By David Scott
Boston Sports Media Watch

***UPDATE: 11:45 a.m., FRIDAY, Dec. 15 - The Red Sox have announced a 2:00 p.m. Conference Call to announce the team’s new radio broadcast team. It is expected that ESPN’s Dave O’Brien will be introduced at that time, as the partner for Joe Castiglione.

Scott’s Shots will live-blog the call, which will feature Entercom’s Jason Wolfe and Sox COO, Mike Dee.***

• There is still no official word on whether ESPN’s Dave O’Brien will be joining Joe Castiglione in the Red Sox radio booth for 2007.

The Sox’ Executive Vice President/Public Affairs Dr. Charles Steinberg checked in with Shots at 1:19 a.m. on Friday morning to report “no news tonight” on the radio team. A midday (Thursday) email to O’Brien went unreturned.

O’Brien’s agent, Maury Gostfrand, was contacted by phone by Shots on Thursday afternoon but had a firm “No comment” on the O’Brien rumblings. Gostfrand, who recently left RLR Associates to start his own New York-based company, Vision Sports Group, LLC, maintains an impressive client list beyond the rising O’Brien. Gostfrand also represents HBO’s Cris Carter, TNT’s Kenny Smith, ESPN’s John Kruk, FOX’s Jay Glazer and ESPN’s emerging Hubert Davis, among others.

While O’Brien has a multi-year deal with ESPN, that deal would need to have specific language prohibiting outside work to preclude O’Brien from joining a major league club. Other ESPN talent with agreements that have allowed outside opportunities in the past have included Jon Miller and Gary Thorne (who was also thought to be on the Sox short list to replace the quietly dropped Jerry Trupiano).

Two years ago, when O’Brien was in the running for a Cubs broadcasting job, it was reported that ESPN did not allow him out of his network duties. However, with O’Brien’s recent stature increase (the World Cup) and his versatility (he’s done college hoops for the network), the thinking is that ESPN is more likely to share their rising star – especially for a job that involves the talent’s hometown team.

• Ah ha! Now we’re understanding why Tom Terrific was such a glum chum on Wednesday. US Magazine had the Exclusive!.

• The thorn in Auburn’s side – none other than the Ware (Mass.) Warrior – Pete Thamel cinched up all sorts of writing awards with this week’s follow-up to the Auburn Grade Scandal.

Thamel had just about the best investigative year (non-Barry Bonds division) in the country, that we know of.

• A bit more on the tragic Jeff Allison saga.

• We have it on it good authority that the Boston Globe actually has a relatively new arm called “Research & Development.” Assuming it started within the last year, that means the Globe was only a full decade behind on the concept.

. . . The Globe puts some closure to Dice-K Week with a haughty editorial, the likes of which only they can provide.

• Why no pink? WE DEMAND PINK.

A very nice week for Michael Silverman was capped off with the details of Dice-K’s no-trade clause. he and Jeff Horrigan, once again, did yeoman’s work. And let’s face it, Nick Cafardo and Gordon Edes got after it as well (you always need to consider the NESN work that the Globies are responsible for.)

. . .
• Our favorite line of the week from the acerbic Horrigan came in this Tuesday night (9:38 p.m.) posting when he wrote: “Hey, all of you interested Sox fans (and 10 p.m. TV sports guys), it doesn’t appear that things are going well out in Southern California regarding Matsuzaka. . .”

Yes, Who’s Better Than Butchy Stearns. He’s calling you out.

• Dapper Donny Marshall was the third man in for Saturday night’s FSNNE Celtics at New Jersey contest and the ex-UConn Husky, ex-NBAer (and current in-studio analyst with Gary Tanguay) was sparkling in his courtside debut for the network. (Marshall has previously done color commentary for ESPN on college hoops and in the Hartford area – that foundation was clearly to his benefit.)

Marshall – in a GQ-friendly blue shirt with white cuffs and collar – joked late in the game that he had spent all his money shopping in NYC and thus wouldn’t be joining the Mike Gorman and Tommy Heinsohn for Monday’s game at MSG.

Marshall, will however, be doing at least four more games courtside for FSNNE, according to spokesperson Skip Perham.

