As you've noticed over the last 10 days, our site has turned into a mini-Olympics parlor. We certainly don't view ourselves as huge Olympics fans, but we've enjoyed our share of programming. We've concluded it's partly due to the summer games coming at the perfect time. We're stuck in the lull of the baseball season where it's gone on for a long time, but isn't quite ready for the postseason stretch run. College football and the NFL are on the horizon, but still a good few weeks from officially diving in.

The other main reason the Olympics have been enjoyable to watch is the enthusiasm of some of the analysts and commentators. We already documented Bela Karolyi's outstanding performance in TV-watching and quite frankly, the male gymnastics commentator Tim Daggett is unintentionally hilarious.

We get to listen to analysts whose sole job is to hammer us with information that the viewer wouldn't otherwise be able to pick up on, which is what we always assumed the job entailed.  Sure, it can be a bit overwhelming - Cynthia Potter trying to explain sychronized diving comes to mind - but it can also be fairly interesting.  Consider us somewhat entertained when Ato Bolden is speaking about the physics behind running down a track at 20 mph or Kevin Barnett trying to get viewers to understand how someone is supposed to return a volleyball jump serve that is going about 80.   

If you can ignore the superiority of Costas, that sap from Mary Carillo, 25 interviews with Michael Phelps' mom and the fact that the sideline reporters try to conduct interviews with athletes immediately after an event when they literally can't breathe, we haven't found too much to complain about over the past two weeks. 

If nothing else, it's created an excuse for sports fans to watch Melissa Stark again. My, she still looks good.   

Crap that actually came from somebody's mouth

"Michael Phelps getting the muscles loose for his next semi." - Dan Hicks

Let the record show that Phelps vigorously attacked that semi and every semi he had in Beijing. It's what true champions are made of.
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"(Yang Yilin) looks like a kid playing in the playground." - Tim Dagget

Yang has some Brett F***e in her. Any time Yang can get some F***e in her, she's going to be successful -- and have tons of fun.
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"(Diana Taurasi's) like Joe Montana. She sees things develop before they happen." - Ann Myers

Quotes like these are fun because they make you realize WNBA media puts their sport on par with the NFL. Nothing wrong with that other than well, BWAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH.
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"In Cleveland (Brady Quinn's) the most popular guy in the entire city." - Tony Kornheiser

LeBron James is not amused Tony. Not by a long shot.
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"So that would be Mr. Wright meeting Mr. Wright. ... that's exactly right." - Kornheiser

The Bobber is impressed, Tony -- especially for a preseason game.

House Moms are Dominant at Basketball in Spain



SIRIUS XM Signs Hyperactive Monkey to 5 Year Deal

In a sign that even the mainstream sports radio market is flooded with a lack of ideas and originality, the world's premiere sattellite radio distributor has inked the "Mad Dog", Chris Russo, to a long term contract.

SIRIUS XM Radio announced today that it has signed renowned sports talk personality Chris “Mad Dog” Russo, the former star of the Mike and the Mad Dog show, to a five-year contract to headline a new sports talk channel exclusively available on SIRIUS and XM.

As we noted yesterday, Russo will be getting his own channel - 123 on Sirius, 144 on XM - and it will be dubbed ‘Mad Dog Radio.’

Far be it for us to criticize the signing when we never really listened to Mike and the Mad Dog prior to its demise, but Chris Russo? Really? This is the same Chris Russo who does minute-long video bits for MSNBC/NBC Sports resembling 60 seconds of a drunken buffoon talking sports. Actually, that might be a bit too harsh for the drunken buffoon.

The five year deal, while not too surprising, once again illustrates there really isn't much to listen to in the sports radio industry - from a national perspective. When these two are "the best we can do", we've got serious problems. And then there's that Jim Rome character.

INCREDIBLE.

PHENOMENAL.

TOP NOTCH INTERVIEW WITH THE LEGENDARY RONNIE PAULINO IN THE NEXT HALF HOUR OF THE SHOW, THAT'LL BE GREAT.

GONNA BE A GREAT SHOW.

Even the Professional Media are Mocking Tiki

After briefly touching on the crappy humor of Tiki Barber in last week's Circus, we thought we'd direct you to a few unfavorable reviews Tiki earned via the real journalism people. It's quite telling - and highly amusing to us.

The Columbia Journalism Review points out that Tiki referred to Mike Krzyzewski as "Mike Rezevski" and called the nation of Hungary "Hungaria". They also add:

"Olympic Update is on for two hours a day, but as far as Barber is concerned, it’s Amateur Hour."

The folks over at Sports Business Daily also chime in:

"No one would care if this program disappeared from the schedule."

Safe to say that when we talk about the positives of watching the Olympics, we're not thinking of Tiki on MSNBC's Olympic Update. In much the same way Barber wasn't the "typical football player" in his playing days, Tiki is not the typical television broadcaster ... he's way worse.

Sweet dragon costume, dork.

The Snap Runneth Over

Normally we let Bob Carpenter take care of the snappy lines at the end of this column each week with one or two lines, but after much pleading from the Bobber, a 10-spot is taking center stage.  For it's not often that one journalist can put in a transcendent performance the likes of what Jayson Stark from ESPN.com has done. 

In his Rumblings and Grumblings column, Stark makes a point to sprinkle some cheese into the title of each subsection of his piece.  For his sterling performance in a column last week, we recognize him today with a Bob Carpenter Snappy Lines Achievement Award.

The following all appeared in a single article:

Rays-ing the stakes (on the Tampa Rays)
Rockie time (on the Colorado Rockies)
Phila-Manny-ical (for the record, we have no clue what this is supposed to mean)
Fresh Eyre (on Scott Eyre)
Their Bucs stopped there (on Pittsburgh)
Out of the Pitts (another on Pittsburgh)
Livan Large (on Livan Hernandez; note the apt use of the word "large")
Dunn Deal (on Adam Dunn)
Danks a Million (on John Danks)
Seeing Red (on Cincinnati)

People, that's ten snappers in one column.  Double digits.  When Carpenter read this on his Commodore home PC, he passed out on the keyboard for 25 minutes. 

Job well done, Mr. Stark. 

The Media Circus is written by Josh Bacott and Patrick Imig. They swear this stuff is real. Email them at info@joesportsfan.com