I was addicted to TV Guide when I was younger. My mother was charged with buying two copies at Wegmans every week – one for Grandpa, who kept it tucked in the cushions of his electric recliner or next to his pen collection (he collected pens from his route as a bread delivery man), and one for Great-Grandma (his mother, she of the fun stories. Her last name was Hooker. She knocks the flowers off her grave. She lived to be 94 and was the first person to tell me to my face that I sucked. She would take my mother’s hand, hit her on the cheek with it, and tell her to “stop hitting yourself, Kelly!” She was that kind of woman.)

On the car ride between Wegmans and the two TV Guide drop-offs, I would devour the magazine. First, I had to see what would happen on next week’s Full House. After getting that all-important information (“Mom, DJ is going on a date with a guy Danny doesn’t like, and Stephanie wants to get her ears pierced!”), I would flip to the front and read every morsel on every non-listing page that I could. This single-handily is why I was a speed-reader in school. I had 10 minutes to read the entirety of early 1990s TV Guide, which was much more substantial than today’s version.

Zoom to today. TV Guide is obsolete, given that I have the Digital Cable Program Guide. I just press menu, listings, and the arrow keys and BAM! – I have automatic, fully updated TV Guide, just minus the profiles of Victoria Principal, Patrick Duffy and Scott Baio. If Grandpa and Great-Grandma were still alive, they would fully and functionally freak the heck out.

But the continuously updated and information overload nature of the Digital Cable Program Guide can lead to pretty funny gaffs. My fiance and I have caught two in the past four days. Thus, I present to you, our first installment of…Digital Cable Program Guide Fail, or Comcast Info Guide Fail, or whatever you choose to call it.

Example #1: The listing for Saturday night’s Boston College versus Wisconsin National Championship game.

Not a screen bitter BU fans wanted to see. (Photo: me)

While Boston College did win this game on Saturday night, they did not win in 2009 over Miami in overtime. Boston University did. Remember that? It was glorious. April 11, 2009. (By the way, congrats to BC on winning another title on Saturday. Way to keep the National Championship on Comm Ave. The WCHA can cry all they want.)

Example #2: Did you know the United States added a new state? And it is home to a city named Denver too!

It's a new state. I wonder if it's near Colorado. (Photo: Me)

Do you have any fun Digital Cable Program Guide Fails? I’d love to feature them. Send them to sportsgirlkatATgmail.com (replace that AT with the @ sign). I can’t give you anything, but I can ensure that you’ll make me giggle.

So given all that has happened to me sports-wise in the past year, I have nearly too much fodder for a “What I’m Thankful” for post. I’ve whittled it down to some of the most amusing or important points – I apologize if I’ve left out anything or anyone.

Thank you, Rian Lindell (#9). (Photo: BuffaloBills.com)

- Like last year, I am thankful for Rian Lindell. He is the only consistent part of the Buffalo Bills. I still do not understand why more baby boys born in the Western New York area are not named Rian. He’s made 90% of his field goals this season, and is a perfect 100% on point after touchdowns. He’s trick play savvy, and may actually be a better quarterback than any other quarterback currently on the Bills roster (just kidding…I think.)

- I am thankful for the Penn Quarter Sports Tavern, located in Washington, DC. This tavern became our home base while in DC for the Frozen Four. The bartenders were accommodating, hysterical, and can handle large crowds of somewhat rowdy college hockey fans extremely well. When I was back in DC for some work travel in August, I went inside and the bartender – who is known to wear either a UNH hockey jersey or a Normar green Red Sox jersey when he tends bar – remembered me and got excited because another New Englander was at the bar. Penn Quarter, hands down, is my favorite sports bar of all time. Thank you for taking good care of us college hockey fans.

- Thank you to Curt Styres and the Rochester Amerks for making AHL hockey relevant again in my hometown of Rochester, NY. I attended an Amerks game at Christmas time last year, and while it was the one of the highest attendances of the year, it was anemic compared to the crowds of my youth.

This season, the Amerks have turned it around. After owner Styres contracted Ted Nolan to work for the franchise over the summer, forked over thousands of his own wealth for player salaries, and seemingly convinced Florida (their parent) that it was important to grow quality players in Rochester, the team has gone 15-2-1. 15 wins, including 11 consective wins. This is Amerks hockey, folks – they’re back, and the rest of the AHL needs to get used to it.

