7. Keith Olbermann: The MSBC anchor returned to ESPN Radio this month, providing listeners with an entertaining hour alongside Dan Patrick. More important, Olbermann put a human touch on Peter Jennings' death during his MSNBC show by discussing his own longtime pipe and tobacco habit, and the resulting benign tumor that was removed from his mouth. ("We are all sad about Peter Jennings. Me, I feel sad and guilty. But if his death has saddened you and you smoke and you want to do something about it, something for him, stop smoking. Or get somebody else to stop smoking.') For this, he was reportedly (according to the New York Daily News) excoriated by MSNBC president Rick Kaplan, and blasted by the message board critics for being self-serving. So here's praising Olbermann for not blowing the usually maudlin smoke when it comes to tributes. 

8. John Madden, gamer and children's author: Forget about Madden's new Sunday Night Football gig on NBC come 2006 or his huge role on ABC's lame-duck season of Monday Night Football. The latest Madden football game from EA Sports hit stores this week (Madden 2006) and the reviews, at least from this site, are pretty impressive. SI.com Adam Duerson calls it the best Madden game ever. Now comes word that Madden has signed a deal with Penguin Publishing to write a children's book -- John Madden's Heroes of Football: The Story of America's Game. The book will be out in Fall 2006 and we're pretty sure it will include at least one BOOM!.

9. The New York Post's sports media critics, Phil Mushnick and Andrew Marchand: Fearless, and highly readable, the Post's duo have been firing at a fever pitch in the past five weeks. For starters, here's Mushnick on ESPN's Chris Berman: "Berman's nicknames are just wordplays on players' given names, wordplays that have nothing to do with the athlete and everything to do with promoting Berman. "He knows the difference, but he consistently pretends not to." Mushnick has also scolded Stephen A. Smith ("As ESPN continues to spread Smith here, there and everywhere, Smith continues to generate more heat but almost no light). Marchand's reporting is top-notch, and his Friday column offers an often uproarious memo to television programmers. Both are must-read for sports television fans.

10. Terrell Owens: T.O. has gone O.T. on ESPN. On Thursday, Owens conducted three separate interviews on three different shows (PTI, SportsCenter and at the half of the Packers-Chargers preseason game). He also appeared on ESPNews when he held an impromptu conference at Eagles camp. Thus, we better not hear from a single ESPN outlet about T.O overload because the folks in Bristol are driving this story with same panache Fernando Alonso pilots his Renault.

THE BOTTOM ONE

KNBR-AM: Not a good month for the San Francisco all-sports radio station. Talk-show host Larry Krueger was fired this week after leveling both Giants hitters ("brain-dead Caribbean hitters hacking at slop nightly") and septuagenarian manager Felipe Alou (Krueger said Alou's brain had turned to Cream of Wheat) with ill-advised comments that had ageist and racist overtones. Krueger's inanity prompted Alou to quit his KNBR pregame radio show, as well as offer his own misguided remark on ESPN's Outside The Lines (The manager referred to the host as "this messenger of Satan"). Krueger was initially suspended for a week and probably would have survived had KNBR's staffers not foolishly followed up by using clips from South Park and Saturday Night Live to mock Alou's Satan soundbite in a skit on its morning show. That prompted the firing of Krueger and two staffers.