The 2015 DSR Raggies (Detroit Media Awards)

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By Jeff Moss
DetroitSportsRag@GMail.com
January 17, 2015

The Golden Globes have been announced; the nominations for the Oscars have been released; and today the DetroitSportsRag publishes the 2015 DSR Raggies for achievement — and lack thereof — in the Detroit sports media world over the last year.

We were going to have a huge shindig at the Laurel Manor in Livonia to announce this year’s recipients but then we remembered none of the nominees would show up and we couldn’t find a high-risk insurance company with a low enough premium for the liability coverage we’d need.

So, unfortunately, this year’s awards will be boringly announced in this article. As always, the Raggie Trophy is comprised of a Detroit snow globe, a “Made in Detroit” coffee cozy and one of Moss’s wife’s unused tampons. “Winners” should expect their award in the mail.

Worst Radio Broadcast Team
Jim Brandstatter and Dan Dierdorf
University of Michigan Football

The first-year broadcast team was an unmitigated disaster with the out-of-place Brandy mis-handling the play-by-play duties after the forced retirement of Frank Beckmann.

And the former U of M offensive lineman and CBS color announcer was no great shakes either in his first year in the Wolverine booth either.

Instead of going the conventional route and hiring either Matt Shepard or Doug Karsch to replace the racist, Tea-Party imbecile Beckmann, an attempt was made to utilize two color men. It was a bad decision from day one and the end product was atrocious.

First of all, Brandstatter has no business doing play-by-play. He isn’t in good enough shape to TALK THAT MUCH. Between his obesity and his cigarette smoking, the man constantly sounds out of breath and on the verge of a coronary. It is extremely disconcerting.

During the U of M/OSU game, Brandstatter mistook Devin Gardner for Devin Funchess several times. And vice-versa.

The best that can be said of this team is neither wrote a Detroit News Op-Ed piece stating that black people should be proud that they like fried chicken.

First Runner-Up: Will Tieman and Matt Steigenga (MSU Basketball)
Second Runner-Up: Dan Dickerson and Jim Price (Detroit Tigers)

Best Radio Broadcast Team
Ken Kal and Paul Woods
Detroit Red Wings

Kal is a consummate professional and the best play-by-play announcer in the city. Unfortunately, Woods doesn’t add much to the broadcast — with his odd voice and blasé analysis — but this team is still better than any other in Detroit.

First Runner-Up: Dan Miller and Jim Brandstatter (Detroit Lions)

Worst Twitter Feed
Anthony “The Beast” Fenech
Detroit Free Press

This was probably the most contentious category this year due to many deserving recipients. In the end, the Freep Tigers beat writer separated himself by:

1) Sending idiotic selfies of himself
2) Wishing Tigers players a Happy Birthday
3) Commencing a daily countdown until Opening Day 2015
4) Tweeting out a picture of himself in a dumb John Lowe hat taken by Tim Kurkjian.

And his Tigers takes aren’t so hot, either. He narrowly edged out the Detroit News‘ Lynn Henning, who spent the year accusing everyone who disagreed with him on the Twat Box of being Jiff Myst. Only his spot-on political Tweets saved him from his own paranoia.

First Runner-Up: Lynn Henning (Detroit News)
Second Runner-Up: Vincent Goodwill, Jr. (Detroit News)
Third Runner-Up: Terry Foster (Detroit News)

Best Twitter Feed
Tony Paul
Detroit News

The News’ national beat writer retains last year’s crown while even improving on his 2013 performance.

From breaking the news on social media that the Tigers were on the verge of trading for David Price at the deadline and predicting the Yoenis Cespedes/Rick Porcello trade weeks before it occurred to his day-in and day-out Tigers coverage and his socially-conscious Tweets (especially on LGBT issues), Paul separated himself from the pack in 2014.

First Runner-Up: Josh Katzenstein (Detroit News)
Second Runner-Up: Kyle Meinke (MLive.com)
Third Runner-Up: Brian Manzullo (Detroit Free Press)

Worst Television Anchor
Dan Miller
Fox-2

This doesn’t have anything to do with Miller’s ability to read the sports news off a teleprompter and EVERYTHING to do with his continued insistence on polluting the airwaves with his horrid Sportsworks guests on his Sunday evening program.

