To say I’m not surprised we’re here is an understatement, this has obviously been coming for a while, a few of us predicted it, a couple of us have written about it only to be told we don’t know what we’re talking about. However, when you watch the numbers and have at least half a sense of how business works it was pretty clear to see that a website that did everything it could do to piss off its customer base was bound to end up either going in a different direction or folding.

When TSN announced this week that they were disbanding the site in its current form many immediately came out and started exchanging their emails and messages of goodbye. They also voiced their displeasure over the call.  Now they might be eliminating the community there in the current form it is in, but whatever it is they’re planning is not going over very well. The rug was pulled out from under many who have called that place home for sports commentary and camaraderie from as far back as 2004, and from the looks of the site that they’re installing there’s not much chance that’s really what people want. Was it a bad business move? I think so. Jeff Price, the new president of TSN thinks what people really want is sports on the go, which is another way to say he’s banking on the Blackberry crowd for a lot of traffic. I’ve looked at the current posts up by their writing staff and only one had any “LIKES”, which in translation means so far no one is interested in the idea of promoting this format at all.  

Personally I’d like to see the research Price used before he came to this decision, because from what I’m looking at right now it makes me say –“I’m not getting it”, I understand the concept, I’m just not sure it was wise to begin a networking format when the whole idea behind it depends on reader’s promoting it and the very reader’s you’ve counted on for years are being shafted so it’s hard to fathom they’d stay around to do you a favor. It also seems the demographic they’ll be reaching are those in the 17-25 age group with the launch of Rowdy.com and that as of now isn’t even complete. So it’s safe to say they didn’t learn anything from the 2.0 debacle that blew up in their face. What a mess that was if you recall.

But from one’s loss is another’s gain,  we’ve learned a few of the member’s at TSN are launching in the coming month or so their own site and we wish them all the luck in the world with that, and we also have seen some rollover from TSN as well. If the powers that be would like to know where all their traffic went, all they need to do is click to a few outside places and they’ll see where they went, because they aren’t there. When they stop by here I’ll personally hand Jeff Price and Marcus DiNitto (when he makes his way back from Santa Monica, where he was sent to work with Yahoo on TSN’s behalf) their very own Gold Plunger by Binford, because this week “Sporting News FEED” is the “YGS Tool of the Week”!!!

The runner up in this week’s voting was Antonio Cromartie from the New York Jets, who has so many kids, mostly three year olds, that he has trouble remembering their names on command. There are only a couple of reasons I could see this happening; one, he hasn’t ever met them, so out of site out of mind, or, he’s just not in the practice of writing their names on the memo line of his child support checks. Either way, it sure looked pretty bad on camera for this year’s Hard Knock’s show on HBO. There he was, eye’s rolling, trying to name them and count them on his fingers, pausing between names like he was asked to name the 50 states alphabetically…what a dolt. I don’t know what’s worse, that he had an over-active libido that produced numerous offspring in ’07-08, or that he never thought to consult Larry Johnson first before he went without purchasing at least one box of Trojans. For Antonio, we at the Gab have a real special surprise; Antonio gets to choose from one of these two gifts, we’re donating either a lifetime supply of stickers that say “HELLO, My NAME IS…” or the cost of a vasectomy. We’ll let you all know what Antonio says when we hear back from his agent, if he can remember who it is.