==ESPN's Bob Ley will anchor network coverage of Barry Bonds' arraignment in San Francisco today (starting at 9 a.m., followed by a one-hour special at 11 a.m.). Monday, Ley also coordinates the hour-long coverage (starting at 7 a.m.) of Michael Vick's sentencing in Richmond, Va. ESPN's "Monday Night Football" is doing the Falcons' game that night.

==Your weekend football viewing guide:

The NFL:

Thursday:

5 p.m.: Chicago at Washington, with Bryant Gumbel and Cris Collinsworth on NFL Network. Ooops, guess you already missed that one. Or, maybe you really didn't miss it.

Saturday:

Nothing. No college football, either.

Sunday:

10 a.m.: Dallas at Detroit, with Joe Buck and Troy Aikman, Channel 11 (as opposed to Tampa Bay-Houston, Carolina-Jacksonville, Philadelphia-N.Y. Giants or St. Louis-Cincinnati on Fox)

10 a.m.: San Diego at Tennessee with Greg Gumbel and Dan Dierdorf, Channel 2 (secondary market considerations here means you miss Oakland-Green Bay and the spintingling Buffalo-Miami contests also offered at this time by CBS ... instead we get a two-for-Gumbel fumble weekend)

1 p.m.: Pittsburgh at New England with Jim Nantz and Phil Simms, Channel 2 (as if you really wanted to see Arizona-Seattle or Minnesota-San Francisco on Fox or Kansas City-Denver or Cleveland-N.Y. Jets on CBS opposite this).
Simms said it in the CBS press notes about the Patriots' so-called mystique: "Now the NFL is not about all the games, it’s about which game of the year is it this week. I guess there are certain parts of it that are good, but we tend to lose focus on too many teams that are doing some good stuff and they are going to be part of the playoff picture. We can’t get past the Patriots, the Cowboys, the Green Bay Packers, Indianapolis Colts, and this week the Steelers squeak in there because they are playing the Patriots…Every time the Patriots play a game that is close now, of course since they are undefeated, it becomes huge news. I fell into the trap, thinking, my gosh, maybe what they are doing is so extraordinary that they may not play close games this year. Now I realize that it’s just too hard to separate yourself dramatically from the rest of the field, especially if you are talking about the elite five, six, or eight teams."

5:15 p.m.: Indianapolis at Baltimore, with Al Michaels and John Madden, Channel 4
Monday:

5:30 p.m.: New Orleans at Atlanta with Mike Tirico, Ron Jaworski and Tony Kornheiser, ESPN

=="Big Cable may not be listening, but football fans are showing there is a big desire to see NFL Network." That's in quotes, because it comes directly off the press release sent out by the NFL after its NFL Network coverage the Green Bay-Dallas game last Thursday.
The game, we think, was the thing folks desired to see, not necessarily the network, nor Bryant Gumbel's call.
According to how you manipulate the numbers, some 10.1 million homes tuned into the game, but probably thousands more watched it in restaurants and bars with either DirecTV or Dish Network, since no cable company has signed up. The network says that game earned a 14.6 "coverage area rating" -- meaning 14.6 percent of the 40-odd million homes with access to the game actually watched it. Doesn't seem very impressive now, does it? The 10.1 million viewers makes the Packers-Cowboys game the ninth most-watched program on cable this season -- after eight other telecasts on ESPN, but ahead of TBS' Game 4 of the Yankees-Indians American League Division Series game (9.2 million). But that was before ESPN proclaimed that last Monday's Patriots-Ravens telecast went down as the most-watched basic cable telecast of all time with 17.5 million viewers -- even bigger than the Disney Channel's telecast of "High School Musical 2" in August (17.2 million).
More telling is that nearly two million saw live streams of the Packers-Cowboys game on NFL.com Live with stupid "look-ins" at 15 and 45 minutes after each hour.
The NFL also reported that "fans are making their voices heard loud and clear in many other ways about the demand for NFL Network" by sending "several hundred thousand e-mails" to cable companies after going to www.iwantnflnetwork.com and making "thousands" of phone calls complaining to the NFL offices about the lack of the NFL Network.
Associated Press columnist Tim Dahlberg correctly assumes the NFL, with all conspiracy theorists on board, doesn't mind the New England Patroits running the table, "a bet that is increasingly popular in Vegas. But a lot is riding on whether the Patriots are unbeaten going into the Dec. 29 game against the New York Giants. The NFL wants it to be must-see TV, but to see it you must watch the league's own NFL Network. It's one of eight games the league kept for itself this year, and one which some 70 million households won't be able to see because of a bitter dispute the NFL is having with cable companies. The more valuable the game, the more leverage the NFL figures it will have to force cable operators to carry the network on the lucrative basic cable tier. By far the most valuable game left this year will almost surely be Pats/Giants."

