Apparently, we now expect so little from our sports — except to pay more and more for them — that were seldom are disappointed.
Thus, we shouldn’t be surprised that the response from many “sports fans” to the Saints bounty story fell somewhere between ho and hum. “What’s the big deal? That’s just football being football.”
To some desensitized degree, that’s true. Yet, if one were to ask the following:
What if your kid was the star receiver on his Pop Warner, high school, college or NFL team? And the opposing coach — the adult in charge — offered his players an extra slice of pizza, an extra helmet sticker, a game ball, or $10,000 for knocking your kid out of the game?
Not for tackling your son or for playing good, hard-hitting defense against your son, but for injuring him, for knocking him out of the game, preferably into an ambulance that would then transport him to a hospital?
Is that football being football? Hell, no. That’s football being criminal, football infused with premeditated aggravated assault.
And if you knew your kid were the target of such a “game plan,” you wouldn’t wait for a criminal indictment, you would hire the best attorney in town — and they would line up once they got a whiff of this story — and sue the laundry off the league and those coaches party to this plan. In the Saints’ case, the plan was in place for three seasons!
It’s interesting how some of the former and current Saints defensive players characterized the whistle blower or blowers as a “snitch” or “snitches.”
“Snitch” is no longer just a grammar school put-down. It now commonly is used in gang-infested neighborhoods to warn those who would cooperate with police in crime investigations. To “snitch” — to act to try to cleanse one’s neighborhood of criminals — is to know that you or your family will be targeted for the next “hit.”
In 2004 and 2007, an East Baltimore drug dealer and Bloods member, Ronnie Thomas — street name “Skinny Suge” — produced, starred in and circulated videos titled “Stop Snitching” then “Stop Snitching 2.” They featured vulgarities, guns, drugs, piles of cash and threats against police and civilians. So stop snitching, got it?
And across the country, along the deadliest blocks, “Stop Snitching” T-shirts were worn. “Snitching” was spray-painted beneath “STOP” on corner street signs.
Carmelo Anthony, raised in East Baltimore, dressed in red and fresh out of Syracuse University and into the NBA, is seen in the first video, knowingly laughing it up with a nasty street thug.
In 2010, Skinny was sentenced to 20 years for, among other things, witness intimidation.
Now we have NFL players — pros produced by our colleges — condemning those who would “snitch” on the Saints. Those who would seek to retain or restore some civility in their sport are damned as “snitches,” violators of a street-gang code that has infiltrated the NFL.
So, if you want to keep excusing, explaining rationalizing, indulging and dismissing this Saints scandal as “football being football,” fine. That’s your call.
But please, if this is “football being football,” do the rest of us a favor and stop referring to football as a “sport.” Premeditated, aggravated assault? Sure. But a sport?
Easy to call winner after game is over
Radio Row: 1) SiriusXM’s Mad Dog Radio channel, Wednesday at 5 p.m., shamelessly included another Jeff Allen scamdicapper ad. The narrator claimed Allen was going to give you the winner of that day’s West Virginia-UConn game, “as if it had already played!”
It already had been played.
2) For all his name-calling and tough-guy talk, Craig Carton is becoming a shill. Wednesday on his WFAN/MSG show he said, “It’s rare that we do MMA [mixed martial arts, cage fighting] here,” then introduced an MMA preview segment.
What a coincidence! Carton now co-hosts an MMA show on Spike TV! And Carton, in this segment, noted and promoted Spike’s MMA show.
3) As long as WCBS Radio and its kin stations are expected to replay John Sterling’s calls the mornings after Yankees games, they can’t expect the sports anchors to pretend the calls are better than a very bad, long-playing joke.
Monday, after WINS replayed Sterling’s typically butchered call of a Yankees home run — “Gone! … No, caught! … No, gone!” — Marc Ernay added that Sterling’s “in midseason form.”
4) Last Friday, Mike Francesa knowingly declared this Saints bounty thing was no big deal. The NFL would only give the participants a mild slap. Wanna bet, Mike?
Yesterday, Francesa said Peyton Manning would favor playing for Houston because “he doesn’t like big cities.” Houston’s the fourth largest city in the United States, third largest in the NFL (and much larger than Al Alburquerque).
If only Francesa learned to say, “I don’t know,” now and then, he would have a chance not to always be authoritatively dead wrong.
Hey, Mike, time was right for foul play
Add Knicks coach Mike D’Antoni to the list. To not foul the man with the ball with less than 10 seconds left and with a three-point lead (see: Knicks-Celtics on Sunday, Paul Pierce 3-pointer to tie with :05 left, Knicks lose in overtime) roughly is the same as giving your opponent a one-in-three chance to tie the game vs. forcing a one-in-100 situation.
Put it this way: I never have seen the team up three, less than 10 seconds left, ever lose the lead or the game when that foul is made.
I’m sure it has happened, but I’ve never seen it. Yet we’ve seen the game tied and sent to OT dozens of times when a 3-point shot is allowed.
* While TV all season has posted graphics showing Syracuse’s bench as a high-offense crew, reader Jim Mitchell of Kirkville, N.Y., notes the practical explanation is never given: Starting forward Rakeem Christmas typically plays no more than five minutes.
ESPN graphic yesterday, early in Syracuse-UConn: “Syracuse 0 turnovers. UConn 0 points off turnovers.”
Kansas State-Baylor yesterday on ESPN2. Kansas State was identified in graphics as the team in purple, the school’s color.
Except K-State was dressed in its Nike-issue black uniforms.
Dilemma for two Nike-run schools last Saturday. The St. John’s Red Storm played the Rutgers Scarlet Knights.
Only one of the red-named teams — it was St. John’s — could wear its black uniforms.