If you haven't read this article yet...skip this post entirely, and click on the link below. A must read.

Too much shouting obscures the message (ESPN Ombudsman)

Wow. Just wow. My first reaction is..... I can't believe ESPN actually put that on the site. My second reaction is.....What in the hell was George Solomon doing for about three months? That guy was worthless...I don't care what he did at the Post.

Here are the highlights if you don't feel like reading the whole thing:

It was mid-January, a few days before the NFL conference championships. The first shouting I heard came from a football analyst who had no doubt that the Saints were going to crush the Bears on Sunday. He was so emphatic that the guy he was foretelling the future with said, "Well, I guess there's no need to play the game, Sean. Let's just declare the Saints the winner." This is analysis, I thought, and remembered a favorite saying of the day that had once been posted on the farm stand where I buy tomatoes: "Certainty is the place you stop when you are tired of thinking."

I got to hear Tony Kornheiser and Michael Wilbon take on the monkey on "Pardon the Interruption." Oh no, not you too, I thought. But Kornheiser and Wilbon calmed down, read some news in a normal tone of voice, discussed the news at varying volume levels, laughed at themselves and each other, and made me laugh as well. It seemed the sports equivalent of getting your news of the world from Jon Stewart on "The Daily Show." I felt better.

In the past two months, I have heard a lot of yelling, from some but not all of the anchors, from some but not all of the commentators who rotate through "Around the Horn," from Skip Bayless on "Cold Pizza," and from some but not all of the guests who sit across from Skip and allow themselves to get bent out of shape by his absolutism.

On "1st and 10," on March 1, Bayless' assertion that 50-75 percent of NFL players use human growth hormone made his guest, former Giants (now Dolphins) kicker Jay Feely, so mad that he fired back, "That's ridiculous. It's dangerous for you to make that claim." If one is going to speculate on limited evidence about athletes' steroid use, better to do it as Chuck Klosterman did in his thoughtful, provocative opinion piece, "Why We Look The Other Way,"