Erin Andrews gave her first interviews on Sunday night after it was announced the 34-year-old personality would be leaving ESPN for Fox.
"This was a difficult move but it was the right move because it's allowing me to do so many things that I probably would not have been able to do had I stayed at ESPN," Andrews told Richard Deitsch of SI.com.
"It's a different way to expand my role. I'm not tired yet. I don't want to hang it up. I just need to get better and these were different opportunities that I would not be able to find anywhere but at Fox Sports."
Fox has been making aggressive moves the past two years to become a player in college football, including a 12-year agreement for broadcast rights to Pacific 12 games and a similar 13-year deal with the Big 12.
The Wiz's 2011 study of bowl game expense reports is cited in the May 14 edition of ESPN Magazine, which is titled "The Money Issue" and features Floyd Mayweather on the cover.
ESPN examined the most undervalued and overvalued assets in sports. In citing our study, ESPN determined that going to a bowl game ranked No. 6 on the overvalued list. The item appears on page 84.
The Wiz determined that the 70 teams in the 2010 postseason spent an average of $1.31 million on a bowl trip, with nearly 25% going toward required ticket purchases the teams did not recover. Read our report at this link.
New York might not be considered a hotbed of college football, but on Tuesday night it was the place to be.
Writers Buzz Bissinger, featured in the video above, and Malcolm Gladwell debated broadcaster/author Tim Green and columnist Jason Whitlock on whether college football should be banned. Bissinger and Gladwell argued for abolishment, and by the end of the night had won over the packed house at New York University's Skirball Center.
The audience was polled beforehand and only 16% supported a ban and 53% opposed it. By the end of the debate, 53% favored a ban and 39% opposed it. The undecided vote, which was 31% beforehand, was only 8% at the end.
Pulitzer Prize winner Buzz Bissinger, writing in the Wall Street Journal, says enough is enough. College football serves no academic purpose, therefore it should be banned.
Bissinger writes: "The players themselves don't benefit, exploited by a system in which they don't receive a dime of compensation. The average student doesn't benefit, particularly when football programs remain sacrosanct while tuition costs show no signs of abating as many governors are slashing budgets to the bone."
He adds that according to the NCAA, 43% of Division I-A teams lost money, this at a time when tuition is skyrocketing.
Nine years ago, Christin Wilson was an intern at a TV station in Charleston, S.C., and had the opportunity to help with a live shoot featuring then South Carolina coach Lou Holtz. Holtz grows impatient while waiting for the interview to start and vents his anger to Wilson.
"No matter who you are, whether you're scraping the gum off the streets or you're President Obama, you treat people with the respect that you'd want to be treated with," she said.
James, 49, an analyst on Thursday night and Saturday afternoon telecasts on ESPN/ABC, is in his second tour of duty with the network. He was a studio analyst in the early 1990s before leaving in 1996 for an expanded role with CBS.
He returned in 2004 and although his work is generally praised, James' reputation — along with that of the network — was tarnished when he became involved in a controversy involving his son, Adam, and Texas Tech coach Mike Leach.
Adam, a receiver on the Red Raider team, was recovering from a concussion last season when Leach reportedly confined him in a shed for two hours during practice after suspecting the player was exaggerating his injury.
James complained to Texas Tech officials and reportedly threatened to sue the university. Leach, who called James "a Little League dad," was eventually suspended and then fired before the team played in the Alamo Bowl.
James Cutbirth, an assistant professor of journalism at the University of British Columbia, wrote a piece for Huffington Post that was critical of the analyst and ESPN:
"Craig James has every right to be a pestering football dad, as obnoxious as that may be. However, if he wants to exercise that right, he owes it to his network and the reputations of other reporters who work there to move into a job that doesn't have these ethical temptations or create the appearance of impropriety."
ESPN ombudsman Don Ohlmeyer wrote a lengthy piece about James and the network that the analyst dragged into the fray. He ended it with this: "As ESPN grows, so will the conflicts. All the policies in the world won't cover the potential scenarios. The company needs to develop a hypersensitivity to such developments. News decisions in these cases must not be resolved by asking 'What's permissible for the employee?' but rather 'What's fair to the audience?' "
James also has an interest in politics. A native Texan, he considered running as a Republican candidate for U.S. Senate and is a board member of the Texas Public Policy Foundation, a conservative think tank.
So there you have it. Do you like Craig James? Do you not like Craig James. Fire away!
