Stool Samples

By Pat Imig and Josh Bacott
joesportsfan.com

ESPN has full intentions
of making you hate
Monday Night Football.”

– Stool Samples 01/03.

It’s only been a few weeks since the football season officially ended and ESPN is doing everything in its power to make sure that we know that Monday Night Football will be on their network next season.

Sure they sent out a press release regarding the move and sure they sent out a press release announcing the broadcast trio that will cover the Monday night games, but that’s not enough of a reminder. If the 10-second promotional spots that the company began running didn’t indicate how happy the network is to shove MNF down our throats, now SportsCenter is airing classic Monday Night moments every day. To put this into perspective, we are still six months away from the 2006 kickoff (that’s 182 days)… and we’re already counting down until ESPN Monday Night Football debuts! Screw baseball!

This raises a few questions: are there 182 moments in Monday Night Football history that can be deemed “memorable”. Also, when will the company come to grips with the fact that since the advent of cable television and the advancement of satellite, Tivo and the Internet, Monday Night Football has dwindled down to nothing more than a game that happens to be on Monday Nights? That apparently isn’t stopping the Worldwide Sports Leader from doing everything it can to rev up the promotional machine and try to create a ratings bonanza.

And there are rumblings that ESPN would like to open this new era of Monday Nights with a double header. That would mean that Sterling Sharpe would be providing analysis in the second game. Bravo, ESPN. Congratulations on your quest to destroy any interest the average fan has in watching football at an enjoyable level.

Crap that actually came from somebody’s mouth

“They’ve got seven wins against the Top 100.” – Jay Bilas on Arizona
“They’ve got eight wins against the Top 100.” – Jay Bilas on Alabama

Not to be nitpicky, but with teams like SLU, DePaul, Kansas State and Manhattan hovering at the 100 ranking, we’re thinking Bilas may want to offer up another reason as to why Arizona and Alabama belong in the NCAA tournament.
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"I guess maybe I'm going to have to figure out a way to coach better.” – Larry Brown

When your team is 15-40, we’d say that’s probably a solid option.
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“You just hope you inspire some kid that says 'He did it. I can do it.' You know what I mean. And that's all the record means to me. You just hope you can inspire some kid who says ‘I want to break Barry Bonds' record’ and if that happens, I'll tell you the truth, I'll be on his side." – Barry Bonds

On behalf of people with a functioning cranium, we’d like to tell Barry that he’s full of crap.
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“Jon Clayton, thanks for showing us your six pack.” – Neil Everett

There’s just something strange and odd about Neil asking Clayton to show him his six pack. Maybe it’s the fact that they’re both men.
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“Tennessee coach Pat Summitt had me at hello.” – Gene Wojciechowski, ESPN.com

First Neil Everett and now Gene Wojciechowski is smitten for Summitt.
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“All is not Wells: Pirates' pitcher diagnosed with clot” – Headline Guy, Foxsports.com

Come on Headline Guy, now you’re just getting lazy.
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“Making shots is important.” – Steve “Snapper” Jones during the Knicks-Nets game

Otherwise, a Knicks game might break out.
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“There is an inordinate amount of noise in this arena because it’s a very loud place.” – Ron Franklin on Oklahoma State’s Gallagher-Iba Arena

There’s no truth to the rumor that immediately before that statement, Ron Franklin was on the phone with John Madden.
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“Is there anything more tired than the annual (Roger) Clemens courtship ritual? Clemens' flirtations with the Red Sox, Yankees and Rangers are merely designed to get him top dollar from the Astros.” – Ken Rosenthal, foxsports.com

Bravo, Ken. Bravo.
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“Even though we think they "lost" all three of their major winter trades (Mike Cameron, Kris Benson and Jae Seo), they're (the Mets) now clearly the best team in the National League on paper.” – Jayson Stark

So they made three crappy trades, overpaid for several free agents (as usual) and could potentially go into the season with Steve Trachsel as their #3 starter? Clearly the best team on paper, indeed.
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“This is the league that gave us Dick Butkus and Bronco Nagurski.” – Rick Majerus criticizing a foul call in the Iowa – Indiana basketball game.

Apparently the Big Ten’s ability to produce linebackers is now to be considered a factor for officials in the basketball games.

I’ve Lost All Credibility
Hi, my name is Tom Hammond. You may be wondering why I’m writing under the heading of I’ve lost all credibility”, so let me fill you in. This loss of credibility has nothing to do with the
fact that I wear butt loads of makeup from the NBC Sports booth whenever I call the action. It actually has to do with the fact that even though I’m the lead play-by-play man for Notre Dame football (you know, Notre Dame football… arguably the most prestigious college football team in history) last week, I was relegated to the role of lead play-by-play man for woman’s figure skating during the Olympics.

Man, I’m glad the Olympics are over.

- Tom

Media Rant of the Week – Three sides of Barry Bonds Coverage
The hype has begun for the return of the Major League Baseball’s most likeable slugger. Barry Bonds is only a handful of homeruns from passing Babe Ruth’s career mark and when he does, only Hank Aaron will be left in his sites. Needless to say, all of this potential for history has sparked ample media coverage.

