How do football teams typically score seven points? A field goal and two safeties, right?
“So, why,” asks reader Pat Proietti, “can’t ESPN treat us like adults? When updating scores why not just flash ‘7’ rather than flash a ‘6,’ wait, then flash ‘7’?”
Why? I don’t know. Because it’s ESPN? Why is it that every time I drop something in the kitchen it rolls under the refrigerator — even things that don’t ordinarily roll? So I look at it as football.
Seems everything about football now is expected to be taken at face value — a funny face.
I just read a Sports Illustrated piece on Louisville’s impressive quarterback, Lamar Jackson, a profile that includes several paragraphs on how much study and practice — not to mention travel to and from games — it has taken Jackson, by his own admission, to grasp the contents of Louisville’s fat playbook.
Now, those literate enough to have read this piece were likely left to ask when Jackson has the time to attend classes and to study to succeed in them. Louisville is a college, right?
But such a pertinent question (It is pertinent, no?) went unaddressed. Or is this student-athletics front now such a given that such questions have become silly ones?
Not too long ago, college and NFL games were rarely determined by penalties for rotten, unsportsmanlike behavior.
Now? In the NFL alone, there are two or three a week.
Sunday’s Skins-Giants game, played by college men, clearly was determined by which team wanted to lose it more by acting like violent, unhinged punks. But if a playoff game such as January’s Steelers-Bengals can be determined by prison-yard-riot behavior, why not regular-season games?
Sunday, all kinds of lunacy was in play. In other words, a now-standard NFL Sunday.
Here, before the start of Jets-Chiefs, CBS picked up the end of Chargers-Colts — just in time to hear Hollerin’ Kevin Harlan and Rich Gannon become inextricably immersed in irrelevant revelations about how an earlier missed San Diego PAT now forced the Colts, up 26-22, to go for two. That missed PAT, they concluded, was big!
No, it wasn’t. Had the Chargers made that PAT, the score, with 1:28 left, would have been 26-23, thus the ensuing Colts PAT would have put them up by four. Either way, San Diego needed a touchdown. There was no burning issue to fan.
Prior to the kickoff of Chargers-Colts, defensive back Antonio Cromartie became the first Colt to kneel during the National Anthem, now symbolic throughout sports as protest of white America’s oppression of black America. Cromartie’s conspicuous social activism was dutifully recorded and respectfully reported by the media.
But no one, to my knowledge, responded with, “Is he serious!?”
Cromartie, 32, is the father of 12 children by eight women. He could be in six places at once and still be an absentee father of children born to the self-oppressed, long-shot black world that his rank irresponsibility has virtually guaranteed.
Yet Cromartie was politely portrayed to have engaged in genuine, legitimate protest of the oppression of black Americans. What many believe — that his social and racial activism was preposterous, a public display of wanton hypocrisy — went unchallenged, unspoken, unreported.
Then there was the recall of Ian Eagle’s preseason game chat on CBS with Jets general manager Mike Maccagnan. The GM boasted that the Jets have been careful to sign only “good character” players from other teams.
This week, the Jets welcomed tight end Austin Seferian-Jenkins, released by the Buccaneers after his second DUI in three years. What a character!
The revised language of football — substitute the plain, simple and easily understood with genuine gridiron gibberish — continued. Reader Bradley Weinstein wonders what ESPN’s Ron Jaworski meant when claiming that the Jets’ receivers “have an excellent catch radius.”
Ya got me, Brad. Maybe Jaworski confused the Jets with fishing boats?
And why can’t the conspicuously stupid be spoken as such, perhaps even serve as a deterrent to future players acting like fools?
Sunday, Jets receiver Quincy Enunwa made a catch, then went into his already-tired, slow and self-absorbed first-down signal act. Did it matter that the Jets were down, 17-3, late in the third quarter? Or that he stood preening with the clock running? Nah.
Logical, well-adjusted viewers needed CBS’s Greg Gumbel and Trent Green — among my favorite TV teams — to scold or at least note what was impossible to ignore. They ignored it.
And if it’s true what FOX’s Erin Andrews reported before the Skins-Giants game — Josh Norman refused referee John Hussey’s request to jointly talk peace with him and Odell Beckham Jr. prior to kickoff before they then met with Hussey separately — why wasn’t Norman tossed before the game for non-compliance with the request of the head official?
Now that would have sent a message.
Anyway, this week I have Beckham, Antonio Brown and Pacman Jones in my personal-fouls fantasy league.
ESPN gets some self-promotion in during tragedy
Would ESPN exploit a sudden, tragic death for self-promotion? Of course, it would!
Hannah Storm reported that ESPN’s “Buster Olney just moments ago confirmed multiple reports that Jose Fernandez is dead.” Good grief.
On the subject of shameless promotion, the Yankees’ WFAN pregame on Sunday, included an ad for a car dealership promoting the on-lot appearance of Lawrence Taylor!
St. Louis fans left with useless Rams PSLs
So as many as 46,000 owners of St. Louis Rams PSLs could be left holdin
g empty bags now that the Rams have bolted to Los Angeles. Remember what Roger Goodell said, “PSLs are good investments.”
Superb work by FOX’s producer-director team of Richie Zyontz and Rich Russo throughout the Skins-Giants game. They quickly found everything, from Giants center Weston Richburg’s second misconduct, automatic ejection foul (needlessly shoving Josh Norman from behind), safety Andrew Adams’ brutal, away-from-the-play, game-losing head-smash of Dashaun Phillips that negated a blocked punt and the kicking net’s response to Odell Beckham Jr. trying to knock it down — the metal bars supporting the net bounced back to smack Beckham in the head.
Want a kick? SiriusXM’s live Ryder Cup coverage (Sirius 208, XM 92), includes the charmingly nuanced calls of Northern Ireland’s Maureen Madill, a former amateur champ, Julia Child describing golf. She’s a hoot.
NBC’s Dan Hicks on Dustin Johnson: “He took that leave of absence.” He took a leave of absence? To write a book? Sick relative? No, he was suspended amid reports of cocaine use. If Jack the Ripper were reinstated to the PGA, Hicks would tell us he cured his slice.