Miller’s loyalty to his imbecilic media friends has always been a major issue but the problem had never been as pronounced as it was in 2014. Miller repeatedly gave airtime to a well-documented troll (Drew Sharp), a five-tool imbecile (Terry Foster) and an inarticulate slob (Pat Caputo).

The saddest part of this travesty is Miller obviously knows better; I am fairly confident he doesn’t have much respect for the above dipshits.

In the old days, this was an almost unavoidable problem since you couldn’t throw a rock without hitting a Detroit sports media dummy. Now, however, any of the finalists for the Best Twitter account would be viable panelists along with folks like Dave Birkett, John U. Bacon and Justin Rogers.

But keep giving a platform to the above jackasses and the played-out pair of Bob Wojnowski and Jamie Samuelsen, Dapper.

And when you are a #1 or #2 seed in the DSR Worst Detroit Sports Media Personality Tournament next month, remember that you gave airtime to a guy who claimed Ndamukong Suh was overrated and maintains the Doug Fister deal was the right thing to do.

First Runner-Up: Bernie Smilovitz (WDIV-4)
Second Runner-Up: Ryan Ermanni (Fox-2)
Third Runner-Up: Jennifer Hammond (Fox-2)

Best Television Anchor
Tom Leyden
WXYZ-7

He seems fine and — considering all of the diaper changing and babysitting he has to do with Justin Rose and Brad Galli — I figured I’d throw him a bone.

First Runner-Up: Woody Woodriffe (Fox-2)

Best Media Fight
Lynn Henning vs. Dave Hogg
Detroit News vs. Fox Sports Detroit Website

(Well, the best media brawl occurred between former WDFN personalities Lary Sorensen and Ike “Mega Man” Griffin, but since neither have been either relevant or working in this market for decades we couldn’t award them this Raggie.

But we’d highly recommend you familiarize yourself with this awesome feud by clicking here. I’ll wait ….)

It all started with a fairly innocuous back-and-forth Tweet by Hogg regarding journalists lazily relying on anonymous sources in their reporting.

But for some reason, the paranoid schizophrenic Henning took this personally …

Then Tony Paul got involved …

And the bickering went on ….

But the highlight of the exchange was a message that Henning sent to Paul after it was all over. One would have to imagine that Grandpa Lynn was trying to send a Direct Message, but who knows with this addled goof …..

It wasn’t exactly Darren Rovell vs. Richard Deitsch, but Henning calling Hogg a “twit” might have also been the Twitter moment of the year.

First Runner-Up: Tony Paul vs. Dave Hogg over a baseball official scorer debate
Second Runner-Up: Rod Allen vs. Mario Impemba Off the Air

Worst Local Sports Radio Show
Karsch and Anderson
97.1

This was another knock-down, drag-out battle with a lot of debate in the DSR newsroom but Scott “The Virgin Whale” Anderson and Doug “Benedict” Karsch ended up taking the top prize for their combination of awful sports takes and Detroit homerism. They constantly dumb-down the discourse by wasting a weekly interview with Jim Caldwell and are content to discuss an avalanche of embarrassing non-sports topics.

When these two dolts aren’t attacking basic math principles (the Cross-Eyed Virgin didn’t know how WHIP was calculated), they are offering up topics like this ….

Who has the best bread?
Would you hook up with a woman with 3 breasts?
What local community has the craziest parents?
Is the SI cover jinx for real? Who is the next victim?
Were you a Champ or Chump of the grill yesterday?
Peter Griffin or Homer Simpson?

I am not making any of this shit up.

It took a lot for someone to dethrone Drew Lane and Marc Fellhauer’s blatant homophobia and race baiting on 105.1, but The Whale’s constant fanboy defense of every sports team in Detroit is as nauseating as picturing the slob naked.

First Runner-Up: The Drew Lane Show (Detroit Sports 105.1)
Second Runner-Up: Anything with Dan Leach, Eric Thomas, Dennis Fithian, Pat Caputo, Terry Foster, Ryan Ermanni or Tom Mazawey

Best Local Sports Radio Show
Mike Valenti ALONE
97.1

Let me be very clear about this Raggie. This isn’t being awarded to Mike Valenti and Terry Foster. It’s not being awarded to Valenti when he is paired with Bob Wojnowski, Jamie Samuelsen or, for [Trout’s] sake, Dan Leach.

