HOW’S this for trouble on the brew? The NFL Network’s exclusive Dec. 29 Patriots-Giants, an 8:15 Saturday nighter, is the last game of both teams’ regular season, thus it could be, among other things, to determine whether the Pats go undefeated.
Though the game will be on over-the-air TV only here and in Boston, the NFL Network is currently available in only 35 million of the nation’s 95 million cable, satellite and telco homes.
As one veteran TV ad salesman this week succinctly predicted for us in crude, but easy-to-understand terms, “More than half the country will not see this game. The [bleep] will hit the fan.”
Had there been no NFL Network – at least one that created demand by pulling games from the schedule – Pats-Giants likely would have been a traditional Sunday afternoon or late-season Saturday over-the-air telecast, thus available in 85 to 100 percent of the country’s 112 million TV households.
Pats-Giants could be the kind of can’t-miss game much like last Sunday’s Pats-Colts. On CBS, that game was available to 96 percent of the country. Pats-Giants could attract a huge audience, too – for radio.
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Prevailing wisdom holds that Bill Belichick adopted this Me vs. World, half-mad/half-Bobby Knight role after the Sept. 9 Spygate episode, just to prove that he doesn’t need to cheat to win and that he’s comfortable in the role of defiant bad guy.
But for all the mocking fun media, fans, opponents and Sunday morning psychiatrists have had explaining the post-Spygate Belichick, the man may be legitimately troubled. After all, he left evidence months before Spygate.
On Jan. 7, after the Pats defeated the Jets in the playoffs, Belichick headed from his sideline to meet Eric Mangini. As he did, Mangini was being circled by NFL-credentialed photographers and videographers who anticipated the photo-op. Seeing such people on the field after games, and working his way past them, was nothing new to Belichick.
But when Belichick, the winning coach, for crying out loud, found his path momentarily blocked, he grabbed the nearest photographer – the Boston Globe’s Jim Davis – and with an enraged expression on his face, violently shoved him aside. Davis, at the time, had half his career – one eye – to his camera.
With that, Belichick could have moved on toward Mangini, but first, he took an extra moment to give Davis more, to reach toward his camera and to shove it into his face, as if Davis had asked for it and as if Belichick were entitled.
Belichick’s behavior was more than unnecessary, more than excessive. It was twisted. He appeared to have committed a random act of violence, an unprovoked, blindsided assault. And he looked and behaved as if, at that moment, he wanted to hurt someone, and that he’s entitled.
Davis was unhurt and Belichick apologized, but the incident – that enraged, illogical look on Belichick’s face – made for a snapshot of the man that’s hard to shake.
That episode didn’t get a lot of play outside of New England, but, especially given the circumstances – his team had just won, 37-16 – Belichick left at least a few people unsurprised, 10 months later, when he chose to run up the score, 52-7, against the Redskins, when he chose to further stomp a team that had already been thoroughly beaten.
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Fordham’s basketball team first played Manhattan in 1911. The 100th game between the two NYC colleges is scheduled for Nov. 28 at Draddy Gym. That game, at The Garden’s insistence, should be played in The Garden, where Fordham and Manhattan used to play a lot, often against each other.
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If only Stephen A. (Word)Smith didn’t come packaged as a slick, self-impressed, windbag and all-around all-knowing fellow, it wouldn’t have been as funny. Sunday, on ESPN’s TV side, Smith noted the Patriots’ improved “receiver corps,” except he pronounced it, “receiver corpse.”
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We agree with reader Steve Dorio: There has to be a better place for Ken Daneyko – the 18-year Devil, a Devils’ MSG/FSN analyst, a beloved local sports figure and a recovering alcoholic – to co-host the postgame show than from in front of the bar at the Bud Light Goal Bar at the Prudential Center.
At least shoot the show against a wall instead of presenting Daneyko and, for that matter, co-host Steve Cangialosi, as they try to be heard over the sights and sounds of people boozing it up, just over their shoulders.
And though this isn’t the first show from a bar, it’s not exactly the neighborhood drop-inn/stumble-out. How are all those postgame drinkers getting home? None are driving?