Media Power Rankings (cont.)

An upcoming book about the Dallas Cowboys will be filled with interesting revelations, including one about former defenisve end, Charles Haley. Otto Greule Jr. Richard Deitsch's Mailbag Submit a question or comment for Richard. Name: Email: Hometown: Question: SEND Follow Richard Deitsch on Twitter

6. A.J. Daulerio, Deadspin Editor: For those who think Deadspin will fade in the post-Leitch era, I'd bet the other way. Community has always been the strength of Deadspin, even with a talented group of staffers. It remains, at least for the moment, the most powerful engine for smaller sports blogs to get run nationally. Daulerio's track record suggests that he'll push the envelope much further than Leitch (see Scott, Stuart at Super Bowl LXI), which makes him a dangerous man in this part of the world. Whether he can keep the loyalty built up by his predecessor will be his biggest challenge. Only time will tell whether he's Ray Perkins or George Seifert.

7. Jeff Pearlman, author: Full disclosure: Pearlman used to share an office next to mine during his years at Sports Illustrated, and I am unabashed fan of his work. I can also vouch that he is first-rate man away from the laptop. His upcoming book, Boys Will Be Boys, chronicles the drug, ego, and sex-fueled Cowboys dynasty of the 1990s. The writer interviewed 146 players for the book, unearthing details such as Charles Haley's fondness for exposing his genitals to teammates. It's a delicious read. But what stands out for this column's purposes is a part in the book about Skip Bayless, a well-known columnist in Dallas during the era who wrote a best-selling book -- Hell-Bent -- in 1996 on the Cowboys' championship teams. Bayless suggested in that book that Dallas quarterback Troy Aikman was gay.

"Skip Bayless could have been one of the really great columnists," former Dallas Morning News sports editor Dave Smith told Pearlman. "But as a columnist, if you are going to beat up on someone, it better be from your heart. You better feel that way. Skip attacked people for the sake of doing it. His gay take on Aikman was the most unfair thing in my 44 years as a journalist."

That, my friends, is a howitzer. It'll be interesting to see if Bayless addresses such charges when the book breaks in the fall.

8. Will Leitch, New York magazine contributing editor: One of the professional traits I most admired about Leitch, the now former editor of Deadspin, was his ability to simultaneously marinate in new and old media. It is a complex magic act and not easily achieved. As he cultivated mainstream contacts with media cognoscenti, he remained true to his site's Magna Carta, providing a portal for interesting, talented and sometimes crude sports bloggers who lacked the corporate mite and reach of mighty Gawker Media. Not only was this a brilliant content play, it also produced brand loyalty that occasionally bordered on a cult. I found it remarkable how often someone I contacted within the confines of this column -- we're talking major names in the mainstream sports media -- who would tell me they had an ongoing email discourse with Leitch. His final week at Deadspin was an exercise in brilliance and egoism. Above all, it was entertaining, from wildly strange score-settling columns to genius tributes, such as this one and this one to bon mots from the most unexpected of places.

9. Common Sense: June was a cruel month for readers and viewers. Among those who either uttered or wrote something inappropriate: Bonnie Bernstein, Justin Gimelstob, Jemele Hill and Johnny Miller. This column rarely advocates for firings or suspensions when it comes to speech, though I certainly find Don Imus (whom we don't classify as a sports broadcaster) as a serial offender of race-offensive comments. (The Imus blueprint has long been let your flunkies make questionable and race-baiting comments and feign shock when they come out -- I also don't believe for a second that he meant to point out the injustices suffered by African-Americans, via Pacman Jones.)

All of the above smartly offered apologies, including here, here, here, and here. At least such comments prompted some interesting dialogue, including a worth-reading post-suspension interview with Hill by AOL's Michael David Smith.

10. Dick Vitale, ESPN: I had initially planned to give Vitale some love this month. He's an unabashed fan of the Rays. And when Baseball Tonight contacted him on June 30 to talk about baseball's newest darlings, he offered plenty of astute points about the team, from bringing in character guys, such as Troy Percival, to the impact of the Matt Garza/Jason Bartlett for Delmon Young deal on the team's defense. He even had some funny moments with analyst Chris Singleton, who was wearing a Rays jersey in the studio.

"I've spent, out of my own pocket, over a quarter-million dollars for season tickets over an 11-year period, so I am legit," Vitale said. "I'm telling you, Singleton is a fraud right now."

If only it had ended there. A couple of nights later, ESPN foisted Vitale on the audience during the final game of the Rays-Red Sox series. During an interview with Erin Andrews, whom Vitale has worked with on college basketball, Vitale offered this bit of sophomoric analysis: "Joe Maddon has done a great job," he said. "Not as great as you, though. I tell you one thing. All I know is this: If Bo Derek is a 10, you are 15."

Last month, I used this space to criticize Rick Sutcliffe for comments he made about Andrews that were objectifying by any standard. As I wrote then: "[It is] particularly disturbing because it came from an employee of ESPN. The network and its airwaves should be the one place, above all, where Andrews is not exploited. I don't doubt Sutcliffe thought he was being a fun-loving jokester, but the message is Andrews is an object and not a broadcaster. That's a bad message."

It's clear Vitale was having fun with the interview (his wife was sitting next to him) and as anyone who knows Vitale will tell you, his adult daughters mean the world to him. He seems like a good man, no matter what you think of him as an announcer. But words matter, and by equating Andrews with Bo Derek (forget the fact that such a line has as much cultural currency as Blake Edwards), Vitale does every working female sports reporter a disservice, including his colleague. It's an objectifying comment, pure and simple, and as one of ESPN's most prominent voices, Vitale has to be better than that.