Sports

Late finish ruins Bowl bashes

You know what is going to distinguish — for you, personally — this year’s Super Bowl from last year’s and a few before that? Most likely, nothing.

That’s the way the NFL and its TV underwriters want it, demand it. They want everyone home, in their same chairs as last Super Bowl, hopefully alone, creating maximum home-alone scenarios, up and down the block, every block East of the Mississippi.

If, as the song goes, “Video killed the radio star,” the NFL’s relentless TV greed is killing the Super Bowl Party.

Super Bowl parties were a natural phenomena that took hold among all assortments of neighbors, friends and families during the 1970s, lasted through the end of the century and are now on the steady fade. They’re logically in annual free-fall — and by systemic design, due to the “need” to maximize TV ad revenue by pushing the Super Bowl deeper into the night.

In other words, the logic of holding or attending a Super Bowl party for a game that will begin at 6:30 on a Sunday night, as opposed to 3:30 or 4 p.m. kickoff on a Sunday afternoon, becomes the difference between maintaining a tradition with, “We’ll be there!” and losing it to, “Why bother?” — the latter attached to the realization the game isn’t likely to end until after 10 p.m. on a work/school night.

And so, all the biggest events in sports — events we once held as extra special and memorable because of where we were and who we were with — will lack distinction beyond the distinction of all being indistinguishable.

The leagues want everyone watching TV, but one TV per viewer — no sharing.

Home, watching on TV, alone, at 10 p.m., is where and how MLB wants us to watch the World Series. It’s where and how the NCAA wants us to watch the NCAA basketball tournament final and the championship football game. It’s where and how the NBA wants us to watch the NBA Finals. And it’s now where and how the NFL wants us to watch the Super Bowl.

There’s nothing TV money can’t do. Nothing.

Book backs Babe as namesake of candy bar

We Have long heard conflicting “facts” on the namesake of the Baby Ruth candy bar. Those who assumed it was named for Babe Ruth often were scolded that they were wrong, that it was named for “Baby Ruth,” the first child of President Grover Cleveland. And that became that.

Nevertheless, a recent biography of Cleveland written by Matthew Alego strongly supports the Yankees slugger in this marathon with Cleveland: “The Clevelands’ eldest child has long been cited as the eponym for the Baby Ruth candy bar, but the evidence is unconvincing.

“Ruth would die of diphtheria in 1904. The candy bar debuted in 1921 — just as Babe Ruth was emerging as a national idol. By insisting that the candy bar was named for the dead daughter of a dead president, the Curtiss Candy Corp. successfully avoided compensating the home run king.

“Even Nestle, the company that makes the bar today, acknowledges that ‘many theories surround the origin of the Baby Ruth name.’”

* Why does no one who lives in an apartment building ever win the Publishers’ Clearing House Sweepstakes, wonders reader Jack Beglane?

Good question. Here’s another contest-related one: Has there ever been a more foolish, self-important, self-exposing blowhard than Mike Francesa? What Francesa did on the air late Thursday afternoon is, even by his standards, colossal.

He wrecked his own annual Super Bowl trivia contest! He was so impatient and annoyed with a contestant, rudely talking down to him, that he lost count of the number of questions he had asked. Francesa was so stuck on himself, he didn’t realize the caller had won his contest!

Then, when it was revealed to him, he went into an endless, convoluted, repetitive self-defense, thus, as always after pinning himself in a corner, making an extra spectacular fool of himself.

Francesa, who sounded bored and distracted, thought the fellow had answered three questions, rather than the game-winning four. His haughty disregard not only overrode the big, fanfare moment of a two-week contest — eliminated build-up to the big moment — any taped promotion of the happenstance will be lost to Francesa’s maltreatment of the winner and Francesa’s disinterested arrogance.

Here the sponsors of a big-ticket contest had a live, on-the-air winner, and the show’s self-afflicted host made those moments useless. He’s a genius! No one comes close!

Nichols snuggles with CNN

Rachel Nichols, who rarely passed on an opportunity to make herself the focus of her reports on others, has left ESPN for CNN and Turner Sports.

Among her last public but off-air acts as a credentialed ESPN reporter came Nov. 18 when, during team drills before Ravens-Steelers (an NBC telecast), she pranced the field, no microphone or other reporting tools, kissing and hugging players.

ESPN explained she was just wishing players a happy Thanksgiving. CNN’s release on Nichols’ hiring notes she has a degree in journalism from Northwestern University.

* Stunning how networks spend a fortune to compile and process stats with which to butcher reality. Yet, in just seconds, amateurs — regular fans — can expose these stats as worthless or so wildly misleading as to be ridiculous.

While stat-fried experts spent another NFL season hollering “Wow-wee!” over passing yard totals — why bother with context and genuine insights? — reader Jim Johnson correctly notes this NFL season, there were 15 games in which a QB threw for at least 400 yards. The record for their teams on those occasions was 4-11.

* For the past two weeks, reader Joe Magnetico heard all this authoritative talk about QB playoff records — as if they’re starting pitchers — yet these stats never consider whether a QB’s team didn’t play because of a first-round bye.

Magnetico notes though people have knocked Peyton Manning’s playoff record, he five times quarterbacked his teams to byes. Manning was so good during the regular season, he and his teams didn’t get the chance to play in that many wild-card games! What a bum!