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No Tears for Hampton’s Jerica Jenkins in Fight With Hodgkin’s Lymphoma

February 27, 2011   Milton Kent   No comments

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Jerica JenkinsWhen doctors told Hampton point guard Jerica Jenkins that she had cancer, she cried for a long time that April day.

It’s an understandable reaction, even more so for a high school freshman, which she was at the time of the diagnosis of Hodgkin’s lymphoma.

That day ended, and, so too did Jenkins’ tears, as it’s coming up on seven years since that day, and she hasn’t wasted any water on her cancer.

“I was shocked,” said Jenkins, a 5-foot-4 junior from Lancaster, Tex. “I didn’t believe it. I was 14. I was like, ‘There’s no way I have cancer.’ I just couldn’t believe it. I cried right then. Then, I realized that I had to deal with it and move on.”

There were enough tears to go around that first day when Jenkins got the diagnosis two days after a biopsy. She and her mother cried and prayed, and then got after beating Hodgkin’s, a lymphoma with a relatively high treatment rate, if detected early.

 

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Cooper-Dyke Bringing Hall of Fame style, Broken Clipboards to UNC-Wilmington

February 26, 2011   Milton Kent   No comments

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TOWSON, Md. — As Cynthia Cooper-Dyke turned to walk out a side door of the Towson Center to board the team bus for a seven-hour ride in the middle of the night back to Wilmington, N.C., it was gently brought to her attention that she had broken yet another clipboard in that night’s game in frustration over her team’s play.

“How many is that this year?” asked Cooper-Dyke.

“Five,” answered an assistant coach.

There are three things that make that situation pregnant with irony. First, UNC-Wilmington, where Cooper-Dyke is in her first season as head coach, had just beaten Towson by 29.

Second, the win moved the Seahawks to a 21-6 overall record and to 13-3 in the Colonial Athletic Association, keeping them in contention for an at-large NCAA tournament bid.

 

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Darrell Waltrip, Mike Joy of FOX Fire Back at Tony Kornheiser

February 17, 2011   Milton Kent   No comments

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It’s a safe bet that you won’t be seeing Darrell Waltrip holding hands with Tony Kornheiser and singing “Kum Ba Yah” anytime soon, not that you were likely to anyway.

But the chances got even more remote when, during his show, “Pardon The Interruption,” Kornheiser said Tuesday he had spoken to someone who said there was a “60 percent” chance that Dale Earnhardt, Jr. had qualified and won the pole position for Sunday’s Daytona 500 with a car that was not up to code and that NASCAR officials had looked the other way.

Needless to say, Waltrip, a FOX race analyst, took umbrage with Kornheiser’s off the cuff statements and said so during a conference call to promote Daytona coverage Thursday.

 

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Elena Delle Donne Smiles Through Good Times, Pain

February 16, 2011   Milton Kent   No comments

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Elena Delle DonneTOWSON, Md.– Smiles are perhaps the most versatile form of expression we have, for they can mask a feeling as well as amplify one.

The smile on Delaware forward Elena Delle Donne’s face last Thursday did double duty, functioning as a sign of happiness and a cover for pain.

The Blue Hens gritted out a 64-52 win over lowly Towson in a Colonial Athletic Association game in which Delaware shot 40 percent from the floor and were outrebounded on the offensive glass, 22-14.

And Delle Donne was the key to Delaware’s success, with a game-high 21 points, 11 rebounds and four blocks. The scoring was off a bit from her 25.5 points per game average, but then, you try pouring in points when your back is in spasm for most of the game, as it was then.

The SI joint in Delle Donne’s back went out late in the first half and her left leg was shorter than her right. She played the entire second half in excruciating pain, managing seven points and six rebounds after intermission.

“It’s just a pain,” Delle Donne said. “I can’t catch a break this year. But we got the win. It was an ugly win, but that’s all that matters.”

The ailing back is just the latest misfortune to befall Delle Donne, a 6-foot-5 sophomore, who was third in the nation in scoring last year. She said she hasn’t had a pain-free game since the second game of the season, a win over Villanova.

That’s when Delle Donne started to feel overly tired all the time, certainly well before the rigors of a new season should take hold.

