Houston.BloggersPub

First he had a flop reality show, “The Benefactor”…now he wants a pro football league?

Mark Cuban is a pretty smart guy. I’m not a Mavs fan by any stretch, but here’s what I do like about the guy: he’s interactive with the fans. Cuban personally answers their e-mails and even sits with them in the cheap seats. I can’t see Rockets owner Les Alexander doing that, heck I can’t even see Clutch the Bear doing that. Cuban’s a great NBA owner. I agree, he over-steps his boundaries and is a little obnoxious, but the guy cares. I see some owners during a game and they look like they’d rather be on their yacht watching HGTV. Cuban treats his players like royalty…although, he did screw up by trading Steve Nash but that’s water under the bridge.

So why in the hell does he want to go toe-to-toe with the big bad National Football League? A buddy of mine said it best, “Before he sets his money on fire, why not just give some to me?” Valid point. Cuban wants to make a spalsh, he wants to set a precedent. I remember a couple of leagues that didn’t do so great trying to compete with the NFL.

The USFL only lasted from 1983-35 . I was proud to call myself an Oklahoma Outlaws fan. I vividly remeber my old man lugging me to Skelly Stadium to watch Doug Williams.(remember that guy?) Too bad we only had the team for a year…after that, they moved to Arizona.

Then there was the wildly popular XFL. What a great idea! Let’s take pro wrestling and mix in a little football! AHHHH, the scantily clad cheerleaders. I was working for NBC at the time and remember when the first weeks ratings came back. We thought, “Holy Crap! This is a hit!” Then came week two…boy was that a wakeup call. Vince McMahon never quite recovered from that one. Acutally, I’m sure he’s doing just fine, financially speaking.

So as Mark Cuban and some other rich guys decide to unleash their master plan for a new football league. I have a simple piece of advice for them: Save your cash, don’t do it! The NFL is a vicious beast. You’ll never be able to compete!

Michael Penix

Catch more of Michael Penix on the Houston Sports Blog at abc13.com!

(Image courtesy of Flickr User jdlasica)

I just threw that ‘alert’ in there to get your attention. Did you feel like you were watching a cable news channel’s ticker? Or did you just ignore it in my headline like you do on a cable news channel?

Back to the point, The Chief has some news about the blue moon hanging in the sky tonight on the Weather Blog.

Make sure to look up tonight.

Big news in the tech world. Of course there is Microsoft’s new table which for some reason I’m not getting that excited about.

Not to be overshadowed, Apple released iTunes plus. Rolling Stone has more:

a new version of the music-download service that sells higher-quality tracks without copy protection for the premium price of $1.29. So far, only EMI and a few small indie labels have made a deal with Apple to sell songs without DRM (digital rights management), but since the EMI’s catalog includes Pink Floyd, Frank Sinatra, the Rolling Stones, and Coldplay, it’s a good start. (The Beatles and Radiohead are also on EMI, but neither has agreed to sell music on iTunes).

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The gang at Rolling Stone found a few problems with the service by the way.

Let’s not forget about the younger kids on the block, Google, who added street level views to it’s mapping service. Just don’t get too excited about using the new service on Houston streets. No dice my friend. We’re only the fourth largest city in the US by the way.

Go type in New York, it’s pretty cool to look at. You’ll see a ‘Street View’ tab, click that.

Ken Hoffman of the Houston Chronicle has created his own TV news draft:

Let’s imagine a new TV station is coming to Houston and it’s going to have nightly news. And all the other stations have to make free agents of their anchors, weather forecasters and sports reporters. In other words, everybody starts from scratch.

Welcome to the 2007 Houston news draft, brought to you by Miller Lite and Go Daddy. Tonight, we’ll bring you the first five rounds of the draft. Here’s the draft order. The new station will get the first pick in each round, followed by Channel 39, Channel 26, Channel 2, Channel 13 and Channel 11.

Stations must pick one male news anchor, one female news anchor, a weathercaster, a sports anchor and a general news reporter - in any order they wish. I will be making the draft selections for the new station. I promise to make good picks based on talent, ratings ability and work ethic.

I won’t be like the Houston Texans and take some anchor nobody ever heard of, just because he’ll sign cheap. That’s just stupid. Let the record show that the Texans’ record shows that.

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Ken, what about consumer reporters? My main man Jeff Ehling should be in there.

The new album by Black Rebel Motorcycle Club was recently released and it’s continuing to blow me away. I wasn’t expecting Howl, part 2–don’t know what I was expecting, actually–but I…

Some of my long-time readers may know I worked with noted urbanist Joel Kotkin last year on a study of Houston as an engine of upward social mobility. The framework that came out of that study is called “Opportunity Urbanism”, and it will be officiall…

This article on the status of Metro’s current projects such as the North Line BRT is both encouraging and frustrating….

Yesterday, the Chron Texas Politics blog reported that House Speaker Pro Tem and staunch Tom Craddick ally Rep. Sylvester Turner…

Diane Trautman alerts me to an interesting town hall meeting that took place in Crosby (small town northeast of Houston)…

According to Grits, Governor Perry’s first veto of 2007 was for HB770, a “bipartisan bill that drew no organized opposition…