Football horrors reaching new depths
THE VIDEO of the Friday night high school football game near San Antonio arrived via the Internet on Saturday.
With the winning team — aaided by the ejection of two opposing players — running out the clock, two defenders waited fofor the ball to be snapped then bobolted toward an official in their babackfield. One smashed him frofrom behind, snapping his head bbackwards as the rest of him hit the ground. The other, also nowhere near the ball, then ran in and speared the fallen man.
Even by modern standards of sports being shoved toward perdition, this was horrifying. This was a premeditated, aggravated assault.
Next, Saturday, the pathetic enterprise known as ESPN did its part. During BaylorSMU, ESPN cut to its studio for — say it ain’t so, Joe — a “Cover Alert,” a graphic noting that Michigan State’s an 18 ¹ /₂ point favorite vs. Western Michigan.
The anchor then narrated a showandtell — WMU just scored, to make it 3417 and, “The spread is 18 ½ in favor of the Spartans, but this [TD] is making things interesting in regards to the line.”
For Pete Rose’s sake! Everyone is now presumed to have bet on games and/or players through — and at the financially invested urgings of our sports and their networks! You didn’t bet? Why not? Everyone does! All aboard!
Saturday on NBC, Texas LB Peter Jinkens thought he’d sacked Notre Dame QB Malik Zaire. So Jinkens began to do an allaboutme dance, fingerwaving and all. Naturally, NBC stuck with Jinkens.
But Jinkens and NBC thought wrong. Zaire was still up and stumbling forward.
Thursday, ESPN’s college opener was North Carolina, revealed to have conducted 18 years of goodgrades in phantom classes for basketball and football players, vs. South Carolina, another arrestsasdevelopment team that plays in the SEC, which leads the nation in football arrests and now conducts seminars to dissuade full scholarship recruits from committing crimes, especially assaults on women.
And then there’s the SEC image promo: The SEC is all about a college education! Guess that’s why some jokes are called gags.