Morgan Wick

The Strange Case of Chris Benoit

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WWE wrestler Chris Benoit was found dead alongside his wife Nancy and son Daniel on Monday, and all three deaths appear to be the work of Benoit himself.

The reaction to which has led to some interesting insights on human nature, or at least American culture. It seems that people’s revulsion to murder outweighs their sorrow for a figure that, up until his death, was rather well-respected in the wrestling community.

People have overcome their sadness and disbelief and switched to anger at Benoit. Many people are now upset with WWE for dedicating last night’s “Monday Night Raw” to Benoit’s death. (The show was originally to be a memorial service to the fictionally-dead Vince McMahon, but that storyline appears to be dead.) “World Wrestling Entertainment owner Vince McMahon opened tonight’s Extreme Championship Wrestling episode by saying that Chris Benoit’s name would not be mentioned at any other point during the telecast because of the revelations that have surfaced about the murder/suicide since a Benoit ntribute show aired on last night’s episode of Monday Night Raw.”

Um… what? So a guy (as it is likely to turn out) goes a little insane and kills his family and then kills himself and we focus on the murders? Don’t get me wrong, murder is bad, but does it change all the accomplishments of Benoit’s life? (Okay, I guess it does.) Can anyone really blame WWE for showing a tribute to one of its greatest wrestlers, especially since the “murderer” news hadn’t come out at the time?

Meanwhile, various news outlets are already speculating about the possible role of steroids in Benoit’s rampage, and the whole story is likely to result in a lot of renewed attention towards wrestling that it really doesn’t need…

Yet Another Greatest Movie List?

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Last week the AFI updated their 1998 “100 Years… 100 Movies” list with a “10th Anniversary” update to the list. (Let’s not get into the fact that it technically hasn’t quite been 10 years.) I’m not going to give my opinions on the list, which you can see on Wikipedia here, mostly because I’m not qualified to have any, not being a movie watcher. (But yay for Do the Right Thing cracking the Top 100!)

However, it’s apparent that lists like these appeal more to our desire to list things (and my magnetic pull to countdowns) more than anything else. That’s why regardless of anything else, the future “greatest lists” mentioned on one of the polls will become part of the future of Da Blog.

I just need people to pick some initial topics for listing, which you can do in a comment to this post for now; later I’ll introduce a more robust topic-picking system.

A reminder, if you’re just joining us…

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If you don’t know what the poll on the right side means:

  • If it asks where I should host my Web site, please refer to the Web Site Update post, and its accompanying update, which should be listed below.
  • If it asks what should be featured, just look and see which option you would most be interested in. “Sports Watcher” is a feature briefly featured on Da Blog earlier in the year. Here are some examples.

Thank you.

Quick note: When will a web site start?

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Both polls on the right side of Da Blog (only one of which is visible at a time) will run for four and a half more weeks, ending two weeks into July. This is because I probably still won’t get a lot of votes on either one, and I don’t want to launch a web site right before or while I’m in the middle of a course that’s condensed into four weeks. I probably will have a web site launched by July 15, though.

Web Site Update, one week in

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ZendURL has begun attracting some not-so-favorable responses over on free-webhosts.com. That makes me a lot more skeptical of them. I can’t really wait to find out if they’re going to fix their problems.

Scroll down to the “Web Site Update” post to learn more about the poll(s) on the right side of the screen. I need to get more votes than I have. If I get no responses on the web site host poll I’m probably going to be choosing between Freehostia and 50Webs. If I get no responses on the future-of-Da-Blog poll I’ll reissue it in broader terms.

Durations of sports television contracts

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Info from Wikipedia and research through various sources. This info is incomplete and may contain inaccuracies. Your input is welcomed if you can point me to sources to fill in absent or unknown info.

College football contracts – basketball and other sports generally through following year:
ACC thru 2010
Big 12, ABC thru 2015, FSN thru 2011
Big East thru 2013
Big 10 thru 2016
Pac-10 thru 2011
SEC, CBS and ESPN thru 2023, CSS thru 2013
MWC thru 2016 or 2020
C-USA thru 2010
MAC thru 2016
WAC thru 2016
Sun Belt thru 2011
Notre Dame thru 2015
Army thru 2014, Navy thru 2009

College basketball only:
MVC thru 2011
WCC thru 2011
Horizon League thru 2010
MAAC thru 2010
Atlantic 10 thru 2010
Patriot League thru 2008

Professional and other leagues:
NHL thru 2011
Horse Racing, Belmont Stakes on ABC at least thru 2008, NBC thru 2010
MLS, FSC thru 2010, ESPN and Univision/Telefutura thru 2014
MISL, FSC thru 2009
NIT thru 2010
US Open Cup thru 2010
AFL, ESPN thru 2011
French Open, Tennis Channel and ESPN thru 2011
Australian Open thru 2011
Wimbledon, NBC thru 2011, ESPN thru 2013
NFL, NBC thru 2012, CBS, FOX and ESPN thru 2014
PGA, NBC and CBS thru 2012, Golf Channel thru 2022
UEFA Champions League thru 2012
Olympics thru 2012
IndyCar, ABC thru 2012, Versus thru 2018
MLB thru 2013
NCAA Tournament (men’s and women’s, plus other ESPN and CBS champs) thru 2013
BCS thru 2014
NASCAR thru 2014
LLWS thru 2014
US Open (golf), ESPN thru 2014
US Open (Tennis) thru 2014
MLL thru 2016
NBA, WNBA thru 2016
British Open thru 2017
LPGA, Golf Channel thru 2019

Last Updated: July 24, 2009

Soccer… MMA… softball?

