Dee-fense! Dee-fense!
Forgive this self-indulgence, but it’s time to respond to some FAQs — frequently asked questions worthy of answers. Placed on the defensive, I’ll answer.
The most often asked question/accusation I’ve faced is whether, given the content of The Post’s sports section, I’m a hypocrite for taking such a thumbs-down position on sports gambling, before and after it became legal.
Short answer: No.
Long answer: Would readers hold me in greater regard if I allowed The Post’s content, especially outside sports gambling advertisers or any advertisers, to dictate or in any way shape my opinions? I trust not.
Thus, through multiple Post ownerships, I’ve been allowed the freedom to write as I wish and feel about sports gambling, including the ruin it so often inflicts on its as-seen-on-TV primary targets: young, vulnerable, self-convinced men.
I cherish the ability to write what I feel to be a columnist’s obligation: My version of the truth. In Constitutional terms, “Everyone’s entitled to my opinion.”
Readers likely also note that the weekly results of The Post’s on-staff “touts” — often tasked with “playing the board” on NFL games, as if picking two-out-of-three winners isn’t hard enough — are listed in this section for readers’ approval, disapproval, perusal and mockery. The results speak for themselves as anti-gambling reminders.
My history at The Post, as it relates to sports gambling, is extensive. With nothing more than silly gags attached to minimal info, I weekly selected USFL games in the mid-1980s.
That ended after I received a postcard from a Syracuse University student claiming he’d made a big score on one of my best bet picks. He apparently took my picks seriously. I didn’t want anyone’s ruin on my hands.
It was about then that I began to examine, investigate then write about touts who were buying ads in The Post promising guaranteed riches while making highly dubious — ridiculous — claims about their weekly success rates as game handicappers. Knowing they were in the business of suckering suckers, The Post allowed me to reveal their con artistry.
I even concocted a word for such crooks still in use: scamdicappers.
And with The Post’s tacit permission, I drove hundreds of thousands of dollars in scamdicappers’ advertising out of The Post and into the eager arms of the rival Daily News.
The only sports gambling I’ve indulged, but certainly not blindly, is on horse racing — an industry predicated and gauged on wagering for 150 years.
Hypocrite? Nah. I’ve been consistent on the matter since 1985 , but, still, a damned good question.
The only other issue that Post readers largely don’t understand is that reporters and columnists generally don’t write the headlines, choose the photos or write the captions that accompany the photos. Editors do that.
It still galls me that a journalism professor at Pace University had his entire class write me nasty letters objecting to “my” suicide-insensitive use of “Bridge-Jumper” in a headline above a column about a horse racing gambler who bet a ton on the odds-on favorite to show — finish no worse than third — in the hope/likelihood he’d win 10 cents on every two dollars he bet.
When that favorite ran out of the money, the editor who wrote the headline reasonably applied the track-slang “Bridge Jumper” — that’s what they call such wagerers — above the column.
I shortly learned that this journalism prof had no idea that daily newspaper writers don’t write their headlines. I was politely appalled. But he graciously invited me to speak to his class on the matter, and a good time was had by all.
Those are my stories and I’m stuck to them. Tune in next week for Infrequently Asked Questions.
Saquon will bring class wherever he goes
Whatever happens to Saquon Barkley and wherever he goes, some will remain grateful for his end zone dismissal of Odell Beckham Jr. after Barkley ran for a touchdown at the Texans in his third game as a pro, in 2018.
After crossing into the end zone on a determined run, he appeared to try to modestly hand the ball to the nearest official when Beckham, eager scene-stealer, rushed up to Barkley, swatted the ball from his hand then invited Barkley to join him in a gyrating dance.
Barkley shook his head, “No,” retrieved the ball and tossed it to an official, leaving Beckham to dance by himself.
The game was on Fox, and Barkley’s can’t-miss-it act of in-game modesty and civility was ignored. There was no replay of his selfless celebration as it didn’t — and still doesn’t — fit TV’s requisite for extra special, and even slo-mo attention.
Thanks, Saquon, some of us needed that.
Another golden opportunity lost.
As reader Vin McCardle sagely asserts, that Manasquan-Camden high school N.J. playoff game that saw the winning shot waved off by referee error — there clearly was time left on the clock — could have provided a lasting and virtuous life lesson for all involved, but especially the kids on both teams and within both schools.
All that was needed was for the “winning team” to declare that it would refuse the W, so it could be granted to the team that actually won.
Imagine the needed national feel-good that would have created. Both teams would have gone on a network TV tour. Even ESPN might’ve awakened to such virtue.
But doing the honorable thing — making a conspicuous good from a conspicuous bad — has become a diminished ideal.
Fox not stopping Big Papi
Among the most curious elements of TV is its inability to make NFL and MLB pregame and postgame shows worth our time. After decades, none stands out as even moderately interesting, entertaining or insightful.
It appears that Fox’s MLB studio show will again include little better than big names. Thus, lying, cheating, scorn-inviting, time-killer Alex Rodriguez, carefully and predictably dull Derek Jeter, and David “Big Papi” Ortiz will return.
If we’re still supposed to be attracted to Ortiz — a PED suspect, shady character and public speaker of crudities entering his seventh year (!) of being the unfunny comedy star of the show — Fox execs need to get out, and perhaps stay out, more. Despite the forced belly laughs of panelists, Ortiz is not funny. He’s barely understandable and says nothing of substance when understood.
Again this season, at least 25 Yankees games will exclusively appear via pay-extra streaming, again with the emphasis Friday night games. More bottom-line chopped salads from Rob Manfred and his band of team owners who have allowed baseball to rot.
Best game televised last week? Johns Hopkins, 16-14, over Virginia in lacrosse, seen on the ACC Network. Close match, sustained action, minimal showboating.
Thursday during Blues-Devils ESPN again distracted and annoyed with its flashing IDs of players during power plays. This mindless additive holds no value beyond ESPN’s usual, “Look what we can do!”
An “explosive argument” between Stephen A. Smith and Pat McAfee? Leave it to ESPN to create a match with no rooting interest.
