Another awkward segment from NFL Network

All Super Bowl coverage except for the game is one giant blog post.

Here’s a story:

Back when the Michigan Wolverines were putting boots to asses, they hosted the national game of the week up in Ann Arbor against the Michigan State Spartans. College GameDay showed up, recruits jammed the stadium and the Big Brother/Little Brother rivalry had more juice than it has since Nick Saban and Lloyd Carr were on the sidelines.

The game had, arguably, the best finish of the year – both from the improbability of Michigan State pulling out a victory from the jaws of defeat, and for the ramifications it would end up having on the College Football Playoff. Here’s a reminder of the game’s ending.

Afterward, being the charged up blog that we are, we posted anything and everything in the way of fallout. Results, Twitter reactions and any trolls that manifested. One such troll was Jemele Hill, a Sparty alumna, taking digs at Rich Eisen, a Michigan Man.

We wrote it up and tweeted it out because, again, we’re a blog. It’s part of the gig. With wounds still fresh from the defeat, Eisen found our tweet and took a potshot at FanSided.

Salty, eh? Never mind the fact that every person on Twitter – every single person – uses the medium so they’ll be paid attention to. Who really gives a shit what blogs post about. You put something in a public forum and it’s fair game. Eisen never had an issue when blogs posted his touching tribute to Stu Scott or any of his 40-yard dash videos. Why care now?

This is the nature of sports blogs. We pick up everything – the good, bad and inane – and post on them. If notable figures do something we find interesting, we’ll post. Deliver what people are looking for, or might enjoy.

Now, spinning forward to Super Bowl week, here’s a segment that aired on NFL Network on Super Bowl Sunday, about three hours before the Big Game – Steve Mariucci hugging beautiful women while Eisen narrates.

So that’s the type of stuff Rich Eisen and NFL Network pay attention to, huh?

To be fair, I couldn’t care less that Mooch was hugging beautiful women in the most awkward of manners. Nor do I care that Eisen was part of the segment – it was pretty funny and Eisen played a great straight man. This is the sports universe nowadays. There are 60 minutes of on-field competition, and then a billion hours of bloviating. You can only parse game footage so many times. There has to be an entertainment value somewhere. Everyone, no matter the medium – ESPN, NFL Network, Sports Illustrated, every Internet site on the web – employs blog elements.

The issue is that Eisen is playing from both sides of the plate. Kvetching about nonsensical coverage when he’s salty after a loss, but delivering the same kind of mindless entertainment while having to kill 12 hours of programming. His tweet, while probably a quick, innocuous strike in his mind, was actually harmful to a smaller media entity like ours. It immediately discredited the site – one that admittedly has a great deal of fluff, but also some excellent writing and insight (obligatory examples one, two, three and four). The years of clout he’s built up can be wielded like a sword – for good or ill. So, for somebody trying to claw up in the sports industry – one that’s more competitive than ever – his tweet came off as childish and uncalled for. Especially when his show is littered with segments of grown men wearing onesies and talking like babies, and ex-coaches giving off awkward sexual chemistry with models and movie stars.

And yes, this is a post that’s probably three months too late. But hey, when the boss points at you and says write about this bullshit that’s on the TV, and it’s act or not get a paycheck, well, you just try and put a bow on it.