After further analysis, more media notes

==Yup, it's Fox again dragging its big-rigs into Fontana for the first of two NASCAR events. The post-Daytona buzz is supposed to be perfect for the Hollywood-ification of the left-turners. Mike Joy does the call for the AutoClub 500, with analysts Larry McReynolds and Darrell Waltrip on Sunday at 12:30 p.m. at the two-mile California Speedway.
Says McReynolds about the Daytona aftereffect:
“After winning the last two spring races in Fontana, Matt Kenseth obviously, has to be the odds on favorite. Even though Kenseth didn’t have a great finish last weekend in Daytona, he had a great race car and unfortunately got caught up in a wreck with teammate Dave Ragan. If you go back to the final five races last year, he had five consecutive top five finishes including the win at Homestead and that, coupled with his recent history at this track makes him the favorite to win.”
Then why do we bother watching?
Fox reported that Sunday's Daytona 500 had a 10.2 rating/20 share and averaged 17.8 million viewers, up slightly from a year ago (10.1/20).
Meanwhile, ESPN2 has the Nationwide Series 300-mile race on Saturday (4 p.m.) with Dr. Jerry Punch, Dale Jarrett and Andy Petree. Allen Bestwick does "NASCAR Countdown" with Rusty Wallace and Brad Daugherty.

==In addition to all that -- and don't you think it's enough -- DirecTV gives a fan a chance to show his NASCAR chops (and promote its HotPass subscription service) by allowing someone to do the race call. Today and Saturday, fans can register at the DirecTV Fan Zone kiosk around the Fontana track. The winner will be interviewed by the HotPass production execs and the winner will provide the live audio description on one of the four channels of coverage on the Sunday HotPass service. DirecTV is doing the promotion at every track where NASCAR stages an event this season. Last week, Daytona 500 winner Kevin Harvick was one of the four pre-determined drivers who got the HotPass exclusive treatment of continuous in-car camera and audio coverage.
If you're not familiar with the HotPass deal, which is like NFL Sunday Ticket, bad boy Tony Stewart does the promos for it and explains: "The best part: You don't have to hold it in for all 400 laps."
That's his temper, or his bladder?

==HBO's Jim Lampley, Max Kellerman and Lennox Lewis do the call from Madison Square Garden on Saturday for the Wladimir Klitschko-Sultan Ibragimov bout (6:30 p.m., after the replay of the Kelly Pavlik-Jermain Taylor bout).

Afterward, HBO's documentary "Joe Louis: America's Hero ... Betrayed" makes its debut (9 p.m.) It's a must-see during Black History Month, focusing more on how after Louis became a national boxing icon, he served in the U.S. Army in World War II but was hounded by the government to pay back taxes -- from money he donated.

==For the record, the NBA All-Star Game on TNT did a 4.5 coverage rating, down 11.8 percent from 5.1 last year. It's been pointed out that the game has drawn fewer and fewer viewers every year since TNT has done the game since 2003.
So what, says TNT.
This is the statement issued by David Levy, president of Turner Broadcasting Sales and Turner Sports: "TNT’s 17 hours of NBA All-Star 2008 programming, more than 100 hours of broadband coverage on TNT NBA Overtime, and the inaugural use of text messaging to help determine the NBA All-Star Game MVP and Slam Dunk champion clearly resonated with fans on a multitude of platforms. Turner Sports and the NBA have always prided themselves on cutting edge innovation and this weekend’s successful event showcased our partnership’s ability to aggregate and produce sporting events on a variety of mediums.”
TNT says more than one million text messages were received to help determine Saturday's Slam Dunk contest winner, Dwight Howard. And more than 500,000 voted online to determine Sunday's game MVP (LeBron James).

==Steve Lavin pays a return trip to Pauley Pavilion with Brent Musburger to cover the UCLA-Oregon game, Saturday at 12:30 p.m. as an ABC regional contest (Channel 7) ... Steve Physioc is paired with Krista Blunk and Melissa Knowles on ESPNU's coverage of this BracketBuster contest between Rider and Cal State Northridge (Saturday, 6 p.m.). It goes head-to-head with the ESPN coverage of No. 1 Memphis against No.2 Tennessee (Dan Shulman, Dick Vitale and Erin Andrews). ... CBS gets into March mode with Tim Brando and Mike Gminski on the Arkansas-Kentucky regional game (Saturday, 11 a.m.), followed by Gus Johnson and Clark Kellogg on the Kansas-Oklahoma State regional game (1 p.m.; instead of St. John's-Duke with Dick Enberg and Bill Raftery). Sunday, Craig Bolerjack and Bob Wenzel do the Syracuse-Notre Dame regional (11 a.m.) with Verne Lundquist (no Jim Nantz?) and Billy Packer doing Wisconsin-Ohio State (1 p.m.) All that includes Greg Gumbel and Seth Davis with the "At The Half" studio show each day.

== ABC has Mike Breen, Jeff Van Gundy, Mark Jackson and Michele Tafoya at the Detroit-Phoenix NBA game (Sunday, 11:30 a.m.)

==Starting with its coverage Wednesday of the Lakers' game in Phoenix, ESPN360.com has become the first in the U.S. to deliver HD video streaming on a live event. It's available in the 16:9 aspect ratio, at a high bit rate (more than 2 Mbps) and doesn't need additional download or software. ESPN360.com’s initial HD streaming programming lineup will include the weekly NBA game and add college games in the future.

==CBS reports that its CSTV network, soon to be called CBS College Sports Network, has been added to the Charter cable lineup in Southern California as a digital sports view on Channel 399 or 411 to customers in Glendale/Burbank, Long Beach, Malibu, the San Gabriel Valley, Whitter, Riverside, San Bernardino and Victorville.