No. This honor is for Valenti when he is operating solo — sans any co-host and with as little interaction as possible with either his call screener, his producer or whoever else might chime in.

It’s pretty much the only time 97.1 is listenable. When Foster is on vacation — or out scheming about his next failed food-service business — and Valenti is in the WXYT-FM studio by himself, the show is actually pretty good.

When left to his own devices, Valenti sticks to sports. When he isn’t stuck playing the bad guy to Foster’s fun-loving family man who bangs Downriver skanks, the MSU grad is at his best.

Only Worm’s relationship with Mike McDermott in “Rounders” was more of an anchor than what Foster’s is with Valenti. Well, maybe Sharon Stone’s character in “Casino” was a bigger albatross to Ace, but you get where I am going here.

Yeah, I know that Valenti tends to read both this website and my Tweets and regurgitate some of my takes verbatim but that is probably why I like him when he is by himself.

First Runner-Up: The Baseball Show with Tony Paul (105.1)

Worst TV Broadcast
Mario Impemba and Rod Allen 
Fox Sports Detroit

The winner of this category should come as no surprise. Mario and Rod go back-to-back as the worst television broadcast team in town. If anything this pair was even worse in 2014. Hell, their personal animus toward EACH OTHER terrified even their bosses at FSD.

And not that Impemba and Allen needed any assistance, but the late-season addition of another math-challenged doofus in Jack Morris made the Tigers’ TV team even more unlistenable. Just listen to Morris try to explain to viewers that Ian Kinsler is going to be awarded an RBI for standing at home plate when a Cleveland pitcher threw a wild pitch … on an intentional walk attempt ….

Allen had MANY similar brain-dead moments himself, however ….

The Tigers 2014 MVP wasn’t either Max Scherzer or Victor Martinez … it was the mute button on your freaking television remote.

First Runner-Up: Ken Daniels and Mickey Redmond (Fox Sports Detroit)

Best TV Broadcast
Ken Daniels and Chris Osgood
Fox Sports Detroit

Wait. You are probably wondering how the Red Wings’ TV broadcast could get first runner-up as the worst announcing tandem and ALSO win the Raggie for best team.

It is very simple. When homer, slapdick Mickey Redmond and his played-out, old-fashioned commentary is the color announcer, the broadcast is awful. Nothing is more passé than “The Mick” shtick.

When Redmond isn’t available for road games because of his allergies to forks, knives and spoons, Chris Osgood fills in and does a very fair job of analyzing BOTH teams.

The irony of this situation is that Osgood does a MUCH better job of staying impartial while broadcasting than Redmond does even though Osgood is much closer to this group of guys — he PLAYED with some of them — and is currently EMPLOYED by the team as a goalie consultant.

And while Osgood still has some things to work on as a professional broadcaster, his hockey acumen cannot be questioned.

The Ozzie/Daniels pairing would be much more palatable if Daniels wasn’t such an awful Ken Holland apologist. The way Daniels defended the Wings’ decision to deal Calle Jarnkrok and a second-round pick for the corpse of David Legwand was an absolute joke.

Although, I do give Daniels credit for broaching the constant rumors that Mike Babcock might leave Detroit for Toronto at the end of this season.

Can you imagine Impemba and Allen mentioning THAT story if they covered the Wings? Not a chance in hell.

First Runner-Up: George Blaha and Greg Kelser (Fox Sports Detroit)

Check back tomorrow for the following Raggies ….

Worst Beat Writer
Best Beat Writer
The Jamie Samuelsen Memorial Raggie
The Montreal Screw Job Raggie
Worst Take by a Pundit
Worst Detroit Sports Media Moonlighting Raggie
The Ted Bundy Raggie
Newcomer of the Year
Twitter Faux Paus of the Year
The Captain Janks Raggie
Worst Beat Writer Who Doesn’t Cover a Detroit Team
Best Beat Writer Who Doesn’t Cover a Detroit Team
Worst Article of the Year
Best Article of the Year
The Detroit Sports Media Personality of the Year 

(You can follow Joff Mess on Twitter at @JeffMossDSR. You can join the Facebook discussion here. And if you enjoy the site and you want to contribute financially to the DSR, you can do that here.)