Sports

New York Times contributing writer Jonathan Mahler was featured on the front of the Sports section Saturday, opining on two drug-related prosecutions in the sports world, “Why Clemens and Armstrong Aren’t Worth Pursuing Anymore.“ Mahler, who writes for the paper’s Sunday magazine and the Book Review, managed to drag the Iraq War, the Bush administration, even the ancient Ken Starr…

The following post was based on a misunderstanding of the conversation described. Please see our retraction here. Tuesday's Morning Joe treated the conviction of former Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich as a relatively minor affair, and gave it little to no coverage save a brief discussion about the supposed injustice of the process. "It's any other day and that's any other news story," said…

Trying to submerge its own network’s “under God” censorship into a greater narrative, Monday’s NBC Nightly News managed to combine into one disjointed story, pegged to “a tough slog” over the weekend “when it comes to the campaign to get along in our public discourse,” the NBC Sports decision to remove “under God” from the Pledge of Allegiance in its opening montage for the U.S. Open golf…

According to his University of Maryland faculty bio, Kevin Blackistone "is a former award-winning sports columnist for The Dallas Morning News from September 1990 to September 2006." He has written for AOL's FanHouse; his most recent column is here); he was likely released when AOL recently laid off its FanHouse employees as a result of what I refer to as "Huffington's Heist." In a Monday…

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…