Sports

TV lauding ill-earned ‘record’

Knew it the moment we heard about it. We knew that in the pandering, mindless, shallow world of modern TV sports “journalism” that bad would be celebrated as “fabulous!” and wrong applauded as “sensational!”

That’s another astonishing thing about current sports and TV journalism: Neither take holidays off from testing the limits of our endurance and tolerance. It’s as if common sense and common decency surrendered, finally took the buyout.

We knew, from years of conditioning, ESPN’s “SportsCenter” would be “jacked” by news on Tuesday that Division III Grinnell (Iowa) sophomore guard Jack Taylor scored a record 138 points in a game.

And we knew such news would be far less important than the fact he scored 138 points in a 179-104 final, against Faith Baptist Bible (Iowa).

That it was another ill-earned, adult-supervised record-smasher — high school and college record books are lousy with them — isn’t supposed to be of any concern among those who’d prefer to watch slam-dunk contests, home run derbies and tape of backboards being shattered rather than a good game.

“I felt like anything I tossed up was going in,” Taylor told the Associated Press.

He was 52-for-108 — he missed 56 shots — yet felt as if he couldn’t miss!

On TV, edited reels showed Taylor hitting shot after shot after shot. There was no edited reel of him missing 56 shots or a fast-forward reel of him taking 108 shots in a game won by 75 points.

The once-decent, once-standard act of clearing the bench during blowouts to allow others — the kids who practice hard, all week, perhaps? — to take a shot or two? Forget it. Why win by 50 or 60 when you can win by 75, set a record, be all over SportsCenter?

But it wasn’t just SportsCenter.

Taylor, who seems like a sweet kid — not the kind to enjoy kicking opponents when they’re way down and way out, not the kind of attitude-enriched, Nike-programmed kid you’d expect to eagerly pursue a record for a machine-gunning fish in a barrel — also appeared, the next morning, with Matt Lauer and Savannah Guthrie on NBC’s “Today.”

Of course, the fact the record was set in a game that only minimally qualified as a “sporting competition” or that this was (another) record-by-slaughter wasn’t mentioned. Lauer and Guthrie told him they think what he did was terrific! What an achievement!

They didn’t ask why he was allowed to take 108 shots — no one on his team took more than six — or why his coach would allow Taylor to take 108 shots in a game that was won before halftime.

But Taylor seemed so innocent and so unaware of the unsportsmanlike excesses that scoring 138 points demanded — perhaps he grew up watching SportsCenter — that he volunteered that he was able to get the ball to shoot so often because his team “pressed all game,” forcing 49 turnovers.

Grinnell pressed all game? In a 75-point win? That’s a good thing? No, it’s sick, twisted.

As of Wednesday night, the only person on TV I know to have objected to this latest betrayal of sports was Bill Raftery, doing color on ESPN’s North Carolina-Chaminade telecast. He placed the blame — not the credit — where it belonged: on the head of Grinnell’s coach, David Arseneault.

But Raftery’s old school.

Here’s the kicker: Faith Baptist had a player, David Larson, who scored 70 in that game. I guess his job was to keep it close. Larson played all 40 minutes while Taylor played “only” 36. So two players, in the same game, played 76 of a possible 80 minutes and totaled 208 points.

Yep, as 75-point blowouts go, this was no game for you bench warmers. Seven Grinnell kids played five or fewer minutes. But remember what they say in those TV promos: NCAA participation builds character!

A Knight to remember

Steiner Collectibles this week introduced its newest “signature” hire: Just in time for Christmas, Bobby Knight. The man who regards “Good morning” as none of your bleepin’ business, is now in the mood to impersonally sign autographs for all his admirers and supporters.

“Extremely rare” Knight-autographed photos start at $150. “Extremely rare” Knight-autographed basketballs start at $250, $300 if, “1976 32-0” is added. See? Some fools he can suffer.

* Stuart Scott may portray himself as the slickest rooster in the Bristol barnyard, but Monday night, after Bears-49ers, he sounded like a gushing groupie over the play of Niners’ backup quarterback Colin Kaepernick. And when Kaepernick appeared on ESPN’s on-site set, Scott spoke as if he were going to faint.

Scott’s best of his worst: “Twenty-five-point win on Monday Night Football, the third biggest win ever for a quarterback making his starting debut on Monday Night Football.”

Professional broadcasters once would have been embarrassed to say such a thing on national TV. And no network that respects its audience and employees would have one of its pros parrot such silliness. But at ESPN, no matter how cool you think you are, that’s how it goes.

* For all the “Thanksgiving means family” stuff and stuffing coming from NFL telecasts, yesterday, there are now three NFL games played on Thanksgiving.

If family is so important to the NFL and its obedient networks, how many thousands of stadium and broadcast staffers — ticket-takers, beer vendors, parking lot attendants, security personnel, ballpark and TV and radio operations folks — are pulled from their families on Thanksgiving to work NFL games?

* Analysis of the Week: Solomon Wilcots, CBS analyst on Chargers-Broncos — a game picked up here in the fourth quarter, Sunday — went on and on about how a San Diego touchdown would be disallowed via replay review — even as replays showed receiver Danario Alexander to have had the ball when it broke the goal line.

Wilcots spoke knowingly, authoritatively. Although he might’ve been the last to know he was wrong — the TD counted — he just moved along as if he’d said nothing to the contrary, as if we’d never heard him.

* Reader Doug Gibson, Marlboro, N.J., asks if the horizontal-striped black and yellow jerseys worn by the Steelers, Sunday night, “come with a ball and chain?”