Costas Now roundup.

A round-up of opinions surrounding the now infamous Costas Now panel on blogs, and the profanity-laced comments of writer Buzz Bissinger.

Will Leitch, Deadspin, "Of Jimmy Olson, Spittle And The Dying Of The Light"

It was clear from the get-go, from the very first, "I bet you don't know who W.C. Heinz is," that this was not going to be a roundtable exchange of ideas. (Poor Braylon Edwards, honestly. He must be completely bewildered this morning.) It was obvious that Bissinger had been building up to this for a long time, those dark nights wondering what the kids were searching online, those terrifying moments when the world seemed to be spasming out of his control ... they all built up to this. We had seen him backstage, and introduced ourselves. He was, as Jimi Hendrix was famously described, a live wire with too much current running through it. We could see it coming; anyone paying attention couldn't have missed it.

We suppose we could have punched him in the nose or something, called him an ass---, said he was a piece of ----. It might have made for more riveting television; we are certain Costas wouldn't have minded. But that would have been counterproductive. When you see someone flailing desperately at someone, something, anything, there's nothing more to do than sit there, bemused and bewildered, amazed at what was happening, just like everyone else was. We cannot imagine any reasonable human being watching that display and saying, "doggone it, that raving man has a point!" The only way to win a battle like that is to let the audience take in what is happening, and trust them to respond accordingly.

Sure: We would have loved to have made all the points about blogs that we've made countless times before, trot them all out again, in front of a national audience. Had we that opportunity, we surely would have taken advantage of it. But we felt, in a way, the point was made for us. Watching this talented man spin himself into a typhoon of imploding bluster showed the fear, showed the anger, showed the futility of it all. We sat back and watched, and hoped nobody got hurt, just liked you. Honestly: We really hope he's OK. A fight would have done no one any good, least of all him.

Canadian DJM, Sports on My Mind, "Why Bissinger Had a Point"

I mostly enjoy Deadspin. I read it everyday. I have it on my RSS feed. I comment over there, from time to time. But I’m also not going to pretend that it’s above reproach. It’s not a watchdog site, or a news site; it is an opinion site and it *is* a gossip site. I think mocking Deadspin for posting pictures of Matt Leinart drinking from a beer bong is totally, completely, 100% warranted. That’s some childish bull----, and Leitch is smart enough to know that it’s childish bull----. His defense of it was fourfold, and each of the defenses he offered is ridiculous.

1. “It’s funny!”
Why is it funny? Seriously, why is it funny? It’s only funny because it’s embarrassing. Leitch knows this. He’s not posting pictures of Leinart working for charity, or playing with his kids, or going to the library. Leinart gets his picture posted when he’s doing embarrassing ----. It’s only funny because his image is being captured in moments when he’d probably prefer not to be photographed. Which brings us to Number 2:

2. They post them on their Facebook pages.
Oh, Will. We want to agree with you. We really do, but you have to know that this is horse---. Perhaps some of the embarrassing pictures you post are from the offender’s own Facebook pages, but the Leinart pictures, which were the ones under discussion, were from TheDirty.com. You either know this or really ought to know this, because your site made a follow-up post which was entirely about where you got the pictures. You’re posting pictures from paparazzi sites designed to embarrass. Man up and admit this.

3. They’re real people!
The ---- is this, US Weekly? Of course they’re real people. NOBODY is debating this. I don’t even know what this argument is supposed to mean. It’s OK to publicly embarrass athletes because it would be OK to publicly embarrass anybody? What?

4. Braylon Edwards, so by extension all athletes, have no complaints, because they are not hounded by photographers like Hollywood stars.
Man, this is a preposterous argument to make. The ends are the same regardless of the means. I can’t even tell what the argument is here. Is it “You only have a right to complain about being publicly embarrassed if photographers make it difficult for you to go outside”? Is that it? Because humiliating ---- is humiliating ---- regardless of the source.

And Leitch’s disingenuous claims that he’s not encouraging paparazzi or that he wouldn’t go through somebody’s garbage are riding a razor thin line of believability. Sure, Will’s not running out to snap photographs of athletes at parties: but posting those pictures makes him just as bad.

Hey Jenny Slater, "I come not to bury Buzz Bissinger, but to pity him."

But there's something instructive in that, because it demonstrated -- inadvertently, I would assume, but I could be wrong -- the crux of this whole argument, and the thing that we all know scares Bissinger the most: There really isn't a whole lot of difference between what he does and what the sports blogosphere does. He's got his opinion; we've got ours. Now, Bissinger gets published in the New York Times and writes books that are turned into movies, while I try to steal just enough time from my day job to earn a few cents from Google each day writing fanciful yarns about Nick Saban's farts -- but turn out the lights and we're just two plain-looking, rather profane guys with opinions on sports.

The difference, of course, is that Bissinger went to an elite prep school, was an editor of the student paper at Penn, and won a Pultizer, and I've done none of those things. But if Buzz says that, say, Tony Romo is a good quarterback and I say Romo sucks, none of those academic or professional highlights make Buzz any righter than I am. And the thing is, there was a time when that might not have been the case, because people like me didn't have an outlet to hold forth with our opinions, so all we could do was read people like Bissinger and his colleagues and decide which of them we sided with the most. But now we don't have to do that. Buzz is understandably angry that his position at the top of the heap is in danger of being usurped, but in expressing that anger, he demonstrated that -- ta-da! -- he's no different from any of the rest of us. His elite Northeastern education may have given him more knowledge, credentials, and access than any of us will ever get on our own, but apparently it didn't give him enough manners to keep "I think you're full of ----" from being the very first words out of his mouth directed toward Will Leitch.

DWil, Sports on My Mind, "Costas Now Town Hall Meeting Notes: Mitch Albom on Ethics; Will Leitch’s Spin Left for Dead"

Though Leitch speaks as quickly as an MLB player after having ingested a few too many greenies, his outsized and overblown ego was deflated by Bissinger’s blunt descriptions of the juvenile snark that is the hallmark of Leitch’s website.

Costas then spoke directly to Leitch and Deadspin: 'There are a number of sports blogs that are well-written, make good points, are insightful, and are funny. But there’s a very large percentage where the quality is poor and the tone is abusive.'

Not realizing that Costas was reiterating Bissinger’s feelings and his own earlier statement and that Costas was directing his words towards Deadspin, Leitch responded thusly: "And frankly those are the ones that are most likely not read."

Oops. At 10 million page views a month Deadspin has a huge audience that is taken with "dumbed down" writing and lowbrow humor.

Adam Abramson, Newsday.com, "Buzz Bissinger is Lame"

Bissinger came off as pretentious, which is found all-too-often in the words of major columnists today. I don’t need someone to imply they’re more intelligent than I am, when they’re not.

The best part of the 20-minute train wreck on Bob Costas’ show was Bissinger’s lack of a solid argument and Leitch taking the high road on several soft jabs flailed in his direction. While Bissinger may be eloquent with the pen, he came off looking like a buffoon in front of the camera.

What Bissinger sees as indecent is what I, a 24-year-old college educated sports nut, think makes Deadspin and its blogosphere peers work. The new media generation doesn’t want someone rehashing what we watched. We’re looking for the conversation we’ll have in the bar or at the water cooler.