Oh my god! I can't believe he actually pulled it off!!! Rapper Lil Wayne actually beat three of our country's finest sports writers to take the ATH....ummm....well I'm not exactly sure what he won, but who cares! Here are the highlights....

All kidding aside he was a bit to quiet, but maybe it seemed that way because Mariotti and Paige are so damn loud, but he was actually pretty good. Plus that LT "face time" bit was actually pretty funny. Good on you fellow blogger.

Video: Lil Wayne On Around The Horn

If there is anyone out there crazier than Woody Paige, Lil Wayne is probably the guy. The rapper has already appeared on First Take multiple times, and has his own blog on ESPN.com, but ESPN has decided that's not enough. Wayne will be on the panel of tomorrow's airing of Around the Horn. Seriously....

Fresh off his four wins at the 2009 Grammy Awards Sunday night, rapper Lil’ Wayne will be a panelist on ESPN’s Around the Horn Tuesday at 5 p.m. He will match wits with regular reporters Woody Paige, Jay Mariotti and Michael Smith in the 30-minute sports debate program moderated and scored by Tony Reali. Lil’ Wayne, who contributes to ESPNthemag.com and has appeared on ESPN's First Take and, led performer nominations with nine and won four -- Best Rap Album (for Tha Carter III), Best Rap Solo Performance ("A Milli"), Best Rap Performance by Group or Duo ("Swagga Like Us"), and Best Rap Song ("Lollipop"). He will appear on ATH from Los Angeles.

I guess you can't really make that show anymore annoying than it already is, and Lil Wayne is actually pretty good during his appearances on First Take. With that said, this seems to be inline with a lot of the other current gimmicks on the network to garner ratings for certain shows.

Set your TIVOs now, folks!

(Via ESPN PR)

The more and more I write this afternoon, the more and more I realize what a crazy past two weeks this has been. We've had a war of words between two highly respected former QBs and announcers in Troy Aikman and Boomer Esiason. We've had a network that calls themselves, "The Worldwide Leader in Sports," completely ignore a story when they could have reported it as a rumor. AND we had a person at that same "Leader" make a Hitler reference and cause a double standard in suspension policies. Just wild all-around, right?

This site really tries to be a "watchdog for the watchdogs", and while I think it's succeeded in that to some degree, it ultimately just a drop in the bucket. Well a drop in a bucket, from about the 100th bucket, in a line of proverbial buckets. Jay Glazer however has an idea. A very good one in fact. In a discussion with USA Today's Michael McCarthy, he has proposed the idea of a "Media Scorecard"....

Jay Glazer, Fox Sports' NFL insider, says his goal is to make his rivals at ESPN "miserable." Still ticked after ESPN issued an internal "hot list" instructing staffers not to follow his report that New York Jets quarterback Brett Favre snitched on his old Green Bay Packers team to the Detroit Lions, Glazer views this week's leak of the private directive to ProFootballTalk.com as a personal attack.

"It's disappointing. What we should do as a result is start keeping score," says Glazer, who broke Favre's trade to the Jets and the firing of Lions GM Matt Millen. "If they want to talk about credibility, let's keep score, starting from Week One of last year, and see who broke what, who was right and who was wrong. I don't think they'd want that."

And Glazer didn't appreciate the report by Peter King of NBC and Sports Illustrated in which Favre himself described his story as "total" bull. "Did he give up family secrets? Yes. Was it total (bull)? No."

Well, as a pseudo-member of the Sports Media, I had thought about taking on this task by myself, but lucky for me.....someone beat me to it. PFT's Mike Florio....

The relevant factors listed will be the scoop, the person who broke it, whether it was confirmed by a credible independent media outlet (OK, that will require some subjectivity as well), whether it was confirmed or denied by the persons involved, and whether the report was accurate, inaccurate, or inconclusive.

For starters, we need to come up with a good list of reporters to include. Here’s our work-in-progress roster: Jay Glazer of FOX, Chris Mortensen of ESPN, Adam Schefter of NFLN, Peter King of too many media outlets to list, John Clayton of ESPN, Alex Marvez of FOX, Michael Smith of ESPN, Michael Silver of Yahoo!, Jason Cole of Yahoo!, Charley Casserly of CBS. (Let us know who we’re missing, or whether any of these guys shouldn’t be included.)

