FanHouse Scott Van Pelt

Video forward by Kevin Blackistone.



The colloquium was titled "Intercollegiate Athletics: Pro/Con: the Joys and Challenges of College Sports." The subject, as stated by moderator Maury Povich, was academics, athletics, and money.

Povich directed his first question at Redskins offensive tackle Stephon Heyer. While at Maryland, did Heyer consider himself more student or athlete.

The Redskins offensive lineman chuckled.

Aaron Curry is considered the "safest pick" in this year's NFL Draft. It's for several reasons: he started all but one game in his three-year, redshirt career at Wake Forest, he plays a position that doesn't scream "NFL downside" like, say, quarterback, and perhaps most importantly, everyone is aware that he's just a good person.

This became all the more evident during a recent radio interview with Mike Tirico and Scott Van Pelt on ESPN Radio (autoplay) when Curry was asked about bringing a leukemia survivor and a patient at St. Jude's Children's Hospital with him to the NFL Draft on Saturday.

Last week, when I found out that Bud Selig had made over $18 million in 2007 to slowly destroy run baseball, I was a bit appalled, and let my feelings on the subject be known. As you'd expect, I wasn't the only person who was a bit taken aback by the news.

Selig's salary was the discussion of many sports radio programs last week, including one with ESPN's Scott Van Pelt, in which Van Pelt discussed his shock to learn of Bud's bouillon. Well, thankfully I write for AOL and not ESPN, because if I did I probably wouldn't be allowed to write this post, seeing as how Van Pelt won't be hosting his radio show for a while.

Once all the dust settled after last summer's Buzz Bissinger meltdown, a more nuanced view of blogs began to emerge within the sports media mainstream. Whether they personally read blogs or not, most sports media professionals I know understand that it's silly to pretend that all blogs are good or all blogs are bad.

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.

Tony Reali was a 23-year-old writer and researcher at ESPN in 2001 when Michael Wilbon and Tony Kornheiser decided to give him the on-air role of Stat Boy at the end of every episode of their new show, Pardon the Interruption. Two and a half years later, he replaced Max Kellerman as host of Around the Horn.

Reali now has the job of provoking and correcting older sports writers down pat, which will help this weekend as the moderator of a panel of sports writers during the second day of ESPN's coverage of the NFL draft.

In a phone interview with Reali Monday, I talked to him about the draft, blogs, mixed martial arts and criticisms of Around the Horn.

A light-hearted poke at baseball players' custom of hiding their mouth with their glove while they talk? Or a deep rooted hatred of Wake Forest by Virginia native David Wright stemming from a ruined NCAA bracket in 1995, when Tim Duncan and the one seed Demon Deacons were ousted in the round of 16 by Oklahoma State? You decide in Wright's new Sportscenter commercial featuring Neil Everett, Scott Van Pelt, and the Wake Forest Demon Deacon:

Not sure David is going to clinch any appearances on SNL on the strength of this spot. When the scene is stolen by a mascot reading a newspaper, it's never a good sign.