SPORTS COUCH POTATO

ESPN needs to do right thing and give Phillips the boot

There's got to be something in the water at ESPN. Testosterone, maybe? What is it about working in Bristol, Conn., that brings out the worst in guys?

Allegations of sexual misconduct have dogged the Worldwide Leader for years. Mike Tirico, Harold Reynolds, Sean Salisbury and now Steve Phillips are among the network faces who have each had to deal with messy accusations about their treatment of female co-workers.

This week's revelations about Phillips' scandalous "Fatal Attraction" affair with 22-year-old production assistant Brooke Hundley makes us wonder how the baseball analyst and former New York Mets general manager can keep his job.

Our condolences go out to Phillips' wife (and mother of his four boys) Marni, who's had to endure the horrific embarrassment of her husband's indiscretion and the bizarre, desperate and downright scary behavior of his mistress. (You can read all the sordid details here.)

Phillips was suspended for a week but it's to believe he hasn't already been asked to clear out his cubicle. Here's hoping ESPN does the right thing and shows him the door.

UPDATE: Phillips was fired Sunday by ESPN. Hundley has also been terminated. A representative for Phillips said he "is voluntarily admitting himself to an inpatient treatment facility to address his personal issues, and informed ESPN of his plans Friday."

Read more at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/10/26/steve-phillips-fired-by-e_n_333458.html

ESPN platforms put full-court press on college hoops

If you think ESPN is omnipresent on the college gridiron — and it is — contemplate its reach on the basketball court: The Worldwide Leader will broadcast about 1,100 college hoops games this season over its multiple platforms.

Things get going in earnest on Nov. 9 with the annual 2K Sports Classic Benefiting Coaches vs. Cancer. Then comes the College Hoops Tip-Off Marathon on Nov. 16 with games scheduled every two hours starting at 6 a.m. ET.

This is the first year of a 15-year agreement with the SEC featuring every conference home game not on  a broadcast network to be televised on an ESPN platform. It is also the first season of a new agreement with the WAC, with games on ESPN, ESPN2 and ESPU.

For the ninth straight year ESPN will show the NCAA tournament's opening-round game from Dayton, Ohio.

The network's platforms include ESPN, ESPN2, ESPNU, ABC, ESPN360.com, ESPN Mobile TV, ESPN Regional Television and ESPN Full Court.

Record audience watches Favre pick old team apart

ESPN's "Monday Night Football" telecast of Brett Favre's epic performance for the Minnesota Vikings against his former Green Bay Packer team landed the biggest audience in cable television history.

The 15.3 rating was the largest in ESPN's 30-year existence. According to Nielsen Media Research, the game — won by the Vikings 30-23 — was on in 15.1 million households, and 21.8 million viewers watched.

In the Twin Cities, the game produced a combined rating of 58.3 on both ESPN and KSTP, StarTribune.com reported. That means 1.009 million households tuned in, a stunning number given there are slightly more than 1.7 million households in the market area.

KSTP, the local ABC affiliate which carried a simulcast of ESPN's telecast, had a 40.8 rating and ESPN had a 17.5 rating in the Minneapolis-St. Paul market.

NFL needs to scrap antiquated blackout rule

Kudos to Mike Francesa for blasting the NFL's blackout rule on his weekly "Mike'd Up" show Sunday on New York's WNBC-TV.

Francesa's comments came hours after the Detroit Lions beat the Washington Redskins 19-14 for their first regular-season win since Dec. 23, 2007. The game was not televised in Detroit, where it was attended by only 40,896 fans — the smallest crowd to see a Lions game in 20 years.

Sunday's games in Detroit and Oakland were not broadcast locally while another in San Diego narrowly avoided a similar fate. According to league rules, a game not sold out 72 hours in advance of kickoff is required to be blacked out in home television markets, theoretically to protect eleventh-hour ticket sales.

Times being as tough as they are, fewer fans are able to afford the price of an average NFL game ticket, which at $75 a pop is up 4 percent from a year ago.

Not too many cities have been impacted more by the economic meltdown than Detroit, home to America's downtrodden auto industry. As bad as the Lions have been — they had lost 19 consecutive games before knocking off Washington — the opportunity for the locals to watch them on TV for three hours on a Sunday afternoon is likely as important as ever.

Any diversion from the devastation of unemployment and financial struggle is more than welcome these days — just ask comedian Jay Leno, who earlier this year came to the city to play a free concert for those who had lost their jobs.

NFL owners need to recognize that whether or not a game is televised locally is no longer relevant to ticket sales as it was decades ago when the league was competing for eyeballs. And at a time when fewer people are attending sporting events in general simply because they can't, eliminating the blackout rule is also the right thing to do.