Quite frankly, we got more media

==The Onion Sports headline of the week sure to please Stephen A:

'Fire Isiah' Chant Breaks Out During Knicks' Front-Office Meeting

==A poll on AOL Sports poll (in cahoots with AwfulAnnouncing.com) sure to displease Stephen A. It's to determine the "Worst Sports Announcer" (in a bracket that puts Smith up against Sal Masekela).

== The weekend football TV guide:
The NFL:

Sunday:
10 a.m.: Seattle at Philadelphia with Kenny Albert, Darryl Johnston and Tony Siragusa, Channel 11 (as opposed to the other Fox offering of Detroit-Minnesota, San Francisco-Carolina and Atlanta-St. Louis)
10 a.m.: San Diego at Kansas City with Dick Enberg and Randy Cross, Channel 2 (as opposed to CBS' other offering of the best game of the day -- Jacksonville-Indianapolis with Jim Nantz and Phil Simms -- as well as N.Y. Jets-Miami, Houston-Tennessee and Buffalo-Washington)
1 p.m.: N.Y. Giants at Chicago with Joe Buck and Troy Aikman, Channel 11 (up against Fox's other offering of Tampa Bay-New Orleans and CBS carrying Cleveland-Arizona and Denver-Oakland)
5:15 p.m.: Cincinnati at Pittsburgh with Al Michaels and John Madden, Channel 4

Monday:
5:30 p.m.: New England at Baltimore with Mike Tirico, Ron Jaworski and Tony Kornheiser, ESPN. The network says former Miami coach Don Shula will also be a guest in the booth.

Colleges (with BCS rankings):
The locals:

Saturday:

1:30 p.m.: UCLA at No. 8 USC, with Terry Gannon, David Norrie (pictured) and Jeannine Edwards, Channel 7
FSN Prime Ticket has a one-hour pregame show starting at 12:30 p.m. and a post-game show starting at 5 p.m., with Lindsay Soto, Petros Papadakis, Rodney Peete, Danny Farmer, James Washington and Jeremy Hogue, plus reporters John Jackson and Michael Eaves.

Nationally:
Tonight:
5 p.m.: Fresno State at New Mexico State with Eric Collins, Bill Curry and Dave Ryan, ESPNU.

Saturday:
7 a.m.: ESPN College GameDay is in San Antonio for the Big 12 Championship.
8 a.m.: Miami (Ohio) vs. Central Michigan in the MAC championship in Detroit, with Pam Ward and Ray Bentley, ESPN2
9 a.m.: Army vs. Navy with Ian Eagle, Boomer Esiason and Sam Ryan, Channel 2
9 a.m.: Tulsa at Central Florida in the Conference USA championship with Dave Pasch, Andre Ware and Erin Andrews, ESPN
10 a.m.: No. 6 Virginia Tech vs. No. 11 Boston College in the ACC championship in Jacksonville, Fla., with Brad Nessler, Bob Griese, Paul Maguire and Bonnie Bernstein, Channel 7
11 a.m.: Virginia Union at Tuskegee in the Pioneer Bowl, with Charlie Neal and Charles Arbuckle, ESPNU
1:30 p.m.: Oregon State at No. 17 Oregon with Dan Fouts and Tim Brandt, ESPN2
4 p.m.: Cal at Stanford with Ted Robinson, Kelly Stouffer and Lewis Johnson, Versus
4:45 p.m.: Pittsburgh at No. 2 West Virginia with Mike Patrick and Todd Blackledge, ESPN
5 p.m.: No. 1 Missouri vs. No. 9 Oklahoma in the Big 12 championship from San Antonio, with Brent Musburger, Kirk Herbstreit and Lisa Salters, Channel 7
5 p.m.: Arizona at No. 13 Arizona State with Mark Jones, Bob Davie and Stacey Dales, ESPN2
8:30 p.m.: Washington at No. 12 Hawaii with Ron Franlin, Ed Cunningham and Jack Arute, ESPN2

Sunday:
5 p.m.: BCS selection show, with Chris Rose, Charles Davis, Barry Switzer and Jimmy Johnson, Channel 11. They've also got Chris "Jub Jub" Myers, Thom Brennaman, etc., at locations throughout the country, but pay special attention to reporter Charissa Thompson,who will be on the University of Hawaii campus.

