Takes

Mike Tirico replacing Bob Costas is a win for white media members

NBC announced that Bob Costas is handing over Olympic duty to Mike Tirico. And if you remember, Mike Tirico is a white guy, as he said. ... As a white guy, I'm happy that Bob Costas is passing off the Olympic coverage to another white guy. It's good to see the white guys keep their jobs in the media business.

Roger Goodell is being negligent by not knowing Barstool since they've been 'threatening his life'

[Roger Goodell] said he had never heard of Barstool Sports before. I believe him, yo. Which is bullshit. And as Dave and Hank mentioned, he's being negligent if he doesn't know who Barstool is because they were the ones that have been threatening his life. Allegedly. Through his own ignorance, he's actually putting the entire NFL in harm's way by not making sure that he takes all the precautions to stay alive.

Mike Wilbon is actually a blogger because his job is the same as Barstool's

Has somebody explained to Mike Wilbon that his job is pretty literally our job? So he's a blogger, too. He doesn't even write columns anymore. You know what? Anybody that doesn't like bloggers, guess what? You're a blogger. I'm going to call you a blogger.

The Starters on NBA TV are sports hipsters

I don't like to shit on other people's quality of their work. But they have a show, and it's actually good. It's very stat-oriented... but like the Starters on the NBA network. They are hipsters. They're sports hipsters.

Hank is more famous than former NHL star Ryan Whitney

Is there a part of you that realizes that Hank is still more famous than you? [Ryan Whitney: I'm fully 100% aware of it.]

WWE's production values are superior to the NBA and NFL

WWE's production values are [so good]. Their stuff is better than NBA, NFL, Namath. Their stuff is so good and so far advanced.

Every crime headline should include the sports teams the criminal roots for

Every time that there's a crime in the paper, if the detectives are able to figure out what teams they supported, they should include that in the headline. So like Pittsburgh Penguins fan hits Washington Wizards fan in a drunk driving accident.

Jay Mariotti is just a troll looking for attention

It's called a troll that's looking for attention. And I absolutely played right into what he wanted.

News broadcasts should stop reporting on crimes to discourage copycats, similar to how the NFL stops showing streakers

The news should stop showing all the bad stuff that happens so it's work for me they should follow the NFL's lead once again Roger Goodell is a thought leader trying to improve society so hey news big news producers out there maybe stop leading with mass murders cut away from them and have Gruden just talk that's right and then and then there won't be any more murders

Announcers are drawing telestrator dicks on purpose to drive ratings

I think that announcers are drawing telestrator dicks on purpose to drive up ratings. Because there's one thing that you can't draw when you're doing a telestrator and that's a dick. And they do it every time. Every single time it's a dick.

Training yourself to say 'tuckus' instead of 'ass' makes you a giant 'tuckus hole'

Do you know how big of a tuckus hole you need to be to actually do that in college? ...What a fucking tuckus. God I hate, I hate that.

Fox has a much better Thanksgiving broadcast than CBS because they use holiday graphics

CBS cheated us on that. I don't know if you saw it. But it came back. They didn't have it, and then Fox was like a bukkake of leaves on my face. Leaves and gourds just dripping... I actually got mad on Thanksgiving Day when I turned on the Lions game and it was just a regular scoreboard. How the fuck am I supposed to know it's a holiday if it's a regular scoreboard?

J.J. Watt’s Players' Tribune article is basically erotic fan fiction he wrote about himself

One was wearing a 99 jersey with my name on the back, and another was wearing shoes with my logo on them... That was some fucking fan fiction erotic art shit for J.J. Watt. He hired a J.J. Watt mega fan to write that passage.

Twitter is a perfect representation of what is going on in the world and decides major decisions

Twitter decides major, major important decisions. Twitter is a really good testament to what is going on in the world. Right. Great representation. Everything that everyone's exactly.

Chris Collinsworth's son Jack is likely running his Twitter account

Jack Collinsworth the night before Chris's son... when the tweet went out from Bill Simmons he wrote somebody needs to gently break the news to Simmons that his show just got canceled... I think Jack is running Chris's account and Chris is either going to explain that or he got roped into some radio wars.

Gladiator fights to the death would draw huge ratings

If there were to be actual gladiator fights on television... I'd watch. I think it would draw huge ratings. Like, yeah, fight to the death. Someone's got to die. Someone's got to die... Someone's got to die within 10 minutes. Or else they both die.

