Olbermann was just the start. He began to appear on my football screen this fall shouting and gurgling like some kind of secularist prophet telling me the identity of the “worst people in the NFL.”
Frequently stone casting while caught in the act of sinning against reason, Olbermann demonstrates several ancient truisms about the world of television.
Truism 1: Those who cannot do anything, end up teaching about the things they cannot do.
Truism 2: Those who cannot teach, end up opining on NBC about the things they cannot do or teach.
Final Truism: Those whose opinions are utterly predictable, but whose delivery volume and style is unpredictable will prosper at NBC.
Olbermann is the perfect confirmation that the legacy media is determined to give jobs to those whose opinions are safely like those of the rest of the geriatric herd, but whose eccentric and insufferable delivery makes them exciting to the blow dried heads of the media executives.
These executives confuse the courage needed to hire a man with an eccentric delivery with the courage required to hire a man with interesting content.
We have all survived scores of bloated ego-systems in the broadcast booth, but at least they were talking about football. Now Olbermann and aging former stars, those whom fame outran so the name died before the man, are giving us their opinions about the Cause of the Week.
Enough.
I believe in some of the causes showing up on my football screen, but when I want “causes” and advice on them, I shan’t turn to Tiki Barber or a former Bengal Who Is So Vanilla No One In America Can Remember His Name Though It May Be Chris Collins.
In fact, what qualifications does a Bengal have to pontificate on success in football or anything else?
NBC, and the rest of the networks, seem determined to destroy the best thing about sports: its pristine irrelevance.
Today, in perhaps, the most absurd moment in recent televised sports, NBC turned off the studio lights during the half-time show of the Eagles-Cowboys game. Commentators claimed they were being “green” and sat in a studio lit by candles. Their faces in shadow, they looked like Death Eaters had taken over NBC and were planning how to bump off Harry Potter.
Instead, it turns out that they are planning a future in which all of America will be forced to go back to candle light. They cut the football chatter and instead cut to a discussion of global warming.
One talking head was standing outside of what looked like an igloo and opined that with luck he would be able to talk to experts on climate change like Al Gore.
Please stop.
Now.
Don’t talk about anything serious, because we like our football (and all our sports) not serious.
I don’t care what cause it is.
Don’t politicize one of the few areas left to unify Americans around something that is just fun and not so serious.
We know there are bigger things that the Colts-Patriots game, but let us pretend for a moment that there isn’t.
Tomorrow we will go back to dealing with mortgages (those lucky enough to get them!) and wild fires. Please, please, please today let us enjoy watching a Viking break a record and the build up our loathing for any return of the Jerry Jones to the Super Bowl.
If Jones’ team plays Bill Belichick’s, then global warming will soar from all the gas escaping from their swollen heads.
We know both don’t matter half as much as one young man serving in Iraq, but watching them believe they do is half the fun.
Sports can unite us because it is a place where politics has no place.
I don’t care how Brett Farve votes . . . I just love watching him heave the ball eighty yards to win in OT. I don’t want to hear about causes at half-time. Is it too much to ask that there be one place in our acerbic and divisive culture where we can lay our culture warfare down and just be fans?
A sign of health in a nation is when the grown ups do hard work, fast on the fast days, but then know how to play and feast on the feast days. Sunday is not a day of work. We lay our burdens down and play together. We may work at cross purposes, but we can all enjoy watching Reggie Bush stretch for a touchdown.
I remember sitting in Rich Stadium in December watching Dan Marino play. A Bill’s fan next to me was shouting curses at the Dolphin’s star. “You stink Marino!” he shouted. Then he sat down (briefly due to the ice on the metal bleacher) and said to me (with a shake of his ale addled pate), “Damn, that Marino is good.”
We just loved watching him play. I don’t know that man’s politics, religion, or whether he drives a gas guzzling SUV. That moment I did not have to know. We were united by the trivial, made important by the ability of the trivial to entertain and rest weary minds.
“You are right.” I said and shook my head.
NBC is taking all this away.
Please, NBC, do we have to politicize everything? Must everything be tied to a good cause?
Just show us the game. Please?
