In the last year, we have witnessed a steel-headed quarterback do some pretty stupid things, a frosted-flake golfer unveil his personal life in a way neither he nor we wanted, and the return of a dog-killing phenom. What a year!
It is no surprise that these events made major headlines. After all, we live in the days of useless journalism. We no longer can say that the youth are disinterested in the news because we so-called adults don’t really follow much real news ourselves. The fact that there hardly is any news could be the cause. Between homicides that do not shock us, politicians we cringe to trust and world events from which we are terribly isolated in our personal securities, there just isn’t much to read in the papers or on-line in this the tenth year of the twenty-first century. One would think that readership of literature would be on the rise, but with Facebook and Twitter and MySpace being so grippingly fascinating, well, you get the point of sarcasm, don’t you?
The three biggest news stories of 2010 involved sports figures who did wrong and tried to rebound. What to do, what to do? We can’t stop the machine that is media. Even if we turn our televisions off, they (those guys who sell advertising) will still know what we would have watched had we been watching. They are that good!
We could quit watching sports. Stop! Don’t be so silly. Why would we do that? This is life. Without sports we would simply have…well, a life.
Listen, I am as big (no fat jokes, please!) of a sports fan as anyone. I enjoy the games and I buy into the hype. I allow advertisers to throw money around to support the media monolith of our times. I play my small part. I am aware that the NFL has had all kinds of tragedies and assorted flaws – from linemen who have killed innocent drivers in off-field mistakes to tacklers who have paralyzed other players in on-field collisions.
Regardless of events, we take football too seriously and we react too emotionally about athletes and their downfalls. As if we should be surprised! Aeschylus (classic Greek playwright – Google it) taught us the dangers of pride and its eventual destruction some 2,500 years ago, and yet we find ourselves surprised when it happens with each generation.
Take for instance The Big Three of 2010. Ben, Vick and Tiger…were you really surprised? If so, you haven’t paid attention to history.
Michael Vick offers us some sort of hope, though. You may recall that Vick led a dog-fighting ring that was atrocious, violent and just plain wrong. Fair enough – he did a really bad thing. There is no single argument against that. He screwed up. However, he also served his time and was released back into society. He followed the laws that We The People have instituted within our American landscape.
I have heard a lot of people make proclamations that they will never root for Vick or any team that signs him. Again, fair, everyone has their right to their opinion. Everyone also has the right to be brought back into perspective.
Whether you like it or not, our rules state that once you have served your time, you deserve a second chance. After all, society is bigger than football – despite what you might think.
The would-be haters return with comments that no other regular guy would get his job back after going to jail, and that they would be forced to work from the bottom. While I can’t disagree with you, I have to be realistic in my reaction. Mike Vick is not a regular guy. You and I are regular guys. Michael Vick did not make the NFL the Empire that it is – we did.
The NFL runs on the simple logic of Supply and Demand. As long as you demand football, they will supply it, and they meet your demand by paying top athletes a lot of money to entertain you. In short – get off your high horse. Do not tell me for a second that you wouldn’t take the same deal Michael Vick did in order to return to a job that would pay you more money than 99% of the world population will earn over an entire lifetime.
It is the very time you spend, the jerseys you purchase, the television you watch, the fantasy football you play, the ESPN that you follow, the tailgate parties you enjoy, the ticket lists you enroll on, the tickets you beg, borrow and steal for, and the Vegas odds you digest that make the NFL what it is – a Billion Dollar Industry. I repeat, Billion! Any industry pays its employees what the market deems they are worth. I teach; the education sector deems I am worth enough to get by on a modest living in the suburbs. I like to think my profession is noble, but I am sure we have recuperated killers amongst our ranks somewhere. I just hope they don’t run my Super Bowl poll.
So, the next time you scoff at Michael Vick, take a look in the mirror. That authentic rip-off jersey you had to have may well have paid his salary.
As for the other two stories of 2010, only time will tell whether those two silly boys, Tiger and Ben, will change their stripes, so to speak. Both Roethlisberger and Woods are playing the media frenzy well. They are both saying the right things and promising to behave wisely, etc. I just wonder, when 2020 rolls around, which of these athletes will we remember? Probably all three, though Woods will be the one to have done the most. His legacy as a golfer is already set in stone. Ben has done his fame due diligence – two Super Bowl victories will have him part of the discussion for decades. The historical jury on Vick will deliberate longer than his trial jury did. What he does will go a long way to deciding his fame and his fate.
Until then, don’t blame the guy for taking the job, you would and so would I. I would even wear Eagle’s green for that kind of green.
Tuesday, November 30, 2010
Tuesday, November 2, 2010
Chris Berman - Shut Up!
So, now that the 2010 baseball season is in the books, we can put to rest the world’s worst saying. (Well, okay, a lousy sports cliché at best.) As the San Francisco Giants are now World Series Champions, we can put the past behind us and move on.
Allow me to explain.
The San Francisco Giants originated in New York, a fact many readers may already know. They moved to California in 1957, a long time ago in terms of our contextual history. There was (and still is) a football team in New York also called the Giants. Perhaps you have heard of them.
It has long bothered me that Chris Berman (a man whose work and commentary I otherwise enjoy entirely) has referred to the American football franchise as “The New York Football Giants.” What makes the moniker worse is the voice he uses when saying this. He drops his vocal range into a deep and husky bass tone that reverberates with memories of long-dead announcers, namely those old school veterans who might have called a football game long before ESPN even existed.
