Some Monday Afternoon Links

Going through some sports news and I found enough stories to give you some links this afternoon.

A couple of blog entries from Conde Nast Portfolio’s Allan Kreda. First Kreda quotes an interview Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones did with CNBC’s Darren Rovell about the NFL Network. And Kreda points out that CBS got a 22.5 overnight rating for the Pats-Colts, the highest regular season game rating since 1986.

Paul J. Gough of the Hollywood Reporter says football did well for both CBS and NBC yesterday.

John Molori’s Media Blitz on Boston Sports Media Watch says Patriots-Colts actually lived up to the hype. And Bruce Allen, the owner of the BSMW, has the ratings for WBZ-TV in Boston.

There’s been a story circulating on the internet today that the Indianapolis Colts boosted the sound of the crowd inside the Hoosier Dome yesterday. In fact, one fan thought he had caught the Colts with this particular clip. But Mark Alesia of the Indianapolis Star has CBS saying that noise during the broadcast came from the production truck and not the Dome. But this is not the first time this issue has been raised.

The NFL has moved the next Patriots game which will be on November 18th against the Bills into the 8:15 p.m primetime slot for Sunday Night Football. Mike Reiss of the Boston Globe who has an excellent Patriots blog has more on this story. Here’s the press release from NBC Sports. The move by the NFL means the originally scheduled game for primetime, Chicago-Seattle will be in the 4:15 p.m. slot for Fox as Dale Phelps of the Tacoma (WA) News Tribune tells us.

Rob Amen of the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review writes a story on a local company that provides the production truck that ESPN will use tonight on Monday Night Football.

Jeffrey Flanagan of the Kansas City Star looks at how the Chiefs Radio Network called the Packers-Chiefs game yesterday.

ESPN has selected the November 17th Penn State-Michigan State game for a 3:30 p.m. slot on ABC. In the meantime, the Pittsburgh-Rutgers game on that same date will be a syndicated ESPN Plus Big East Game of the Week. Blair Kirkoff of the Kansas City Star has the Big 12 games on TV for the same date (all times Central). Kyle Veazey of the Jackson (MS) Clarion-Ledger has the SEC TV schedule and notices that ESPN/ESPN2 do not have any conference games that day.

I gave you this story this morning, but we get some more reaction on ESPN’s teaming with Microsoft to send content to the Xbox live network. Kyle Sutton of PC World has more on the story in his blog (did you ever think I would link to a story in PC World?). Todd Spangler of Multichannel News writes that game replays and original content are part of the deal. And we get more directly from ESPN’s Press Release.

There you go for now. Plenty of NFL and college football news for you in this edition. Check back later for a possible evening update. Primetime Viewin Picks are next.