So it’s Super Bowl Sunday and, as is my custom, I have the sound on the TV all the way down.
But more on that later.
As I write this, my gut tells me that Super Bowl XXXIX will be decided midway through the second quarter, so the only remaining elements of suspense are:
a) What’s the over/under on the number of Freddie Mitchell body parts that will litter the post-game field after the Patriot secondary he verbally trashed gets through with him?
b) In which quarter will Rodney Harrison prove that Terrell Owens’ overused mouth can, indeed, house a regulation-sized football?
c) Will my daughter get her homework done by 2008?
d) How will my chicken wings, marinated in my own teriyaki sauce, turn out?
I watch TV games with the sound down because, with the precious exception of Keith Jackson, all network telecasters sound alike. I mean, Kinko’s identical.
Hey, the score’s always plastered in the upper, right-hand corner and they always show what down it is.
Who needs those guys?
Years ago, NBC made the inspired experiment of telecasting a Jets-Dolphins game WITHOUT announcers. Why it didn’t catch on, I’ll never know.
These fluff-dried talking heads make a 1-yard run up the middle sound like a 360-degree windmill slam-dunk. Who are they trying to fool?
For fun, I used to make a game of waiting to see how badly the Men with the Golden Tongues butchered names.
Example: Curt Gowdy tripping through Manu “Tusiasiopo.” I quit listening to a certain radio talk show host when he added a vowel to the name of one of my heroes and called him Orlando “Cepedia.”
My guess is that these clowns went to the same broadcasting school, because they sound identical, they have the same fake tan and there’s not one tired cliche that they don’t consider the zenith of intellect.
I didn’t hear the telecast, but I can pretty well reconstruct the important parts:
“I’ll tell ya, Bubba Pigg, ‘Crime Spree’ Wilson’ll come at you like a hookin’ bull.”
“That’s right, Lou Smorals, when I was in the league, he was literally a house afire.”
” (Chuckling) I don’t doubt that, Bubba Pigg. He’ll pull your barge out of the fog and then feed the crew. He can do anything on that football field.”
“You said it, Don Picker, not to mention OFF the field. He’s not called ‘Felonious Monk’ for his charity work.”
(Laughs aplenty.)
“Holy smokin’ Roman candles, Bubba Pigg, you know what they say about that kind of football player, don’t you?”
“No, Don Picker, what do they say?”
“They say that he may have a small belt buckle, but it’s what in his gut that counts!”
“That’s right, Don Picker. He can really take ‘em to the woodshed!”
(Unbridled guffaws.)
Another thing I bet they did. At what point in the game did they anoint Bill Belichick the latest genius?
Einstein was a genius. Belichick is a football coach. But that doesn’t stop telecasters from throwing the word around, just as they did with Tom Landry, Bill Walsh and Vince Lombardi.
If those guys are geniuses, why does every coach in the league run the same offenses and defenses? Why does every one of them say, “We wanna establish the running game”? And then why do they say, “You win with defense”? And why can’t they just answer a simple question about the game until they’ve seen the films first?
This is the same Belichick they ran out of Cleveland. My hunch says he got a lot smarter when Tom Brady started completing bombs to Deion Branch. Joe Montana boosted Walsh’s IQ 100 points, minimum.
But that doesn’t stop the telecasters.
Except on my set.
By the way, my daughter finished her homework and the wings were luscious.
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