The Weekend Viewing Picks have my sports and entertainment suggestions.

Time for your links. As you can imagine, many of the stories will deal with Sunday’s Super Bowl.

National

Michael Hiestand of USA Today talks with NBC’s Bob Costas about his past experiences in hosing a Super Bowl pregame show.

The Nielsen Wire Blog has a look at the 10 Most Liked Super Bowl ads in the last five years.

Daisy Whitney at MediaPost says a large portion of viewers go online to look up information about a Super Bowl ad.

Wayne Friedman of MediaPost writes that the Super Bowl is reaching almost half of all female viewers.

Peter Pachal of Mashable says NBC will hold a Google+ hangout to after the Super Bowl to discuss the ads.

Marisa Guthrie of the Hollywood Reporter talks with NBC Sports Group Fearless Leader Mark Lazarus about the Super Bowl, winning the Olympics and losing Wimbledon to ESPN.

John Eggerton in Broadcasting & Cable writes that a fan lobbying group hopes the FCC will call for the elimination of the NFL’s antiquated TV blackout rules.

John says a Michigan man has been charged with illegally streaming NFL games online.

Thomas Umstead from Multichannel News says Saturday’s UFC pay per view event will be available in 3-D for the first time.

Todd Spangler of Multichannel looks at Verizon’s streaming of Sunday’s Super Bowl on select mobile devices.

Adweek talks with Sports Illustrated/NBC’s Peter King.

Tim Nudd from Adweek notes the return of the E*Trade baby to the Super Bowl.

The International Olympic Committee has awarded the Japanese rights for the 2014/16 Games at a much lower rate than the US rights paid by NBC.

Robert Livingston at Games Bid says the 2014 Olympics in Sochi will be the first to be produced in 3-D TV.

André Lowe of the Jamaica (yes the country) Gleaner says ESPN has gathered some former NFL players in a cruise ship for the Super Bowl at Sea. I’m not making this up.

Sports Illustrated’s Richard Deitsch talks with The Big Lead’s Jason McIntyre about his recent profile of ESPN Radio Hack Colin Cowherd.

Allison Stoneberg at ESPN’s Front Row discusses how the network’s producers book guests for the studio and radio shows during Super Bowl Week.

Jack Dickey at Deadspin explains how the New York Times really messed up the story of former Yale quarterback Patrick Witt.

Dylan Stableford at Yahoo’s The Cutline explains why the Puppy Bowl has become so popular on Super Bowl Sunday.

Sports Media Watch delves into the expanded NFL Network Thursday Night Football schedule.

SMW has a few ratings news and notes including one on the Winter X Games.

Ken Kerschbaumer of Sports Video Group goes behind the scenes with NBC’s Super Bowl production crew.

Jason Dachman of SVG goes into NBC’s first-ever online streaming of the Super Bowl.

And Dan Daily from SVG writes about this year’s Super Bowl World Feed.

Steve Lepore at Puck The Media says Wednesday night NHL games are doing well for NBC Sports Network.

Northeast & Mid-Atlantic

Chad Finn of the Boston Globe speaks with NBC’s Rodney Harrison on the unspoken revenge factor for the Patriots in this year’s Super Bowl.

Bill Doyle of the Worcester Telegram & Gazette has NBC’s Cris Collinsworth talking about the Super Bowl.

Richard Sandomir of the New York Times says one of the Mets’ TV partners may help to bail out the team from its financial troubles.

Judy Battista of the Times reports on the expanded Thursday Night Football schedule.

Stuart Elliot of the Times says the Shazam mobile app will play a prominent role during many Super Bowl ads.

A rare appearance by Bob Raissman of the New York Daily News in the links. He has his Top 5 Super Bowl announcing teams of all-time.

Phil Mushnick from the New York Post has some Super Bowl storylines the media has missed.

Ken Schott at the Schenectady Gazette looks at the NFL Network announcement of five more games added to Thursday Night Football.

