How’s that song go? Oh, yeah …
“It’s the root of all evil, of strife and upheaval, “But I’m certain, honey, that life would be sunny, “With plenty of money, and you!”
Wow, a good, old fashioned, sensible Sunday 1 p.m. start in New York for a New York NFL team, the Jets, today. Imagine that!
But that’s no accident. Smaller TV market opponents, such as Jacksonville, or losing teams are mostly assigned logical starting times because they’re deemed financially and commercially expendable.
The Carolina Panthers have both sides covered. They’re a small market team coming off a 2-14 season. This season, all eight home games are scheduled for 1 p.m., all eight away games scheduled for 1 p.m. in their opponents’ locales.
The Tennessee Titans, 6-10 last year, are scheduled to play all afternoon games, all but one at 1 p.m.
Lucky Panthers and Titans fans.
Face it, Jets and Giants fans and ticket/PSL holders, such things as reasonable NFL starting times for your teams will become harder to find than a short line at the DMV. And winter night-time outdoor climate counts for nothing.
The NFL, like MLB and the NBA, is a league that would shove every loyal, financially abused patron down an elevator shaft if it meant another nickel in TV money.
And if the Jets or Giants are competitive, the NBC Sunday night “flex” will snatch another afternoon game, or two. Just like ESPN’s Sunday night baseball, sensible can be — will be — eliminated in the snap of a wallet.
So, how’s that Personal Sucker License working out?
The sports greed in this town never stops. The U.S. Open/USTA folks, Wednesday — two days after the Open ended — invited the public to the National Tennis Center to buy 2011 Open logo merchandise at 50 percent off.
In other words, the USTA didn’t want to get stuck with stuff that it couldn’t sell during the Open because it was priced too high, $35 court-sweat towels, for example.
But if it originally had charged a reasonable price and still built in plenty of profit, how much would have been left?
Regardless, the USTA attached a name to Wednesday’s come-on: “U.S. Open Fan Appreciation Sale.” Seriously.
If the USTA truly appreciated its ticket-buying fans, it wouldn’t need to demonstrate such day-after “fan appreciation.”
New NFL instant replay rule not scoring big
Twenty-five years later, the NFL’s “instant” replay rule still is being made up as it goes along.
Last Sunday, as seen on CBS, Ravens’ running back Ray Rice was ruled to have scored a TD from eight yards out. But with all scores now subjected to mandatory replay inspection, the game was stopped before the PAT attempt. Rice was then ruled down at the 1.
Two plays later, Rice scored from the one. The Ravens immediately kicked the PAT. Though the score appeared clean, there was absolutely no time to review the play — a scoring play — before that kick, thus the new mandatory replay inspection rule was violated in the first week of the season.
* Is former NBC Sports boss Dick Ebersol a self-promoting egomaniac? You tell me.
Several readers have noted that NBC’s Sunday NFL telecasts used to open with a lot of noise, color and a full-screen graphic carrying Ebersol’s name, as if he was the star of the show, followed by production credits that only seemed to excuse/justify the appearance of Ebersol’s name.
No other national sports telecasts ever opened with such credits.
Last Sunday’s NBC NFL opener, sans Ebersol? No opening credits at all.
Funny thing, though, I can’t recall the opening graphic, “Dick Ebersol’s Half-Day Old, Plausibly Live Olympics!” or “NBC’s Dick Ebersol Presents: The XFL!”
* Football remains TV’s most wildly misunderstood, facts-butchered, circumstances-ignored, stats-blinded game. Every telecast is brings a flood of misinformation.
Throughout the Giants-Redskins’ telecast last Sunday, Fox’s Joe Buck noted dropped passes by Giants receivers and balls thrown out of bounds by Eli Manning to avoid sacks. In the fourth quarter, FOX posted this graphic: “Manning Under Pressure — 30 dropbacks, 2 sacks, 6 knockdowns, 8 hits.”
But did that prevent Fox and Buck from stressing Manning’s poor “passer rating,” as if it’s his ERA, as if the game were pitch-and-catch, as if it were played in a test tube? Nope.
ESPN gets scoop on old story
Not that this makes surprising news anymore, but a scoop reported on Turner Sports-managed NBA.com about NBA finances on July 12, was last week reported by ESPN — as an ESPN scoop!
* Joe Girardi, on the (pay) phone with Mike Francesa on Thursday spoke of how long catcher Francisco Cervelli’s might be unable to play: “Concussions are too unpredictable to predict.” To which Francesa answered, “I would agree with that.” What a relief that must have been to Girardi.
* Q: Why did ESPN need three men — Reece Davis, Craig James and Jesse Palmer — to call Thursday night’s LSU-Mississippi State game? A: Because that’s all the room there was in the booth.
* So CBS’s sports studio anchor James Brown — long a living, breathing, uncompromising symbol and advocate of God-fearing civility and gentlemanly public comportment — Friday morning hops on the WFAN/MSG simulcast of the Pee-Pee and Poo-Poo Show for a little cross-promotion.
* All that happy noise about St. John’s University’s fabulous, nationally-ranked, ESPNU-rated recruiting class, yet no one checked to see if they could read and write?
* The U.S. National Team, 1-0 losers to Belgium in a recent friendly seen on ESPN2, seems to start games with “Let’s see what happens” soccer instead of “Let’s make it happen” soccer. Even with famous new coach, German big-match scoring star Jurgen Klinsmann, the U.S. has to be down a goal before it attacks.
* Now that it signed this huge $15 billion extension with ESPN, why does the NFL still need the NFL Network in addition? Just so we can pay more and more for both?
* Tom Brady threw 48 times for 517 yards and four TDs on Monday night. That meant the Pats ran the ball just 21 times (for 103 yards). But how long before some stat-headed expert concludes that the Pats’ running game is weak, in need of attention and improvement?
* If FOX’s Troy Aikman continues to replace “fumble” with “putting the ball on the ground,” he will be banished to ESPN.