Friday Reading and Open Thread

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• MSNBC on the decline of the nickname.
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• We'll get to it soon enough on here but Chiefs Fanatic checks out LT Jared Gaither and CB Paul Oliver for the NFL Supplemental Draft.
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• If you've been reading sports blogs any length of time, you've seen that girl from the Snorg T-Shirt ads. Winning the Turnover Battle has an interview with her here.
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• Pacman Jonesin' has some advice for you fantasy football players out there.
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• ESPN morphing into MTV? Tis true says Awful Announcing.
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• How about a little PFT rumor about Tank Johnson going to the Bucs?
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• Deuce of Davenport has a very clever list of drinks that should be named after athletes.
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I haven't been watching much ESPN lately. Now, I'm not one of those bloggers that is railing against the WWL simply because they're the 800 pound gorilla in the room. This is just something I noticed over the last year or so. ESPN has a lot of crap on that I have never and probably never will care about watching. Poker, bowling and the ESPY's to name just a few. I have to confess I think I did watch the ESPY's when I was younger but hasn't YouTube pretty much obliterated that idea? Was I the only one who watched to see the really cool sports plays that I had never seen before?

My other reason for shying away from the sports giant is that I feel at my ripe old age of 24 that the network doesn't really offer me, an adult, much in the way of programming anymore. I could care less about the spelling bee, which appears to only be as successful to the degree to which its shoved in our faces. Going over the intricacies of who's more "now", Tiger Woods or Matt Leinart? And have the ESPN anchors taking it seriously? Please. I have enough trouble wrestling the remote away from my little brother (22) and his damn Real World crap. Don't even get me started on that show...

I remember when I was younger waking up on Monday mornings to the shouting of "PLAYS! OF! THE WEEK!" and knowing it was going to be a good day because of that. Now, I wake up, write what I can here, hustle off to work and back home to catch up on my sports info. I really lack the time nowadays to watch ESPN for four hours to get my daily sports fix. The Internet is always on and there are inevitably a million more opinions and bits of info out there than ESPN (or any television network) could ever hope to deliver.

Maybe I spend too much time on the Internet checking out sports blogs. I was reading an article in a magazine yesterday and when I reached the end of it, I instinctually looked for the comment section. Go figure...