- I’m thankful that I can listen to WHTK, Rochester’s young sports radio station, online. It’s important that I perform my Boston-sports-blogger penance and listen to WEEI and The Sports Hub on a regular basis, but listening to anything more than the bare minimum of both stations leave one screaming at their radio dial and lamenting the downfall of society. To reaffirm my faith in human sports-fan kind, I’ll turn on WHTK online. It doesn’t always work, but when it does and I get the opportunity to listen to the John DiTullio Show, I am a happy camper. People talking about sports – all kinds of sport, all teams, all genders, with a understanding of sports history thrown in – in an intelligent, civilized, indoor-voice manner is wonderful.

- Thank you to the Food Network for keeping me company while I was recently dignosed with H1N1. Your channel was the only one I could watch in my fever induced dizziness. I am especially thankful for Sandra Lee, whose programming may be funnier than anything on Comedy Central. (I’m a lazy cook, don’t get me wrong, but Lee takes it to new levels of laziness.)

- Thank you to the 2008-09 Boston University men’s hockey team. Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you. Their season not only gave me awesome blog fodder, but convinced me that there is no better sport in this country than college hockey.

- Thank you to every blogger, Twitterer, writer, journalist and editor that I have worked with or who has promoted my work in my first full year of actively pursuing freelance sportswriting as a large hobby/second job. Thank you for giving me venues to share my writing. I may not be the world’s best writer, but regardless, I’ve been given so many opportunities to contribute.

- Thank you to the bloggers and journalists out there who I am not huge fans of. Just because I don’t like their work doesn’t mean I don’t respect it. Additionally, many of them have much larger audiences than I have, meaning they have to be doing something right.  As someone still working up the ladder, I can learn from every single one of them, even if I do not agree with them.

- Lastly, thank you to my fiance and my cat. They put up with me writing lacrosse stories until 2am after coming home from my full-time job at 8pm. I have no idea why they let me do what I do, but I am thankful they do so.

Just a quick note for those of you who were intrigued in my July interview with Rival Films’ Matt Fults on the Boston University-Boston College documentary, The Battle of Comm Ave. A pre-sale of the DVD begins today and ends on October 9. During this time, you can get the Director’s Cut DVD for half price, with free shipping. The DVD will ship November 1st.

The made-for-TV version – minus the Director’s Cut’s 32 minutes of extra footage – will air several times on NESN in November.

Even if you despise both BU and BC, you can never go wrong with supporting mainstream media coverage of college hockey, especially when the DVD is the price of one beer at an arena.

You were quite the topic of conversation on Tuesday, appearing literally out of nowhere with the sudden morning announcement of the demise of WBCN. With your August 13th arrival, Boston will be home to four sports radio stations – fitting really, given that Boston is the capital of obsessive sport fandom.

Before you go around stealing talent from the existing three stations (which you are already rumoured to be doing), let’s talk about one aspect of Boston Sports Radio that no one ever mentions:

Where are the women?

Yes, there is a woman, Jayme Parker, who does WEEI’s Sports Flashes on occasion. And WEEI.com recently hired a recent BU grad to host it’s morning video clip segment and do brief sound bites. Yes, many of the upper administrators calling the shots on WEEI and ESPN890, like Julie Kahn (Vice President of Entercom Radio New England) and Jessamy Tang (General Manager of 890ESPN), are some strong-willed and successful females. But besides that, Boston sports radio is all male dominated.

In 2009, when one of the most consistent and coveted football analysts/hosts of the past decade is female (Suzy Kolber), and when the Red Sox beat writer for the largest newspaper in Boston is female (the Boston Globe’s Amalie Benjamin), and when our regional sports television network host is female (NESN’s Kathryn Tappen), why are females largely absent from manning the microphones in Boston’s sports radio scene?