Barack Obama would be an electric Sunday Night Football announcer

I think he [Obama] would make a good Sunday night football announcer. You team him up with Peyton Manning. I think he'd be electric in the booth.

NFL ratings are down primarily because the prime time games have been poor

One reality is the games haven't been very good... You're going to have some crappy primetime games. But even Jaguars-Titans... the problem is, more often than not, the primetime games have been crap.

Joe Thomas bribing journalists with BBQ is a violation of ethics

Mary Kay Cabot... tweeted out yesterday that Joe Thomas bought us lunch today trying for the third Good Guy Award... Joe brought them all barbecue... respect the biz. You can't be accepting free barbecue. This is probably why the Browns have gotten such glowing press.

The take that the NFL 'sucks' right now is becoming too mainstream and annoying

My hot seat: People who say the NFL sucks. I'm done with it. We were kind of early to it... Now it's become a little too mainstream. People saying the Seahawks-Cardinals game sucked. That game was amazing... I still love the NFL. I'm sick of it. I'm back on Roger Goodell's side.

I did not fart on the air during ESPN Sunday Countdown

It wasn't me. Not at all. It wasn't me, absolutely. I would take blame if it was me, because that was a doozy. But I don't think, and everybody looked at me, but I don't think, I don't even think it was anybody passed gas. I think it was a chair, somebody moved in the chair.

The pressure for male TV announcers to have full heads of hair is messed up

Joe Buck has come out and said that he was addicted to hair plant surgery and almost lost his career... I think that's fucked up, the pressure that we put on our male announcers to look good for the camera. Always be looking good.

ESPN First Take's ratings are down because Stephen A. Smith failed to kidnap Kevin Durant

So they need some help because First Take, when they lost Skip Bayless, both sides lost. Ratings are down because people realize that Stephen A. Smith wasn't going to back up that talk. They're like, oh, this guy's not going to kidnap anyone.

Vince Scully's 'retirement' is the coward's way out for an announcer.

I'm glad that Vin Scully's done. I'm just sick of hearing about the farewell tour. It's like, dude, you're just an announcer. I want my announcers like Harry Caray and Jack Buck, they need to stick around to the bitter end. Get a little senile. Vince Scully, you took the coward's way out. What real announcer retires?

A Mike Greenberg solo show would be a four-hour suicide note of unathletic stories

Can you just imagine four hours of Greeny? ... It actually just might be really depressing to have a guy just making fun of how unathletic he is for four hours. You need that Golic balance. ... Now it's just going to be one long suicide note. It's just going to be him being like, I was not good at sports in high school.

Skip Bayless is a professional hockey goon of sports media

A guy like [Skip] Bayless is a professional hockey goon. He goes out and skates around the ice and punches people. The people just happen to be LeBron or Chris Bosh, etc... He is one of the brilliant sports television people who understands how to push people's buttons and say ultimate contrarian things.

The NFL books terrible pregame bands like OneRepublic on purpose to show power over the audience

I think the NFL does that on purpose. They always have the world's shittiest band opening up for the season... They do it on purpose just to say, like, fuck you, you're going to watch. We could wheel out Ozzy Osbourne while he's in a coma, and you would still tune in and watch.

Mike Greenberg's belief that ties are more satisfying than overtime is the worst opinion ever

Mike Greenberg's dumb rules... I dislike overtime and college football so much that I genuinely believe ending in a tie is not only more just, it is more satisfying too. That has to be the worst opinion of all time.

CBS firing Mike Carey because of internet meaness sets a terrible precedent

But what CBS has done here is it sets a terrible precedent. Yes. Because if you cave into the Internet once, oh, boy, that's a lot of power that you're giving CBS basically said we can get anyone on their staff fired. Right.

Dropping a 'trash' signature sneaker is the new version of a celebrity sex tape for staying relevant

Dropping a trash signature sneaker is like the new sex tape. That's how you get people talking about you.

Skip Bayless is better at insulting athletes than Stephen A. Smith

I'm just saying, like, if you needed somebody, if it came down to it, you needed one guy to hurl out one insult at an athlete, who are you going with? I'm going to Skip. ... I think he's better at it in general.

Bob Costas is the alpha dog of NBC sports because he lifts in jeans

It was revealed that Costas walked into the weight room with jeans on and just did upper body. I saw it down here. I went to the gym and Bob Costas strolled in in jeans, t-shirt, sneakers, jeans, but he was just doing upper body. That's a savage move. That's a short man move. All chest, no legs.