The exercise begins Sunday and runs through the Super Bowl. We’ll then decide whether to keep it going, or whether to change it or expand it.

I think this is ultimately a great idea, but when we start to talk about the "merit of inclusion", I think that's when it gets sketchy. Many of you have talked about not even caring about who breaks news on trades and firings, and I think that's a fair point of view. If you're just a regular Sports Fan, who cares right?

I think the lesson that ultimately needs to come from this is that ESPN needs to understand that giving credit to someone else isn't a bad thing. Us Blogs do it all the time and the sharing of information will only make the public more informed. Waiting for Chris Mortensen and Michael Smith to confirm a story, just so you can spin the headline to cater to them, really needs to stop. It's not fair to the viewing audience, or the person who actually broke the news, and just makes you look like a poor sport. Hopefully something like a "Media Scorecard" can make that a reality.

Reporters engage in their own kind of trash talking (USA Today)
We're Keeping Score, Starting Now (Pro Football Talk)

ESPN just broke the news before noon, that Tony Romo is going to miss the next four week's with a broken pinky finger. Apparently the credit is going to Michael Smith today, which is surprising since Ed Werder actually leaving at Valley Ranch, and here's the video....

The channel has already made the switch to "Cowboys and Romo TV", and look for it to stay that way for the rest of the day. We've already heard from a handful of analysts, and while it's definitely a big story, but by the time we get to Monday Night Football....we'll be in overkill territory.

P.S.- ESPN is also breaking the news that Big Brown is going to be retired, and Tommy Bowden has been fired, as well.

Well then. That headline got your attention didn't it? It was clear on Wednesday, when I labeled Glazer the "Media Winner", that I was impressed with the FOX reporter, but today he took that to another level. In a brief interview with Newsday's Neil Best, Jay gave some insight into the biggest NFL story in years was scooped in an Orlando airport and even threw a potential jab at ESPN....

Fox's Jay Glazer has compiled a string of NFL-related scoops, but he had to go beyond the usual call of duty to win the Brett Favre-to-the-Jets sweepstakes late Wednesday night.

He spent nearly 24 hours in the Orlando airport waiting for the news to come down.

"I never wanted to kick Mickey Mouse's -- -- so much in my life," he said Thursday from the office of Panthers coach John Fox, whom he originally was to visit Wednesday.

"Dude, you get real creative when you spend an entire day waiting for a huge scoop in a damn airport," he said. "I felt like Tom Hanks in 'The Terminal.' I started making friends in the stores."

So the story goes like this (allegedly)....

1) ESPN's reporters are all over Favre. They suck up to him early on basically laying all their eggs in one basket. Text messages fly and the reports start rolling out all in Brett Favre's favor.
2) GM Ted Thompson isn't happy that he is getting dumped on by the biggest Sports Media entity on the planet.
3) Rachel Nichols ends up with Brett Favre on a tarmac in Green Bay (there's really no reason for this here besides the fact it was funny to write).
4) Glazer wisely chooses Thompson for information knowing that a GM would know that his OWN DAMN TEAM would know about a trade before a player would (crazy I know).
5) Glazer is told from "sources unknown" to not board a plane to Charlotte that day, and sat in the airport all day waiting for word.
6) Glazer gets the call from his "sources unknown" and goes live with the biggest NFL trade story in the history of the game at 10:45pm.
7. ESPN is still talking about Tampa Bay's plans up until about 11:25pm.
8) ESPN catches on at around 11:30 or so and scrambles to verify. They credit Glazer for a good 30 minutes before changing, "as reported by FOX Sports" to "as confirmed by Michael Smith".
9) End scene.

Arguably one of the biggest trades in Sports History was found, scooped, and written, all in an Orlando airport over 1,300 miles from the scene. How awesome is that? Healthy competition is something ESPN hasn't had for awhile now and I'm stoked to see new ideas and new people getting to things first these days. It's about damn time and someone needs to start the slow clap for Jay, immediately.

Update: As SOTG pointed out in the comments that "Mickey Mouse" comment could have been in reference to being in Orlando. I'll see if I can't get a confirmation one way or another.

Fox's Glazer spends day in airport, gets Favre scoop (Newsday)

(Oh and having someone [*ahem*MichaelSmith*ahem*] verify a story through a press release doesn't mean shouldn't continue to give credit where credit's due.)