Let’s get it back to the Eagles.

Longtime Crossing Broad supporter Mike Missanelli spent a few minutes on Tuesday’s show talking about our Philadelphia Eagles media bracket, so we appreciate the plug. This is an important exercise, and we need as much publicity as we can get.

One thing we do not appreciate, however, are allegations of a pernicious nature. And on Mike’s program, he not only poo-poo’d Sal Paolantonio’s seeding, but pretended not to know some of the media members in the bracket and then had the audacity to claim that we STOLE the “field of 64” idea from him. That’s an absolutely outrageous assertion.

Here’s the audio:


I will answer these allegations, one by one:

“It’s not every day where I would recommended anybody going to Crossing Broad for anything pertinent, but for matters of fluff, occasionally.”

Pretty good zinger. I actually laughed at this.

But I disagree. I think the Crossing Broad staff does a nice job when embarking upon “normal” journalistic forays. Earlier this week I presented 46 observations about the Philadelphia 76ers. Bob is a baseball coach who did some good stories on Phillies Spring Training. Anthony is a veteran of the Flyers beat. We’re not bad at doing non-goofy stories.

“The last time we heard from Kevin, by the way, he was illustrating his ignorance to the barriers faced by lower socioeconomic candidates for unpaid internships.”

Well, the great thing is that you don’t need to do unpaid internships to land a sports media gig! But if you are already supporting yourself financially and can add unpaid work for experience, I would recommend it. It’s not exploitation if it’s optional.

“Today, like many others before him, he stole the concept of the field of 64, for his own personal use…. like I perfected many years ago in this town.”

Now this is rich. Mike Missanelli claiming proprietorship of the field of 64 is one of the most ridiculous things the selection committee has ever heard. Everybody and their mother does a bracket of something when March comes around. It could be a bracket of Italian foods, or Alt Rock bands, in which case I’d have Chicken Parm and Sonic Youth as #1 seeds, respectively. But to sit here and allege that you have field of 64 hegemony, when these exercises are so widespread and pervasive, is bananaland. It would be like Al Gore telling people he invented the internet, when his actual contribution was introducing legislation to advance the technology.

“Ray Didinger pretty much invented football, as far as I’ve been told.”

Now listen, when you make a snarky comment about Ray Diddy, you are really going out on a limb. We’re talking about the #1 overall seed, a universally respected guy, and a Hall of Famer. You don’t have to like Didinger, and you’re perfectly entitled to feel however you’d like about him, but shading Ray puts Mikey Miss into a small and not very vocal minority. This is a preposterous reach, even by Mike’s standards.

“The fourth seed, I don’t know who this is. Who’s John McMullen? I’m sorry. I don’t know who John McMullen is.”

I’m pretty sure Mike knows who John is, and that he’s just acting like he doesn’t know him because he frequently appeared on ANOTHER RADIO STATION and has connections to JAKIB Media, which has/had links to ex-Fanatic hosts Eytan Shander, Harry Mayes, and Tony Bruno. I wouldn’t rule out Mike telling the truth here, but I had to guess, he’s probably being petty.

As a blanket response, the selection committee was high on John McMullen as a veteran soothsayer, a non-hot taker who offers measured opinions and asks good questions on the Zoom calls. As a result, he made the bracket as the #4 seed in the Chris Gocong regional.

“He (Sheil Kapadia) has a seventh seed, which I thought is a pretty low seed.”

RE: Sheil, the committee would have ranked him as a #1 seed if he was exclusively covering the Eagles. But since he’s more of a national type these days, we explained it this way in the introductory post, which apparently nobody read:

“Maybe they’re jack-of-all-trades columnists without a specific focus. As such, we seeded those people lower, not necessarily because their work isn’t good, but because they aren’t as involved on a daily basis as, say, somebody like Les Bowen or Jeff McLane. For instance, Sheil Kapadia is more of a national guy these days, due to a shift in duties at The Athletic, and therefore he’s gonna be seeded lower than what he would have been if he was a full-time Eagles beat. Same with the general columnists at the Philadelphia Inquirer.

This is how the committee ruled.

More Mike:

“Here is the ultimate disrespect. Sal Pal gets a 12 seed in this tournament? Oh my God!” 

Tyrone and Natalie are both right in their follow up comments.

Number one, Sal is not exclusively an Eagles guy, so, per the established rules, he drops a bit. And when Tyrone says we were trying to teach Sal a message, that’s 100% correct.

The selection committee penalized Sal Pal for giving the worst Eagles take of the last decade. The most asinine opinion in recent memory, when he said the Eagles should be “investigated” for tanking the final game of the season. He then went on MIKE’S SHOW, Mike lobbed him softball questions, Sal couldn’t defend his take, and then hung up to end the call.

When you say something that outrageous, and then don’t even have the ammunition to back it up, you get a #12 seed in the tournament. Sal Pal, in the opinion of the committee, should just be lucky he earned a berth at all.

“Who else is a five seed? I don’t know who that is. I don’t know who that is either.”

One of the five seeds is Howard Eskin, so of course Mike isn’t going to say his name on the air. Another five-seed is wunderkind Benjamin Solak, who knows more about Xs and Os than any “expert” Mike has had on his show over the last ten years. But Mike probably doesn’t read Bleeding Green or explore new media outside of Crossing Broad, and prefers to go the old-school route with the legacy types, who romanticize sports journalism in somewhat goofy fashion.

Anyway, good segment from Mike. In four minutes, he dissed Ray Didinger, pretended he didn’t know some other people, and then alleged that we stole the field of 64 concept from him, even though the original idea was inspired by Brian Haddad, who used to work at “the other station.”