victory as the Pitt head coach. Keep ‘em coming, Jamie.

Also, the Bocker sends out condolences to Pitt forward Mike Cook, who appeared to completely obliterated his knee last night. Get well, Mike.

-Post written by Matt Tynan

By now I’m sure you’ve all heard about what a snake Bobby Petrino is for leaving the Atlanta Falcons to go back to college and coach at the University of Arkansas. You may have heard about how owner Arthur Blank was asked by Petrino if he could interview with Arkansas, and after his request was denied Petrino went and did it anyway. Or how about how Petrino left one year after signing a 10 year contract with Louisville and one day after looking Blank in the eye and telling him he’d be the Falcons coach next year.

So after all of that put yourselves into the mind of an Arkansas recruit when Petrino comes to your living room. Here’s a guy who has never held a job for more than 2 years before he’s off to greener pastures and he’s telling you that he’ll be around for a while, that he wants to build a winner, that if you come to Arkansas you have his support and bright futures lay ahead. As a parent of one of these athletes do you really want to trust your kids with this guy? I wonder why anyone would come to a school coached by this guy when it’s a given that he’s going to be gone in two years and your program is mired in controversy. Just look at Louisville, Petrino’s job before the Falcons.

Of course Petrino is seen as some sort of offensive genius and he made a BCS bowl game. Walt Harris, formerly of Pittsburgh and Stanford, has also made a BCS bowl game and was considered an offensive genius. You can ask Pittsburgh and Stanford how that turned out. If you want an example of a coach with no character look no further than Dennis Franchione, he ran out of Alabama to coach at Texas A&M and while there was asking boosters to pony up money for a copy of the teams’ injury report, which the NCAA does not allow. You can ask Texas A&M how that turned out.

So my question is this. Why, with all the good coaches, not to mention good role models, in college sports do rats like Franchione and Petrino keep getting hired? Is the pressure too much that these school president’s and Ad’s feel they need a name rather than hiring someone new and perhaps suffering through a few bad seasons before things turn around? At this point, College Football is nothing more than a minor league for the NFL, where kids are pushed in and pushed out, education unecessary, and money is passed between schools and coaches. Amateur sports sure was a nice idea.

This is my first entry in a series of postings on how the media, mainly in sports, fails the fan. Today’s entry will concern how ex-ballplayers turned media men have failed in properly covering MLB’s steroid crisis.

Throughout the coverage of Major League Baseball’s steroid scandal, journalists and writers often stated that while they may not have pursued the steroid issue far enough, they also felt that they could not close enough to the steroid action in order to implicate any individual players of steroid use. However, the sports media was populated with people that could provide indisputable testimony needed to break this story wide open; Ex-players.

ESPN, FOX and the local cable stations all hired retired players in order to provide their audience with inside information and gain viewership. ESPN alone employed no fewer than a dozen former big leaguers, including fan favorites John Kruk, Eric Young and Rob Dibble. Additionally, these outlets would supplement their postseason coverage by adding active players from non-playoff teams to their broadcasts, including Bret Boone, Vernon Wells and Eric Byrnes. Most of these players did average to fair jobs in providing the fan with inside analysis, but all failed in their journalistic responsibilities to report the truth when it came to steroids.

When the Mitchell Report was published, some of the players implicated as steroid users were now members of the media. Additionally, these juicing journalists all had track records of defending accused steroid users and denying their own personal use of steroids. Three of these media personalities are F.P. Santangelo, David Justice and Fernando Vina.

Santangelo played in the majors for parts of six and used HGH supposedly to recover from injuries in 1997 and 2001. When he retired, Santangelo eventually ended up as a host of a morning sports radio show in the Bay Area. As a member of this show, F.P. gave the benefit of the doubt to such supposed roiders as Barry Bonds, Mark McGwire and Brady Anderson.

Fernando Vina played for parts of 11 seasons and even made 2 all-star teams while playing for the St. Louis Cardinals in 2000 and 2001. In 2007, Vina was a featured analyst on ESPN’s Baseball Tonight. In this role, he had every chance in the world to come clean in a public forum. Moreover, he had every chance to fulfill his obligation as a journalist to find truth for his audience. Vina failed miserably on both accounts and only when he was named in the Mitchell report did he admit his use of HGH. In this ESPN interview with Bob Ley, Vina seems to be backtracking and lying about his use of HGH for all of the 5 minutes that Ley questions him. Vina seems to rationalize the use of HGH and even defend the integrity of cheaters more or less saying that HGH caused his injuries to worsen, therefore it can’t possibly make a pro baseball player better. This is not a TV Analyst speaking, rather a cover up artist looking to C.Y.A. on behalf of crooked baseball players.

