FanHouse DarrenRovell

The FanHouse Podcast: Because bloggers are much sexier on the phone.

We promised a big week of podcasts Monday and we weren't lying. None other than Darren Rovell of CNBC Sports Biz fame joined Ryan and myself on the podcast machine to talk about his upcoming CNBC documentary: "As Seen on TV," which debuts Wednesday at 9 PM ET on CNBC. (View the preview right here. Right now. Actually, wait, listen to the podcast first. Then watch.) Rovell's documentary chronicles the amazing rise of infomercials and such products as the Snuggie, the Shamwow and the Chia Pet (although the last one might be on the decline, as you can see here). We also chat about the 5/3 burger and the business of the NFL Draft. Enjoy. It's quite good.

It's not exactly a secret that there are problems with the current state of the economy here in the United States. In recent weeks we saw that the government had to bail out banks all over the country, and just this morning they gave the auto industry another $17.4 billion to keep them afloat for a little while. Still, most people thought that sports would be the one area of the country's economy that was recession proof.

That theory has been proven wrong as well, as leagues like the Arena Football League have had to cancel their season, and even the NFL and NBA have begun laying off employees. It's also evident in baseball's free agent market where it seems that only the Yankees are comfortable handing out long-term big-money contracts right now. So while baseball teams may not be hemorrhaging money at the moment, the league is taking some precautions, and according to CNBC's Darren Rovell, they've issued a hiring freeze.

CNBC has exclusively learned that Major League Baseball had a meeting with its employees yesterday and announced to its staff that, in order to deal with the current economic environment, it was undergoing a hiring freeze, freezing salaries and taking 20 percent of employees' vacation time for 2009.

The good news is that there won't be any layoffs stemming from this hiring freeze, though no one can be certain that there won't be in the future.

Like a lot of baseball fans, when I was a kid growing up I collected baseball cards. Every time I went to the store with my parents or ran to the local convenience store, I always made sure to get myself at least one pack of cards. By the time I had reached the end of my collecting days I had two giant bins full of cards in my basement, and countless books filled with the valuable cards.

Still, in my life there was one card I always wanted that I could never get my hands on. I remember the first time I saw it at my friend Billy's house when we got home from the local White Hen Pantry. Billy opened his pack of cards up and was flipping through them when he stopped on one and yelled "I got one!" I went over to see what he was talking about and sure enough, there it was. The 1989 Fleer card of Baltimore Orioles second baseman Bill Ripken, and there, written on the bottom of his bat were those two infamous words (Hint: They rhyme with Duck Race).

It's one of the most famous baseball cards to ever be printed, and for years there were a lot of different stories as to why Ripken had written those words on his bat. At the time Ripken came out and said that it must have been a prank pulled by one of his teammates, but as it turns out that's a lie. I know this because for the first time since that card came out twenty years ago, Ripken finally decided to tell CNBC's Darren Rovell the truth behind the obscenity.

Terrell Owens is the proud new endorser of an energy drink. Woo. It's called "Venom", it is marketed "for delivering piercing energy that strikes back" and it's made by Dr. Pepper and Snapple. So, clearly at first glance, it seems like a worthwhile product that pretty much everyone in America should be guzzling at every possible occasion.

Or perhaps not. It seems, as Darren Rovell notes, that the drink may have some health risks associated with it.

[...]a group of researchers at Johns Hopkins said that energy drinks should carry warning labels that site potential health risks.

The risks cited are what you might expect of any product that has an intense amount of caffeine, including rapid heart rate, anxiety and difficulty sleeping.

Venom seems to have the standard amount of caffeine as compared to other energy drinks. I say the word "seems" because the amount of caffeine is not listed on the bottle...

Now, in fairness, most energy drinks have health risks associated with them. After all, slugging caffeine all day works fantastically in the short run, but we don't have a clue of what the long term effects could/will be. Especially when you factor in the common societal notion that tons of kids are drinking pounding energy drinks these days.

In case you've been in total freak out mode about the availability of Chad Ocho Cinco jerseys, well, keep on freakin', because you might not be seeing them for a while.

No, the NFL's not angry enough to keep 85 from slinging jerseys -- it wouldn't behoove them financially to do that. But, if Reebok caves and swaps the jersey now, think about how many "Chad Johnson" jerseys the wouldn't be able to sell. Yeah. A lot. Darren Rovell explains.

Reebok, which makes the league's jerseys, and licensees have to protect themselves from a player suddenly changing their number (it's normally not a name), so they make them change whatever they need to change months before the season. Failure to do so means that a change likely won't be made that season.

The sticking point is that for a receiver of Johnson's caliber, there's likely as much as 100,000 "C. Johnson" jerseys, not only in Reebok inventory, but in store shelves around the country.

If Johnson wanted to buy out all the jerseys, a source with knowledge of the situation said it would cost him the cost to make the jersey, which is roughly 60 percent of the retail price. That would be about $48 a jersey or $4.8 million if that 100,000 number is reality.

That's right. Someone finally found a sticking point for Ocho Cinco's name change and potential marketing boom, recording one catch for 22 yards against the freaking Ravens on the first Sunday of the 2008 season aside.

Tom Brady's injury is a bad thing for many people on a number of levels. Bad for the Patriots in the AFC East. Bad for Brady because his knee is kind of funked. And bad for fantasy owners, because according to Darren Rovell, if Brady is out for the season, his collective ownership will lose $150 million.

Here's how the math is done.

Brady's incredible year last year, which included a record 50 touchdown passes, meant that about 50 percent of the people who drafted Brady last year won their leagues, Thomas said. With the Brady hype not bought by all, Thomas said that it was believed that about 30 percent of leagues this year would be won because of Brady.

