James defeated his broadcast partner Mike Patrick in Round 1 and was never tested along the way, also beating out some of the biggest names in AA lore – Rick Reilly, Stephen A. Smith, Chris Berman, and Joe Buck. His victories over Berman and Buck were astoundingly ginormous. 77% of the vote against Berman and 85% of the vote against Buck (over 21,000 votes in the Final were cast for Craig James).

Is James an “awful” announcer? That’s debatable. Frankly I’ve never found anything he’s said to be particularly insightful or inflammable; but he’s a former college football star from Texas, who happens to be telegenic, so he gets a lot of airtime on the World Wide Leader. Is he an “awful” human being? That assessment might have more traction, at least when you consider Awful Announcing’s take on why James was so unpopular among voters in the site’s tournament.

In case you’ve been in the Alaskan wilderness the last two years, James’ son Adam was at the center of a scandal that resulted in Mike Leach being fired from Texas Tech. Since, Leach has been on a crusade against Tech, Craig James, and ESPN in what appeared to be a “he said, she said” kind of roundabout argument.

But when excerpts from Leach’s new book, Swing Your Sword, were introduced it was a gamechanger. Now, we had visible proof through e-mails between James and his hired trolls at Spaeth Communications that the PR campaign against Leach was largely bogus. Spaeth and James conspired to falsely vilify Leach, forward lies from Adam James as truth, pollute blogs with fake comments, and feed fabrications to ESPN “reporters,” all the while grinding a personal axe against Leach for not treating Adam James with the regality that he deserved. Simply, Craig James took part in a false character assassination using his position in the college football media and on the “leader” to do nothing more than carry out his petty, childish, pathetic personal agenda.

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Bob Wolfley at the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel reports that the game earned a 57.0 share in overnights. Better yet, “a whopping 85 percent of the sets on at the time were tuned to the game.”

So basically, if you were watching television in Milwaukee Sunday afternoon, you were watching one thing: The Pack beat up Da Bears.

Impressively, the 2007 NFC Championship game between the Packers and the New York Giants earned a 58.5 rating, although only a 78 share.

(H/t Fang’s Bites)

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Sports Media Watch (via Turner Sports) reports, “Through 18 telecasts, TNT is averaging a 1.6 U.S. rating and 2.589 million viewers for NBA coverage, up 33 percent in ratings and 43 percent in viewership from last year (1.2, 1.813 mil), and up 60 percent and 71 percent, respectively, from 2008-09 (1.0, 1.518 mil).

The Miami Heat-Boston Celtics match on opening night and the Heat-Cleveland Cavaliers game were the two most-watched regular season telecasts since 1996. LeBron James is the new Michael Jordan, at least when it comes to television ratings. (And Charles Barkley is the new Charles Barkley.)

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Athletes are not known for their wonderful public speaking abilities. They aren’t unintelligent – most of them, anyway – it’s just that they’ve been taught to think roboticly about things like effort, workrate, and desire, so the inevitable soundbites are cliches focusing on those themes.

But every now and again, an athlete surprises reporters with smart, thoughtful commentary. Landon Donovan jumps to mind. So does Charles Barkley.

Apparently, we can add Deion Branch to the list. continued…

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“They will break the single-season win record [of 72]. And I think they have a legit shot at the Lakers’ 33-game [winning] streak [in 1971-72], as well. And only the Lakers have even a remote shot at beating them in a playoff series. They will never lose two games in a row this year. They have put together a much better roster than anybody could ever have expected. There is now no good way to defend them. They are unguardable. They are indefensible. They are just too good and have added so much shooting and are so versatile that they will score at will.” continued…

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Courtesy of New York Yankee’s beat writer Mark Feinsand. Happy weekend, world.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Ben Blatt uses a couple complicated formulas to compare the writing styles of luminaries Bill Simmons, Jason Whitlock, and Rick Reilly.

Blatt wonders if he can determine the author of a column based on word usage. The results: His equation goes six-for-six in predicting who wrote a given column. In fact, the formula overwhelmingly points out the correct author.

But that’s not the best part of the study. continued…

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Check out Connect Jets, which syncs with your Twitter account and let’s you follow all the Jets on the service at once.

