Talking NFL

As most of you know, I almost never post on the weekends. The weekend is a time for rest and relaxation (or hookers and cake, depending on the mood). However, there’s been a battle raging between mainstream media and the blogosphere over the last few days that I just had to chime in on…

You’ve probably heard about it by now. The storm of controversy concerns ESPN radio host Colin Cowherd, who on Thursday morning encouraged all his listeners to visit the sports blog The Big Lead at the same time. This effectively blew up The Big Lead (a very good blog, by the way - not like this piece o crap), and kept the site out of commission for over a day.

Now by itself, this incident may seem like just a bad prank. However, there’s some history between Mr. Cowherd and sports blogs…

Here’s a recap in chronological order:

March 1st, 2006: The M Zone (Michigan based sports blog) publishes a piece called “The M Zone Collegiate Wonderlic Test”. Good stuff.

March 22nd, 2006: Colin Cowherd plays radio segment entitled “the real Wonderlic test.” Eight of the questions are identical to ones published on the M Zone posting:

March 23rd, 2006: The M Zone and Colin exchange ’spirited’ emails. Here’s the sanitized summary:

M Zone: Kindly credit us, please.

Colin: No, thanks.

March 24th, 2006: The sports blogosphere lets Mr. Cowherd have it, lead by heavyweight Deadspin.

March 27th, 2006: Colin apologizes on air & gives The M Zone their due credit. Everyone is happy.

Intermission:

One year later…

April 5th, 2007: Colin encourages his listeners to all visit The Big Lead at once, thereby blowing it up. A rough transcript of the radio broadcast has been provided by Every Day Should Be Saturday.

April 5, 6, 7th: The blogosphere responds to Colin’s act. Here’s a partial list of essays, compiled by our friends over at Awful Announcing. (Colin Cowherd: An Act of Self Defense is particularly witty.)

Collectively, the group has decided to name Colin ‘Schrutebag’ from now on.

April 7th: The Big Lead, back online, warns of dire consequences if their site is attacked again.

(Note - I was surprised to see just how long The Big Lead stayed out of commission. If they intentionally prolonged their absence in order to gain awareness and empathy for what happened, I say good for them. If not, I say time to get a new server, and ASAP.)

So, what to make of all this?

Look, I know that to most of those who casually surf the net, the sports blogosphere seems like an odd place; filled with sarcasm, vulgarity, and at times, petulance (myself included in all 3 counts). But it’s also filled with some very talented writers, who have found a niche for themselves as well as a solid audience. The Big Lead is one of those sites, and Colin went out of his way to completely mess with them, and for no apparent reason except for the fact that he could.

Picking to mess with The Big Lead, out of the myriad of sports blogs out there, was a REALLY bad move by the Schrutebag. They have serious online street cred, with over 60 sports blogs linked to their site, and have interviewed mainstream media & sports members such as ESPN’s Dan LeBatard and the Detroit Tiger’s Curtis Granderson. Their interview with Jason Whitlock (just after he left ESPN) is a must read, (especially when he rips on Scoop Jackson and Mike Lupica) and has been viewed nearly 100,000 times. It’s no wonder how quickly the blog troops went on the offensive.

As for Colin Schrutebag, he seems to have a decent following as well, and they’re making themselves known on the internet. But his defenders need to realize three important facts:

1) He plagiarized from a blog (knowingly or unknowingly can be debated, but what can’t is:)

2) When confronted by the website to give them credit for the piece, he refused, on multiple occasions. Finally,

3) He told his listeners to flood a website, in order to (and I’m quoting), “just blow it up”.

With that information in hand, it’s impossible not to promote Admiral Schrutebag Cowherd to the ranking of a LEVEL 1 Douchebag.

It will be very interesting to see what (if any) action is taken over at ESPN next week. Their new Ombudsman, Le Anne Scrieber (i.e. public’s representative to ESPN) was just introduced to the media on Thursday (TBL Day), and her inbox has no doubt been flooded with reports of Scrutebag’s shenanigans. According to several blog commentators who have all ready emailed her, she responded with the following:

“Rest assured, I will have something to say about the shutdown of thebiglead.com in my column next week.”

A former New York Times sports editor in her early sixties, she describes herself as a “thick skinned…fair-minded person of sound judgment.” Based on that, you get the feeling she will not take kindly to last week’s activity.

And will Scrutebag himself apologize? Probably not, unless he is pressured by ESPN to do so (as it appears it was the case in the M Zone incident). His shtick is to get under peoples’ skins and push their buttons. I, for one, can’t take him to task for that.

However, I do have a suggestion. Since his interests include irritating the crap out of people, plagiarizing other writer’s work, and general acts of douchebaggery, I have a recommendation for his new radio co-host:

Borges, Cowherd. Cowherd, Borges.

Or should I say; Douchebag, Schrutebag. Schrutebag, Douchebag.

The Big Lead, blown up, The M Zone, Deadspin, Colin Cowherd and Ron Borges are B.F.F., Urban Dictionary, number 3

And on that note…Happy Easter, everyone!