Sports Illustrated Goes After ESPN Again, Specifically Craig James

I find myself agreeing with this SI article I read today, but am curious as to why SI published it.  It's basically a round table discussion analyzing college football coverage on ESPN/ABC/FOX.

Stewart Mandel, Andy Staples, and George Schroeder (all three write for SI) were questioned on who their favorite/least favorite analyst and play-by-play announcer.

There was virtual consensus that the team of Kirk Herbstreit/Brent Musberger were the best in college football, which I would agree with partially.  I like Herbstreit, but I find Musberger to be virtually impossible to suffer.  When Musberger actually does his job, he's fantastic (as long as this isn't the greatest game he's ever watched; he's seen a lot of those).  However, when he moonlights as an analyst, he usually won't let Herbstreit more than a few words at a time. Sometimes, it's almost comical.

What was truly interesting about the article was the unified dislike for Craig James as an analyst.  There seems to be a universal dislike for the guy after he was implicated in former Texas Tech coach Mike Leach's firing.  There's a lot of questioning as to why James still has a job considering the conflict of interest they claim he has.

When it comes to ESPN's college football coverage, I tend to watch Gameday and that's about it.  I truly can not stand the vast majority of their in-studio analysts (Lou Holtz, Mark May come to mind), and prefer to go do my laundry or walk the dog during halftime of any games on ESPN rather than listen to those guys. 

However, I'm glad to see other major sports news organizations stand up to ESPN.  They continue to make questionable decisions regarding on-air personalities (as in who they let be on tv/radio), but that's a whole other blog post.  They also focus more on the entertainment value of a story, rather than the news value.  When was the last time ESPN broke a major story? Yahoo sports has been doing their job for them for years now.

Anyone have a favorite announcer out there? I really liked Mike Mayock doing the Notre Dame games last year.