Welcome to Tuesday’s Morning Mashup. For the latest news, start at our WEEI.com home page or click here for the top stories from our news wire.
TUESDAY’S BROADCAST HIGHLIGHTS:MLB: NY Yankees at Boston, 7:10 p.m. (WEEI, ESPN, NESN)MLB: Oakland at LA Dodgers, 10 p.m. (MLB Network)NBA: Boston at Washington, 8 p.m. (NBCSB, TNT)NBA: Houston at LA Lakers, 10:30 p.m. (TNT)
AROUND THE WEB:
-- During an appearance on Richard Deitsch’s Sports Media podcast Monday, ESPN expert James Andrew Miller said the complete failure of ESPN’s new show Get Up would do real harm to the Worldwide Leader.
Miller said ‘the ramifications are serious’ if the already-fledgling show fails.
“I think there’s a lot at stake just in terms of the world of ESPN. This network needs to be able to deliver a successful show. It’s just as simple as that,” Miller said. “Yes, it’s hard to deliver it and all that stuff, but there’s gotta be a lot of smart people over there who have the ability to take talent that they believe in and talent that has received a lot of support from the audience before and turn it into a successful TV show. If they don’t, then I think that’s a real problem for them, beyond the salaries. The salaries are significant, but beyond the salaries, if you fail at doing this show, the ramifications are serious.”
“They need to make this show work,” he also said. “They need to make this show work not just in justifying the salaries but here’s the thing: If this show doesn’t work, ESPN, when they’re next in conversation with a piece of talent at Fox or NBC or CBS saying ‘Come over to us and we can be the home for you that you really want. You want your own show or you want to raise your profile or something. We can do that.’ Well, they need to be able to prove that.”
Get Up, which debuted April 2, has earned terrible ratings that are steadily declining and is down 24 percent over its first four shows from last year’s SportsCenter in the same time slot.
The show’s hosts, Mike Greenberg, Michelle Beadle and Jalen Rose, make a combined salary of $14.5 million.
Miller said new ESPN president Jimmy Pitaro might be more likely do something about the show than former president John Skipper.
“I think they need to get their act together by the beginning of football season. And I think that they basically have until next year’s Super Bowl,” Miller said. “I don’t think anything’s going to happen, no matter what the ratings are. That said, it’s interesting to see what Pitaro’s patience level is going to be with it versus Skipper’s because Skipper gave birth to this, and if he were still there, I think they would have had, certainly, at least a built-in margin for error that they may not necessarily have with that.”
-- Ray Lewis said Monday he thinks all of Odell Beckham Jr.’s problems stem from his lack of a relationship with God.
"Where there is no God, there is chaos,” Lewis told Colin Cowherd on The Herd. “I started to see he started to distance himself a little more and a little more and a little more. Listen to me. I don’t care about religion. I’m talking about a foundation. When your foundation is disturbed, when everything you are doing is the opposite of what got you to this place, then you are making your own life hard.”
In a video surfaced last month, Beckham appears to be using drugs with a woman in a hotel in Paris. He is also being sued for $15 million by a man who alleges he was assaulted by Beckham’s security at Beckham’s home.