Since I was twelve and would watch Fox NFL Sunday in amazement that a woman like Kolber was reporting on football, sports media has made significant strides in including intelligent and insightful women in television sports media and print work. It almost seems, however, that sports media is still reluctant to put women in a position where they can be heard, and not seen – the radio. It seems as if that unless you can visualize the female, have they Erin Andrews-like looks or otherwise, they do not have a place in sports media. Think about it – Boston.com pimps out photos of Benjamin throughout their sports section. Even as a print journalist, they have felt the need to create a visual presence for her more so than the men on their sports desk. Kolber has had to become more feminine looking as the years go by – her hair got longer, she started wearing heavier makeup when she switched to ESPN. Are we still at a point where women in sports media still have to be eye candy, and thus, can’t just appear as a voice through a radio?

This is Boston, Massachusetts, home to more female sports fans than probably any other city in the United States. A large majority of those female fans actually have an in-depth knowledge of their favorite teams, players and sports. Thus, excluding female voices on sports radio is ignoring a giant demographic, and is not reflective of the area in which we live. Instead of hiring a female or ten to add to insightful and legitimate sports commentary, WEEI and 890ESPN rely on idiotic, light-weight old-school radio guys to fill their programming hours. These are the men who debate politics instead of pitching rotations during their morning shows, who will publicly discount some sports over others, and admittedly know very little about some of the sports in which they are hired to report on. At least a woman’s voice could lend something new to these broadcast, and might even keep the broadcasts more on-topic than the meandering nonsense that fills some of the broadcast hours.

Thus, Sports Hub, I expect you to consider some female voices when you begin hiring on-air talent. You want to win the quickly developing “sports radio wars” over WEEI? Hire a woman. WEEI and 890 ESPN, if you want to make a giant change to win over a new demographic and have a chance against the Sports Hub’s FM signal? Hire a woman. Because if Boston can entrust a woman with their Red Sox beat work, and entrust a woman with hosting Bruins and Red Sox post-game analysis, then you can certainly trust a woman to host a sports radio program. You have no excuse.

Sincerely,

Sports Girl Kat

P.S. If you need a woman to fill some of your late night or weekend programming, I might know a certain blogger who might be interested and would come cheap…

I bounded up the three flights of stairs to my office, jumped through the door, smiled to the student who was working the main desk, skipped into my office, and fired up the trusty laptop. I fired off a few emails, and then opened up Google Reader to catch up on the morning’s recaps of the event that had made me full of so much bounce – BU’s blood-pressure-raising win against Harvard in the Beanpot semifinal the night before.

And then, there it was, in the Terrier Hockey Fan Blog. Yet another BU Beanpot goal had made the Sportscenter Top 10. In 2006, it was Chris Higgins’ crazy “How’d He Do That?!” slide into the boards goal.  Monday, it was his classmate from down Route 1 North, Jason Lawrence’s game-winning goal that made the Top 10.

It’s a rarity that college hockey makes Sportscenter.  Sportscenter just recently rediscovered the sport of hockey in general, so for them to pay attention to anything but bare bones NHL coverage could be asking a little much.

And of course, the one time that Sportscenter shows BU Hockey, and shows one of my favorite players no less, I do not yet have cable set up in my new apartment.

Of course, I immediately go to ESPN.com. I search the recently redone site, looking through the glossy clutter for any link to the Top 10. All I see is coverage of Kobe Bryant’s 61 point performance at Madison Square Garden. I click the “Videos” tab. Nothing. I click the “Sportscenter” tab. Nothing. I use the search function. Nothing. I go to the NHL page, and the College Sports page, and still nothing.

I give up for the time being.  I go back to doing my real work.  At lunchtime, I scour the ESPN site again, repeating my steps from the morning and adding even more.  A waste of time – no Sportscenter Top 10 online.

Was I just missing it?  Is it on the site, but just not easy to find? The new ESPN site is definitely cluttered, and some of its organization leaves much to be desired.  Is it available to Insiders only?

Eh, I’m okay with not being able to find it – I mean, I was at the game, I didn’t need to see it on TV – but it leads me to a bigger issue.  If ESPN wants to make a truly multimedia experience, one where their “SportsNation” can comment, blog and interact with their content, why not make a well-known part of their flagship program available on their website?  I’m not saying make all of Sportscenter available online – I understand that as a cable network, that would be counter-intuitive to their bottom line.  But if ESPN is going to place selected shared content online, why not include the Top 10?

Thoughts? Am I just missing it and looking like a complete idiot?

“Kat thinks the only things on TV worth watching are on her digital sports tier. Who needs CNN and MTV when you can have Fox College Sports Central and the like?”

