“Everybody knows that the dice are loaded.
Everybody rolls with their fingers crossed.
Everybody knows that the war is over,
Everybody knows that the good guys lost …
That’s how it goes, everybody knows.”
— Leonard Cohen
Pop Quiz: Name the NFL running back who scores a touchdown then, instead of doing an all-about me-thing, points to his lineman to demonstrate his thanks.
Answer: I couldn’t come up with anyone, either.
Naturally, the first thing removed in the wake of Richard Sherman’s Sunday night vandalism — his game-stealing, grotesquely immodest incivility — was common sense.
After all, no matter how street-slick and Stanford-polished Sherman is supposed to be, before and after the game he chose to trash, mock and ridicule fellow-pro Michael Crabtree as a “mediocre” receiver.
Though such a characterization was inaccurate and classless, it provided Sherman the attention for which he weekly plans. But why would he boast about his ability to defend a “mediocre” receiver? Sherman’s pre- and postgame boast wasn’t merely his classless standard, it was stupid.
Then there were the pandering, superficial examinations that found Sherman to have been raised in gang, poverty and drug-saturated Compton, Calif.
At Stanford, he became an accomplished player while sustaining his standing as a legit student. Although we know his football ability is a matter of self-evidence, the latter can be a matter of systemic fraud.
In other words, we should excuse Sherman on either or both grounds: He came from a rotten neighborhood but he was a good student. Either or both mitigates, provides him a free pass for his successful attempt Sunday to make himself the story of a game otherwise won by his team.
But I don’t see either as having any relevance to explain, let alone excuse, his weekly plan to behave like a creep. That “he doesn’t know better” seems far less credible than “he knows far better than most how to draw and sustain attention.”
Still, we’re in the throes of a world in which we’re told to ignore what we see and instead believe what we’re told. Thus, those who are smarter than that aren’t given credit for being smarter than that.
Sherman doesn’t want to be excused. He wants attention — the most given to anyone on his team. To that repulsive end, he’s a winner. Here I sit, writing about him.
And by Wednesday, he was starring in one of those hideous “bleep-the-world” commercials for those headphones — the world’s first that come with a rotten attitude.
Why was he chosen? Why was he immediately rewarded with this endorsement? Because, at least for the latest short-term, Sherman fulfilled the down-we-go, get-’em-young marketing strategy: Good is worthless, bad is good, worse is even better.
Perhaps, had commissioner Roger Goodell on Monday fined Sherman for placing the NFL in public disrepute, that advertisement would not have proceeded.
But Goodell’s efforts seem limited to endeavors such as selling PSLs — expensive smoke in expensive buckets — as “good investments.” Goodell would rather get into your wallets than Sherman’s.
Still, in a world gone nuts, we can take consolation in recognizing the cons and the backward-pointed, wrong-headed devices designed to sell sports while destroying sports. Not that we can do much about it.
Many of us are at least as smart as Richard Sherman, and a lot more practical and less gullible than those who would indulge, excuse and even claim to enjoy him.
Heck, by Monday night I had received a pile of emails from readers who suggested Sherman’s behavior Sunday night was an audition for a gig at ESPN. We’re not all that stupid, Richard.
Joe giving FOX viewers a Buck’s worth of useless stats
Here’s hoping FOX’s Joe Buck spends his two weeks before the Super Bowl trying, at last, to come to grips with the fact that football is not baseball.
Sunday, with the 49ers going for it, fourth-and-goal from 2 feet, Buck, just before the snap, found it essential that he tell us, “49ers overall, 8-for-13 on fourth down this season.” Thanks, Joe, very helpful.
But Joe, this was fourth-and-2-feet. In Game 2 of their season — against Seattle, no less — the Niners failed to convert on a fourth-and-51-feet (17 yards).
OK, so maybe some thoughtless stat-head loaded such nonsense into the database. But after all these years of watching, calling, interpreting football, does he really think all fourth downs are the same? So much so as to provide such wildly irrelevant info at that moment?
The game began with a fumble by Seahawks quarterback Russell Wilson, recovered by the Niners at the Seattle 15. Several plays later, San Francisco kicked a field goal.
Buck: “Those are the first opening-drive points allowed by the Seahawks this season.” Good grief, Joe!
Additionally, Buck’s party boat has begun to list to genuine, gridiron gibberish. When Wilson scrambled — for his life — out of bounds, Buck explained Wilson “extended the play,” blitzes were “dialed up,” and what he once described as “a short gain” became “positive yardage.”
Row back to us, Joe.
The notion ESPN would know the most about sports proves nonsensical daily. Same with the NFL Network and football. Now MLB …
In an MLB.com audio/video tribute to recently deceased Jerry Coleman, the narrator tells us Coleman, as a Yankee, was with “eight division championship teams.”
What?!? There weren’t even divisions when Coleman played. He played on eight pennant winners. How can MLB not know that?
Not long ago, ESPN reported Bobby Thomson’s “Shot Heard ’Round the World,” was a “walk-off to end the 1951 NLCS.” Seriously.
ESPN set to bump Brent
Inside and just outside ESPN, word is out that Brent Musburger no longer will be the network’s No. 1 college football play-by-player, that he will be offered — or has been offered — a down-the-line role, if he chooses to stay. He will be 75 in May.
So the NHL will hold an outdoor game in warm, sunny L.A. at roughly the same time the NFL plays its championship game outdoors in cold, wintery Jersey. Well, all righty, then!
True or false? FOX’s Super Bowl pregame will include a feature on all the NFL-approved and NFL-sanctioned price-gouging attached to the game. A: Fat chance.
Reader Bob “The Goo” Gewirtz writes that until Sunday’s Richard Sherman episode, he wanted his grandson to attend Stanford. “Now, I want him to attend my alma mater — Potsdam State.”