BOILING POINTS
TV lauding ill-earned ‘record’
KNEW it the moment we heard about it. We knew that in the pandering, mindless, shallow world of modern TV sports “journalism” that bad would be celebrated as “fabulous!” and wrong applauded as “sensational!”
That’s another astonishing thing about current sports and TV journalism: Neither take holidays off from testing the limits of our endurance and tolerance. It’s as if common sense and common decency surrendered, finally took the buyout.
We knew, from years of conditioning, ESPN’s “SportsCenter” would be “jacked” by news on Tuesday that Division III Grinnell (Iowa) sophomore guard Jack Taylor scored a record 138 points in a game. And we knew such news would be far less important than the fact he scored 138 points in a 179104 final, against Faith Baptist Bible (Iowa).
That it was another il learned, adult supervised records masher — high school and college record books are lousy with them — isn’t supposed to be of any concern among those who’d prefer towatch slamdunk contests, home run derbies and tape of backboards being shattered rather than a good game. “I felt like anything I tossed up was going in,” Taylor told the Associated Press. He was 52for108— he missed 56 shots — yet felt as if he couldn’t miss! On TV, edited reels showed Taylor hitting shot after shot after shot. There was no edited reel of him missing 56 shots or a fast forward reel of him taking 108 shots in a game won by 75 points.
The once decent, once standard act of clearing the bench during blowouts to allow others— the kids who practice hard, all week, perhaps? — to take a shot or two? Forget it. Why win by 50 or 60 when you can win by 75, set a record, be all over Sports Center? But it wasn’t just SportsCenter. Taylor, who seems like a sweet kid— not the kind to enjoy kicking opponents when they’re way down and way out, not the kind of attitude enriched, Nike programmed kid you’d expect to eagerly pursue a record for a machinegunning fish in a barrel — also appeared, the next morning, with Matt Lauer and Savannah Guthrie on NBC’s “Today.”
Of course, the fact the record was set in a game that only minimally qualified as a “sporting competition” or that this was (another) record by slaughter wasn’t mentioned. Lauer and Guthrie told him they think what he did was terrific! What an achievement!
They didn’t ask why he was allowed to take 108 shots— no one on his team took more than six— or why his coach would allow Taylor to take 108 shots in a game that was won before halftime.
But Taylor seemed so innocent and so unaware of the unsportsmanlike excesses that scoring 138 points demanded— perhaps he grew up watching SportsCenter — that he volunteered that he was able to get the ball to shoot so often because his team “pressed all game,” forcing 49 turnovers.
Grinnell pressed all game? In a 75point win? That’s a good thing? No, it’s sick, twisted.
As of Wednesday night, the only person on TVI know to have objected to this latest betrayal of sports was Bill Raftery, doing color on ESPN’s North Carolina Chaminade telecast. He placed the blame — not the credit — where it belonged: on the head of Grinnell’s coach, David Arseneault. But Raftery’s old school. Here’s the kicker: Faith Baptist had a player, David Larson, who scored 70 in that game. I guess his job was to keep it close. Larson played all 40 minutes while Taylor played “only” 36. So two players, in the same game, played 76 of a possible 80 minutes and totaled 208 points.
Yep, as 75point blowouts go, this was no game for you bench warmers. Seven Grinnell kids played five or fewer minutes. But remember what they say in those TV promos: NCAA participation builds character!