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Athens, GA (Mar 4, 2008) - When we went to Camp Sertoma as kids, we had a chant that it seems Brendan O'Reilly at WBNG-TV in Binghamton, NY has taken to heart. It went like this:

We are the boys from Binghamton,
We think we're pretty neat.
We never wash our elbows,
We never wash our feet.
We carry swords and pistols, and other weapons too.
We are the boys from Binghamton, so who the hell are you?

WBNG-TV had, and still probably is, the only decent news show on TV in Binghamton (and think of that in relative terms). So I guess is is natural that Mr. O'Reilly felt that he could upbraid ESPN for the way the handled their request for video of last Saturday's Cornell win that iced their ticket to the Big Dance (aka the NCAA Men's Division I Basketball Tournament).

Now one has to wonder why ESPN did not hire a freelance ENG crew to go shoot video for their show? It is not as if they did not have enough lead time and notice to have a crew on stand-by.

Here are some excerpts from Mr. O'Reilly's blog tirade:

Thanks so much for calling my cellphone repeatedly on Saturday. Not sure how you got that number, but it sure was super to chat...

Any-who, just wanted to clear up a few things...

Yes, we are happy to share the video from Cornell clinching their Ivy League title. Hope you don't mind if we go ahead and worry about our show first though...

I know everyone loves the Sportscenter, with the zany commercials and all, but we're going to go ahead and edit our stuff first. We're selfish that way...

Second, after I send you the video roughly 15 minutes after we get the tape back from Ithaca, feel free to call again and ask me to resend it because "the video quality isn't the best." No sweat. It's not like I mentioned we're a staff of 2 putting together a 30 minute show...

Third, when you run our video on all your shows, please find a font size roughly one pixel in height to show that it was shot by WBNG. We want people that have 60 inch monitors to have to squint to read it. That's the goal...

Now there are a few sportscasters who have come out of WBNG over the years. Pete van Wieren (when it was known as WNBF) has worked with the Atlanta Braves since 1976. Bill Pidto is still doing stuff over at ESPN. Oh yeah, and he went to Cornell too. And then there is Karl Ravech. He spent time along the shores of Cayuga Lake too, but at Ithaca College.

So a note to Mr. O'Reilly. If you ever hope to get out of Binghamton like half the population has over the past twenty or so years, you had better be careful with blog posts like this. As amusing as it is, it might come back to haunt you! Do you really want to cover Binghamton University, The B-Mets, the Senators, and STAC sports the rest of your career?

Thanks to Neil Best at Newsday and Awful Announcing for posting about this so I could catch in in my RSS reader.

Oh, and now for the legal disclaimer. "The Big Dance" is a registered trademark of the National Collegiate Athletic Association...but that is a topic for another day.