2008 TOP 5 WORST SPORTS PERSONALITIES
Here is my list of the Top 5 WORST Sports Personalities around today. Amazingly enough, I wrote this column when this site first opened late in 2006 and the list hasn't changed AT ALL!!! All I really did was change the year at the top, and the shows that some of these fools are on. For the list I looked for people that are on TV, Radio, or in Print and downright annoy the hell out of me. Being on this list doesn't necessarily mean the person is bad at their job; they are just completely intolerable to the senses, ruining the overall entertainment value of anything they take part in, whether it be a show, broadcast, website, article, sporting event, etc.
#5 : Jay Mariotti (Around the Horn Panelist, Chicago Sun-Times Reporter)
Around the Horn has always done an adequate job filling the void between Rome is Burning and PTI. But in the long tenure of the show, one annoying thing has remained, and that is Jay Mariotti. Has Ozzie Guillen ever been more on point then when he called Mariotti a 'bunch of sticks' (look it up)? This guy is an annoying, nagging, complaining, corny, and outright stupid idiot. He's like the girl that you're stuck dealing with for life because she had your baby after a terrible one night stand. Every idea he attempts to bring to the table is obvious, and all of his opinions are retarded. Listening to him talk about sports is like listening to your great-grandfather talking about how things were 'back in his day'; you wish you were anywhere else but right there, and you leave each conversation feeling angry and somehow dumber than you were heading in to it. Please please please cut this guy from your panel ATH producers; I implore you to do so, not just for myself, but for the sake of eyes and ears on ATH fans everywhere.
#4 : Merril Hoge (NFL Matchup, NFL Live)
The mere mention of Merril's name causes one of two responses from people: confusion for the 75% of fans that have no idea of who he is, and laughter from the other 25% that know him and think he's a joke. This former Steelers Fullback must have had his screws knocked loose setting blocks during his NFL tenure, because the insight he attempts to provide on the various ESPN shows he appears on is downright lunacy. I specifically remember a mid-season episode of Edge NFL Matchup during the Eagles Superbowl run a few years back where he was asked what team with a good record was a pretender, to which he replied the Eagles...who at the time were 7-0...saying they would implode thanks to TO and miss the playoffs. Though they did go on to imploded and miss the playoffs the NEXT season, you pretty much need downs syndrome to think that any team sitting at 7-0 would miss the playoffs, and this obvious display of craziness should have led to his immediate dismissal from sports casting (as a note, the birds went on to finish 13-3 and lose in a well fought Superbowl). The fun that comes with a show that Merril Hoge appears on is guessing what he is going to say next, which is surprisingly easy to do: simply take any game with an obvious favorite or any really good team, and pick against them. That's it, sadly it's really that simple. Hoge is guaranteed to make the worst possible picks, and defend them with even worse ideas; it's money in the bank. The day Merril Hoge makes a good NFL pick is the same day Charlie Brown actually kicks the football without Lucy pulling it away. I honestly think NFL Matchup has actually been cancelled on ESPN because the people at the 'Edge' company who sponsored the show couldn't take it anymore and shaved their own faces off, a death I would only recommend for Hoge himself.
#3 : Bryant Gumbel (NFL Network Commentator, Host of Real Sports )
I don't even have much to write about Gumbel, as Real Sports is actually a well written and informative broadcast that he does a fairly good job of hosting. But his recent transition to being the play-by-play man for the live games on NFL Network is one of the worst decisions the NFL Network could have made, second only to my #2 spot you will read momentarily. Gumbel does not have the personality, and especially not the voice, for someone that will be talking THE ENTIRE GAME. His lingo and verbiage is too top shelf for the average NFL fan, and he has mastered turning the disturbing sound of screeching on a chalkboard into a voice and uses it as his own during these games. Even though he has Cris Collinsworth, a really good color guy (though Cris is extremely overrated by the sports media, who speak of him as though he's the Color Commentator equivalent of Jesus Christ), it still doesn't offset the fact that Gumbel is only truly useful when you are putting together satirical sports pieces like the ones on his HBO show. Hopefully the NFL Network realizes the error of their ways in the middle of the season (i.e. David Stern and his new NBA basketball) and they replace Gumbel as soon as possible so we can have some quality in the booth during the home stretch of the season's remaining NFL Network games. Otherwise, I will find myself at more chick-flicks with my Fiancé on Thursday and Saturday nights and less time with the boys holding my ears and complaining while an otherwise enjoyable football game is happening.
