Ah yes, what holiday season would be complete without a clip from Pam Ward to celebrate your New Year? Pammy thought she was throwing it to the studio for an update during the thrilling Little Caesars Pizza Bowl, but alas....she was still on live. Enjoy (from KSJ via Deadspin)!

The irony of all of this is that Ray Bentley went on a ten minute spiel about how professional was (when discussing females in Sports because of the female ref) earlier in the game. Too funny, and I a perfect video to end the decade with. Where would I be without you Pammy?

XOXO,
AA

This was covered in the PWC on Saturday, but the World of Issac happened to pull the video, so I thought I'd share the clip. Michigan State had a pretty amazing comeback (as amazing as Big Ten Football can get I guess) against Wisconsin on Saturday, and it took a game winning FG after a nice drive to do so.

During said drive, the Spartans were out of timeouts and had a third and ten with :41 on left on the clock. Listen to the brilliance of Pam as she calls for the ever-genius, "spike the ball on fourth down" play!

Again, this is the announcer that the Washington Post referred to as, "always prepared to the max, knows her Xs and Os inside and out and sets up her analyst partners beautifully." Man, did she ever setup Ray Bentley on that one! I think we might have our Pammy winner before I even post the voting this afternoon. Good lord.

Pam Ward Continues Her Idiocy (The World Of Issac)
A Weekend Well Spent Surfing (WaPo)

I don't know how many people caught last night's thrilling victory by Middle Tennesse State over Florida Atlantic on ESPN2, but a new feature was debuted called "Interactive Tuesday". There were video clips, emails, soundbytes, votes and scrolling messages, and announcers Todd Harris and Ray Bentley constantly highlighted them throughout the game. There was only one small problem, apparently they were unedited before being displayed and some of the more asinine moments were caught by Complain In Vain....

(1) First, we saw the following message scroll atop our screen from a watcher named Landry Arnett: “sec title game: bama and lsu forget florida who loses to ole miss.” So, Landry had to take the time to sit down at his computer and write this, but not once consider is that is even a possibility? Seriously, there is 0% chance that these two teams could meet in the SEC title. None, nada. LSU is in the SEC West, Alabama is in the SEC West.

(2) Next, another message scrolls atop the screen. This one is not quite so offensive, but we do appreciate misuse of the English language. This was from texaswinbig12: “I think that Texas is a very good team this year even better then Bama.”

In the end, Middle Tennessee (nicknamed the Blue Raiders) won on a pretty exciting Hail Mary play as time expired. Just after the 32-yard game-winning touchdown pass was brought down by the receiver, Harris exclaims, “And the Blue Raiders snatch defeat from…[trails off]” then comes back with “Blue Raiders win!”

All hilarious moments, but nothing was better than the voting process. At multiple times throughout the night, both Harris and Bentley tried to use results from polls to add excitement, but when only 1,338 people vote on a poll that was posted in the second quarter....it's probably not the best idea to highlight that at the end of the game....


It seems like a fun idea in theory, and maybe ESPN is testing it out on lesser viewed games first, but they might want to work out some of the kinks before trying it again. Either that or just lie about the number of voters at the end of the night. That's just embarrassing.

Interactive Tuesday (for idiots) (Complain In Vain)

I honestly don't have anything wrong with Arena Football, but for some reason I just can't get into it. About the only clips I've ever posted are of referees getting hit in the balls and players or coaches cursing their brains out. Well ESPN is trying their darndest to get you Football geeks into the game, and they're planning on-airing a whole game with the majority of audio coming from on-field action and interviews. Via ESPN PR.....

ESPN2 will present a special “Live-Wired” telecast of Russell Athletic ESPN Arena Football that will bring viewers into the arena through additional microphones, locker room access, and wall-to-wall action and sound from the AFL matchup between the Philadelphia Soul and Georgia Force Monday, May 12, at 8 p.m. on ESPN2 and in high definition on ESPN2 HD. The game will also be simulcast on ESPN360.com and ESPN Mobile TV.

Analyst Ray Bentley will narrate the game and lead viewers in and out of breaks, timeouts and plays in the red zone, as well as conduct live interviews throughout the telecast. Most of the audio will come from on-field action through commentary from the players, coaches and referees. ESPN2 will utilize sevenseven [sic] microphones total.

I'm not sure if our friend Ray Bentley is the only announcer, but this is definitely an interesting approach. If you played the entire game without announcers I'd probably watch the whole thing, but with Ray asking questions I might just watch a quarter. Either way I'm watching though right?

It's gotta be tough for an announcer when there are audio problems for just about the entire game. It's also gotta be tough when the studio throws the game back to you and you don't know you're on-air....

"What?!?"

Pam and Ray have been disappearing every so often while calling the MAC Championship game. Stan Verrett and Jesse Palmer have been calling the action from the studio, but it's been slow going. Verrett should never call a game again....audio problems or not. It seemed like he was on a 10 second delay. I guess it's possible that the TV screen he was watching on could have been 30 feet away though.