Mike Tirico is the best sports announcer to listen to right now

Mike Tirico might be my favorite guy to listen to. It's probably Al Michaels still maybe has it because of who he is and what he's done. But Mike Tirico might be my favorite guy to listen to.

Bob Costas was a better Olympic broadcaster when he had pink eye.

I miss pink eye Bob Costas. It's not the same with him with two functional eyeballs out there. I miss it. I miss it. He was so good when he was playing hurt. I actually think he was better when he only had one eye.

It is unavoidable for every high-volume media company to eventually have a scandal like the Hulk Hogan Gawker story.

It seems like it's unavoidable at certain points to have some story, because you're just churning out lots of content, to have some story go awry and go off the rails. I mean, Hogan, I think, is the most extreme, completely insane example of it. But I think that it's difficult, almost impossible to avoid.

If you claim you were hacked after a scandal, you must lean into it with more fake hacks

If you are going to go the hacked route, you have to go farther down the rabbit hole of hacked. So you accidentally snap a picture of your penis, then you accidentally snap a picture of a swastika, then you accidentally snap a picture of like you throwing a rock at a pigeon and then you're like shit I got hacked.

Draymond Green should sue Snapchat for entrapment

If I'm Draymond, I would consider suing Snapchat. They made an app that makes it really easy to send dick pics that disappear afterwards. So it's like entrapment.

Women in sports media should know 'No' is a complete sentence

I always say like, here's my advice. No is a complete sentence. Like you don't have to justify to anybody why you're saying no to anything because I think young women sometimes feel like they have to.

Media members and sports figures should physically fight to settle disputes

I think the media and sports figures should actually physically fight. That feels like something that would happen in maybe Argentina where a ref screws up and they're like, 'oh, we're going to kill you.' I'd like to see more accountability.

Stephen A. Smith would have successfully prosecuted O.J. Simpson

I actually don't disagree with Stephen A. Smith here... Because I actually do think he would have been able to put O.J. Simpson in jail. He is so exhausting as an arguer, as a person, that I think that the jury would have just said, 'you know what, just have Stephen A. Smith stop talking and we'll put [Simpson] in jail.'

NFL Blitz is a Mount Rushmore-tier video game

All right, first up, NFL Blitz. No, I played video games a lot more when I was really young, and that was my favorite one.

Madden is the greatest video game franchise ever

I have Madden, the franchise. Just going to take the whole franchise. Fuck it. Mount Rushmore, you get to make your own rules.

GoldenEye 007 and Oregon Trail are top-tier video games

GoldenEye is number one since you didn't take it... Number two, I have Oregon Trail.

I am ground zero for sports stars and the first sports celebrity who wasn't an athlete

I was actually told by a reporter from Sports Illustrated when he interviewed me, he said, you're the first sports star. I mean, what the hell is a sports star? Star for sports. You're the first one. You're the first guy to become a sports celebrity that wasn't an athlete. ... You are ground zero for sports stars.

Marlins Man was only complaining about not getting into the Fort Bragg game, not skipping it out of respect

I asked him, the first thing I asked him before the game was, hey, are you going to Fort Bragg? He said nothing about respecting the military. All he did was complain about how he couldn't get in and how he does so much to promote Sunday night baseball and Major League Baseball. But MLB and the Marlins are being mean and they won't let him in. ... So for him to now suddenly be bashing me for going is just quite frankly bizarre.

People should be fired for being bad at Twitter

I hope that this happens more in the future. Just people get fired because they suck at Twitter, not because they say anything offensive or because they break a law or anything, just because they suck at the platform.

The X Games have lost their fastball because they cancel events for rain

The X Games has lost their fastball... they canceled all the events yesterday because of rain, and these are the X Games, right? Why are you canceling events because of rain? If anything, it should be the Surge commercial where everybody is running up the hill.

Women's lacrosse is not a real sport because Northwestern is good at it

Also, Northwestern won a national title, and if Northwestern can win a national title in the sport we're talking about, that's not a real sport. So women's lacrosse, sorry, not a real sport.

Steve Weatherford is the 'Rosa Parks' of heavy breathing at Planet Fitness

He's now taking a stand about people shaming heavy breathers... This is the Martin Luther King of breathing heavy in Planet Fitness is Steve Weatherford. Really standing up for some civil rights here. [PFT]: I'd say it's more Rosa Parks.

Johnny Manziel should get fat to regain public sympathy

Fat Johnny Manziel is actually a good way to get some sympathy back... You can't... It's just different when you're fat. People won't call him a scumbag as much... You're lovable when you're fat.