On Cowherd, Our Site, and the Ombudsman's Swift Response
By Jason McIntyre
Yo. So by now, you may have heard – ESPN radio host Colin Cowherd knocked us out of the blogosphere Thursday. In an unprovoked attack, the bombastic host screamed, ‘wouldn’t it be great if we could blow up a website?’ and then urged his legions of fans to visit our blog and destroy us. Mission accomplished. We were eviscerated for about 48 hours.
There appeared to be no rhyme or reason behind his malicious attack. This man doesn’t matter, thus we never talk about him. In our yearlong existence, the only time he drifted into our orbit was when he blatantly stole material from the M Zone, a popular blog about Michigan sports, and tried to pass it off as his own. Classy guy, indeed.
We would, however, like to thank Mr. Cowherd for his asinine antics. Just so he doesn’t think he’s Mr. Big Swingin’ Dick, here’s the backstory on our blog: all along, we were doing it on the cheap. We paid a measly sum to have our blog hosted in Romania of all places, where we shared server space with many other blogs. When Cowherd sent his listeners to our site, it crashed the server, which screwed more than just us. The kind Romanians then booted us off their server, and we spent Easter weekend shelling out big bucks so that if Howard Stern, Rush Limbaugh and Dan Patrick mentioned our blog simultaneously on air, we could withstand it. We’ve long needed that swift kick in the pants, so thanks, Colin. We’re back in the States!
Many thanks to the kick ass sports blog community. The support has been overwhelming, and it will not soon be forgotten. Lastly: we’re still not sure if this hit was ordered by ESPN, or this was Cowherd acting like a lone ranger, but either way, the voice of the little people will not be silenced. The media often bows down to big, bad, ESPN, but we will not. We’re going to continue to hold their feet to the fire when necessary. There’s plenty to love about the network, the .com and the magazine, but ESPN gets away with far too much bullying, and should be held accountable.
After the jump, a brief Q&A with ourselves (lame!) that will hopefully answer any outstanding questions:
Q: What’d you do to piss the guy off?
Nothing. One of two things happened – ESPN put him up to this to silence one of its many critics, or Cowherd feels the need to pick on bloggers in hopes of ‘getting people to talk about him.’ But we welcome his listeners. Poke around, stay awhile.
Q: Do you listen to his show?
No. We’ve got Sirius, so that’s where we spend most of our time. The only ESPN radio guy we listen to is Jim Rome, and not all that frequently.
Q: Will you sue?
Readers mentioned this option far more frequently than we imagined. Since what he did was illegal, we may look into it.
Q: Cowherd called your blog a ‘media’ site. Accurate?
We like to think of ourselves – there are three of us – as a sports blog that also plays the role of sports media watchdog. When USA Today unjustly blows an athlete (happens far more often than you think), we’ll call them on it. When ESPN tries to steal another journalist’s scoop, we’ll try to point it out. Also, we
interview media types once or twice a month. If you care to peruse the archives, there’s some interesting stuff in there from Richard Sandomir of the New York Times, Jason Whitlock of the KC Star, Dan LeBatard of the Miami Herald, Mike Freeman of Sportsline.com and many, many others.
Q: Harold Reynolds, Sean Salisbury and Colin Cowherd walk into a bar …
Stay close to your women, avert your eyes from all cell phones, and fortify your websites.
There are 9,461 blogs that referenced this incident, and we’d love to mention them all. But two blogs below did a fantastic job capturing the zeitgeist of sports bloggers everywhere, so be sure to check them out.
Cowherd’s ‘attack’ on blog: ‘Zero tolerance’ (ESPN.com)
Cowherd vs. The Web (USA Today)
That Wasn’t a Very Nice Thing to Do (One More Dying Quail)
The Blogging Community is Mildly Upset with Colin Cowherd (Awful Announcing)