Bleacher Report makes me want to kick someone in the balls.

At first glance, Bleacher Report seems like a quasi-legitimate sports news website.  Some stories from Bleacher Report could easily be imagined on the front page of ESPN.com (UFC 100: Octagon Girls of the Past and Present) or in a Rick Reilly column (Lamar Odom: “O-done” with the Los Angeles Lakers?)

While reporters for ESPN and other players in mainstream sports media may be hacks, they’re professional hacks who have to at least ground their reporting in facts and reason, and their reporting generally has at least a shred of significance to the average viewer.  The same can’t be said of the esteemed contributors to Bleacher Report.  They’re just plain old hacks.  And they usually have no idea what the hell they’re talking about.

Case in point, this conspiracy theory from some clueless fan about Favre intentionally losing games for some dumb reason or another:

As for the Jets, they ultimately profited from Favre’s brief time there. Yet they were just a pawn in Favre’s game.   The enemy was the Packers. For their grief, they get just a third round pick out of Favre—not the second rounder or the potential three first round picks possible if the Jets had dealt him.

I’ve heard more coherent and logical theories from my toaster.

Aside from the just plain dumb, there’s the just plain pointless, evidenced by this Packers fan giving his entirely arbitrary predictions for the Madden ratings for Green Bay’s players, ratings which happen to have already been released.

You’re also sure to find an inordinately large amount of uninformed analysis.  Reading one of CheeseheadTV’s exceptional articles breaking down new defensive schemes or contract negotiations puts Bleacher Report to shame.

And for God’s sake, why does Bleacher Report show up in Google News?  If I wanted to hear 30 random assholes offering their fascinating opinions and speculation about Brett Favre, I’d turn on SportsCenter.

Aaron Rodgers Courts a Grapefruit Heiress

Via the New York Post, we now know that Aaron Rodgers has been seen “cozying up with” grapefruit heiress and swimsuit model Julie Henderson (Thank God for the New York Post and its journalistic integrity–get with it New York Times!)

Insert grapefruit/breast joke here.

Sexy Rexy is Houston-bound.

Former Bears QB and noted Sex Cannon Rex Grossman will sign with the Houston Texans.

This appears to have been a master move by the ingenious mega-agent, Drew Rosenhaus.  Surely, on a team that has long been starved for talent at the quarterback position, Sexy Rexy will find himself on top of the depth chart in no time.

Wait, what’s that?  He’s going to be battling some guy I’ve never heard of to be the third string quarterback?  Behind Dan Orlovsky?  Scramble-out-of-the-endzone-for-a-safety Dan Orlovsky?  Oh….

Are bloggers’ anonymous sources better than traditional writers’ anonymous sources?

packergeeks says that Favre will be a Viking by the end of the week.

Follow us on Twitter.

PACKERwatch is finally hip and cool, now that we have one of those newfangled tweeting machines.

Click here to follow everything that we twitter twit tweet.

I am now fully prepared to engage in Twitter warfare.

Yahoo! Sports tries out innovative new journalistic technique of just making stuff up.

A Yahoo! Sports headline screams:  ”Packers’ Kampman appears unhappy with move to LB.”

So, why does Yahoo! Sports think Kampman is unhappy?  Allow them to explain:

“There’s always a learning curve,” said Kampman.”

I wonder what their headline would be if Kampman had actually made a quote indicating any unhappiness whatsoever.  ”Kampman threatens to kill Ted Thompson?”

Fran Tarkenton is not Brett Favre’s biggest fan.

Fran Tarkenton:

“I think it’s despicable. What he put the Packers through last year was not good.  Here’s an organization that was loyal to him for 17, 18 years, provided stability of organization, provided players. It just wasn’t about Brett Favre. But, you know, in this day and time, we have glorified the Brett Favre’s of the world so much, they think it’s about them. He goes to New York and bombs. He’s 39 years old. How would you like Ray Nitschke playing in his last year for the Vikings, or how ’bout I retire, and go play for the Packers? I kind of hope it happens, so he can fail.”

But wait, there’s more!

“It’s about team.  It’s not about Brett Favre.  So he goes and runs up to the Jets, doesn’t even dress in the locker room with the players, has a separate facility…it’s all about him, and it’s supposed to be all about your team.”

Tarkenton then proceeds to list a lot of big games that Favre blew that I’d rather not remember.  This is only a small sampling of the rant.  To listen to the audio of the whole Favre segment, click here.

Tundra Vision misses the good ole’ days

The funny thing about nostalgia is that things were almost never as good as we remember them to be.  A perfect example of this is on display at Tundra Vision today:

Journalism was once a noble profession, because we trusted those writing for us to be noble, honest, and to have integrity.

First of all, journalism has never been any more or less noble than any other profession, and journalists have always been prone to the exact same biases and flaws as anyone.  The idea that journalists were some kind of pure crusaders for all that is right in the world until 1994 is absurd.

Secondly, sports journalism doesn’t need to be unbiased, even in its most ideal form.  Sports are games.  On the list of things that are truly important, they fall somewhere between American Idol and what Michael Savage says about anything.  So it doesn’t really matter if Greg Doyel wants to rip on Favre apologists in his columns, just like it doesn’t matter if I want to rip on Lions fans for being from Detroit.

Anchors were encouraged to develop catchphrases and inject their personality into the show, so you were just as likely to tune in to see Dan Patrick and Keith Olbermann perform their little comedy routine as you were to see what happened on the field that day.

The reason new media serves as a refuge from people like Dan Patrick isn’t because blogs don’t inject their personality into their writing; it’s because their personality is more interesting, and their jokes are funnier.  Scrolling through the comment section on a single post from Deadspin will deliver more laughs than an entire year’s worth of Rick Reilly’s columns.

Finally, Tundra Vision’s logic seems to have a paradox:

Today’s sports media is aghast that their jobs as they knew them are in jeopardy, but in part, that is their own doing.

The people Tundra Vision is accusing of bad journalistic practices (ESPN, Jim Rome, PTI, etc.) are not in any danger of losing their jobs.  As much as ESPN sucks (and I completely agree that it does), it’s not in danger of fading into obscurity any time soon.  In fact, the people who are losing their jobs are the very people Tundra Vision defends:  the entirely objective, facts-only, no-commentary newspaper reporters.  And the biggest reason they are losing relevance is because newspaper is an outdated medium.  Why do I need to read a recap of Sunday’s games in Monday morning’s newspaper when I can instantly find scores, stats, and all the other facts about a game instantly online after the game?  And for more in depth analysis of a game, I can wait a few more hours after a game and browse through the Packers blogosphere to find a detailed breakdown of just what went right and what went wrong.

Of course I could be wrong.  Maybe it is all Jim Rome’s fault.

Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel discovers Photoshop.

 

Photoshop is really neat-o!

Now they just need to find less nonsensical ways to use this fascinating technology.

My Thursday Night Football parties just got a lot less crowded.

Comcast and the NFL finally reached a compromise on the 2-year dispute over which cable tier to put NFL Network on (If this sounds like something not worth a seemingly interminable 24-month blood feud, that’s because it isn’t.)  That means cable customers can now watch Thursday night games, and that means I’m not the only person on my block with the game on.