The reference to the “football Giants” has been outdated for decades and can now be ceased entirely!
The beauty of comedy is knowing when to quit. Thus, a good joke is not supposed to be beaten to its untimely death. The beauty of a good radio (or in this case TV) bit should also be in knowing when to quit, knowing when to drop the gimmick and just call a team their name. Case in point, the late Steelers announcer, Myron Cope, always called the Cincinnati Bengals the “Bungles” because of their long history as a terrible team. It was unfair yet funny, but when the Bengals were 11-5 and had thumped the Steelers twice in the same season, it was time to give it up. He never did.
As well, Chris Berman needs to stop! And I have been saying this for about fifteen years.
The joke was old the very minute ESPN first aired as a full-time channel. By 1980, the Giants had been playing baseball in the Bay Area for over 20 years! Willie McCovey, arguably the greatest San Fran Giant of all time, played his entire career under the cool breeze of the Pacific, having never played at New York's Polo Grounds. Berman’s attempt at humor was dead a long time ago.
As we moved through the 90s and the 2000s, the joke became even further outdated. After a decade (1967), maybe it was still clever. But, after a half century, see 2007 has come and gone, the point is done, it’s over!
Half of the sports fans who know the baseball Giants once played in New York just don’t care. For anyone fifty and younger, the Giants have always been the San Francisco Giants, and the football team has always been in New York. My generation does not need to be reminded that there was once a distinction between the two Giants. Once they moved, the distinction was coastal, geographical, two-thousand-five-hundred-miles-apart-ical, to not quite coin a phrase. In short, we know!
Chris Berman does not need to remind me that Eli Manning and Lawrence Taylor share the same city as did Tom Landry, Frank Gifford and others who have played football under the blue and red Giants’ colors. We know! Heck, even the original Giants Stadium is gone, and the site where the 1956-1973 Giants played non-soccer-football (old Yankee Stadium) now sits empty. Maybe Chris can hold an old-timers reunion there, though the affair would have to be broadcast in black and white so that Chris feels more at home.
Hopefully, now that the past has evaporated and the “SAN FRANCISCO BASEBALL GIANTS” have won their first World Series ever on the Golden Coast and the franchise’s first since 1954, we can all go happily about our business as sports fans and root for teams in cities and not clarifiers in team and city names.
I mean, after all, it’s not like the New York Hockey Rangers lost the World Series to those same Giants. Hey, wait a minute…
Allow me to explain.
The San Francisco Giants originated in New York, a fact many readers may already know. They moved to California in 1957, a long time ago in terms of our contextual history. There was (and still is) a football team in New York also called the Giants. Perhaps you have heard of them.
It has long bothered me that Chris Berman (a man whose work and commentary I otherwise enjoy entirely) has referred to the American football franchise as “The New York Football Giants.” What makes the moniker worse is the voice he uses when saying this. He drops his vocal range into a deep and husky bass tone that reverberates with memories of long-dead announcers, namely those old school veterans who might have called a football game long before ESPN even existed.
The reference to the “football Giants” has been outdated for decades and can now be ceased entirely!
The beauty of comedy is knowing when to quit. Thus, a good joke is not supposed to be beaten to its untimely death. The beauty of a good radio (or in this case TV) bit should also be in knowing when to quit, knowing when to drop the gimmick and just call a team their name. Case in point, the late Steelers announcer, Myron Cope, always called the Cincinnati Bengals the “Bungles” because of their long history as a terrible team. It was unfair yet funny, but when the Bengals were 11-5 and had thumped the Steelers twice in the same season, it was time to give it up. He never did.
As well, Chris Berman needs to stop! And I have been saying this for about fifteen years.
The joke was old the very minute ESPN first aired as a full-time channel. By 1980, the Giants had been playing baseball in the Bay Area for over 20 years! Willie McCovey, arguably the greatest San Fran Giant of all time, played his entire career under the cool breeze of the Pacific, having never played at New York's Polo Grounds. Berman’s attempt at humor was dead a long time ago.
As we moved through the 90s and the 2000s, the joke became even further outdated. After a decade (1967), maybe it was still clever. But, after a half century, see 2007 has come and gone, the point is done, it’s over!
Half of the sports fans who know the baseball Giants once played in New York just don’t care. For anyone fifty and younger, the Giants have always been the San Francisco Giants, and the football team has always been in New York. My generation does not need to be reminded that there was once a distinction between the two Giants. Once they moved, the distinction was coastal, geographical, two-thousand-five-hundred-miles-apart-ical, to not quite coin a phrase. In short, we know!
Chris Berman does not need to remind me that Eli Manning and Lawrence Taylor share the same city as did Tom Landry, Frank Gifford and others who have played football under the blue and red Giants’ colors. We know! Heck, even the original Giants Stadium is gone, and the site where the 1956-1973 Giants played non-soccer-football (old Yankee Stadium) now sits empty. Maybe Chris can hold an old-timers reunion there, though the affair would have to be broadcast in black and white so that Chris feels more at home.
Hopefully, now that the past has evaporated and the “SAN FRANCISCO BASEBALL GIANTS” have won their first World Series ever on the Golden Coast and the franchise’s first since 1954, we can all go happily about our business as sports fans and root for teams in cities and not clarifiers in team and city names.
I mean, after all, it’s not like the New York Hockey Rangers lost the World Series to those same Giants. Hey, wait a minute…
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