==Save the date: The Tennis Channel plans to televise the upcoming exhibition between Pete Sampras and Roger Federer on Monday, March 10 at Madison Square Garden in New York. They've called it the "Netjets Showdown," and not only will Tennis Channel do it live (4:30 p.m.) that day, but with John McEnroe as the analyst and Justin Gimelstob the reporter for play-by-play man Ted Robinson. Tennis Channel will also stream the match online at www.tennischannel.com.

==Guess that Mike Greenberg-Mike Golic team as Arena Football League announcers was a one-shot deal. Bob Wischusen has been named the lead ESPN play-by-play guy on AFL games this season, and former NFL players Shaun King and Marcellus Wiley have been added as analysts. Dave Pasch and Joe Tessitore will also call games, and Ray Bentley returns as an analyst.
Wischusen, King and Wiley do the Dallas-Georgia game on Saturday, March 1 (10 a.m., ABC). The ESPN2 AFL game of the week will be on Mondays starting March 3 (6 p.m.)

==The Golf Channel has a three-part sit-down with Stanford freshman Michelle Wie that airs Saturday (7:30 p.m.), Sunday (6 p.m.) and Monday (5:30 p.m.). She'll take us around the dorm rooms and discuss a "seven-year plan" to graduate. Wie is making her LPGA 2008 debut this weekend at the Field Open in Hawaii, aired on the Golf Channel today and Saturday at 3:30 p.m.
By the way, did Tiger Woods ever get his Stanford diploma?

==NBC, with Dan Hicks, Johnny Miller, Roger Maltbie, Mark Rolfing and Gary Koch, picks up the quarterfinal and semifinal rounds of the WGC-Accenture Match Play Championship from Tuscon on Saturday (11 a.m. to 3 p.m.), followed by the Sunday 36-hole final (11 a.m. to 3 p.m.). The Golf Channel coverage, with Kelly Tilghman and Nick Faldo, continues today as well as Saturday and Sunday morning, meaning between the two networks, 27 hours will be televised.
NBC producer Tommy Roy says it about the coverage: "We view matchplay as one of our specialties and cover matchplay differently than stroke play. For example, when we go to a match, we stay with it. You can't jump around from player-to-player and hole-to-hole as you would in a stroke play event. It's a daunting task, but one that we love."

==In other golf TV notes, DirecTV plans to do up a Masters Mix Channel for all four rounds of The Masters tournament from April 10-13, writes Michael Hiestand in USA Today this week. One channel will be devoted to Augusta’s “Amen Corner'' (holes 11, 12 and 13), another to holes 15 and 16. Each channel has its own set of announcers. The other channel will have ESPN and CBS live overall coverage. The channels will also be available on Masters.org.

==The NFL Network will lose about 4 million subscribers when EchoStar goes through with plans this week to move the channel on its "America's Top 200" tier (instead of "America's Top 100" package), according to the Sports Business Daily. One of the reasons EchoStar is making the move is "because it was disappointed in the league's decision to give the season-ending Patriots-Giants game to national over-the-air broadcasters," said SPD.

==Roger Clemens isn't going to Disney World after his Congressional testimony.

The New York Times reports that Clemens withdrew from a scheduled appearance at the fabricated "ESPN the Weekend" at Disney World next weekend. In a statement, Clemens said: "I believe my current participation could be a distraction. The event should be an occasion for fun by all, and I want that to be the case for everyone involved."
ESPN said it had a confirmation from Clemens earlier this month, but his testimony to the U.S. House Committee on Overight & Government Reform may have changed his mind.

Of course, Clemens' lawyer Rusty Hardin said the decision to withdrawl "had nothing to do with his legal situation. I haven't even talked to him about it."

Stay in that denial mode. You wear it well.

And as for ESPN: You're off the hook.

==And finally:
A judge in Houghton, Mich., involved in a lawsuit stemming from the exhumation of the body of former Notre Dame legendary halfback George Gipp ruled Thursday that ESPN must provide the Gipp relatives with any materials it has related to the fact it had a camera crew record the digging up of the remains on Oct. 4.
Gipp, who died in 1920 of pneumonia, was exhumed for DNA testing to determine whether he had fathered his girlfriend’s child. The results were negative.
Karl Gipp, who says he and George Gipp are first cousins once removed, and another cousin, Ron Gipp, filed the suit in November in Houghton County Circuit Court. In seeking damages of more than $25,000, they accuse the defendants of negligence, contending that the remains of the player’s sister, Bertha Isabelle Gipp Martin, were disturbed because workers initially dug in the wrong spot. She was buried next to her brother.
The defendants include ESPN; Mike Bynum, a sports writer from Birmingham, Ala., who helped arrange the exhumation and notified ESPN; Rick Frueh, of Chicago, who requested the exhumation and says he’s Gipp’s great-nephew; and Dr. Dawn Nulf, the county medical examiner who authorized the removal of George Gipp’s remains from a grave near his Upper Peninsula hometown of Houghton.
Torger Omdahl, an Iron Mountain attorney representing the Gipp cousins, said it was too early to say how much benefit the materials will provide.
“After I see what’s there, I’ll know,” he told The Daily Mining Gazette.
Frueh and Bynum, among others, have asked the case to be dismissed, saying that the Gipps are not close enough relatives to be able to have filed the suit. The court will decide whether to move forward
with the case on March 24.
Meanwhile, it might behoove the Reagan Library to put a few extra security guards near Dutch's gravesite in Simi Valley. Just in case another ESPN camera crew gets a little anxious.