The Big Lead is all overwhat the Grinder noticed last night, watching Texas play Ohio State. FOX couldn’t stop cutting to Colt McCoy’s family in the stands because of McCoy’s ridiculously hot girlfriend. The lovely young lady is Rachel Glandorf, a track star at Baylor and reporter for the CBS affiliate in Austin. Yum.
Nobody in broadcasting does the cutaway like FOX. They are utterly addicted to shots of family in the stands or players on the bench, cheering or looking agonized. Sometimes it works, like with Rachel Glandorf. Sometimes it comes off as an incredibly obvious and cheap ploy to make the game seems more exciting than it is. Sometimes, it's Brenda Warner. Possibly the worst variation is the Ultra-Closeup, which FOX uses when they cover MLB. They cut to someone's yes, just his eyes, and slowly pull back to reveal... a bench coach staring. Big whoop. Note to FOX: People have HD now. Beingh that close to someone's face is like working at dermatologist's office. There are some things that you don't want to see clearly.
ESPN.com has officially launched their big redesign. A writer for Venture beat.com is peeved. He shouldn't be. Or, at least, he shouldn't be surprised. ESPN, while having some of the best writing anywhere online, has always buried their content under a blizzard of unnecessary multimedia, like pop-up video of the same highlight package you watched the night before on a bigger screen. On some basic level, higher-ups at the Worldwide Leader seem to view their web presence as a kind of mutated TV channel, rather than a viable medium of its own.
Hardball Times has a long story on Lefties vs. Righties that starts slowly, but eventually gets pretty cool. There are even charts and graphs for huge stat geeks like us. If you are one of those people eagerly counting down the days until pitchers and catchers report, or worse, until the World Baseball Classic, this piece will suck up the better part of your day.
Finally, Sports By Brooks picks up a story in British paper claiming that titanium head golf clubs "ping" so loudly that constant use could make golfers go deaf. Which is "why John Daly can't hear all those people telling him to get help."
