From left: Cook, Favre, Werder (I swear this was the coolest picture of Werder I could find)

How do you prefer your Band-Aid removed? With a quick, painful jerk that uproots body hair along with it? The kind that provides an agony that is much worse in the seconds leading up to the removal than the removal itself? Or do you prefer the cautious, calculated removal that distributes pain in measured doses for an elongated period of time? Because I assure you America, you’re gonna have to suffer through one.

LeBron James’ decision to play for the Heat? We may still be talking about it … okay, I. I may still be talking about it. But, really, it’s over. He’s a Heat. (A Hot? A Heats? No, he’s a Heat.) James isn’t forcing us to discuss it. Matter fact, I bet he’d love us to stop. That Band-Aid got yanked two weeks ago, the pain should be long gone. Brett Favre? He never wants anything to stop. Ever. He pulls the bandage 1/3 off, then re-applies the pulled part just so he can do it again. Forever.

As much as I’m angry with James and have decided to stop returning his phone calls for a little while, I’d prefer his shenanigans to Favre’s, who, once again is kinda, sorta hurt and kinda, sorta not sure his old man bones have it in them to play football again. And he’s kinda, sorta not sure when he will know, so just keep checking in periodically* to see if he’s made a decision.

* once per hour … forever.

This is the fourth year the man who’s won only one more Super Bowl than I have has spent his summer playing catch in Mississippi in front of an ESPN camera. And I’m bored. And you’re bored too. And a little hungry, which is bound to happen when you skip lunch, you workaholic, you. But you know who’s more than bored? Favre’s agent James “Bus” Cook.

From the newest issue of Men’s Journal :

(I should warn you, Cook’s language is a little blue, so be sure to cover your children’s ears as they read this.)

“Brett talked to goddamned Ed Werder at ESPN, says he needs ankle surgery. Now why did he do that?” Cook asked.  “I’ve got [Brad] Childress calling. I’ve got reporters calling all damn morning. Goddammit, why does he have to be such a goddamned drama queen? Play, don’t play, goddamn, people are getting sick of it. I’m getting sick of it!

Why does he have to talk to these people? What good does it do? Ed Werder at ESPN! What’s he ever done for anybody other than say, ‘Look, look, Mommy, I got this first, ain’t I special?’ You got problems with surgery, talk to your wife. Why talk to goddamned Ed Werder?”

Eat it, Werder.

You know, if you’ve been paying attention (pay attention!) you’ll notice the common thread with Favre and James is one World Wide Leader in Sports. If ESPN would stop hiding the the bushes of every superstar with a decision to make, maybe we wouldn’t be forced to choose between pulling off the first-aid bandage strip quickly or slowly. Maybe the entire world would simply be able to take a dip in the pool and let the soaking bandage un-affix itself and lie at the bottom of the shallow end. Wouldn’t that be nice?

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Photos courtesy of Flickr

Here’s a recap of the weirdest or most overlooked sports stories on the Interweb this week. Plus, as you’ve come to expect, bears are finally past giving condescending warnings about forest fires.

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Monday Interested in seeing a matador get gored in the crotch 4-inches deep? I know, right? Me too! Bull Fighting
Tuesday The WNBA: Where childhood abuse eventually leads to a career. Basketball
Wednesday Indians announcer Bruce Drennan saw last week’s episode of “Treme” and now he’s all about yellin’ into the YouTube. Baseball
Thursday A famous golfer involving himself with a porn star? Interesting. A DVD of that porn star talking about that involvement? Less so. Golf
Friday Deadspin.com’s Give-Tebow-A-Nickname contest is waaaay better than ESPN’s. My vote is for “Fail Mary.” College Football
Saturday Gilbert Arenas was released from his halfway house, but couldn’t remember the combo to his home’s security gate. Basketball
Sunday Funny or Die present: Jim Brockmire: A Legend in the Booth (a little NSFW language). Baseball
Eighth Day Does this mean all those hairy Kardashian sisters are Flyers fans?

Here’s a recap of the weirdest or most overlooked sports stories on the Interweb this week. Plus, as you’ve come to expect, Steve Nash’s wife is suddenly having second thoughts.

