Stephen Rodrick writes in Slate that television has killed the sports columnist. He’s right! As Exhibit A he offers up Stephen A. Smith, the annoying, untalented ESPN head and Philadelphia Inquirer columnist. (Smith’s boss at the Inquirer disputes Rodrick’s thesis, saying that the “multi-tasking” hasn’t affected Smith’s newspaper work. He’s right, too–Smith was always a terrible writer.)

But while Rodrick has diagnosed the disease correctly, he’s mistaken on some of the symptoms. Most notably, he bashes the Washington Post‘s Tony Kornheiser. But in reality, Kornheiser is one of the few working sports columnists who still pays attention to the actual craft of writing. His columns are very solid stuff, despite his TV stardom.

Even so, reading Rodrick will probably get you shaking your head and saying, Amen.

If you haven’t already, you should check out J-Log Online. They’ve been nice enough to advertise on Galley Slaves, but don’t hold that against them! A site this interesting deserves a look.

Hugo Chavez may be the most under-reported story in the world today and Thor Halvorssen has an excellent piece on the strong-man’s latest ties to terrorism. Sooner or later, Bush is going to have to get serious about Chavez. Particularly if he’s serious about all of that stuff from his inaugural address.

Halvorssen has written an important piece it deserves to be widely read.

Hugh Hewitt has a fairly persuasive piece which argues that the blogosphere is to news today what television was in 1950–a force which is going to completely remake all of our information institutions.

I still disagree with the blog evangelists in many of the particulars: For instance, Hugh argues against the importance of traditional Big Media saying, “Sure, the Washington Post can ‘break’ the news that the Pentagon is revamping its intelligence operations, but the moment it is in print it has traveled the globe and a thousand or ten thousand commentaries are registering. The Post no more gets to define the significance of that reorganization than I do.”

As I’ve said before, this is a pretty important difference, no? Without the news that the Post breaks, the blogosphere would have nothing to talk about except for its sleep apnea disorder.

But Hugh is undoubtedly right about the market for news analysis–which the blogosphere may stand to completely obliterate. It’s not crazy to think that 20 years from now op-ed pages and opinion magazine might be a thing of the past, leaving Big Media to do only news gathering. Does that sound like a bad thing?

You’ve probably already seen this, but I hadn’t.

WARNING: The following item is yet another appraisal of the newly reborn Georgetown Hoyas.

It might not seem like a big deal, but the fact that the Georgetown men’s basketball team has received five votes in the Associated Press poll and four in the ESPN Coaches’ poll is nothing to laugh at. Fine, laugh at it. But it still marks an incredible comeback for a team that went 13-15 last season–and losing 15 of its last 18 games. The Hoyas are currently 12-5 (4-2 in the Big East). The five votes received for this week are the first such votes in almost two years. ESPN currently predicts the Hoyas not only to make it to the Big Dance but to be seeded 7th against a 10-seed (Maryland). The Washington Post last week put us in an 8-9 matchup.

Tonight the Hoyas face off against St. John’s–a team that will not make it to the postseason due to NCAA infractions. But a conference win is a conference win, which they will need before they head to Boston and face the undefeated Eagles.

To fully grasp the turnaround under coach John Thompson III, see my previous lament in The Daily Standardfrom two years ago, followed by the sacking of former coach Craig Esherick a year later.

Galley Friend B.W. sends along this amazing video clip of a young baller named Henry Bekkering. It’s pretty amazing and reminds me of the legend of Earl “The Goat” Manigault. The Goat was a playground fixture in New York back in the day:

In the 1960s, the New York playground scene was dominated by Earl “The Goat” Manigault. In the ten years he played basketball, from age twelve to twenty-two, Manigault created a powerful legend. Just over six feet tall, he once dunked over Lew Alcindor (the legendary seven-foot center from a New York high-school who led UCLA to three national collegiate championships and, after changing his name to Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, had one of the longest, most productive careers in the history of the NBA). Manigault is the only person ever to perform a double-dunk, and his greatest regret was never being able to perfect sitting on the rim after a dunk, something he decided to try because he noticed that during dunks, “my waist would be hovering near the rim.”

Unfortunately, The Goat dropped out of college, got hooked on heroin, and after age 22 never played seriously again. We’ll never know how great he could have been.

In 1998 The Goat died at the age of 53. I hope that he’s looking down on young Henry Bekkering and smiling.

Larry Miller has one of the most wonderful remembrances of Johnny Carson.