Sports

Lunacy reigns from MMA to Big East tourney

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I Just had a funny thought. What if my father had been a basketball TV analyst? He would have been good — honest and concise — right up until halftime, when he would have been fired for both.

My old man wasn’t the kind who would or could approve or applaud something that made no sense. Believe me.

It’s a shame modern media demand that we suspend common sense to regard bad as good. After, say, one of those features about a college kid from a poor, pitiful background, my father, a Depression Era kid, would have said, “So how could he afford all those tattoos?”

He was like that. He didn’t say much, but you couldn’t tell him two plus two equaled anything except four.

And if a kid stood glaring at a TV camera, banging his chest after a slam, my old man would have said that he should be getting back on D instead of showing off. Yup, he would have been gone by halftime. Then they would fire the guy who hired him.

Which brings us to Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who has joined other legislators in calling for the removal of the ban on few-holds-barred mixed martial arts cage fighting because the enterprise, often promoted to young males as a real blood sport compared to their violent video games, could bring revenue to the state.

Keep this in mind the next time something murderously insane happens, say, at a grammar or high school. The same politicians will stand before the TV cameras to wonder aloud what has made our children so mindlessly, excessively violent.

Last basketball season an indoor street fight — a stomping included — erupted between the student-athletes of the University of Cincinnati and those of crosstown rival Xavier.

The brawl was prefaced, and to some extent scheduled, by game-week taunts, threats and boasts — the kind chanted by gangsta-rappers and spoken, tweeted and acted on by gang-bangers. Some players, while preparing for a turf war — it’s about respect, ya know? — didn’t even know one another.

Afterward, the schools expressed their profound sorrow for this disgrace. It sure sounded good.

Wednesday, Cincinnati showed up in the Garden and on ESPN to play Providence in the Big East Tournament. Cincy, perhaps with area recruits in mind, wore its latest in adidas-mandated menace-wear — black-and-white shorts in a camouflage/combat pattern. Time to go to war, again.

Apparently Cincinnati’s leadership, last year humiliated by the behavior of its team, are over it.

Meanwhile, this Big East Tournament, as a fashion statement, has been seized by adidas to renew war on Nike to determine which can do the most dirt to college sports — and everything else they touch — by buying the rights to do their worst.

As for Providence, it easily lost to Cincy, which in turn lost to Georgetown yesterday. But who knows? Two recruits scheduled to be seniors are doing hard time for an unprovoked, random assault on a Providence student that fractured his skull in 16 places, his face disfigured despite surgeries. Another victim of student-athletics. More where he came from.

The only change coming is that it’s going to keep getting worse, the media’s silence sustained.

Hey, Mike, QB not eligible for draft

You would think by now someone at CBS Radio, WFAN or YES would have the common sense and decency to demand that Mike Francesa cease misleading their audiences.

Last month Francesa, always first with the latest bogus inside info (unless lifted from a newspaper), claimed that “the steal” in this NFL draft will be Louisville QB Teddy Bridgewater. Francesa, as usual, was full of it. A sophomore, Bridgewater isn’t eligible for this draft.

Wednesday, Francesa declared Bridgewater, despite Francesa’s recognition of his talent, has decided to stay at Louisville!

With the ease of a megalomaniac and the transparence of the emperor in his new clothes, Francesa compounded one fabrication with another – and figured he had covered himself!

Meanwhile, Francesa’s freakish, sustained ability to sagely tout heavy favorites who not only lose but lose badly, and his knack for pretending to know all about things — everything — he knows nothing about, collided Wednesday, with the selection of an Argentine as Pope.

Tuesday, Francesa played the chalk, telling a caller — as if he knew — that the new Pope likely would be from Italy.

One wonders if, upon hearing that the new Pope would be Francis, whether Francesa, for an instant heard “France …” and thought he had been named Pope!

* Also Wednesday, ESPN, the network that censured devoted shill Brent Musburger for enthusiastically noting a young woman’s beauty, hired Ray Lewis.

Lewis is a career concussionist (with flags and fines to prove it); he is the father of six from four women; he admittedly obstructed a still-unsolved double-homicide investigation (he later reached a financial deal with the victims’ families).

The minimal dictates of common sense provide, especially at a time when the NFL is loaded with both lawless players and those losing their careers, minds and lives to concussions, that Lewis would be the last guy right-headed folks would hire.

But ESPN’s sending him right to the head of the class. He will be prominently featured around “Monday Night Football.” And now, much as it made its “Bobby Knight Goes Nuts Action Reel” disappear, ESPN again has to play pretend with history.

Just had another funny thought. Imagine if my dad ran ESPN …

Rangers pay for Sabre ban

So How did the Rangers make out following that five-game suspension to Buffalo’s Patrick Kaleta for slamming Brad Richards head-first into the boards?

Well, through four, the Rangers would have been better off had they insisted that Kaleta be given a scholarship to the John Tortorella School of TV Charm.

Without Kaleta, the Sabres lost 4-3 to the Hurricanes, lost a shootout to the Devils, lost 3-2 to the Flyers. So to some unknown degree, the Rangers’ conference playoff berth competitors all benefitted. Next, without Kaleta, the Sabres beat the Rangers.

Tomorrow Buffalo plays the Eastern Conference rival Senators. If Ottawa wins, that would make an 0-for-5 sweep — the Rangers the extended victims of Kaleta’s foul on Richards.

In this shortened, conference-only season, it would have made sense to heavily fine Kaleta and suspend him only for games vs. the Rangers.

* Quick, name the last three Big East Tournament winners. … Thought so.

* MLB Network’s Matt Vasgersian set the bar lower on Wednesday. During the WBC’s Italy-Puerto Rico: “Angel Pagan has turned into a really great major league player.” Hmmm.

* Q: Richard Craig, Delray Beach: “How can Doral be called the ‘Blue Monster’ when the par-5 10th can be reached in two with an iron, then five-wood.” A: The nickname now refers to the $350 greens fees.