Monday Nice try, but everyone knows neon orange jumpsuits are not acceptable in match play. Tennis
Tuesday Adidas and Nike poised for battle in Central Florida. Totally saw this coming. College Basketball
Wednesday Ain’t it time to learn you some facts about this business of officiating? Officiating
Thursday The WTA’s No. 6-ranked Caroline Wozniacki displayed some class, and therefore has her integrity investigated. Tennis
Friday When the dust settles, perhaps Deadspin.com’s attack on ESPN was the best thing the site could have done. Sports Gossip
Saturday Ease up on the hyperbole surrounding Saturday’s Machida-Rua fight or it’ll be the worst decision you’ll ever make in your lifetime EVER. MMA
Sunday McGwire is St. Louis’ hitting coach. Who better to illustrate a proper power swing and undetectable needle marks? Baseball
Eighth Day You’ll never stop staring at Steve Nash’s face. Basketball

The SEC’s television deal with ESPN made national headlines a year ago. But as the SEC on ESPN debuts this fall, the conference’s policies on new media are starting a brush fire across the Internet.

As the New York Times pointed out on Thursday, the real issue is with video. The SEC and ESPN don’t want bloggers messing with game footage, because that’s what they hope to sell to fans in many different ways. And in order to make that happen, the SEC is choosing to crack down new media. The problem is, college football has been majorly influenced in the past 10 years by exactly what the SEC hopes to muffle.

Moreso than other sports, college football wouldn’t be what it is today without the Internet. Just ask the creators of fireronzook.com. That site earned a whole chapter in Stewart Mandel’s excellent “Bowls, Polls and Tattered Souls.” And there’s no doubt that recruiting websites like Rivals and Scout have altered the game forever. Blogs are the third leg on that stool, and they’re especially adept at creating highlight reels and mash-ups on YouTube.

Without bloggers who devote their hours to the obsession of college football, we might have missed this, this and this along the way. And if those bloggers are severely restricted in using game footage, we could never look back on jump passes, miracle plays and cleat-removing blocks.

More importantly, access the game footage gives fans a much-needed outlet when there’s controversy. Just imagine how Missouri fans would have taken to YouTube after the fifth-down play against Colorado. And there’s no doubt Miami fans would have protested even louder over the 2002 National Championship game if they could call up the replay anytime they wanted. We won’t even mention how Stanford fans might have utilized YouTube back in 1982.

Streaming-video might have even helped conferences go to instant replay. So why are the SEC and ESPN being so Big Brother about this? Since it’s big-time college football we’re talking about here, then it’s obviously about the money. Instead of cracking down, they should look toward how other sports have handled this. And they wouldn’t need to look any further than NASCAR.

This year, NASCAR created the Citizen Journalists Media Corps. It’s a motley band of bloggers from sites like Racingtoday.com and Frontstretch.com. The sites are run by people ranging from seasoned journalists to hardcore fans, and they’re all given access to the races so long as they pay their own way.

The SEC should draft its own version of a citizen media group. Give the bloggers access to the press box and let them get some face time with the athletes. Sure, there will be some homerism, but you get that with traditional media anyway. Hand the bloggers some guidelines for professionalism, and let them go at it. The content they’ll produce will have the passion and the depth that you can’t always get in traditional media.

But what to do about the video? It’s another easy fix. The conference should make it a competition to create the best highlight reel or video commentary each week. Make it part of the SEC’s website, or even better, put it on ESPN. The blogs would go crazy for it, and they’d churn out more original pieces than the local TV stations could put together.

As Keith Jackson might say, the SEC is closing the barn door after the horse is long gone. The Internet and streaming video is too much a part of college sports to clamp it up now. If the SEC wants to make best use of its content, it should be giving bloggers more access, not less.