==The NFL also says the Kentucky Public Service Commissioner has been “inundated with e-mails from people wanting the NFL Network,” according to WKBO-TV (ABC-13) in Bowling Green, Kentucky. It could also get a little louder again in the state of Texas, Indiana and Oklahoma when the University of Houston faces Texas Christian in the Dec. 28 Texas Bowl (in Houston), and when Indiana faces Oklahoma State in the Dec. 31 Insight Bowl (in Tempe, Ariz.), both exclusively carried live by the NFL Network.

==Mass. Sen. John Kerry, who was on with KSPN-AM (710)'s Steve Mason on Thursday, wrote a letter to both Roger Goodell, the NFL's commissioner, and Kyle McSlarrow, the president of the National Cable and Telecommunications Association, in hopes of resolving the dispute over NFL Network carriage. Kerry's greatest concern may be that because of the NFL Network's exclusivity, many in the Boston surrounding area won't get to see the Patriots' final regular-season game Dec. 29 against the N.Y. Giants -- which could be somewhat historial. “Unfortunately, this disagreement has led to the use of what could potentially be an historic football game as leverage in a negotiation,” Kerry said in the letter. It was Kerry who staged a hearing about Major League Baseball’s “Extra Innings” subscription package only being available on DirecTV. MLB eventually worked up a deal to put out-of-market games on cable.

==Does Green Bay Packers quarterback Brett Favre extend his streak of consecutive starts to 250 when his team faces Oakland in Green Bay on Sunday. Will the SI cover jinx, rather than his recently separated left shoulder and bruised right elbow, be the reason why all that could come to an end this weekend, after he was named the magazine's annual "Sportsman of the Year"? The Dec. 10 Sportsman of the Year issue, which came out Wednesday, includes more at www.si.com/sportsman: A tribute to Favre, exclusive video segments, galleries of past Sportsman covers and My Sportsman nominations from dozens of SI writers.

==Chris Fowler, Lee Corso and Kirk Herbstreit won't be doing a live ESPN "GameDay" Saturday from the Nokia Theatre in New York City, but it'll only seem that way. They'll be hosting ESPN's coverage of the live Heisman Trophy ceremony Saturday at 5 p.m., after they hosted Thursday's College Football Awards show from Lake Buena Vista, Fla. ESPN has done the Heisman Award show for the last 14 years.

==Lisa Salters, who we talked with to discuss her upcoming piece on "E:60" on USC basketball player O.J. Mayo, may still hear her voice reverberating around the San Antonio Alamo Dome after last Saturday's Missouri-Oklahoma Big 12 title game on ABC. During the game, just before halftime, Salters could be heard over the in-house public address system saying: "Well Brent, (Missouri QB) Chase Daniel was over here on the bench fuming. He was just so upset.” Daniel then looked up to see who was talking about him. Play-by-play man Brent Musburger followed up: “Lisa was talking to a lot more folks than she anticipated. ... Whoa, Chase looked over there and said, 'Who’s talking about me like that on the PA, man?'" Musburger explained that Salters was preparing for a halftime contest and her report inadvertently went through the PA system because is left on. It's not the first time Salters has been put in an uncomfortable situation. About a month ago, during an episode of "E:60," Salters was shown arguing about the merits of the French "sport" of Parkour (where people do basically gymnastics through malls, city streets, etc.) "Sounds like the silliest non-sport I have ever heard . … It's not a sport—this is something white people do! How many black people parkour? None! … There are some things that are intrinsically not interesting to us as a people. This is one of them." Which got a laugh from fellow black reporter Michael Smith, but was edited out from subsequent replays of the show. Ironically, one of the founders of Parkour is Sebastien Foucan, who is black.

