Posts tagged BonnieBernstein at FanHouse

ESPN's Bonnie Bernstein was a guest on Mike and Mike in the Morning Wednesday, and when the subject turned to a high school basketball player who is considering playing professionally in Europe instead of going to college, Bernstein made an extremely odd comparison between American high school basketball players and Palestinian suicide bombers.

I've just reviewed the show in question and transcribed the full text of Bernstein's comments below.

It's sort of like, you know, and this isn't -- I'm prefacing this by saying this is in no way an analogy to sports because I know we live in a hypersensitive society -- but I remember a while ago I was reading an article in the New York Times about Palestinian suicide bombers and I just remember being struck by the notion that from the point of birth, people in Palestine are taught to think that dying in the name of God is a good thing.

They grow up wanting to be suicide bombers. So bringing it back to sports -- and again, I'm not making the comparison or the analogy -- if a young talented basketball player is being told at an early age that they are destined, it is a good thing to focus on basketball and not worry about what's going on in the classroom, why are any kids going to be worried about what's going on in the classroom?

Bernstein seemed to know that what she was saying would offend people, and sure enough, it did.

(Warning: the video below contains foul language)

The above video was from the last game that Roy Williams coached at Kansas. It was after the 2003 NCAA Tournament championship game where his Jayhawks lost to Syracuse. After the game, CBS's Bonnie Bernstein asked the question that was all around Ol' Roy all week long: are you going to Carolina?

It is five years ago today that Matt Doherty "resigned" from the head coaching position at North Carolina. From there, rumors ran wild in New Orleans (site of that year's Final Four) that Roy Williams was the one and only guy that UNC wanted.

Oh, if you don't know, Roy Williams did take the Carolina job ... and will be taking his Tar Heels to San Antonio to play Kansas in the Final Four on Saturday.

Yesterday we learned that ESPN will have a Monday Night Football B-team consisting of Mike Greenberg, Mike Golic, Mike Ditka and Bonnie Bernstein on the first Monday of the NFL season.

That announcement has prompted a lot of discussion, both pro and con. But the most interesting response I've seen came from a comment at Football Outsiders asking this:

Honest question: Can we get ESPN to put Ditka on the sideline and Bernstein in the booth? Wouldn't that ultimately be cooler and more informative?

I don't know how Bernstein would do in the booth, but I couldn't agree more about Ditka on the sideline. In fact, now that I think about it, if we're going to have sideline reporters at all (and I'm not sure that we should), why aren't they always ex-coaches?

Who can provide better insight from the sideline level than someone who patrolled the sidelines as an NFL head coach? Who will know what to ask the coaches at halftime better than someone who was once in their shoes? Who would have a better chance of actually getting a coach to say something insightful than a former colleague in the coaching fraternity? This makes too much sense not to happen.

According to the Fanhouse's own Michael David Smith, CBS eliminated sideline reporters and nobody noticed. Smith's comment is actually very representative of what many people think: sideline reporters are useless and, like most useless objects, they should be thrown into the trash.

First, let me point out, that I am very partial to Bonnie Bernstein. Nothing, to me, is sexier than a woman who knows sports. Before I go Joe Namath on this blog, let me also add that she is a terrific sideline reporter. She is a true professional, she takes her job very seriously, and she asks all the right questions. In my opinion, it is sideline reporters like Bernstein and Michelle Tafoya that epitomize the way the sideline reporter job should be operated. But even the most seemingly useless sideline reporters are useful in some capacity.

The CBS broadcast dropped the ball big time in the Chiefs vs. Rams broadcast.
Because of CBS' hard-headed decision to eliminate sideline reporters, Chiefs' fans missed extremely valuable information on why four of their starters were hooked from the game with injuries, never to return. Shouldn't somebody at CBS notice when star linebacker Derrick Johnson leaves the game on crutches? Instead, we had to make that conclusion ourselves, asking ourselves why Keyaran Fox was playing snap after snap after snap. What about the status of the Chiefs' pro bowl guard, who was carted off the field? What about Greg Wesley, who left the game with a shoulder injury? What about potential Defensive Rookie of the Year candidate Tamba Hali, who left the game with a hip pointer injury. These are four marquee players that left the game and yet not a whisper from the broadcast crew. Not even a mouse squeak.