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The Monday Wrap… And Some Links Too!

What a sporting weekend. Major League Baseball could not have asked for a better final weekend to the regular season You had the clinching of the American League East by the Red Sox. There was the complete collapse of the New York Mets and the charge by the Philadelphia Phillies to take the National League East. The Chicago Cubs clinched the NL Central Division. San Diego failed to clinch the Wild Card despite the opportunity to win it on its own and the Colorado Rockies won 13 of its last 14 games to force a one game playoff tonight.

For MLB, the sad note was seeing the end of the Atlanta Braves era on TBS. For 30 seasons, there was the comfortable feeling knowing that if your local team wasn’t on TV, the Braves would be. And before ESPN got into MLB, the way to watch baseball on a national level every night was either to watch the Cubs on WGN or the Braves on TBS. While TBS will still have baseball every Sunday starting next season, it will be a national package of games.

We grew accustomed to seeing Skip Carey, Pete Van Wieren, Ernie Johnson, Sr., John Sterling, then Don Sutton, Joe Simpson and Chip Carey joining Skip and Pete. Fans enjoyed the chemistry between Skip and Pete. And the rise of the Braves coincided with the cable explosion in the 1980′s and by the time the Braves started their 10 year dominance of the National League, TBS was there to chronicle it. From a high of 152 games a season to the 75 games it did this year, watching the Braves on TBS became a comfortable fit like an old slipper. Unfortunately, as times change, so do philosophies and TBS feels the Braves are no longer a good fit. This will leave a team with a national fan base without an outlet to watch the games. The Braves say they’ll look for ways to reach fans in the Southeast, but for fans across the country who can’t afford MLB Extra Innings on cable or satellite or on the internet, yesterday’s final game on TBS was a very sad day. I know I’ll miss watching the Braves.

As for the NFL, you couldn’t find a weekend that could match what we saw yesterday. Brett Favre breaks Dan Marino’s touchdown record. The Detroit Lions score a record 34 points in the 4th quarter to beat a woeful Chicago Bears team. My Cleveland Browns put a big hurt on the Baltimore Ravens and there was Oakland’s Daunte Culpepper going into Miami to show what he could do when healthy.

US golf showed it was alive and well with the Presidents Cup and raucous crowds helped the atmosphere in Montreal.

And HBO got a nice present when Jermain Taylor was upset his defense of his middleweight crown by Kelly Pavlik.

You can’t forget about the upsets in college football starting with South Florida over West Virginia Friday night, spilling into Saturday as Oklahoma was beat by Colorado, K State putting a big licking on Texas and Auburn beating defending national champion, Florida.

You couldn’t ask for a better sporting weekend. And this week, the League Divisional Series begin and they do so under some great momentum. Let’s get to the links.

USA Today’s Michael Hiestand says the loss of the New York Mets from the playoffs has caused TBS to change some of its announcing team assignments. Ray Frager in his Baltimore Sun blog has highlights of comments made by Cal Ripken from a media conference call conducted by TBS.

Neil Best of Newsday says one of those changes includes TBS scooping up SNY’s Ron Darling who became available after the Mets were eliminated yesterday.

The New York Post’s Phil Mushnick says SNY’s Darling and Keith Hernandez criticized the Mets at the right moment.

Jim Williams of the DC/Baltimore Examiner says TBS gets its postseason underway with the Rockies-Padres one game playoff tonight. And the Padres will allow fans to watch the game at Petco Park.

Paul Sullivan of the Chicago Tribune says Cubs broadcasters, both current and past, will have a heavy influence on TBS’ coverage of the League Divisional Series.

Chuck Caree in the Wilmington (NC) Morning Star talks about the end of the Braves on TBS.

From the Wilmington (DE) News Journal, Delaware viewers will be glad to know that Comcast is adding TBS HD to its lineup today. The Consumerist says even though Comcast has added TBS HD to a bunch of cities, Chicago is not one of them.

Dusty Saunders in the Rocky Mountain News says the playoff push of the Colorado Rockies gave Denver fans a dilemma whether to watch baseball or the Broncos playing against the Colts.

CNBC’s Darren Rovell discusses what the New York Mets really lost when it played itself out of the MLB postseason.

The Houston Chronicle’s David Barron reviews the sporting weekend in his Four DVR’s, no waiting blog.

John Ryan in the San Jose Mercury News writes that the NFL pregame shows had a lot of love for Brett Favre.

The Multichannel News reports that the Big Ten Network signed a deal with RCN Cable giving it access to homes in Chicago, Phildelphia and parts of the Lehigh Valley in Pennsylvania.

Daniel Kaplan of Business First has an article on MSNBC.com about the NFL selling ads space on its teams’ websites, keeping the money while the teams keep the space.

ESPN and World Championship Sports Network have signed an agreement for WCSN to provide a 24/7 feed of Olympic sports on ESPN360.

The Toronto Star’s Chris Zelkovich writes that longtime Maple Leafs analyst Harry Neale is leaving the team to join the Buffalo Sabres’ TV team. And Zelkovich says NBC seemed to go overboard to say Canadians love hockey during the Presidents Cup coverage from Montreal.

That’s it for now.

Sunday Night Links

A few links to provide tonight.

