Cowherd would be ok. He hosted a Sunday night sports show in Portland before he went to ESPN. He was actually a sportscaster on tv before he was a radio guy.

Simmons is a legit journalist? Dont get me wrong, i love the guy, but he's no journalist. He's one of the original sports bloggers, funny guy, good insight, and knows the NBA salary cap better than anybody but he's no journalist. And like said above not made for TV.

The whole idea is preposterous. Late nite Sportscenter is the highest ratings of any, no way they would give that up for a talk show, unless it means ESPN II. And Dan patrick would have been the best for that show. Knows sports, people like him and great interviewer (look what he got from Terry Bradshaw).

The problem with Allison's idea of snagging Jay Leno is... it puts ESPN/ABC in direct competition with itself: Jimmy Kimmel. It's lose-lose for ESPN/ABC (or maybe a really smart businessperson can find a way to make that win-win).

Allison, ESPN is good at many things, and one of them is knowing when to mend fences. Their zero-tolerance policy on criticism of ESPN was an overreaction in the Jason Whitlock case. He's a very smart and articulate journalist with very strong opinions. They knew this when they hired him to write for Page 2 on ESPN.com and when they put him on the air (despite having a radio face).

Fast forward a year or two from his firing and they can see that he's stuck to his guns and has stayed true to his self. I read every one of his KCStar columns and his tenor hasn't changed a lick. He is still the same very valuable commodity to a house like ESPN as he always was.

Saying "I'm sorry we had a fight; let's make up" is the sign of a mature, well-run organization. In this case, if the reports are true, kudos to the folks at ESPN.

Actually, Simmons makes sense - ESPN let him write for Kimmel for two years, and he is currently on a ten-week sabbatical "to write his next book". Maybe this is a smokescreen to actually prepare the show.

LeBatard (I think of a good joke on his nambe, but . .) big in the Miami market? His station 790 AM the ticket had one or two good books, but the other sports station 560 AM is beating them now. Plus he's a total clown on PTI. And I mean, a TOTAL clown. Whitlock has terrific experience on TV and is far, far, far (am getting this across?) talent that Danny boy will have at anytime in his life.

A late night show sounds like a great idea, but they will definitely need some comedy if they want to compete with CBS/ABC/NBC/Comedy Central. They now air Sports Center just about all day long now, unless you don't have a DVR (like me) then I don't see how you can't get your sports fix before late night.

I'm not from the Florida area and I liked LeBatard as a PTI fill-in more than any of the others. BAM!

I don't think I can add another hour of programming in my normal recording schedule though.

will this be filmed in bristol?

Cowherd is pretty much everything that's wrong with sports-talk radio. Whitlock would be interesting, but seems unlikely.

How about Stat Boy, with Simmons as head writer? And I bet you could get Hootie and the Blowfish as the house band.