==College football notes:
-CSTV will reair last week's Arkansas triple OT victory over previous No. 1 LSU today (5 p.m.).
-ESPN says last Thursday's game beteen USC and Arizona State did a 3.4 rating (3.27 million homes) which is the network's biggest for a Thansgiving game since 1993 (Texas A&M-Texas). It also reported that the ESPN2 Boise State-Hawaii game on Nov. 23 did a 2.8 rating, the best of the 14 Friday night college football games on ESPN or ESPN2 this season. And ABC's prime-time coverage of Kansas-Missouri on Nov. 24 did a 7.0 overnight mark, the best in 2007 for Saturday Night Football.

==NBC announced this week it will stick with its scheduled Indianapolis-Baltimore game in Week 14 (Dec. 9), and the only change on the NFL's master schedule is Pittsburgh-New England (on CBS) moving from the 10 a.m. to 1:15 p.m. window.

==NBC also says it did a 15.6 overnight rating and 24 share for last Sunday's New England-Philadelphia game, the best in Sunday Night Football's short history and most watched prime-time game since Pittsburgh-Indianapolis on ABC's Monday Night Football in 2005 (15.8/24). The rating peaked at a 17.3 from 8 to 8:30 p.m. during the fourth quarter. Boston (39.5/55) and Philadelphia (35.4/50) did the best rating; L.A. came in at 12.9/21.

==NBC’s Bob Costas said it on “Football Night in America,” doing the highlights of the Cincinnati-Tennessee game when the Bengals’ Chad Johnson caught a 10-yard TD pass and celebrated by taking over the camera in the back of the end zone and pretending to shoot game action: “Someone’s got to tell him this is his worst nightmare. When he’s behind the camera, that means he can’t be in front of the camera.” A great retort. Except that it was, of course, caught live for the viewers by several of the other TV cameras around the stadium.

==HBO's "Costas Now" returns Tuesday (10 p.m.) with a show that looks back at the year in sports and includes a roundtable with Charles Barkley and John McEnroe.

==CBS NFL analyst Steve Beuerlein says it was all a joke that just got on the air by mistake as the network's media relations crew tried to explain why the former Notre Dame quarterback doing the network's Tennessee-Cincinnati regional telecast last Sunday referred to Titans running back LenDale White as a "USC thug" coming out of a commercial break. The game wasn't seen in the L.A. market -- we had Oakland at Kansas City instead in that 10 a.m. slot -- but those with DirecTV's "NFL Sunday Ticket" might have caught it. In the game, the Titans' White was given a personal foul after he kneed the Bengals' Marvin White near the end of the first half. Back from a short commercial break, Beuerlein could be heard saying, "USC thugs, man," as cameras showed White sitting on the bench. White played for USC, as did Titans coach Jeff Fisher. Beuerlein, born in Hollywood and a star at Anaheim's Servite High before going to Notre Dame -- then playing two seasons for the Raiders while they were in L.A. -- was joking with play-by-play man Bill Macatee, a Valley resident who knows more than most about USC football and is an avid fan of the program.
"Steve being a Notre Dame guy and like any two friends who have those allegiances would do, they kid each other about Notre Dame and USC all the time,'' CBS spokesperson LeslieAnn Wade said. "Certainly Steve wishes it wasn't on the air and so does CBS.''
We wish we heard it.
Macatee and Beuerlein are on CBS' regional coverage of Denver-Oakland on Sunday.

==And what do we make of what came from the mouth of "NFL Today general manager/professor" Charley Casserly on CBS' pregame show? After a discussion with James Brown about the record pace of kickoff returns for TDs, Casserly had the rest of us scratching our toupees when he went on about how touchbacks are also at an all-time high. Only 79 percent of kickoffs are being returned, Casserly said, and a change in the rule using the K ball means the balls are getting more often and get softer. And ...
"And believe it or not, global warming comes into it," Casserly said. "Al Gore can’t even take credit. When it’s warmer weather, the ball goes farther than in colder weather. All across the fall of the north this year we’ve had warm weather, therefore global warming is causing more touchbacks.”
Tell it to a polar bear clinging to his life on the edge of a melting iceberg.

==Ted Robinson and Marques Johnson have their own crosstown mess to deal with Sunday. Robinson, the newly installed main voice on Pac-10 basketball for Fox Sports Net, will be with Johnson to do the 11 a.m. game between USC and Kansas from the Galen Center for FSN Prime Ticket, then jet across town to call the 5 p.m. game at Pauley Pavilion between UCLA and Texas. In between, Barry Tompkins and Dan Belluomini do the Arizona-Texas A&M came for FSN West at 3 p.m.

