The Summer of Jim Gray Continues

Just when we thought he was gone forever from the National Sports Media Stage, relegated from ESPN to doing radio golf, and sideline reporting for the Sacramento Kings, guess who decided to pop back into the sports media scene?

If you had Jim Gray, you win.

First it was working in the employ of LeBron James to ask the softball questions during "The Decision." Now, he's working for the Golf Channel at the PGA Championship about to take place this weekend at Whistling Straits in Wisconsin.

Here he got the chance to interview Corey Pavin, captain of the US Ryder Cup team, about the prospects of every one's favorite 119th ranked golfer Tiger Woods, making the Ryder Cup team. What happened? Here's the story from Steve Ellig:

In a tense exchange in the middle of the PGA Championship media center on Wednesday, Golf Channel reporter Jim Gray stuck a finger in U.S. captain Corey Pavin’s chest, called him a liar and barked, “you’re going down.”

The exchange was precipitated by a conversation between the two that took place outside the player registration area on Tuesday night. Gray reported that when when asked if he would extend a captain’s pick to struggling star Tiger Woods, Pavin said, “of course I’m going to.”

On Wednesday morning, when he learned of the report while practicing on the Whistling Straits course, Pavin denied making any such statement or that any player had secured a spot as a captain’s pick, which are not finalized until Sept. 7.

Pavin and his European counterpart Colin Montgomerie had just concluded a scheduled Ryder press conference when Gray, approached Pavin after the room had mostly emptied.

Gray, whose employer earlier had issued a statement that it was standing by the facts of his report, stuck a finger in Pavin’s chest and berated him, according to Pavin and his wife, Lisa, who claims she recorded the exchange on her cellular telephone.

“It’s all right here,” she said, waving the phone.

“I just said, ‘You’re full of ‘something,’ ” Pavin said. “I’m not going to let that happen. He got upset. His eyes were a little odd … He was just a little crazy.”

If you seek comment from Jim Gray, he said the following earlier today on Live From the PGA Championship on Golf Channel '... there is absolutely not one part of what Corey Pavin said to me that has been misquoted. And quite frankly, I happen to like Corey Pavin. I've known him an awfully long time, and in this instance, his is being disingenuous and is not telling the truth.' "

If I had to take a side in this, give me Corey Pavin. Gray is nothing more than a hack, looking to stir up any controversy, in order to get back into media relevance. So enjoy telling Kings viewers about end of game strategy and just leave the rest of us alone.

Follow me on Twitter @kt1000

Let's Play The Feud: Keith Olbermann Vs. Bill Simmons

For a man who by his won accord wants to be with his ill father, Keith Olbermann sure has been busy with other things this past week. First he made an appearance on The Daily Show as part of Jon Stewart's piece on the new social media sensation (and disturbed the crap out of me by suggesting that he or Jon Stewart needed to pull their pants down), Chatroulette, and now he has engaged in an online feud with Bill Simmons.

I will post the back and forth in an unedited stream for the sake of easiness and flow. Keith Olbermann's jabs come from his MLBlog, The Baseball Nerd while Bill Simmons' responses come from his Twitter account, sportsguy33

Olbermann started the fight in a post mainly about Johnny Orsino's Hall of Fame Candidacy

KO:

"I promised no politics here and I stick to it. But I never said anything about never mentioning other sports, although I think I'll start that rule about a paragraph from now. If you'd like to read the most poorly-informed conclusion I've come across in sports media this year, you have your link. Proceed with caution. In short, it is the contention that the comeback of Tiger Woods will be more difficult than the one Muhammad Ali faced in the 1960's. If the writer can let me know when Woods is punitively drafted by the military even though he is about eight years older than almost all the other draftees, I'll begin to take him seriously. In the interim I am again left to marvel how somebody can rise to a fairly prominent media position with no discernible insight or talent, save for an apparent ability to mix up a vast bowl of word salad very quickly."

BS: "I'm furious that my Tiger column distracted America from a detailed and only mildly creepy case for Johnny Orsino's Hall of Fame candidacy."

BS: "KO, please know the feeling is mutual. You're my worst case scenario for my career in 12 yrs: a pious, unlikable blowhard who lives alone."

BS: "I feel bad about saying Olbermann lives alone. I forgot about his cats."

