If you don’t know by now, a controversial call by a replacement referee gave a touchdown, and the win, to the Seahawks. The call, replays, reaction, opinion and outrage filled much of the 90 minutes following the game.

As PRNewser reported several ESPN player-analysts challenged the outcome. Trent Dilfer, who once quarterbacked the Seahawks, said during “SportsCenter’s” coverage: “You get so frustrated with incompetence that it turns to anger. The NFL has insulted my intelligence. It’s tearing at the fabric of the game.”

The previous record for SportsCenter was 5.9 million viewers following a Monday night game which also featured the Packers playing the Minnesota Vikings Nov. 14, 2011.

Broadcasting and Cable reports the game itself averaged 16.2 million viewers, the third largest audience for any cable program this year.

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“I’ve never had cops knock on my door for anything in my life,” Portnoy said in an interview with the Boston Globe yesterday. “That is not a coincidence that this is one of the first times I’ve taken something down.”

The pictures showed the baby frolicking on the beach with his mother, Gisele Bundchen. Portnoy did not take the photos, but drew fire for his decision to post them alongside commentary about the size of the boy’s genitalia. That didn’t sit well with many readers, nor with the producer at WEEI radio station in Boston. Portnoy had been a regular on-air guest, but was dropped after posting the pictures.

“What he did was completely irresponsible,” Jason Wolfe, the station’s vice president of programming, wrote on Twitter. “It’s not about whether he was allowed to do it or not. It’s about common decency. And he showed none.”

Lawyers said Portnoy would probably not face child pornography charges because he did not appear to have “lascivious intent” in posting the picture. Some said that posting the images may have violated the child’s privacy rights, depending on where the photographs were taken.

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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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“Many media types I know hold the fans in contempt. It’s sad when, say, a cheese-heavy local baseball blogger thinks he knows it all but fails to see himself for what he is: a glorified stenographer with a bloated ego and a sweet gig. It’s the misguided elitism that rankles. Reporters don’t consume sports the same way fans do, and few of them have made much of an effort to understand your perspective….Boo whomever you like. Or don’t. It’s up to you. Just don’t let anyone dictate the terms of your passion. They aren’t you, and they shouldn’t pretend that they always know what’s right.”

Passively accepting the commentary of, say, Bob Costas is for lemmings from the Midwest, Gonzalez says.

“Context is important. Let’s not forget where all this supposedly unsavory conduct occurs. We don’t live in St. Paul, Minn., or St. Louis. The fans there are Stepford automatons, blinking and cheering and slobbering on cue. It’s frightening. Many of the people (in Philadelphia) take pride in being the opposite of the typical mindless water-and-sprout mutants filling seats in stadiums across the country. Philadelphians have long seen themselves as open, honest brokers – fans who will tell you exactly what they’re thinking instead of what you might want to hear.”

So in conclusion: Philadelphia fans can tell you what they’re thinking (even when you don’t want to hear it), but Philadelphia announcers cannot.

– Photo Los Angeles Times

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Comparing the two genders, male sports fans are likely to say the Internet is the best place for sports content (36.6 percent) compared to female sports fans who give the edge to TV (36.2 percent).

In general, sports fans are using the web to check scores and stats (59.2 percent), to read sports-related news (47.4 percent) and to watch sports-related video clips.

Ranking surprisingly low on the list was using the Internet to play fantasy sports (11.8 percent). continued…

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