So what’s the worst that could happen if the num ber of timeouts in the last three minutes of basketball games were reduced by rule to only one or two per side?
The more prepared, better- coached, sharper team would have an advantage? That’s a bad thing?
Thursday night, the final 3:19 of West Virginia-Cincinnati took 23 minutes to complete. Had to — eight timeouts were called. The game became a per-possession timeout and coaching marathon.
The final 23 seconds of Ohio State-Michigan on Friday afternoon included three timeouts. Later Friday, there were five timeouts in the final 1:31 of Virginia Tech-Miami. It now hardly matters if one team arrives better prepared and better schooled to play the smarter basketball down the stretch. Yet good thinking, given that it’s college ball, should be rewarded.
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Only ESPN would think that after four-seed Virginia Tech’s loss to last-seed Miami in the ACC tourney Friday, we needed studio anchor Ryan Burr to tell us that he “just got off the phone” with ESPN “bracketologist” Joe Lunardi, who said Va. Tech’s loss, vis a vis the NCAAs, “qualifies as a bad loss.” We’re begging you, men, let us in on the secret!
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Here’s lesson No. 5 in the college basketball tournament How To Be a TV and Radio Announcer Handbook. Practice saying the following “nots”: “For a 12-seed, they’re not backing down/not being intimidated/not quitting/not going away/not afraid to take it inside/not afraid to shoot the 3/not playing like a 12-seed.”
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If the CBS-NCAA basketball tournament contract is blown up after this tournament, reconfigured to be shared with another network, if the postseason NIT is eliminated and the 65-team NCAA Tournament field is increased, don’t fall for any triple-double-speak. The changes will have zero to do with basketball or college, everything to do with money.
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At a time when folks are beginning to recognize that metal baseball bats create the kind of accelerated action that adds danger to the limbs and lives of kids, it’s disappointing to see Michael Strahan, one of my TV heroes (for real), starring in a TV commercial for metal bats.
Francesa ‘source’ for double standard
So Mike Francesa, after trashing Chris Carlin for reporting that sources close to Jim Calhoun think he soon will retire, demanded to know how Carlin could report such a thing without knowing it’s true.
Then Francesa and WFAN spent the next two days advancing source-based reports about St. John’s coach Norm Roberts, Tiger Woods and Jose Reyes without knowing whether the stories are true! (Apparently embarrassed by Francesa, WFAN did not include tape of that Francesa-Carlin chat on its Web site).
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Reader Mike DeGregorio, of Manalapan, N.J., notes that in 10,000 fewer at bats than Rickey Henderson (3,335 to 13,346), Jose Reyes has more triples (73 to 66).
“Yeah,” writes DeGregorio, “so let’s bat him third.”
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Not only does HBO’s Bryant Gumbel look very good following cancer treatment, we’re told he’s doing very well.
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Robert De Niro is being cast as Vince Lombardi in a film co-produced by ESPN. Current plans are for the movie to be released during the off week between the 2012 AFC and NFC championships and the Super Bowl.
But I have got a feeling that ESPN, ABC and ESPN Radio will provide plenty of advanced notice, starting, oh, next week. ESPN is pushing for Chris Berman to play Bart Starr or Herb Adderley.
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Lex Shirreffs, of Bryn Mawr, Pa., suggests that the record for working for the most TV networks (four) in the shortest time (five months) recently was set by Mary Carrillo. Since September, she worked for NBC (tennis, Olympics), ESPN (tennis), CBS (tennis) and HBO (“Real Sports” correspondent).
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Allen Iverson’s latest crash landing, I suppose, means that we still are supposed to forget about the good old Big East days, back when those who added two and two to conclude that Iverson couldn’t possibly be a legitimate Georgetown student risked having John Thompson brand them a racist.
Why does ‘sorry’ Tiger need a PR firm?
If TIiger Woods, as now suspected, plays in next month’s Masters, it vaporizes the widely held opinion that he would miss one major to demonstrate both his genuine remorse for past behavior and his sincerity about change.
And if doing right by one’s family is Woods’ primary goal — that’s what he says it is — why does he need a new public relations firm, or any public relations firm? Is he going to distribute press releases and issue statements to his wife and kids?
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Once again, nearing the close of a cheesy season, Rangers fans can’t figure if it makes more sense to root their team in or out. Instead of focusing on the postseason price hikes for the more expensive seats, this time let’s go with the least expensive ones, the seats way upstairs: For the first round, $37 regular-season tickets jump 75 percent to $67.
Second round, those $37 seats go to $74 (100-percent markup). Third round to $110 per (200-percent jump) and $160 for the finals, a markup of a mere 332 percent!
Season-ticket holder S.P. wonders what happened to all that happy talk after the 2004-05 NHL lockout, which reduced player salaries and was supposed to make tickets more affordable, when they steadily have risen. Those “inexpensive seats” since 2005-06 have been “reduced” from $22.50 to $37.
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Honest Press Release of the Week: Announcing that it will televise the new Pinstripe Bowl from Yankee Stadium, ESPN added that the game will be played by “the Big East team with the third-best conference record against the Big 12 team with the sixth-best conference record.”
The only thing missing was the headline, “ESPN Lands Game Between Nothing Special Teams.”