I don't know who on the board besides Cubsfan is a Chicagoan, but I presume most Midwesterners here of a certain age watched the Sports Writers on TV show in the late 80s and early 90s. A local version of the Sports Reporters ESPN show from Chicago, but certainly more human and less polished than its cable cousin from Bristol.
Jauss was everywhere on the Chicago sports beat, but I'm not sure he was ever the feature columnist at any of his stops. Almost always the optimist, as I remember he was the second best sidekick for a Gleason, ever.
Originally posted by odessastepsA local version of the Sports Reporters ESPN show from Chicago, but certainly more human and less polished than its cable cousin from Bristol.
For non-Chicagoans, while not as over-the-top as the SNL caricature, this show had to be the inspiration for the "SuperFans" sketches. One of a handful of TV shows I would make time to watch, but probably wouldn't work anymore in the face of 500-channel cable and thousands of blog sites.
I think you sell them short comparing them to the massively inferior rip-offs. ESPN's "The Sports Reporters" is too short to get into a decent discussion, and a national show has too much ground to cover. Plus they used a rotating cast of pretentious newspaper columnists with little chemistry, before figuring ratings were the same if you threw any three of the kids from ESPN.com on with Lupica.
And then they came up with "Around the Horn" for sports fans with 20-second attention spans, a show they could get away with using hacks like Skip Bayless and Woody Paige.
I loved Sportswriters on TV growing up. The original lineup of Bentley, Gleason, Jauss, and Telander was perfect because their ingrained differences would lead to argument/discussion without it ever feeling forced the way Skip Bayless just takes whatever position lets him yell at the other person for four minutes.
A lot of good stuff from DC this week and it's the beginning of the end for Batman: BATMAN #676: It's the official start of Batman R.I.P. in which Tim Drake asks about Damien and we see one of the more frightening takes on the Joker.