When ‘getting it right’ goes wrong
AT LEAST the weekend’s football telecasts let us know early they were going to be tough to take.
Fewer than three minutes into Giants-Eagles, FOX rules expert Mike Pereira’s latest sensible tout of the game-suffocating replay rule again led to a contrary ruling — all in the name of “getting it right.”
In the second quarter, another crap-shoot replay review led to the negation of a Giants’ TD that for decades would have been six, no gripes from either side.
Early in Jets-Dolphins, CBS stayed its pathetic course, replaying in slow motion an ain’t-I-great sack dance performed by Miami DE Cameron Wake, who tackled Josh McCown after he wound up in his arms, McCown having avoided two other Dolphins.
CBS’s Alabama-Vanderbilt opened with a taped close-up of Vandy LB Nifae Lealao spewing semi-decipherable trash about how Alabama was in trouble, playing in “our house.”
Got that, kids? If you don’t talk trash, you’ll be ignored.
Bama was able to overcome such trash-talked threats and road-team disadvantage to win, 59-0.
Rutgers-Nebraska on BTN opened to play-by-play man Brandon Gaudin’s hype that RU is “much-improved.” Let’s see, home loss to Washington, home loss to anticipated pancake Eastern Michigan, then a 65-0 home win vs. annual pay-us-for-the-pounding Morgan St. Yep, much-improved.
The first 3:30 of that game included two pull-the-plug replay reviews.
Soon Gaudin told us NU QB Tanner Lee “was expected to play at the next level.” You suppose he meant the NFL? Or is there a level between college and the pros?
FOX’s college pregame comeons featured eight moving football images, six of them of showboating. After all, if not for acts of public immodesty, who’d watch football?
The Games Have Changed, Continued:
The biggest play in Rutgers-Nebraska wasn’t actually a play; it was an inexcusable dead-ball late hit by RU DB Kiy Hester gifting Nebraska a first down at the RU 11 and soon a TD to take a 21-17 lead in a 27-17 final.
Despite hundreds of millions of dollars thrown at college programs and pro players, such acts are now a common cause of wins and losses.
On FOX, Saturday, the win-starved Brewers, home vs. the Cubs, were down, 3-2 in the bottom of the 10th, runner on second, one out. Travis Shaw, lefthanded batter, then hit one deep to right-center.
As seen several times, Shaw walked toward first, watching to see if the ball was caught, hit the wall or was a home run. It was a game-ending home run — barely.
Yet, despite the replays, neither Matt Vasgersian nor John Smoltz asked the question: If Shaw was so unsure, why didn’t he run?