FanHouse MikeGolic

March Madness is heating up, so if Bob Knight is on ESPN talking about athletes who have impressed him, he must be talking about college basketball players, right? Not quite. In an appearance on ESPN Wednesday, Knight said that, in reality, he believes the best athletes in the country right now are not American basketball players but a visiting troupe of Russian skaters.

I wasn't going to do one of these posts at all, because they are a bit cliched. On the other hand, it's an American tradition to give thanks, so who am I to stand in the way?

I'm thankful for fantasy football.

As I said, I wasn't planning on doing this. Then I heard -- via my brother -- that ESPN Radio "personalities" Mike Golic and Mike Greenberg were talking about how they don't play fantasy football this morning. That's fine. I don't care if you don't like fantasy sports, as it's most certainly not for everyone. He also informed me that the two clowns were saying they don't play because they "don't understand it," and they sounded very smug in saying it.

First of all, what a crock. If you know anything about football, you understand fantasy football. You pick an assortment of players from around the league. They compile passing, running and receiving stats. Those are computed very simply into points. If you have more points than your opponent, you win. This is like when an old person claims they don't understand a DVR, as they pop a cassette into their old, trusty VCR.

We noted last week that Mike Golic, the co-host of ESPN's Mike and Mike in the Morning, is a UFC fan. Now MMA Rated points us to a video of Golic talking to Randy Couture the day after his UFC 91 fight with Brock Lesnar was announced:

Although Golic is obviously not an MMA expert -- he mispronounces Royce Gracie's first name -- he is clearly very enthusiastic about the sport and eager to learn. And Couture, as always, is a great ambassador for the sport, doing a good job of answering Golic's questions. I hope Mike and Mike talk about UFC 91 next week.

Golic's partner, apparently thinks the most interesting thing about MMA is cauliflower ear.

For the most part, mixed martial arts is ignored on ESPN. Yes, Chuck Liddell has been on the cover of ESPN the Magazine, and ESPN.com has its weekly MMA Live show, but most of the on-air ESPN personalities are either apathetic or downright hostile to MMA.

But Mike Golic, the former NFL player who is one half of the Mike & Mike in the Morning team, doesn't hesitate to call himself a UFC fan. In a chat at the Mike & Mike web site, Golic was asked if he likes UFC. His answer:

Mike Golic: I like it very much. I hope it doesn't end up going down the road boxing went down making it so convoluted you can't follow it. I love the idea and having it regulated a bit helps.

Mike & Mike had Randy Couture and Brock Lesnar as guests the day after their UFC 91 fight was announced, and I hope Golic doesn't hesitate to keep talking up MMA. As long as Michael Wilbon is around, MMA needs all the friends in Bristol it can get.

On ESPN's Mike and Mike in the Morning today, Mike Greenberg made a brief comment that provided an interesting insight into ESPN's relationship with the blogosphere.

Greenberg said that one day, out of curiosity, he typed "Greenberg Golic ESPN" into Google, and was horrified by the results. Greenberg's bottom-line conclusion: "People cannot stand us."

Sure enough, the first Google result for that search query is a blog post headlined, "Weenie Greenie: ESPN Radio's Mike Greenberg Gives Us All a Lesson in Arrogance." The post mocks Greenberg and "his sub-normal-IQ sidekick Mike Golic."

But what really interests me about Greenberg's comment on the radio today is that it seems that if it weren't for that one-time occasion of Googling himself, Greenberg would not be the least bit aware that there are a whole lot of sports bloggers who rip ESPN on a daily basis. When you're sitting in a studio in Bristol, the sports blogosphere is easy to ignore.

I happened to catch ESPN's Mike & Mike in the Morning this week when they announced the winning bid for a charity auction to have the show broadcast from a listener's home. The top bid was $57,100 -- all of which will go to the V Foundation for Cancer Research -- and although it's nice that a good cause is getting that kind of money, my first thought was, What kind of person pays $57,100 to have Mike and Mike come over?

Now I know what kind of person: Rush Limbaugh's ex-wife, Marta Maranda. The Palm Beach Post reports that Maranda, an aerobics instructor who met Limbaugh online and was married to him for 10 years, was the person who placed that top bid.

Maranda has not said publicly what made her decide to pay so much money to have Mike Greenberg and Mike Golic come over, and she hasn't said which of the many homes she bought after her divorce settlement will play host to Mike and Mike. Her primary residence is an $11.5 million mansion in Jupiter Island, Florida -- not far from where Tiger Woods lives -- but the code enforcement officer there says doing a live radio broadcast in a home would be strictly prohibited.

Wednesday night, a crime against Wrigley Field, and humanity, occurred. Sullying one of the great reputations in baseball, ESPN journalists personalities Mike Greenberg and Mike Golic threw out the first pitch and sang the seventh-inning stretch in the Cubs' 7-4 win over the Orioles. OK, so it wasn't that bad. But it was slightly dubious -- just what business do ESPN employees have screaming "Let's get some runs!" at a Chicago Cubs game?

As a cure -- a cure for all the bad versions of the song, the slow celebrities, the sketchy selections -- Goatriders make a simple proposal: have Ron Santo sing every anthem.

It makes sense. Santo, for all his faults, is in many ways the spiritual successor to Harry Caray -- the bumbling, silly, lovable man in the (radio) booth. Give him the microphone, and make the insanity stop. No more of this. For the love of God.

ESPN has announced this year's second-string Monday Night Football team, and it's the same as last year's second-string Monday Night Football team: Mike Greenberg, Mike Golic and Mike Ditka.

The NFL season's kickoff weekend features two Monday night games. The first, Vikings-Packers at 7 p.m. Eastern, will be called by the usual ESPN crew of Mike Tirico, Ron Jaworski and Tony Kornheiser. The second game, Broncos-Raiders at 10:15 p.m. Eastern, gets the Greenberg-Golic-Ditka trio.

I thought the three Mikes were fine last year (aside from the one unfortunate moment caught on camera), although I wish Greenberg and Golic wouldn't be quite so reverential toward Ditka: They act like he's a god, not a colleague. If the three of them can just talk football without reminding us every five minutes that Ditka is a Hall of Famer, they'll be fine.

On the May 1 edition of ESPN's Mike and Mike in the Morning, co-host Mike Golic participated in a competitive eating contest in which he scarfed down 15 chicken wings, while professional competitive eaters around him ate significantly more.

It was intended to be a lighthearted moment on the show. But some people took it seriously. Really, really seriously. Peter Finney Jr., a writer for the official newspaper of the Archdiocese of New Orleans, has this to say:

The hedonistic display was bad enough - Golic finished last to "professional" eaters Tim "Eater X" Janus, Pete "Pretty Boy" Davekos and "Crazy Legs" Conti - but the gluttony-as-sport, far from laughable, should sting any correctly formed conscience.

I guess my conscience isn't correctly formed, then, because I don't feel the least bit stung by watching competitive eating.

I report this "news" at the risk of Enrico and the rest of Philly hunting me down, but it turns out that Mike (JACK!) Schmidt just really does not care for Philly Cheesesteaks. He's well aware of the finest cheesesteak joints in town, but claims that he never really made it downtown a lot because he lived outside Philly. Also note that I'm really only posting this because Mike Golic works himself into a veritable froth before asking Jack what his favorite cheesesteak is. Combine Golic's reaction with the build-up they give Schmidt and I'm sorry, but the clip is just hilarious.

Don't get me wrong -- I always loved Schmidt just because guys like he and Dale Murphy were legit heroes for little kids like myself back in the day. And he's not insulting Philly at all here, Golic just kills me, is all.