While awaiting the “Please stay on the line for the next available representative,” we often reach the point when we consider hanging up (or hanging down; “hanging up” is anti-gravitational, no?). That’s when we hear, “Your call is important to us.” Who doesn’t like a recording with a sense of humor?
Suffering institutionalized, programmed baloney has become such a part of our routines that to expect better is to await the “Christmas With the Cromarties” TV special.
The latest NFL calamity — Saturday’s Steelers-Bengals, which should have swapped the coin toss for a pat-down — has made for some dark laughs, while temporarily muzzling the pandering hip who encourage “No Fun League” teams to “play with swagger.”
So many to choose from, but let’s start with Boomer Esiason, who on CBS’ postgame, did what Jim Nantz and Phil Simms should have throughout a playoff game determined by which team committed the last foul for gross misconduct: Esiason condemned the “dreck” — he spoke the Yiddish word for garbage — he had just witnessed. Good!
Yet Esiason’s frequent and admirable weekend advocacy for NFL civility is contrary to his weekdays co-hosting a national CBS TV/radio show heavily reliant on incivility; a show that, by design and purpose in catering to a certain male demographic, often targets listeners’ hearts and minds by aiming for their crotches.
The same Esiason who can’t suffer the incivilities he saw from pro athletes and their coaches in a playoff game on Saturday spends weekdays advancing social coarsening. He obligatorily trash-talks and deals in simple put-down artistry while purposefully speaking go-low words and idioms including “ass,” “piss” and “sucks” — not the worst of pop-cultural choices, but words Weekend Boomer assiduously avoids, especially when expressing pro-civility sentiments in response to NFL malfeasance.
Weekday Boomer joins the legions that ratchet up the incivility while Weekend Boomer gnashes his teeth and wonders how we arrived in such a low place.
Then there’s Roger “PSLs Are Good Investments” Goodell, who this week, as per team owners’ money-first terms of his engagement, escorted the Rams from St. Louis to Los Angeles, the nation’s second-largest TV (money) market.
Goodell’s richly rewarded assistance in such matters — the not-for-profit NFL has paid him well over $100 million over the past five years — would be easier to indulge had he not been given to declarations such as, “It’s all about the fans,” and that fantasy league gambling — sucker-bet operations the NFL and its teams have thrown millions into for its cut of fans’ losses — “is not gambling.”
If ever there was a week when the NFL commissioner should have been front, center and loud to make clear that never again will a game, on his watch, resemble Saturday night’s. … But Goodell was tied up trying to make team owners even more money.
As the NFL has become an alert-the-riot-squad “sport” — disorderly participants now include coaches in addition to players and patrons — only the finances of team owners and the TV-contracted are serviced. As the product is vandalized and burns, the Nero Fiddles League plays “Who’s Sorry Now?”
Next, Mike “Dewey Wins!” Francesa, who provided his latest best-in-show character: Sunday, the day after that playoff apocalypse, he said, “If I’m the Bengals, I’d fire Marvin Lewis. Why? He can’t control his team.”
Monday, after a caller revisited his words, Francesa insisted, “I never once said Marvin Lewis should be fired. No, never. Never, ever called for the Bengals to fire Marvin Lewis.”
Apologize? Correction? Francesa? Not a chance, though a stop at Francesa “lost tapes” chronicler “RN’s Funhouse” is recommended for full evidence and enjoyment. (Also, the teams Francesa resolutely counted out of the NFL playoffs following poor starts — Steelers and Seahawks — will play their second playoff games.)
As for Bengals coach Lewis, he’s a peach, too. Perhaps to deflect from his significant accountability for annually fielding a team that, short of Tasers and pepper spray, would be eager to turn a playoff game into a losing gang war, he defended his team, thus himself, from charges of neglect.
Yep, what we could see coming — even before kickoff security was dispatched to keep the teams apart — took Lewis by surprise. What we knew based on past performances — that Adam “Pacman” Jones and Vontaze Burfict were reliable bad risks (seems Cincinnati defensive tackle Domata Peko didn’t know it was illegal to leave the sideline to shove an on-field opponent) — was something Lewis never considered as a matter of precaution and preparation.
Even with 22 seconds left, Steelers up two and kicking off — perhaps Cincy could get a shot at a field goal — Lewis’ team remained in rampage mode; a Bengal, on the kickoff, threw a punch.
But Lewis seemed unsure, defensive, as to why he was being asked about his accountability. Accountability? For what?
Your call is important to us. Laugh riot.
Irvin was N.J. legend
All the obits I read merely mentioned Monte Irvin, dead at 96, was born in Alabama. But he was a just-across-the-Hudson Jersey guy, and, though modesty prevented him, he had outlived his legendary status as a four-sport man — 16 varsity letters — at Orange High School.
Had his and our world not taken so long, Irvin and the Giants might have preceded Jackie Robinson and the Dodgers in breaching the color line. Irvin didn’t play in the bigs until he was 30.
Marty Appel, who has held many baseball jobs — Ch. 11’s executive producer of Yankees telecasts, Yanks’ PR director, author, included — years ago shared an office with Irvin in the commissioner’s office.
“He was warm, educated, refined and, certainly to me, fatherly,” said Appel. “He’d scold me for not wearing a hat on cold days. To this day, as I put on a hat, I hear Monte Irvin.”
Appel once asked whom, had Irvin been allowed a full major league career, Irvin would bring to mind among notable white players of his day. “I mentioned a few examples for him to draw on. He said, ‘Joe DiMaggio.’ I believe it; Monte Irvin was a modest man.”
Terrible title telecast
Monday’s Clemson-Alabama title telecast was what we’ve come to expect from ESPN: dreadful, start to finish.
After the kickoff, ESPN couldn’t wait to bolt to show a reel of ’Bama QB Jake Coker highlights. Hype for a game we were in place to watch!
On the first play from scrimmage, a Clemson defensive back risked a 15-yard penalty by tackling, then excessively taunting, nearly igniting a fight, yet Kirk Herbstreit ignored that to speak his usual nonsense — the DB had “made a play” and “in space.”
Throughout and before, we were told the head coaches are tight. So, did ESPN bother to show them as (or if) they met at game’s end? Ix-nay.