Let’s call it as we both saw it: In order.
Guess it was too much for Cam Newton to remove that black cap thingee he was wearing during the national anthem. But he’s just another who demands respect with little in return. Surprised he didn’t exploit the anthem to display his Gatorade money towel.
On the flipside, Broncos wide receiver Demaryius Thomas demonstrated class, not returning to the sideline after the coin flip until he’d shaken hands with the Bay Area Super Bowl MVPs who were called to witness the flip. The rest of the Panthers and Broncos bolted.
Poor Mike Carey. The ex-NFL ref and CBS’ in-house replay-challenge expert got another one wrong, claiming that a pass to Jerricho Cotchery that was ruled incomplete would be changed. It wasn’t. But look at it this way: Here’s an accomplished NFL ref who sits in judgment of get-it-right replays and getting it right still comes down to maybe.
Jim Nantz’s “Here’s a look at our Bud Light Skycam” was followed by a so-what look at the field. And, for what Bud paid for the privilege, I wasn’t the least bit moved to go grab a Bud. You?
Bronco DB Aqib Talib’s penalty for taunting — it’s the Super Bowl, for crying out loud! — inspired Nantz and Phil Simms to speak of the damage — instead of punting, the Panthers had 15 more yards and a first down — but didn’t inspire either to say what needed to be said: Such behavior at such moments is insane!
And neither Nantz nor Simms even leaned toward condemnation when Denver DE Malik Jackson was penalized 15 yards for unnecessary roughness. Ho and hum. It’s just another game.
In all, there were five penalties for bad behavior, yet Nantz and Simms, who’ve sadly become steady panderers, apparently didn’t find that nearly as inexcusable as we did.
Guess it didn’t matter that Odell Beckham’s excessive me-first onfield conduct cost the Giants a playoff spot this season. He’s still worthy of starring in a Buick commercial.
CBS just can’t help itself. Panther Jonathan Stewart’s 1-yard TD plunge was followed by his lengthy hand-jive showboat bit, the latter rewarded with a full, slow-motion replay. Even rank immodesty after a 1-yard run gives TV an opportunity to do dirt to sports.
Where was Carolina’s sideline passing game, so strong all season?
Overall, CBS did a good job staying on the field — a given that’s no longer a given — but there was no Jerry Jones or Rob Ryan to shoot.
Nantz understandably ignored it, and Simms only hinted at it, but we couldn’t miss it: Denver won despite Peyton Manning.
Jim Gray, who often puts too much Jim Gray into his interviews, yesterday for Westwood One Radio, conducted a good one with Tom Brady, even if Brady’s Super Bowl pregame presence was predicated on his and Westwood’s shared endorsement/sponsorship interest in Macy’s.
Gray politely insisted that Brady answer if he’s rooting for longtime rival Peyton Manning. Brady finally admitted that he is — sort of — as both a friend and a competitor who has “as much love for the game as I do.” On the other hand, said Brady, if the Broncos “win the super Bowl, I’ll be jealous of him.” Good stuff on both ends.
By the way, New Yorkers — and fans from many other cities — can dislike Brady with all they’ve got, but he’s an all-timer, extremely talented, tough, too, who was a sixth-round draft pick.
Louisville finds way to keep up NCAA scam
Even when the Big Picture Guys enter a room, sit down before a coterie of cameras, then admit that there’s no beating this rap, we news media folks keep missing or ignoring the big picture.
Among those seated at the Friday bad news conference — bad news is announced on Fridays because Saturdays make the least news noise — to announce the University of Louisville’s Boom Boom Room & Hall of Anatomical Studies will remain closed for affirmations were deeply regretful panelists including head basketball coach, Kentucky thoroughbred devotee and horizontal ed instructor Rick Pitino, and a fellow named Chuck Smrt.
Smrt wasn’t there as the winner of the “I’d Like To Buy A Vowel” last name contest, but as Louisville’s hired-in-August NCAA compliance consultant. Smrt’s former position was to plug loopholes for the NCAA; his current one is to find loopholes for NCAA member schools. His employment on both sides of the fence stands in functional recognition of the worsening shadiness of big-time college sports, an insidious condition that has given rise to a low business subculture:
Those studied in the fine art of plumbing the depths to prevent basketball and football programs from breaching the boundaries and reaches of the NCAA’s tolerance have, for the past, oh, 35 years been in great demand by Division I colleges — certainly more than distinguished professors — after apprenticing at the NCAA.
These folks travel a career path similar to Smrt’s. For 17 years, Smrt was an NCAA rules investigator. Then he went freelance, renting himself to schools that had trouble determining right from wrong for themselves, or those left to wonder whether they’d done enough — all they possibly could — to exploit or circumvent the rules in order to win ballgames.