“I was feeling exhausted in that game and it was almost like I couldn’t push through it,” Delle Donne said in an interview before the Towson game. “At halftime, I felt like I was going to fall asleep during the coach’s halftime speech. I was just a mess.”

 

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CBS, Turner Reveal Blueprints for NCAA Tournament Coverage

February 10, 2011   Milton Kent   No comments

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CBS and Turner Thursday announced a big piece of the road map by which they will combine to carry next month’s NCAA men’s basketball tournament, and it is a messy one.

For Mike Aresco, CBS Sports’ executive vice president for programming, what is an annual challenge — namely getting the March Madness to the right homes at the right time — has been made even more, well, challenging, by the presence of three more channels.

But it should be fun. Shouldn’t it?

“I think this will be one of those deals where we’ll look back on it and say, ‘Gee, wasn’t that fun?’ It might not be fun while we’re doing it,” said Aresco, laughing.

As previously announced, CBS, TBS, TNT and TruTV will air each of the 67 games nationally, from the new four play-in games to the Final Four and national championship match, across the platforms as national games. That means you won’t have to hunt for any games or buy a Direct TV package to see every game of the tournament.

That’s the easy part. What will be tricky is the execution of the plan, large portions of which were unveiled Thursday.

The process begins with “The First Four,” the newly created quartet of first round games, that will air on Tuesday and Wednesday March 15 and 16, starting at 6:30 p.m. with the nightcap at 9 p.m each night on TruTV. Though the games will feel for many much like the play-in games, CBS and Turner will gloss them up by having its Final Four crew of Jim Nantz, Clark Kellogg and Turner NBA analyst Steve Kerr do the Tuesday doubleheader with the ever excitable Gus Johnson and Len Elmore working the Wednesday games.

“We’re conscious with the NCAA of having those Tuesday-Wednesday games be perceived as part of the tournament, which they are,” said Aresco

From there, things get interesting. The start times of the Thursday and Friday games, now officially known as the second round, will be staggered in such a way so that viewers will be able to see more of the contests, since they’ll be scattered between the four channels.

As recently as last year, when CBS had all the games, start times would be delayed by 5-15 minutes during the windows. Now, there will be enough of a delay so that there will be “wall to wall basketball from noon to midnight,” Aresco said.

 

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Super Bowl XLV Breaks Viewership Record

February 07, 2011   Milton Kent   No comments

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It’s official: Sunday night’s telecast of Super Bowl XLV is the most-watched program in television history, in terms of viewership.

FOX , which aired Green Bay’s 31-25 win over Pittsburgh, breathlessly reported Monday that 111 million viewers tuned in to watch. That tops the 106.5 million who watched last year’s game between New Orleans and Indianapolis and surpasses the 106 million who tuned in to see the final episode of “M*A*S*H” in 1983.

This marks the fourth straight year that a Super Bowl telecast has set a viewership record, marking the first time a major sporting event has hit record high in four straight years. More impressively, Super Bowl viewership from 2005 to Sunday night has increased by nearly 25 million viewers.

In ratings terms, the Super Bowl posted a 46.0 rating and 69 share, meaning 46 percent of the nation’s households were tuned in to the game, while 69 percent of all television sets that were on at the time were watching the contest. That ties Sunday’s game for ninth on the list of highest-rated Super Bowls and 16th on the all-time list of most-watched shows, occupying those spaces with the same telecast, that of Super Bowl XXX aired by NBC in 1996 between the Steelers and Dallas.

The final “M*A*S*H” episode, which aired in February 1983, remains the highest-rated show of all time, pulling in a 60.2/77.

The Super Bowl closes a remarkable year of football viewing, in which ratings and viewership among all the NFL’s partners (CBS, ESPN, FOX and NBC) were up significantly and that “Sunday Night Football” ended the year as the most-watched program in all of television.

 

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Early Super Bowl Ratings Hint at Blockbuster Numbers for FOX

February 07, 2011   Milton Kent   No comments

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FOX wasted no time Monday laying the groundwork to declare Sunday’s Super Bowl telecast the most-watched in American television history by releasing ratings from the nation’s 55 largest markets.

The network announced that the Green Bay-Pittsburgh contest garnered a 47.9 rating and 71 share of the audience, according to Nielsen figures. That’s a three percent rise from last year’s 46.4/68 for New Orleans-Indianapolis, which aired on CBS.