KO:

"I'd also like to welcome new reader Bill Simmons, who has been kind enough to tweet about my note here last week already ceding him the dumbest sportswriting award of 2010 for his laugh-out-loud funny argument that the comeback of Tiger Woods (caught having repeated trouble with his putts) will be more difficult than that of Muhammad Ali (persecuted by the federal government for the color of his skin, his stance against the war, and his religious conversion, and effectively banned from his sport for two years).

(KO quotes 1st Simmons tweet)

This is pretty standard stuff for Mr. Simmons. Make a fool of yourself comparing Tiger Woods (loss of advertisers) to Muhammad Ali (loss of income, threatened loss of freedom), so change the topic - to an admittedly trivial column about a trivial moment from a marginal catcher named John Orsino.

Mr. Simmons resumes:

(KO quotes 2nd Simmons tweet)

This assumes that Mr. Simmons' career now is where mine was twelve years ago (anchoring SportsCenter, then my own MSNBC political show, anchoring NBC Weekend Nightly News, writing a best-selling sports book, etc). In fact, this assumes that this is Mr. Simmons' career, which is remarkable. Also, anybody who could write as many words without saying anything of consequence really should throw around the word "blowhard" as frequently as he would a street sewer cover.

Also, I don't think "pious" necessarily means what he thinks it does.

Having made his point 50% of his words ago, Mr. Simmons still continues. As usual:

(KO quotes Simmons 3rd tweet)


Mr. Simmons apparently uses, for factual research, old parody sketches from "Saturday Night Live." I'm not surprised. That was Ben Affleck. Thanks for playing.

I am surprised, however, to be able to shed some light on something that has been a prominent topic of late around the internet: the prospect that Mr. Simmons is leaving ESPN. Admittedly I am something of an authority on this process. Nonetheless, I was stunned to receive several emails from some of Mr. Simmons' bosses there, thanking me for pointing out the absurdity of, and the embarrassment to ESPN provided by, the Woods/Ali comparison.

About five years ago, I guess, somebody said Tony Kornheiser was the most uncontrollable, unmanageable talent in the history of ESPN. I was, of course, crushed (although I believe I got honorable mention). When ESPN bosses are writing me for helping them about somebody they claim has now lapped Tony and myself, I am left to conclude only that if Mr. Simmons does leave ESPN, it may not be entirely of his own choosing.

And we now encourage Mr. Simmons to again falme [sic] the comments section under various identities, to his heart's content. This is a managed site, and they can take 'em down. But enjoy yourself.

BS: "I've said enough. This was not why I got into writing. RT @rgspiegel: Anxiously awaiting ur response to Olbermann...this should be good."

Thus ends another online feud involving Keith Olbermann!

My thoughts on this:

1). Bill Simmons working with ESPN has absolutely nothing to do with any of this at all, right? RIGHT? Yeah, that's about as true as saying the Toronto Maple Leafs are going to win the Stanley Cup this year.

2). Simmons' article is no doubt controversial, and if Olbermann wants to take the time to criticize it, that's fine by me. I mean, the timing is a little suspect seeing as he is supposed to be with his father and not humiliating himself in a feud with one of the most popular sports writers in this country, but he has a right to his opinions to Simmons' piece.

3). Olbermann clearly does not understand or comprehend the amount of people that hate his guts and the amount of people that love Simmons. He is accusing all of the nasty comments he got in the comments section of the first blog post to be Simmons using different aliases. Sadly for him, he is mistaken. For starters, I read a post from someone at OlbermannWatch who said they went there and left a comment (they then copy and pasted the comment they left at The Baseball Nerd into the OlbermannWatch comments section), and that guy is not Bill Simmons, and secondly, does he really feel as if Simmons has no fans that will defend him to the death, regardless of what Simmons writes? Sheesh. Talk about delusional.

4). Lastly, am I the only one that sees Simmons being hypocritical here? First of all, his responses were not the great and read like he was the exact same thing he was accusing Olbermann of being, a pious blowhard? And secondly, if Simmons claims he is better than getting into an online fight, then why did he respond to Olbermann in the first place? Surely he was not dumb enough to think that Olbermann would not respond to his insults, right? Fitting how only after Olbermann responds with some accusations of him (albeit, seemingly crazy ones) does he then decide to be above all of this and declare himself better than getting into such a petty argument. Sheesh. Talk about a thin-skinned hypocrite.

