Hummel Appears On Waddle and Silvy

Rob Hummel appeared on the Waddle and Silvy Show out of ESPN Radio in Chicago yesterday to discuss D Rose's ACL tear since he is, after all, the world's foremost authority. Or something. Of course, Rob wasn't already a millionaire when he tore his (twice).

You can check out their podcasts by going to this link. 

We understand Rob going on Waddle and Silvy instead of the Boiled Sports Handsome Hour. You have to work your way up to the big time.

Thanks to reader Sean for the heads-up.

Painter Weighs in on Xavier, officials and his squad

If you've got time to listen to your Lady Ga Ga or Michael Buble at work (and who doesn't), you have time to listen to a very honest interview from Matty.

Click HERE to do so.

IU shill, and Indianapolis ESPN 1070 radio host, Dan Dakich hosts one of the best college basketball coaches and it doesn't take too long to read into what Painter really thinks.

-In spite of not drawing techs very often and seemingly not laying into the officials enough (for my liking), it's pretty clear he's not fond of the way the game is called by some.  Good.  There are a ton of officials that stink at their job.

-Painter has some guys (read as one specific guy) on a very short leash when it comes to on-court, in-game behavior.

If you already liked Matty before this, you'll probably like him more...If you didn't like Painter before listening to this, I don't see how you could continue the madness.

Boilerdowd Making WIMS Radio More Handsome

This happened on April 1, but we promise it's not an April Fool's Day joke. Your favorite handsome co-editor, Boilerdowd, joined the guys at WIMS radio for "Shootin' the Sports" to discuss the Matt Painter situation. It's a fifteen minutes that will change your life. Or at least entertain you for a while.

Several of you had asked about it and so here you go. Enjoy.

My favorite part is the sound of the train whistle flying through less than a minute into it. Choo-choo!!

SHOCKING NEWS: Story About Notre Dame Football Embellished

Sit down, everybody.  This is kind of a bombshell.

It turns out that Rudy, everbody's* favorite underdog, was a bit of an exaggeration. I know, I was shocked, too. What is there to believe in anymore?

Joe Montana went on the Dan Patrick Show yesterday and, in between sounding like he was completely baked, Joe sighed through a grudging explanation that, yes, he was there when Rudy was there and yes, Rudy got to play in their last game... but no, nobody turned in their jerseys and threatened to quit and no, they were not playing anything but a cupcake and no, despite having carried him off the field, it wasn't done seriously. It was done as kind of a joke. You know, the kind of dick thing they do at Notre Dame that makes opponents and fans hate them.

Can you believe it? I know I can't.

To think.... a story involving Notre Dame football three-plus decades ago has been stretched and distorted beyond reality. I mean, what's next? IU basketball fans wanting to have Bobby Knight back for a night to honor him?

Oh.


*Everybody is defined as really sad, clueless people who think movies like Rudy and The Blind Side are actually true-to-life.

Tom Izzo Thinks a Lot of Other Teams Are Good

Tom Izzo was on the Dan Patrick Show this morning and discussed a number of topics. At one point, Dan asked him who the best team was he'd seen this year.

Izzo began by mentioning Texas (which is free-falling its way out of the Top 25 at this point, but which beat MSU so they must be good...right?) and then also discussed Kansas, Kentucky, Syracuse.....

No mention of the number 3 team in the land, though. The team that took his squad behind the shed in their own house. The team that smoked his Final Four team by 18 last year. The team that he's got to go visit this Sunday.

The only mention of Purdue was when Dan wished him luck against Purdue this Sunday. No discussion of the Big Ten race. No talk about whether or not that's a big game.

We get accused sometimes of being hypersensitive to the lack of respect Purdue gets, but again, to reiterate -- it's not such a bad thing. Keep underestimating our boys.

Elliott-Brees Connection Mentioned on DP Show

As B-dowd mentioned, Drew Brees reportedly sent a text to Joey Elliott telling him to "go out and shock the world" on Saturday. (And, indeed, they're still talking about this game in Abu Dhabi.) Maybe we can arrange for Drew to text Joey before every game the rest of the season?

We often bitch about the lack of respect our program gets from media outlets so I wanted to mention this here. One of the few morning radio programs I can stomach is The Dan Patrick Show, and each Monday they do their "best and worst of the weekend," and one of the guys made Joey Elliott's performance against OSU his "best" of the weekend.

