==Which leads back to a "commentary" the Onion had back in 2000:

In My Day, Ballplayers Were For Shit

==Former ESPN "SportsCenter" anchor Robin Roberts is expected back on ABC News’ “Good Morning America” on Monday, only 10 days after undergoing surgery for breast cancer. “She is still awaiting her test results, but is feeling great and looking forward to getting back to work,” said Bridgette Maney, show spokeswoman. Roberts, 46, told viewers last week she had been diagnosed with breast cancer after finding a lump in a self-examination. She had surgery last Friday and has been resting at home since.

==Dan Patrick returns Monday for his final week of doing his ESPN Radio show (on KSPN-AM 710 from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m.), and there's no hint floating around about who'd be a permanent replacement starting Aug. 20. KSPN-AM program director Larry Gifford said the winner could be one of the fill-ins over the last few weeks, but nothing has been decided. He said that window won't be filled with local programming here on a permanent basis, but the station will plans for some local programming from 10 a.m.-to-1 p.m. late rthis month. Of all the subs who've dropped by to fill in the last few weeks, Scott Van Pelt seems to be the best fit. Collin Cowherd seems settled in that morning slot for the West Coast and probably wouldn't be wise to mess with that. Which reminds us: Where's Tony Bruno been?

==CBS course reporter David Feherty said he expects to drop a few pounds while walking with about 15 pounds of equipment around his waist and on his back at the PGA Championship in Tulsa, Okla., where temperatures are expected to be well above 100 all weekend. Maybe someone can follow him around with a water hose. "Not a hose, by a sprayer attached to the biggest green bottle of Gold Bond Powder you've ever seen in your life -- the green one, not the yellow one," said Feherty. "It'll be like a crop duster firing on me. With all the rain they've had in the area the last few months, the intense heat is sucking it all out and it's like steam coming out of the ground and going up your pant legs."
PGA.com , with CBS Sportsline.com, continues coverage each day from 6 a.m. to 4 p.m., overlapping the TNT coverage today (11 a.m. to 5 p.m.), Saturday and Sunday (8 to 11 a.m.). CBS goes five hours Saturday and Sunday for the third and final rounds (11 a.m. to 4 p.m.).
Feherty is quoted in the current issue of Sports Illustrated as saying that watching Tiger Woods' final round of 65 at the Bridgestone Invitational, and was the only one to break par on that day, was "one of the alltime great rounds ever seen by anyone. Tiger had that Zen-effing-transcendental look kfrom the start to finish, you know? Seriously, watching Tiger is like watching a different species."

==Now that ESPN "SportsCenter's" daily saga on "Who's Now?" is done -- Tiger Woods, by the way, was voted top dog over LeBron James -- the question is: What's next? ESPN.com ombudsman Le Anne Schreiber gives the best of both sides in her latest "command performance" column that comes because "mo single topic has ever drawn the volume and intensity of unsolicited complaints to either my or my predecessor's mailbox that this sports popularity contest has."
One of the things that Schreiber suggests is that ESPN should consider adding a "crisp, half-hour, nightly news version of SportsCenter -- just news and highlights ... (without) gimmicks or sponsored segments or recaps, without self- or cross-promotion, with a consistent anchor team accountable for a consistent tone, with spare to no use of instant commentary." The show would serve as a "prime-time island of clean, clear, straightforward news on which ESPN's journalistic credibility could securely rest.” Maybe she's either been watching ESPNEWS, or has caught FSN's "Final Score," whose ratings, according to a network spokeman, have doubled since April.

== Tuesday, Sept. 4, is the date set for the third season of the 16-competitor boxing reality series, "The Contender," on ESPN in the 7 p.m. slot. Promoters say 2.3 million people viewed last year's finale between Grady Brewer and Steve Forbes, which made it the highest-rated boxing telecast on the network in nine years. Sugar Ray Leonard returns as the host. Oscar de la Hoya and Adam Corolla are making appearances, and the total purse this season is raised to $1 million. Also for the first time, fans will be able to see the entire fights each week on ESPN2.

==The Oxygen channel announced plans a reality series featuring former NFL and current NFL Network analyst Deion Sanders, his wife Pilar and their five kids starting in Feb., 2008. The working title: "Prime Time Love." The hook, howeer, is Pilar, described as "a former model and glamorous big city girl (but now) is the ultimate fish out of water in her small town of Prosper, Texas: population approximately 2,000. She loves her life, family and her stately home, but wants to step out from underneath her husband's huge shadow and strike out on her own - while Deion would rather she stay at home with the kids."
In other words, take the plot for "Green Acres" and freshen it up. Who plays the role of Arnold the pig?
Oxygen, the only cable network owned and operated by women, launched in 2000 and is available in over 73 million homes.

==Karch Kiraly's calf injury will prevent him from playing in this weekend's AVP Manhattan Beach Open and force him to just do the NBC telecast -- women's final is Saturday at 1:30 p.m. and the men's is Sunday at 1:30 p.m. -- with Chris Marlowe, Mike Dodd and Heather Cox.