Folks such as Smrt, having left NCAA law enforcement to practice NCAA law avoidance, are hired by colleges that are deeply invested and diseased by whatever-it-takes sports sickness. These fellas are not hired, after all, to help determine the freshman English Comp reading list.
The scene is not unlike the district attorney who spends the second half of his career as a mob lawyer.
So let’s give Smrt credit for showing up, on Louisville’s time and dime, to join in surrendering the fact that Louisville’s (young) men’s basketball recruits were enticed by free-everything full scholarships, cash in the form of Pell Grants and, if that didn’t clinch it, regular, athletic department-budgeted performances staged by local strippers and lap-dancers.
And so the national scam — the kind that in other businesses results in indictments and slam-dunk convictions for racketeering — rolls along, rolls along. Our colleges continue to serve as fronts for basketball and football programs that continue to be presented to the public under the bogus pretense that they have something to do with institutions of higher education, that these recruits are legitimate student-athletes.
But at best, academics are optional. The education of full-scholarship recruits to colleges has become a matter of serendipitous accident. Strippers, on the other hand, are regarded as essential, as deal-sealers for McDonald’s All-Americans “with a monster first-step move to the hoop.”
So SEC football colleges, in the name of pre-emptive, preventative social activism, now hold preseason seminars to tell their recruits they shouldn’t commit battery or sexual assault against women — apparently at least some of the recruits arrive unaware. And the NFL Panthers — college men and professionals about to play the biggest games of their careers — were assembled before the Super Bowl for a been-there/done-that speech telling them Super Bowl Week is a lousy time to be arrested.
And now Louisville will have to become more fox and less wolf, recruit its basketball student-athletes with something easier to keep the lid on. Perhaps the next wave of former NCAA investigators will come up with something.
Golf’s ‘Wasted’ opportunity
Viewer Indiscretion Is Advised: The Phoenix Open, now sponsored by Waste Management, has again been seen and heard as the Young & Wasted Open. Tens of thousands of rowdy, attention-starved 20-somethings, loud-mouth drunk by 11 a.m., we’re annually told is both “lots of fun” and “great for the game.”
Maybe. Who doesn’t enjoy being surrounded by 40,000 young drunks?
But the “Isn’t this fun?” and “You can feel the energy” stuff that this weekend came out of Golf Channel/NBC — Kelly Tilghman and Peter Jacobsen were among those to so testify — sounded tired and unconvincing, as disingenuous pandering is so often heard.
There’s no PGA event annually more predicated on both the sale and abuse of alcohol. To that end, no one finds the Wasted Management Open more “fun and entertaining” than the PGA’s bottom-liners.
As for more standard disingenuous coverage, NBC foolishly continued to play “plausibly live” games with an audience that TV has conditioned to know when it’s being treated dishonestly.
Saturday: Why, there was Dan Summerhays, 2-over and 13 back of the leader when he suddenly appeared, and for the first time.
Could it be? Why, he nearly made a hole-in-one! Amazing how NBC, like CBS, always has that spooky sixth sense!
Check Goodell’s brain
Outside of presidential politics, is there a public speaker who comes across more full of it than Roger Goodell? He addresses concussions as if they’re infrequent and mysterious, as if they’re just a fad.
Lost Tapes: While making nice-nice on the air with superstar horse trainer Bob Baffert, last week, Mike “Let’s Be Honest” Francesa, for a second time since the Preakness, passed on an opportunity to tell Baffert that he spent the week before the Preakness hollering that Baffert “should be fired!” for conflicted interests.
Gotta love those ticket promos seen on YES’ Nets telecasts, those showing four Nets, arms folded and glowering menacingly at the camera. Yep, if looks could kill, we’d never know the Nets are 13-39.
No prison time for Plaxico Burress; he was sentenced to probation for his latest — tax evasion — which means SNY, following the rich and unrewarding TV custom of giving first crack to the least deserving, can bring him back.
In Kristaps Porzingis we’ve the privilege of watching basketball’s first 7-foot-3 swingman. On defense, he plays down low, like a center covering a center. On offense, you’ll find him way outside or on the far wings, a deep-shooting guard. That, and coaching, explains why some nights he has 14 rebounds, others he has four.
Noting that defensive ends Qaadir Sheppard and Amir Ealey have been tossed from Syracuse’s football team for “violating team rules,” reader Ron Perri asks if they might’ve “again left wet towels on the locker room floor.” Might be worse than that, Ron; they might’ve been caught in the library.