==Sports Onion headline of the week:

==Pepperdine is one of the 11 schools on board with a new ESPNU project called "Campus Connection," where college students generate content for ESPN TV, radio, magazine and internet venues. The program connects students, communications departments and athletic departments in producing anything from a live game for ESPNU to reports on their schools for the ESPN networks to contributing stories to ESPN.com or ESPN The Magazine. Other schools participating so far are Florida State, Georgetown, Georgia, Missouri, North Carolina, Ohio University, Syracuse, Tennessee, Texas and Texas Southern. The UNC-Asheville at UNC men’s basketball game on Jan. 9 on ESPNU will be the first test assignment -- students from the University of North Carolina will serve in a variety of production roles, potentially including the responsibilities of game producer, play-by-play announcer or game analyst and sideline reporter.
UNC communications professor C.A. Tuggle says in an ESPN release: “As educators, we try to give our students experiences that closely mirror what they'll face as professionals. It doesn't get any more ‘real world’ than working on a game broadcast with ESPN. Our students will face all the pressures of live production, as well as reap the rewards associated with doing a good job on a broadcast seen by millions of people.”

==Larry Whiteside, a Boston Globe and Milwaukee Journal baseball writer who became the first African-American eligible Hall of Fame voter in 1980, was named winner of the 2008 J.G. Taylor Spink Award for sportswriters, voted in by the Baseball Writers Association of America, and will be enshrined in the Baseball hall of Fame on July 27. Whiteside died last June from Parkinson’s disease. Also, online voting at the Hall of Fame website put ESPN’s Joe Morgan among the finalists for the Ford Frick Award, which acknowledges lifetime achievement in broadcasting.

A predictable response from those who operate the blog FireJoeMorgan.com: "Joe Morgan, baseball player = one of the very very best second basemen of all time. Athletic, gifted, great eye, great hitter, great fielder, just absolutely all-around magnificent. "Joe Morgan, announcer = whatever the opposite of the "Hall of Fame" is." Wasn't it Morgan who was confused during an ESPN "Sunday Night" broadcast about when he broke into baseball and got a key hit against the Philadelphia Phillies during the 1964 season that helped in their collapse? And then had to clarify it the next week?

The winner will be announced Feb. 19. Morgan could be the first to be enshrined in the Hall as both a player and broadcaster. Dizzy Dean, put in as a player in 1953, could also have that distinction as he is one of the 10 selected for the 2008 ballot by the museum search committee.

==With little warning, the NBA is supposed to have all its coaches submit to wearing microphones and do in-game interviews, plus allow cameras in the lockerroom on any Thursday game TNT covers and on ESPN's Friday night packages, according to a story in Wednesday's USA Today.
Thursday, the Associated Press reported that Dallas coach Avery Johnson and Denver's George Karl, who were the first to clip on the mikes as part of TNT's coverage, made it clear they’re only doing it because they have to. Dallas’ Jerry Stackhouse and Denver’s Eduardo Najera also wore microphones as well.
Dallas Mavericks maverick owner Mark Cuban was on board.
“I love it, as a marketer and as a fan,” Cuban told the AP. “I think anything that gives more real information means we put up with less ridiculous comments from commentators. That’s always a big plus."


==HBO replays all four half-hour compelling episodes of “Mayweather/Hatton 24/7” tonight (8-to-10 p.m.) and Saturday (9-to-11 a.m.) leading into the network produced pay-per-view ($54.95) coverage of the Floyd Mayweather-Ricky Hatton welterweight title bout. HBO.com will also carry live videostreaming today of the weigh-in at 2:30 p.m. from Las Vegas. Jim Lampley, Larry Merchant, Emanuel Steward and Harold Lederman are on the call Saturday starting at 6 p.m.

==Finally, ESPN "Monday Night Football" sideline reporter Michele Tafoya failed to get the word "caper" or "capering" into the recent New England-Baltimore telecast, meaning she's 0-for-2 in the post-John Ireland era of the 'name game" she plays now alone with 710-AM's Steve Mason on his weekday afternoon show. The week before, Mason asked her to get the word "Stillers" into that Pittsburgh-Miami sloggy contest at Heinz Field -- Steve says that's what the citizens of upper Pennsylvania call their Steelers. Tafoya failed.
"Mason needs to come up with more creative words. .. like 'truculent' or 'tarradiddle,' Tafoya emailed. Reminded that she has only been successful three times (including twice in one game) in working the "phrase that pays" into the broadcast, which results in Mason making a $100 donation to the Humane Society, Tafoya responded: "Watch me go on a December tear." Just three "MNF" telecasts left. Tear away.

==And the final video clip:

Did the ESPN2 cameras catch Kansas State's Bill Walker peeing in a towel during a game against Oregon in the final seconds of a tie game last Thursday? He's down in the left-hand corner of the screen near the bench.

This second video from the KState student section, reverse angle, seems to make it apparent everyone in the building knew what he was doing...