Too early (and not enough Celtics ties) to be The Next Tommy, but Marshall is building a very nice resume reel.

• A moment of silence please, for FHM-U.S.

You’ll have to indulge us a bit here. As some of you may know, Shots did some freelance time with the Laddie Mag (even witnessing its incredible launch which coincided with the sad, slow, homicidal act committed on SPORT magazine). The title’s long-time editor, Scott Gramling, is one of the most in-tune, down-to-earth and truly creative people I have ever met in the industry. (He’s also a college hoops fan of the highest order, UConn, in particular.)

And, to be sure, I had some very enjoyable times on the expense account of the Emap corporation.

All that said, I want to make the following statement loud and I want to make it clear:

SCREW YOU, YOU POMPOUS BRITISH BASTARDS.

Emap came into America in the late 90s and less than a decade later they are running back to the Mother Land with curled tails between their legs. And to me, that’s a just dessert for a company that came in, completely mis-read the market and entirely ruined – and then shuttered – SPORT, one of the nation’s oldest and most ingrained sports titles.

Instead of taking the redeeming elements of SPORT (which were just then beginning to emerge despite Shots’ presence) and COMBINING it with the main themes of FHM (tits, ass, beer), the Emap braintrust figured they could continually repackage the same thing, month after month and keep a readership interested. The very month Emap pulled the plug, we (SPORT) had just completed an LA photo shoot with Terrell Davis and Cindy Margolis (at they time, they were bordering on A-list status). I still have the dummy cover that came out of that shoot. It was going to launch the FHM-ized SPORT and it was going to be something the Brits weren’t willing to invest in.

The Davis/Margolis issue never printed and FHM literally took over the office space on the floor SPORT shared with them in a Union Square office building. And now, six years later, instead of having built an alternative model to ESPN the Magazine (which SPORT/FHM could have been), the Emap folks are quitting and going home.

Tally-ho, you fish-and-chip phonies.

. . . Whew. That felt nice.

And we can’t get out of this note without a listing of my three, personal favorite FHM assignments:

1. Danica Patrick, April 2003 – before she exploded. She was such a hard ass, you couldn’t help but love her. And, at that time, she was still a bit unpolished – and very secretively sexy. The outfits she wore for the shoot were unbelievable and I’d be lying if I said I didn’t try to catch a glimpse behind the makeshift dressing room curtain at the studio.

2. Simeon Rice, 2003 – an interview and photo shoot in LA, that included a night at the FHM 100 Sexiest Party at some studio lot. There was a Madonna impersonator with more body guards than the real Madonna and a post-party trip to some trippy LA club with Tom Green. I’m pretty sure he banged Vida, THE Ass that night. I’m very sure I didn’t. Shots also wound up singing bad Billy Joel in Gramlings suite at 3 a.m.

Interview highlights with Rice included:

(On whether having a Super Bowl ring helped with attracting women):
“If you’re counting on a Super Bowl to get you some pussy, then you’re a sad-ass cat.”

(On what he thinks about having a woman on his team):
“Is she hot? Because if she was, then she’d be getting herself pregnant by halftime.”

(On who gives him inspiration):
”Walter Payton and Michael Jordan. And Bruce Lee-he was an ass-kicking son of a bitch and his philosophy was the best thing going. I see myself as a combination of the three.”

And when asked if his “boys” have a home in his trousers while he’s on the field of battle, he responds:

I’m definitely not freeballing. My nuts are precious. The jewels are kept in the safe and I will not relinquish the information to that safe.

3. Jeremy Shockey, September 2003 – While I didn’t get truly wild in NYC with Shockey, the night did finish up at SCORES and it included large portions of meat at dinner with Shockey’s girl posse. Yes, Mo Vaughn was (no joke) at the club that night. Shockey kept it mellow and so did we, for the most part.

• Rest the soul of that precious magazine and its editorial staff. And revel in the failure of some blimey Brits who killed SPORT magazine without a guilty bone.

Never forgive, never forget.

. . . (The U.S. web site, it should be noted, will stay in operation, according to reports.)

