Sports Fans what is up?

Hope everyone is enjoying their Wednesday… as college baseball tournaments take off around the nation! Should be a great match-up tonight between Ole Miss and STATE in Hoover, Alabama at the SEC Tournament, both teams need to make a statement if they want to host an NCAA Regional. And not just with a win tonight. Ole Miss won last year’s tournament title, and it’s always hard to defend, but with players like Will Kline on the bump and Freshman of the Year Jordan Henry scoring runs like Ricky Henderson, they just might pull it off. STATE can be explosive, and they split the season series, so it could fall either way tonight. Tune it at 10 for latest!

Now time for a response… yesterday Christi wrote about equality in media coverage across the board… especially for women’s softball in comparison to baseball, and she made some valid points. However, the major dart she threw at everyone from local TV and newspapers to ESPN and beyond is universal, and it’s just the way things are in 2007. It all comes down to money, like she said, but to take it a step further it's this simple...

People care about the things... THAT THEY CARE ABOUT. Ratings drive the business of television, sports or otherwise. The key to me is to find great stories that take place within the world of “non-revenue” sports and showcase teams and athletes in that medium, because trying to pull off a full-fledged production and beaming it around the world for people to see when there is no significant coin being made is an impossible task for any network. Just ask Versus. I’m a hockey fan… Go Predators… but do people even know that Versus exists? Or what channel it is on their TV? Or who is playing in the Stanley Cup Finals this week? Didn’t think so. And those aren’t female athletes. If you care about it you watch, if you don’t, then you don’t. It’s a free country and in my opinion the people always speak. And they do it loud and clear with one thing, their wallets.

One other quick take… how confusing is it to all of us who are motor-sport fans in the NASCAR world that a strong majority of the drivers, crew chiefs, teams and owners DO NOT LIKE the Car of Tomorrow… yet today NASCAR announces that beginning next year the entire series will be run with the new model stock-car. What does it mean when Jeff Gordon has won 3 races this season and dominated with the COT yet is on the record saying he doesn’t like it? It says that NASCAR made a huge mistake by trying to dismantle a product that worked, and in the end the fans will be the ones who suffer (as usual) because the competitive world that existed on the track is virtually gone. Hendrick Motorsports has won ALL 5 Car of Tomorrow races this year… and I guarantee you number 6 is coming at Dover June 3rd. Last year if your name wasn’t Jimmie Johnson you couldn’t win in a Hendrick car… now you can. Even Kyle Busch is competitive, sometimes. How is Junior not replacing him at the end of '07 anyway? He is. But the decision by NASCAR leaves you scratching your head, doesn’t it?

Keep Walking the thin Line…

Christian