FanHouse MikeGreenberg

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.

When ESPN hired Bob Knight as a college basketball analyst, some questioned whether the coach with the legendary temper would be able to work as a TV commentator without dropping any four-letter words.

When it comes to Tim Tebow, the sports media is just a wee bit prone to overstatement. On the one hand you have the Fox announcers embarrassing themselves last night with their excessive gushing. And on the other hand, you have certain draft "experts" going ridiculously over the top in diminishing Tebow's skills as a quarterback.

ESPN's Mike Greenberg perfectly encapsulated both of those media tendencies today on Mike and Mike in the Morning.

"He could be the president of the United States some day," Greenberg said. "And he has a better chance of that than he does being an NFL quarterback. ... It's just true. ... I can't believe anyone who doesn't think that."

I'm going to have to go ahead and disagree with Greenberg there: Of the two jobs, I think Tebow is more likely to become NFL quarterback than United States president.

I'm not particularly high on Tebow's prospects as a pro quarterback, but there's at least a 50-50 chance that he'll improve as a passer, work on his slow delivery, adjust to a pro-style offense and play quarterback in the NFL at some point. I would place Tebow's chances of occupying the Oval Office at a little below 50%. I can't believe that Greenberg can't believe that everyone doesn't think that.

When it comes to Tim Tebow, the sports media is just a wee bit prone to overstatement. On the one hand you have the Fox announcers embarrassing themselves last night with their excessive gushing. And on the other hand, you have certain draft "experts" going ridiculously over the top in diminishing Tebow's skills as a quarterback.

ESPN's Mike Greenberg perfectly encapsulated both of those media tendencies today on Mike and Mike in the Morning.

"He could be the president of the United States some day," Greenberg said. "And he has a better chance of that than he does being an NFL quarterback. ... It's just true. ... I can't believe anyone who doesn't think that."

I'm going to have to go ahead and disagree with Greenberg there: Of the two jobs, I think Tebow is more likely to become NFL quarterback than United States president.

I'm not particularly high on Tebow's prospects as a pro quarterback, but there's at least a 50-50 chance that he'll improve as a passer, work on his slow delivery, adjust to a pro-style offense and play quarterback in the NFL at some point. I would place Tebow's chances of occupying the Oval Office at a little below 50 percent. I can't believe that Greenberg can't believe that everyone doesn't think that.

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.

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.

On Mike and Mike in the Morning today, Mike Greenberg and guest host Trey Wingo are discussing what kind of chances Rocco Mediate has of beating Tiger Woods in today's U.S. Open playoff.

Their basic thesis, that Woods is the clear favorite, is undeniable. But they're taking it to an absolutely ridiculous extreme: According to Greenberg and Wingo, a Mediate victory today would be comparable to Buster Douglas defeating Mike Tyson in 1990.

Let's get real here. The odds at Bodog say that if you bet $100 on Mediate and he wins today, you'll make a profit of $275. In 1990, the Mirage in Vegas was posting 45-1 odds on Douglas, meaning that if you had bet $100 on him, you would have made $4,500.

I'm not sure if Greenberg and Wingo are dramatically underrating Mediate or if they're forgetting how big an underdog Douglas was, but there's just no comparison.

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.