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February 12 , 2002 - DISCUSS THIS ARTICLE



A motherlode of sports
Normally, I would say that March is hands-down the best month in sports. You can argue until you're blue in the face about how much better the pros are or about how much more fun football is (don't even try with baseball) - but there's no single sporting event that's as entertaining, interesting, and magnetic as the NCAA Men's Basketball Tournament. They call it March Madness. No other event has that kind of hyped up billing in its nickname. The Rose Bowl isn't called "New Year's Nuttiness." They don't call the Super Bowl "Winter Whackiness." The World Series aren't the "Fall Freakout!" Hell, even the WWF couldn't come up with a catchier name for an event.

But I'll concede my position on March to February this year. This February has brought us the NHL All-Star Game, the NFL Pro Bowl, the NBA All-Star Game, the Winter Olympics in Salt Lake, and due to the unfortunate circumstances of September 11, the pushed-to-a-week-later Super Bowl. Now before you go on and say I'm already killing my own argument, notice that I had said "single sporting event" above. But for sheer hype, talent, and star power, you cannot beat February 2002.

"02-02," as I like to call it, will go down as one of the most jam-packed, emotional, interesting months in sports history. A tour de force 28 days of athletic competition, it will also be remembered by curmudgeons like me as a tour de farce.

At least it wasn't an ear
Marking yet another assault on an individual (and upon his own sanity), Mike Tyson decided to take a bite of someone's calf as he and Lennox Lewis rolled on the floor during a press conference to announce an upcoming fight. The sport once known as "the sweet science" has now devolved into antics usually reserved for sanitariums and child care centers. If you're still paying your local cable or satellite operator to watch this stuff, I really have to question who's the bigger nutjob - you or Iron Mike.

Anyway, now that we have the obvious athletic travesty out of the way, let's take a look at the rest of the month's good, bad, and freakin' ugly.

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times
Many people - sportswriters and armchair quarterbacks alike - are saying that Super Bowl XXXVI was one of the best 'Bowls ever played. My camp (alright, so that's something like 3 of us) is saying that it was one of the least entertaining. Truth be told, it was both. The first 55 minutes of play were some of the most boring, long, excrutiating minutes of pigskin aired on national television since the last Big Ten college game on NBC. It was slow, it was tedious, and on top of that, this year's Super Bowl ads didn't live up to the usual hype. Blame the poor economy and blame the Patriots' smothering defense. Bill Belichick's defensive tricks turned the highly-hyped Warner and Faulk Show into football's version of vaporware. Until the last five minutes, it was like we were watching the Warner and Faulk No-Show.

I'd have been rooting for the Patriots from the start - I'm usually for the underdog when I don't care about either team - but being from the Bay Area, I was still harboring some bitterness about the Pats' questionable win over the Raiders in the playoffs a couple of weeks beforehand. But somewhere down the line, between Kurt Warner's constant whining and Tom Brady's winning attitude, I was won over and was glad to see New England win - especially after the decision to drive for the gamewinning field goal in the last ticks to win it all. These Patriots had some cojones, something sorely missing from the more high-flying "west-coast-offense" style games.

To make the western guy in me happy, it was a pleasure to see so much left-coast talent on the championship team. Bledsoe (though he didn't lead the team much this year) is a Pac-10 product, as are J.R. Redmond and defensive monster Teddy Bruschi - the latter formerly of Arizona's vaunted "Desert Swarm" squad. And MVP Brady, despite his departure for the collegiate ranks of Michigan, is a hometown boy as well. We couldn't be prouder.

The Patriot Bowl
And we had many reasons to be proud. Not because of the über-jingoistic showing of "patriotism" before the game or during halftime - the level of over-commercialized red-white-and-blue schlock was a known quantity well before the first fans started to file into the Superdome - and not because Paul McCartney and Bono told us we should stand proud - but because of the true Patriots on the field.

From the moment New England poured out of the tunnel - in unison - they showed teamwork, spirit, and a never-say-die attitude more representative of their name than any talking head politician could muster in a lifetime of "work." There's enough material on the BS behind the whole event, but someone else has already written about it. I'd rather dwell for a moment on what was good about XXXVI, if only because it's uncharacteristic of me.

Speaking of proud moments, the (ahem) rightful Super Bowl quarterback, Rich Gannon of the Oakland Raiders, led the AFC squad to a decisive victory over the NFC in an equally unexciting Pro Bowl the following week. Sometimes things have a funny way of working out.

Marred All Stars
While we can be thankful to the New England Patriots for being upstanding citizens and being good role models in their show of solidarity and spirit, pro athletes aren't perfect. Like our other heroes of the day (firemen and cops) they boast inordinately high incidences of domestic abuse and womanizing.