First, Tim Tucker of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution has the last words of Skip Carey on the final Atlanta Braves broadcast on TBS. Rodney Ho of the AJC talks about what will replace the local feed of TBS for Atlanta viewers.

David Sweet of MSNBC talks about TBS moving into the MLB TV postseason picture and says this is another migration of another major sporting event to cable.

Neil Best of Newsday blogs that inexplicably, SNY only did a nine minute postmortem following the Mets collapse today that took them out of the MLB playoffs. Best correctly points out if the Mets won, SNY would have certainly done an extended postgame show. Instead, just 9 minutes and it was shown 90 minutes after the last out. If SNY wants to promote itself as a sports news destination, it has to show the good and the bad of its lone team.

Phillies fans will be able to watch the NL East-clinching game again tomorrow on CW57.

Can you believe NBC Sports put out a press release on the quotable quotes from tonight’s Football Night in America just an hour after it finished and the Sunday Night Football game wasn’t even over?

Speaking of fast, ESPN has decided to make another stop in Baton Rouge for College Gameday this season on Saturday. In the Eugene (OR) Register-Guard, Mark Baker says College Gameday might not return to the Oregon campus for a while.

Brad Myers of the Wilmington (DE) News Journal says by the time Monday Night Football rolls around, he’s footballed out.

Meg Thilmony in the Urbana/Champagne (IL) News-Gazette writes that Illinois fans are scrambling to watch the Illini’s games on the Big Ten Network. via satellite TV. Chris Rosenblum of the Centre (PA) Daily Times writes that Penn State fans are forced to go to local bars to watch their team play on the Big Ten Network.

William Houston of the Toronto Globe and Mail says the intermission portions of Hockey Night in Canada will not travel this season and be produced in CBC’s studios in Toronto.

That’s going to do it. I’ll be back Monday morning.

Sunday Musings

Recovering after being out for a day.

A few things for today.

Against my better judgment, I bought the De La Hoya-Mayweather fight from DirecTV. I joined in the 7th round. It turned out to be a better fight than I expected. But also, I wanted to see what may be one of the last HBO assignments for Larry Merchant. On Friday, I linked to Bob Raissmann’s article in the New York Daily News regarding Merchant’s contract talks with HBO. While Merchant doesn’t have the command he once did, he still was able to hold his own with Emmanuel Steward and Jim Lampley. On the technical side, HBO’s camera work was solid and Lampley’s call showed why he’s still one of the best ever at boxing play-by-play along with Howard Cosell. My only complaint was that DirecTV on its own, ended the PPV while Merchant was interviewing De La Hoya. Lampley had not signed off. Apparently, one overeager technician at DirecTV decided to end everyone’s viewing of the night on his/her own. Thanks a lot, jerk.

I’m going to miss not having the Atlanta Braves on TBS next season. It’s nice to have the option on a Sunday or any summer day to switch to TBS and have the Braves on. Back in the 1980′s, Ted Turner decided to put his Braves on his Superstation for programming. At one point, TBS cablecast 150 Braves games. Skip Carey, Pete Van Wieren, Joe Simpson and Don Sutton have all been welcomed into the nation’s cable homes. Of the MLB teams that have national followings, you can put the Braves into that category. It’s obvious that the Yankees, Red Sox and Cubs all have national followings. Thanks to Superstation TBS, the Braves do as well. But with its new TV contract to cover the entire League Division Series and one League Championship Series each year for the next six years, TBS will drop the Braves next season in favor of carrying 26 Sunday afternoon games involving the entire MLB. The Braves will go to Fox Sports South exclusively next season and that’s too bad. The only way to follow the Braves nationally will be through the sporadic ESPN, Fox and yes, TBS pick ups. Unless you have MLB.TV through the internet or the Extra Innings package on cable or DirecTV, you won’t be able to see the Braves on a day-to-day basis. So if you’re watching the Braves on TBS this season, get ready to find another way to watch them next season.

The Sports Emmy Awards were handed out last week. NBC won 9 awards including Outstanding Live Sports Series for its NASCAR coverage, Outstanding Play-by-play for Al Michaels’ call of Sunday Night Football and Technical Achievement for the XX Winter Olympic Games in Italy. HBO won obligatory awards for journalism (Real Sports with Bryant Gumbel), ESPN had eight awards (I’m including four for its ABC Sports division which unfortunately was swallowed up before last year’s college football season). The entire list is here.

As a regular viewer of Red Sox baseball on NESN, I must say their broadcasts have improved drastically since the John Henry ownership took over the team and the network. Some of their ideas have not worked including having a rotation of studio analysts for their pre-game shows. Dennis Eckersley is the best. Bob Tewksbury wasn’t bad. Sam Horn was just plain awful. This season, NESN has added Ken Macha, the former Oakland A’s manager, and from what I’ve seen, he shows promise. His first two days on Friday and Saturday were with Jim Rice. Today, he’s flying solo. Ken was dry on Friday, but he makes good points and gives a manager’s perspective, something the others, all former players cannot. Since it’s his first weekend of work, I won’t totally review him until he has at least 10-20 games under his belt, but so far, he’s pretty decent.

We’ll have some links on Monday. I might return later today if there’s something of note. Oh, I will return with my thoughts on The Amazing Race finale. I know who wins, but I want to see how the team wins.