by Jason Whitlock

10. My man Charles Barkley, my favorite sports broadcaster, might want to ponder the notion that he is being unwittingly set up for failure by competing television networks and media outlets.

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Sir Charles is insightful, entertaining and laugh-out-loud irreverent when talking about all things NBA, including the social issues that impact basketball. Chuck runs circles around John Madden, Dick Vitale, Don Cherry, Kirk Herbstreit and whoever is supposed to be the broadcasting face of baseball.

But Madden, Vitale, Cherry, Herbstreit and whoever is supposed to be the broadcasting face of baseball all have one distinct advantage over Chuckie. They stay in their lanes. No one asks them to comment on issues outside their area of expertise. And if they did comment on something outside their main sport, it would not be treated as rewrite-SportsCenter, stop-the-presses news.

Given his recent, inaccurate statements about Turner Gill and Auburn, I'm not surprised that Barkley's hometown police popped him for DUI and wrote an inflammatory, published-at-TMZ.com report detailing Sir Charles' allegedly drunken pursuit of a head(-coaching) job.

When you don't stay in your lane, you give your critics and enemies an excuse to pull you over and cite you for credibility-killing buffoonery.

I'm not jumping on any high horse. I don't see nothing wrong with a little bump and grind. I'm a Barkley fan. He just needs to learn the words "no comment" and use them together from time to time.

The competing TV executives will be more than happy to air Barkley's thoughts on the mortgage crisis, health-care reform, Manny Ramirez and the 65-pound mole removed from Ginny Sack's ass. (I have no idea why I just thought of The Sopranos).

9. Turner Gill and the Buffalo Bulls win the Mid-American Conference and Miami of Ohio and Eastern Michigan hire Mike Haywood and Ron English. Coincidence? No.

Winning trumps whining every day of the week. Gill's success at Buffalo created opportunities for two more black coaches within the MAC. This is the way opportunity has always been won for minorities throughout American history.

Let me personalize this for a quick moment. I have always known that I got to write columns here, at the Kansas City Star and previously at ESPN and AOL because Ralph Wiley, Bryan Burwell, Mike Wilbon and William Rhoden performed at such high levels as sports writers in the 1980s and 1990s.

No amount of whining could produce the job opportunities for black sports writers that Wilbon, Rhoden, Burwell and Wiley generated with their rise to the top of my profession.

Rather than whining about what job white folks won't give us, we'd be better served providing whatever ethical support we can to ensure that Gill, Haywood, English, Randy Shannon and the others have success where they are.

The Sam Cunningham route -- 135 yards and two TDs vs. Alabama and Bear Bryant -- is undefeated in the fight for equal opportunity.

8. If a network really wanted to improve its game-day coverage of college football, it would hire and pair Andre Ware and Chris Spielman to do color commentary.

Turner Gill didn't get the Auburn job, but his success at Buffalo has helped other black coaches land jobs. (Gregory Shamus / Getty Images)

Spielman and Ware are underutilized at ESPN. They're terrific, and they'd be stars working together. They know the game. They're prepared. They have passion for the game. And they're insightful.

They could probably call NFL games too. But I'd leave 'em at the collegiate level because they were both better college players than pros. Spielman was a very good NFL player, but he was a beast at Ohio State. Ware, of course, flopped in the NFL after winning the Heisman.

With Ware and Spielman working together, you'd have an offensive and defensive quarterback analyzing the game.

This idea is too easy and makes too much sense for it to ever happen.

7. If you've ever wondered what makes Bill Simmons the second-best sports columnist working today, check out this column written in November about the death of NFL home-field advantage.

Wow. I've spent the past month obsessing over this column and recommending it to friends in and out of the sports-writing profession. It's brilliant. It combines humor, useful information, analysis, storytelling, original thought and a fan's perspective. It's the best thing I've read on the NFL this year (excluding the NFL Truths).

Simmons gets hammered by many traditional sports writers. They say he doesn't report, writes too long and cracks stale jokes. They're wrong. They're jealous.

If newspapers consistently wrote pieces like the Simmons' piece referenced here, newspaper sports columnist wouldn't be losing their relevance and influence so rapidly.

Traditional sports writers are so caught up in the 1980s and 1990s, Mitch Albom model of overwritten narrative of things we've already seen on television that our industry fails to recognize that the publishing of original ideas is the only thing of value we can consistently offer.

Simmons is a star because he specializes in original thought.

6. Given what I just wrote about Simmons, it's no surprise that I think ESPN wasted 3 million bones on Rick Reilly, whose last original concept was hoodwinking ESPN into giving him a golden parachute from Sports Illustrated, back-page irrelevancy.

Oh, Reilly had his day. He was at the top of the game when he broke news about a Michael Jordan comeback. Reilly's descent began in 2002 when he sanctimoniously asked another grown man (Sammy Sosa) to pee in a cup.

By the time ESPN made it rain on Reilly he was more qualified to work the door at Spearmint Rhino than make more money at the Worldwide Leader than Simmons, Wilbon, Van Pelt and countless others.

Despite the improved platform, his columns create zero buzz and his television commentaries make Mike Lupica seem informed, Jay Mariotti sound clever and Skip Bayless appear genuine.