It's been a good feeling to be a Boilermaker the past few days.

I Will Never Understand Why He's Still On The Air

I'm sorry. I know I shouldn't keep beating a dead horse but, hey, this is (partially) my site and so I'm going to. While I think you could devote an entire feature to the mega-stupidity, forcedness, and all-around lousy radio that makes up the bulk of Mike and Mike in the Morning, there are sometimes things that stand out to me and for some reason I feel compelled to complain about them to you.

This morning, as I'm driving to work, they're talking about the Olympics and Mike Greenberg claims that "The time difference really works, you know?" Golic agrees, because, why not... and Greenberg goes on...

"I mean, twelve hours, that works out great. Five hours, now that would be bad... I mean, if it were London, what's London? Five hours? Six hours? Liam [one of their imbecile producers], what's London? Five hours?

Yeah, see, because if it were there, when the events are happening in the evening there, it'd be the middle of the night for us."

Ah, wait a minute. No. No sir, it would not be. London is five hours ahead of New York, thus if things were taking place in the evening there, it would be the afternoon in New York.

I guess it just bothers me that Mike Greenberg is supposed to be the semi-intelligent voice on this program and he doesn't even realize that London's five hours ahead of New York and not five hours behind. Maybe I'm being nit-picky, but that's kind of basic knowledge, isn't it?

Self-Deprication Is Always Funny

Here at Boiled Sports (and simply by being Purdue fans) we often get criticized for being whiners or always feeling like we get screwed somehow. I think in general we would agree that we always get screwed somehow, but you have to hear us out; usually, it's by our own coaching staff, like anytime Brock Spack is allowed to drink an entire container of maple syrup and then go draw up a defensive game plan. He just gets antsy in his pantsy.

Anyway, with college football season coming up sooner than you think, I thought it'd be fun to poke fun at our own brethren because, really, when you're a blindly loyal fan, you really can be ridiculous sometimes. Hell, some clowns are even predicting a 10-win season for the Boilers this season.

Below is a video cobbled together by someone who then put it on YouTube. It's from a rant by Colin Cowherd, noted ESPN radio douchebag who intentionally took down The Big Lead for no apparent reason a couple of months ago. Anyway, I have to admit that this bit is kind of funny. And to whoever the Purdue fan is who called in and tried his best to get his wacky-ass scenario heard: kudos, my good man, and way to Boiler Up.

Only 30 days until the season opener.

The Idiot Brigade

I've never been a fan of Screamin' Stephen A. Smith on ESPN and, sadly, he has a regular midday radio show in New York on 1050 AM, the local ESPN radio affiliate. He says stupid things all the time that are just way too easy to skewer so I just don't. Basically, time and the ability to pick what thing to mock keep me from posting regular features on how big an idiot Stephen A. Smith is today. But the other day he had Donald Trump on his show, another schmuck of all schmucks who seems lately to really enjoy bashing other millionaires.

A few weeks ago, Trump went after equally-loathesome fatass Rosie O'Donnell, perhaps curious as to who the public would side with when both combatants are complete a-holes. On 1050 radio the other day, Trump chose to bash Mark Cuban and the Dallas Mavericks over and over and over again. He referred to them as "losers" and basically said they'd never win with Cuban as owner because he, too, was a loser and didn't "look like" a winner. Excellent analysis, Donald. I'm sure I'm not alone is saying that I wouldn't mind have Mark Cuban own my favorite NBA team. They didn't lose because Cuban's a bad owner or puts to much pressure on them. But that's neither here nor there.

At one point, while Trump is railing against Cuban, he remarks that Cuban "copied The Apprentice" (Trump's overrated show that's not nearly as original as Donald thinks it is/was) with his own show. Stephen A does his exaggerated chuckle at this and says, "Ha ha ha, yeah, da Bachelor..." before allowing Trump to continue pointificating.

Except Cuban's show was The Benefactor and not The Bachelor. Words are hard for Screamin' Stephen. I know this is a little thing but it's one of those small things that, when you hear it, provide an indication of just how stupid a person is.

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Then the cavalcade of brainlessness continued yesterday on a show I normally enjoy very much. The drive-time show on 1050 is hosted by Michael Kay, the voice of the Yankees on the YES network. Now, a lot of people don't like Michael and I can see why you might not. But if you listen to his show on a regular basis, you'd grow to love it because it's actually very funny and it's not your typical clueless meatheads yelling at the callers like they're drunks in a sports bar.

