Sports

Criticism of Musburger unwarranted

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“When I nod my head, you hit it.” — Moe, from The Three Stooges

IT COMES flying at us, all day, all night, every day. We’re surrounded. To the bell tower! Sanctuary! The best we can do is distribute numbers, like in the deli section at the supermarket.

1. Brent Musburger

I never have liked the hyperbolic, self-serving content of Musburger’s TV and radio work. Long before CBS had enough of him, 22 years ago, he regularly was identified here as a dare on the better senses. Also, I’m a born, raised and reminded feminist. I have two sisters, no brothers; two daughters, no sons.

But of Alabama QB A.J. McCarron and girlfriend Katherine Webb, during Monday’s national championship on ESPN, Musburger said nothing — nothing — wrong.

If he was guilty of anything it was of being corny, the way uncles at Thanksgiving tease the teens at the table by saying, “You must have to beat the boys/girls back with a stick.”

“Aw, cut it out, Uncle Brent. And please pass the gravy.”

Musburger noted McCarron’s girlfriend, a 23-year-old Miss Alabama, is stunning.

“Wow, I’m telling you quarterbacks, you always get the good-looking women. What a beautiful woman, wow!

“If you’re a youngster in Alabama, start getting the football out and throwing in the backyard with pop.”

Musburger reprised a harmless, 90-year-old American folk axiom: The QB always gets the pretty girl.

For crying out loud, in a 1935 Popeye cartoon, Olive Oyl sings, “You’ve gotta be a football hero, to get along with a beautiful girl.”

But the media, conditioned to pounce on some things while giving others a complete pass — most in the news media first cautiously weigh social, political, ethnic, racial and religious components (real and imagined), based on their perceived personal risk — determined Musburger is a lascivious old man.

Nonsense. You wanna hear sexist, objectifying spiels on ESPN? Watch the ESPY Awards. The cheap, sexual stuff comes scripted.

How come the news media never have issued a peep of protest when ESPN proudly announces its latest deal with some rapper whose commercial success includes vulgar boasts to regularly use and abuse young women? Not a peep.

ESPN’s typical of Big Media in that it overreacts, underreacts or doesn’t react, based on considerations beyond or beneath right vs. wrong. Thus, ESPN seldom comes close to getting it right. In this case it should have politely responded that Musburger said nothing wrong, thus those demanding his contrition — or termination — should take a hike.

But ESPN never has been able to present anything into proper context, thus it went with, “The commentary in this instance went too far, and Brent understands that.”

How’d ya like your boss to similarly back you after you were accused of some gross, public indiscretion — one that simply never happened?

When I nod my head, you hit it, 2 —

Perhaps another wildly misinterpreted moment from this week arose when CBS found NFL commissioner Roger Goodell in a long, full embrace of Ray Lewis before the start of Sunday’s Colts-Ravens, Lewis’s last home game.

Perhaps Goodell was just using the moment to give Lewis a pat-down. After all, the blood-soaked clothing Lewis was seen in while skipping the scene of that double-stabbing homicide at the 2000 Super Bowl never has been retrieved.

Or is it that Lewis’s financial settlement with the families of the two murder victims was enough to end the Atlanta PD’s investigation?

It was not enough for the NFL, its commercial licensees and TV partners to allow Lewis to be an exceptional, if unapologetically ruthless, linebacker. Regardless of so much evidence to the contrary, they determined to package and present him as an exceptional human being, as well.

Soon, Lewis likely will be hired by a TV network, likely ESPN. He should keep working, given that this wonderful man has, at last count, six children from four women. Besides, with a few more such hires, TV will be without any analysts who can identify — let alone choose — right from wrong.

When I nod my head, you hit it, 3 —

This year’s Hall of Fame shutout should forever stand as a monument to the extended, money-first endeavors of MLB commissioner Bud Selig (on behalf of greedy team owners) and former Players Association head Donald Fehr (on behalf of drug-dirty players).

Everything, over roughly a dozen-year period, went down on their watch and with their tacit approval. Did it matter that The Game, its legacy and its clean players would suffer? Not if there was extra dough to split.

And to think that both were so money-blinded and arrogant that they figured no days of reckoning would arrive.

Now the MLBPA is headed by Michael Weiner, another who apparently thinks we’re too stupid to recognize, let alone recall, what we couldn’t miss. Weiner issued a statement making shame-shame at the vote-less voters:

“Today’s news that those members of the BBWAA, afforded the privilege of casting ballots, failed to elect even a single player to the Hall of Fame is unfortunate, if not sad.

“Those empowered to help the Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum document the history of the game failed to recognize the accomplishments of several Hall of Fame-worthy players. To ignore the historic accomplishments of Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens, for example, is hard to justify.

“Moreover, to penalize players exonerated in legal proceedings and others never implicated — is simply unfair … ”

Time out, brother, the BBWAA’s oh-fer vote, if nothing else, recognizes the historic accomplishments of the likes of Clemens and Bonds — it recognizes them as too dubious to bless, too disagreeable to the common senses for voters to attach their names beside their approvals.

The oh-fer adds to the history of The Game that the Hall of Fame is now stuck to deal with — not stuck by baseball writers, but by the greed-headed neglect of folks such as Selig and Weiner’s predecessor.

Weiner would have better served the MLBPA and himself with silence, rather than with insults for those who voted with what MLB and the MLBPA never demonstrated — a conscience.

Reader Steve Arendash notes that Sammy Sosa, former slightly built spray and line drive hitter, hit 63 or more HRs three times — yet never led his league.

But here’s what I would like Mr. Weiner, head of the MLBPA, to explain: How is it that Sosa, when seated before a Congressional panel, forgot how to speak English?