Boston Sports Media Watch

I’m actually starting to warm up to Bill Burt.

Burt has been on the sports media scene for nearly 25 years now, and has spent his entire career at the Lawrence Eagle-Tribune where he is now the Executive Sports Editor for the paper.

He joined the paper right out of college, and has covered events such as Marvin Hagler fights in Las Vegas, the Patriots Super Bowl trips, and even tried out for the Manchester NH Arena Football League team for a story. He also does the Burt Talks Sports blog for the paper. For a while, the blog was squatting on the BradfordonBaseball.com domain after Rob Bradford left the Eagle-Tribune, but now the domain has been transferred back to Bradford and points at his Boston Herald blog.

He has gotten most of his biggest exposure in the region as a result of his appearances on WEEI’s Big Show, where he is forced to play a bumbling, forgetful role to make Glenn Ordway look smarter. Burt has also hosted a weekend show with Lenny Megliola on the station, one which resulted in a Pete Gustin skit which is actually funny.

He recent Celtics columns and coverage has been top-notch.

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Popularity: 12% [?]

It’s not football season, so we haven’t seen or heard a whole lot of Smerlas recently.

Fred Smerlas is a former Pro Bowl Nose Tackle for Boston College, the Buffalo Bills, San Francisco 49ers and Patriots. He currently is a TV and Radio commentator for WEEI and other outlets. On WEEI, he is mostly teamed with Steve DeOssie, who is also his business partner in their Rhode Island steakhouse.

During football season he also serves as a a contributor to western New York radio stations WGR in Buffalo and WHAM in Rochester.

He is known for picking the Patriots in every single game, something that almost worked last season…

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Popularity: 16% [?]

Sean Grande is in his seventh season as the radio play-by-play voice of the Boston Celtics.

When Grande took the Celtics job alongside Cedric Maxwell in 2001, he was mostly known among New England sports fans for his role as Pete Sheppard’s predecessor in the “Flashboy” role on WEEI’s Big Show. He was also known for his work on Hockey East TV telecasts, and as the Boston College Football announcer from 1996-1999. He was also the program director at WEEI for three years.

In 1998, he took the job calling Minnesota Timberwolves television games, becoming the youngest announcer in the NBA, at the age of 28. He has done some national work calling college football for ESPN. When he came back to Boston to cover the Celtics, he also became a programming consultant for sports radio 1510 The Zone.

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Popularity: 18% [?]

With the NBA Finals tapping off tonight, it’s appropriate that we look at the man that his Boston Herald profile calls ”the dean of NBA beat writers in continuous service with a team.”

Steve Bulpett has been on the Celtics beat since the Bird days, and has seen plenty of ups, but probably more downs during his time covering the team. The profile says that he has been on the beat for 23 years, but I’m not sure when that figure was last updated.

Bulpett is a native of Lynn and Swampscott is a graduate of the University of Dayton, where he played intramural hoops, winning a championship with teammate Dan Patrick.

Bulpett is not someone you see and hear all over your airwaves, he seems to pick and choose his spots, and just focuses on doing his job and covering the team. He’s made appearances on Comcast SportsNet, Celtics Stuff Live, and a few other outlets recently.  

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Popularity: 21% [?]

With Hazel Mae slated to exit NESN at the end of the month, we might be seeing a whole lot more of Kathryn Tappen on the network.

According to her official web site, Tappen has wanted to be a newscaster since the eighth grade. She has an athletic background, having competed in cross country and track and field for Rutgers University.

She broke onto the New England media scene in 2005 at NBC Channel 10 in Providence, Rhode Island, where she was the weekend sports anchor and sports reporter for the station.

In August 2006, she moved over to NESN, where she is the Boston Bruins studio host and serves as a weekend anchor and reporter for SportsDesk.

David Laurila did one of his RedSoxNation.net interviews with Tappen a while back.

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Popularity: 28% [?]

One of the young guns at the Boston Globe, Gasper made a name for himself this past NFL season, working alongside Mike Reiss on the Patriots beat, and on the Reiss’ Pieces blog.

Gasper has also been heavily involved in the Celtics postseason coverage, showing his chops in that sport as well. Gasper has been spotted frequently on NESN’s Globe 10.0 and other programs as of late.

He joined the Globe in 2002 as a sports reporter in the paper’s Globe North section.

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Popularity: 21% [?]

You either love him or you hate him.

These days Gerry Callahan is perhaps best known for his biting political commentary on the Dennis and Callahan morning show on WEEI, but it’s easy to forget that at one time, he was perhaps one of the best sports writers in the country.

Callahan grew up in Massachusetts, graduating from Chelmsford High School and UMass Amherst. He started his career with the Lowell Sun in 1983 and then moved on to the Boston Herald five years later. In 1994, he moved on to Sports Illustrated, where was a senior writer for the publication.  

