BSPN

"Welcome to SportsCenter. I'm Rich Eisen with Steve Levy. Tonight we'll take a look at the Boston Celtics. Just how good can they be? Could they be the best team in basketball? Maybe the best team of the last twenty years?"

"And we'll look back on the World Champion Boston Red Sox and what each of the players on that team is up to. Could they win five more championships before all is said and done? Or is it more likely eight?"

"But we start with a look at the New England Patriots. Here, just look at some photos. My God, they're manly. Oh, sorry, Steve, I'm drooling on the desk."

"That's okay, Rich. I was lost in admiring Tom Brady's throwing motion and didn't notice."

"It is gorgeous, isn't it?"

"And just look at Randy Moss jump."

*silence*

"Wow."

"I don't think there is any question, this could be the greatest team in the history of organized athletics."

"Steve, I wouldn't be surprised to see them challenge UCLA's record 88 consecutive wins."

"I agree, Rich."

"In other news, there are some teams outside the Boston area playing, as we can see from the shot of the scoreboard behind Kevin Garnett's head. We'll freeze the frame for a second so you can look at the scores, then we'll have ten more minutes of Celtics coverage followed by Lee Corso asking whether Boston College can get back in the BCS race."

*commercial for some mobile phone featuring Peyton Manning*

What to censor?

Just skimming LZ Granderson's article on the whole John Amaechi coming-out party, and noticed, curiously, that ESPN's auto-censor applied to the comments (which replaces naughty words with "####") appears to be triggered by the word "gay." I assume that's because the majority of commenters would use it in the colloquially perjorative sense ("that's so gay"), but in an article on a gay athlete coming out? Leading to comments like: "Maybe its time for a #### NBA player to come out as a rolemodel for other young ####/lesbian atheletes." Of course, the commenters noticed. The fact that ESPN is promoting this story would be pretty cool if their internal values reflected that same consideration consistently.