==ESPN Classic (as well as ESPN360.com) carries the NASCAR annual awards banquet live tonight at 6 p.m. (reaired at 9 p.m. on ESPN). For extra incentive, Kelly Clarkson will sing sometime before dessert and after snarky opening remarks by David Spade, said to be a "long-time fan of NASCAR, having served as Grand Marshal in 2006 at Atlanta Motor Speedway and as the Honorary Mayor at Darlington Raceway in 2003," according to ESPN publicity researchers.

==Versus and the Tennis Channel have the U.S.-Russia Davis Cup finals starting today in Portland. As the Camarillo doubles team of Mike and Bob Bryan join Andy Roddick and James Blake in representing the U.S., Versus has all the matches live starting at 1 p.m. today with Bill Patrick (play-by-play), Jimmy Arias (analyst) and Leif Shras (reporter), with the Tennis Channel replaying it at 7 p.m. each night.

==HBO says it had started production on a documentary on the life of former heavyweight champion Joe Louis called "America's Hero ... Betrayed" that focuses on how he survived despite many setbacks. Those who were interviewed about him include his son, Joe Barrow, Jr.; former President Jimmy Carter; poet Maya Angelou; comedians Jerry Lewis and Dick Gregory and writer Gay Talese. The documentary debuts on Feb. 23 during Black History Month.

==Vin Scully, who turned 80 years old Thursday, will most likely never agree to have a bobblehead made of himself and given away at Dodger Stadium, which is what the team did for Tommy Lasorda when he turned 80 durng the season.

==A funeral service in Chicago is set for Saturday for former KSPN 710-AM program director Ray Kalusa, who died last Wednesday from a heart attack en route to see his mother on Thanksgiving in Las Vegas. He was 49.

==The second annual "You Make The Call Contest" -- allowing a listener of 710-AM to call the second-half opening kickoff of Saturday's USC-UCLA game from the Coliseum on Saturday that'll air on the station, if Pete Arbogast allows it, comes down to three finalists. Voting continues on the 710 website and the winner is announced live on Steve Mason's show between 1 and 4 p.m. today. The finalists: Cecil Treadway, Scott DeFalco and Eric Stover. Last year's winner called the second-half kickoff of the USC-Notre Dame contest, and if memory served us, the kick went out of bounds, no runback, and the series started at the 35 yard line.

==For the record, ESPN's Erin Andrews has won Playboy.com's "America's Sexiest Sportscaster" vote, with the Playboy press release indicating that the "leggy, lovely sideline reporter" lured nearly 40 percent of the more than 50,000 votes cast. FSN reporter/anchor Lindsay Soto was second, with Krista Voda, a NASCAR reporter for Speed Channel, finishing third. So does it mean Andrews will be invited by the company to do whatever demeaning thing they'll ask of her in the future? SI.com did a quick chat with her, and Andrews' response: "It's nice that people voted for me, but I haven't thought too much about it. I have two big football games to prepare for this week." Yeah, prepping for Thursday's meaingless Rutgers-Louisville game, followed by Saturday's Conference USA title game must be pretty taxing in the grand scheme of who's going to the BCS.

==And finally:
The much-discussed Steve Mason Soulja Boy Remix dance video to celebrate his new 710-AM show:

Mason has said this week the goal is one million hits on YouTube. Don't stop believin'.
When Mason came on the air Monday in his new time slot, he didn't allow listeners to read between the lines. Saying he was laying it out all for the audience because “you guys aren’t stupid,” Mason explained why he was no longer doing the drive-time spot with John Ireland, his partner there the last four years: “This solo show was not my idea and wasn’t my choice . . . if given my choice, I’d be working with John, but my bosses didn’t give me that choice.” As for whether he was told of the changes before they were announced two weeks ago, Mason admitted: “Yes, I did know shortly before and it was awful. I was torn up about it. . . I’m sure my bosses are cringing at this whole conversation, but I have a new contract and they can’t do anything about it. That’s officially the story. John’s a great guy and this has obviously put a strain our friendship, but it’s business and I’m moving forward and intend to have a great show every day.” As for the additional departure of midday host Kevin Kiley, whose spot Mason is now filling, Mason added: “(Management) gave him a lot of money to go away. That would be the correct answer."
And as of today, Mason is still working for the company.