More Cuts at ESPN

HAHAHAHHAHAHAAAAAA! One of my favorite Simpsons lines:

"Golly I'd love to chat but my son's been kidnapped. You haven't seen him, have you? Caucasian male, between the ages of six and 10, thinning hair."

 

Maybe it's just regional bias, but the '80s Jets were a wildly entertaining bunch of what-ifs. Were a few yards away from the biggest comeback in playoff history against the Bills in '81 and had the Browns beaten and buried in '86 before Gastineau tried murdering Bernie Kosar. Might have cost the world a Subway Super Bowl.

 

Pennington was just good enough, and just injury-prone enough, and the Jets just good enough with him at the helm, to get people to believe he could have been great and gotten them to the promised land if he had better luck with the injuries. But he didn't even have a good arm IN COLLEGE. Didn't Marshall try kicking a 90-yard field goal in lieu of him throwing a Hail Mary at the end of the I-AA title game in 1995? And his shoulder was so shredded in the 2004 playoffs that Quincy Carter was supposedly in line to start the AFC Championship Game if Herm hadn't fucked that thing up 10 ways to Sunday.

 

Linda Cohn has more plastic on her than the bumpers on my Honda Civic.

 

Herman! HERMAAAAAAN!!!

I still can't believe this was necessary. My God.

One Coach Helps Jets Move Like Clockwork (Published 2004)

 

It's worth tracking The Simpsons down on DVD, because they have commentaries for EVERY episode. Some suck, but that one is a good one - they talk about trying to get Dr. John initially for the part, but "he was too busy partying the previous night" and they went to Gailard Sartain instead. Conan O'Brien guests on all of the commentaries for episodes he wrote, which are also good, and the same with Lovitz. (This holds for Futurama as well - All episodes have commentary, and John DiMaggio in particular is ridiculously funny and Bender-esque on them.)

 

ESPN gonna give $5M/year to someone who couldn't capture interest long enough to prevent an 80s New York Jets threadjack.

 

$12 million per year over 5 years. Stephen A. Smith's ESPN contract pays him $12 million per year

 

Jesus Christ.

 

I will say that they use Smith on everything, he's pretty much their "opinion" guy on every sport (whether he's current on them or not) - boxing, NBA, whatever hot button issue of the day is, throw in First Take AND his radio show. They get a lot of mileage out of him. But dang, that is a lot of bread. More than any of the broadcast news anchors or morning hosts (except for Robin Roberts or Stephanapoulous). What's crazy is Hannity makes $25m from Fox News while Tucker only takes home $6m.

I'd add that he also "drives content" (i.e. will "report something" whether there is anything there or not) that will keep the yak fests busy for a news cycle or two.