You know the drill by this point. It’s the Cutty Awards, also known as the Jay Cutler Awards for the outstanding excellence in the Field of DOOOOOON’T CAAAAAAAARE.
We receive a lot of banal and pointless story pitches and press releases every week. Some are bad; some are worse. This week, these three stood out as the worst.
Dishonorable mention (these are the ones that just missed):
-I received one pitch where the woman sold herself as “I’m the guys’ girl that 99% of the girls approve of.” Sure you are honey, sure you are. Good luck with that.
-Huffington Post live wanted me to plug their interview with Robert Horry in which he insulted Charles Barkley in order to draw attention to himself. Why is he “attention Horring” mind you? Turner Sports produced a documentary on the championship years of the Houston Rockets and obviously that would draw attention to it.
-Another pitch I received began with “Does your gym bag stink? There’s finally a solution to your smelly sports stuff…”
Bronze Medal (third worst of the week) Rob Gronkowski is taking his family on a cruise
Gronk is taking his family on a cruise to the Bahamas in February. And we’re supposed to care because……..???? Wait, it gets worse. The publicist said in the pitch that Gronk had already Tweeted out this non-news to his 2 million followers. Because I was really was very interested in how many followers Gronk has. And they’re already aware of this cruise that…let’s just move on.
Silver Medal (second worst of the week) ESPN Popeyes Bahamas Bowl
ESPN felt it was worthy of writing an entire press releases to tell us that Popeyes chicken extended their sponsorship agreement of the Bahamas Bowl. It’s really sad that somebody would waste Disney corporation money and time on such an endeavor
Gold Medal (worst of the week) NBC SPORTS GROUP
This is a tie actually. NBC Sports gave us two equally pointless press releases. Here’s the first
-The 2015 Stanley Cup Final, featuring the Tampa Bay Lightning and Chicago Blackhawks, has averaged 4.965 million viewers on NBC/NBCSN, making it the second-most watched Stanley Cup Final through four games in 18 years,
That’s a whole lot of qualifiers there to justify writing a masturbatory press release. The second most, not the first, of a game 1-4, not for the entire series. And it’s only the second best in the past 18 years. That’s a lot of “X among Y within Z” cherry picking there. But this next one might have been worse.
-Game 3 of the Stanley Cup Final between the Tampa Bay Lightning and Chicago Blackhawks averaged 3.896 million viewers, making it the third-most watched Stanley Cup Final game ever on NBCSN.
How many games does NBC Sports put on the NBCSN channel each year 2 or 3? How many years have they been broadcasting Stanley Cup Final games on NBCSN? 3 or 4? So what this game ranks 3rd out of 10 or 11?
WOW! HUGE BREAKING NEWS!!!!
Paul M. Banks owns, operates and writes The Sports Bank.net, which is partnered with Fox Sports Digital. Banks, a former writer for the Washington Times, currently contributes to the Chicago Tribune RedEye edition. He also appears regularly on numerous sports talk radio stations all across the country.
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