Saturday, Vin Scully, who turns 90 on Nov. 29, had the audacity to protest the protesters. He thus was condemned as an “Old Retired White Man” on a popular, but reckless, often dishonest and vulgar sports website featuring cheap-shot artists who make snap, no-research bad guesses to mischaracterize and defame.
Like Morning Zoo radio, that’s how several internet sports journalism sites generate attention. That’s where we’re headed.
At a symposium, Scully calmly answered a question about NFL take-a-knee national anthem protests. He said he’s so upset by them, he’ll never watch another NFL game.
He’s hardly alone among those who won’t suffer conspicuous disrespect for the anthem and flag over any selected or selective issue. Such protests appear dismissive or ignorant of greater symbols of freedom, history and sacrifice.
Scully: “I am so disappointed. I used to love, during the fall and winter, to watch the NFL on Sunday. And it’s not that I’m some great patriot. I was in the [World War II] Navy for a year — didn’t go anywhere, didn’t do anything. But I have overwhelming respect and admiration for anyone who puts on a uniform and goes to war.
“So the only thing I can do in my little way is not to preach. I will never watch another NFL game.”
But in so doing — in speaking his mind and interpretation rather than avoid the risk — he became an immediate target to be tainted or branded a “racist.”
It’s such an easy, wishful, one-smear-fits-all response of the pro-tolerance intolerant to explain thoughtful dissent. It’s simple and self-fulfilling. To strongly disagree with the method of protest means you’re a racist.
Sports broadcasting historian David J. Halberstam was livid over such a fast-moving, sophomoric, uneducated and bigoted characterization of Scully, suggested one listen, via YouTube, to Scully’s instant postscript to calling Hank Aaron’s 715th 1974 home run that broke Babe Ruth’s non-steroidal record. Kismet placed Scully and the Dodgers in Atlanta to play the Braves:
“What a marvelous moment for baseball! What a marvelous moment for Atlanta and the state of Georgia! What a marvelous moment for the country and the world! A black man is receiving a standing ovation in the Deep South for breaking the record of an all-time idol!”
Yeah, he’s just an “old, retired white man.” That explains it.
Anyway, the NFLPA, Wednesday, did announce that players will be encouraged Sunday to observe a moment of silence as per the day after Veterans Day, as if they’re cutting the nation a break. To whom do we address the thank-you cards?
NFL still playing us all for fools
Iceberg? What iceberg? Full speed ahead!
At a time when the NFL should be issuing some acknowledgment that it plans to right the ship, if not an SOS, it sails on, ship of fools.
Roger Goodell never misses an opportunity to miss an opportunity to restore order, sensibility, civility and some sport to the sport. His influence on the game is found in his firm but false declaration that “PSLs are good investments” and that professionals have their immodest, clownish dance skits, if not their playbooks, rehearsed and ready to perform, win or lose, enjoyed as football-natural “spontaneous fun.”
And now Goodell faces a band of mutinous team owners.
Last weekend, when the NFL could not afford to be seen leading with its gone-nuts side, its games again were loaded with gone-nuts displays by college men: cheap shots, head-shots, blindside shots, non-tackle tackles designed to disable, unsportsmanlike conduct and unnecessary roughness penalties, ejections, requisite post-play garbage-talk and hassles, all-about-me demonstrations and a group-participation brawl.
Many players have gathered to exploit the national anthem, to show the nation they’re righteous, socially concerned young men. The game begins and quickly they blow their covers by engaging in post-play violence and tribal warfare, often followed by tweeted threats and hateful put-downs.
And these scenes are fully indulged, often showcased as “highlights,” by the NFL’s TV networks and pandering announcers too frightened to say, “See that? That stinks!”
Buccaneers quarterback Jameis Winston, a rotten egg while at Florida State — a rotten-egg mill long before Winston was born — ignited a multiple-player brawl by leaving the sideline to accost Saints defensive back Marshon Lattimore, who was then belted from behind at top speed by Bucs receiver Mike Evans.
Winston won the Heisman Trophy the year after Johnny Manziel won it. How we doin’, football?
In Jacksonville, Cincinnati WR A.J. Green responded to a post-play shove by DB Jalen Ramsey with his fists, further solidifying the Bengals’ annual appearance as a drunken mob armed with an ugly rumor.
And what did Goodell, not to mention the NFLPA, have to say about this latest round of “games”? The usual. Nothing. Nothing in public, as if we didn’t see more of what we can’t miss, although many claim to now miss everything as NFL viewing has fallen beneath their dignity.
This was another time for Goodell and NFLPA head DeMaurice Smith to holler, “Enough!” How can players be taken seriously as society scolds when moments later their antisocial behavior threatens to disable one another and destroy their well-paying business?
Sunday night, all NBC’s Cris Collinsworth could muster about Dolphins defensive lineman Ndamukong Suh was: “He really is some player, and I know he catches a lot of heat because he makes so much money.”
He takes heat because, for $114 million for six years, he was signed despite a career loaded with penalties, fines and suspensions. And Suh continues to reinforce his rep as among the dirtiest players in NFL history.
How could Collinsworth pretend we don’t know? Same reason Goodell does.
College hoops’ China syndrome
It’s not just the shoplifting charges against three UCLA basketball players, in China to play Georgia Tech on Friday night on ESPN in each “school’s” opener. It’s everything else, too.
First, in an issued statement, UCLA invited all to play stupid: The school, it read, “is aware of a situation involving three UCLA student-athletes in Hangzhou, China.”
“A situation”? Like a lost room key? And how can they be students when they’re shipped halfway around the world, arriving five days prior to playing one game? Or was it also a shopping trip?
With the three accused UCLA players benched for tonight’s game, Georgia Tech’s student-athletes, who also arrived five days before the game, now have a shot. Two Georgia Tech starters are indefinitely suspended for illegally accepting hundreds of dollars worth of “gifts,” no doubt from well-intentioned adults.
As ESPN’s go-to college basketball genius, Jay Bilas, explained, even if recruits don’t attend classes, they reap the social benefits from being in a college-campus environment.