However, yesterday, Michael was doing the day game the Yankees had so his backup, Don LaGreca was filling in for him. Don is a good guy, too, and does a good job as a sidekick and occasional host. However, he was paired with legendary idiot Steve Phillips and this is the death knell to anyone who has an aspiration to be successful on TV or radio. Whenever Phillips is on Baseball Tonight, it usually comes to a point where he says so many stupid things that John Kruk wants to strangle him.

On yesterday's show, Phillips was repeatedly credited with "coming up with" a way to measure Roger Clemens' value to the Yankees. I'm not making this up. I mean, I'd say you measure his value by how his mere prescence intimidates other lineups or how it makes your pitching staff that much deeper or, hey, you know, straight wins and losses and other quantifiable stats.

But no. No, Steve Phillips measure of figuring out Roger Clemens' worth to the Yankees is to take the Yankees five starters and the Red Sox five starters and to rank them in order from 1 to 10. Wherever you think Clemens fits in there is....your answer...? Really? I don't get it. And no matter how long I listened, I still didn't get it. And do you know why? Because it's idiotic. What do the Red Sox starters have to do with Roger Clemens being a Yankee? So what if I'd put Schilling or Beckett ahead of him? They aren't on the same team. And the group did nothing to explain how this helps us understand Clemens' value. Most of them had Clemens ranked 5th or 6th out of those 10. Okay. Now what? What does that tell us?

At one point, they actually got Michael Kay on the phone before he got on a plane with the Yankees to head to Seattle. LaGreca asked him about Clemens' value to the Yankees and then credited Phillips with this wonderful formula for figuring worthiness thusly:

"Steve Phillips came up with this and it's really a great one," says LaGreca, "You take the five starters for the Yankees and the five starters for the Sox and you rank them one to ten. Where does Clemens fit in there?"

There's a pause as you just know Kay is trying to do what I was trying to do in my car -- figure out what the frick this has to do with a pitcher's value. And then he comes back with this:

*sigh* "Oh... leave it to Phillips to come up with something like this."

Exactly. It makes no sense and this was about as close to saying it on the air as these guys were going to.

So those are my moron stories for today.

Lunardiology

Joe Lundari, he of "Bracketology," seems confused himself.

Yesterday afternoon, while on Michael Kay's radio show in New York, Lunardi said that the Big Ten was "weak" and he wasn't impressed with any of the teams, except for the top two. Oh, you mean, arguably the two best teams in the frickin' nation, Joe? Joe? Hello?

Joe went on to say that he thought the Big Ten should/would only get "four, maybe five teams." While he was talking -- while he was talking -- I brought up his Bracketology page on ESPN.com, which claimed to be updated on 3/9 (which was that day) and said he had six teams -- not four or five -- considered "in" the Tourney.

Then today, Lunardi made an appearnace on the ESPN tourney show that's currently wrapping up. Bilas called him out on a lot of his crap, specifically pointing out that if any of these major conference bubble teams (such as Kansas State, Illinois, etc.) lost to the teams that squads like Old Dominion and Drexel (who Lunardi has "in") have lost to, we wouldn't even be considering those major conference schools for the tourney. A solid point by the Bilastrator, I thought.

Lunardi's defense? He's not picking the teams he likes; rather, he's picking what he thinks the committee is going to do.

Well, now, Joe, then why is your opinion often injected into your interviews, usually accompanied by a haughty sneer when commenting on the "weak" Big Ten that has produced two teams who have held #1 rankings this season?

Also, Joe Lunardi still thinks Purdue needs to show well today to be considered a lock. Joe Lunardi is a bitch.

Game on in 15 minutes.

Quitting On Mike and Mike

Okay, so I'm pretty much done with Mike and Mike In The Morning as part of my official morning routine. For the past few years, I've listened to them pretty much every morning. I put the radio on when I got up and was getting ready for work and then I had it on in the car during my commute. I never really liked them or found them amusing so the logical question one might ask is why did I listen?

Well, I live in the New York listening area and if you want to listen to sports talk in the morning, they're the lone option. It's the same reason I have Cablevision service -- I have no other choice if I want cable.

So I listened and tried not to let them completely annoy me as I waited for their one redeeming quality to occur -- their outstanding guests.

