Greg A. Bedard, the Boston Globe's NFL reporter, himself in an odd spot this week.
Until November, Bedard had been covering the Green Bay Packers for the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel. Thus, this week, with the Packers coming into Gillette Stadium Sunday night to take on the Patriots, Bedard finds himself a popular fellow. His knowledge of his old team puts him in good stead to write insightful columns for the Globe this week.
At the same time, Bedard, who is very engaging and accessible on Twitter (@Greg_A_Bedard) finds himself a target of many Packers fans who enjoyed his work covering their team. He's been asked countless times which team he is a "fan" of (Bedard smartly gives the answers that he is not a fan of any team), and is accused of having turned on them and somehow betrayed the Packers and their fanbase.
He's handled the situation with grace, saying of the Green Bay fans, "They love their team." He went on further to say that it's been a rough week for the fans in Wisconsin, referring to the injury to star quarterback Aaron Rodgers, who seems unlikely to take the field on Sunday night.
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Comcast SportsNet New England made a couple of hires this week, adding veteran Boston TV and Radio anchor and reporter Bob Neumeier and former Big Ten Network and Fox Sports Northwest reporter Nicole Zaloumis to their stable of anchors and reporters for the network's nightly SportsNet Central program.
The addition of Neumeier, well known to Boston fans, lends the network even more credibility, especially among viewers who remember Neumeier from his long stint at WBZ-TV. Zaloumis appears to be the replacement for Jackie Pepper, who did not have her contract renewed recently.
CSNNE also announced that they have renewed the contracts of Michael Felger, Gary Tanguay and Donny Marshall.
The station also came up with a neat little programming series, scheduling up college games of many of the most popular Celtics, including Ray Allen at UConn, Paul Pierce at Kansas, Shaq and Glenn Davis at LSU, Rajon Rondo at Kentucky and even Danny Ainge at BYU. The series runs Friday, Saturday and Sunday, starting at 7:00 PM Friday night.
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NESN made a little news of its own on Thursday, announcing that they've partnered with FOXsports.com to provide Boston and New England area content to the national FOXSports.com website. The move is part of FOX's strategy to imitate ESPN.com's series of locally-based mini-sites. The will also allow the sites plenty of cross-promotion, hopefully to the benefit of each.
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The Red Sox beat at the Providence Journal has been something of a rotating door as of late, with Sean McAdam, Steve Krasner, Brian MacPherson, Joe McDonald and Daniel Barbarisi all spending time on it. Barbarisi is the latest to move on, reportedly heading to the Wall Street Journal, where he will cover the Yankees and Mets in the Journal's new expanded emphasis on sports. Babarisi grew up a Yankees fan, something that never slipped into his coverage of the Red Sox.
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Boston hip-hop veteran and huge NFL fan Mr. Lif (aka Jeff Haynes) does a weekly NFL show on 106.7 The Fan in Washington, DC. He’s also going to begin contributing blogs for Boston Magazine come February. You can check out his show online here: Big Games with J. Haynes vol 2. Each week, the show will be booking NFL guests and he'll be doing a weekly NFL ‘Rap-Up’ where he raps about the previous week in the NFL each show.
Link of the week:
All Sports News Will Now Be Broken On Twitter - Business Insider notes that Sports reporters give away all their best scoops on Twitter.
Hub radio host blasted over sex poll - I'm not sure I would've liked to have been Michael Felger when he came home from work after this.