Larry Brown Sports

Oregon beat Wisconsin 45-38 Monday to win its first Rose Bowl since 1917. They put on an offensive show, scoring six touchdowns while netting 621 total yards. Ducks fans had to have enjoyed watching the game, but unfortunately some Oregon residents missed at least a large part of the game because of a power outage.

KOIN-TV in Oregon reports that a car crashed into a power pole and knocked out electricity to nearly 4,000 people in Beaverton and Hillsboro Monday.

The power reportedly went out before kickoff and was out as of 5:00pm PT, which was relatively late in the game.

Talk about horrible timing. If I were living in that area, I probably would have driven to a friend’s place to watch. That just sucks. The only thing worse was when a power outage prevented thousands of fans from watching the end of the Giants-Patriots Super Bowl, only this was probably worse for Oregon fans.

The tournament hasn’t even started yet but we’re already having complaints from fans about getting their game switched out for another one on CBS. Only this one appears to be due to a legitimate technical error rather than the judgment of an individual.

During Saturday’s border war on the hardwood between Missouri and Kansas, fans in Kansas City, Columbus, and St. Louis had their game on CBS switched to the Michigan-Michigan State contest as I learned from KC radio host Nick Wright. Other fans across the country lost the Kansas-Missouri feed, but were apparently intentionally switched to the Arizona-Oregon game instead.

KU Sports says “KCTV5 apologized to viewers and said that CBS told them the problem related to sun spots causing problems with the satellite feed from the national network.” They’re saying the problem won’t happen again which is good, because I’ve never heard of such an issue.

Kansas may have been ahead by a dozen points with three minutes left in the game, but if there’s anything I know about the Jayhawks it’s that you don’t screw with their fans when it comes to basketball. You mess that up, you get fury and CBS learned that the hard way.

Many sports fans lost out on Sunday when Cablevision subscribers were unable to see local games because of a dispute between the cable company and FOX News Corp. Fans in the New York-area who are Cablevision subscribers missed out on seeing the Giants-Lions game which was televised by the FOX network. Likewise, Cablevision subscribers in Philadelphia missed the Phillies-Giants NLCS game which was also on the FOX network later in the evening.

As a DirecTV customer, and man, I am sick of paying well over triple figures each month, luckily I wouldn’t have to worry about such an issue. Still, it’s awful that some fans who are paying for cable are caught in between this negotiation and are missing out on big games for their favorite teams.

At the heart of the dispute is FOX wanting more money from Cablevision per subscriber. The TV networks used to make most of their money selling advertisements, but with the economic downturn their business model is changing. They’re now trying to make more money through cable subscribers. Without a deal in place between the sides, News Corp has pulled its stations from Cablevision. Unfortunately, like usual, the fans paying their cable bills are the ones losing out. Let’s hope they agree to an amicable deal that doesn’t result in higher fees for subscribers.

In what hopefully won’t set off some sort of new FCC regulation a la Janet Jackson, some Super Bowl viewers in Tucson received what was an unwelcome surprise. With under three minutes left in the game following the Larry Fitzgerald touchdown that gave the Cardinals the lead, in the most suspenseful moment of the game of one of the best Super Bowls ever, several viewers had their feed interrupted by a porn scene:

Officials at Comcast said about 30 seconds from Club Jenna, an adult cable television channel, were shown on the local Super Bowl telecast. The company was still working Sunday night to figure out how it happened.
…
Callers said that the clip showed a woman unzipping a man’s pants, followed by a graphic act between the two.

“I just figured it was another commercial until I looked up,” said Cora King of Marana. “Then he did his little dance with everything hanging out.”

At unfortunate times like these, it’s only fair that someone must ask whether or not the man was doing the “Dirty Bird” dance. Luckily for the households with HD programming, they were unaffected. Honestly, how can anyone think this was anything other than a prank? This has to be right up there with some of the best ever. I’m guessing it was a Spring pledge class at Arizona State or something. Who else would come up with something like that? Sadly, this isn’t the first time Super Bowl viewers had the game ruined by transmission problems.

The thought didn’t really occur to me since I was in a studio and couldn’t sneeze without catching the game on one of like fifty TV sets. But at one point during the first half, a Patriots fan called into the radio to tell us that the power was out in her area of Massachusetts and that she was relying on us for updates. It was at that point that I realized my place in this world. Just kidding (sorta). So when I got home from work I decided to see if I could find this story on the net somewhere. I couldn’t. Instead, I found out about like five other different outages during the Super Bowl. Sucks to have been these audiences:

+ Thousands in Brentwood NorCal lost power and missed the ending!
+ 17,000 people in Bloomington lost power
+ 1,045 people in Oahu lost power during the second half

You were probably one of the 80 million or so who got to watch the game uninhibited (save the jerkoff fan who kept yelling by your ear). But just remember how lucky you were not to have problems with your power. Missing the ending? Now that would have sucked.