MNF on the verge of extinction?

We decided to let The Champ do a guest column for Joboo. Post in the comments if you’d like to see The Champ contribute more to Joboo. Don’t ask how you can become a guest columnist here. It is a rigorous process of living with one of the blog authors and coming up with ideas…and then not writing the column for several days.

After a 35 year-run on ABC, Monday Night Football moves to ESPN this season. On the surface of things, many might write this off as not being that big of a deal. However, with NBC picking up the Sunday Night games that ESPN used to carry, I ask whether or not it is possible that Sunday Night Football surpasses MNF in popularity.

            Added to the new competition of the John Madden-led NBC crew, we also have the fact that ABC reportedly had been losing about $150 million a year on Monday nights in the past eight years.

            I keep hearing more and more buzz that Sunday Nights will be the “new MNF” and that MNF will slowly but surely fade away. At first I dismissed all of this talk and was of the opinion that MNF will always have a special place in the football fan’s heart.

            I think this situation deserves a detailed examination so we can better evaluate the status of both SNF, and MNF, and make some kind of a determination as to which program is in better shape. What better way to do that then to look into a week-by-week comparison and see which network has the matchup edge.

At the risk of sounding like Chris Sheridan…

First off, I’m not sure why I’m awake pre-7am. The whole finding out USA won thing has worked thus far for me in following this FIBA Championship. I’m certainly not trying to change things intentionally and this move is certainly going to haunt me in class at about 3:15pm today. You notice a couple things very early on when watching a USA Basketball game…

Coach K really is really, really bad. They’re going to win this game. They’re going to win the Tournament. But, the all-star mentality is still there and nothing has been done to change that. Like USA Hoops fans were promised. Until that mentality changes, there are going to be shaky moments for the team.

I don’t want to sound like I’m doubting USA or sound like Chris Sheridan, but give me some latitude on this one. This is the first time I’m ripping the US team and, really, the score sits at 25-25 in the 2nd quarter right now and I have no doubts that USA is going to win. I just need to rip Coach K real quick. I’ve disliked him for a really long time. Coach K has always been a great motivator and amazing recruiter. The thing is, though, there is a reason why for over a decade, Danny Ferry was the best Duke product in the NBA.

Is there some sort of FIBA rule that prevents him from sending out this starting line-up:

Elton Brand, Chris Bosh, Carmelo Anthony, Lebron James, Dwayne Wade?

Joboo College Football Preview: West Virginia Mountaineers

We started off this season preview talking about the Boise St. Broncos. We wanted to set the stage of this preview, which is essentially that we’re not going to write about it ALL, so we’ll try to write about what you aren’t going to hear about consistently.

So, why today is this preview about the West Virginia Mountaineers?

Because you haven’t been hearing about them enough. West Virginia is a contender for the National Championship, but you hear more about teams with no shot than you do about the Mountaineers. The main reason for that is fairly simple, this is a team that legit doesn’t get enough respect. A ton of teams talk about not getting respect. I’m sure if you interviewed all of the Notre Dame football players, at least 25% would talk about respect to the media. The Mountaineers have a legit complaint, though.

Joboo says “Play Pro Football Pick’em.”

Anyone interested in proving they are smarter than a bunch of law students? While it was originally started as a Michigan State Law School pro football pick’em league on Yahoo we’ve made the decision to open it up to any that stumbles across our little blog. For those uninitiated with the pick’em format its pretty simple: this league has the spread taken into account, but each week you just pick the winner of the game. The league accommodates up to 50 people and with a rather weak turnout by our fellow law students it seemed a shame to keep to ten teams or so. Anyway, for anyone that is interested in joining feel free to sign up. The pertinent info is: League ID # 31676, Name: MSU LAW, password: skincancer ( A note about the password, no one here at Joboo endorses skin cancer, or any cancer for that matter, but its really an inside joke about the demon spawn that attempted to teach us Civil Procedure last year). There won’t be any prizes awarded for the winner, but you’ll have are everlasting respect. . .or something like that. Anyway, good luck to anyone that signs up.

Joboo College Football Preview: Boise State

They play their football on a blue field…and that is why the Joboo College Football Preview begins in Boise, Idaho. Well, the other reason why Joboo is starting with the Boise State Broncos is that we realize we can’t preview ALL of the college football teams, so we’re going to try to give you previews of teams that you might not typically see a preview for. ESPN certainly isn’t going to give you much Boise State coverage, but, they’ve got Notre Dame covered.

