The HuffPost Live Critique Thread For 12/3/12: The Same Old Sad Sports Fail

Having had the pleasure and gratitude of being on Huff Post Live (HPL) four times in the past,  I say with all due respect that unless there is a disclaimer from their host starting a segment that they are not an expert in sports that they would stop doing sports segments until they get a host with a sports journalism background or truly respected sports reporting chops.

It's emabrrassing, and frankly, it's pathetic when their male hosts try and do sports segments and look disastrous in doing so with incomplete or antiquated framing to begin the discussion and just wrong statements throughout.

Later today as of this post, the HPL-LA with Jacob Soboroff will be doing two more sports related segments, though one of them will be on the Kasandra Perkins tragedy. The first will be about Barry Bonds, Roger Clemons, and Sammy Sosa being eligible for the Hall of Fame, and Soboroff has already framed it with the generic, tired fan cliche argument that if they were to get into the Hall of Fame, it should be with an asterisk.

Last week Marc Lamont Hill, who I really do like as a person and political/social/cultural commentator,  created another poor sports segment on HPL from his cliche' column on Jeremy Lin not being an elite point guard in the NBA, like elite sports reporters and figures across ESPN and Sports Illustrated were placing him in the Hall of Fame or multiple All-star games based on his magical February.

Saying inaccurate things about Lin's Knicks tenure, like "teams left Lin open a lot" when that was certainly not true since Lin had the ball in his hands most of the time and penetrated in D'Antoni's and even Mike Woodson's offenses, with a firm conviction in those false comments being correct is common when any HPL guy does a sports segment.

That is painful typical of people who are not sports reporters or professional sports pundits, and those simple mistakes are something that Hill, Soboroff, Sacks and any HPL host or producer has done while doing a sports segment outside of Janet Varney and Nancy Redd, who did a great job being honest and doing segments learning about sports instead of thinking they were experts.

I don't say just because I'm banned there for just being honest and vocal about their shadiness in their comments section. They say I was being too mean, but when you deal with conservative trolls and people who don't know it all, then sometimes you will sound mean to those people who are wrongly informing people in the comments.

It's just the fundamental disregard of sports as being facetious and not worth our full respect like real important news issues of our time that really bothers me when HPL does sports segments.

Most of the audience there finds it weird that sports segments are even there at HPL and can clearly tell that its hosts don't have a consistent firm grasp of it.

And they will continue to embarrass themselves with these poor efforts unless they are either upfront about their lack of sports expertise or just get someone to conduct segments with definite professional sports expertise.