I’ll just begin by saying my sadness last week about Stanley Arnoux’s injury is gone. It’s replaced by anger. WWL 870am told Gus Kattengell to sleep with the fishes. So now we’ll have one less decent reporter covering the Saints.
Fantastic.
Media coverage of the Saints just continues to circle the bowl. I understand that 870am is in the last year of their contract with the Saints and have basically stopped saying, reporting or even thinking anything critical of the Saints in hopes of signing another contract. Hey, I’m all about self-preservation too so I get why they do what they do. I mean, if WWL 870am didn’t carry Saints games would you have any reason to listen at all? I’ll be completely honest, the only show on 870am I listen to is Monday night during the season because I like Mike Detillier and even he didn’t seem to hammer the Saints too hard last year. Hell, he didn’t even report any inside info after Drew Brees and Jeremy Shockey got into it when Atlanta housed the Saints. Something he used to do all the time when Buddy D was around. I think Deke Bellavia should just get it over with and wear a Saintsation outfit to Sean Payton’s Monday press conferences (or maybe not).
Now I know most of you don’t care about the media being hard on the Saints. I do. Maybe the whole "Kenny Wilkerson thing" has the media scared that they’ll be next. Jeff Duncan says the Saints got calls from teams wanting Randall Gay. Oh really? Then why was that not reported ANYWHERE ELSE? When I googled ‘Randall Gay trade rumors’ I got nothing else. Seriously, teams were calling about Gay but PFT, National Football Post, ESPN, SI, and every other football website never saw fit to at least post it as well? Jeff - if Mickey Loomis tells you he can fly, will you just report that as fact too?
The media just regurgitates whatever the Saints tell them and it pisses me off. Since the Saints started 6-1 in 2006 they are 19-22 in the two-and-a-half years since. Shouldn’t Sean Payton’s ass be on the line? Shouldn’t there be at least one media personality that busts the Saints balls on a daily basis? Entercom, who owns WWL, is in the crap hole so Kattengell getting the boot was probably about money and nothing else. He never ruffled any feathers at Saints camp but how can the flagship station not have a reporter assigned to cover the Saints daily? Sure they’ll send some intern out there to collect sound and interview players but shouldn’t "The Station of the Saints" have a higher standard? I’d like to think so.
Maybe it doesn’t really matter because probably fairly soon (like next year) Benson will buy a radio station and just put the Saints games on that station. Then the Saints will have a radio station to be their mouth piece 24/7/365. What will the Times Picayune sports staff have to do then? Let’s all hope the Saints go 14-2, because if they struggle and we start asking questions about what is going on, we know no one appears to have the courage to ask Sean Payton and company tough questions. The Saints wouldn’t answer them anyways.
If the Saints control all the information we get and they control the media that covers them it makes following the team less fun. Perhaps I should just follow the Times-Pic’s lead and not question anything. Everything’s fine, nothing to see here, move along, Black and Gold Super Bowl….
Saints Video to get you to buy that Reggie Bush Fat Head
Fifteen years ago the Saints traded for Jim Everett and I nearly lost my freaking mind. We just traded for ‘Chris’ Everett? What was Jim Mora thinking? Everyone was down in the dumps...then Jim Everett attempted to go Ike Turner on Jim Rome. Glorious! If this happened today I think the internet would go to Defcon 5, it would lead PTI, and Skip Bayless' face would melt like the nazi in Indiana Jones. Two of those would be pretty sweet. Suddenly I was like, “Hell yeah! Maybe this guy ain’t so bad. I like guys who don’t take crap (Bad ass guys are sexy, Anderson Cooper-like guys give me a headache). By kicking a pre-pubescent Jim Rome, Everett actually gained Saints fans' love. And he wasn’t bad by Saints QB standards. This video is like a great wine...time makes it better.
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