Pete Dougherty of the Albany Times Union has NFL Commish Roger Goodell shooting down rumors of more Monday Night Football doubleheaders.

Pete says Commissioner Goodell is firing a warning shot at Time Warner Cable.

Pete reviews the 11 men who have called a Super Bowl on network television.

The Crossing Broad blog says the Philadelphia Daily News and Inquirer may be on a slow death march to oblivion.

Keith Groller of the Allentown (PA) Morning Call discusses NBC’s coverage of Super Bowl XLVI.

South

David Barron from the Houston Chronicle notes that NBC’s Rodney Harrison may be an ex-New England Patriots, but he says he can remain fair.

David says NFL Network gets a beefed up schedule next season.

Mel Bracht of the Daily Oklahoman says NBC’s Cris Collinsworth gets to call his second Super Bowl on TV.

Mel notes that College GameDay will be covering the Big 12 on Saturday.

Midwest

John Kiesewetter of the Cincinnati Enquirer notes that one local radio show will be on radio row in Indianapolis today.

Scott Olson of the Indianapolis Business Journal says ESPN is very happy about choosing Pan Am Plaza as its Super Bowl headquarters this week.

The Indianapolis Star has what journalists are saying about the city as a Super Bowl host.

Bob Wolfley in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel says two participants in last year’s Big Game will be on NBC’s Super Bowl pregame show.

Dan Caesar of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch says Cardinals TV voice Dan McLaughlin will return to call games this season.

Steve Walentik of the Columbia (MO) Tribune calls ESPN’s Jay Bilas, “College Hoops’ Deepest Thinker.” Ok.

West

John Maffei of the North County Times says Al Michaels still loves calling Super Bowls.

Jim Carlisle of the Ventura County Star says Michaels is hoping for overtime.

Jim has NBC’s Rodney Harrison keeping the David Tyree catch from Super Bowl XLVII in proper perspective.

Richard Varrier of the Los Angeles Times looks at the Fed crackdown on websites that were illegally streaming NFL games.

Tom Hoffarth of the Los Angeles Daily News talks with former Lakers voice Paul Sunderland and lists the 20 best play-by-play men in Southern California.

Tom has more about Paul in his blog and adds a couple of media notes.

Canada

Susan Krashinsky of the Toronto Globe and Mail explains why Canada can’t see the U.S. Super Bowl ads in real time.

The Canadian Sports Media Blog has NBC’s Super Bowl production by the numbers.

And that’s going to do it for the links. Enjoy the Big Game.

The Super Bowl Weekend Megalinks is a post from: Boston Sports Media Watch

We have to give (Boston’s own) Peter King credit for scoring the first extensive interview with Tom Brady since the Patriots’ All-World quarterback was lost for the season on opening day last September.

In the story, (Tom Brady is Back ) posted on SI.com, we see clearly that #12 has lost none of the fire and zeal for the game which made him so adored in these parts, and which also put him at the very top of the NFL.

We get a glimpse of Brady’s offseason workouts with Randy Moss, Wes Welker, Joey Galloway and Greg Lewis, and learn what caused the infamous staph infection which initially cause his recovery to be set back a bit.

Plus, you just have to love this quote:

With his voice rising as he leaned forward in his chair, Brady said that playing 10 more seasons “is a big goal of mine, a very big goal. I want to play until I’m 41. And if I get to that point and still feel good, I’ll keep playing. I mean, what the hell else am I going to do? I don’t like anything else.

As pointed out by the BSMW message board posters however, critics will still manage to find things to twist take out of context. Here is a prediction of how ProFootballTalk.com’s Mike Florio will summarize the article:

• Brady says he’ll play ten more years – but made no commitment to New England beyond 2010
• Struggling to regain timing with Moss
• Calls self “real gladiator” while mocking the nation’s space program and armed forces
• Considers self bigger than game, team; was surprised that game carried on without him
• Turned owner, head coach against team’s medical staff
• Sees son only once a month
• Currently running illegal practices
• Has “family friend” do his surgery

Are You Ready For Some Football? is a post from: Boston Sports Media Watch

If you hadn’t heard, Peter King recently moved to Boston. If you read King at all, I’m not sure how you could’ve missed this point, as he’s told us several times, and has already told Boston Magazine all about the great coffee and food he is getting here in the city.

