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Dateline– December the twelfththth, two thousand eleven, Sixers press release:

Philadelphia 76ers Chief Executive Officer and co-Owner Adam Aron announced yesterday via his Twitter account (@SixersCEOAdam) that life-long Philadelphian and veteran broadcaster Tom Lamaine will be the team’s new Public Address Announcer for home games at the Wells Fargo Center beginning this season. Additionally, Aron announced that Matt Cord has been promoted to “Senior Correspondent” for the team’s official web site SIXERS.COM.

“The new owners of the Philadelphia 76ers have promised transformational changes in the game presentation for the Sixers when we play home games at the Wells Fargo Center. We are also committed to dramatically boosting content on our web site, SIXERS.COM,” Aron said. “With this announcement, we have made progress to achieve both goals.” 

 

Today:

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Que es?

This summer the Sixers said that Lamaine, who is 706, would not return, mostly because he performed his duties with the gusto of Jim Lehrer narrating the signing of a peace treaty. So, the team held a tryout to find his replacement. Some of our radio friends, 97.3 ESPN’s Mike Gill and WIP’s Brian Startare, auditioned, and I think either would have done a fine job. Cord, too, tried out… for his old job, ostensibly because he was tired of letting his many talents go to waste doing nonsensical interviews with G-list celebrities for the Sixers.com video page – whose daily visits must be in the tens! – and he wound up winning his old job back.

WHAT?! GAH! THE SAME THE GUY?!!

The same guy.

I have no issues with Cord– thought he was fine and didn’t see the need to replace him with Lamaine. But why bring him back? If you’re keeping score at home (I am, because I make a living performing such completely meaningless tasks), this is now two contests the Sixers have held – the mascot fiasco was the first one – that have ended in a stalemate of sorts. God knows what happened to poor souls Big Ben, B. Franklin Dogg, and Phil E. Moose. I can only imagine that they’re swimming with Phil A. O-Fishadelphia at the bottom of the Delaware. And that sucks, because I don’t think moose can swim in deep water, and certainly not when they’re carrying a basketball and wearing a revolutionary period jacket:

image from mobilwi.typepad.com

A moment of silence for Phil E….

Back to the rant. 

So the mascot thing went nowhere. And now the PA announcer search has led us back to Cord. It’s like what happened on the short-lived NBC reality series Average Joe. The show’s second season tried to find sexy sweetheart Larissa Meek an average-looking guy with a heart of gold, but she wound up picking one of the late-arriving studly heels, Gil Hyatt, over nerdy Bostonian and awwww pick him fan favorite Brian Worth


image from www.hsd3.org

Hyatt quickly dumped Meek upon finding out that she used to date Fabio (yeah, for real, she used to fuck fucking Fabio). The whole thing was a disaster and the show limped through two more seasons before retreating peacefully into the land of television yesteryear so bloggers could make ridiculous references.

Now I don’t know how Cord would feel about a chick who once dated Fabio, and that probably doesn’t matter. What matters is that instead of going outside their comfort zone, the Sixers, like Meek, went with the predictable and safe choice in Cord. And that’s lame. Silly, too. Silly and lame. They made a big deal about searching for a PA announcer, giving local radio guys and others a shot at a dream job of sorts… and then settled on the original guy?

This is entirely too many words about a PA announcer, but the whole contest now feels like it was a sham. You think so too:

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Screen Shot 2012-10-11 at 2.24.02 PM
Screen Shot 2012-10-11 at 2.24.02 PM
Screen Shot 2012-10-11 at 2.24.02 PM
Screen Shot 2012-10-11 at 2.24.02 PM 

ANNNNNDREWWWWWWWWWWWW BYNUMNOMNOMNOM NOMNOMNOMNOMNOMNOM.