For those of you in the Raleigh/Durham area, the local sports radio landscape is set to change on Monday with the disappearance of 850 the Buzz.  A few months back, Capitol Broadcasting which owns WRAL-TV, 101.5 FM and 99.9 The Fan made a move to purchase 620 AM WDNC from Curtis Media which also owns 680 AM WPTF. Curtis also bought 850 AM WRBZ which was owned by McClatchey Broadcasting.  This shakeup basically ended the two sports talk stations scenario and consolidated everything under one company, Capitol. On Monday morning, 620 the Buzz will begin broadcasting with Adam Gold and Joe Ovies taking their morning show over there.  David Glenn will be heard on 99.9 from 12-3 every day.  The rest of the Buzz/Bull personalities were apparently dismissed including Bomani Jones and long time local radio man Tony Riggsbee.

One rather significant casualty in all of this is the 850 the Buzz Blog, which Joe Ovies started around four years ago.  While no official reason was ever given for its demise, one can only assume the management at Capitol wanted to house everything on the WRAL Sports Fan website so the Thee Blog, as it came to be known, was axed.  A little known secret about the origins of this blog is that my participation on the 850 blog gave me the inclination to start THF.  Over the intervening years I developed interactions with the guys at 850 both through the blog and twice made on-air appearances.  I also credit my appearance on the 850 the Buzz blogroll(along with ACC Now) and their timely linking of things I wrote as the primary driver of traffic in the early days.

The 850 the Buzz Blog was basically a local version of Deadspin handled with a modicum of journalistic integrity and sans the gratuitous use of the F-bomb. Joe Ovies did an outstanding job bringing humor, calling out local players and coaches alike and needling the respective fan bases on a regular basis.  Ovies did his job so well that he has basically been accused of hating Duke, NCSU and UNC all at the same time. In short it was a steady stream of great content and a nice framing of the local sports stories.  The regular readers in the comments section were not too dissimilar from what we see here at THF.  Many UNC fans frequented that blog and this one as well.  By and large the discussions were level headed and thoughtful.  The level of flaming and general rivalry trash talking picked up here and there.  However, Ovies followed a model similar to the one I follow here which is to keep the trolls out by not even approving their comments to begin with.

At the end of the day, the loss of Thee Blog is a shame.  While Joe Ovies will surely be a part of the WRAL Sports Fan site, it is difficult to see a community of readers simply die.  Thee Blog was a little like the United Nations.  It was completely neutral and fans of all stripes from among the local schools congregated there to debate their respective teams.  In a day and age of anonymous internet postings where it is very easy to be a keyboard commando or spout ignorant garbage for the world to read, the community at Thee Blog kept that kind of stuff to a minimum.  Most of the readers were smart and understood not only the details and history of their own team but the other local teams as well.  It made for some interesting discussions. I, for one, will miss it.

So to Joe Ovies and the now defunct 850 the Buzz Blog, I salute you.

The question everyone has after UNC plays like this is whether or not Roy was biting the heads off live chickens while running the team to the point of losing their lunch.  Turns out that was not the case.  Green says Roy opted to use it as a teaching moment and did push for a competitive practice, possibly to ratchet the intensity up.  Given the fact this group has been together three years destroying them in practice might not be the best approach.

As for what happened Sunday night and why it happened again after everyone swore it wouldn’t following the Kansas game, Green is fairly even keel about it saying sometimes things don’t go your way and “it happens.”  To some extent that is true but at the same time Green struck me as a little nonchalant about the whole thing.

Anyway, Green indicated that the Heels were ready to move on which is probably the right attitude.  We will find out how ready Wednesday night.

UPDATE: Play has resumed at Kenan and the Heels promptly give up a TD.

That was not the sort of lightning and thunder we were expecting.  Heels are up 14-0 with 12:03 remaining in the 2nd quarter.  It has basically been the Brandon Tate Show.  Tate has an 82 yard punt return for at TD and popped off a 54 yard run to set the Heels up in the red zone and TJ Yates hit Brooks Foster for the 2nd TD.  Then the weather got nasty so the delay is in effect until they do not see lightning for 30 mins.  According the live blog at 850 the Buzz, an 8:45 restart is possible.  I do know that here in North Raleigh, things are pretty rough at the moment.

1. Why does it seem when these guys declared Ty Lawson was the one who looked most likely to leave and now it seems like he is the most likely to stay?

2. Jones also raises whether or not the parental influence is playing a role here.  He notes that Danny Green and Wayne Ellington have had fathers who were publicly involved and who also seem to be the most anxious to leave versus Lawson’s parents who have been silent.

Barnes also discusses Roy’s role in all of this and points out that he is still very much involved in the situation for all three.

Click on over there and take a listen.

So it has been two weeks since Roy and Mike Krzyzewski go in a verbal sparring match over injury reports and for reasons that pass all understanding some intrepid reporter decided to revisit it by asking Krzyzewski about it on Monday. The response was most interesting as reported by ACC Now:

Krzyzewski said Monday that he did not say “unlike other schools, we don’t release our injuries,” in a post-game radio interview with Duke broadcaster Bob Harris on Feb. 17 after Duke’s loss at Wake Forest.

The N&O asked for and received a copy of the audio file of Krzyzewski’s original post-game comments from the Duke athletics department on Monday.

The audio clip, which verified what Krzyzewski said Monday on the ACC teleconference, included the following passage:

“[Nolan Smith] hyperextended his knee. You know, we don’t put out all our injuries, you know, but we’re injured too, you know. I mean everyone’s injured.”

A few things that strike me about this.

1. Yes, 850 the Buzz missed the boat on this one which is highly unusual for them. Adam Gold, who I have had the pleasure of sitting in studio with, told ACC Now that they had a Duke source for the quote they ran in their original blog post which apparently set off the controversy. That quote included the words “other schools” which made it appear Krzyzewski was calling out UNC for their public release of injuries to the media.

2. ACC Now notes in their post that they asked Duke for the audio clip and received it after Krzyzewski’s denial he said “other schools.” No one thought to do this before? It did not cross anyone’s mind at the N&O or anywhere else to ask to hear the quote in question? I guess not which may actually speak to the credibility 850 enjoys since people ran what they quoted without checking further into it.

3. Why didn’t Duke just release the audio two weeks ago and put an end to this whole fiasco right then and there? Someone at Duke must have know 850 got the quote wrong and they were also aware that Roy had responded to that comment. If this was the case I am not sure what reason Duke had for sitting on the audio which would have corrected the erroneous public record and essentially ended the controversy. It is not like Duke or Krzyzewski was enjoying positive PR from what was happening and a quick press release with the audio would have doused the flames so we could have all not wasted time talking about. If it was as “stupid” as Krzyzewski says it was, then why not kill the story outright?

4. While Krzyzewski denies he was calling out another team because he did not use the words “other schools” I would argue the “You know, we don’t put out all our injuries, you know, but we’re injured too, you know” line seems like only a slightly more vague version of the incorrect statement. He is obviously still talking about the public release of injury info and by saying “too” he is drawing a similarity between his team and someone else. Since UNC had been releasing such information and the injury angle had been played out in the media concerning UNC, the context frames his statement to point at UNC.

So there you have it. Much ado about nothing really, now let’s be about the business of winning the ACC.

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