According to Greg Olsen, the latest raw yak on Fox, the key to the Giants’ victory Sunday was the Vikings’ inability to establish “lane rush integrity.” Thinking about food.
Six NFL playoff games since we last met, friends, and we take these truths to be self-evident:
The overwhelming commercial message in all the TV shows was to bet, bet, bet, bet, bet and then bet some more. Bet with both fists, every game, all game. Parlays, prop bets, first-first bets (read the fine print in tiny TV print).
Bet on the paid endorsement of rich celebrities, from football’s Fab Four Manning family to Kevin Hart, Wayne Gretzky and Jamie Foxx, all further enriched by attracting mostly young adult men to invest their money — all major credit cards are accepted! — in a business that relies on investors losing their money, whatever else happens to them as a result.
As for Roger Goodell, the $64 million per top fake that serves as a financial front for team owners and the NFL’s fake, selective public consciousness, picks from his previous high-profile convictions for legalized sports gambling:
“The NFL’s position is to get our games involved [creates] an additional threat to the integrity of our league and the public good…
“Simply put, we don’t want our games to be used as bait to sell gaming. threatens the character of team sports. Our sports embody our best traditions and values. They represent clean, healthy competition. They support teamwork. And for success through preparation and sincere effort.
“With sports gambling, our games would represent the quick buck, the quick fix, the desire to get something for nothing. Legalized sports gambling would change – for the worse – what our games stand for and how they are perceived, and magnify the ever-present risks of corruption and scandal.”
My favorite: “Our players cannot be expected to act as healthy role models for youth if they are forced to act as participants in gambling enterprises. And legalized sports gambling sends a sad message to our youth that “anything goes” when it comes to raising revenue… that we might as well legalize, sponsor and promote any activity so the state can “cut” it . “
But as states, desperate for vice, legalized sports gambling, Goodell & Associates decided to strike, either through licensing – the NFL sold its logo to three gambling businesses to improve their situation – revenue from television (ratings and commercial), and now the addition of betting booths at NFL stadiums.
Cry for the children, Roger? Cry me a river, four, fake meter.
After the gambling ads (and Minnesota’s inability to establish “rush lane integrity”) the dominant theme of the six playoff games was the replay rule, now with the surprise addition of “quick replay” to more quickly provide a second opinion, right or wrong.
Five of the six playoff games — Giants-Vikes, the exception — were stripped away from the football to micro-inspect what just happened, allowing TV to cut back on more gambling ads.
What the late George Young, who joined the NFL office after fixing the Giants, filed in a fattening folder in which he had written, “The Monster Grows” — additions and corrections to the “instant” replay rules — now further attributes the games associated with long, unintended delays and examinations to arrive at debatable decisions.
Such issues were never a matter of divisive fandom in those years when many of us became football devotees. Crazy as it may seem, we used to turn on football games to watch football games, not delays for replay rule decisions or to watch our gambling action. But you can’t stand in the way of progress.
Maher PAT attempt coverage almost blew up by ESPN
As for those six playoff games, the TV coverage, especially with the networks’ top crews in place, is what we’ve come to expect: carelessness, stunning ignorance of current circumstances.
When the Cowboys beat the Bucs, 31-14, on Monday night, only one thing remained to be seen: After Dallas went on a 30-7 run, Brett Maher would miss his elusive fifth extra point of the game.
If the terrorists had broken into the ESPN truck, they would have stopped to gag and blindfold the crew to see if Maher made that kick first. For crying out loud, both my sister-in-law and Stephen A. Smith would have stopped talking to watch.
ESPN almost missed it.
On three TD replays leading up to the PAT, ESPN nearly missed it as the ball was in the air and through the uprights.
Then ESPN released coverage of the alarming and all-too-familiar — both teams solemnly gathered around the prone, immobile victim — injury to Bucs WR Russell Gage. When Gage finally walked off the field, ESPN was on commercials.
This could have been forgiven if ESPN had shown it on tape. What moving fee? Conscious? ESPN showed us nothing.
After SF’s Christian McCaffrey made a long run, a close-up of Fox showed his eyes looking up, apparently at the stadium’s big video screen to check for the closest Seattle defender. EXCELLENT SHOT Of course, Daryl “Moose” Johnston was too busy to notice.
It’s interesting how the following Saturday’s Chargers-Jags telecast on NBC, the one-game team of Al Michaels and Tony Dungy received radically mixed reviews.
But given that it was three hours of Johnston, I’ll side with reader Peter Dowd: “I’m glad I don’t have some jerk explaining every play down to the last detail trying to show how smart he is with modern football.”
Fox A-Team analyst Olsen on Giants-Vikes lead said: “The biggest thing about the Giants is they want to be a play-action team, not a passing team.
The Giants then beat the Vikes, the entire game, via drop-back passing, short play-action. But Olsen talks so much, how can he remember “The Biggest Thing”?
Then there was Olsen’s assessment of Kenny Goldaday’s $72 million failure as “a bit of a disappointment.” And Lizzie Borden was “a little eccentric.”
Fox’s “Next-Generation Stats” didn’t bode well for either generation, as they noted that Daniel Jones had run for “23 more yards than expected.” Expected by whom? Calvin “The Add and Divide” calculator?
After Bengal Sam Hubbard’s 98-yard TD fumble return, NBC’s Mike Tirico calmed himself down to see it: “One of the greatest plays in terms of fumble returns in playoff history!”
As Ray Goulding of the old radio comedy team Bob and Ray said, “George Washington was one of our first presidents.”
The networks don’t have the NFL’s worst behavior
As for those six playoff games, then professionalism is now entirely optional, a matter of undiscerning personal choice, nothing higher. Almost every game featured at least one episode of players doing their best/worst to get kicked for misconduct.
In the first half of Dolphins-Bills, a multi-player brawl ensued with Bills players amid the hassle wearing the Goodell issue’s “Choose Love” social message helmets.
A multi-player scene erupted when Seahawks DB Johnathan Abram followed up a tackle by Deebo Samuel by hitting his previously injured leg — a play and point that Fox initially forfeited for cutting off the crowd’s last botched reception.
And in another “Thoughts and Prays” tribute, “This puts Everything in Prophet” on Damar Hamlin’s on-field episode, Jimmie Ward only needed to hit downed Seahawks QB Geno Smith to give the Niners a 14-13 halftime lead. I’m driving. Instead, he tried to decapitate him with a helmet-first, unguided projectile.
And so the half ended with Seattle up, 16-14, a field goal on the final play after a silly 15-yard run against a 31-year-old college guy. Viewers, even without betting, were still left wondering how what they just saw could happen in a pro football playoff game.
