Bottom of the Bird Cage 5/20

It would be the 140th day of the year.

It was on May 20, 1873 that Levi Strauss and Jacob Davis received a U.S. patent for blue jeans with copper rivets. It was on this day in 1927 that Charles Lindbergh took off from Roosevelt Field in Long Island and made the first trans-Atlantic flight in history, landing in Paris the next day.

May 20 is a very big day for birthdays. Actor Jimmy Stewart was born in 1908, former Vikings coach Bud Grant was born in 1927, hockey great Stan Mikita was born in 1940, singer Joe Cocker was born in 1944 and singer-actress Cher was born in 1946.

And on May 20, 1506 Christopher Columbus died.

But May 20 is remarkable for a story with a Kansas connection. The town of Codell, Kansas, that is in Rooks County, a few miles north of Hayes, was hit by a tornado on May 20, 1916. And then another one on May 20, 1917, and finally a third hit on May 20, 1918. The third tornado killed 10 people in the tiny farming town in north central Kansas. The church pictured to the left was wiped out in the 1918 tornado.

Wonder what May 20, 1919 was like? It must have been a heckuva party that night when nothing happened.

From the New York Times:
Comcast will make the NFL Network available to 10.8 million of its digital-basic subscribers by Aug. 1, ending nearly three years of legal hostilities with the National Football League by completing a nine-year deal Tuesday.

Comcast, the nation’s largest cable provider, will pay significantly less than what the league had originally sought.

“It’s a chapter that’s behind us and not worth going over,” Brian L. Roberts, the chairman of Comcast, said in a conference call. “It wasn’t where we wanted to be or where anybody wanted to be.”

The battle was between a powerful league aggrieved by Comcast’s relegating its channel to a digital sports tier that cost subscribers extra, and a huge cable operator whose customer base is crucial to a network’s exposure.

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This is a good overall story if you want to understand this long battle between the league and Comcast.

Now that it’s settled, hopefully the league can pull off the same sort of deal with Time-Warner and everyone will have equal access not just to the NFL Network, but the games that the network carries at the end of each year. It should never have taken this long to get done and the league needs to look at the people that have been running the network and whether they are the types to move the NFL Network into the future.

From the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette:
As the NFL’s defensive player of the year, James Harrison has no fear. As someone forced to fly across country, that’s another story. Harrison did not list his fear of flying among the reasons for turning down a trip to visit the White House and President Barack Obama tomorrow. But a well-placed source said he believes that is what will keep the Steelers linebacker home while his teammates make the short hop to Washington.

The source described Harrison as a “wreck” when he must take team flights during the season and avoids plane rides when he can.

“Yeah, there’s a lot of truth to that,” confirmed Bill Parise, Harrison’s agent. “When James was in college, his mother had to drive him to all the away games. That’s the absolute truth. The transition for him into the NFL was real difficult at first.

“He can get on airplanes and fly, obviously, but he doesn’t like to.”

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Harrison is getting hammered by the pundits for not attending the White House visit by the Steelers and that’s about the silliest thing I’ve heard and read in some time. Whatever his reasons for bypassing on the trip, Harrison has that right. That’s what this country is supposed to be about. I doubt there’s a political statement being made, although with his new contract Harrison may have gotten his tax bill and might not be very happy. He doesn’t want to take part.

From Philadelphia Inquirer columnist John Gonzalez:
The Census Bureau is still crunching the numbers on this, but preliminary reports indicate that almost every person on the planet now works for ESPN. The World Wide Leader has an absurd amount of people on its payroll. So why doesn’t ESPN employ a single smart executive who can help the company avoid its recurring basic journalism problem?

ESPN is just fine when delivering a “story” or the “news.” But the company gets into trouble when it modifies those words in a cheap attempt to attract attention. Even though the WWL is fond of “breaking news” and “developing stories,” I don’t think it’s used either term properly since Roy Firestone worked there.

Two days ago, ESPN reported a “developing story” about Brett Favre scheduling surgery to repair his partially torn biceps tendon. The WWL made a big deal about it. Yesterday, ESPN walked the story back. Ed Werder cited a source that said Favre would not undergo surgery. ESPN didn’t use the “developing story” graphic on the follow-up. It just sort of slipped the new information to viewers and moved on, but not before it blamed the inaccurate report on the St. Paul Pioneer Press. Funny. Because when the WWL was running the initial “developing story” about Favre, I don’t remember it giving the Pioneer Press credit. Must have been an oversight.

But you know how ESPN gets with Favre. The mere mention of his name is a powerful narcotic that prevents the greater Bristol area from thinking clearly.

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ESPN has been distracted this week by Michael Vick’s release from Leavenworth and forgotten about Favre. That won’t last long. Expect BF is the BFF that ESPN has ever had.