FanHouse Mike Wilbon

After Kimbo Slice was knocked out by Seth Petruzelli in what turned out to be the final mixed martial arts fight in the history of the EliteXC promotion, ESPN's Michael Wilbon had harsh words for EliteXC and Kimbo on Pardon the Interruption, saying, among other things, that the fight was fixed.

So when the news came out that EliteXC is out of business, it was obvious that Wilbon would have something to say about it. On today's Pardon the Interruption, he did.

After Wilbon's on-air partner, Tony Kornheiser, noted EliteXC's demise, Wilbon said, "Where are all the rabid sycophants who went wild with their e-mails when I said this thing last week is a fraud? Where are they? It's a fraud! Go home! Get out!"

Today's installment of Pardon the Interruption began with an April Fool's joke that was treated as a startling revelation: Kansas and Davidson will have to re-play the last 16 seconds of Sunday's game because an error allowed Kansas guard Sherron Collins to keep playing after his fifth foul.

Michael Wilbon argued that it's a great idea, saying, "Now we see a situation where the mid-major is treated fairly." Tony Kornheiser, however, said, "This is not fair." And then they acknowledged that the whole thing was made up, they blew noisemakers and they flashed "APRIL FOOL'S" on the screen.

It was pretty funny, mostly because of how convincing Wilbon and Kornheiser were: I would guess that the majority of viewers weren't fooled, but Wilbon and Kornheiser argued about it just as passionately as they ever do. I wonder how funny they found it on the Davidson campus.

Earl Weaver is a classic, right? But that doesn't mean that he's also not, you know, still alive. I love Tony Kornheiser's bemused expression at Mike Wilbon's gaffe: "I think he's with us." And as Awful Announcing points out, Weaver is only 77 years old, not 88. AA said that Wilbon laughed off the mistake when informed after the show, but I'm guessing Weaver probably had a completely different reaction (that a few dozen f-bombs) were he watching from home.
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The fine folks at PTI weigh in on the latest episode in the Spygate saga: the response from Bill Belichick and Scott Pioli about Matt Walsh's claim that he has video evidence of the Patriots cheating.

Like FanHouse's Michael David Smith wrote yesterday, Tony Kornheiser and Mike Wilbon are of the opinion that by speaking out now, it looks like the Patriots are trying to discredit Walsh. So even if he does eventually produce video of, say, New England taping the St. Louis Rams walkthrough in the day before the Super Bowl, Belichick and Pioli can claim Walsh was working alone.

The PTI guys also find laughable Belichick's assertion that that the filming of opposing teams' defensive signals ranked about a "one" on a scale of one to 100 in terms of information gained. Which raises the obvious question: why do it. The Boston Globe's Mike Reiss asked just that and got this response: "Why do anything? Why study tendencies? Why study stances?" Um, okay.

In any event, on the latest charges leveled by Walsh, the Patriots are innocent until proven otherwise. Even though public opinion has already been shaped by previous events, perceived and real.

During an interesting discussion on Pardon the Interruption today, ESPN and Washington Post commentator Michael Wilbon had some harsh criticism for the sports media -- not excluding himself -- when it comes to reporting on America's most popular sport. Here's part of what Wilbon said, in a conversation that started about the BCS but also turned to the NFL:

One of my things I've been angry about all year is our profession. This is about sports writers and media people just rubber stamping anything that happens in football. ... We don't question, we don't probe football, which is now the new American national pastime. We do question and probe for baseball, we do question and probe and criticize when it comes to basketball. When it comes to football, we'll accept anything. ...

We have fallen down on the job, the media. Our job is to examine and be critical, and all we do as a body is cheerlead when it comes to football. All we do is hype it. We don't really want to get tough. We don't want to be tough and ask the tough questions and probe when it comes to coaches, and commissioners, and all of the poobahs, and it just really bothers me.

I think Wilbon makes some solid points here. Football draws higher TV ratings than other sports and generates better web traffic than other sports, and that means it's in the best interests of media companies' bottom lines not to kill the goose that lays the golden egg.

But while journalists don't have to try to kill football, the sport does deserve to be viewed with more skepticism, whether it's performance-enhancing drugs or gambling or taking actions that aren't in the best interests of the fans. The media shouldn't be afraid to take on football, and Wilbon -- as one of the most prominent members of the sports media -- should lead the way.

A look inside Monday Night Football.

In the bowels of the Metrodome before the Bears-Vikings Monday Night Football game, I was introduced to Michael Wilbon of ESPN and the Washington Post. Knowing that Wilbon isn't a fan of blogs, I asked him to explain why.

I was surprised that his response was more about his own personal preferences than about bashing bloggers, although he did a little bit of that, too.

"I'm old," the 49-year-old Wilbon told me repeatedly. "You build up your reading habits over a lifetime."

Wilbon explained that he has always been a newspaper man and that he will always believe that if, for instance, there's breaking sports news in Boston, he's much more likely to get the full story from reading the Boston Globe than he is from reading any blog. In Wilbon's view, the Globe has access and blogs don't, and therefore the Globe will have information that blogs won't.

Wilbon also brought out a lot of the usual criticisms of blogs -- no editing, no standards, no accountability, but at that point a couple of (younger) ESPN staffers sitting with him interrupted to point out that he was painting blogs with too wide a brush. At that point, Wilbon mentioned Deadspin and The Big Lead, and he seemed to realize that those blogs are higher in quality than the ones he dismisses as lacking in standards.

I don't think Wilbon is ever going to feel fully comfortable with blogs, just like I don't think Shirley Povich ever would have been fully comfortable with sports writers arguing on TV. But I think he's more like the dad who doesn't understand the music his kids listen to than the dad who organizes boycotts of that music.

Yesterday Redskins safety Sean Taylor was remembered at FedEx Field (above) when the Redskins played the Bills. Today Taylor was remembered in a funeral service at the Florida International University arena.

Otis Wallace, the mayor of Florida City, Florida, spoke at the service, and he had harsh words for the members of the media who wrote about troubles in Taylor's life in the days after he was shot. Wallace, who has known Taylor for years and works with Taylor's father, the police chief in Florida City, said that if any good could come of Taylor's death, he hoped it would be "the media getting a small lesson in grace and humility."

Wallace then said of reporters who suggested that Taylor's actions had put him in a position to get shot, "They should be ashamed." That got a loud standing ovation, the most enthusiastic response from the crowd all day.

Wallace did not mention any members of the media by name, but Washington Post writers Mike Wilbon and Leonard Shapiro have both faced heavy criticism for writing negatively about Taylor after he was shot.

Eagles quarterback Donovan McNabb said in an interview two weeks ago that was broadcast on HBO's Real Sports this week that, "There's not that many African-American quarterbacks, so we have to do a little bit extra."

Now every other black quarterback is being asked to weigh in, and this is what Titans quarterback Vince Young had to say:

"Everybody is going to have their opinions and this and that, but that is not my fight to fight. Right now over here with the Tennessee Titans, we are trying to go to the playoffs and we can't worry about all the other mess going on.''

That comment infuriated Mike Wilbon on ESPN's Pardon the Interruption today. Wilbon went off on Young, saying Young should show gratitude toward black quarterbacks who came before him, men like Marlin Briscoe, Warren Moon and Doug Williams, who helped pave the way for players like Young. Wilbon called Young a "self-absorbed young punk," and added, "I don't want to hear Vince Young say, 'It's not my fight to fight.'"

I get what Wilbon is saying, but I think he's being awfully hard on Young. All Young was really saying is a variation on what athletes say every day: He wants to focus on the game on the field. Is that so wrong?
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