BY losing a gold medal to mindless, perhaps commerce-conditioned showboating Friday, Lindsey Jacobellis has created a golden opportunity.
Consider that Friday night NBC’s Jimmy Roberts and then Bob Costas gently, legitimately beat up the 20-year-old snowboarder. Saturday, NBC repeated some of Costas’ interview with Jacobellis, one in which she admitted to making a mistake, yet said, “I have no regrets.”
NBC made a big thing of it. Good. It was big thing-worthy.
But the story is no longer about Jacobellis, who, as if out of Hawthorne’s “The Scarlet Letter,” spoke from NBC’s studio in a sweater that displayed only a large Nike swoosh. Now the story is about TV – in this case NBC, which so clearly recognized what Jacobellis did and why she did it.
NBC has re-acquired NFL rights. In the wake of the Jacobellis episode and NBC’s scolding response, let’s see how NBC chooses to promote and present the NFL. Let’s see if NBC will practice the same lesson that it wanted all of us to take from the Jacobellis episode.
Our guess is that NBC’s NFL coverage will be similar to CBS, Fox and ABC/ESPN – promos will be loaded with players demonstrating all forms of immodest behavior, the kind athletes have become conditioned to demonstrate in exchange for TV’s rewards.
Our guess is that NBC will give the most thumbs-up coverage to the loudest-mouthed, most attention-starved, chest-poundingest braggarts. That’s what NBC sold the last time it had NFL and NBA rights. But we’ll see.
Friday, Costas and Roberts did what they had to do. We know both to be very decent men – sportsmen – who would only discourage the marketed mindset that cost Jacobellis a gold medal.
But what we wouldn’t have given for Jacobellis to have turned to Costas, Friday, and said, “Hey, didn’t NBC give us the XFL?”
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CBS lately is emphasizing its last two letters. Last month, Dick Enberg insulted a national audience when he reported that Colts DB Nick Harper will start despite a cut “suffered in an accident yesterday.” But Harper’s wife was in jail, charged with stabbing him.
Saturday, during UConn-WVU, Gus Johnson reported that UConn point guard Marcus Williams had been suspended the first semester “for violating the student code.” What did that mean? Overdue library books? Chucking water balloons from a dorm window? Could Johnson have been any more vague?
Williams stole four laptop computers from UConn students. Apparently, felony theft is a violation of UConn’s student code. Tough code; it can even get a star player suspended for a while.
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That ESPN devotes incalculable resources to college basketball hardly means that ESPN understands college basketball. Saturday, because Bucknell was ranked No. 24, ESPNews reported that Bucknell’s four-point loss to Northern Iowa was “an upset.” But NIU, now 22-6 and playing at home, was a 6 1/2-point favorite.
With Chris Berman doing most of the hollering, ESPN already is flooding our senses with Monday Night football come-ons, as if such relentless annoyances will make one more person watch. Thursday’s “SportsCenter” included the Terrell Owens/Sharpie incident as a “Monday Night Football Classic Moment” – evidence of what ESPN regards as a classical sports moment.
FAN’s Joe Benigno hosts a Tomorrow’s Children fundraiser, tomorrow night at the Laugh Factory, 42nd St. and 8th Ave. For more info: 212-586-7829, ext. 1 . . . We’re told that ESPN added Stephen A. Smith’s “Quite Frankly” because it was tired of “Around The Horn” being the worst show on TV.
Last season, Alfonso Soriano made $7.5 million. This year, he asked for $12M per, but lost his arbitration hearing. He’ll have to settle for $10M. And somewhere there’s a reporter preparing to ask him if he’s bitter.
Hooters has opened a Vegas casino. Casinos ostensibly trade on the public’s trust. But that didn’t prevent Hooters from having, as one of its “Grand Opening” attractions, TV scamdicapper/blowhard Wayne Root.
Sammy Sosa, who when subpoenaed to testify before Congress suddenly forgot how to speak English, then went up the street to play for the Orioles. Now he turns down an offer to play for the Nationals, who play across the street from Congress.