It’s a fact that can be spoken and written without hesitation or exaggeration: Sports television grows more absurd by the day. For every step forward in technology, TV folks take us two steps back in its application.
The Wright Brothers? Aren’t those the guys who invented the wheeled, flying leaf blower?
Louisville and Marquette were playing the first half of their Big East quarterfinal Thursday night on ESPN, the TV headquarters of mindless excess.
With play on and three men, Sean McDonough, Bill Raftery and Jay Bilas, calling the game when no more than two were needed, the screen already was heavy with stuff to read and assorted clutter to minimize the view of live basketball:
The indiscriminant and redundant “Bottom Line” crawl along the bottom of the screen; above that an ESPN logo, the names of the teams (including Louisville’s No. 14 national ranking), the score of the game, a “1st” graphic indicating it was the first half, the game clock and the shot clock.
Enough? Nope.
Above that, ESPN kept flashing graphics — irrelevant, needless, senseless graphics that could only further marginalize the picture while distracting the audience. Empty-headed stuff such as this:
“LOUISVILLE REBOUND LEADERS.
C. SMITH 5 KNOWLES 5”
Immediately followed by: “LOUISVILLE ASSIST LEADERS. SIVA 3 KNOWLES 3.”
“LOUISVILLE” was even preceded — decorated — by the school’s cartoon cardinal logo.
Why? Why in the name of common sense and live TV would ESPN choose to further make a mess of the screen and inhibit the audience’s ability to watch a game by throwing up such useless info?
Was ESPN conducting a Big East tournament fantasy league for total rebounds and assists of individual players? Few, if any, viewers cared who led the Cardinals in assists with three minutes left in the first half, so why cover even more of the court and the game to post reading matter that isn’t worth reading?
Was there even one viewer who wanted to know how many assists Knowles had? Do executive producers think these things through before authoring their inclusion?
Whatever happened to TV’s noble and often successful attempts to provide “the best seat in the house?” When was that thrown into reverse? When did “Look what we can do!” become the senseless standard?
I know, we’ve been down this dead end before. Nothing’s going to change, not for the better.
If TV technology existed today that could change our seat, we would be given the option of moving directly behind a woman in a tall, flowered hat.
And we would be seated next to a crying baby, a baby who only stops screaming when you sit him on your lap and read him a story about individual first-half rebounding stats.
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ESPN invents these grand expert roles — Mel Kiper Jr., mock NFL draft magician; Todd McShay, rater, by position, of college prospects — then beats us to death with them. Now we have ESPN Bracketologist Joe Lunardi, who we were told several times Thursday projects Georgia as the last school that will be invited to play in the NCAA tournament. (Georgia lost the next day). Lunardi’s “expertise” is the same as others’ — it’s based on a load of “ifs.”
But ESPN would have viewers believe that it hires sorcerers.
Francesa conveniently forgets his ‘official’ stance in past
Mike Francesa — screaming murder on Wednesday after the refs blew the end of St. John’s-Rutgers, demanding the rules be retroactively changed on his command — didn’t quite rhyme with his recent takes on officiating.
As readers have recalled, in June, in assessing ump Jim Joyce’s last-out safe call, a horrible call that deprived Armando Galarraga of a perfect game, Francesa excused it an episode that’s part of games, one that humanizes sports, makes them so appealing.
But reader John Mancuso of Marlboro, N.J., has a logical take on that St. John’s-Rutgers ending:
Given that both coaches, Steve Lavin and Mike Rice, are ref-ranters who were in full stomping demonstration near the game’s end, it stood to reason that the refs would jump their own gun, that they’d leave the floor as quickly as possible to avoid a scene.
Was Rice’s behavior at least partially responsible for Rutgers’ fate?
Regardless, there’s no one with a greater gift for being both pompous and wrong than Francesa. Thursday, with Pitt taking a six-point, second-half lead over UConn, Francesa knowingly recognized that this was the beginning of the end, a simple case of Pitt, the better team, pulling away. Mikey knows all, yes, all!
UConn won at the buzzer.
He’s uncanny. Who else can spot himself a 4 1⁄2-point favorite with a six-point lead more than halfway through the game and, talking down to you the whole way, still get it 100 percent dead wrong?
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Although it raised Knicks and Rangers ticket prices last week, Cablevision, believe it or not, did something nice. Given the earthquake in Japan, it began to provide a news-filled TV Japan network free to subscribers through March 17.
That would be a radical change even for Mets starters.
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The basketball team that represents the University of Miami — school colors orange, green and white — now plays in Nike street-cred all-black uniforms, and has for a couple of seasons.
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ESPN has named Adrian Healey, Englishman turned Connecticut Yankee, lead play-by-player on Major League Soccer telecasts.
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The Knicks shot four free-throws Wednesday in Memphis to the Grizzlies’ 35. Fix! Impossible! The Knicks don’t play enough defense for the other team to shoot 35 free throws.
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McDonough may be ESPN’s only courtsider with the nerve to note that the money-talks product logos pasted to the Garden court during the Big East tournament are a slippery danger.
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Golf Channel’s cliché machine, Kelly Tilghman, on Friday could have said that Doral leader Hunter Mahan “has made a lot of putts.” Instead, she went with, “He has seen a lot of putts, so far, find the bottom of that cup.” Oy.
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Forget free speech, every March people should be paraded to the public square then pilloried for the remainder of the NCAA tournament for saying any of the following: “The Big Dance,” “Going dancing,” having your “ticket punched” or “The clock has struck midnight on Cinderella.”
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New Mets outfielder Willie Harris, versatile sub and Mets killer, was asked by WFAN’s Steve Somers on Monday how to succeed off the bench.
“Pay attention to the game,” Harris said.