Here’s a recap of the weirdest o

Monday Lions WR scratches himself up on his golf cart – hilarity and shame ensue.  Football
Tuesday Maxim Magazine brought the funny when they “hacked” into David Ortiz’s Gmail account. Baseball
Wednesday Why did ESPN ban Twitter? ‘Cause it’s unmarketable, dummy. Sports Broadcasting
Thursday No 9-year-old would ever be on the NBA’s radar … would he? Basketball
Friday Nothing is as funny or sad as this little league catcher watching the same kid hit five homers in one game. Baseball
Saturday Dorm Golf: The best way for engineering students to make mom proud, poly-sci students to make mom angry. Golf
Sunday At this point, will people even remember that Favre used to be good? Football
Eighth Day These sporting robots are almost as fast and efficient as Dwyane Wade.

Last week, Forbes Magazine, through E-Poll surveys, polled its readers and compiled a top 10 list of the most disliked people in sports. I was confused at first why it was Forbes and not, say, Sports Illustrated executing such a poll. I mean, these are sports figures we’re talking about, isn’t ESPN’s magazine better equipped? Forbes may not be the foremost expert on sports, but flip through any issue of their magazine or click on any page of their web site … dudes know a lot about hateable personalities.

But the list isn’t as much of a reflection of the Forbes company as it is about the company’s readers (ages 13 and up). And what’s reflected is a severe case of “lemmingism.” Everyone who made the list makes sense, but are they a true reflection of the most disliked sports figures?

I mean, hockey is one of the five largest sports in the country (and Canada, if you care) and no one from the NHL represented. Most of the names you’ll see here are hated because of overexposure more than their actions that caused the overexposure. Can they be blamed for that? And if they can, why isn’t Erin Andrews at the top of this list? (She’s not) Heck, one of these guys retired 17 years ago. Is that the best (worst) Forbes readers could come up with? Do they even follow sports?

In the words of the 10th most disliked athlete, “you cannot be serious.”

1. Michael Vick
Why he’s here? Yeah, okay. This isn’t surprising. He had dogs kill one another in his off time. Honestly, if Vick had murdered a human, his jail sentence would have been longer, but he’d be no more hated than he is now.
Does he belong? I’ll put it this way … yes. Yes, he does.
Possible replacement Brett Favre. Vick’s infamy was brutal and awful, but it was also original. You know what isn’t original? Brett Favre’s annual hijacking of the sports pages while he decides if he wants to be a professional suckwad or a retired suckwad. Most of the guys on this list are on here because people are tired of hearing about them. On that front, Favre is head, shoulders and suckwad ahead of everyone else.

2. Manny Ramirez
Why he’s here? Steroids. He used ‘em. He got caught for using ‘em and he missed almost a third of the season for using ‘em.
Does he belong? Dodger fans don’t think so. Manny gets L.A. fans giggly-er than girls at a sleepover.
Possible replacement Sean Avery. I wanted to put a woman on here, but I’m unconvinced that Serena Williams counts. I guess Avery is as close as we’re going to get. I mean, c’mon … these are women’s sunglasses, dude. New York’s self-proclaimed bad boy has literally lobbied to be marketed like a WWE villain, which is not only a tacit admittance that he’s a wanker on the ice, but he’s seemingly badmouthed every last one of his hot and famous ex-girlfriends. Anyone who badmouths Elisha Cuthbert: unlikable. That’s a rule.

3. Alex Rodriguez
Why he’s here? Overexposure. Perhaps the overwhelming disgust for both Madonna and Kate Hudson has spilled over onto him as well.
Does he belong? If you take into account America’s tendency to convert jealousy into hatred along with the fact that he’s dating a movie starlet, makes $25 million a year to play a game in the most famous city in the world and cheated so as to help him achieve all these things, then yeah. I reckon he belongs.
Possible replacement Kyle Busch. This little pipsqueak. This picture best illustrates why he really ought to have made this list. And if you’re a NASCAR apologist, then what about when he snapped the Nashville Superspeedway Les Paul guitar trophy into shards ’cause he was just so gosh darned excited. A-Rod’s a tool that seems embarrassed by himself a lot of the time. Busch shares no such embarrassment.

