As if there were any doubt about what college and pro teams’ abandonment of tradition and its nicknames — on behalf of the outfitters who purchase their souls — are all about, please see UCLA’s new “alternative” uniform.
Of course, black isn’t UCLA’s color, “UCLA Blue” — that’s what UCLA calls it — and gold, are its colors, as we’ve known since Bill Walton, Lucius Allen, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar (nee Lew Alcindor), Gary Beban and Troy Aikman had zits.
So UCLA would abandon “UCLA Blue” for adidas black, aka, “Midnight Black”? There’s no money in shame.
To that pathetic end, we’ll always give St. John’s basketball coach Steve Lavin credit for candor. When he coached UCLA and the team added a black uniform, Lavin admitted that such a change would aid recruiting. So what kind of student-athlete would choose a college based on uniform colors? You tell me.
Anyway, UCLA’s football team only plans to wear its black uniforms against in its annual game vs. The Bloods.
For all the cameras, commentators, and slo-mo video, TV remains values-barren, superficial.
Baltimore’s Ray Rice, Thursday on NBC, ran right from the Denver two, caught a super outside block from veteran RB Vonta Leach, then stepped inside to score. But instead of acknowledging Leach, Rice did a muscle-flex bit. Yep, it was all him!
And while Al Michaels and Cris Collinsworth praised Leach, it made no difference. NBC focused on Rice, all the way to the bench, and then some.
Let’s presume ESPN never would post a graphic or any prepared info to a national audience without it first being inspected. Still, last week, as per typical for ESPN, we read that 0-1 Georgia hasn’t begun 0-2 “since 2011.”
After heavyweight Tommy Morrison last week died at 44, largely forgotten went the fact he was the nephew of Marion Robert Morrison — stage/cinema name: John Wayne.
On the morning of their opener, two words for the Jets: Single wing.
ESPN’s Pants Always On Fire: Mark May, half of ESPN’s torturously forced partnership with Lou Holtz, last week said he recalls Michigan-Notre Dame as a great rivalry from watching while “growing up.” May was born in 1959. The two didn’t play between 1943 and 1978.