Since he lives in Boston, I guess he’s now on my beat.

In his column following the draft, King wasn’t impressed with all the moving around that the Patriots did. I’ve put in bold the statements that stuck out to me:

• New England. I was told last night the Patriots loved Eric Wood, the Louisville center who projected to center or guard in the NFL, but if that’s the case, they could have had him at 26 instead of trading out of the round for yet more picks. So I remain mystified about the continued trading rather than picking… Brandon Tate’s a poor man’s Percy Harvin, with the same off-field question marks, picked almost exactly two rounds later than Harvin … I go into the Patriots in more depth later, but I thought it was a strange draft, almost drunk with the power of moving back. The one reason you can never kill this team about drafting is it’s taken a lot of no-name guys high over the years and many have become cornerstones.

“Drunk with the power of moving back.” What does that even mean? Then, in yesterday’s column, King lauds the Eagles for putting on a “draft clinic.” It’s way too long to quote in its entirety here, but I’ll offer a few snippets:

What would you think if I told you the Philadelphia Eagles got third-, fifth-, sixth- and seventh-round draft choices, plus half a starting cornerback for nothing in this year’s draft?

That’s right. For free. There is no smoke, mirrors or cheating involved. Only thought and effort.

For moving down six spots in the third round — eventually taking a player they were considering for that 85th pick anyway — the Eagles got filthy rich. I am shocked more teams don’t run their draft the way the Eagles do. It’s almost irresponsible that teams don’t do it the Philadelphia way.

The Patriots do, (some feel they originated the concept) but they’re “drunk with the power of moving back,” and cause King to be “mystified” with all their trades for additional picks.

Then the Eagles GM is quoted, which might give you a clue as to why their moves are being so strongly praised:

“Actually, I’m happy more teams don’t,” said Tom Heckert, the Eagles general manager. “If more teams did, we wouldn’t be able to do what we do.”

This may come out the wrong way, so bear with me. But if I were a football fan looking for a team to root for, I’d pick the Eagles, and what they did on draft weekend is a big reason. The Eagles think. They don’t do things the way they’ve always been done because that’s the way they’ve always been done.

In contrast, in last weeks column, King later called the Patriots draft was “uninspired” and “odd” and “greeted with shoulder shrugs around the league.” 

King then goes into details about all the moves that the Eagles made. In the end, the Eagles netted “third-, fifth-, sixth- and seventh-round draft choices, plus half a starting cornerback.”

King will tell us that the Eagles netting Peters, Maclin, McCoy plus the six-pick trade-down is what makes Philly’s draft preeminent. That’s not the point. We’re strictly focusing on the practice of trading up and down and turning picks into multiple picks. As I said at the start of this post, I’m not discrediting the Eagles. The point is that the Eagles and Patriots did the same type of thing, and the unfriendly Patriots get hammered while the Eagles and their quotable GM get praised. King doesn’t get it.

But, let’s look at the trades that the Patriots made during draft weekend:

• Started with the 23rd pick, traded it to Baltimore for #26 and a fifth round pick #162
• Traded the #26 pick and the #162 pick to Green Bay for a second round pick (#41 Darius Butler) and two third round picks (#73 & #83 Brandon Tate)
• Traded a second round pick (#47), a fourth round pick (#124) and a sixth round pick (#199) to Oakland to move up in the second round to #40 (Ron Brace)
• Traded a third round pick (#73) to Jacksonville for a 2010 2nd round pick and a 2009 seventh round pick (#232 Julian Edelman)
• Traded a third round pick (#89) to Tennessee for a 2010 second round pick.
• Traded Ellis Hobbs to the Eagles for two fifth round picks (#137 and # 141)
• Traded those two fifth round picks for a fourth round pick (#123 Rich Ohrnberger) and a sixth round pick (#198 Jake Ingram)