4. Terrell Owens
Why he’s here? An inability to censor his narcissism.
Does he belong? He belongs for the amount of time various media outlets have spent talking about him over the years, but generally, Owens has done very little to warrant the ire of the American people. At worst, he’s been a bad teammate. Then again, his statistics suggest he’s made his teams better. It’s all about perception.
Possible replacement Tom Brady. Oh no! Not my sweet Tom. What’s he ever done to anyone except urinate awesomeness and use unicorn horns to pick Superbowl glory out of his teeth? Well go ask Bridget Moynahan. He knocked up Coyote Ugly, split while she was pregnant, ignored the birth while pretending not to ignore the birth, hooked up with a Brazilian supermodel (superfluous pic here) and impotently allowed her to treat Moynahan’s kid as if it were her own. Oh, then he had the gall to skip the 2008 season. So I ask you, what’s worse: being a bad teammate with good stats or being a bad husband, father and man with no stats?

5. Kobe Bryant
Why he’s here? Smugness and possibly rape. Mostly smugness.
Does he belong? For the smugness? Yes. For the possible rape? I’d have to visit Denver a few more times to say for certain.
Possible replacement Fedor Emelianenko. People just don’t like it when someone so obviously talented doesn’t need fans’ approval to stay talented. We don’t like when talented people clamor for it either (see: Rod, A) but when you’re good and you know it and no one can do a damn thing about it, it tends to alienate fans. Fans want to feel a part of it all and when they know they’re not a part of any of it, it pisses them off. Now you tell me, which one of these two was I just talking about?

6. Allen Iverson
Why he’s here? Because people like “gangsters,” not “gangstas.”
Does he belong? Iverson hasn’t been relevant in two years. Right now, only three teams have shown any interest in paying him to play basketball and one of those teams is in Greece. Hating an irrelevant Iverson is like hating the words to a song a toddler just wrote.
Possible replacement Mark Cuban. If the fine readers over at Forbes want to flippantly throw Iverson on here because he came into the NBA with cornrows and tattoos and everyone was depressed that Michael Jordan was gone, that’s fine. Now allow me to retort by submitting my own irrationally-justified basketball personality. Mark Cuban is loud, he picks fights with players, his hair is often mussed, he likes Jason Kidd too much, his cha-cha-cha is a 1/2-step too slow and he was accused of insider trading. But go ahead, convince me a neck tattoo is worse.

7. Isiah Thomas
Why he’s here? Sexual harassment … and because he hasn’t done anything well since 1993.
Does he belong? Oh yeah. He might have tried to kill himself and when it didn’t work, he might have tried convincing authorities that his daughter was the one who was ill. Also he sexual harassed a woman (not daughter related).
Possible replacement I had a whole case for either Al Davis or George Steinbrenner and although they both totally deserve to be on here, the readers polled by Forbes accidentally got this one right. Isiah Thomas is awful.

8. Stephon Marbury
Why he’s here? Sociopathology.
Does he belong? Absolutely not. Oh sure he’s been a locker room cancer on each of the last four teams he’s played before arriving in Boston, but few noticed until he got to New York and became Isiah Thomas’ cancer. But seeing as how Thomas is more disliked than Starbury, isn’t this a clear-cut case of “the enemy of my enemy is my friend?” Friends don’t put friends on disliked lists. Think of it this way: Stephon Marbury builds the character of every NBA player with whom he comes in contact. Good for the game.
Possible replacement Brock Lesnar. And since very often “bad” is good for the game, who better to illustrate this than the UFC’s Brock Lesnar? Look, you don’t get more white than Brock. He’s a 6-foot-3, 265-pound farm boy who lives and trains in the Minnesota woods, has a drooling problem, drinks Coors and signifies that “he’s No. 1″ with the wrong fingers. He’s thoroughly unlikeable, yet UFC has never been more popular. It’s far more fun to hate than to love.

9. Nick Saban
Why he’s here? Bullying. Lying. Willfully living in Alabama.
Does he belong? Nah. For $32 million, I’d probably live in Alabama too. But I wouldn’t talk to anybody.
Possible replacement Brett Favre (again). Yes, but what better way to emphasize how disliked he is than by having him wear out his welcome on this list, just as he’s worn out his welcome in the NFL. Remember in “Mike Tyson’s Punch-Out” when you beat Bald Bull and then later in the game a meaner, tougher Bald Bull returned? Such is Favre. Just when his awfulness seems to subside, another offseason arrives and it takes three star punches to get him to go away.