That may be the truest Facebook status message in the history of status messages.

I adore my digital sports package like my cat adores shiny objects. I took the plunge a year ago and subscribed to a Comcast digital sports tier. I don’t have Netflix, I don’t go to movies, I rarely go out to bars, and one of my hobbies involves rolling every penny I ever find, so I felt I could handle the expense within my student-loan-repayment-consumed budget.

The digital sports tier I am a proud subscriber of is the Comcast “Sports Entertainment Pack.”  Here are the channels:

The Speed Channel
Outdoor Channel
Fox Soccer Network
NBA TV
NHL Network
MLB Network
TV Games
CBS College Sports (the late CSTV)
Fox College Sports (FCS) Atlantic
Fox College Sports (FCS)  Central
Fox College Sports (FCS) Pacific
NFL Network
Tennis Channel

Steve Young likes TV, just like me! (gratutous Steve Young mention of the post)

Out of these channels, I watch NHL Network and NFL Network the most, followed by the FCS channels and CBS College Sports. The FCS channels are great in the variety of sports they cover -last evening, I fell asleep watching Division II women’s basketball from Wisconsin.  Sure, the camera work was out of the Blair Witch Project, but heck – the fact that it was an option for me to watch? That was kind of cool.

The “Sports Entertainment Pack” is severely lacking when compared to other sports channel packages offered by the likes of Direct TV and Dish Network. Call me a geek, but I would love the regional Comcast Sports Networks and/or Fox Sports Networks.  I also would like MSG and Time Warner Sports so that I can keep up with the sports of Western New York. I know some other cable/satellite companies offer these channels – just not Comcast. Maybe the market isn’t there for them up here in Boston.

Besides my “Sports Entertainment Pack,” I have the normal sports channels interspersed throughout my cable: ESPN, ESPN2, ESPN News, ESPN Classic, Comcast Sports Network (CSN), NESN, and Versus.  I don’t get to watch a ton of television because of the long hours I tend to keep at work, but when I do, 97.5% of the time it is one of the sports channels I have. The other 2.5% consists of my weekly viewing of “The Office,” my weekly viewing of a show on E! that I will not mention, and the morning news.  What makes up that 2.5% of my viewing could easily be watched online. I really don’t need the rest of the 200 channels I have.

Given all of that, here is my proposal to Comcast – let me have “Cable A La Carte.” I get to select 20-30 channels I actually want. No MTV, no Lifetime, no Military Channel. I don’t watch them, thus I don’t need them. Let me have all the sports channels I want, and none of the WE, Oxygen, Bravo, Fuse channels I don’t. None of this Current TV – what the heck is that anyway?  No more QVC, HSN or ShopNBC – I don’t need any Marie Osmond dolls.  Just give me my sports and my local channels. That’s all I need.

In today’s advanced technological age – one in which I can text or Twitter a Comcast Representative to fix a problem or subscribe to my “Sports Entertainment Pack” – why can’t I have a la carte cable?

So, my dear readers, tell me: If  “a la carte cable” was possible, what 15, 20, or 30 channels (including local channels) would you pick? They don’t have to be all sports – I’m just interested in what others would choose.

You have been the object of my squee since I was old enough to have a celebrity mega crush. Even though I am now older, engaged, and have moved on to other objects of squee like Gabe Kapler and Jason Bay, you will always be my number one.

I try to catch your commentary on Monday Night Football every Monday. (I must say, Emmitt Smith makes you sound even more eloquent than you already are.) Although I had to work late on Monday, I was able to catch your post-game analysis after the Packers-Saints game. While watching, I had one overwhelming question:

What happened to your hair?

Did you dye it? It looked much lighter. Is your hair negatively reacting to the New Orleans weather? If so, I can point you in the direction of some excellent anti-frizz products. (Then again, so could your ex-model wife.) Are you so busy with your multiple children that you didn’t have time to comb it? If so, that is completely excusable – you have like five now, and not everyone can look as good as Kate Gossalin when running after their multiple young children.

I feel bad for you, and I feel even worse for pointing out in a public forum. However, I just want you to know that I’ll still be a fan, through good hair and bad, through ESPN moving you off Sunday NFL Countdown because they no longer wanted commentators with an IQ higher than 80 and your Samsung HD television advertisements where you are inexplicably wearing shabby flip-flops.

