8:56 PM ET. Full disclosure: I am deeply regretting the commitment I made to review these episodes. I don’t even want to watch them. But I do love a Liev Schreiber voiceover. For me, he stands with Peter Coyote as our finest documentary voiceover artists. (Coyote does many of the epic Ken Burns films.)

8:59 PM ET. How many of these Game of Thrones series need to exist? I watched a few episodes of this latest one and it’s just people arguing in old timey conference rooms about tactics. Boring as boring can be.

9:03 PM ET. Blues Brothers music…already. This is going to be a tough watch.

9:05 PM ET. Liev sounds a bit weathered. The depth of his vocal is missing. Not happy about this.

9:06 PM ET. I guess Cole Kmet is not a draw for White Sox fans. What was the attendance that day? 11?

9:06 PM ET. Eberflus: “Winning doesn’t make you a winner.” I disagree, Matt. I believe that’s the only requirement.

9:08 PM ET. They are MILKING the first ten minutes of this episode. They can’t have much.

9:12 PM ET. Caleb couldn’t sing. “You don’t have to be able to carry a tune, to carry a team,” Liev says. This show is written by children.

9:16 PM ET. Very excited about the Harris/Walz ticket. Walz seems a genuinely good dude who’ll connect with the union/rural voter that Dems have lost to the Trump types over the last eight years.

9:17 PM ET. If they knew Saban was going to be there this week (episode) they should have made the entire thing about him. Let him host the episode. He’s a compelling figure.

Read More …

Fan and media access to NFL training camps is a double-edged sword. On one side, access is fun. Fans seems to genuinely enjoy going to camp practices and reporting what they see on their social feeds. Media members know how voracious the fan hunger is for new NFL content and gets tons of mileage out of their analysis of 7-on-7s and late-practice red zone sessions. And if you have video?!?! Click click click click click click click click click.

But one must always remember that we are in an era, despite this unprecedented access, of intense franchise secrecy. The access is measured, controlled. Teams are not going to show a single supporter or reporter anything that could potentially put them at a competitive disadvantage when they start keeping score in September. And that is what makes the prospect of the Chicago Bears appearing on HBO’s now ubiquitous Hard Knocks series this summer a complicated endeavor.

Hard Knocks Schedule

• Episode 1 – Tuesday, August 6, 9 p.m. ET
• Episode 2 – Tuesday, August 13, 9 p.m. ET
• Episode 3 – Tuesday, August 20, 9 p.m. ET
• Episode 4 – Tuesday, August 27, 9 p.m. ET
• Episode 5 – Tuesday, September 3, 9 p.m. ET

Hard Knocks is reality television, and not since the days when Herm Edwards and Rex Ryan were involved has it been particularly good reality television (if such a thing exists). Reality television thrives on big personalities and fabricated drama. The ripped, Australian deckhand and the one-arm chef both like the busty second stew! But only one can make out with her in the hot tub! Which one will it be? (For those of you unfamiliar with Below Deck, those sentences will be gibberish.)

Read More …