Sporting Madness

We're going to be running plenty of panel recaps from Blogs With Balls' fourth edition (which I'm in New York City for) here this week, but the best moment actually came in the final panel of the day yesterday. Thus, to borrow from a famous quotation , "the last shall be first and the first shall be last". The most newsworthy moment of the whole day came from Josh Elliott , former ESPN SportsCenter anchor and current ABC Good Morning America co-host, who was on the final BWB panel ("Rising Stars") and candidly responded to my question about how he handles criticism of ESPN (along the lines of what I've delivered in a couple of pieces at The Good Point ). "I absolutely understand why people criticize ESPN," Elliott said. "It’s so pervasive and there are certain decisions it makes that are so terrible it sets itself up." Elliott was particularly bothered by his colleagues' reactions to his GChat interview with Deadspin ...

BIRMINGHAM, AL—The world of college football is going nuts at the moment with realignment, expansion and potential superconferences that could exacerbate the divide between the haves and have-nots . Other NCAA conference commissioners are raiding opponents , desperately trying to keep their conference alive , desperately trying to save their own job , lurking quietly or plotting world domination , but SEC commissioner Mike Slive has been rather quiet lately—despite extending an offer to Texas A&M and reportedly (or maybe not ) to Missouri as well, allowing the ACC's raid on the Big East to dominate the headlines . Slive chose to break his silence at a Birmingham bar Tuesday night, walking out on stage with rock legend Mark Knopfler and debuting a new song the two of them have been secretly working on. Unfortunately, video cameras were not allowed, so to get a sense of what went down, watch this video of Knopfler's original (now permitted in Canada !) and substitute in...