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Dick Ebersol, the powerful head of NBC Sports, has stepped down from his post following a breakdown in contract negotiations. Ebersol helped shepherd through an impressive range of sports programming at NBC, from Super Bowls to Olympics. Golf was part of the package, from Ryder Cups to majors, and the Golf Channel (acquired as part of the NBC-Comcast merger) was expected to bear more of Ebersol’s stamp in the coming months.

During his tenure, Ebersol helped bring in the Ryder Cup, the U.S. Open and several major Champions Tour events. He also brokered a deal that involved ESPN getting a piece of the Ryder Cup in which NBC got Al Michaels in exchange for a long-forgotten Walt Disney creation, Oswald the Rabbit. (Here’s the whole bizarre story.) NBC has broadcast the Ryder Cup since 1991 and the U.S. Open since 1995.

Ebersol’s departure adds uncertainty to the role of the Golf Channel in the NBC/Comcast mix, as well as NBC’s plans to bid on PGA Tour tournaments and other events. Our pals over at Fourth-Place Medal have a eulogy/wake/roast for Ebersol’s NBC career, focusing heavily on his Olympics legacy. Check that out for some more perspective.

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It’s impossible to overstate, or really even explain, the golf world’s fascination with John Daly. Perhaps it’s because he’s the photo-negative of everything the golf world stands for in terms of propriety and decorum. Perhaps it’s because his Thursday rounds are far more interesting than most leaders’ Sunday ones. And perhaps it’s just because we’re all a tiny bit jealous of a two-time major winner who’s doing everything he wants, whenever he wants, damn the consequences.

Playboy has just published a long profile on Daly (link NSFW; hope you didn’t need to be told that) that begins with his humble origins:

His upbringing was straight out of some old-school country song. Born in California, Daly and his family moved when he was four to a log cabin in Dardanelle, a tiny town in Yell County, in the middle of Arkansas. It was the ­epitome of redneck life, one in which his mother made chocolate gravy and biscuits in the kitchen and homemade shirts on her sewing machine. He and his brother Jamie would drag a trampoline up to the house so they could jump off the roof onto it, just for kicks. Their father made his own muscadine wine and stored it in mason jars. All the Daly kids risked a belt whupping when trouble came around.

…before proceeding through his major wins and his four wives. It’s not a favorable review ("The picture he paints is of four women who had all the flaws") but by all appearances it’s a fairly honest one. And it’s drawing plenty of attention for one key quote:

"I’m real close to being a nympho, if I’m not one," he admits. He and ­[girlfriend Anna] Cladakis try to have sex at least once every day. "If I’m with somebody, I want to be with that person. I wanna have sex a lot. Anna’s been great. We’re both nymphos, I think. We like each other’s company. We like making love to each other."

If that doesn’t make you gag, recall that he gave "have lots of sex with your wife" advice to Tiger Woods, and look where that got Woods … er, don’t.

Anyway, as much as Daly pinwheels through life, and as far as he falls without hitting bottom (his estimated monthly expenses are an unbelievable $43,000) , he’s still got something almost the rest of us don’t:

"It’s like Jack Nicklaus said, ‘If you win the British Open at St. Andrews, your golf career can’t get any more complete,’" Daly said. "Or something like that."

[Visor tip: Pro Golf Talk via Dogs]

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Next week sees the publication of "Those Guys Have All The Fun: Inside the world of ESPN," a book that’s setting off shock waves in the sports media world for its complete and total takedown of the ESPN mystique. Assorted tales of SportsCenter anchors behaving badly and other horndoggery are dominating the headlines over at Deadspin, but there’s a very small golf presence as well. (Come on, golfers! Do something worthy of gossip pa — oh, wait. Right.)

We got our hands on an early copy of the book, and here, we present an excerpt on how Jack Nicklaus ended up creating an ESPN mainstay.

Scott Ackerson, Coordinating Producer
In the late eighties, SportsCenter was an hour show on Sunday, the only SportsCenter that was an hour long. One week, I had a hole in the show that was about seven minutes long, because it was the British Open and we had just that and baseball. So I said, "Let’s have Cliff Drysdale interview Jack Nicklaus, and talk to about anything besides the British Open. I don’t care about the British Open, I just want to talk to him about the state of golf." And the interview was really good. He talked about the state of the game and where he thought golf was going in the future. I called it "the Sunday conversation," because I think you ought to title everything so it resonates with the viewer.

Also included: Norm McDonald’s thoughts on Tiger Woods as a target of jokes (a good sport). Arnold Palmer and Phil Mickelson didn’t even make the cut. Shame. Still, check out the book for enough sports-dirt knowledge for the whole summer.

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