If it weren’t so redundant — so worn out — it would be remarkable. In a shallow and often self-defeating effort to appear diverse in their hiring of on-camera, microphone-attached NFL and college broadcasters, the networks have, with few exceptions, demonstrated conspicuous, feckless and often comical tokenism and insulting sexism in hiring mostly female sideline … Read more
Take your pick. You wanna be Gus Johnson or Roger Goodell? Both gigs are easy and pay a fortune. Never underestimate your inabilities. These days you can be anything you wish just by showing up. Take Gus Johnson, who has ascended from an unreliable and unprepared speaker of Knicks radio basketball — a game he … Read more
Why is it that what we can’t possibly ignore is so often ignored by experts hired by TV networks to tell us what we can’t possibly miss? Shorter version: Why are we so seldom told the truth? We hold these truths to be self-evident: Under Brian Cashman and Aaron Boone the Yankees remain prepared to … Read more
I’ve become a sour old grump? You bet your tapped-out DraftKings credit card I have. I’ve devolved from my younger version. And if you don’t like it, turn the page. If you think what has happened to our sports — most of it by authoritative and greed-sickened design — is good for sports, then hah! … Read more
Before 2-plus-2 became a matter of opinion, I preferred single-digit numbers as stand-alone numbers. Last week provided witness to several numbered news items of sports business note. 1) Nike stock is in a sustained free fall. While its money and influence — one and the same — remains the lifeblood of ask-no-questions sports and athletes … Read more
It’s easy to blame television for all that lays us low and then lower. That’s the problem: It’s much too easy. Like adding one bad idea to another bad idea to make two bad ideas. Saturday, Disney’s ESPN and ABC wrapped up their annual mindless destruction of the Little League World Series with the Curacao-Nevada … Read more
Kyrie Irving was right! Planet Earth is flat, and that explains why so many people are falling off its edges, never to be seen again. Ready for this one? Longtime reader Gary Wilbur — a credible man who shares intelligent, moderately worded thoughts, nothing socially objectionable — last week learned that the fantasy football fun … Read more
Rough stretch for Tony Romo. And the feeling is pari-mutuel. Over the weekend at Los Alamitos a horse named RomoLand, the heavy favorite at 4-5, neared the starting gate when it became uncooperative and was scratched. I don’t know how or when CBS plans to punish Romo for his alleged OWI in Wisconsin, but I’d … Read more
Excuse this self-indulgence, but I need to update my Wish List: I wish, in Howie Rose’s final season, the Mets had provided him more opportunities to, “Put it in the books.” I wish that live baseball fans would stop booing every time a visiting pitcher throws to first to keep the runner close. I wish … Read more
So help me, I don’t know why. If I did, you’d be the second to know as I’d immediately share it with you. Why television execs, regional and national, have chosen to destroy sports telecasts with unneeded and unwanted excess is an ongoing study in self-nullification. What NBC did — what it chose to do … Read more
Who knew? We knew. Since Goose Gossage was a gosling, we knew. We always have. Wednesday’s Knicks-Spurs Game 1 was amazing for how the ABC/ESPN crew — the invisible, unheard crew, from cameramen to tape operators — treated it. It was treated like a basketball telecast, no reason to abandon it to press “look what … Read more
Before MLB allowed TV money to become the tail that wagged its dog, one of life’s great simple pleasures was weekend baseball. And before TV executives decided that we prefer our baseball telecasts smothered in verbal and visual detritus — as if we demanded to know the titles and speeds of the past nine pitches … Read more
Say, fellas, when you get a chance, do us all a favor and do absolutely nothing. It’s an ASAP matter, but it can wait. To only limited surprise, Adam Silver issued a look-away pass to the Spurs’ super-duper star Victor Wembanyama for landing a vicious, intended and arguably felonious, full-swinging elbow to the undefended head … Read more
Well, it’s official, I guess. I’m a born and raised racist. It’s all over the internet. Again. So it must be true. Recently, readers and friends have sent me a copy of a column authored by a person who has discovered indisputable proof that I’m a racist. Seizing upon columns I’ve written in which I … Read more
Let’s try to figure out how it happened and what they had in mind. We presume it was at a preseason meeting called by Adam Silver to determine the NBA’s postseason schedule, emphasis on TV money. And so the NBA decided to sell a stack of playoff games to can’t-DVR-them streaming services for some quick, … Read more
To hell with fans, especially in NYC, the nation’s largest TV market in which fans are mistaken for dollar signs. Source link #MLBs #greed #naked #complicit #partner
Not that individual tastes should serve as a scientific meter, but for years I’ve received missives from Yankees fans who wished that Howie Rose was theirs. Rose, who will pack it in after this season at age 72 — and after a serious health issue two years ago — had a natural or conditioned sense … Read more
Being a beneficent fellow, I to declare this Benefit of the Doubt Sunday. So let’s say that Adam Silver was blindsided by this; he had no idea that the NBA’s Hawks had declared March 16 a “cultural” salute game to an “iconic” strip joint in Atlanta, replete with a vulgar, N-word chanting rapper and the … Read more
If we listen closely, we can hear the grandfather, a lifelong Yankees fan, speaking to his grandson: “Oh, yeah, so many memorable moments. Did I ever tell you that I was in Yankee Stadium the day they retired CC Sabathia’s number? Yeah, what a special moment! “What was his number? Darned if I remember. It … Read more
Farmers Almanac spring forecast: “A deep, dark and foreboding sky lingers in the approaching MLB atmosphere. Fans are advised to be prepared to take cover and shelter in basements or whatever room is closest to the ground to discourage jumping from windows to escape the scene.” Another season of telecasts — free TV, cable TV, … Read more