Please, God, take me tonight and bring me back as a washed-up, 50-something American white man. Only in America.

5. Dan Patrick is still upset with me about my preseason criticism of NBC's "Football Night in America," so let me take a moment and do some postseason clarifying.

No offense Dan, but at the end of an NFL Sunday, I want real analysis, not inside jokes. (Peter Kramer / Getty Images)

I didn't like the show. It needs to be revamped. It's built around Patrick and Keith Olbermann reading highlight packages. Analysis and commentary are secondary to Patrick and Olbermann trading inside jokes and giving ESPN the finger.

I get the jokes and I have no problem with anyone publicly giving ESPN the finger. I happen to think Patrick and Olbermann are really, really good. But after a day of watching football, I want the kind of meaty analysis I get from Berman, Jackson, Saunders and Dilfer at ESPN or Terry, Jimmy, Howie, Michael and Curt at FOX.

Plus, Olbermann is now a political figure. When I hear his voice, I want to hear nothing but Sarah Palin jokes. I loved Olbermann during the presidential race. (I'm not a Democrat or Republican. I just despised Paris Palin.)

Olbermann is no different from Rush Limbaugh. KO is too divisive to be dropped in the middle of a football show.

Anyway, fix the show by punting Olbermann and making Costas and Patrick switch places with Tiki Barber and Jerome Bettis. Hold on, punt Tiki and Jerome, too. Let Cris Collinsworth lead the show with a couple of guys who can keep pace with Collinsworth's commentary.

4. Remember when that Chicago-area sports columnist, Mike Nadel, blasted Erin Andrews for wearing the skimpy dress to and flirting inside the Cubs clubhouse? He was right, and Andrews was wrong.

Erin Andrews ... just one of the guys? (J. Meric / Getty Images)

What put it over the top for me were her post-controversy statements about just being one of the guys and the players all viewing her as a sister.

As much as I would like to, I don't know Erin Andrews. But I refuse to believe she's as airheaded as the excuse she offered up. And if she is, I really, really want to know Erin Andrews ... in a big-brother-little-sister way. Sounds like a big brother is exactly what she needs.

You see why I didn't write about this at the time? I have no discipline. And if I don't stop now, I'm going to start naming names of specific things I've witnessed inside professional and collegiate locker rooms when things turn incestuous between brothers and sisters.

Let me add the obligatory: The overwhelming majority of female sports writers are very professional.

3. I'm still waiting for sports blogs to police themselves. And it appears the wait will be just as long as the wait for traditional journalists to police themselves.

We're as bad as street gangs and corrupt cops who enforce codes of silence among their peers. Deadspin replaced Will Leitch with A.J. Daulerio, the idiot who looked over Stu Scott's shoulder at a Super Bowl party and reported on a text Scott sent to a female friend.

Leitch, editor of Deadspin at the time, was an unethical idiot for posting the man-laws-breaking gossip in the first place. But no one in the blog world or in the print media world attempted to level a penalty against Leitch or Daulerio for the crime. Well, I did.

Well, and Buzz Bissinger tried to go after Leitch. But Buzz used the wrong ammo.

Most of the media followed Richard Deitsch's lead over at SI.com. Deitsch spent much of 2008 trying to paint the picture that Leitch was the most influential man in the sports world not named Roger Goodell.

In January Leitch offered up this embarrassing explanation for stupid comments about highly respected African-American members of the sports community.

When called out on his explanation, Leitch offered up an even more inane explanation at Deadspin.

I don't think these explanations would've satisfied Deitsch and others had an athlete made the same kind of boneheaded mistake. But all of Leitch's obvious floundering was pretty much ignored.

Do I think Leitch is some sort of bigot? No. I think he's full of himself, susceptible to falling victim to the same biases we all are and believes he can do no wrong because many mainstream media members are cowards and have their heads planted in Leitch's rear end hoping he'll write something flattering about them on Deadspin.

Daulerio is next.

It's the same pattern that turned ESPN evil. Everyone decided working for ESPN or getting their scoop scrolled across the bottom of ESPN was more important than actually policing the most powerful institution in sports.

2. I'm in the process of re-watching all seven seasons of "The Shield," and Vic Mackey, Shane Vendrell, David Acevada, Claudette and Dutch are making a serious run at Avon, Stringer, McNulty, Bunk, Marlo and Snoop.

"The Wire" is still king. But, upon further review, "The Shield" is closing the gap.

The Shield is the only show I've ever watched that is significantly better the second time around. I loved it the first time. But it's incredible when you're watching the pieces fall into place that led to the Vic-Shane showdown.

Season 1 ended the exact same way as the series finale. The pilot episode is quite possibly the best first episode of any TV series in history. Season 4, starring Anthony Anderson as street kingpin Antoine Mitchell and Glenn Close as captain of The Barn, is as good as Season 1 of "The Wire."

1. The first annual Jason Whitlock sports writer of the year award goes to FOX's Jay Glazer.

For the second year in a row, Jay destroyed everyone on the NFL beat. It's not even close right now.

You can e-mail Jason Whitlock at ballstate0@aol.com.