FanHouse Fox

Every Monday during college football's endless offseason, The FanHouse Walk will put last week's stories to bed and deliver the essentials to bridge that agonizing space between now and September.

Rejoice! Er, potentially rejoice -- Last week the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported speculation that FOX might extricate itself a year early from its BCS coverage commitments. Besides the rarely disputed notion that FOX's BCS coverage is woeful -- thank you, Thom Brennaman and endless band shots -- the network seems to realize they've been dealt a weak hand for their 2010 games.

I think most people will be happy with the way this bidding war turned out:

Fox Sports declined to match an offer from ESPN to televise Bowl Championship Series college football games from 2011 to 2014, the network announced Monday.

Fox still has the rights for the next three years.

The Fiesta, Orange, and Sugar bowls will now reside on ESPN; the move also triggers a clause in the Rose Bowl's contract with the Disney/ABC/ESPN hydra that allows said hydra to move the Granddaddy to ESPN.

Upside: no more tortured Barry Alvarez and the BCS games move to a network that actually cares about college football year round. It was odd to turn on a BCS game only to get some weird smattering of announcers you've never seen before and endless cutaways to the band by a director obviously used to NFL games. Dude, check out those people with the funny hats. And they've got instruments! WE MUST EXPLORE THIS FASCINATING ODDITY.

And so forth and so on.

Downside: if you don't have cable you're out of luck. (But how can a serious sports fan exist without cable these days?) And if you're a playoff advocate this is another four years of the BCS mess.

(HT: Awful Announcing.)

NASCAR fans across the country were treated to a pre-race show that consisted of nothing but balls and strikes after Fox Sports decided to keep a game between the New York Yankees and the Boston Red Sox on the air deep into the NASCAR timeslot.

Fans who had tuned in for the NASCAR event in Phoenix, Ariz. were abruptly switched to racing as the field entered turn three during the first lap of Saturday night's Subway Fresh Fit 500, while viewers hoping to catch the end of the baseball game were told nearly a minute later that they could continue watching on FX.

All in all, the situation simply wasn't handled well.

Me? I was hoping to see the NASCAR action. But neither here (Fox) nor there (FX) could I see any of the pre-race show, much less "Gentleman, Start Your Engines".

I understand that there are obligations Fox Sports has to carry while covering these two events, but it seems pretty clear to me that Fox Sports should have just been proactive enough to at least start the NASCAR coverage over on FX.

The Red Sox/Yankees tiff was a close one and I understand that millions of people were wanting to see the end of that one. Was it right for those fans to have to quickly switch over to FX to catch the last few pitches of a one-run game?

I don't think so.

The solution to put one or the other on FX long before the green flag of the Sprint Cup Series race makes a lot of sense to me. What say you?

Now that TBS' coverage of the Divisional Series has ended, I think it's safe to say they did a decent job of covering all the games. Yes, there were a few things about TBS's coverage that I wasn't a fan of. That little 9-foot marker they put over at first base to measure a runner's lead off of the bag? Yeah, that was stupid and pointless. Frank Thomas as a studio analyst left a bit to be desired, and don't even get me started on Dick Stockton and his crazy hair.

Still, TBS must have been doing something right, because the ratings for this years divisional round games are better than they were last year.

Fox, like other broadcast networks, reach more than 113 million U.S. households who own TVs. Cablecaster TBS is accessible in only about 90 million households and doesn't even have the potential reach cablecaster ESPN had on its playoff coverage last year. ESPN also put its game coverage on local over-the-air TV in the cities of participating teams.

So, with less accessibility into TV households, TBS' first-round coverage would logically have lower TV ratings than the first-round coverage on Fox and ESPN last year. That was made even more likely considering that viewer interest, in any sport, usually builds the longer that playoff series last - and TBS had three of its four first-round series end in sweeps.

Funny thing, though. TBS finished its first-round games averaging 3.8% of U.S. households - up 18% from last year's first-round games on Fox and ESPN.

Since most of us haven't noticed thanks to Barry Bonds' chase of Hank Aaron, I feel it's important for me to tell you that Sammy Sosa hit home run number 599 of his career tonight in Cincinnati.

The 38-year-old slugger hit his ninth career grand slam off Cincinnati's Mark Belisle in the fifth inning, making his trademark hop when the ball headed for the stands. The Texas Rangers outfielder ended a drought of 70 at-bats since his last homer, on May 22.

It's also the first grand slam Sosa's hit since September 15th, 2004. If Sosa can reach 600 sometime this weekend, it would be fitting. He's hit more home runs against the Reds than against any other team, 53, and one of those was his 500th home run back in 2003.

Normally you'd think it's pretty odd that only the fifth man in the entire history of the sport is about to hit his 600th home run, and nobody really seems to care.

Will ESPN or FOX be breaking into their coverage this weekend to show us Sosa's at bats like they do Barry Bonds? Something tells me they won't, and obviously it's got more than a little to do with the suspicion of steroids with Sosa.

That's been the story of Sosa's career though. Whether he was cheating or not, he was always in the shadow of somebody else who may or may not have been cheating. First he was overshadowed by Mark McGwire, and now it's Barry Bonds. In a way it's worked out well for him. Unlike Bonds, Sammy's going to get that record he wanted, and he doesn't have to go through all the distractions.

Previously at The Fanhouse:
Remember Sammy Sosa? Yeah, He's Almost To 600
Sammy Sosa Gets Around

Check out this lead:

ABC let 80 percent of the BCS out of its grasp three years ago. If given the opportunity to get any or all of it back, the network won't let it happen again.

"I don't like looking back," Chuck Gerber, ABC/ESPN executive vice-president for college sports said during Tuesday's BCS meetings at the Hotel Intercontinental. "But if it does come up again, and it makes business sense, we would love to be there."

Ever see two boys fighting over the same pretty girl? It's kind of like that with the BCS. Unless either gentleman finds some principle to stand up, the girl gets to name her price with the suitors. And so it goes with the BCS and potential broadcast partners.

I mention this because Florida President Bernie Machen is due to present his playoff proposal to the SEC this week. One of the arguments by playoff supporters is that a playoff could match or exceed the revenue generated by the BCS.

To sound like Lee Corso for a moment, not so fast. One year after losing its BCS contract and another year out from negotiations, ABC is champing at the bit in hopes of renewing a broadcast contract with the BCS. This is prelude to a major bidding war and pours cold water on a hypothetical and unknown cash argument presented by playoff advocates.

Frank Caliendo, sometimes known as "the only good thing about Fox's pregame Sunday studio show," might not be returning to the network. His contract expired after this season, and no one's sure if he's going to come back.

FOX wants him back, and he sort of wants to come back ... but they have differences on the amount of appearances that Caliendo will be making (FOX wants 23, Caliendo would prefer about 10). And since each appearance takes between 10 and 30 hours of prep time, you can understand why he'd want to limit them.

My advice to Fox is ... well, my advice would be to assign Joe Buck to Figure Skating, and give his entire salary to Frank Caliendo ... but I'd settle for them just working out a deal with Caliendo. He's an amazingly talented impressionist (and I don't even really like impressionists), and if they don't give him what he wants, someone else will. And then we'd be down to 0 reasons to watch Fox NFL Sunday.

And in other Caliendo news, he's working on a Chris Berman impression ... which will hopefully include ruining NFL drafts, a nasty combover, and a predilection towards women in white leather.

Some examples of his work: his Jim Rome, his President Bush, and his impeccable John Madden: