There’s no cure for botched sports coverage

THE IDEA — if it was the idea — made sense: ESPN would remotely show some live professional baseball from South Korea to help the self-quarantined pass the time.

But then ESPN’s preposterous production standards came to the fore, thus the ballgames became background filler in favor of clutter, gizmos and say-anything yak, as if we tuned in to see clutter, gizmos and hear say-anything yak.

Naturally, Fox is trying to compete with ESPN’s empty-headedness. After last Sunday, those who were looking forward to Fox’s return to live NASCAR coverage are still waiting.

Fox shrunk the view with needlessly fat graphics and worthless shots of closeups of single cars. Once again, live TV was sacrificed to “better ideas” and “technological advancements.”

Perhaps we’ll soon learn if MLB is done trying to wreck the game with artificial additives such as those golf ball-stuffed baseballs used last season to shatter home run and strikeout records — to fabricate “excitement” — when all it did was reduce The Game to a home run or strikeout sideshow.

As for the return of the NBA, does it much matter if it means the resumption of 3-point chuck-a-thons posed as basketball?

Seems Fox’s college football lead analyst Joel Klatt on Monday couldn’t find the time or inclination to ask Big 12 commissioner Bob Bowlsby about all the arrests of Big 12 players, including five Kansas State players in four days a few weeks ago.

K-State football coach Chris Klieman said, “I am extremely disappointed in the poor choices recently made by some of our student-athletes.”

Texas players have been on a roll, too, including the arrest of a 19-year-old receiver for illegally carrying a loaded Glock, a bullet ready to go in the chamber. A recent Texas recruit was arrested for selling Xanax — he had $1,300 in cash on him — and a Kansas player also recently was arrested on a weapons charge. Student-athletes.