WE who write TV/radio sports columns too often make big deals out of what we guess should be or might be a big deal. Lots of swings, many misses.
Put it this way: It has been nearly a week since the big news broke: Monday Night Football, after 36 years, is off ABC following this season. Yet we’ve yet to hear a single soul express remorse, regret, surprise, joy or any reactive emotion of any kind.
And it figures. Monday Night Football has been nearly dead for roughly half the country – this half – for years. It faded, then faded some more, nearly suffocating in a wallet.
It suffered from excessive NFL night-game sales/scheduling. Every Sunday night, more and more Saturday nighters, a few other nights. The NFL saw to it that the Monday Night Football sizzle would eventually leave Monday Night Football cooked and then burnt.
MNF choked on the NFL’s own devices, by its own hands, from commercial excesses that turned 2½-hour games into 3½-hour games, conditioning East Coasters to know that even before kickoff and regardless of the teams, there’s no chance of making it to the end, which typically became 12:30 a.m.
(The telephone message machine at NFL Films’ South Jersey HQ used to carry a sound bite of the late John Facenda, the fabled voice of NFL Films, calling NFL games an incomparable “2½-hour” experience.)
MNF became an exercise similar to watching a movie, the ending to which you knew you wouldn’t see, so why bother? Besides, you’d watched two or three games the day before.
The diminished state of MNF could be gauged every Tuesday morning, by ritual. For its first 20 or so years, the commuter/water cooler guy-talk was, “What’d ya think of last night’s game?”
Then it became, “Did you see the end of last night’s game?”
Finally, “Did you watch any of last night’s game?”
What once was a given – that you watched the entire game – became a given that you didn’t.
MNF, throughout the country, became such a protracted affair that Al Michaels frequently was moved to acknowledge that the only folks still enduring likely had an over/under bet.
Consider that what’s regarded as the greatest MNF game – Oct. 23, 2000, the Jets’ wild, comeback 40-37 OT win against the Dolphins – went largely unseen in New York and Miami. It ended at 1:18 a.m.
Even today, Jets and Dolphins fans are unfamiliar with that game, the greatest in the history of Monday Night Football.
Eleven University of Tennessee and nine University of South Carolina football players have been arrested in the last year. Since the recruiting class of 2000, four Div. I scholarship football or basketball players have been charged with murder.
Yet, the NCAA is still trying to institute academic reforms, this time based on the loss of scholarships for programs with poor graduation rates.
Fellas, rules will never improve academic integrity. Only integrity will, and integrity costs money – TV money, ticket money, booster money, sneaker money. Rules only make the cheaters more creative, the compromisers more compromised. Phony degrees will become easier to “earn” than ever.
For the here-and-now security of all students, it’s time the NCAA got real: Forget graduation. Punish member colleges based on arrest/conviction totals. Seriously.
The best baseballcasters know that they should say nothing before saying nothing, and that silly makes for sillier.
Wednesday, during Yanks-Jays on YES, Ken Singleton said that Joe Torre would like the Yanks go on a winning streak. To which Bobby Murcer replied, “Well, the Yankees are the kind of team that can win a lot in a row.” Hmmm.
The next night, during Mets-Marlins on FSN, Ted Robinson tried to engage Fran Healy in some updated talk about how the Marlins might bolt Miami if they don’t get a new stadium. “You know what?” Healy said. “Time will tell if they stay here in Miami.” Thanks.
On the other hand, when producers choose to show three replays of the same routine double play, they in essence urge their announcers, somewhere after the first replay, to say something silly.
ESPN Classic, Thursday, aired Game 7 of the 1992 Pirates-Braves NLCS. Barry Bonds, 28-years-old and nearly unrecognizable because of his sleek build, played left for Pittsburgh … Aaron Bern, sophomore offensive lineman at Indiana out of Montgomery, Ala., is the great-nephew of the late Mel Allen.
TBS’ Don Sutton, Thursday, as the rainy Braves-Nationals game was again delayed to apply dry top-dressing: “The grounds crew has scattered more dirt than the National Enquirer.”
We nearly lost cherished Mets and Fox baseball director Bill Webb over the winter. He slipped on the ice, hit his head and was out for four hours. “I’m told that I was in bad shape for a while,” he said. “I’m glad I missed it.”