Piling up this week's sports media notes while wondering why winds can be high enough to knock down power lines but don't pack enough punch to blow all of the leaves from my yard to my neighbors':
* Much punditry has been aimed at how the delivery of news on television, particularly as it relates to matters of politics this year, has become far too infused with viewpoints of the right and left. Not enough programs play it down the middle, the argument goes. (Please check out The Baltimore Sun's David Zurawik's blog at baltimoresun.com/zontv for some terrific commentary on these matters.)
When it comes to sports, though, viewers long have consumed their news with heavy doses of opinion. In fact, do we even think about it anymore?
The dominant sports news delivery systems at ESPN put reporters and commentators right alongside anchors on just about every program. So we jump from Buster Olney and Tim Kurkjian passing along what their sources tell them about baseball's free-agent market to Steve Phillips and John Kruk opining on how they think the signings should play out.
Most sports fans should be sophisticated enough to discern the difference, but even those anchors supposedly just serving as conduits of the news do more than simply narrate highlights with pithy catchphrases. We could be hearing something innocuous as on SportsCenter this week, when a clip showed the Los Angeles Lakers' Lamar Odom kicking out a pass to Sasha Vujacic, who was open because he was out of the game and standing up by the bench. Robert Flores remarked that the Lakers' warm-ups (which Vujacic was wearing) sported colors too much like the game uniforms, confusing Odom. Flores' anchor partner Chris McKendry responded that Odom's mistake was still pretty bad.
No big deal.
On the other hand, to hear ESPN's voice of the NFL studio, Chris Berman, say the San Francisco 49ers' firing of coach Mike Nolan "disgusted" him is quite a different matter. Doesn't that call into question how Berman will present any news regarding the 49ers? His role is - or should be - different from that of Tom Jackson or Mike Ditka.
Then again, that's just my opinion.
* Wednesday's completion of World Series Game 5 did finally jump one of the games into a double-digit rating. Fox's telecast drew 11.9 percent of the national audience. The final national average of 8.4 made this Series the lowest rated ever, the first to average under 10.