In Bond’s case, a little more coverage than usual can certainly be justified. The intriguing part is the multiple angles to covering the same athlete. It seems that the media has yet to settle on the best way to present Bonds to the sports world.

ESPN took a seldom-used angle when they decided to focus solely on the actual details of Bonds’ arrival of spring training. ESPN’s Barry Bonds beat writer, Pedro Gomez, has once again assumed his post as the foremost authority of everything Bonds, coming dangerously close to stalking the large-headed slugger. Of course, in typical fashion, they took this simple “reporting” well beyond the interest level of most normal fans, providing details of everything short of what magazine Barry was reading on the clubhouse crapper.

In case you were interested in how long Barry stretched the other day, we documented a little of Pedro’s reports. The highlights included…

02/22/06
Barry arrived at 7:50 local time with his seven-person entourage in tow. He spent about an hour inside the clubhouse. He stretched for 4 minutes with teammates. He took batting practice off Giants pitchers Jason Schmidt and Noah Lowery. He hit a home run off Schmidt in his last swing.

02/23/06
Barry Bonds did something today that he hasn’t done in two years - he took part in spring training drills for the second consecutive day!

02/24/06
Today, Barry did something today that he hasn’t done in two years - he took part in spring training drills for third consecutive day! He took three full rounds of batting practice. He also threw a curve ball by saying that from here on out, reporters will need to sign a waiver and legal release in order to interview him as a result of his new reality show on ESPN.

On the far opposite end of the spectrum was Media Circus future star, Rob Dibble on his foxsports.com baseball blog, Hardball.

With his first entry in the blog since mid-December, Dibble takes aim at all critics of Bonds and fellow aging star, Roger Clemens and uncorks one of his trademark wild fastballs directly at their heads.

“One thing the people who actually played in the last 20 years with these two men (Clemens and Bonds) would know is how amazing their feats have been. Forget the cheating stuff because it's all nonsense anyway. It's never been proven that taking anything, whether it be steroids or vitamins, can make you into a Hall of Famer. If it were, more players and non-players would be lining up to swallow every pill on the planet.”- Dibble

While Gomez went the information route, Dibble obviously chose to address the Bonds return to spring training with a vicious defense of the steroid accusations. The argument certainly wasn’t rock solid, but Dibs wasn’t done.

“Let me just tell you from listening to the critics what they haven't really said: To play today, you have to face the world's best every day. Do you think the Babe, smoking and drinking the way he did back in the day, would've survived today's best? Have you ever seen Barry and Roger work out? I have, and that's why today's ballplayers should get way more respect then they do.”

(Has anyone told Rob that one of the desired effects of steroid use is the ability to work out longer and harder with less recovery time? He’s not exactly helping out his argument.)

Even though it is riddled with holes, Dibble’s opinion is just one of the extreme viewpoints when analyzing Bonds.

Taking the opposite stance was Dibble’s counterpart on foxsports.com, Ken Rosenthal, who chimed in with a piece asking the question – why doesn’t Barry just retire?

“If Bonds' right knee is still causing him significant discomfort, if he "can't even run that much anymore," as he told USA Today's Bob Nightengale, then he isn't going to be of much use to the Giants this season. And if Bonds is fed up with the media and all their silly questions about substances that he used and the federal government alleges to be steroids, then the solution is very simple.

Get out.

Bonds can protest, "I'm clean, I've always been clean," knowing there is no proof that he used performance-enhancing drugs. The presumption of innocence has taken a hit during the steroid furor, but fans will believe what they want to believe — and many are tired of players who insult their intelligence.

Bonds can put himself out of his misery, MLB out of its misery and yes, the Giants out of their misery, too.

Enough tirades. Enough threats.

Just stay home.”

Apparently Rosenthal isn’t a big fan of Barry Bonds giving everyone the Brett Favre “will I or won’t I?” routine.

In this case, all three have different angles on the season that could be Barry Bonds’ last. While most people probably fall in the middle, it’s always interesting to watch the media formulate their differing styles of coverage of the same topic.

Let’s just hope that Pedro Gomez practices some discretion when reporting from the Giants locker room.

Farewell Turin
As a tribute to the gone and quickly forgotten 2006 Winter Olympics, we leave you with these beauties from the women’s figure skating finals a week ago Thursday, which one member of Stool Samples was forced to watch…

“There’s also a difference between the short program and the long, that being the amount of time.”

“Remember, when only one point separates 1st and 3rd, every point matters.”(whoever said figure skating analysts weren’t good at math?)

“The difference between Sasha (Cohen) and everyone else, is everyone else skates to Romeo & Juliet. She is Juliet.”

“What easy elegance there was to that, strength underneath, magnificent quality. That’s a lady skating.” (on Shizuka Arakawa)

We’ve never yearned for Salisbury lashing out the public more than while typing those quotes.