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College softball is a bigger deal than the WNBA or MLS, and is getting to be almost as big as UFC.

That’s what I have to conclude after the Women’s College World Series pulled off an average 1.5 rating, including a 1.8 for the rubber match between Arizona and Tennessee, admittedly according to ESPN itself.

I don’t know what ratings for the men’s College World Series are, but if they’re higher they’d have to poke into the twos, which is a bit mind-boggling.

So let’s go out there and start a pro softball league! Well, first of all, the Women’s Final Four gets pretty good ratings, roughly comparable with this, but the WNBA stinks up the ratings somewhere in the vicinity of .4. That said, we already have one, and I’d barely heard of it before last year. It’s six teams with hope for expansion, but despite having MLB as “official development partner”, you probably haven’t heard of it either. It’s not actually part of MLB but it seems to have failed at marketing compared to WNBA and MLS nonetheless. Of course, also part of its problem is that it has teams in Chicago AND Rockford, but none in NY or LA.

Competition for cable boxes! Hooray! Oh wait…

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The FCC is finally enforcing an 11-year-old rule requiring cable companies to allow competition for their set-top boxes. (I’d like to see competition for the companies themselves, as opposed to the fake competition that gives them local monopolies, but whatever.)

After more than a decade of cable-company stalling, FCC head honcho Kevin Martin is mad as hell, and he isn’t going to take it anymore. The cable companies are, effective July 1, finally going to have to separate their navigational (channel-changing) and security (scrambling channels) functions, with the latter to now be served by “cable cards” that plug into the back of the machines.

Now you’ll be able to buy your cable box instead of having to pay the cable company a little extra each month for it. Sounds great, right? The cable industry is just being obstructionist?

Except $5-10 a month sure seems like a better option than hundreds of dollars one time. Then again, over time the box you own yourself becomes a better option, plus you can take it with you when you move (and perhaps, just maybe, at some point, when you change cable companies without moving). But the hard-and-fast deadline is hindering progress on two other fronts:

  • Cable cards have so far proven unreliable, since cable companies have no interest in making them work, and consumers may have difficulty tracking them down. A computer chip inside the box that downloads security settings would be a better deal, but right now cable companies are scrambling to meet the deadline they already have. Even Martin thinks “downloadable security” is a better idea than cable cards and would have let cable companies go to that instead… if only they had made a firm commitment to the technology.
  • The “generic” boxes won’t have interactive-technology functions like VOD and PPV. The cable companies haven’t been able to agree on a protocol with the to-be-manufacturers of generic cable boxes. The electronics companies want the FCC to nudge along progress on that front, but they’re a bit busy with this deadline right now.

I’m almost tempted to say the FCC should grant another one-year extension, this time with interactive-function and downloadable-security provisions attached. All the previous extentions have been the result of cable company stalling; now we’d have one to iron out real problems. Assuming Martin is still head of the FCC in 2008, it would not start a slippery-slope process.

But I have an idea that could prevent this sort of thing in the future. When a regulatory agency extends a deadline, it should act as though the old deadline is still in place, and levy fines (not as big as that for missing the real deadline) against all agencies not already in compliance.

Had that been followed at the start, cable companies would have actually gotten cracking on separation, instead of continuing to stall for over a decade. Extensions would have been made in good faith instead of just to stall.

Of course, the real problem is that the FCC allowed itself to be in the pocket of cable companies for so long…

The most pivotal day in "Versus" history?

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Versus will televise Big 12 and Pac-10 football games as part of a new agreement with FSN, a rehash of FSN’s prior deal with TBS. I’d be more impressed if FSN hadn’t already let Pac-10 games go to ESPN and made another agreement with ESPN for Big 12 games.

This is great news for Versus and terrible news for fans of those conferences who have longed for them to get off FSN. TBS to Versus is a big step down. On the other hand, while Versus isn’t likely to get The Game That Will Determine The National Championship (between ABC and FSN), this is exactly what Versus needs to do to establish its bona fides as a major sports power before the Big Three contracts come up for renewal again in the mid-2010’s. Versus’ limited distribution and the fact that it counted on major sports to establish its reputation, instead of making sure they had one going in, helped kill their shots at NFL and MLB rights (though Versus’ best shot at the mighty NFL, especially considering their distribution, was probably always the package the NFL relegated to the NFL Network for reasons not concerning the individual drawbacks of any network).

Getting the sort of sports that characterized the early days of ESPN and ESPN2 is also a must. Versus has already gotten a head start on that with NLL and MISL coverage, and dipped its toe into Arena Football coverage last season. Jumping into more mid-major sports, like MLS and the WNBA, would seem to be a logical next step, but MLS and AFL rights are locked up into the next decade, and WNBA (and NBA) rights are pretty much too far into negotiations at this point, with the pens practically already sitting by the contract.

The Big 12 has already re-upped with ABC and FSN, a deal that starts in 2008. Versus might be able to interject itself in SEC negotiations, which are up for renegotiation soon for a new deal starting 2009. Both football and basketball are shown on CBS and ESPN, but ESPN’s coverage of the SEC is rather limited, with lesser games (including the basketball semifinals, a bit of notoriety shared by no other Big Six conference) relegated to regional syndication.

Versus probably overestimated the cache of the NHL today in trying to line up deals for better sports. Now they have to hope that even mid-level Big 12 and Pac-10 games will draw enough eyeballs to stop itself from being a joke for any league over the NHL line. I can’t exactly say the battle of Iowa is a good sign of what’s to come, but at least now they might edge just a little bit higher.