He was a frequent Big Show co-host in the early days of the program, before getting his own show with John Dennis starting in 1997. After leaving SI, he rejoined the Herald as a columnist.

The D&C program has garnered its share of attention, and not all of it positive. In 2007, Callahan missed several months of work on the show with a throat ailment. By the time he was healthy enough to return, his contract as well as that of co-host Dennis was up for renewal, which resulted in a brief lockout for the pair which had them returning in time for the first “Patriots Monday” of the 2007 season on September 10th.

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Popularity: 25% [?]

So is he a newspaper writer, radio personality or television host?

Felger holds all three roles at the moment, though his work at the Boston Herald has been scaled back considerably. He first joined the paper in 1989 and worked his way up to the Bruins beat where he served from 1997 to 1998 before being pulled off the beat after an incident involving the Bruins ownership. He was moved to the Patriots beat starting in 1999, and really started to make a name for himself as an early supporter of Bill Belichick’s decision to go with Tom Brady over Drew Bledsoe in 2001.

He became a regular on WEEI’s Big Show, as well as on WBZ’s Sports Final, where his battles with Globe writers Ron Borges and Nick Cafardo were appointment viewing for a time. In those battles Felger was viewed as a Patriots toady, and ironically, since that time he has pretty much done a complete 180 and is now among the team’s more outspoken critics.

In 2005, Felger jumped to the new 890 ESPN Boston where he was given his own drive-time show in competition to WEEI’s Big Show. In the last year he has also taken over as co-host of Mohegan Sun’s Sports Tonight on Comcast SportsNet, replacing Greg Dickerson, who moved to the role of sideline reporter for the Celtics broadcasts on the station.

Felger is originally from Milwaukee and a graduate of Boston University. He is married to former WBZ/WSBK news anchor Sara Underwood.

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Popularity: 31% [?]

Announcer boy is up next.

Don Orsillo is the play-by-play man on NESN’s Red Sox telecasts, he’s done most of the games starting in 2001, and has done all of the local non-national broadcast games since the 2005 season.

Orsillo’s first game was Hideo Nomo’s no hitter in Baltimore in 2001, and he received some criticism for what was perceived as a lackluster call of the final out. He’s gotten some practice on calling no-hitters since that time, and his performance is well received overall in most quarters.

Orsillo’s NESN.com bio lists out his past experience:

Orsillo got his start as a baseball play-by-play announcer for the Pittsfield Mets of the New York-Penn League during the 1991 and 1992 seasons. In 1993, Orsillo moved to Binghamton, N.Y., to do play-by-play radio and television for the Binghamton Mets of the Double-A Eastern League. While with Binghamton, he had the opportunity to serve as a commentator for the nationally syndicated 1994 Double-A All-Star Game.

During the 1991-1996 hockey seasons, Orsillo was the play-by-play radio and television voice for the Springfield Indians/Falcons. He hosted “Inside the Indians,” a weekly live television talk show and was the analyst for the 1994 AHL All-Star Game.

Orsillo was awarded a local Emmy in 2003 as Outstanding Sports Broadcaster and in 2005 was named the Massachusetts Sportscaster of the Year.

During the 2007 postseason, he called games for TBS on their national broadcasts.

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Popularity: 28% [?]

Yes, the day is finally here.

The Boston Globe clearly considers Dan Shaughnessy the star of its sports department, putting the columnist front and center whenever a big sports event is catching the attention of even the most casual of sports fans. Shaughnessy gets the call for all the front page stories during the baseball postseason, and even now with football and basketball. He is used by the paper to be the voice of Boston sports.

Shaughnessy grew up in Groton, and is a graduate of Holy Cross. He started his professional career with the Baltimore Sun in the late 1970’s, serving as Orioles beat writer. He moved on to the Globe in 1981, where he covered the beat for the Red Sox and Celtics before moving to the columnist role. He is a seven time Massachusetts Sportswriter of the Year, and eight times he has been selected as one of Americas top-ten sports columnists by Associated Press Sports Editors.

Shaughnessy’s feud with Curt Schilling has been well documented, and as has his role in the (short lived) resignation of Red Sox GM Theo Epstein following the 2005 season. His formulaic columns, ripjobs and contrarian opinions have earned him the title of The Most Hated Man in Boston, though I have a feeling he’s not as hated by the average fan as we might think he is. His work has inspired his own watchdog blog, the entertaining Dan Shaughnessy Watch.

He is a frequent guest on national sports shows such a Jim Rome, and is a frequent guest on stations all across the country.

Shaughnessy has written at least 11 books, including The Curse of the Bambino, The Legend of the Curse of the Bambino and Reversing the Curse: Inside the 2004 Boston Red Sox. Other credits include Senior Year: A Father, A Son, and High School Baseball and Ever Green The Boston Celtics: A History in the Words of Their Players, Coaches, Fans and Foes, from 1946 to the Present.

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Popularity: 34% [?]