If you follow that list, and track that first pick that the Patriots started out with at #23, you’ll find that they ultimately turned that one pick into the following, without trading a single other asset that they started the day with already in hand:

• Pick #41 Darius Butler (who King’s colleague Don Banks had the Patriots taking at #23)
• Pick #83 Brandon Tate (King himself praised his skills)
• 2010 Second Round Pick (From Jacksonville)
• Pick #232 Julian Edelman (who Mike Reiss seems high on)

That’s not really ”uninspired” to me. They took a late first round pick, and turned it into two seconds, a third and a seventh. Not a bad haul. In his own mock draft prior to the draft, King said of the #23 pick “One smart guy swears they’re taking UConn CB Darius Butler.” Well, they did, but they got an extra second, third and seventh round pick to do it. For free!

Coming into the draft, the Patriots had two second round picks. They ended up with four in this draft, plus an extra two next year. They got those two next year for a pair of third round selections this year. They clearly moved around with a purpose, they weren’t just “drunk with the power of moving back.”

Back to the whole point of the post. Why did King dismiss the Patriots moves while praising the Eagles? I tried to clarify with him, and we’ve been having the following Twitter exchange:

@SI_PeterKing – Why are you praising the Eagles for doing the same thing you knocked the “drunk with power” Patriots for doing last week?

SI_PeterKing Hi Bruce: Hope you don’t mind, but I am going to answer your question in my Tuesday column. Thanks for writing in.

@SI_PeterKing : I look forward to it, because 4 draft choices between the 3rd & 7th rounds = wow!, Two second round picks = mystifying?

SI_PeterKing: Hi bruce. Peter here. Peters, Maclin, McCoy PLUS the six-pick trade-down makes Philly’s draft preeminent.

@SI_PeterKing Thanks for the reply. My point isn’t really who did better, its that you knocked the Patriots for doing what the Eagles did.

I give the guy credit for responding and I do think King is one of the good guys in the media. Too often though, he allows himself to be used as a mouthpiece by his subjects. In this case, I think he’s just missing the point. It’s not that the Eagles did better or the Patriots did better, it’s that they did the same things, and the Patriots get hammered or mockingly dismissed, while the Eagles ”put on a draft clinic” and are innovative and thinking outside the box, and not doing things the way they’ve always been done. He just doesn’t get it.

Why the contrast? Is it really simply because the Philly GM explained what they were doing, whereas the Patriots just went out and did it?

Update:

Here’s King’s answer in his column today.

• TWITTER QUESTION OF THE WEEK: From Bruce Allen of Boston Sports Media Watch: “Why are you praising the Eagles for doing the same thing you knocked the ‘drunk with power’ Patriots for doing last week?”

Though in principle you might be right, Bruce, it wasn’t the same thing. The Patriots didn’t have the same result in trading down as the Eagles did, though they did acquire two second-round picks in 2010 in their wheeling-and-dealing. Philadelphia traded down six spots late in the third round and got one of the top guys they would have taken at 85 (Cornelius Ingram), half the value of a starting corner (Ellis Hobbs), a seventh-round pick this year and third-, fifth- and sixth-round picks next year … and still exited the draft with three potential impact players in 2009 — Jason Peters, Jeremy Maclin and LeSean McCoy.

It remains to be seen if the Patriots got the same sort of impact out of their 2009 draft and beyond, but it didn’t look like it to me. It surprised me they twice traded down out of the first round for three additional picks instead of taking a tackle of the future like Michael Oher or some higher-rated player at 23 or 26. It could be that Darius Butler, for instance, could have had a mid-first-round grade and by getting him in the low 40s it constituted great value on their board.

As I wrote last week about New England, “The one reason you can never kill this team about drafting is the Patriots have taken a lot of no-name guys high over the years and many have become cornerstones.” So let’s see how it plays out.

I guess that’s all we can do right now.

Watching Peter King is a post from: Boston Sports Media Watch