Esteemed TV executive producers, studio and game producers and directors:
Do you guys, well, mostly guys, realize that for the last dozen-plus years, wise old and middle-aged owls have been trying to reverse what you’ve done and continue to do to sports?
Do you know that high school and rec-league administrators have been desperately working to preserve, salvage or restore what little sport is left?
Of course, they’re spitting into your hurricane. Their diminishing time and numbers give them little chance against TV’s senseless, no-better-idea formulas. Soon, such caretakers will be extinct, replaced by those raised to accept — often for not knowing better or differently — bad as good.
Consider what the newer waves of Little League dads were, as kids, presented as acceptable, even standard elements of sports.
Consider what FOX did Sunday: Early in the fourth quarter of Giants-Chargers, 5-foot-8 running back Danny Woodhead, his back a shield to taller Giant defensive backs, jumped and caught a tipped pass. It was a good play, but not so special that Woodhead had any other reasonable option than to try to do what he did.
(Moose “Speech-Maker” Johnston, gave full, amazed credit to Woodhead for out-jumping taller opponents, choosing to ignore what viewers couldn’t miss — that he was, by far, in the best position to catch the ball.)
Woodhead rose and went into an extended, exaggerated demonstration of great self-regard, one he ended by posing like a hood ornament on an old Pontiac.
FOX replayed the play, twice. But Woodhead’s immodest response to it was shown three times, the last in slow-motion — in case someone missed what wasn’t worth seeing twice. And FOX sideline intruder-by-design Tony Siragusa gushed over Woodhead’s after-tackle excesses.
There was no football play in that game deemed by the adults in FOX’s truck to show on tape three times, but a narcissistic, post-play performance was treated as if it were the essence of modern football.
The day before, the first half of ABC/ESPN’s telecast of Oklahoma-Oklahoma State ended to three slo-mo images of first half “action.” All three were of players in acts of self-celebration, including the now-standard it’s-all-about-me chest-pounding.
These were sights selected for safe-keeping, to be edited, packaged and presented as representative of the first half of a football game!
Thursday on NFL Network, Brad Nessler, Mike Mayock and NFLN’s truck-provided replays made a legitimately big issue of an unsportsmanlike behavior call against Texans’ defensive back D.J. Swearinger, that cost his team the ball and three points just before the half.
With Houston having lost nine straight, Swearinger helped make it 10.
Yet, in the second half, the same NFLN truck that so eagerly acted to help condemn Swearinger’s me-first misbehavior, provided an ain’t-he-grand slo-mo of 3-9 Jags’ defensive tackle Andre Branch in a 25-yard post-tackle waltz of self-love.
But the NFL’s own network — with its hiring, programming and live telecast sensibilities — has been all-in on TV’s unspoken, unwritten, unwise, unceasing and undivided effort to destroy all that’s decent about sports, from the inside out, top to bottom.
Audible: Gruden gibberish to stay at ESPN
Despite rumors he soon will accept a head coaching job, Jon Gruden has announced he will remain with ESPN at least through next football season.
In a statement issued by ESPN, the fifth-year “Monday Night Football” analyst said, “Fly paper hitch-six, orangutan mocha chip, bladder-zip pig noise counter-slant, low red right; on two.”
Monday, reader Moon Mullins was left befuddled by Gruden’s description of a “wide departure hook route.” Mullins: “Where is he? At an airport?”
No muss, no fuss. Mike Breen and Walt Frazier, when teamed on MSG’s Knick telecasts, remain easy on the central nervous system.
Tuesday in Cleveland, as Alonzo Gee stole the ball from Knicks guard Pablo Prigioni then scored on a breakaway, Breen called for a whistle, hollering Prigioni had just been “hammered” by Gee.
A replay showed Gee had smacked only the ball from Pirgioni, who then fell, as if he had been hammered. “Looked like he stripped him clean, Mike.”
“You know what, Clyde? You’re right.” Then back to the game, no worries.
If only game-callers would learn there’s no better or equal substitute for treating audiences with — and to — good faith. Everything else is just bad faith, by degrees.
There was a time when it seemed everyone in sports TV knew Mike “Mickey” Wittman, or at least knew where he was. All you had to do was look up.
The former University of Miami basketball star (teammate of Rick Barry) spent more than 40 years as the “Father of Sports Aerial Broadcasting,” shepherding TV cameras-attached Goodyear blimps to big events throughout the country.
Everyone loved — still do — Wittman, especially those to whom he gifted blimp rides, and that was just about everyone and their families — was a soft touch.
Tuesday, Wittman will be inducted into the Sports Broadcasting Hall of Fame during a ceremony at the N.Y. Hilton.
Super trip will be pricey
Stop! Thief! The NFL has again rated the Super Bowl PG — for Price-Gouging. The same Port Authority/PSL Stadium round-trip bus service that costs $10 for Giants and Jets games, for the Super Bowl will cost $51. Super Bowl parking at PSL, normally a painful $30 per Jets or Giants game, will be a shameful $150.
Anyone who thinks 6-6 Rutgers being chosen to play 8-4 Notre Dame in the Yankee Stadium Pinstripe Bowl has to do with football as opposed to money — selling tickets to locals — only could get into RU on an athletic scholarship.
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Good news, boys and girls! Uncle Mike Francesa has declared his authoritative inside sources, including those from the imaginary Ramapo (N.J.) Police Department, tell him there is no Santa Claus. You know what that means!
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YES and Ian Eagle were ready Tuesday, the moment Paul Pierce, back from an injury, checked in against Boston: This was the first time he played as a non-starter since February 2007, and just the fourth time he hadn’t started in 1,118 games, his NBA career having begun 1988.
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Reader Bill Chase, Albany: “We often hear football announcers saying that a coach ‘dialed up’ a play or a blitz. Isn’t it time this cliché were upgraded from ‘dialed up’ to ‘texted’ or ‘tweeted’?”
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Think the same members of the Hispanic Clergy Organization who demonstrated their support for Alex Rodriguez, this Sunday will preach that it’s sinful to worship false idols?*