* ESPN hasn't overhauled its playbook by going to live SportsCenters during weekdays, but it showed a few tweaks can mean a better offense.
Wednesday offered a good example. The stories of the Boston Red Sox's acquisition of outfielder Mark Kotsay and the Jacksonville Jaguars' finally getting No. 1 draft pick Derrick Harvey under contract broke in the morning. Under the previous format of repeating the last SportsCenter from the night before, these stories would have been relegated to updates inserted into the show. But with live programs, the news was able to be integrated, making the SportsCenters much more up to date.
* Would you like a show dedicated to how you're getting fired? That's life in the NFL. Tomorrow night at 8 on the NFL Network: Around the League: Roster Cuts.
* Sigh. Back to school means high school football games on ESPN. The network will carry a matchup between two Kansas City, Mo., area schools Sunday at noon. Then on Monday at noon, the Kirk Herbstreit Ohio vs. USA Challenge pits a team from his home state against one from Florida. Lots of blue-chip recruits in action.
And we don't need this. I know the cat is not only out of the bag as far as putting national attention on high school athletes, but the cat also has already clawed the bag into little pieces. It's disappointing to see Herbstreit, whose college football work on ESPN I generally admire, involved in such an enterprise.
* Look for a series of baseball promotional spots soon to highlight postseason telecasts on Fox and TBS. Among those featured are comedians Jeff Foxworthy and Frank Caliendo, American Idol's Randy Jackson and the animated Stewie from Family Guy. The theme is "There's Only One October." (Which is handy to know. After all, in the Jewish calendar, some years have two months of Adar.) Just curious, though. Does Major League Baseball really want to be associated with a cartoon character motivated by thoughts of matricide?