David Justice had a long and distinguished career in the bigs and is known as a classic playoff performer. In retirement, Justice worked a a commentator at ESPN and then moved on to the YES network, the Yankees-cable channel. Justice was YES’s primary studio analyst and on several occasions had opportunities to discuss steroid use in and around baseball as few suspected and known steroid users, namely Jason Giambi and Roger Clemens, played for the Yankees while Justice was at YES. Justice never spoke truthfully about steroids in baseball, being quoted in 2002 as saying :

“….I look around the clubhouse, and I don’t see anybody with signs of steroid use. I don’t know of anyone who came to camp 20-30 pounds heavier.” (USA Today, Jul. 7, 2002)

He too was named in the Mitchell Report as having bought HGH from Kirk Radomski, the primary source of the Mitchell Report. Now in a radio interview with Colin Cowherd of ESPN just after the report was released, Justice denied even knowing Radomski, but did go on to say that he had asked Brian McNamee, Yankees Strength and Conditioning coach, about the benefits of HGH after his 2000 season with New York. McNamee was the primary source in the Mitchell Report for all of the evidence related to Roger Clemens and Andy Pettitte. Pettitte admitted that McNamee’s testimony on Pettitte was true. Supposedly, Justice was offered a chance to try HGH via McNamee, but he turned it down because of the risks.

How does David Justice basically deny that steroids exist in baseball and that no one appears to use them when he himself witnessed how effective they were as a teammate of Roger Clemens and was at the very least offered the chance to use HGH? Where is his defamation of character law suit against George Mitchell if Justice is so innocent of the charges?

These three parties are all did wrong on their own account, but they wronged the public when they took jobs that required their openness and truthfulness when addressing the public. So far, each is still employed in the sports media even though each defrauded his audience and failed at his end of the journalistic agreement. If they had worked for a news outlet and lied to this extent, each would certainly be fired because their work would have no credibility. Santangelo, Vina and Justice are all still currently employed at their places of work, meaning that ESPN and the YES network do not respect its audience enough to give them truthful and reliable analysis. So far, these three players have proven to be cheaters on the field and liars off of it, yet their is still a place for them in the media. If they have lied about their involvement with steroids thus far, why won’t they continue down this route, especially considering that these three have never faced any punishment at all for their actions?

While these three remain employed in their roles as journalists and supposed purveyors of the truth, the media fails US again. All the sports fan has for information is the media. The sports fan has to rely on the media for information because their is no other channel for information coming from the teams and players they are interested in. If the media is not honest with the fan and employs liars and cheats, the fan is defrauded.

The Pittsburgh men’s basketball team is off to a fast start once again this year. Thursday night will likely put the first blemish on their otherwise spotless record. Duke is the first real challenge the Panthers will face, in fact, probably the only challenge before the Big East season begins.

It’s not that I think Duke is the better team; as someone who was born and bred in Kentucky, I think the dump I took this morning is better than Duke’s basketball team. Pitt plays tough defense, and with the team no longer weighed down by the overrated failure Aaron “The Ghost” Gray, the offense is actually scoring points. No, the problem I foresee for Pitt is not the players.

It’s Coach Dixon. Maybe I should go easy on him, and take his 115-30 record as a head coach as a sign that he’s the next… Krzyzewski? But I’ve watched Pitt basketball for Dixon’s entire run, and every year I have been frustrated as I watched good teams lose games because of bad coaching. The sad truth is that Dixon was thrust into a head coaching job at an emerging basketball power and he was not ready for it.

Don’t get me wrong. I think Pitt has a chance against Duke tomorrow and I think that Dixon could someday be a good head coach. But let’s face it: he’s no Coach K. He’s more like the next Boeheim, destined to sit on thirty years of good-but-not-great teams, unable to coach them to any real achievements, then luck into a title when an NBA talent stupidly goes to college for a year.

Prove me wrong, Dixon.

-Post written by Matthew Tynan