On the same day payments to victims of the BP Gulf oil spill were cut off, celebrity chef Emeril Lagasse appeared on SportsCenter to promote the Gulf Coast Seafood Tourism Bash (brought to you by BP).
A tourism festival with a marginal link to sports being promoted on ESPN is weird enough, but then Emeril started making some kind of cannibalistic gumbo using NFL players. (Presumably, he's cooking with oil.) The 2pm Eastern SportsCenter is quickly becoming a venue for the surreal.
By the way, I'm watching the Dan Patrick show right now (as I "work from home" ... catching up on email from, crap, Fall 2011 semester). I hope to enjoy my first 3rd hour all week.
Some of my favorite things in the ESPN book:
- The alcoholic beginnings of the network. Yikes, one of the key movers behind the network drank hard from morning to night.
- Jim Gray's defense of his work on "The Decision": You're just jealous!
- Tirico doesn't provide much defense in his silent treatment of Kornheiser on MNF. Apparently, he wants to be the only media guy in the booth ... he only knows how to interact with ex-players and ex-coaches. Weird.
- Boomer's quotes are all only a few sentences long, much shorter than is standard in this 700+ page book of quotes. How can he talk so much on air and then be so terse in the book? Here is a sample that I generally agree with (warning: profanity and some other objectionable stuff from Deadspin). One of the tensions on ESPN is trying to objectively cover sports that they have contracts with. Boomer fails.
- I always wondered why DP left the "mothership" and it turns out it was because they wouldn't cut back on his workload. He wanted to spend more time with his kids.
- I've been introduced to Awfulannouncing.com.
What other highlights have I missed?