#2 : Jim Mora (Sr.) (NFL Network Personality)
There are only two things that I watch religiously in my home, Sports and Music Videos. When I had Comcast as my cable television provider and it's 5 different channels devoted to music videos 24/7, I would say that there was a 50-50 split of what I was watching. Since switching to Direct TV and it's ZERO Music Video channels, I now watch Sports about 95% of the time, and almost half of that is spent watching programs on the NFL Network. I sit through all kinds of garbage, including NFL Cheerleader playoffs and NFL Replay showing the same games I watched courtesy of my NFL Sunday Ticket package the previous weekend. It's true, I'll just about watch anything the NFL network throws at me. However, there's one thing that can instinctively make me flip the channel to something else without even knowing it and that is when I see the elder Jim Mora show up on my screen and start talking. This guy is so awful at his job that I feel sorry for his family. I've never seen someone who does such a great job of combining his two worst traits into one giant mega-mistake each and every time he's in front of the camera, but Mora somehow merges his overall inability to read from cue cards (I'm convinced he can barely read at all), and his complete and utter inability to mask the fact that he's reading from cue cards (and reading directly, without even attempting a single adlib). I'd like to see him try to talk to a beautiful girl who has her boobs hanging out and look her in the face, it would be the same thing. Maybe we can just chalk it up to this being the inaugural season that the NFL Network has live games to worry about, so they are focusing all their resources on that aspect of their brand. But putting this guy on camera for up to 4 hour stints at a time on "Point After" is just excruciating for viewers., especially if you consider that the brunt of the show consists of a misc. female host asking Mora a question, directly followed by up to 5 straight minutes of him attempting to answer via cue-card-reading with the camera zoomed in on his face as he stumbles through the printed words, all the while looking slightly down and to the left (where I assume the cue-cards are located, unless it's the female host's exposed boobs he is staring at). I really force myself to watch him sometimes simply because when TV goes out of style 20 years from now, I want to be able to say I saw first hand what may go down as the worst televised football game breakdown commentary in the history of cable. Factor in that Mora was a terrible coach (diregard the hilarious interviews he did in the days leading up to his firings in Indy and New Orleans), that he has the same voice as the old lady from those "Do you want to make more money, sure we all do" commercials, and how his opinions are really those of the cue cards writers and not his own, and I can't figure out for the life of me why he has a job. Each time I stumble across him on this show I find myself watching and rooting for an Anchorman-esque moment, where one of the people in the crew that hates him will write something that is terribly racist or utterly offensive to an entire group of people on the cue cards, and then everyone sits and stares in a state of astonished amazement as Jim reads the card verbatim. Unless there's a plan to do that currently in the works, someone needs to fire this joker ASAP.
#1 : Skip Bayless (Co-Host of First Take, ESPN 2 Writer)
I have been writing this article for going on 2 weeks now, and I will frustratingly admit that it has only taken so long because I've been trying to find a way to put my hatred for Skip Bayless into words. Seriously, my list was completed in about 5 minutes and I wrote the comments for everyone else in about 15 minutes combined. But Skip is a different story. First off, let's just start by pointing out that his chosen stage name is Skip Bayless....SKIP! In my mind, that's just as bad as if he went by Nutsack Bayless. Then, his ESPN.com bio has the audacity to start off by referring to him as "one of the country's most respected and opinionated sports columnists". Really, what country? I don't know who in their right mind can respect anybody with a name like Skip. Who else does ESPN.com have in that same class of respectability, Bonehead Jenkins and Toot McGee? Anyway, this is just the start of the annoyance that is Mr. Bayless, and his terribly flamboyant name is only a very small part of the giant 'Moron Pie' that Cold Pizza serves us every morning opposite Woody Paige, so let's move on. His next accomplishment is fascinating to me: any person that can make Jay Crawford (the 2007 version of Gomer Pile in a suit) look good has to be despicable. I actually feel bad for Jay and his lack of personality, because if you ever watch Cold Pizza, you see him spending the entire 1st & 10 segments juggling a combination of awkward faces, fake laughs, and impossible segues into whatever topic is next after each and every ridiculous opinion that Skip Bayless utters. Let me make this abundantly clear: SKIP MAKES NO SENSE...EVER! I have personally seen him state several thousand opinions and/or viewpoints, and EVERY TIME he follows up with some incoherent, crazy, and usually retarded compilation of irrational thoughts that he tries to pass off as facts and justification for the pile of elephant crap he just defecated out of his mouth. Sorry, but we're not buying the cookies that you're selling little girl, try the house next door. And please don't think for a second that I don't 'get it': you are trying to play the heel to Woody Paige's face, trying to be the bad guy, trying to be the dirty little sportscaster that everyone loves to hate. The only problem is, it's not working. Instead, I HATE to HATE you. I wish you were off TV, off the radio, off print, hell I'd celebrate if you were dead. Sure that might be over the top, but you've made going over the top for no good reason a multi-faceted, daily ritual for answering even the most basic of questions. The difference between you and I is that I just wrote a paragraph's worth of strong arguments that are good enough to convince people why you suck, whereas you go off your rocker on things as simple as "did the Red Sox overpay for JD Drew?" ten times a day, everyday, and don't even almost treck down the path that one could consider the human thought process. Therefore, good luck attempting to continue bamboozling ESPN into keeping you on the air, but know that you are single-handedly destroying the Cold Pizza show. And the really really sad part of that is, if not for any other reason, then because Dana Jacobsen is one of the most refreshing and entertaining Female Sportscasters American sports has, and you are murdering her chances to succeed.