Logo

When I heard it, I almost drove off the road in incredulous laughter. I was listening to the Colin Cowherd show last week. Someone else was filling in for him, and I forget who it was. If Cowherd had been on the air, I might have had a heart attack when I heard it. It was IBM being announced as the sponsor of some tool to let users send in information and comments to the show.

Colin Cowherd has been an outspoken critic of blogs, bloggers, and social software/networking tools. He has lightened up some since "the incident," when he called on his listeners to deluge "The Big Lead" with traffic and bring the site crashing down. That does not change the fact that it was a denial of service attackand was just baaaad form.

IBM, on the other hand, is a leading proponent of social networking and social software tools for the corporate enterprise, as well as for small and medium businesses. IBM encourages their employees to blog. They include a blogging template with their Lotus Collaboration Software. They sell services and software to help organizations deal with security issues such as denial of service attacks.

For most readers, this may sound a little geeky. But my Business Controls Caddy blog/site is powered by IBM Lotus Notes and Domino Collaboration Software. So are the basketball and football television broadcast schedules you will find here. So are many media sites for professional and amateur sports organizations.

So yes, I almost bust a gut laughing at the irony of the sponsorship. It is almost like an arranged marriage where the parties do not know anything about each other and are joined in wedded bliss.

I hope I get some more comical moments out of ESPN. It makes long drives fun.