Sports

Chief  New York Times “Caucus” blog contributor Michael Shear celebrated Bracket Obama in a Saturday morning post on the president's college basketball tournament pool picks --“Obama’s N.C.A.A. Bracket Is One of the Best.” The wins just keep piling up for the president, at least on the court, in Shear’s telling. Being president is an ego trip. So you would have thought President Obama wouldn’…

David Gregory is best-known as the calm, if liberal, host of NBC’s Meet the Press on Sunday mornings. But he’s also a fan of the Washington Capitals hockey team and as a local celebrity, along with Pat Sajak, he volunteered to help cheer on the team with its “Unleash the Fury!” in-game presentation centered around actor Tom Green reprising the line from the same scene he played in the movie…

Jon Meacham, the liberal host of PBS's "Need to Know," frankly admitted Thursday that media scrutiny of President Bush would far surpass the mild criticism of Barack Obama when it comes to a 10-minute ESPN segment on the President filling out his NCAA Tournament bracket. Stalwart liberals such as MSNBC "Morning Joe" co-host Mika Brzezinski and California Lt. Governor Gavin Newsom (D)…

MSNBC's Chuck Todd on Thursday fretted over the blame Barack Obama is enduring for making televised NCAA picks during the ongoing crises in Libya and Japan. After gushing over the President's basketball predictions on Wednesday, Todd followed up by lamenting, "Makes people wonder why anyone wants the job." Talking to former Bush aide Tony Fratto, a defensive Todd argued, "[The White House…

On Thursday's CBS Early Show, news reader Jeff Glor declared: "President Obama is ready for March Madness, it appears. He broke out the brackets at the White House yesterday and made his picks in the NCAA basketball tournament." However, he lamented how the commander in chief "Didn't exactly go out on a limb....For his Final Four he chose all number one seeds." Only moments earlier, Glor…

Diane Sawyer allocated all but 1:37 of World News to Japan on Wednesday night, committing 33 seconds of that limited time to touting President Obama’s NCAA basketball picks provided to ABC corporate cousin ESPN. “Despite all the troubles around the world” Sawyer rationalized – as if there’s much evidence Obama, who’s hardly been engaged in the Libyan or Japanese situations and who went…

MSNBC's Chuck Todd on Wednesday hyped the fact that Barack Obama will be making his NCAA tournament picks on ESPN. The Daily Rundown anchor enthused, "You got about 27 hours to get your brackets in. The President has already done his." Perhaps referencing the devastating earthquake in Japan or the ongoing crisis in Libya, Todd vaguely  allowed, "He's a bit distracted, of course. Maybe he…

I’ve been a sports fan all my life. Of course being raised in the Southeast we took our college football very much to heart and it would be hard to be raised in North Carolina as I was and not be Dixie proud of the legendary brand of basketball that’s played in the Atlantic Coast Conference.

During a Monday morning recap of the Super Bowl, "Morning Joe" co-host Joe Scarborough asked, tongue-in-cheek, if "right-wing, talk radio conservatives" would blame President Obama for the ghastly national anthem performance by four-time Grammy winner Christina Aguilera. Amidst the light-hearted banter, Scarborough turned serious and asked "when we talked about what's driving the week –…

As some blogs have already reported, ESPN columnist Rick Reilly implored President Obama in his Monday column to take direct action against college football's BCS system. Arguing that the BCS is run by a conglomerate of elites representing the power conferences and the bowl games, Reilly pleaded with Obama to work to install a playoff system in college football. "What a lie this BCS era is…

Not even NBC Sports could stay out of politics the day after the election, on what must have been a slow NFL news day. The provocative headline "Republican Tidal Wave Could Carry Vikings To L.A." was featured prominently on NBC Sports' ProFootballTalk.com Wednesday.

Steroids are back in the news with the arrest of a Canadian doctor charged with providing performance-enhancing drugs to top athletes. It’s a major issue in the sports world, raising the question whether some of today’s most-well-known sports stars violated rules to boost their performance. At the same time, the ethics of how The New York Times handled the investigation also raises serious…

"I've said many times before, we're all held to a high standard here." - Roger Goodell, NFL Commissioner...except when our players are engaged in sexist conversations.Fresh off the heels of a locker room controversy involving reporter Ines Sainz, in which Goodell referred to New York Jets players as engaging in ‘unprofessional conduct' toward a female reporter, we have a couple of star NFL…

Perhaps it was just a publicity stunt for his impending MSNBC show, but Lawrence O'Donnell went Crazy Larry on Morning Joe today. The lefty host of The Last Word unleashed on an unlikely target: AFL-CIO head Richard Trumka.  What ignited Larry's tirade was Trumka's professed concern for the contract-negotiations plight of professional football players. O'Donnell was outraged that the union…