There are 18 Jets currently on Twitter, everyone from Matt Higgins (Executive Vice President, New York Jets) to Calvin Pace (“Starting linebacker for the NY Jets. Sneaker Collector. Foodie. Wake Forest Alum. Community Servant. Opinionated individual.”)

If we were Jets fans, this would be awesome. Since we’re not, the hardest part is unfollowing them all.

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The new network features unlimited live cut-ins and highlights from college football games airing on ESPN’s multiple platforms, as well as syndicated and locally-produced games from various Football Bowl Subdivision conference.

Anish Shroff hosts the day-long coverage with college football game and studio analyst Rod Gilmore.

The channel is normally available only on Time Warner Cable, Bright House Networks and Verizon. continued…

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

He is also the producer of the just-opened play “Lombardi” on Broadway.

“Tony Ponturo has been integral in shaping the entire sports and entertainment landscape over the last two decades,” said Jonathan Block-Verk, president and CEO of PromaxBDA. “His career at Anheuser-Busch is legendary and celebrating his body of work, and contribution to this industry, at the inaugural Sports Media Marketing Awards will be a true privilege for our organization.”

Ponturo will receive the award November 18 in New York City.

SportsNewser is a media partner of the PromaxBDA Sports Media Marketing Awards.

More information, after the jump.

continued…

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“I’m not going into the locker rooms anymore,” Sainz said Thursday at a news conference. “It’s not a good place right now for me. I don’t want to be in there.”

Since her incident last month at the New York Jets practice facility, Sainz has taken a break from reporting. After a stop in Pittsburgh, Sainz will return to the Jets facility (Please be on your best behavior, fellas.) before visiting the New England Patriots.

“I need to wait one month to work again because I don’t want to be the focus,” Sainz said. “I’m not looking for that kind of publicity. It affects my career and development in the States.”

She’s received nearly a dozen job interviews and an offer to pose nude in Playboy, which she promptly turned down. continued…

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Well, they really don’t like him.

As we get closer to Saturday’s Michigan-Michigan State game in Ann Arbor, the Michigan residents are becoming more hostile with the fact that the former Detroit Lions president and CEO is working the game with Sean McDonough.

Sports talk show host and The Detroit News columnist Terry Foster has led a online campaign this week against Millen and ABC/ESPN.

“Call 888-549-3776 ext 3. Tell ESPN and ABC your thoughts on Matt Millen doing the Michigan-Michigan State game,” Foster wrote on his Facebook page.

Enough people have voiced their opinion to ABC/ESPN that the network issued an e-mail statement to Tom Leyden, a sports anchor at WXYZ in Detroit.

“Matt brings a strong knowledge of the game, decades of experience and a great ability to communicate his insights to sports fans,” the e-mail read. “He and Sean McDonough are one of our top commentator teams and as a result, are assigned to one of the very best matchups each week.”

Foster followed up with a blog post on Thursday saying it was time to bring back the “Fire Millen” chants at Saturday’s game:

I’ve heard from some people who want to boycott the game, but we should not let ABC run us off. This is our game and it means too much to our community. We simply must allow these outsiders know what they are doing is not cool. It’s time for ABC and ESPN to get the message. Repeat after me. FIRE MILLEN!

They do know there’s a football game between two Top 25 teams happening, right?

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Some numbers from the 2008 final day: Ratings ranged from a 3.2 in New York to an 8.3 in West Palm Beach. (Old people love intercontinental golf!) The day averaged a total overnight of 4.4 nationwide.

So, how does that compare to other events? continued…

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Well, other than the fact that it’s a ton of money, it shows that English Premier League clubs can be profitable. During the last few months, American owners of Liverpool and Manchester United – two of the biggest teams in the world – have been lambasted (for good reason) because the debt they took on to purchase the teams is overwhelming their books. (More detail here and a great story about Liverpool fans stalking the owner here.)

Arsenal, on the other hand, is putting a fine product on the field – the Gunners currently sit tied for second in the EPL – and are filling the coffers. You know, like the Pittsburgh Pirates, except good.

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