Not too long ago, here, we described the easiest-on-the-senses methods of modern TV sports viewing — that is, watching as an “O” or a “Q”.
Watching as an O entails dropping your jaw to form an O with your mouth while blankly accepting anything that is told to you or appears. O’s are expected to consider save stats, red-zone percentages and phrases such as “ability to score the basketball” as flat, factual matter, like state capitals.
Still, O’s know how to read — and remember. It’s not as easy to fool an O as it is a Q.
Q’s are one step — the last one — beyond. After dropping their jaws to form an O, they extend their tongues out either side of their lower mouths to form a Q. Despite their designation, “Q’s,” as were Bernie Madoff clients, are not allowed to ask questions — not even about the FOX Robot.
To that end, the NCAA, in confederation with CBS and Turner this week, made history: Even the four NCAA Tournament “play-in” games, dubbed the First Four, were so afflicted by academic, financial and moral compromise — if not corruption — they were unfit for even O’s.
Wednesday on Turner’s oddly named truTV — it is almost totally reliant on bogus, Q-targeting “reality” programming — James Madison played LIU.
Sunday, into Monday morning hours, after JMU was selected, an off-campus NCAA party inspired this report from the Harrisonburg, Va., Police Department:
“When officers arrived they were informed by private security personnel that the party was too big. They asked for everyone to leave. As officers were attempting to disperse the more than 200 people from the premises, one individual began yelling obscenities at the officers and enticing the crowd.
“He was told to leave several times by the officers, and eventually was taken away by acquaintances. Due to the officers knowing who the individual was and the concern for the safety of the public should the crowd turn riotous, a decision was made not to arrest the individual at the time.”
The police, however, later arrested that “individual,” Rayshawn Goins, 24, JMU’s leading scorer and rebounder.
JMU next demanded that the Q emerge in all of us: It suspended Goins for the first half of Wednesday’s play-in vs. LIU Brooklyn. Sure, that’s harsh, but you know what they say: Spare the rod, spoil the 24-year-old star power forward.
After all, the only thing harsher would have been JMU suspending him for the second half.
Not that LIU didn’t demand some Q-time, too.
LIU had a nice thing going this past September, a “Welcome Back Students” dance, when four members of the basketball team began flexing their bad-ass muscles. They started a brawl. And when the DJ appealed for peace, they went after him, too.
Five student complaints were filed with police. The four student-athletes were arrested.
Defending NEC champs — the Blackbirds were automatic qualifiers for last year’s other Big Dance — LIU suspended each player for two early-season games.
Tuesday on truTV, St. Mary’s won its play-in. On March 1, the California college was hit with a pile of penalties for recruiting sins, which may have been because St. Mary’s’ rosters annually read like the guest book at the Paris Hilton (or Missy Hyatt).
This year’s includes four from Australia, one from Trinidad, one from Lithuania. In the none-of-your-business tradition of John Thompson the Elder, players’ birthdates go unlisted.
And that, my fellow O’s and Q’s, is all it takes to make it to a nationally televised, student-athlete NCAA play-in games. Last one to the library is a rotten egg!
Technically, LeBron dunk was not that great
ESPN’s destruction of sports is as mindless as it is relentless. Monday in Boston, the Heat, trying to extend their win streak to 23, were down eight in the second quarter when LeBron James dunked — but then was hit with a technical for taunting. The Celtics made the free throw.
Tuesday morning, the No. 1 Play of the Day on “SportsCenter” was that LeBron James slam and technical. Essentially, James had scored a one-point field goal, and the geniuses at ESPN identified that as especially good!
* Yep, it was all StubHub’s fault the Yankees priced tickets to games in new Yankee Stadium as if people would rather be at a Yankees game than sleep indoors. And now “Bottom Line” Bud Selig, MLB and the Yankees have TicketMaster (aka Tack-on-Master) handling their re-sales.
* Helen Kutsher, the First Lady of the Catskills — known by generations of New York athletes and sports media as the most gracious, regal woman to have asked if you wanted more pot roast — died Tuesday at 89.
* CBS’s Clark Kellogg now makes with those transparently forced holler-guy routines en route to commercials. Why do networks figure they need to hype what we already are watching?
* Now Rory McIlroy has ticked off Arnold Palmer. Seems that in adding Nike millions and Nike clubs — he thus far seems comfortable with only the former — he has been inoculated with that Nike “attitude.”
* Apparently done with his TV endorsements of Weight Watchers, Charles Barkley now appears (and on the heavy side) in a commercial co-starring his tent-sized undies. Yesterday on CBS, Barkley’s studio wisdoms included, “I actually think that [teams seeded] three, four, five and six can lose in the first round of the Tournament.” Imagine that!
* Jim Kaat, asked by WFAN’s Evan Roberts and Joe Benigno on Monday what he thought of the Yankees’ spring training, said that in his last start of the 1975 preseason he allowed nine runs in 1 2/3 innings, “then began the season 8-0.” (In ’75, with the White Sox, he began 8-1, but who’s counting?)
* The only way the Knicks could snap that road losing streak is exactly how it was done: Mike Francesa declared the Knicks would lose their fifth straight that night in Utah. Final: Knicks 90, Jazz 83.
* New Mexico State, school colors crimson and white, yesterday wore its black unis vs. St. Louis. … Any stat, any time: CBS/Turner yesterday noted Tuesday’s play-in wins as schools’ “first NCAA Tournament win in X-years.” As if!
* Bad enough that Taylor-Made has come out with a crude crotch ad sales slogan for its new golf ball, NBC golf host Dan Hicks is handed that slogan to read on air — and he complies!
* Reader Eddie Rabin wonders if Stephen A. Smith feels empowered to be a fast-talking basketball expert because he sounds as if he is identifying himself as “Stephen Naismith.”