1. We saw those plays! All the highlights, interview clips, etc. are things that have already been done, except, we guess, for the “red carpet” type of stuff.  C’mon, SportsCenter gets watched by hundreds of thousands daily.  There’s little new material.

2. The highlight mentality Call us sports purists, but we think that the highlight-heavy clips and such distract from true enjoyment of the game.  So much of baseball, for example, happens between pitches, that you can’t get the full experience of watching–even on TV–if you’re just seeing bits.

3. Also, what about the kids? Kids are seeing athletes rewarded, at the ESPYs, for awesome feats of skill (and luck, and popularity, but leave those aside for now.)  These are their role models.  But what kids SEE is those amazing plays.  Result: they go for that crazy catch, or ridiculous basket…and skip passing, teamwork, and all the things sports are trying to teach them on and off the field.

Not that we’re hating on Drew Brees…

We’re fascinated by the immediacy that the 24 hour news cycle and the advent of the internet have brought to the world of sports reporting.   (Except when our twitter feed refreshes faster than our MLB GameDay and we find out that in fact someone just grounded out with the bases loaded on the second damn pitch they saw, oh my God, Lance Berkman, how the hell are we supposed t–)

Ahem. Sorry. That’s a different rant.

Today, however, is the beginning of a new era–an era of repression! Of tyrrany!  Of…The New York Times pointing out that some leagues don’t like bloggers much, with our opinions, and our darn free speech.

Actually, while the article’s lede is about bloggers of a more traditional nature, the more important parts are about video rights: gone are the two minute highlight packages you’d see on local news after the game, thanks in huge part to ESPN, the behemoth that will likely change the face of broadcast sports soon even more than it already has.  (Think about it….remember when the MLB playoffs were on an actual channel anyone could watch?  Now there’s only one October…and it’s on TBS, which isn’t even in DirectTV’s basic cable package, by the way.)

ESPN can afford to pay to broadcast sports.  We can–and do–pay to watch them, more than ever before.  Bloggers who shoot video or, as technology increases, stream games, are infringing on these rights, say the conferences, leagues,  and TV execs.  But movie pirating’s a big business–how much more of a big business could livefeeding a sporting event become?

And if enough of that begins to happen, the model will be forced to change.  Even just one good site streaming live video could do it, if they could make a good argument for being allowed to broadcast their own video and commentary  (the commentary might make it a first ammendment issue, we think, though we didn’t go to law school.)

Well, we’ll see.

It’s about time this happened.  Women’s basketball has had some exciting players with star potential in recent years, but lack of exposure has stopped them from reaching their true potential as inspirations to young (especially African-American and Hispanic) girls, who are often in desperate need of role models for healthy lifestyles and exercise as well as for the value and excitement of higher education.

College Gameday is so widely-watched by the people who flip on ESPN by default that this might make a big difference in terms of the number of fans who either casually watch or more closely follow women’s basketball.

Here’s hoping.

His tweets, such as ““Anybody know what’s going on with the Celtics? Cause I don’t!””, haven’t caused an issue yet…unlike the one Paula Abdul sent yesterday in her own contract negotiations.

Meanwhile, ESPN’s freaking out over employees using Twitter. Repeatedly.   At length.

UPH, for our part, enjoys following our favorite players.  For example, today we learned that Chad Billingsley of the Dodgers wants to thank all his fans for supporting him!

We’re shocked, truly.  Shocked.

In all seriousness, the impact that Twitter can have–and could in the future, as younger and more tech-savvy athletes come to the fore–is probably huge.  Even without violating confidentiality in terms of things like salary numbers, a player could make waves, just by asserting displeasure at being benched, say.  A totally rational and normal reaction, and one we as fans all assume takes place.

But we haven’t gotten to read it until now, and therein lies the rub.  Right now, it’s unlikely that a lot of contracts have Twitter-clauses, but can they be far away?