The Chicago Bulls will present a team-autographed game ball from Game 6 of the Bulls-Atlanta Hawks series to the family of Daryl Hawks, the late Chicago sportscaster who was set to call that series-clinching game when he died suddenly last week at the age of 38. Hawks was found unresponsive in his hotel room on May 12 and was rushed to a hospital where he was pronounced dead.

Before Game Three of the Nashville Predators-Vancouver Canucks game, this cameraman gets smoked (double entendre!) when a Predators player comes out during pregame introductions and runs over the cameraman (who’d been obscured by smoke).

(H/T to Puck Daddy)

Announcer Ron Franklin has filed a lawsuit against ESPN for wrongful termination in his home city of Austin, Texas.

Franklin confirmed the report to Michael McCarthy of the USA Today but declined to comment on how much he’s seeking in damages or details of the lawsuit.

Earlier this month, Franklin was pulled from a radio broadcast after making derogatory comments towards colleague Jeannie Edwards.

Two days after the story broke, Franklin was fired from ESPN after 25 years.

NBC sideline reporter Andrea Kremer chimed in on the Ron Franklin/Jeannine Edwards incident, telling USA Today reporter Michael McCarthy that the vitriol towards women sideline reporters is out of control.

“The vitriol that is spewed forth about women, women in sports TV, female sideline reporters is just so out of control,” said Kremer. “It always boils down to: Why are there women sideline reporters? What do they really do? Inane questions that are so antiquated, so passé. It’s not what it’s about. The focus should be on the performance of a Jeannine Edwards. The focus should be on: What did Pam Oliver contribute to the telecast? It should be about the analysis a Suzy Kolber brings, not whether Joe Namath‘s trying to kiss her one day. The focus always gets off the performance and contributions that we bring. I don’t understand that. People are assailing Jeannine Edwards. Why?” Read more

If football ad sales are any indication, the ad recovery the business is seeing this year is the real deal. As we reported last week, ad sales look to be strong for the upcoming 2010-2011 season, but we had no idea they would be this strong.

Sports Business Journal‘s John Ourand reports that Fox has sold out nearly all of its Super Bowl spots at around $3 million a pop.

So far, CBS, NBC, ESPN and NFL Network all say they are at least 90% sold for the season, which is still a few weeks away from starting.

So what is behind the strong comeback? All of the networks seem to agree on that one:

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