Italian Newsrooms Are Violent And Dangerous Places

I just have to say bizarre. And that guy doing the newscast could not hear that 2 people right behind him were exchanging fisticuffs? Assuming it is real (and at this point I have my doubts), you gotta love how he just got up and walked off once he did realize it. He said "arrivederci" and then realized there is no need for him to stay here where two guys rolling on the ground can bowl him over. Too funny.

Add The Pittsburgh Penguins To The List Of People Mad At NBC

GE, NBC, and MSNBC certainly have not been making any friends at all this year. Actually, that's putting it lightly seeing as they basically have been become a laughing stock of television. From Jeanine Garafalo's extremely idiotic statement last week on Countdown with Keith Olbermann which basically called over 40% of Americans racists (all those who were exercising their freedom of speech and protested Obama's tax policy) to the overload of liberal hosts (see addition of Ed Schultz) and rapidly declining ratings on MSNBC (damn, tvbythenumbers.com is down so I can't pull up the O'Reilly vs. Olbermann chart that illustrates this) to the loss of money they suffered broadcasting the Super Bowl to the occasionally laughable ratings of the NHL on NBC (although in defense of that, the NHL is currently seeing some relatively really strong ratings and the Pens-Flyers game on Sunday was the highest rated hockey game on NBC since the Winter Classic). But sticking on the subject of hockey, they slightly angered some Pens fans by not allowing Sunday's Pens-Flyers Game 3 to be shown on an outdoor screen. All year last year, they allowed games to be shown on gigantic outdoor screens in front of the Mellon Arena, which is why it came to such a shock to Penguins fans who may have taken this whole thing a bit too far. From Puck The Media (which is quickly becoming one of my new favorite blogs; check them out if you can and have not already).

The Pensblog have been waging a war against NBC since their decision to ruin the party outside Mellon Arena to watch the game. Now, we agree with them in principle. The 14 or 15 diehard Penguins fans and the 300 or so of their hangers-on since last year’s Cup run want somewhere to drink in public and watch the Penguins lose. But, they seriously took it to a new level. It was like the Parents TV Council after an episode of South Park.

It started with confusing outrage, and a list of people to contact. Then it went to reasoned pleading with the league, whom the guys and their homosexual friend felt abandoned by. Because as you know, the NHL is a business created to cater to the Pens fan, and no one else.

Finally (sort of), it exploded into an admittedly hilarious photoshop of a Penguin defecating on the NBC logo, and a list of NBC’s major advertisers. Really guys? Do you think Red Bull gives a crap moreso than NBC about hockey? Where is that getting you? It finally led to them recommending you watch on the web on one of CBC’s broadcasts.

It finished for now with Pensblog’s annoyingly narrow-founded recap of the game, where they made jokes about Pierre McGuire. Because that’s never been done before. Also made fun of: Harry Kalas. I’m done linking to these clowns, you can find that yourself.

That final post stated that “The war on NBC isn’t over”. C’mon guys, don’t you want people to think I came up with that headline myself? Lame.

But maybe the war needs to end after this news. A 33% share in Pittsburgh? 33%! So why did this happen? Maybe because most of the Penguin outdoor screen-watching fanbase went on with their lives after hearing this news, instead of wasting their time going all Rachel Dratch in 30 Rock about it? If the war isn’t over, then Round 1 most certainly goes to NBC.

Too funny! Like PTM, I agree with what the Pens fans are saying, but The Pensblog took this thing way too damn far.

However, while NBC came out the winners and unscathed in this battle, they really do need to lighten up. For the NBC Universal brand, this has been on of their worst weeks on record, as evidenced by everything linked to up top. In fact, the Garafalo statement was so bad that Bill O'Reilly actually aired bits and pieces of that segment of Countdown! And O'Reilly goes to great lengths not to say or give any direct mention to Countdown and Keith Olbermann (Olbermann's chime-ins were edited out by Fox News in the segment and the logo Countdown with Keith Olbermann was obsucred by a the bottom of a blue box and they only credited the clip as "MSNBC", and most hilariously of all in that Factor segment, the guests referred to him as "that on-air host"). Hopefully though, they'll be able to turn things around as no one wants to see an organization this bad in the dumps like this.

And now that I have pretty much thoroughly bashed NBC, I guess now is as good a time as any to announce that I will be "plausibly" live-blogging Countdown with Keith Olbermann over at JamesCraven's blog, The O Files, tonight at 10 PM ET, assuming that the Flyers game does not go into overtime, in which case, I'll do it from the Countdown website either later tonight or 11 AM ET Wednesday morning.