FOX reports that the rating tied with Super Bowl XXI between the New York Giants and Denver as the highest among the metered markets, while the 71 share matches the highest for a Super Bowl in 29 years..

Let’s pause for a bit of housekeeping: The rating measures the percentage of households around the country watching a show, while the share is the percentage of television sets that are on at a given time that are tuned to a program. In effect, 47.9 percent of every house in the nation’s largest cities watched the game, while 71 percent of all the television sets in the country were watching some part or all of the game.

National ratings and the audience size are expected to be released later Monday. Given that last year’s game became the first Super Bowl to top 100 million viewers at 106 million, Sunday’s Super Bowl telecast may become the most-watched program in American television history, though the rating will likely not top the final episode of “M*A*S*H,” which posted a 60.2/77 in 1983.

The ratings in Pittsburgh and Milwaukee topped out at 59.7, which trails only Chicago’s 63.0 rating for Super Bowl XX as the largest for participating markets.

 

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Joe Buck, FOX Score Touchdown for Super Bowl Telecast

February 06, 2011   Milton Kent   No comments

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On a day when the American penchant for wretched excess was on full display, the scarcity of words marked FOX’s telecast of Super Bowl XLV.

Specifically, the ability of play-by-play man Joe Buck to frame game action using as little verbiage as necessary, while allowing his crew to illustrate the contest with terrific pictures and replays, salvaged the back half of what is annually the longest day in American television.

Buck, FOX’s top football and baseball caller, is arguably the best all-around booth talent in the business. The son of late Hall of Fame announcer Jack Buck, Joe, at 41 years old, is nearly at his dad’s level, with a razor-sharp wit and a keen sense of knowing how to blend modern sensibility with old-school technique.

One of Buck’s myriad strengths is his ability to, in television parlance, “lay out” and go silent, letting the moment speak for itself.

 

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FOX Statistician Hoping for Anonymity in Super Bowl Booth

February 05, 2011   Milton Kent   No comments

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If Sunday is a good day for Ed Sfida, he’ll get just as much attention as Greg Warren and Brett Goode.

Warren and Goode are long snappers for the Steelers and Packers, respectively, and the last thing they’d want is to be noticed, because that, for their position, usually means they’ve made a rather noticeable mistake.

Likewise, Sfida, the statistician on FOX’s Super Bowl coverage, is praying that the game goes smoothly and that his part of the day, feeding pertinent information to play-by-play man Joe Buck (photo right), also goes without a hitch.

“I guess like the long snapper, you know what would be a good Super Bowl? If my name isn’t in the paper Monday morning,” said Sfida.

“If I can anonymously go about doing what I’m doing, and if at the end of the game, Joe shakes my hand and says, ‘Nice job. And we’ll do it again in August.’ I think that ultimately is a good day, knock on wood, if I don’t see my name in the paper.”

Of course, the name of Sfida or virtually any other statistician for that matter is highly unlikely to show up in any newspaper.

But if Rashard Mendenhall rips off the longest run in Super Bowl history, and Buck doesn’t immediately tell you whose name he’s wiped out of the record books (Willie Parker, by the way), then Buck will catch hell in the papers and online, which will not reflect so well on Sfida.

 

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FOX Getting Creative With Pregame Show

February 05, 2011   Milton Kent   No comments

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Super Bowl XLVAs a rule, Super Bowl coverage on the networks is basically the same once the ball is kicked off, because the game that is played on FOX is essentially the same as any other one that is played on NBC, CBS and ESPN.

Where the NFL‘s carriers strive for distinction on Super Sunday is with their respective pregame shows.

It’s admittedly a daunting prospect since a lot of the potential audience for the show is not the hardcore football fan, but rather, as FOX Sports Media Group Chairman David Hill puts it, a group “sitting around with dip and guac and the odd beverage and cups of coffee chatting and seeing old friends.”

In other words, it’s not your standard Sunday afternoon football setup. And it’s dragged out not over the usual one hour or even ESPN’s two, but during a four-hour marathon — the length of which is dictated not by the merits of worthwhile material, but by the economics of wringing out every conceivable Super Bowl-adjacent advertising space

This year, the responsibility for molding the pregame show into something watchable falls to Scott Ackerson, the coordinating producer of FOX’s weekly pregame show.

 

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