Also, be sure to check out Ryan Doherty’s post about wanting to find a college football team to root for and toss in a suggestion.

Boise State Profile
Conference: WAC
2005 W/L Record: 9-3, 7-1…Tied for 1st in the WAC
Schedule Know-How: Their toughest Conference opponent will be Fresno State, and they have that game on the Blue. Also, their series with Pac-10 Oregon State is on the Blue as well.

A quick word about Chris Sheridan…

I need TEXT of some Chris Sheridan articles about USA Hoops. We’re getting some traffic in for searches like “Chris Sheridan is an ass”, “Chris Sheridan USA Hoops” and the bottomline is that Sheridan’s bashing of Team USA is a joke and starting to catch on. Constant pessimism about a team doing what they have to and what they expected to do is a bit silly and people are starting to notice. We need to mock Sheridan more, damnit.

But, there is no way I’m paying for that lousy ESPN Insider service to do so. So, if you’ve got some Sheridan texts and want to see them mocked, send ’em our way. I think we’ve got an e-mail address around here to click on, if not… grahamdo@msu.edu

While I’m on the topic of search engine hits coming in to this blog…we’ve got one for “cecil collins jail” which basically IS a milestone. Has to be.

College Football Team

Ok, here’s the deal. I’m taking suggestions for a college football team to follow, maybe for this season, maybe longer we’ll see how things pan out. In a lot of ways i think College football is superior to the NFL, but maybe most significantly in the connection the fans feel with the team. Unfortunately, I think I’ve been missing out on this aspect. So I’m asking for help on rectifying this situation.

The Phillies wild-card run…

Should I get behind it? Invest in it so to speak. Think they’re going to do it. Watch them come close to doing it…

Only to ultimately see them fall short?

I’m going to try to not write about two things with any consistency on this blog: The Philadelphia Phillies and random pleas to Ryan that consist of: “man, where are you AT..Shawn is showing me PAINTBALL DVDs right now. Get over here and play some damn cards. Seriously, Shawn just said ‘literally, right here is the best shit ever…hands down. Look at this shit. Hang on, I need to rewind it, but look at this.'” Because, really, the readership likely isn’t going to care as much about the Phillies as I do and NO ONE is going to want to hear me talk about Shawn putting on paintball DVDs. (Seriously, Ryan, Shawn just went from paintball DVDs to complaining about picking up “Brandon” Lidge and finally realizing they demoted him from closer right before he picked him up).

This one will be about the Phillies and the wild card, likely no more paintball talk, but at this point there are no guarantees. Click the Read More button if you want, but bitter venting about my favorite team in sports might follow. Not quite sure what’s to come with this one.

Pujols ain’t the Babe

I was making my nightly run through of ESPN.com and ran across this interesting tidbit. You can check out the firsthand material in some GQ issue if you don’t feel weird about that, read it secondhand at http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/news/story?id=2557786, or my personal favorite you can get your news third hand right here at Joboo. Basically to sum up what I got out of the article, in 1921 Babe Ruth was subjected to a bunch of tests by Columbia University psychologists which were duplicated recently with Albert Pujols as the subject.

Madden Ratings…and where they need adjustment…

Madden ’07 hit shelves of stores today and apparently ESPN.com decided to overload on video game coverage, including a video game image as the main site image this morning. The Player Ratings were apparently a big story, players love to check them out…again, apparently.

Peyton Manning was the highest rated QB in the game, getting the only 99 rating overall for a QB, WR or RB. Tom Brady was next with a 98. Now, I’m not going to complain over 1 rating point difference. Sure, I think Brady is better than Manning, but that’s not even the issue.

The issue is simple: EA Sports and the Madden Series are behind the times or simply getting lazy. I assume it is getting lazy, as they have the market cornered, but that Madden knock-off a few years back that got sold for like 20 bucks was ahead of the times.

The fact of the matter is that Manning is not a 99 in any sense of the word. It is Madden 07 for chrissake, you don’t have some negative influence there for being a player that can go from 0 to 60 (in fucking your season and hopes up) in like INSTANTLY?

Again, it’s ’07…let’s get these ratings done up properly…how about tossing in some innovation with regards to these ratings? Take performance in big games into consideration because it is absolutely a huge part of the game.