OK, SETTLE down, take your seats. Before we start this meeting of the Common Sense Club, a couple of brief announcements:
CSC members who plan to bet the Super Bowl are urged to wait until after Pat Robertson tells us which team has angered God.
Also, Jim Dolan is hosting an open-bar/buffet party, this Tuesday, 7 p.m., in the Fran Healy Room at the Play By Play Club. It’s only open to cable subscribers who received a refund on last season’s hockey telecasts. Admission is free, but you need to show your canceled Cablevision check, the one marked, “2004-2005 NHL rebate,” at the door.
OK, let’s get started. CSC member Joseph Pearlman of North Carolina writes to suggest that, as we speak, there’s an ESPN production assistant itching to type, “Lakers are 1-0 when Kobe Bryant scores 81 or more points.”
Speaking of our guys up in Bristol, their bent on excessive cross-promotion continues to Boomer-rang; it continues to expose ESPN’s experts as inerts.
Monday, Dan Patrick’s guest on his ESPN Radio show was ESPN NFL expert analyst Michael Irvin, who explained that he’d gotten it wrong when he picked Carolina to win the NFC championship the day before – only because he didn’t know that Ray Rhodes is the Seahawks defensive coordinator.
Irvin went on to explain that Rhodes is a superior defensive strategist. Yup, Irvin continued, he, Irvin, had a hard time against the Eagles when Rhodes schemed the Eagle defense.
Yep, Irvin would have picked the Seahawks over the Panthers, had only he known that Rhodes was Seattle’s defensive coordinator – the last three seasons.
But let’s be fair; how can an ESPN expert be expected to know such a thing?
Then there were Mike & Mike (Greenberg and Golic), who, during their Wednesday morning ESPN Radio/ESPN2 simulcast, tried to perform the always- difficult Bristol double-sell.
They had ESPN football analyst Bill Curry to help beat the eardrums for Thursday’s ESPN All-Time Super Bowl Team show, hosted by Chris Berman. (Berman couldn’t make it; he was busy stealing the scene from a baby, three puppies and a bunny rabbit.)
Greenberg and Golic began to reason that Bart Starr wasn’t all that dazzling in his two Super Bowls, seeing how he threw for a total of only 452 yards and three TDs. “The numbers,” Greenberg said, “would not say that he had a day like the kind Joe Montana had.” Golic concurred.
Er Fellas, Starr’s Packer teams won those two games by a total of 68-24. And Starr was magnificent. For crying out loud, he was named MVP of both games. The reason Starr didn’t pass for even one more yard is because he didn’t have to.
Mike & Mike are beginning to make Common Sense Clubbers weep. Mike & Mike are beginning to sound more like Null & Void.
But it was that kind of week.
The first guy to accuse Omar Minaya of trying to sign someone through a “We Hispanics gotta stick together” pitch was Carlos Delgado, who last winter claimed that both Minaya and his assistant, Tony Bernazard, who’s Puerto Rican, turned him off by engaging in such an unsavory sell.
A year later, if a white fan merely suggests such a thing, he or she is a bigot. That makes a lot of sense, doesn’t it?
Boomer Esiason’s guests this week on his MSG Network show were MSG Network’s Mike Breen and Ranger coach Tom Renney. Amazing, how he can land such guests.
The common sense oozing from all over The Garden these days is bizarre, truly Dolan-esque.
First, we’re asked to believe – told to believe – that Antonio Davis, upon seeing that his wife was in clear and immediate physical peril, calmly and deliberately walked into the stands to rescue her. That makes no sense at all.
But if you ask us whether Davis calmly and deliberately walked into the stands because he wasn’t the least bit surprised to see his wife locked into her excessively excitable mode – again – well, yeah, that makes a lot more sense.
Then there’s this woman who’s suing Isiah Thomas for sexual harassment. Thomas and Garden president Steve Mills immediately condemned her as an obvious liar, an obvious stick-up artist, a woman obviously lacking any credibility whatsoever.
Well, if it’s that obvious, why wasn’t it even a little bit obvious in 2000, when she was hired as a senior VP? And if she initially disguised what an obviously despicable person she is, The Garden still had five years to find out.
But if we apply common sense to anything coming out of Dolan City, we’re left with just an applicator. Last year they tried to get us to believe that The Garden opposed a West Side stadium because it would be a burden on taxpayers.
These are the same humanists who, borrowing a scene from the Marx Brothers’ “A Day at the Races,” will sell you a ticket to all kinds of events, but you can’t enter The Garden for that event unless you also pay a “facility fee.”
Oh, yeah, the poor taxpayers. The Garden doesn’t pay a nickel in real estate taxes, yet the Dolans would have you think that they bought two tables at the Boston Tea Party.
Still, the thing that makes the least sense is the recent sightings of a smiling Lou Lamoriello. We’re told he’s smiling because the Devils are hot. But that makes no sense; we’ve seen Lamoriello remain rock-faced through three Stanley Cup championships.
Oh, now that makes sense – Lamoriello just saved 15 percent on his car insurance.
Meeting adjourned.
Meeting of the minds
ASTONISHING: ESPN NFL “expert” analyst Michael Irvin reports that he would have picked the Seahawks over the Panthers in last week’s NFC Championship, had he known Seattle’s defensive coordinator is Ray Rhodes – who has held the post for three seasons.
ABSURD: ESPN Radio morning talkers Mike Greenberg (left) and Mike Golic reason that Bart Starr turned in subpar performances in Super Bowls I and II – even though the legendary Green Bay quarterback threw for 452 yards and three touchdowns and the Packers won the two games by a combined 68-24 margin.
TURKEY: MSG owner Jim Dolan and his henchmen could bowl over a village with their impeccable reasoning, as demonstrated in their carefully crafted attempts at character assassination after a longtime employee sued The Garden and Knicks president Isiah Thomas this past week.