==PlayON! Sports, a division of Turner Sports, has reached a deal to do online streaming of about 300 American Basketball Association games starting with this season's Nov. 10 opener. Details about the subscription service are yet to be announced. The ABA is scheduled to have teams in Long Beach, San Diego, Aliso Viejo and Palm Springs this season.

==The Big Ten Network has added more broadcatsers to its lineup, including Jim Kelly, Roger Twibell, Mark Neely and Ron Thulin on play-by-play and Mike Tomczak, Richard Baldinger, Glen Mason, Derrick Walker and Butler By'not'e as analysts. The official launch of the Big Ten Network comes Aug. 30, two days before the kick-off of the 2007 Big Ten college football season. More details: www.BigTenNetwork.com.

==FSN announced it will carry the FIBA Americas Championship tournament, where the U.S. national team (with Kobe Bryant, LeBron James and Carmelo Anthony) will fight in a 10-day event against Argentina, Brazil and Canada, plus Uruguay, Venezuela, Mexico, Virgin Islands, Panama and Puerto Rico, trying to clinch a spot in the 2008 Summer Olympics. The 12-game tournament starts Wednesday, Aug. 22 (5:30 p.m.) in Las Vegas. NBA TV will also simulcast the games. The bronze and gold-medal games are Sunday, Sept. 2.

==ABC will try to spice up its coverage of the Indiana Fever-Detroit Shock WNBA game on Saturday (10:30 a.m.) with an "insider" feature that includes locker room access during halftime. Terry Gannon, Doris Burke and Rebecca Lobo do the broadcast. Meanwhile, ESPN2 made a late call in subbing out the Sparks' home game against Phoenix on Tuesday, replacing it with Indiana-Chicago.

==ESPN360.com execs say they plan to do more than 2,000 live events on the website over the next 12 months, or 10 times more than it carried in 2006. To launch the new approach, Jeff Cravens has been named the vice president & general manager of ESPN360.com.
“With the new programming approach for ESPN360.com we are creating the leading online destination for live sports,” said John Kosner, senior vice president and general manager, digital media, in a statement “This is a tremendously exciting development for sports fans. If the game is not on one of ESPN’s TV networks, fans will check ESPN360.com – and in certain cases go there first.” ESPN says the new programming approach "marks the latest evolution in ESPN’s industry-leading broadband and online video strategy." ESPN360.com currently serves tens of thousands of streams for many of its live online events. Recent programming successes include more than 500,000 streams served for UEFA Champions League soccer matches; nearly 320,000 for the 2007 UEFA Under-21 soccer tournament; more than 250,000 for both the FIFA Under-20 World Cup and the 2007 Wimbledon tennis tournament; nearly 250,000 for both college football and college basketball (not including the March ESPN360.com Championships Week All-Access trial period); nearly 85,000 for NASCAR Busch series races; and more than three million for the 2006 FIFA World Cup tournament (the service’s most-viewed event). ESPN360.com remains a free service, available to more than 15 million homes with a high-speed Internet connection.

==Lakers radio play-by-play man Spero Dedes works with Marshall Faulk on the NFL Network's coverage of the Washington Redskins-Tennessee Titans exhibition game Saturday at 5 p.m.

==According to Bud Collins, one of the more appealing reasons to take ESPN2 up on its offer to have him join the network for its 2008 Grand Slam tennis events, as well as report for "SportsCenter," ESPNEWS and ESPN Radio starting with the U.S. Open next month, was to "be reunited with my long-time partner, Dick Enberg.”
Enberg worked with Collins for 20 years at NBC, including the “Breakfast at Wimbledon” live broadcasts starting in 1979.
“No one through the decades has been more important to the coverage of tennis than Bud,” said Enberg in an ESPN release. “He is not just a historian – literally and figuratively the encyclopedia of tennis – but he has served as a docent. He has been immensely generous, sharing his incredible knowledge with anyone who has an interest in the sport. He is a rich resource…we are very fortunate at ESPN to have him join our team, and I especially am looking forward with great anticipation to working with Bud again.”
Collins, 78, was phased out of NBC's Wimbledon coverage this summer after 25 years. The Boston Globe columnist started on tennis coverage while working at WGBH in Boston from 1963-88, as well as at CBS ('68-72) before joining NBC.

== KLSX-FM (97.1) has decided to become the Raiders' L.A. affliliate this season, including the pre- and post-game shows.

==Finally, in reference to the short Aug. 6 piece Mike Trask decided needed to be written for the Las Vegas Sun, expressing his lack of desire to listen to Vin Scully doing Dodger games, the story surprisingly ends with this line that shows Trask may not be all the big a crackpot:
"Alas, there is one guy worse during a baseball broadcast than Vin Scully: Chris Berman."
Although, that's kind of a redundant statement in the wake of trying to make a point about Scully.