THAT lack of excited anticipation for the Beijing Olympics isn’t just you.
I’m of the firm opinion that if the Olympics had been left at every four years – if the Summer and Winter Games hadn’t been staggered to present an Olympics every two years – that the buzz would be far stronger. It would be closer to what it used to be, especially among those who want to pull for all the American athletes and don’t distinguish their rooting interests based on summer or winter events.
Something that occurs every two years can only seem half as special as something that arrives every four, no?
We interrupt this column to praise Chris Russo. Despite his (and Mike Francesa’s) business connections with NBC entities, Russo on Wednesday ridiculed the Olympics for their increasing irrelevance and political intrigues.
Of course, it’s one thing to say that while his NBC buddy, Dick Ebersol, is in Beijing. Let’s hear Russo say the same things the next time Ebersol’s on. Or he could just play the tape for Ebersol. Fat chance.
And as long as we’re on Russo, imagine if, after 25 years of steadily patronizing his beloved San Francisco Giants – and through many bad seasons – he suddenly was priced out of his seats or out of the park. You think he would take the same easy-fix advice he has been giving to priced-out Yankees, Mets, Giants and Jets season ticket-holders? You think he would accept: “Just stop going. Watch the games on TV”? Or do you think he would throw a fit?
Additionally, what do you think Russo, the San Francisco Giants ticket subscriber, would think of the Bay Area sports talk host who for years has dismissed as unimportant the laments of financially abused patrons?
The Jets will now try to sell Chad Pennington a personal seat license. . . . Eli’s Coming: YES will carry three live Yale football games on consecutive Saturdays at 12:30 p.m., starting Oct. 25 (vs. Penn, vs. Columbia and at Brown).
My mistake here, Friday. Xavier Nady prefers to go by “ex-avier,” stressing the X as sounding “pretty cool.” Regardless, why do we speak the correct pronunciation of players with non-English names – Jose, Juan, Jorge, Jesus, Jacques, Julio, Luis, Manuel, Ramon, Jean-Claude, Bjorn and even Guillermo – but we can’t do the same for those named Angel?
Gary Cohen’s Mets-only home run call is becoming so unnaturally hysterical that he risks attaching the same significance to all of them. Soon, we won’t be able to distinguish a game-ender hit against a 44-71 Padres team in early August from a homer to win a playoff game. Why not leave some decibel-room for the biggest moments?
Good get by ESPN. Ex-NFL QB Tim Hasselbeck, candid and credible, has signed on as a studio analyst. Not that ESPN, which goes through freshly retired ex-players the way Lindsay Lohan goes through nail polish, figured it out on its own. Hasselbeck had proven himself on SNY and Sirius. At least ESPN was paying attention.
It’s almost impossible to believe that FAN’s Joe Benigno and Evan Roberts would have Giuseppe Franco, star of the long-running scam ad on the Yankees and Mets TV networks, as their guest on Friday, and treat him as a legit businessman and regular good guy. But they did. “I can’t thank you enough for giving us a few minutes,” Benigno told him. Pathetic.
All Roberts or Benigno had to ask was how many of the “Look at me now!” models repeatedly shown in the ads were selected because they already had full heads of hair, no ProCede needed. Franco couldn’t have answered, “None of them,” or he would have been lying.
As reader John Dolan of Massachusetts notes, Don Imus seems to have been written out of WFAN’s history. Evan Roberts’ bio on FAN’s Web site once read that as a 10-year-old he did sports updates on “Imus In The Morning.” It now reads that he did them on the station’s “morning show.”
Quite a get by Ch. 2 during Thursday night’s Jets-Browns, landing Joe Namath for a phoner with Ian Eagle and Greg Buttle about the Favre deal. Shame, though, that the only ones who could hear Namath were Eagle and Buttle. Was there no one to let them know?
Rays’ manager Joe Maddon last week benched star outfielder B.J. Upton for failing to run out a ground ball. So, the manager of the season’s most surprisingly successful team thinks that running to first is important. Imagine that.
Connecticut reader Dave Gentile on the Little League World Series adding a replay rule to its ESPN telecasts – games played by 12-year-olds: “It’s ridiculous. I coach 15-16 year-olds. [They’re told] to respect the umpires. We don’t allow them to argue with umps at all. If they do, we take them out of the game (even if they were right). How do we do that if the ump’s call is changed via replay?”