Here we thought that after half-a-century we’d finally made noteworthy progress. Even my pet, Peeve, wagged his tail.
NBC had broken a senseless all-networks, all-NFL telecasts habit by showing the starting Super Bowl lineups just before kickoff rather than wait until the game began to introduce the 44 starters. We’re on a streak! One in a row!
But six days later, NBC’s latest Olympics coverage renewed two of the same old questions:
1) How is it that TV’s top shot-callers don’t realize that television is not radio?
2) Is there a polite way to holler, “Shaddup!”?
Saturday, 20-year-old U.S. figure skater Bradie Tennell hit the ice to warm up — plenty of time to provide a bio, set her scene before her program.
Yet, at the moment her music began and Tennell began to skate for keeps — the music coordinated with her routine — analyst Tara Lipinski chose to drown the music and diminish the scene with extraneous gab.
The music, Tennell and Lipinski began at the same instant.
Lipinski: “She’s so reliable, she’s the [U.S. team’s] pinch hitter with the bases loaded” — Huh? She’s the current U.S. champion — and, “She has never been under such type of pressure” — well, it’s the Olympics, no? And she twice noted Tennell relies on “precision” skating, as if imprecise is a logical option.
It didn’t matter if she, and to a lesser amount, Johnny Weir’s intrusions were live, live on tape or voiced over after the fact from an NBC studio. The needless commentary was both aggravating and standard for what TV sports analysis has become.
NBC’s figure skating coverage has been heavy with such needless over-the-music word-surplus. OK, a triple rear axel camel lutz a with a bicarbonate of soda is worth noting, but can’t we otherwise just watch and, crazy as it seems, just enjoy?
Not a chance.
The weekend’s Olympic viewing was loaded with what struck the reasonably good senses as irreconcilably odd.
As we watched American Red Gerard win gold in Slope-Style “Skateboarding” — at 117 pounds he’d either land softer than most or be blown into the parking lot — two things became inescapable to this viewer.
1) The competitors, mostly young — Gerard is 17 — were incredibly skilled and daring. They performed, or attempted, multiple flips — forwards and backwards — after launching themselves at top speed off extremely high ramps.
2) The winner was determined by who came as close as possible to killing himself while remaining standing on his board.
The commentary and backstories seemed to confirm both.
We were told that arctic conditions made the course more difficult — in this case “difficult” was heard as extra dangerous — and in the case of Canadian Mark McMorris, NBC presented a sensational side story: Eleven months ago a snow boarding accident left him in a “medically induced coma.”
NBC then showed a photo of McMorris, 24, in a hospital bed, attached to countless life-sustaining apparatus to treat — ready? — a fractured jaw, ruptured spleen, internal bleeding, multiple broken bones and a collapsed lung.
NBC’s coverage did not include McMorris’s post-recovery audio/video testimony, “I thought I was going to die.”
Well, safe and skillful isn’t going to win medals, which led me to wonder: How many of these contestants know/knew someone who was killed or crippled pursuing this sport? I’d guess quite a few.
We know the deal. Higher-risk competitions have been added to attract younger audiences turned on by extremes — extreme sports, extreme video games, extreme hamburgers, extreme behavior.
Several Olympic sports are dangerous — downhill skiing (as opposed to the uphill version), luge, ski jumping. So let’s add more? You bet!
If it can attract the omnipotent, increasingly desensitized and ESPN-ized young male demographic — viewers TV’s adult strategists have determined would rather watch 360-degree slam dunks than a good basketball game — it’s a go.
And as long as American TV money — NBC’s, of late — is the tail that wags the Olympics …
Next to be added? My guess is men’s and women’s no-holds-barred, bring-on-the-blood Olympic cage fighting. I wouldn’t be surprised — and neither would you.
Selective outrage over similar offensive remarks
Ex-Patriots tight end Christian Fauria this week made ugly news when he was suspended from his Boston WEEI sports radio show for performing an antiquated, bigoted, faked Chinese-gibberish imitation of Don Yee, Tom Brady’s Asian-American agent. Good, Fauria earned it.
The station has lost at least five commercial sponsors in the fallout.
Yet, when Shaquille O’Neal, now with TNT, did precisely the same thing in mocking Yao Ming, guess what happened? It made roughly 30 seconds of news then, whoosh! Vanished. Next, O’Neal publicly mocked the appearance of a young man — a big fan of his — because of his genetic condition that badly disfigured his face. Again, whoosh! Gone as if it never happened.
In fact, since then, O’Neal has added to his many commercial endorsements, proof that justice isn’t nearly as blind as it is selective.
Don’t much care if UConn women’s coach Geno Auriemma wins 6,000 straight, he strikes me as cruel.
Saturday, in a 124-43 win over Wichita State, he allowed one of his subs the final six minutes, another the last five. Neither scored in a fourth quarter in which UConn kept pouring it on, winning the quarter, 23-4. But maybe those two subs were exhausted from practicing hard all season.
Auriemma does similar all season, every season. This season, from a roster of 12:
In a 104-52 win over Duquesne, he played his starters 30 or more minutes, two subs three minutes each. He played one kid three minutes in a 95-35 win over Houston.
In a 97-49 win versus Memphis, he played one kid for two minutes. In the other win over Memphis, 93-36, he played one sub four minutes another just two. In a 100-49 win versus South Florida, Auriemma first put in one of his subs with 1:50 left.
What’s the stakes, Coach? What’s the point? You’re undefeated, ranked No. 1, up by 50. Not enough?
Eagles on call for Orange
A double-eagle in basketball? Syracuse grad Ian Eagle will call Syracuse-Miami on CBS on Saturday. His son, Syracuse student Noah, will call it on the college radio station.
Did NBC’s Mike Emrick commit an act of network sedition Sunday? During Penguins-Blues, Emrick noted the U.S. women’s Olympic hockey team that day beat Finland, 3-1. That game first appeared on NBC several hours later.
Geez, what they’re doing to basketball. The final 20 seconds of Saturday’s Purdue-Michigan State on ESPN included four timeouts, three in the last three seconds.
Pens-Blues on Sunday on NBC. Pens goalie Matt Murray made a spectacular glove save off a rocket. Replayed only in slow-motion, spectacular looked ordinary.