Because they are an ESPN mouthpiece, they have excellent guests on a lot of the time. During the baseball season, Peter Gammons, Jason Stark and Tim Kurkjian are always on. They also get GMs of random teams and broadcasters from teams in the news, largely because (and I'm just guessing) they're ESPN. The ESPN personalities absolutely must be mandated to come on this abomination of a show and there are occasionally times when you can tell they're less than amused at Mike and Mike's "antics."

So let's get to the point. Why am I done with them? I don't even know where to begin. For one thing, they're annoying and forced and scripted and I've recently found myself getting more and more pissed off. Yes, Golic is fat. We get it. You two are like the Odd Couple. We get it. Mike Greenberg likes the Jets. We understand. Thanks for hitting us over the head with it. They laugh uproariaously at their "jokes," if you can call them that, and act like the two of them are the "wackiest" guys out there. Ugh.

One of Greenberg's most annoying habits, though, is the way in which he asks questions. Some of the most famous interviewers and sports reporters have been noted for asking very simple open-ended questions, thus the proliferation of the now-ubiquitous "How do you feel?" question. It's short, it's open, it leaves itself out there for all sorts of responses. And yes, we're tired of it, but it still gets asked because it's hard to ask a better question that is that short. The general rule of thumb is you shouldn't make any interview about yourself more than your interview subject and Greenberg rambles on every time he ever interviews anyone. It's infuriating. A sample question might be something like this:

Greenberg: "What about the quarterback situation in Miami because you've got Daunte Culpepper who was one of the best but isn't happy now and now you're going to have a new coach and there's also Cleo Lemon in the mix and, the reality is, Culpepper wants to play and play like he did when he was an MVP candidate back in Minnesota with those good Minnesota teams with Randy Moss, but doesn't this have the potential to be a Terrell Owens kind of situation with a star player feeling disrespected and having to kind of fill the shoes of a great, great player like Dan Marino?"

I'm not even exaggerating for effect. This is probably a short question by Greenberg standards. Related to this, he also doesn't know how to greet an interview subject on the radio show. Someone will be coming on and before the person even speaks, Greenberg will ask one of his long questions but he'll start is with, "...and now we bring in Boomer Esiason, and good morning to you Boomer and we'll start with the AFC quarterback situation..." and then he'll literally go on with a 500 word "question" so the first time the interviewee gets to speak they don't know what to say. And I loved Boomer one time when he came on and said, "Wow, that was probably the longest question I've ever been asked."

Next on the list: The "man up" crap. A while back, they began this inane bullshit where Golic would explain to us all how you "man up" in certain situations. They dragged it out to the point where listeners would supposedly send in questions for the guys to answer and of course every time it was discussed, Golic would take shots at Greenberg for not being a real man. Yes, hit us over the head with it again. We get it.

What's more annoying and obnoxious really, though, is the way they often imply that Greenberg is gay. They equate him being a wimp and uncoordinated with having played tennis and being kind of feminine. He claims to love the song "It's Raining Men" and plays it while gyrating homo-erotically in his chair (this abomination is simulcast on ESPN2) and he often comments that he and Golic are "like a married couple," to which Golic reacts with clearly scripted discomfort and disgust. Whenever Chad Pennington is mentioned -- and I mean every damn time -- they BLAST "I Will Always Love You" by Whitney Houston. These examples not only drive home the point that every joke is smashed over our heads on a daily basis but it also makes it look like these two think it's funny to pretend to be gay. Given how the world just crashed down around Tim Hardaway, why isn't this more of an issue ever?

Last year, they made the ill-advised move of having their "First Annual Marriage Madness" right around the end of NCAA tourney time. In it, couples submitted themselves for the chance to get married on Mike and Mike's show in May. What?? What the f-ck does this have to do with sports?? They took up tons of time on the show comparing the couples, telling us all about them and then asking their listeners to vote on the couples they wanted to see win. I DON'T CARE. No self-respecting male did care! It was stupid and contrived (one of the most contrived things they've done on a show that seems to have contrivance in the mission statement) and just impossible to listen to. I contacted ESPN's ombudsman, George Solomon, to complain. I received an email back saying that George would most likely discuss it in his next column. I don't believe he ever did but that's not the point. I definitely think I wasn't alone because as the Marriage Madness stupidity approached and reached its culmination, Greenberg would often start off by saying, "We realize this isn't for everybody and if it's not for you, we respect that." Yeah, so either he was also getting eviscerating emails by the thousands or he was told of the complaints and the thousands of radios being switched to another channel.

