It Hardly is surprising that a media poll conducted by The Associated Press concluded the top sports story of 2012 was the Penn State scandal.
Not a bad choice, not unless we stop to weigh what happened to big-time college sports after and because of the scandal:
Nothing. Not a thing, not for the better. And that’s also scandalous, the second biggest sports story of 2012. As unfathomably revolting as it was, the Sports Story of the Year wasn’t, in the short run and presumably in the long term, worth a damn.
Consider: The money-chasing state of Division I college football and basketball is so conditioned toward wrongdoing that not even the revelation of a long-running pedophile, given a look-away pass on behalf of the sustained status of a football kingdom and its legendary monarch, could stimulate the better sides of competing football kingdoms.
Though everyone’s “thoughts and prayers” went out to the victims of a longtime Penn State assistant coach/Pied Piper who regularly used the football program as his lure, business, as usual, proceeded as usual.
The recruiting of whomever it takes to win a ball game in the name of a college — reading, writing and law-abiding skills non-compulsory — continued.
The feeding frenzy for TV money — with no participating network ever making a value judgment beyond national rankings — not only continued but accelerated.
The multi-million dollar coaching contracts, side deals and bonuses to win at any and all costs continued.
What greater social good — or even minimal social good — does winning college football or basketball games serve? What lasting benefit does society derive from colleges and universities that roll and over and play dead on behalf of winning ball games?
Damned if I know.
But I do know the Penn State scandal was voted the sports story of 2012.
And I do know people in the college sports business lined up to claim their “thoughts and prayers go out to the young victims” of that outrage.
And I do know not a damned thing has changed — except that those in the whatever-it-takes college sports business know that in 2012 they had to run even faster than in 2011.
That show is one heck of a mess
Here is one more reason that the last person to take Mike Francesa seriously — Mike Francesa — unwittingly has become one of the best comedic acts in TV/radio history. Friday, he angrily opened his show with this:
“I gotta fumigate when I come in here, now. Everyone uses my studio, now. And now they can’t — my God — have your producers clean up! Geez! Coffee stains, garbage all over the place. God almighty! Ugh!
“We have everyone in the same studio, now, because of the network, next door. So I have Joe [Benigno] and Evan [Roberts] on top of me … And then the place is a mess.
“I gotta spend 10 minutes cleaning it before we come on the air. God! … God! … It’s disgusting.”
* Not that the NBA’s TV networks are inclined to address such mundane basics — things that don’t explode — but in Thursday’s four-point loss to the Timberwolves, the Nuggets missed nine of 20 free throws.
* Peter Faris, former VP of The Post, died Christmas Day. He was a New Zealander, short, but built like an anvil. And, perhaps because he was the last word on expense accounts he saved his smiling — which he was good at it — for outside the office.
One day — it had to be around 1979 because I covered the Piscataway Nets at the time — I received a call at home from Faris’ secretary: “Peter wants you in here, and right away.” Yikes.
When I arrived outside his office, two other Post basketball writers were waiting. Geez. The three of us were called in.
“Who,” Faris asked, “is Charlie Theokas.”
He is the GM of the Nets, we answered.
“Is he a nice man?” Faris asked.
Yes, we said, very nice.
“Well, he must be,” Faris said. “The three of you had lunch with him on the same day in three different places.”
ESPN Ducks action
There are times when I would like to take ESPN by its shoulders, get right in its face and holler, “Wake Up!”
The opening kick to Thursday’s Fiesta Bowl was returned 94 yards for a TD by Oregon’s De’Anthony Thomas. ESPN responded with a series of crowd and sideline shots. Then, because the “E” stands for Excessive, ESPN added more, then even more. Seven crowd shots appeared before ESPN returned us to the field.
By then, it was too late.
Those familiar with Oregon — and that should include ESPN, no? — know that the Ducks often attempt extra points out of a wild, shifting formation, one that at first appears as if they’re going for two.
Well, ESPN didn’t return us from its post-TD tour of the stadium until the moment Oregon snapped the ball — not that we could see who snapped it or to whom it was snapped. But it was run in to make it 8-0.
The wild play was lost to ESPN’s audience because ESPN again proved that it spends more time self-promoting than self-preparing.
* A new ESPN college basketball promo perfectly captures ESPN’s sense of basketball. It’s a collection of slam dunks with a 3-point bomb thrown in, nothing else.
* Reader Pat Proietti, Rochester, N.Y., writes that this year he watched the movie version of Charles Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol” just to see the ghosts “move the chains.”
* Connecticut reader Mark Morley received the EA NHL 2013 video game for Christmas. “It’s an exciting, action-packed series of stalled negotiations, plus corporate vs. labor finger-pointing. Hours of fun!”
* Skip Bayless. Sounds like a good New Year’s resolution.