With about $500 million in fantasy prizes on the line, that's a $150 million shift in dollars. And some think that's at the low end of the spectrum since the total value of office pools is tough to ascertain.

See, I would have had it pegged for more -- there are TONS of fantasy football leagues in which none of the prizes are monitored by any website or agency of any kind. Hell, I'm in at least ... um, zero of them. Yes, zero.

Of course, this whole fiasco -- Brady going down and ruining your fantasy football season -- could have been completely avoided had you listened to the experts at Fantasy FanHouse. We did, after all tell you not to draft Brady. Of course, in fairness we said to do that because he's overvalued and not because we have Bernard Pollard on the payroll, but still, we said it.

Tom Brady's injury is a bad thing for many people on a number of levels. Bad for the Patriots in the AFC East. Bad for Brady because his knee is kind of funked. And bad for fantasy owners, because according to Darren Rovell, if Brady is out for the season, his collective ownership will lose $150 million.

Here's how the math is done.

Brady's incredible year last year, which included a record 50 touchdown passes, meant that about 50 percent of the people who drafted Brady last year won their leagues, Thomas said. With the Brady hype not bought by all, Thomas said that it was believed that about 30 percent of leagues this year would be won because of Brady.

With about $500 million in fantasy prizes on the line, that's a $150 million shift in dollars. And some think that's at the low end of the spectrum since the total value of office pools is tough to ascertain.

See, I would have had it pegged for more -- there are TONS of fantasy football leagues in which none of the prizes are monitored by any website or agency of any kind. Hell, I'm in at least ... um, zero of them. Yes, zero.

Of course, this whole fiasco -- Brady going down and ruining your fantasy football season -- could have been completely avoided had you listened to the experts at Fantasy FanHouse. We did, after all tell you not to draft Brady. Of course, in fairness we said to do that because he's overvalued and not because we have Bernard Pollard on the payroll, but still, we said it.

I never thought I'd say this, but thank God for the Olympics. You might not realize it, but the gold-plated robot that is Michael Phelps is actually the only thing saving us from a continued barrage of 24-7 Brett Favre coverage.

But the fact of the matter is that once the Olympics cease to be, we will return to plenty of noise about Favre. As it turns out though, it is not entirely because he's so gosh-darn popular. As Darren Rovell points out there are actual numbers to prove just how tired we all are of Favre.

The great folks at Davie Brown Index (DBI), who I think are the best indicators of who's hot and who's not, just sent me the new stats on Favre. Let's look at the difference. (Note: The awareness is the only number in percentages, the rest are just scores.)

Poll	Awareness	Appeal	Aspiration	Endorsement	Trust
5/5/2008	70%	80.5	72	74.8	68.1
8/13/2008	81.20%	71.4	68.7	70.6	60.3

So, as you can see Brett, we do all in fact acknowledge your increased and painful presence in our life. However, I'd agree with all of these and probably knock down "appeal" and "trust" a little bit, just because he's a crazed old athlete at this point with a fatigued arm.

Of course, there's no way to tell how many times Laverneus Coles voted, so the results could be a little skewed. At least that's the excuse I heard ESPN is running with.

The Jets are banking on Brett Favre making them some money on ticket sales (I would imagine). More importantly, they're looking for some more wins this year. But there's also another bonus to pulling in everyone's favorite Gunslinger for the 2008 season. Jersey sales.

Darren Rovell, busy immersing himself in all that is Beijing (Woo! America!), took some time out this weekend to compile a few numbers on what Fav-ruh has already meant to both the Jets and the NFL in terms of everyone's favorite statistical accumulation: $.

*NFLShop.com sold 6,500 jerseys in 24 hours. A record number of jerseys sold of one player. The league's online Web site also experienced a record one day revenue take.

*More Favre jerseys were sold on Newyorkjets.com in a single day than any month in 2007.

*On eBay, the average Favre item sold jumped in price from $24.60 the day before (Wednesday) to $47.86 on Thursday.

*eBay's ticketing site Stubhub also had its biggest revenue day. Stubhub spokesman Andy Pray told CNBC that about 2,500 Jets tickets changed hands through its site.

The most fascinating part to me isn't the tickets -- I expect that. But more #4 jerseys sold in a day than any NYJ month from 2007 (that's how I'm reading the statistic, since Favre jerseys weren't getting sold on NYJ.com last year)?

People watch less golf when Tiger Woods is not involved. That seems fairly indisputable. And even if you feel like disputing it, well, you would be wrong. At least based on the two tournament, somewhat small sample sized statistics that we have so far.

See, as Darren Rovell points out, Tiger was heavily involved in last year's Wachovia (he won it) and last year's AT&T (he hosted it). This year, obviously, he was absent, which probably explains the dip in ratings.

And here's your stats: Television ratings for the final round at the Wachovia Championship this year down 53 percent, and ratings for the final round at the AT&T National down 48 percent.

It's just two tournaments, but the fact that [Anthony] Kim and nearly identical names (Jim Furyk, Robert Allenby) were at the top of the tournament both times, gives us a good glimpse into a couple scenarios of the world without Tiger.

The fact that the rankings dropped shouldn't come as any surprise to anyone with, well, a brain. But that substantial a dip, especially when the latter tournament is the being hosted by the guy driving the rankings? Well, that's a little discouraging in terms of how much national interest the PGA will draw as it heads into the back end of the Fed Ex Cup.

On the other hand -- as I mentioned in a previous chat -- the lack of Tiger in the standings could make for a more competitive stretch run to the season, and if that sparks interest in newer, emerging golfers, then the long term effects could actually work out pretty well. Short term though, might not be so fun.