Play for Pay?

These updates are coming later and later in the day. My apologies. I’ve been quite busy this morning and I have not been able to turn on a computer until now. So many links, so little time so let’s get to it.

First, Teddy Greenstein of the Chicago Tribune attended a taping of a roundtable discussion at Northwestern University regarding whether college athletes should be paid. It got rather testy, but you won’t see that when the discussion airs on ESPNU tonight at 8. This issue is a hot debate among some college athletes and Greenstein gives a nice synopsis. It’s good reading.

Rudy Martzke of USA Today gets together with his fellow senior citizen, Billy Packer of CBS. They discuss the popularity of the NCAA Tournament. Packer contends that more people watch the tournament during the three week period in March/April than NASCAR, but the numbers don’t bear that out. Granted, there’s just one race a week while there are a ton of games on TV, but as it stands, the better ratings are with NASCAR and this comes from an avowed college basketball fan who doesn’t get what the appeal is of taking four lefts around a track.

If you’re going to watch the tournament, here are the broadcast teams as assigned by CBS.

It is just 17 days until baseball’s Opening Day and the Washington Nationals still do not have a television contract. Baltimore Orioles owner Peter Angelos is proposing to televise Nats (this will be an interesting nickname) games on a proposed Regional Sports Network that he and the O’s would own and operate. But MLB opposes this idea because it does not want the broadcast rights to a team owned by a rival team. So the negotiations between Angelos and MLB continue. Thomas Heath of the Washington Post gives a better explanation of the story. Comcast Sports Net Mid-Atlantic currently owns the Orioles rights and would like to broadcast the Nationals, but until this issue is settled, the Nationals remain off TV.

Cablevision of New York is being sued by the New York Jets over a proposed stadium on the west side of New York City. Cablevision is opposed to the stadium and is trying to bid for the land to prevent the Jets from building there. The Jets want to build there so it can its own identity (nice idea after playing some 25 years in Giants Stadium). The NFL says a 2010 Super Bowl will be awarded to New York if the stadium comes to fruition. The Jets contend Cablevision is an illegal monopoly. This could get quite ugly between the Jets and Cablevision. Here’s the link to the story on ESPN.com.

Yesterday, I gave you the link to Bonnie Bernstein’s website. Well, ESPN sideline reporter Jill Arrington has a site of her own. No luck in finding one for the lovely Erin Andrews of ESPN.

That’s it for today.