Cleveland Chokes - Crowe On MNF

Just a couple quick tid-bits from this past weekend...

First, thanks to the Cleveland Indians we now have to tolerate the Boston Red Sox media storm for at least another week and if the Red Sox win the World Series (god forbid), ESPN will have some fill in for a break in the non-stop, minute-by-minute Yankee's manager search and offseason. I really wanted only teams from the 'small markets' so that the major sports media would ignore the world series all-together...but now that the Red Sox are in, the Sox will get all they hype.... Go Rockies!

Last night if you were watching Monday Night Football on ESPN you saw Russell Crowe join the 'boys in the booth' for a while in the third quarter. Right when I heard that Russell Crowe was going to sit in for a bit, I figured he must have a new movie or television show that Disney/ABC/ESPN is trying to shamelessly shill, but no. Crowe, who was given plenty of time to schlep his 'goods', was schlepping his rugby team. So my question is this then, what stake does Disney/ABC/ESPN have in Crowe's rugby team? Is Disney a part owner of the league? What is the deal? Or was Crowe merely 'cashing in a favor'? Someone in a high position within the Disney empire had to owed Crowe some free pub ... because unless the Disney empire has a stake in rugby now, I can't imagine the amount of time Crowe was allowed to pimp his team was insane. In fact, the interview was going on as Indianapolis was sacking the Jags for a safety and the game was still in the balance ... yet, the viewer was treated with Crowe talking about rugby during a football game...