More recently, they've seemed to get more annoying and fake if that's possible. Last week, Golic made a comment about Greenberg always interrupting him and Greenberg then faux-interrupted Golic literally about twelve straight times, much in the way a child would do it when trying to be "funny." It wasn't funny; it was stupid. And yet these are the childish, wholly uncreative things that go on during this train wreck of a show.

One of the ways in which the horrid-ness of this show was crystalized for me was around the holidays when Mike and Mike take off for a week or so. They do it every year, as do many radio hosts, and others fill in for them. The past two Christmas weeks the fill-in has been Mark Schlereth and another guy, somtimes Eric Kusillias and sometimes Trey Wingo. The point is, without the fake Odd Couple schtick, the show is actually...good. Schlereth is a breath of fresh air whenever he's on the show, always seeming to be the voice of reason, logic and sound analysis. While Golic is the kind of moron who says things like "Well, I picked the Colts at the beginning so I have to keep picking them" (No, you fat moron! You don't!), Schlereth is more cerebral and has legitimate reasons for his opinions. When Schlereth guest-hosts (as I said, with another co-host), the show is 100% sports and sports talk with no stupid stories about Greenberg's home life or how Mike Golic likes food.

One more thing I'll discuss is their disgustingly PC approach to things. The best example I can quickly think of is from last year when they did their "Mount Rushmore of Sports" and were lamely debating who should go on a Mt. Rushmore of sports figures. In an effort to be as politically correct as possible, Greenberg would always say, "There are people screaming at their radios, 'You idiots! What about Jackie Robinson?'" And he's right, there are those of us who scream at our radio that these two are idiots. But I digress.

No, the reason that Jackie Robinson wasn't on their Mt. Rushmore of sports was -- get this -- because he's "above it all" and he's "smiling down from above" on this. What...the...f-ck?? Smiling down??

Look, cowards, if you're creating a monument to the most revered and influential sports figures of modern times, you don't exclude certain people because they're too good for it. Mike and Mike were excluding Jackie Robinson because they simply didn't want him on their monument. It wasn't racist and I'm not trying to suggest it was, but just have the balls to say "We're not putting him on it," instead of being chicken PC suckups.

I do not for the life of me understand why this show is still on the air. I mean, there's definitely an element of ESPN forcing it upon us but they've shown in the past that they're willing to cancel terrible shows (see Smith, Stephen A.). I guess there are people out there who like the same lame-ass jokes and making fun of each other that these two putzs do every....single...morning. The people who find this funny are probably the same people who rank The King of Queens as one of the funniest shows they've ever seen.

I also don't understand why there isn't more vitriol out there about these guys. If you do Google searches, you don't find much

What I wouldn't give for a true sports morning show on the radio. Until I get one, I'll have to tune in for as much as I can stand from these imbeciles and simply rejoice when I hear they're not hosting.

Uh-oh, Mike Missanelli is Talking

Just before noon today on 1050 ESPN Radio in New York, Mike Missanelli was filling in for Max Kellerman (talk about two bad choices). Missanelli was discussing his little segment he (apparently) calls "Love Mail/Hate Mail" when his co-host suggested he go with "Love Mail" today with Valentine's Day just around the corner. Missanelli's response to this suggestion?

"You're not going 'Amaechi' on me, are ya?"

Hoo-boy, this ought to make politically-correct people real happy, turning John Amaechi's gayness into a punchline on an ESPN frequency. Missanelli is just one of a cavalcade of idiots that are broadcast on 1050 every day so there are tons of other reasons I would choose to list as to why he's an idiot but this one.... well, way to be aware of the issues, Mike. I mean, Snickers just got absolutely lambasted by gay activist groups for their "Kissing Mechanics" commercial during the Super Bowl, there's been tons of talk on radio and TV this week about John Aemechi coming out of the closet and whether or not a gay athlete might ever be accepted, and here goes Missanelli making an offhand comment that illustrates precisely why gay dudes could never be in pro sports. This is a doofus radio host -- far from the manliest of men -- and even he thinks it's an utter joke.

Being a white straight man, I'm not usually one to bang the drum about this stuff but, dude, come on. Think before you speak. If he made this comment about race, he'd be out on his ass. Just like he was a year ago in Philly.