Priorities have been lost to priorities. Ya think Jim Nantz, normally alert to tell us who’s in and out of games, would have missed the fact backup tight end Virgil Green was lined up alone in Denver’s backfield Sunday if he hadn’t been forced to read another CBS promo?
Prevented from paying full attention, Nantz was unable to alert us. And we couldn’t see for ourselves, not with Green inexplicably out of camera frame. So, surprise! A No. 85 took the straight-ahead handoff and ran for 10 yards — a big, strange play in a drive that made it 10-0, Broncos.
No big deal. It wasn’t as if it were the AFC Championship.
Then there was the shot of Tom Brady and the Pats’ offense running on to the field — OK, here we go, men! — just as CBS cut to commercials.
But if everyone’s attention — CBS’, its viewers’, even the players’, was compromised by the sell, Phil Simms tried to keep it real. He mostly spoke plain, useful football English. In fact, on a Brady pass down the middle, Simms said, “So many people were crossing the middle I couldn’t figure them out.”
Can you imagine the new wave of genuine gridiron gibberish-talkers — Mike Mayock, Kirk Herbstreit, Jesse Palmer, Jon Gruden — admitting such a thing? Same here.
Anyway, those pre-snap shots of field-side fans banging on the padding in front of them never get old, do they? Omaha!
Where do Cuban’s checks go?
While fines of Mavericks owner Mark Cuban for misconduct have become ho-hummers — the NBA hit him with a $100,000 barking ticket Saturday for another court-storming to accost refs — he does get the mind rolling.
As long as the NBA continues to choose to release the names of players, coaches and owners who are fined — such news is issued several times a week, as are the amounts of the fines ($10,000, $15,000 $25,000, $50,000) perhaps, as a continuing matter of disclosure, the NBA could provide us an itemized, end-of-season accounting:
Names, numbers, totals. What was the NBA’s final take on fines? Is it real money? Can we see Cuban’s canceled check? What happens with all that money? Charity? If so, which one or ones? Who gets the write-off?
Or is it used to purchase office supplies? A pod coffee-maker for the office kitchenette?
If the NBA’s eager to tell us it’s maintaining law and order — weekly fining folks thousands — finish your swing; let us know. Cuban’s 20 career fines total nearly $2 million. Did the NBA buy a Ming vase for a swear jar?
Francesa ‘facts’ are lax
An incredible thing about Mike Francesa’s career is none of his bosses — not at WFAN, not at CBS — have ever made him accountable for the bogus “news” and “facts” he regularly delivers to their audiences.
Last week the Giants named Ben McAdoo their new offensive coordinator. Yet, Francesa previously reported — as if he actually knew — former Giants quarterbacks coach Mike Sullivan will get the job; a done deal.
Newspapers had previously reported Sullivan was the leading candidate. It was then that Francesa spoke as if he’d already known that — and even more. Another bad guess spoken as fact from the ultimate insider.
But what our parents once sent us to our rooms for, Francesa continues to do for a living. And it’s not as if he allows callers to keep him honest.
Someone tell Russell Wilson that at game week news conferences, if he wants to make it big, he’d better replace his Seahawks cap with something more attitudinal, or at least wear it gangsta style. And his pleasant, thoughtful, gentlemanly answers — spoken with good diction and grammar — that’s got to go, too.
ESPN’s Steve Young Saturday, on how Colin Kaepernick can minimize Seattle’s crowd noise: “He needs to get off to a good start,” adding that he has to avoid throwing interceptions.
Good stuff from MSG’s Knicks crew Friday. After the Clippers’ Matt Barnes seemed eager to escalate a pick-and-push with Tyson Chandler, MSG was ready with footage of Barnes’ ejection from a November game against the Thunder for trying to make a brawl from a hassle.
Wait a second. Do you mean to say that all this time back-to-rehab Dennis Rodman wasn’t an expert on North Korea?
Geno episode proves common sense is rare
IN 1940, as the world anxiously awaited President Roosevelt’s decision as to whether he’d run for a third term, Gracie Allen, of the comedy team of Burns & Allen, complained to Eleanor Roosevelt that FDR could have avoided all the intrigue had he “run for his third term, first.”
That was a joke. And people got it. One had to enjoy the suspension of common sense in order to get Burns & Allen.
Today, the suspension of common sense, especially as it relates to daily news and information, is essential — even if that news and info are not intended to be a joke, no matter how ridiculous.
Friday, Jets quarterback Geno Smith apparently pulled “an Alec Baldwin” in that he was kicked off a commercial flight for failing to comply with standard FAA pre-flight instructions regarding cell phone and/or headphones use.
News reports have provided Smith with several benefits of the doubt, from an impatient flight attendant, to his inability to hear the steward’s request because his headphones were on, to the suggestion Smith, who is black, was the target of racism.
Then there are reports Smith was tossed for cursing the attendant, who three times asked Smith to get off his phone.
Who knows? Not I. I wasn’t there. But the same suspension of common sense abundant in the Baldwin episode was back.
Unless Smith, throughout his college career at West Virginia and then his rookie NFL season — and trips to combines and pro team workouts in between — traveled everywhere by ground, Friday’s flight wasn’t his first.
Smith, as did Baldwin, had to know they want you to pay full attention to safety precautions and instructions prior to departure. It’s to everyone’s emergency benefit.
And that compliance is no big deal. That part, I do know. And most passengers don’t need to be individually told even once.
But the first thing now removed from such stories is the common sense part.