Sometimes, all you can do is laugh.
For the two weeks before the Super Bowl, the biggest unknown story was the condition of Patriots record-setting tight end Rob Gronkowski, hurting with a high ankle sprain.
Just before kickoff, NBC even provided a report on Gronkowski’s condition, showing a close-up of Gronkowski’s left ankle, tape covering the outside of his shoe.
Then, when the game began, Gronkowski in the lineup, NBC completely ignored him.
The next time we saw him, there was 2:39 left in the first half, after he made his first catch. Until then, not so much as an isolated, taped shot. So much for the biggest unknown story of the last two weeks.
The safety to give the Giants a 2-0 lead? Al Michaels reported it was the first Super Bowl safety since Giants quarterback Jeff Hostetler was sacked in the end zone in 1991’s Super Bowl XXV.
Wrong. The Cardinals scored a safety when the Steelers were flagged for holding in the end zone in the 2009 Super Bowl — a game called by Al Michaels on NBC!
Michaels was funny, that way. Near the top of the game, he made a point of telling us how football stats are very misleading. Then he proceeded to read — and legitimize — every stat NBC threw up.
And he had to be the only football fan watching the game who thought the Patriots’ Danny Woodhead had just returned a kickoff. The rest recognized it was Julian Edelman.
Oh, well, that’s show biz!
It wasn’t a bad telecast, just a funky one, loaded with quick cutaways from the field for no apparent reason, a telecast befitting a game that included three 12-men-on-the-field calls and a 2-0 lead.
There were some good analysis and pictures. Cris Collinsworth, after Patriots defensive back Kyle Arrington failed to bring down mailbox-like fullback Henry Hynoski with a shoulder tackle, said, “High school coaches all over the country are cringing at that.” And a shot of Jason Pierre-Paul’s blind father in the stands made for a good get and a nice moment.
Still, for two weeks NBC joined in the national gnashing of teeth over Gronkowski, the most indispensable weapon in New England’s ordnance. Then, come the game, NBC did all it could to ignore him.
* The one man who received no credit for a job very well done — we’re only conditioned to knock such men — was the side judge, 62-year-old Laird Hayes, who needed two sets of eyes to have correctly ruled Mario Manningham fairly caught that long sideline pass with 3:39 left.
Great call of a great catch. Kinda felt that it was at least mentioning his name — provided NBC knew it.
Horrible call on college hoops scuffle
Thursday during a FOX Sports Net telecast, Cal’s Jorge Gutierrez landed on the Arizona bench while trying to save the ball from going out of bounds.
Next thing you know, he and Arizona assistant Joe Pasternack are tangling, ready to duke it out. Ugly.
But pandering FSN play-by-player Steve Physioc seemed delighted by what he saw, giving it the “that’s what I love about college basketball … the emotion!” treatment. Pathetic.
* Hours two through five of NBC’s six-hour pregame show yesterday were not part of a pregame show.
It was an NBC News, Entertainment and Olympics shopping catalogue. Sure helps to be shameless.
* How much wood can a woodchuck chuck? Chris Carrino and Jim Spanarkel called Saturday’s Charlotte-Fordham game on YES, then both headed to Madison Square Garden — Spanarkel on YES, Carrino on radio — to call Nets-Knicks.
* During Rangers-Sabres on NBCSN, Wednesday, Doc Emrick said: “The Sabres ice the puck, and time is frozen.” Only Emrick can turn an icing call into a floral arrangement.
* Stat of the day: In its home loss to Miami yesterday, Duke was 0-for-6 from the foul line in overtime.
* So all those rowdy drunks who are invited to line the par-3 16th at the TPC Scottsdale every year — as seen over the weekend on CBS — they all drive home?
Francesa gets it Hall wrong
If only Mike Francesa were smart enough to say, “perhaps”; if only he were sensible enough to have said, the past two weeks, that “I think
Bill Parcells will be a first-try NFL Hall of Famer,” he wouldn’t be known as the most colossally wrong know-it-all any of us have ever encountered in any form, personal or professional, up close or distant.
But Francesa instead puffed, over and over, that Parcells was a “guaranteed lock” to be selected Saturday. He said this, and repeatedly, with an air of authority and conviction that would have indicated he already knew from the inside, that the NFL would not even proceed without first being granted Francesa’s wisdom, guidance and approval.
Of course, once again, Francesa set himself up for a great big fall. Parcells didn’t make it. And even all the king’s horses and all the king’s men know that as bad eggs go, he’s closing in on hopeless.
Now, if his 20-year, humorless, self-important, wildly and transparently dishonest, bully-boy, megalomaniacal form holds, he’ll be on to his next, great all-knowing, Mr. Inside Guy claim — another dead-wrong one. As hard as he blew that Parcells was a lock is as hard as he’ll work to ignore the fact he ever said it once, let alone over and over, for two weeks.
Yesterday on WFAN, he blamed his erroneous claim Friday that Tim Tebow shunned Rosie O’Donnell over her gay lifestyle — the two actually had a nice chat — on his news source: Chris Russo! Funny, he didn’t credit his old pal Russo until the report proved bogus! What a stand-up rat!
But with only one exception, Mike Francesa always knows something that you don’t know. He doesn’t yet know that most everyone, by now, knows he’s full of it.
* Reader Joe Irving asks why WFAN would send Francesa to work “Radio Row” at the Super Bowl all week, invite guests on, then “immediately answer the questions he asks them?” Those weren’t real guests, Joe, they were cardboard cut-outs.