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Comment by rickdale | Hacker News Reader

ESPN has come a long way since 2012 Super Bowl production where they had Herm Edwards explaining the Patriots offense to 2 toddlers who couldn't stand in the same place for a second. It was probably the worst segment in ESPN history.

I really like this move though because lately a lot of ESPN women seemed to have moved to CBS or NBC ie Rachel Nichols, Erin Andrews, Michelle Beadle and I am sure more. Not that Nate Silver or Keith Olberman are women, but it definitely is aimed at the right audience and I look forward to this test run at 11 of what seems to be solid broadcasting.

On another note I think a Daily Show style program that brings in clips of announcers and ESPN and makes fun of them would be a great program. Just putting it out there.

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During the NBA season, ESPN's commentary and analysis paled in comparison to TNT. I think this is partially by design -- the best analysts don't make for the biggest audiences -- but I think ESPN is understanding that the landscape is more competitive than they thought.

I'm looking forward to Silver working with Simmons. His column would fit it quite nicely at Grantland.

I think Bill Simmons is entertaining, but I'm not sure that he's great to pair with a real statistician. He makes a million assertions a minute. I guess Simmons has done a decent job of interviewing statistical experts at the MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference, but I think he's better by himself or with a group of guys that don't need verification to let his assertions stand in the conversation.

I do think that the Henry Abbott + John Hollinger[1] dynamic was good since Abbott is more of a curious amateur type and willing to withhold judgement until the facts come in. But if Silver is a baseball guy (some of the stuff that Silver's done on basketball isn't very good, I don't think he's really immersed in the sport), then I wouldn't necessarily expect the paths of those two guys to cross much.

[1] Though I have reservations about some of Hollinger's work, especially PER, which is just a linear weights metric with weights apparently chosen to coincide with conventional wisdom on the value of players. There are superior player evaluation metrics, but PER is very marketable to normal fans. Hollinger does seem to know his stuff though, and he's done a great job in Memphis thus far. It's just unfortunate that he got famous for a ho-hum metric.

Keith Olbermann is a dreadfully partisan and negative person. I can't believe they are bringing him back.

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