CTC has Ohio sports and

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After I finally took the time to match up all of the dates for sporting events I figured out that tonight is a great night for Ohio sports, but specifically for Ohio football. Not only is it the kickoff of the college football season, but the Cleveland Browns also have their final preseason game in Chicago. Meanwhile, Miami and Ball State will face off and Kent State is @ Iowa State in a game that VanDelay Sports has picked Kent to win. Big East member Cincinnati also kicks their season off tonight, and both the Reds and Indians are in action and playing well in the world of Major League Baseball.

Here’s a rundown of tonight’s Ohio sporting events:
- Cincinnati Bearcats vs. SE Missouri State - NCAA - 7 pm
- Miami @ Ball State - NCAA - 7 pm
- Cleveland Indians vs. Seattle Mariners - MLB - 7:05 pm
- Cincinnati Reds @ Pittsburgh Pirates - MLB - 7:05 pm
- Kent State @ Iowa State - NCAA - 8 pm
- Cleveland Browns @ Chicago Bears - NFL - 8 pm

Meanwhile, the Bengals play another preseason game on Friday night and on Saturday Ohio State, Akron, Toledo, Ohio and Bowling Green all kick off their 2007 seasons.

So expect to hear a bit more than normal from the Ohio Sports Time blog this weekend as my wife is out of town. I’d love to blog 2-3 times a day all of the time, but unfortunately life does not allow me to do so. I plan to start off with a post about the Indians and Twins game tonight featuring Johan Santana vs. C.C. Sabathia, then follow that with a post about Browns’ OT Ryan Tucker’s suspension for taking steroids. I look forward to writing more as the weekend progresses.

It’s been over a month since I last mentioned the tasteless Labatt Blue talking deer commercial. You know the one; “we get the fawns up at 5″ says the talking deer in the store. He then goes on to have one of the most obvious f-bombs in the history of TV bleeped out poorly.

I have received a few comments for my speaking out against SportsTime Ohio and the Labatt deer commercial, and there’s one thing I don’t intend to do, and that is back down on my stance. For someone who has kids and loves sports, but wants to raise their kids in an environment where curse words are not used, how do you explain to them this commercial? The f-bomb is the one word that is not allowed on TV, minus certain channels and movies. I truly feel that the continued airing of this commercial by SportsTime Ohio is not only tasteless but also irresponsible. Anything other than correcting this matter immediately is unacceptable.

I was listening to Munch on Sports on ESPN 850 WKNR this evening and heard a ad for SportsTime Ohio claiming that STO provides “The Most Complete Coverage of Ohio Sports.” The Most Complete Coverage of Ohio Sports? Seriously? Does SportsTime Ohio seriously claim to have “the most complete coverage of Ohio sports?” Now I have not hesitated to be critical of SportsTime Ohio in the past, but I am extremely disappointed in the false claims by this station. STO has stated in their TV commercials that they cover Cleveland, Youngstown, Toledo and Columbus, but this claim of “the most complete coverage of Ohio sports” is just plain ridiculous. With no coverage of Cincinnati’s 2 pro teams (Bengals, Reds), the Columbus pro teams (Blue Jackets, Crew, Destroyers) the 6 MAC colleges (Ohio, Miami, BG, Kent, Akron & Toledo) and the UC Bearcats, this claim to have “the most complete coverage of Ohio sports” is a blatant lie.

The Arena League Football Playoffs have begun and the Columbus Destroyers have tied the Tampa Bay Storm early at 7-7. QB Matt Nagy hit WR Damien Groce with a long TD pass to tie the score at 7 as both teams have scored on their opening possessions.

How come all the teams I’m passionate about have coaches/managers who look like they could be asleep during games?  

Who am I talking about? Marvin Lewis, Tim O’Shea, and worst of all Jerry Narron! 

These guys subscribe to what I call the “golf announcer” method of coaching. They are calm, cool, collected. They show very little emotion on their faces during a game. They rarely – if ever – get ejected arguing a bad call. In fact, if you only watched their faces, you would have very little idea of what was actually going on in the game play. 

Like when the latest Bengal is brought in by the po-po, Marvin either issues no comment at all, or a very nonchalant statement about how they don’t tolerate that sort of behavior (though the Bengals’ lack of action says otherwise). 

Tim O’Shea, coach of the Ohio University Bobcats basketball team, has only had 1 technical foul in his career. I was there, it was well deserved and SO great to see out of him.  This guy would have been surprised too.

 

(Photo Courtesy of OhioBobcats.com)

 Or when a relief pitcher has just pitched his 4^th grand slam ball of the year, I’d like to see a little bit of emotion from Jerry Narron. Instead, he has a bored and slightly pleasant look on his face, as if he’s visiting with his grandmother in the retirement home. 

WAKE UP NARRON! Take some lessons from Lou Piniella and get fired up! Get the team fired up! You are not at the retirement home – you are managing one of the worst teams in baseball!  

Clearly, the “I don’t really care if we win or lose” face that you’re putting on for the public isn’t really working. 

While watching all three games in the weekend series between the Cleveland Indians and Cincinnati Reds on Sports Time Ohio this weekend, I watched the same commercials over and over again. Normally commercials don’t give me reason to blog, but one in particular really ticked my wife and I off. A specific Labatt Blue commercial features a guy at the store where a deer comes up to him and engages him in conversation. The deer is obviously giving the guy a hard time for not being out in the woods or something like that, and makes comments about “frolicking in the woods since 6 am” and “getting the fawns up at 5.” The guy makes a comment back to the deer before the scene ends with the deer saying “you got that f*&%ing right!”

Now I don’t know if this bothers you or not, but it does bother me and it bothered my wife as well. Yes, the f-word has lost a lot of power over the years due to the over-use by millions of English-speaking people. But this obvious beeping-out of the f-word, and you can’t tell me that he was saying anything other than the f-word, is just plain tasteless. My wife even made mention of the fact that if we had kids they could not even watch a baseball game anymore thanks to this commercial.

I feel this is a bit of poor judgement on the part of SportsTime Ohio. The station exists to help the Cleveland Indians compete and bring in revenue, but commercials like this one from LaBatt Blue have no place on STO or any other network in my opinion. I hereby ask SportsTime Ohio to use better judgement in the future and remove this commercial from their programming immediately.

In the first of their college sports program 10-year reviews, CollegeSports-fans.com has released their Ohio State football & baketball reviews. In reviewing the Ohio State Buckeyes basketball & football teams, the staff at College Sports Fans included historical stats, records, coaching stats, All-Americans and more as well as a outlook for the future of the programs.

The Ohio Sports Time blog has a new home. Welcome to OhioSportsTime.com, the new location for the Ohio Sports Time blog. We have been providing Ohio pro & college sports fans with updates on Ohio athletic teams since kicking off in 2006, and now we have a bigger, better home to grow into.

While we work out the bugs to transfer our old content to the new servers, you can read our old posts at the former Ohio Sports Time blog site.