Best wishes,

Sports Girl Kat

Your #10 fan since 1992

*************

I am off to see the Boston University Terriers take on the Crusaders of the College of the Holy Cross. The Terriers have played very well against non-conference opponents this season – they are undefeated against them – but we know what we’re pretending didn’t happen last weekend. Let’s hope this evening ends well.

A big blow to Boston University and University of Vermont hockey fans – according to David Scott, of Scott’s Shots (one of my favorite sports blogs, by the way – when he speaks, I listen),
CN8 will be shuttering it’s New England operations. This includes closing the studios right across from the College of Fine Arts building on the BU campus.

Both BU and UVM had contracts with CN8 for broadcast rights to several men’s hockey games. CN8 was to televise six remaining men’s hockey games -

Dec. 5 vs. Boston College (CN8)
Jan. 3 at Denver Cup (CN8)
Jan. 17 vs. Boston College (CN8)
Jan. 24 at New Hampshire (CN8)
Feb. 21 at Northeastern (CN8)
Feb. 28 vs. Massachusetts (CN8)

According to Scott, CN8′s operations will cease in “early Janaury 2009,” leaving five of those six games without a TV home. Scott does say, however, that Comcast Sports Net may pick up the sports programming. However, their primary responsibility is to the Celtics, so I worry that college hockey might get lost in the shuffle.

If CSN decided to pick and choose what games they select, an educated guess would be that January 17 game against BC will be of most interest, if the early part of the season is any indication. One would also hope that CSN would pick up the Denver Cup game on January 3rd, since many of us Terrier fans can’t afford the $400 plane fare right after the holiday season (but trust you me, I tried!)

It remains to be seen what BU or UVM will do in the wake of this announcement. Big kudos to Scott for getting this news.

UPDATE: According to the comment below, Comcast Sports Net will pick up several games on CN8′s college hockey schedule.  Thanks to Tim from Comcast Sports Net for responding right away, and for Comcast for taking care of us college hockey fans.

Here’s something I’ve been thinking about a lot lately: With any job, you’re going to have your ups and downs. At some point, you have to decide whether the downs outweigh the ups to the point that it’s not worth it for you to have that job anymore. You could call it a satisfaction/misery ratio. If that ratio swings past 20/80, it’s time to go.

And then this paragraph just totally turned on my “he’s trying to tell us something” alarm:

Speaking of Jay, I joked in last week’s NFL preview that “Any time ‘Our QB should be better this year because he’s finally treating his Type 1 diabetes’ is your best reason for making the playoffs, I can’t pick you to finish higher than 7-9.” That led to a few readers who either have diabetes or know someone with diabetes e-mailing to say they were disappointed that I made fun of diabetes just for a laugh, which immediately got me excited — since that clearly wasn’t the case — and secretly hoping the whole thing would snowball and ESPN would ask me to apologize, creating my dream scenario of me standing up for a harmless joke and the depressed state of comedy in general, eventually getting suspended because the American Diabetes Association was protesting me in Bristol, then having our ombudsman write a post about me to cap things off. That didn’t happen.

Simmons’ growing dissatisfaction with his position at ESPN is well documented throughout sports media blog circles. However, to come out and say that in a column, and let your editor run with it, makes me beleive that he is on his way out.

Do I blame him? No. Bill Simmons needed ESPN to reach a better place in his career, but he has a fan base that could easily transfer to his own site. He is his own brand. He was “Boston Sports Guy,” then became “ESPN’s The Sports Guy,” and, with the right web developers and savvy new media PR staff, could be just the plain “Boston Sports Guy” again. He could write as long as he wanted, as much as he wanted, whenever he wanted. He wouldn’t have to mince his words about ESPN personalities. Bill Simmons, if you are really thinking of the above, go assemble yourself a crack staff and get ready to strike out on your own.

But until then, don’t post loaded thoughts like the quotes above in your column for your current employer. Not a good idea, Bill Simmons. Up there with posting photos of you drinking with scantily clad underage girls on Facebook or MySpace (which he hasn’t done, but college students do all the time), blasting your current employer is not advisable if you want a successful career. We tell students that all the time.