Colin Cowherd controversy

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Ace Purple
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Colin Cowherd controversy

Post by Ace Purple »

Deadspin.com, wearethepostmen.com, and others sports blogs are buzzing about Colin Cowherd's call to action on his ESPN radio show yesterday where he called for all of his listeners to go to TheBigLead.com and, in his words, "Blow it up."

For the audio (available as of this writing), you can hear it here. Here is a transcript (not written by me), edited by the author slightly for relevance:

“You and I are straining the system, that what I heard…We occasionally, once a week…we’ll mention a website, our listeners will flee to it, and we’ll shut it down. We feel bad about this, we don’t mean to do it. It usually forces that young guy or young gal to buy more bandwidth and can be expensive. I don’t know that…but wouldn’t it be great if every day we gave out a new, young website and blew it up? If I told my audience every day–just one that’s annoying–and we could give it to them, and our audience would blow it up?

I want everyone to go to it as fast as you possibly can. When I say go, go….it’s three words. THE BIG LEAD dot com. THE. BIG. LEAD. DOT. COM. Go now.â€
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Post by fearpeddler »

he's handing out free advertising, or it could be argued that way at least. But just thumbing through taht code you linked I would say he's dancing on the edge of a fine..
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Post by Ace Purple »

The fact that Cowherd explicitly stated that he wanted to "blow it up" (crash the site) won't help his cause. He transferred information (via the radio) and gave a call to action to blow up the website (which, as of right now, is *still* down.)

For his sake, he'd better hope that the resulting crash caused less than $5,000 for all involved (bandwidth overage charges, lost advertising revenue from the crash, costs to the web hosting company, etc.) Why? Here's why...

-----
Some of this is pieced together, but § 1030 says:

Whoever knowingly causes the transmission of a program, information, code, or command, and as a result of such conduct, intentionally causes damage without authorization, to a protected computer; and loss to 1 or more persons during any 1-year period aggregating at least $5,000 in value, shall be punished (with) a fine under this title or imprisonment for not more than one year, or both.

The term "computer" means an electronic, magnetic, optical, electrochemical, or other high speed data processing device performing logical, arithmetic, or storage functions, and includes any data storage facility or communications facility directly related to or operating in conjunction with such device, but such term does not include an automated typewriter or typesetter, a portable hand held calculator, or other similar device.

The term "protected computer" means a computer which is used in interstate or foreign commerce or communications.
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Post by Dr. Whiplash »

JOB OPENING - A national radio network is looking for a sports talk host...
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Post by Dave Allen »

So what was his beef with the site?
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Post by Ace Purple »

Cowherd acted like it was just a site one of his producers found by chance.
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Post by herdgirl72 »

He keeps stealing all the "herd" stuff...like one of his fan sites or
something(not exactly sure) that he just started he calls the
"Thundering Herd".....I've never really liked him....

now Dan Patrick....he's my man.....
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Post by Dr Fever »

Dr. Whiplash wrote:JOB OPENING - A national radio network is looking for a sports talk host...
hopefully they replace Cowherd with someone who doesn't make me want to climb into my radio hoping i'll show up in his studio so I can slap the piss out of him.
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Post by Dave Allen »

I used to be a big fan of Todd Wright who used to host ESPN Radio's "All Night" program. He left to go to either Fox Sports Radio or Sporting News Radio. They replaced him with Jason Smith, whom I don't care for at all.

'Course I like Jim Rome, so what do I know?
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Post by Dr. Whiplash »

I'm surprised they've stuck with Cowherd this long. IMO he's a weak link in the lineup and often sounds desperate to keep it moving. Now that he became desperate enough to maybe cost ABC some serious $$$, I bet he'll be eased out soon.

Speaking of questionable programming moves, last fall WBNS-AM Columbus decided to expand Chris Spielman's midday show from 1 to 3 hours. That's questionable, but they ditched Ohio native and smartass (but I repeat myself) Dan Patrick instead of starting Spielman after Mike & Mike. There's been a lot of criticism in Klumbus but they've stuck with it. Maybe this is an opportunity for ESPN and WBNS to make a change.
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Post by Dave Allen »

I also enjoyed Rob Dibble's work when he was with Patrick.
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Post by Ace Purple »

Cowherd apologized for calling for the DoS attack on thebiglead.com yesterday, though it hardly sounded sincere to me.

http://thebiglead.com/?p=2082
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Post by OldSkool »

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Post by Ace Purple »

The Cowherd story is now up on All Access.
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Post by The Snake »

Ace Purple wrote:The Cowherd story is now up on All Access.

I never hear of thebiglead.com until the Cow-turd story broke. It's a cool blog for a sports fan.


I still hate ESPN for forcing Tony Kornheisher out and bring in Cowherd. Tony was radio gold.

Cowherd just makes up stuff to piss off listeners and get phone calls. He thinks he's the Howard stern of ESPN radio.
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