Stool Samples

Pat Imig and Josh Bacott (email: pgi@joesportsfan.com)

Just when you thought you had seen it all…

…Stu Scott goes and does this. Two weeks ago, the poster child for hamming it up on Sportscenter took the show to a place it had never ventured before. It wasn’t in a simulated press conference with Scott acting as the general manager of Death Row Records, nor was it an intro to another highlight package set to the ridiculous Coors Light theme song about twins that was popular three years ago (even though that happened Sunday as well). In fact, it may have been worse.

During the Bengals and Ravens highlights, Stu and the brain trust at the Worldwide Leader in Sports decided it would be apropos to turn the highlights into Stu’s personal romance corner in a segment known as “Poetry Slam”. Yes, just as it sounds, Stu Scott was reciting poetry over football highlights.

Like a cheap high school talent show, the lights were dimmed down as Stu took his place next to the big screen and began to express. The words that came out of his mouth were drowned out by the voice repeating in our head over and over “this is actually happening on a sports station”. That was quickly surpassed by the overwhelming desire for it to stop. But it didn’t. The rhyming and poetry kept going and going and going, like floodwaters ravaging a city, like a Woody Paige rant that just won’t end.

Just as it looked like that show was returning to regular highlights and updates, the Slam surged on. Scott stayed in stanza and began rhyming about Chad Johnson’s noteworthy touchdown celebrations for another two hours. Actually, it may have only been 20 seconds, but we don’t remember.

After what seemed like an eternity, it was over. And just like the Steve Phillips press conferences before it, this segment unleashed several questions that need to be addressed:

- At what point did they decide that talking over highlights was not enough?

- How long did Stu Scott spend working on this Slam session? And does anyone have the footage of him practicing at his desk, because it could be a killer SNL skit?

- How excited was he when approached management about this?

- Does anyone realize at ESPN that most sports fans are not eagerly awaiting the day that sports and poetry mix?

- Is Michael Irvin’s friend a part of the ESPN front office? It surely seems that someone is smoking crack.

- Did anyone in the company view this and think it sucked?

- Maybe even the second floor janitor?

- Anyone at all in Bristol?

Read on…

Crap That Actually Came From Somebody’s Mouth

“I think they’re capable of (winning) on the road, but it all depends on where they go on the road before they win that game.” – Sean Salisbury on the Chicago Bears

Apparently, it depends where the Bears go and who they play before he’ll say if they’ll win the game. Say what you will about Salisbury, but he’s not rushing into any rash statements or predictions.
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"This right now is football's best quarterback." - Sean Salisbury (two weeks ago) on Drew Brees

Really, Sean? Okay, maybe he’ll throw out one or two rash statements every once in a while.
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“He sure rides it low, doesn’t he?” – Jim Nantz on Marion Barber III

We’re not going to touch this one. We’ll leave it at that.
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“He is ram-rodded by Roy Williams.” - Jim Nantz on Mike Anderson

Man, you’d think someone in the CBS truck would alert Jim of some of the things he’s saying.
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“He rides him down.” – Jim Nantz on Roy Williams.

Anyone starting to notice a trend here?
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“He can sling it in there sideways.” – Phil Simms on Jake Plummer

For the love of everything that is sacred, could we stop with the comments already? This is supposed to be a family show.
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“They’ve got Brian Leftwich out of the lineup.” – Woody Paige on Byron Leftwich

Good to see that Woody hasn’t halted his ritual of not paying attention to anything related to sports.
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“Arrowhead- one of the toughest places to play in the National Football League.” – Mark Schlereth, NFL Live

Nothing ground breaking about this comment, we’re just going to start collecting these Schlereth quotes and see at the end of the year, how many things he called the toughest/best/worst, etc. in the National Football League. We’re up to about 482 right now.
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“Cleveland knows how to play from the rear.” – Steve “Snapper” Jones on the Cavaliers

Something about a guy nicknamed “Snapper” talking about playing from the rear just creeps us out.
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“They’re not just undefeated, they’re really good.” – Mike Patrick on the Colts.

According to the Sunday Night crew these are apparently two different things.
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“An Indy-Chicago Super Bowl. Peyton Manning-Kyle Orton. That is the strangest thought of all time.” – Peter King, SI.com

Of all time, Peter? How about when you decided that other people cared enough about how many egg-nog latte’s you hammer at Starbucks each morning to make it a running feature in your column. That had to be a strange thought.
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“It’s not Drew Rosenhaus. It’s Sage Rosenfels.” – Chris Berman stretching for a clever nickname during NFL Primetime

Wouldn’t the sports world be a better place if ESPN required that Berman not try to be funny anymore?
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“Leave the funny to people who know. People like me.” – Jim Rome on Joe Torre’s “joke” of playing Derek Jeter in Centerfield.

