Ever see the TV show “Ice Road Truckers”? It tracks drivers of 18-wheelers as they haul to and from remote villages in Alaska and the Yukon.
Of course, the show’s producers aren’t going to spend an hour showing you rigs being driven in good, safe conditions. So they show us the trucks being driven during what appear to be the most senseless conditions — during white-outs, blizzards and ice storms, when the drivers, trucks and cargo are in the most peril.
It’s as if these folks wait for rotten weather, then drive straight — or as straight as they can — into it.
And such programming is called, “Reality TV.” But today, “Gilligan’s Island” would be called a documentary. The same increasingly can be said of sports TV. The more senseless it is, the more we’re likely to see and hear of it; the more ridiculous, the better.
Tuesday night on SNY, the Mets were up, 3-2, in the ninth inning. With Jason Isringhausen pitching, the Marlins had the bases loaded and one out.
Now, for the first, oh, 50 years of baseball on live TV, such circumstances held the self-evident truth that this was not a time to be messed with. Just pay strict attention to what was going on.
But not anymore! These circumstances served as the prompt to post a full-screen graphic heralding “The Toyota Instant Text Poll!”
The question: “What should the Mets do right now?”
The choices: A) Leave in Isringhausen. B) Go to bullpen.
That’s right, at the game’s most compelling moment — crunch time, soon to be known as Nestle’s Crunch time — it was time to insult the sensible in order to say and see “Toyota” one more time; a time to play virtual patty-cake with the dim-witted, those who’d text — “standard fees apply!” — A or B. There could be no C, you see.
It’s remarkable. Once upon a time, not too long ago, what was seen and heard with the bases loaded in the ninth inning Tuesday on SNY would have been impossible.
And not because texting and Toyotas weren’t around, but because it would have been rejected as too %*&#@!+?! stupid to even consider!
And there’s plenty more where that comes from.
ESPN’s unquenchable thirst to rank everything and everyone, and especially to apply pitching ERAs to quarterbacks — comparing apples to lug nuts — this season will make football on ESPN even more difficult to endure.
Just to prove that no bad idea is unworthy of duplication, ESPN has come up with its own QB Rating System, the work of ESPN’s new Stats & Information Group — for real — that also will throw a lot of numbers together to give correct conclusions the same status as erroneous ones.
Apparently, ESPN’s legion of football experts can’t distinguish good quarterbacking from lesser quarterbacking just by watching the games; they need numbers, rankings and more numbers and rankings.
And that’s odd, because, while you and I may not be experts, we don’t need numbers or rankings; we can tell good from bad just by watching!
Now, ESPN will tell us, without us even having to watch, why Johnny Unitas was better than Marc Bulger. Except, such ratings, as those currently used by the NFL and its other networks do, just as easily may tell us that Bulger was much better than Unitas.
Will ESPN’s QB ratings tell us that right-handed QBs often are only as good as their left tackles? Take into account dropped passes, tipped passes that are intercepted, wind, snow, rain, mud, injuries, quality of opponents, road, home, circumstances dictated by the score?
Don’t be silly. That would mean applying 11-on-11 context; that would mean disbelieving what you see and what you know and instead believing what you’re told.
The Worldwide Leader in Sports should be debunking the bunk, not adding to it. But nothing can stop ESPN. There are 22 men moving on every snap, yet ESPN insists on boiling it down to pitcher, catcher and batter.
And because this is ESPN’s “new” version of a bad idea, it’s going to be shoved down our throats. Be prepared; you’ll see.
By the way, who was better, Trent Green or John Elway? Well, that depends . . .
Text right now: A) for Elway. B) for Green. C) for cookies and milk.
Bowing to Tiger
Tiger Woods‘ return yesterday inspired the usual, worn TV pandering. Nick Faldo, on Golf Channel, spoke of Woods’ break with caddie Steve Williams as the result of “a miscommunication” before this past U.S. Open.
Not according to Williams. He claimed Woods allowed him to fly in from New Zealand, not telling him he wasn’t playing, thus it was a matter of Woods’ non-communication.
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Sid Rosenberg, on the Yankees’ 18-7 win Wednesday: “Like Charlie Sheen in a whorehouse, the Yanks scored all night long.” I may be wrong, but to have said that at 8:45 a.m. during his sports report on all-news WINS yesterday just may have been the wrong time and the wrong place.
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For a guy who claims to always give credit to the newspapers and other sources he lifts his info from, every morning, Craig Carton sure forgets to do so a lot.
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The Yankees announcers, during the series in Chicago, portrayed White Sox manager Ozzie Guillen as a man who “speaks his mind.” I guess calling a columnist you don’t like “a fag,” as Guillen did in 2006, passes for candor.
Directing legend dies at 84
Jack Simon, a legendary director of Mets games on Channel 9 and Knicks and Rangers telecasts, first on Hughes Sports Network, then MSG, died Wednesday at 84.
Many of the best local and national live sports directors were first schooled by Simon, a steady and engaging presence from 1960 through the mid-1980s. Two weeks ago, Herb Kaplan, a producer who for years worked side-by-side with Simon, died at 83.