Score Atlanta has decided to push Scanning the Dial UP A NOTCH. Apparently I'm pretty good or something. Regardless, this sneak peek of Scanning the Dial is a bit longer than usual and will now contain a "CAN YOU BELIEVE HE SAID THAT?" feature. Hopefully this will become a sports version of what Rodney Ho does for the AJC. Be sure to grab a copy of Score Atlanta at metro area QuikTrips, Krogers and Blockbusters.
NASCAR has gotten a lot of play on Atlanta radio recently. Both sports radio stations in Atlanta have a weekly racing program (Full Throttle on Monday nights for 680 The Fan and Speed Zone on either Monday or Tuesday nights for 790 The Zone) but each station has been including circuit talk into regular conversation. The Zone’s Pollack and Bell program was live from Daytona recently for the Great American Race, and Mike Bell was live at the Atlanta Motor Speedway last week leading up to the Kobalt 500. Bell was able to grab crew chiefs, commentators and a few drivers, including Carl Edwards. The Fan meanwhile was promoting a big contest to send “lucky” fans to the race. Then after the race took place over the weekend, both stations were talking about the huge crash between Edwards and another driver where it appeared that Edwards purposely crashed Brad Keselowski. Hearing these local programs that are not up on their NASCAR try and discuss the “sport” is quite humorous and it actually makes me want to stick with their program moreso than the guys who DO know about it and attempt to teach the average listener who has no desire to learn. On the flip side though, if there is a topic that people care about and the co-hosts don’t know about it and refuse to learn anything about it before commenting, that gets annoying.
I found the recent flipflopping from AJC columnist Mark Bradley to be a little disappointing. Several weeks back Bradley wrote a column that talked about Georgia Tech head basketball coach Paul Hewitt and was critical of the team’s performance on the court, and Bradley wrote the piece so that it was all backed up by facts. Hewitt however took the column as a personal attack and went on 790 The Zone and fired back after also tweeting on the subject. Hewitt earlier this week appeared on 680 The Fan and noted how he didn’t really want to talk about it before proceeding to talk about it and try to make himself out to be the good guy. On the AJC’s website Bradley released several pro-Georgia Tech blogs that are clearly an attempt to get back in Hewitt’s good graces. I ask WHY? Why would you go back against your own researched-based, non-personal attack article just to get “back inside” with this coach? Coaches are bullies sometimes and every now and then a watchdog is needed. Bradley was serving as that watchdog. Stand strong next time, especially since it didn’t read to me as a personal attack.
The Atlanta area news organizations got a taste of the national sports media when Pittsburgh Steelers quarterback Ben Roethlisberger was accused of sexually assaulting a twenty-year-old female at a Milledgeville bar. ESPN swooped in to do live standups in front of the Capital City Bar in Milledgeville, GA and major news stations across the country have picked up AJC stories ever since the event took place last week. On our weekly radio show Score Atlanta Sports Sunday on 790 The Zone, we started our show with the topic and the calls poured in. Folks were wanting the Steelers to do everything from suspend him (the length ranged from two games to four games to, as one caller wanted, the season) to cut him to even draft another QB and make Roethlisberger train his replacement. One caller made the point that sexual assault could mean anything from grabbing a female’s tush to forcing yourself on her just short of sex. The caller said that if it was the former, this would be much ado about nothing. Several callers responded to this one gentleman, saying that if Roethlisberger had even done so much as touch his daughter on the arm and she didn’t want him to, he would have a beef with the quarterback. The Steelers have told the local Pittsburgh papers that the organization will wait until the investigation concludes, but personally, I say they must do something now. This is three incidents in the last four off-seasons, after the motorcycle crash, the alleged rape and now the claim of sexual assault. This twenty-eight-year-old must learn that he is putting himself in the wrong situation constantly and something must change. I made the point on Sports Sunday that you keep hearing about Roethlisberger doing these things, even if no charges are filed or charges are dropped, but you never hear about Matt Ryan doing these things, you never hear about Peyton Manning doing these things. They are smart enough not to put themselves in those situations and maybe Roethlisberger, who has more rings than both combined, should strive to be a bit more like those two.
Braves minor league phenom Jason Heyward will be featured in an upcoming article in Sports Illustrated. According to the team website, the writer was on hand earlier this week and witnessed Heyward crush his first spring training home run for approximately 440 feet that cleared the team’s batting cages before bouncing once on a shed room and then shooting straight over the facility behind the outfield wall. Jeff Francoeur was featured during his rookie season by the magazine before the SI jinx hit Frenchy, eventually costing him the Rookie of the Year award to Philadelphia Phillies slugger Ryan Howard.
Finally, an interesting decision may force the program director at the 680 The Fan to hurt some feelings. The Fan has trumpeted its stance as “Home of the Atlanta Thrashers,” for years now, however the hype has been even more extreme as the Braves now call the Fan its flagship station. The Thrashers are hovering near the final playoff spot in the Eastern Conference, and should the Thrashers make the postseason, what will the station do? Putting Thrashers games on a sister station for the Braves is fine during the regular season, but if the Thrashers make the postseason, are you really going to bump the Thrashers again? And if you put the Braves on the sister station, that would be curious, considering the massive (and sometimes annoying) campaign the station put on to let everyone know that The Fan is the new home of the Braves. The decision will be one to keep an eye on.
CAN YOU BELIEVE HE SAID THAT?
Can anyone tell me what or where Mettenberg is? Is it a town in West Virginia? Oh, Pollack and Bell, did you guys mean Zach MettenbergER? The redshirt freshman competing for the Georgia starting quarterback position? Ahh, I bet you guys did. Here is the thing though: shouldn’t you guys know the name of the person you are talking about? I mean it was only plastered all over ajc.com, the Athens Banner-Herald, ESPN.com, macon.com, etc., but somehow you guys called him Mettenberg? What? Even David Hubbard doing the updates was getting it right. Who is Mettenberg?
No comments:
Post a Comment