Classic New York sportswriter and syndicated
columnist Jimmy Cannon used to write a potpourri piece under the headline,
“Nobody asked me, but…. ” His observations were sharp and often visionary.
For instance he wrote in 1968, nobody asked me, but “all football has to do is
play its games, and the baseball owners will chase their public to them with
their ignorant greed.” Today, the NFL is America’s preeminent sports league
with a new $8 billion TV contract, and baseball is second or third.
Cannon used “nobody asked me, but…” to rattle off
one-liners about sports and anything else that interested him. It was a
tasteful way to convey his thinking without insulting his readers if they
disagreed. Unfortunately, in today’s era of in-your-face media, nothing is more
gauche than being tasteful. So I’ve updated Cannon’s concept with, “I might
offend you, but…” And if I manage to offend you, that’s too bad.
I might offend you, but…
Reggie White’s sudden death of a heart attack at 43
seems unusual, and I’m sure that his 17-year pro football career didn’t help
his health much, yet his passing should remind all athletes that no one is
immortal.
Pay attention, Barry Bonds.
NFL commissioner Paul Tagliabue called White a
gentle warrior, yet I bet no NFL coach ever asked his players to “go out there
on the football field and be gentle warriors.”
Bills vice president of communications Scott
Berchtold chided me last summer for writing “negative stuff,” yet given that
the Bills might make the playoffs after I held funeral services for them in
October, I must take a little credit for motivating them to rise from the dead.
Even though the Steelers don’t need to win Sunday in
Buffalo, longtime Pittsburgh coach Bill Cowher would probably love knocking out
of the playoff picture his good ol’ pal Tom Donahoe, whom he defeated in a
bitterly personal Steelers power struggle in January 2000.
Heck, Cowher might even love knocking out Donahoe,
too.
Ex-players should never serve as color commentators
for their old team’s games on a supposedly unbiased television football
broadcast.
Current TV sports journalists should never appear in
advertisements promoting third-party products of any kind.
Pure print journalists are typically the most
informed media representatives and the most faithful to journalistic standards
and ethics, yet they’re typically the lowest-paid of their media brethren, so
they must be the most foolish too.
If you have a product you want me to endorse, by the
way, I’m listening.
The Fast Ferry is the kind of hard-luck
tale that makes Rochesterians dislike their city, yet the Chicago Cubs have
been a hard-luck tale since 1908 and their fans still love them.
Rochesterians might have been the forefathers of
boorish fan behavior, according to former NBA star George Mikan, who recently
told a St. Paul Pioneer Press writer
that when he played for the Minneapolis Lakers in the late ’40s and ’50s, a
Rochester Royals fan once threw a four-to-five-inch knife at him that missed
and stuck in the floor.
Speaking of boorish behavior, there’s never been a
better time to viciously assault someone in the workplace: Vancouver Canuck
Todd Bertuzzi broke Colorado Avalanche player Steve Moore’s neck during a March
8 game and was recently sentenced to just a one-year probation and 80 hours of
community service after a guilty plea in Canadian court.
Bertuzzi must be a gentle warrior because you just
don’t break some guy’s neck and get probation and community service.
A reason people complain more about pro athletes’
salaries than top Hollywood actors’ salaries (even though actors’ earnings
dwarf what most athletes earn) is because athletes often look like Eminem and
50 Cent, instead of Tom Hanks and Will Smith.
Amerks
20-year-old winger Thomas Vanek leads AHL rookie scorers with 14 goals and scores 17
percent of the times he shoots, so he should take 30 shots a game and score
five goals a game.
Two Super Bowl titles make the difference between
Bill Parcells, the Dallas coach who rides his players hard yet is regarded as a
genius, and Tom Coughlin, the Giants and former RIT football coach who rides
his players hard yet is regarded as the biggest buffoon who ever lived — at
least by his current players and the New York-area media.
Mike Doser will be a Thursday Night Roundtable guest
on Bob Matthews’ WHAM 1180 AM sports radio program, Thursday, December 30, from
7 to 8 p.m.
This article appears in Dec 29, 2004 – Jan 4, 2005.