• Another newspaper poach from the good folks at Yahoo!. You had to know Dave Morgan would be coming back for some of his peeps. Tim Brown and Jeff Passan make a pretty formidable one-two punch for the Yahoo! baseball line-up.

• It looks like ESPN Ombudsman George Solomon will be staying on a while at ESPN, as he said he would be willing to do. ESPN spokesman, Mike Soltys said in an email to Shots this week that “We plan to keep the position and the search is on for (a succesor to Solomon). (We) likely won’t have replacement in time, so (we) are discussing with George staying on, in a month-by-month basis, as we look.”

Shots, it should be known, is applying for the job in earnest.

• Good to hear the blunt yet subtle, Bob Valvano handling color duties on the WHAS11 feed of UMass’s big win over Louisville on Wednesday night at NESN. But Bobby Vee - our former auxiliary press seating neighbor for Final Four games - what the heck was up with the sideline reporter in the baseball cap (during the end-of-first-half on-court interview)? Boy did that look amateurish. It would never fly in this market, that’s for sure. Not indoors, anyway.

Great touch by Bobby Vee, however, constantly reminding his broadcast partner, Ari Wolfe, that the good folks who had NESN were also tuning into the L’Ville broadcast.

“I’m not sure what’s on after the game for our NESN viewers,” Valvano said late in the game.

“I’ll guess it’s Red Sox-related,” said Wolfe, indeed predicting the post-game “Hot Stove.”

. . . Overall, it was a slow week for College Hoops at the Mother Ship and The Deuce, but that’s changing this weekend, as the ESPN PR peeps point out:

Five of the top eight ranked men’s college basketball teams and coverage of three of the remaining eight undefeated programs will tip off the beginning of Holiday Hoops. . .28 games (from) December 16-30

Undefeated #2 Pittsburgh will visit one-loss #7 Wisconsin Saturday at noon on ESPN
ESPN2 will televise undefeated #17 Oklahoma State at Tennessee Monday at 7 p.m.
Tuesday, ESPN will televise Kent State at #6 Duke at 7 p.m.
Wednesday, ESPNU will televise Pepperdine at unbeaten #8 Connecticut at 7 p.m.

The Pepperdine-UConn game is also a live-blog for Shots over at “Hang Time” at CSTV.com. The next night we’ll have Holy Cross-George Mason. (And speaking of the George Mason game, we’re told to expect a rather in-depth look at the Patriots of GM from Basketball Bob Ryan, who has been working the Jim Larranaga story for a couple of weeks now. We’re very much looking forward to that.

• NESN has knocked off the Ipod Shuffle commercial with its own twist to advertise its outerwear.

• The network also went way overboard with the Matsuzaka Marathon, but that’s exactly what they should have been doing. And they even did a nice job of getting the video on the website.

• Maybe I missed it somewhere, but can anyone tell me what the BC recruits think of this coaching change? Isn’t that a slam dunk, have-to-have story for the day (or two days) after Tom O’Brien bolts The Heights? (That link contains a quote from O’Brien’s daughter who works at ESPN and thinks her dad wants media attention. Yeah, right. Because he did so much with the attention he got here. Puh-leeeeeeze.)

• Wright Thompson strikes again. Just fantastic stuff from the Ace of the ESPN.com staff.

• Luke Bonner’s Blog, now that UMass has a quality win, should be even better than its debut entries.

• Special Holiday Edition of Shots next week, you won’t want to miss it!

• Don’t forget the Umies on Friday Night, 8 p.m., on ESPN2 from Finley Stadium / Davenport Field Chattanooga, TN USA. The crew working the game is almost identical to last week’s semifinal game for UMass (minus Erin Andrews): Dave Pasch (play-by-play), Rod Gilmore (analyst), Trevor Matich (analyst) and Dave Ryan (sideline reporter).

. . . Daily Hampshire Gazette Speed Racer Matt Vautour has been doing some nice road blogging on the Minuteman Trail.

. . . Remember - You Were. You Are. UMass.

David Scott writes from a seaside shanty on the shores of Hull, Mass. And can be reached at shotsATbostonsportsmedDOTcom