Be sure to tune in tonight and tomorrow to GPB-TV for the GHSA football state championships, especially Saturday at 1pm for the Class A game, featuring me!
Hypocrisy, my name is ESPN. Falcons fans across the city and the state surely must be pulling their hair out after listening to the World Wide Leader’s NFL experts slam the Falcons’ accomplishments but excuse-make for other teams with a lesser record than Atlanta. Just a few weeks after the Atlanta Falcons came back to conk out the Baltimore Ravens on national television and then best the Packers with a late field goal on the way to a 10-2 record, ESPN’s Marcellus Wiley gave the New Orleans Saints a free pass “get out of jail” card. Michael Wilbon railed on the Falcons the day after the team caught a break or two against the Ravens and then made their own breaks against Green Bay and Tampa Bay, but Wiley was praising the Saints for pulling the same tricks against an AWFUL Cowboys squad on Thanksgiving and then surviving against an even worse Cincinnati team. Quote Wiley on Sunday’s ESPN Radio coverage: “In the NFL, it comes down to wins and losses.” Well if it does, then give the Falcons the respect and due the team deserves for running off a better record than New Orleans, including a victory over the Saints IN the Super Dome.
Wiley continued, “Good things and good breaks happen to good teams. Bad teams find bad things and bad breaks.” So it is OK for the Saints to barely beat two teams that may COMBINE to win 8 games this year, but the Falcons cannot “find” the breaks to beat playoff teams? Crazy.
I am not a Falcons fan at heart, but I feel the national media is still refusing to give due to my hometown team, so I am coming to the rescue. Some one needs to since the four-letter network won’t fully embrace them until Mike Smith and Arthur Blank hoist the Lombardi Trophy. Then the Falcons will probably be lumped in the New Orleans/Ohio State category of “They can do NOTHING wrong!” I just ask that these “experts” apply the same logic to all teams and not treat certain franchises differently due to past successes. As Parcells used to say, “You are what your record is.” That means the Falcons are pretty good. Who cares how they got that way!?
Every local sports radio show has a “black hat,” whose job it is to be a villain that inspires phone calls with ridiculous opinions and who spits on the local teams, just to insight response. Perry Laurentino plays the Ric Flair role on 680 The Fan’s Rude Awakening and while he isn’t as good at the role as John Kincade is on The Fan’s afternoon drive show Buck & Kincade, Laurentino is still entertaining. He may have taken too absurd of a stance recently though as he was trying to instigate an SEC vs. the field argument after Auburn’s win over South Carolina in the SEC Championship game. Laurentino started his rant by ripping Auburn quarterback Cam Newton, which I have no problem with; I thought Laurentino made several valid points. However, Laurentino went into the deep end of the pool without waterwings when he tried to argue that his Pac-10 Conference was just as good as the SEC because the west coast conference had just as many BCS bids as the SEC did, in what is a “down year” for the SEC. Yeah, apparently the BCS rules escaped Laurentino’s brain before the statement came out as EVERY college football fan knows that a conference can ONLY place TWO teams into the BCS bowls. I guess he would say that with his logic that the Big Ten is just as good as the SEC and the Pac-10 as well as it TOO has two teams in the BCS bowls, and that the Mountain West is JUST AS GOOD as the Big XII since both conferences have one team in the bowls. Sorry Perry, but if the rule limiting conferences didn’t exist, LSU or Alabama would receive a BCS bid well before the third place squad from the Pac-10 would. If he REALLY wanted to argue that the SEC was down, he should have championed the cause of the Big Ten who has a top ten team that is missing out of the big bowls.
Finally, the GHSA and Georgia Public Broadcasting were all over it again for the GHSA football state championships. Georgia Public Broadcasting had been leading up to the state championships at the Georgia Dome with a weekly webcast of a football game every Friday night and provided a weekly Wednesday webcast that interviewed coaches, broke down big match-ups and touched on other relevant topics all season long. This past Thursday, GPB-TV aired an hour-long version of GPB Sports Central LIVE from the Georgia Dome that featured a preview of each game complete with the announcing crew from each game, as well as several other big-time features that entertained and informed. Sports Central XL followed with extended analysis, and both can be seen on-demand on GPB.org/sports or on www.gaprepnews.com. If you are heading out to the Dome for the state championship games, be sure and catch the replays of the championship games on GPB’s website. The broadcast crews may be the best collection of talent the championships have ever seen in all of the years the GHSA and GPB have aired the games. Friday’s Class AA game will feature CSS’s Matt Stewart and 680 The Fan’s Chuck Oliver, who work a game every Friday night for CSS. Friday night’s AAAA tilt will feature Charles Ward, a long-time GPB broadcaster and Falcons great Jeff Van Note. Saturday’s Class A game will find WSB’s Zach Klein and Score Atlanta & GPB’s Fletcher Proctor on the call. Class AAA will have a FOX5 crew in Ken Rodriguez and Buck Lanford. Finally Class AAAAA will feature a pair of veteran broadcasters in Dave Garner and Harper LeBel. These broadcast teams all offer keen insights and each broadcaster has a special connection to Georgia high school football that shouldn’t be missed. Every year the telecasts of the championships give GPB some of the highest ratings of any public broadcasting system in the entire country.
Can You Believe He Said That
“There’s a difference between smiling and laughing.”
That was 680 The Fan’s Perry Laurentino who defended Pittsburgh wide receiver Hines Ward for smiling after dropping a pass that would have given his team a first down in a win but ripped Derek Anderson for laughing on the sidelines in an Arizona loss. He doesn’t like it when professional athletes don’t seem to take the game seriously and don’t seem to care when he messes up…as long as that athlete doesn’t play for the Mets, Steelers, or USC Trojans. Those guys can do what they may. Drop a pass and smile it off? Oh he was just smiling…
He most of the praise he gets from the national media, but why are we so hesitant to call him out on his futile record in the games that matter most?
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