10. John McEnroe
Why he’s here? Because he was really outspoken three decades ago.
Does he belong? About as much as a polar bear at the Pyramids.
Possible replacement O.J. Simpson. McEnroe was a loudmouth infamous for throwing hissyfits (and rackets) and complaining about almost every call that didn’t go his way. Essentially he was an NBA player. But all of this happened in the past. He’s retired from the pro tour now. So if inactive players are suddenly eligible for this list, why not pick an athlete who, you know, probably murdered two people? Bonus: How great would it be to have two Buffalo Bills in the top 10?

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Vick, Ramirez, Rodriguez, McEnroe photos courtesy of Yahoo! Sports via Getty Images
All other photos courtesy of Flickr

Remember when Patty Hearst was kidnapped by the Symbionese Liberation Army in January 1974 and eventually helped the terrorist organization rob the Hibernia Bank several months later? Or when Sal “Big Pussy” Bonpensiero avoided doing jail time by aggressively and enthusiastically informing the FBI of the activities of the Soprano organization? Clinton pardoned one and Paulie Walnuts helped whack the other. 

Jose Canseco falls somewhere in the middle.
Undeniably, one of baseball’s least sympathetic characters is trying to become an ambassador of baseball’s Steroid Era. In an ESPN Philadelphia radio interview from Thursday, Canseco was summoned from whatever madcap reality in which he normally operates to discuss the newest bulletpoints added to the growing list of steroid issues. Like saying “Beetlejuice!” three times, Canseco heard 1. “Steroids” 2. “David Ortiz” and 3. “Manny Ramirez” and appeared unsolicitedly.

So what is it this time?

As a guest on the Mike Missanelli show, Canseco discussed, among other things, the necessity for Major League Baseball to have sought out his council on how to deal with the players who tested positive for performance enhancing drugs.

Here’s a snippet:

What baseball should have done in the past is consulted with me. I would have resolved this issue from a long time ago, but [the league is] very stubborn. They blackballed me to get me out of the game. They don’t want to talk to me, they don’t want to listen to me. They’re extremely stubborn. In the past they’ve gotten away with everything. My doors are open to speak with Major League Baseball and the Player’s Association on how to get this subject matter put behind us and move forward. I think a lot of players are getting really bad advice from their attorneys, from their consultants and … it’s just, really, really bad.

“Put behind us?” He says all of this as if the league and the Player’s Association are somehow disallowing Canseco from doing his job of moderating the acceptance of steroids in baseball. He’s like a pastry chef wondering why all his customers are so fat. But there he is, desperate to help the league that, by his own admission, blackballed him, threw him out and locked the door.

The best thing that happened to Canseco after his 2001 retirement was realizing that he was willing to publically discuss things MLB was not. Like it or not, Canseco is the most reliable source on steroid use available to the public. And like a child who finds something that entertains his parents, he’s beaten it into the ground until it becomes truly annoying.

We knew we were supposed to ignore the crazy guy on the bus babbling nosensensically, but we thought he said something interesting, so we engaged him for just a second. He didn’t say anything interesting and now we’re stuck in a conversation with him for another 11 stops. Major League Baseball was smart enough to never make eye contact with Canseco. All these years since his retirement, MLB just keeps working on the sudoku puzzle, hoping Canseco will exit the bus at the next stop.

He hasn’t really helped them, which is why they’ll never seek his council. He’s burned them twice. First by being the poster boy for cheating, then by telling the world how obvious it at was. The league will never let him burn it again by asking for help that it’s too late for him to give.

Canseco poo-pooing the attorneys and consultants of players under indictment is both humorous and sad, like a drunk who danced so much he wet his pants, because Canseco suggests that his advice would have worked out better.

Because lord knows when one thinks of Jose Canseco one thinks of rationality and reliability.

