By Paul M. Banks
-The Chicago Blackhawks organization and Chairman W. Rockwell “Rocky” Wirtz are both finalists in two separate categories at the 2009 Sports Business Awards. The organization has been selected as a finalist in the category of Professional Sports Team of the Year, while Wirtz has been chosen as a finalist in the category of Sports Executive of the Year.
-And they were recently dubbed one of the greatest sports industry turnaround stories of all time by Forbes magazine
-Even though the chances of the Hawks advancing past Detroit are bleak at best, I got to hand it to the Chicago fans, who changed the “Let’s Go Hawks” chant to “De-troit Sucks” for this round.
-If you hear a song enough times, I guarantee you’ll grow to like it- no matter how annoying you found it originally. Such is the case with “Chelsea Dagger” by the Fratelli’s, the Amstel Light song and Hawks goal scoring song.
-By the way if you still haven’t seen the Hawks home intro video that is shown pre-game on the scoreboard at all home games, it’s pretty cool and depicts Chicago in a post-apocalyptic Ice Age.
-Don’t you hate it when you’re watching a game and you get up to get something and then you miss something important. Hottie actress Ali Larter was at game 3 and I missed it when they showed her on the scoreboard because I was in the bathroom at the time. Damn that sucked.
-“Hype this up” when you get the chance on Ballhype
Will we see an Openly Gay Male Athlete in Major Sports? by PAUL M. BANKS on 05/06/09 for the first time ever, polls show more Americans favor same sex marriage than are against it. This new plurality in regards to gay rights makes me wonder when the games played on rinks, fields and courts will catch up to the legal courts
-“We just try to go 1-0 every tweet. After each tweet, we’re back at 0-0”
Northwestern University head football coach Pat Fitzgerald has joined the latest social networking phenomenon — Twitter! With the launch of Fitzgerald’s official Twitter account, coachfitz51, fans can receive instant updates, or “tweets,” directly from Coach Fitzgerald via the internet or on their mobile phone.
-Check out the opening intro paragraphs from Frank Rich’s May 10th New York Times column. Rich is the Times’ Sunday feature columnist.
IF you wanted to pick the moment when the American news business went on suicide watch, it was almost exactly three years ago. That’s when Stephen Colbert, appearing at the annual White House Correspondents’ Association dinner, delivered a monologue accusing his hosts of being stenographers who had, in essence, let the Bush White House get away with murder (or at least the war in Iraq). To prove the point, the partying journalists in the Washington Hilton ballroom could be seen (courtesy of C-Span) fawning over government potentates — in some cases the very “sources” who had fed all those fictional sightings of Saddam Hussein’s W.M.D.
Colbert’s routine did not kill. The Washington Post reported that it “fell flat.” The Times initially did not even mention it. But to the Beltway’s bafflement, Colbert’s riff went viral overnight ultimately to have a marathon run as the most popular video on iTunes. The cultural disconnect between the journalism establishment and the public it aspires to serve could not have been more vividly dramatized.
-Now check out this excerpt from this site’s “Media Mission Statement” from a speech I originally wrote in 2007 and gave at the Scholoastic Press Association and let me know if I have a legitimate plagiarism gripe
“100 years from now, journalism schools all over the world will point to this moment as a critical turning point in media history. In his courageous speech, he called out the major media for all their mistakes and the numerous issues that they covered erroneously. His poignant and accurate observations led to his performance landing harsh reviews from the newspapers and “old media.” Of course, this would happen as the people reviewing him were some of the very same people he slammed during his performance.
They claimed that he “died” on stage. However, the video of his performance quickly spread through the internet and blogosphere where his reviewers found him hilarious and witty. They said he “killed” on stage. One routine elicited two completely different perceptions for the media consumer. In a previous era, only the first report would have prevailed.
It was destined to happen. During the past few years, the major news media saturated us with O.J. Simpson, Michael Richards, Natalee Holloway, Jessica Lynch, Terri Schiavo, Lacey Peterson, Chandra Levy, the Duke Lacrosse team, Anna Nicole Smith and the ‘Runaway Bride.’ For nearly all their viewers, these stories all had little or no bearing on their daily lives. These cost effective to report and produce stories had no actual importance for most people and stood in place of the actual issues that dramatically affect us all.”
-Just in case you needed more evidence that newspapers are obsolete. The Jake Peavy to the White Sox storyline had 3 major plots In the beginning of the day it was “Peavy deal near as Whote Sox desperate for good news” by mid morning it was “Padres and White Sox agree on Trade” By late afternoon it was “Self-interested douchebag Peavy nixes trade to pathetic White Sox.” So if you’re a newspaper man, you were a day late and buck short twice that day. The Ballhype headlines really dropped the ball on that one too by the way.
-Our friends at Midwest Sports.com came up with a Peavy petition.
http://www.petitionspot.com/petitions/peavywhitesox/
-I was working on my NBA off season columns for Walter Football and when I go to the Phoenix Suns, it reminded me of how terrible their defense is. Basically they’re hip-hop artist T.I. because they tells opponents “you can go wherever you like”
-Speaking of the Phoenix region…Ned Flanders once said “looks like Heaven is easier to get into than Arizona State.” And you had to wonder what the school with the 92% acceptance rate was thinking when they denied Obama an honorary degree even though he spoke at their “graduation”
Check this out from Yardbarker
“ASU’s excuse for denying Obama’s honorary degree was because his “body of work is yet to come.” Someone needs to step up and take responsibility for the real reason why Obama was denied the degree. Maybe it was because Arizona is John McCain’s state or because McCain has donated a lot of money to the school or even because it’s a Republican state. Whatever the real reason is, don’t lie and tell us that it because Obama isn’t good enough. That’s like saying LeBron James isn’t good enough to play on your REC league team or that Yao Ming isn’t tall enough to play on your squad!”
-Conservative douchenozzle Mancow was waterboarded a couple days ago. He lasted a mere 8 seconds, and quickly admitted that this practice was indeed torture. SO he came around- hopefully that fat piece of shit and pure evil Dick Cheney might do the same day. But probably not- because that disgrace to America got 5 deferments from the Vietnam Draft. If you still agree with Cheney’s arguments on this issue, you should watch this video of Mancow being waterboarded and realize that you are indeed too stupid to live.
Even if the Wings eliminate Chi tomorrow, it’s been quite a year
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