Actually Jim, we’d leave it up to you if the topic we’re beard contouring.
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What Number Are You Again? We Seemed to have Forgotten.
One of the joys of watching any sporting event on CBS is that the network rarely promotes itself. As fans of the games they present, we’re all fortunate that the commercial saying, “THE NUMBER ONE SHOW ON MONDAY, THE NUMBER ONE SHOW ON TUESDAYS, THE NUMBER ONE SHOW ON THURSDAYS, THE NUMBER ONE SHOW ON FRIDAYS, THE NUMBER ONE NEWS MAGAZINE… ALL ON AMERICA’S NUMBER ONE STATION... FOR OVER ONE YEAR, NUMBER ONE IN THE RATINGS.” only runs roughly 33 times throughout the course of a single game.

Media Rant of the Week – The Art of Schlereth-ese
Two weeks ago Friday, the episode of NFL Live provided America with a rare glimpse into what is one of the most mysterious yet fastest growing dialects in this nation’s culture – Schlereth-ese. It is becoming the primary language of a rapidly rising population of NFL football analysts, believed to be the fifth largest minority in the country. On Friday, the master of this art form, Mark Schlereth teamed up with host Trey Wingo and star Schlereth-ese pupil, Sean Salisbury to review the two games played on Thanksgiving Day.

With a limited amount of highlight tape to cover, Schlereth simply picked the show up and put it on his back and the result was a groundbreaking 30 minutes of TV.

During the course of the show, he put on a clinic on how to speak Schlereth-ese. To speak it fluently, one simply needs to follow four primary rules –
1.) Ignore all acronyms.
2.) Whenever possible, shape every sentence in this general format “_____ are the best ________ in the National Football League.”
3.) Flood the audience with as many hard-core opinions as you can, because no one will remember that you said them when they turn out to be ridiculous.
4.) When the situation dictates that the standard type of sentence structure is not possible, improvise by speaking in terms that no one understands.

Let’s review some examples, all of which were mixed in brilliantly on Friday’s show:

You might have come into the show wondering what Mark thinks of the Denver Broncos.
“This is a solid football team. One of the best in the National Football League.”

Notice how he obeys Rules 1 & 2 of the language and is able to drop a hard-core opinion without really committing to anything. Nicely done, but he was only getting warmed up.

“The Atlanta Falcons run it better than anybody in the National Football League. They lead the National Football League in yards per carry.”

Now in this instance, he crafts another perfect statement, even showing off his ability to avoid the hated ‘NFL’ acronym twice in two sentences. He also goes an extra step by actually backing up his statement with statistics, something that it rarely found amongst young football analysts. Simply brilliant – but there’s more.

“Defensively, the Bears are the best in the National Football League.”

Another hard-core opinion stating that the number one ranked defense in the NFL…sorry, the National Football League is, in fact, the best in the National Football League. You never cease to dazzle us master Schlereth.

“The Tampa Bay Buccaneers, they are probably one of the best tackling teams in the National Football League.”

Don’t say too much, lest you should have to back it up, but say it all at the same time. The Bucs are one of the best tackling teams…probably.

“That offense of the Jets may be the worst in the National Football League.”

Oh yes, you can mix it up. When you’ve run out of teams and things to call the best in the National Football League, you can switch gears and call something the worst. Only advanced students can do this type of transition seamlessly.

While the first three rules of speaking conversational Schlereth-ese are not terribly difficult to master, the fourth rule only comes with years of practice. As we see more and more football analysts popping up, we see more verbal scatting taking place, where an analyst can speak for up to 30 seconds and appear as if he knows exactly what he’s saying, without really making any sense.

Watch and learn as the master intertwines all four rules into a single paragraph, like a painter mixing colors and texture on a canvas:

“Watch my fullback. Hat on hat, get after people. Watch him dip and root out this linebacker. Look at this, head on head, get him under, get him out. Execution. That’s what the Atlanta Falcons do better than anybody in the National Football League – they execute.”

He throws out a hard-core opinion, ignores using the acronym, sentence structure is sound and the first portion of the quote really didn’t say anything at all.

Now you’re just showing off, Mark.

Random Thoughts with Peter King
The architect of the Monday Morning QB column, a feature which has succeeded in reducing the actual football topics covered each and every week, gave us a clinic on random thoughts that don’t take any actual thought this week.

Of his quick hit thoughts of Week 13 in the NFL, here was the one we liked the best -

“b.) Reggie Bush”

So, just stating the name Reggie Bush now qualifies as a random thought? If that’s the case, we’ll give a try too:

Matt Leinart.

That was fun. Here’s a few more, just for kicks:

Troy Brown.
Tom Brunansky.
Chewbacca.

SI.com should be knocking down our door any minute.

Sean Salisbury Is Angry at You
“People better start to recognize. If you don’t know who Seattle is or if you think this is a finesse team out West, you are mistaken!!”

Let the record show that if you think either of these things, Sean is going to come to your house and choke you until you see it his way.