Just like Patty and Puss,’ Canseco has been bent and reshaped enough that he assumes he is someone other than who he is: an incredible slimeball. He wants to create situations in which steroids are looked upon passively, like Ty Cobb‘s anger and racism, as if it were a cute affectation from a bygone era. Because if he is successfully able to do that, then he’s got a chance at the Hall of Fame (don’t worry, he has no chance at the Hall of Fame). He’d perhaps have a cherished baseball post-career. And for that to happen, he believes he needs to insinuate himself back into the central point of one of baseball’s ugliest eras by railing against it.

But he was one of the largest players involved in creating it in the first place. Accepting anything from No-Way Jose would be igniting another fire that the league would be unable to extinguish.

Photo courtesy of Yahoo! Sports via AP

That weary, displaced emotion is what I’ve been feeling about our president ever since the baseball All-Star Game. Something ain’t quite right. It’s unsettling. And it’s only getting worse.

I’m beginning to think that he isn’t really all that into sports.

On Monday, the WNBA champion Detroit Shock were the most recent in a long line of teams and athletes to visit the president’s house. During his speech to the team, Obama retold the story of his daughters watching him watching female basketball players on ESPN’s SportsCenter and how it taught his daughters that girls can be champions too.

There are three things wrong with this tale: 1) If Sasha and Malia were watching their father watching television, how can he be sure they weren’t learning a different lesson? Like “presidents can lazily watch sports highlight shows too.” 2) SportsCenter doesn’t cover anything but the Yankees and preseason football. They damn sure aren’t doing 45-second recaps of Shock games. 3) This weak recollection isn’t even new. It’s the same thing he told to the WNCAA Champion Connecticut Huskies.

If you’re going to regurgitate stories (something that almost everyone does), shouldn’t he come up with a better story to regurgitate?

But wait, it gets worse.

The NBA’s Shaquille O’Neal, in town to do some wrasslin‘, figured he was bigger than the Detroit Shock (Physically? Check. Egotistically? Check. Pop Culturally? Check.) so he tried to do a pop-in on the White House a few hours after the Shock left. It didn’t work and he was turned away by security, a site I would sell your first born to have seen. Alas, we can only assume that Obama, not unlike Jerry Seinfeld, like the pop-in.

NINA: (rolling eyes) This person does not believe in telephones, does she?
JERRY: She likes the pop-in. I’ve told her how I hate the pop-in.
(pointing to George) He likes the pop-in, too.
GEORGE: I just popped in now. I’m a big pop-in guy.
JERRY: Yeah.
GEORGE: How ’bout Kramer.
JERRY: HUGE pop-in guy!

- from “Seinfeld” Season 3, episode 21: The Letter

If Obama’s our first “basketball president,” why not let the Diesel in to take a look around the Roosevelt Room or something?

Perhaps I’m being unfair. The guy is busy … the guy is our PRESIDENT, for cryin’ out loud. He can’t love everything and lord knows women’s basketball can be unlovable. So is O’Neal come to think of it. So maybe Monday’s actions were all just a fluke. I mean, he wouldn’t seem so half-hearted when it comes to his teams, the White Sox and Bulls, right?

Ugh. Listen to the end of that link. Sox outfielder DeWaye Wise makes the biggest catch of his career, the biggest catch of the season and one of the biggest catches of all-time and the No. 1 White Sox fan in the country calls him DeWayne Weiss. This is almost as tragic as the Bob Costas interview from two weeks ago in which Obama calls Comiskey Park, the stadium in which his favorite team played for over a century – Cominsky Park.

Cominsky Park? You can’t say that. That’s like David Ortiz wearing a Yankee cap or a Bulls fan acting graciously toward the worst basketball player in the history of the NBA …

Photo courtesy of Yahoo! Sports via AP

NOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

Is that Bill Laimbeer! Is Barack Obama shaking hands with the guy who spent five years elbowing Michael Jordan in the ribcage anytime he went near the basket?! You see? This is what I’m talking about. If Obama was truly a sports fan, more specifically a Chicago sports fan and most specifically a Chicago basketball sports fan, there’s just no way he wouldn’t have punched Bill Laimbeer in the face here. No way. Leader of the free world or not, a die-hard woulda given him five across the eyes. Look at his left hand in this picture. It’s slightly tense, ready to make a fist, like he knows what he should do with it.

