TV now fires so many absurdi ties at us, we shouldn’t watch without a catcher’s mitt, chest protector and mask.
Friday, I just wanted to watch some golf, that’s all. I didn’t tune in the Honda Classic, a Golf Channel/NBC co-production, for any other reason. Within seconds, though, NBC’s Gary Koch was challenging my brain to a fight.
Of Brazilian pro Alex Rocha, Koch said that, upon arriving to play for Mississippi State, “He spoke no English, whatsoever. What a rude awakening that must have been to go to Starkville, Miss., and not speak any English.”
OK, but how much easier for Rocha would it have been had he enrolled in a college in Maine or Montana? Excuse such a silly question, but if Rocha spoke not a word of the stuff, how was he admitted? How did he attend classes if it was all English to him? Or was Rocha’s recruitment another case of NCAA academic fraud?
Minutes later, Graeme McDowell, a shot off the lead, hit his tee shot on 18 into the water (golfcasters are now in the copy-cat habit of blaming the ball, thus the ball “found the water”). But the ball, a few feet from shore, was playable. And McDowell played it back to the fairway.
McDowell next was heard asking on-course reporter Dottie Pepper if he’d brushed the water in his take-away — a two-stroke penalty if he had. Pepper said she was unsure, a slo-mo replay then indicated that he had, and McDowell, it was correctly predicted, would not sign his card until he knew.
And GC/NBC stayed with it, rewarding us the sights and sounds of McDowell in the broadcast truck reviewing the tape, then acknowledging in a good-fellow interview that he had to assess himself the two-strokes. Good stuff.
But it couldn’t be left at that. Hosts Rich Lerner and Brandel Chamblee jumped into a predictable dissertation about how the integrity of the game is essential, how McDowell should be saluted for his act of great integrity and how all kids can learn from Mr. McDowell.
OK, fine. But just one thing: Given the conspicuous nature of the episode, had McDowell not done what he did, he’d have been disqualified! He had no choice!
Here TV did a fabulous job sticking with this story, but then its voices tried to wreck it by asking us to suspend reality to allow Tinker Bell to play through.
There was more. With players still on the course, the witching hour for GC coverage of live golf — 6 p.m., unless Tiger Woods hasn’t finished — arrived. Lerner had to deliver the customary bad news: “We’re running out of our allotted time.”
Imagine that, golf time on the Golf Channel is allotted. And it was about to expire.
The truth of the matter is that Comcast-owned GC didn’t want to put any more quarters in the meter; it didn’t want to pay the cameramen and techs OT. And even though cable subscribers pay a premium for GC, your money is their money, and their money is their money.
Our allotted golf time, here on the Golf Channel, is up. Geez.
Sadly, gals’ thuggery hardly news
Last week, Baylor’s 6-foot-8 Brittney Griner cold-cocked an opponent, breaking her nose. Judging from the media fallout, you’d have thought that something groundbreaking also had occurred in women’s basketball.
But for those who’ve been paying attention, girls’ high-school games increasingly feature the kinds of pathetic scenes that once belonged only to boys’ games. It’s now not uncommon for the evening news to include someone’s personal video of a gym-riot at a girls’ game.
It stood to reason that girls’ basketball could not be immune from years of selling basketball as a tough-guy, stare-down, trash-talk, hard-foul, bad-dude game. And those wash-off tattoos that girls’ HS and women’s college teams wore for fun have been replaced by the real things. In other words, there’s more to come.
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At the top of yesterday’s Lakers-Magic, ABC/ESPN sideliner Lisa Salters narrated a show-and-tell on Ron Artest‘s newly dyed hair — the Lakers’ colors — with one word in three languages carved in. The word? “Defense.”
“I thought,” said Jeff Van Gundy, “it might’ve been ‘Nuts.’ ”
Incidentally, the last 2:00 of the game took roughly the same time it takes to roast a 15-pound turkey.
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Gotta admire Cablevision’s sense of public relations. During contract spats, it always does whatever it takes to get you to root for the other side.
In this latest hassle, with ABC, Cablevision took the invasive, Orwellian route, misusing technology to ensure that no matter what subscribers wanted to watch when they turned on their TVs, they first had to see and hear anti-ABC propaganda.
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Big East Network analyst Dickey Simpkins, late in Notre Dame’s win at Marquette, Saturday, went Mike Francesa, guaranteeing that if ND wins this one it’s in the NCAA Tournament, guaranteed. Not sure how Simpkins knows this, but we’ll see.
ESPN needs ‘shock’ therapy
Yeah, I know; everyone from Fox Sports.com to the AP (as reported in this paper) declared No. 1 Syracuse losing to Louisville, Saturday, an upset. As if Louisville is commonly an underdog at home (it was the slight favorite).
Still, no one gets it wrong quite like ESPN. After it called Louisville’s 10-point win “shocking,” it produced a graphic showing that Syracuse has lost its last five at Louisville, and all by a bunch. So then how was it a shocker?!
Brings to mind the time USA Today was so eager to promote its “USA Today Top 25” that the first sentence of its lead story was that No. 8 Temple was “upset” by No. 19 Kansas. The next sentence noted that it was something like Kansas’s 45th straight win at home.