Despite my gig at Awful Announcing, I don’t get to talk about sports media on the radio that much. (I know it’s kind of a niche topic unless there’s a big story like ESPN’s Maria Taylor-Rachel Nichols uproar earlier this year.) So it was fun to talk about some of the current rumors about who Amazon will hire for Thursday Night Football and respond to both Cris Collinsworth and Desmond Howard causing a stir with what they recently said on TV.
Yep, it was a good football weekend here at Casselbloggy HQ. Michigan won the Big Ten championship and a spot in the College Football Playoff, matched up against Georgia. And the Detroit Lions won their first game of the 2021 season. So that led off our WISE Sports Radio segment.
That’s probably fortunate because there’s not much baseball news to discuss with team owners locking out the players after Major League Baseball’s collective bargaining agreement expired, other than some good news from the Baseball Hall of Fame. (Pardon the audio briefly dropping out at the 6:45 mark.)
Between schedule shuffles on WISE Sports Radio with the high school football season and Thanksgiving, it’s been a while since I’ve been on to talk football. I almost didn’t make this week’s segment as an emergency came up right before I was to go on the air. But everything calmed down and was OK in a couple hours, so I was able to call in for the final segment.
Adrian Peterson extending his long NFL career with another team, Christian McCaffrey going down for the season, the risk of committing long-term to running backs, Sean Payton’s love for Taysom Hill, and Michigan’s chances in the Big Ten championship game were among the topics I chatted about with Pat Ryan and Mike Gore.
Mondays typically mean baseball talk for me on WISE Sports Radio. But with Michigan’s huge win over Ohio State on Saturday, Pat Ryan wanted to get my Wolverines fan feelings on Jim Harbaugh finally beating the Buckeyes on his sixth try, 42-27.
But baseball teams are throwing some big money at free agent talent, looking to beat the Dec. 2 deadline when team owners will lock out the players and bring the offseason to a freeze. Max Scherzer drew the top headlines by signing with the New York Mets. But plenty of other free agents, including infielder Marcus Semien, pitchers Robbie Ray and Kevin Gausman, signed multi-million contracts shortly before we went on the air.
The NFL reacted to outrage over a bad pass interference call in the 2018 NFC Championship Game by making it reviewable under instant replay. But officials reviewed the plays so badly, rarely overturning even an apparent call, that the league has decided to nix it for the 2020 season.
On Thursday’s WISE Sports Radio NFL segment, Pat Ryan and I talk about that rule, the decision not to add a “sky judge” for instant replay this coming season, a left tackle heading for a big payday, the quieter Cleveland Browns, and… my favorite Michigan player in the NFL.
Ian Casselberry 