Weak sauce, Barry.

Truth is, it’s unimportant to me (and many Americans) if Obama is uninterested in athletics. I need him to care about sports about as much as I need a new hole in the head. It’s the idea that he has (or we have) projected this basketball-playing, Southside-rooting, ESPY White House guest list listing character onto him and he’s played the part instead of being it.

Be the part, Prez or quit playin’.

HBO insiders said that the volatility of Artie Lange‘s appearance on the premiere episode of HBO’s “Joe Buck Live” sparked those involved to ditch the comedy portion of the show and retreat to the more vanilla format of the other HBO sports programs from Bryant Gumbel and Bob Costas.

It’s an odd decision all around. After all, the show A) airs on HBO, a channel known for not shying away from hot-button conversation from the mouths of controversial people (see: Maher, Bill), B) had only one episode and they’re doing away with the only thing people talked about from it and C) was touted as a forum to display Joe Buck’s long-hidden wit and humor.

The odd thing about this deletion of “blue” comedy is that it is what Joe Buck asked for, according to Lange in an interview with ESPN’s Michael Irvin:

Joe Buck came to me in the green room and said, “Listen, let me have it. You know what, you guys are here because you’re comedians.’” He said he’s a fan of mine, he knows what I do … and Joe said, “Let me have it.’” Ross Greenburg, the producer, said to me – and I regret this because I love Paul Rudd and Jason [Sedeikis] – he said, “Art, if this segment gets boring with these other two guys, you get in there and really inject some energy and go crazy.’” On HBO, you tell me something like that, I’m gonna … run with it.

The problem seems to be that Lange didn’t make or understand the distinction between HBO programming and HBO Sports programming (why would he?) and that Buck didn’t make the distinction for Lange. In a radio interview with Buck on the Dan LeBetard show, Buck corroborates Lange’s claims, clarifying that Buck hoped for a juicy PG-13 performance and got something much rawer, which has since led to the President of HBO banning Lange from making further appearances on his network. That’s one less person for Ari Gold to feel threatened by. From the LeBetard interview:

“It just got a little dirty, which is the problem I had with it. I swear to you, [Lange] gave us exactly what he thought we wanted, for that I don’t fault the guy. He was performing and I needed to be more specific on what we wanted.”

The two stories seem to match one another. Neither – if true – would explain why a show dedicated to utilizing Buck’s sports acumen and his humor would rid itself of one of those two things after one misstep. Buck doesn’t seem to have been penalized by HBO (unless you count having to do more shows in September as punishment, which I do). Isn’t this miscommunication partly his fault? And even if it isn’t, and Lange deserves his blacklisting, why scrub away the comedic residue away from the show?

Unless of course, Joe Buck realized that he’s not television funny, he’s just sports funny. You know the difference, I’m sure. Sports funny is like NBA stars Chris Bosh and Baron Davis trading video skits. It’s noteworthy because athletes are showing a different emotion other than boredom or intensity. It doesn’t take a whole lot for the media to get a kick out of certain athletes. Look at how much attention Shaquille O’Neal’s Twitter page gets. Real-world funny is like Pryor, Rock, Carlin, Bruce or y’know … Bob Newhart (seriously, if you haven’t checked out Newhart, he’s side-splitting).

Honestly, who ISN’T funny when you sit him in a booth next to Tim McCarver? It’s like hearing about how Sen. Hillary Clinton has never had the chance to let her wit and humor shine through in public. Is it that she hasn’t had the chance or that she tries, but her wit doesn’t translate in front of a broader public?

I believe people think Joe Buck is clever (none more so than Buck himself, I’m sure), but a lot of this show was predicated on Buck being able to shake loose and get a little more relaxed in front of an audience. In his first show, he never did it. The only one who did is now banned and the producers are calling an audible on the show’s original philosophy.

That points to a gaggle of writers, producers and talent suddenly realizing they didn’t have a clear view of how to be funny or what funny looks like in a talk show format. It might not look like Artie Lange, but it sure don’t look like Joe Buck either.