So if I could hand out the "Fugly Award" trophy for this otherwise amazing February, I'd like to personally shove it up Shaquille O'Neal's ass. Not only would it accomodate it, but he's rightfully deserving of the honor. While this 7'+ meatsack has the adoration of young children everywhere via his endorsements of Taco Bell and Pepsi and appearances in kid-flicks like Kazaam, he rudely ignored the little kids lined up to high-five the NBA players as the All-Star teams were announced. While every other player and coach walked in front of the children and shook hands and high fived them, Shaq made his way conspicuously behind the children and ignored them as he made his way to center court. Mr. O'Neal went out of his way to not be bothered by the kids, earning his new nickname, "Shaqass." (Please, start using this term. It's fitting, and I'd get an ego boost if I ever read another op-ed article using it.)

While I can't rely on Shaqass' generosity, it would be big of him to share that award with the Philadelphia fans in attendance at the First Union Center. The "City of Brotherly Love" became the town of lowly bitterness as they continuously booed All-Star MVP (and hometown son) Kobe Bryant throughout the day. If you ask me, the boos were targeted toward the wrong Laker. Kobe, on the other hand, showed what looked to be signs of maturity when expressing his hurt feelings about the crowd reaction. The cocky teenager seems to be growing up, as genuine pain filled his face upon talking about the booing. Hopefully, his millions of dollars in annual take-home pay will help him get over it.

Otherwise, the NBA All-Star game was its usual self - a long highlight reel of sharp passes, spectacular dunks, and acrobatic basketball. If the break was any indication of who'll win the NBA championship this year, you may as well just give the trophy to the Sacramento Kings now. They dominated just about every part of All-Star weekend. Too bad all I saw of Stojakovic's win of the three-point competition and the Kings' sweep of the three-on-three tournament was what was captured on tape.

Five rings? No, five ZEROES for NBC
Speaking of multi-million dollar athletes and exciting sports on tape, how 'bout those Olympics? By now, we've all gotten accustomed to the ridiculously homespun media and know to expect overly sappy human interest stories before a number of athletes compete. It's sad that we expect and accept this pap now, but what can you do? We're a complacent society.

What's unacceptable is NBC's "coverage" of the Olympic Games. The Salt Lake City Olympic Planning Commission fought tooth and nail (and allegedly did some bribing) with the International Olympic Committee to have the Winter Games held in Utah. For once we have the Winter Games right in our back yard and we're still watching everything on tape delay.

We bitched and moaned about this during the Sydney Summer Games, Barcelona, Seoul, Albertville... Ok, we could count back the folly for quite a number of years. But as much as we griped, they always had a point - when the games are on the other side of the world, how many people want to watch at 3 in the morning? I remember back in the day of Beta videocasettes that every time the Summer Olympics rolled around, blank tape sales skyrocketed throughout the country.

Anyway, with all those great events taking place in the Mountain time zone, would it kill NBC to air some of the events live? At least on weekends? Pretty please with marmalade on top? Sometime around 12:30 on Saturday night, I flipped on NBC to see if I could catch the tail end of Will Ferrel and Chris Kattan trying to be funny, but instead I was treated to Women's Moguls Skiing, the K90 portion of the Nordic Combined, and Pairs Short Program figure skating. Now I know that I've usually imbibed a bit by this hour on Saturday night, but my internal clock was telling me that there were no sports going on at 1:30 am in Salt Lake City. (And to answer the question posed above, I stayed up until about 3:00 watching it all.)

So NBC wants to make part of its 21394587-gazillion dollar deal to be the exclusive broadcaster of the Olympics by putting on the big events on primetime. Big events on prime time sell advertising. Advertising keeps TV free. But are you also aware that 2/3 of NBC's Olympic programming is arriving courtesy of pay-TV? Hmmm... Your monthly cable bill pays cable operators to pay to have CNBC and MSNBC on your system. Am I missing something here? In addition to being shown at the wrong time, the games are completely edited. We only see the top athletes (or the American athletes) because that's what makes "good airtime." But isn't it the other side that we like to see? The also-rans like Eddie the Eagle, the Jamaican bobsled team, and that Kenyan cross-country skier. I guess those really touching olympic stories about the misfits don't make enough money for the network. Perhaps NBC is just greedy.

Or maybe they're crazy. When Hannah Storm hilariously attempted to explain what a "super pipe" is to snowboarding newbies in the audience, I just about lost it. "Hey, Hannah. It's what your bosses were passing around when they chose you and Costas to head up the broadcast." Ms. Storm might be a bit overbearing but tolerable, but the schmoe doing color commentary on snowboarding is more irritating than Danny Bonaduce on his morning radio show in LA. And just what is up Bob Costas' butt lately? He looks and sounds perpetually annoyed. Sure, he's under a good amount of stress being the Olympics figurehead for the big bad network, but I'd grin and bear it for the millions that he's making just to report the results to us... on tape!

They haven't killed it completely
Kudos do go to NBC for swallowing a bit of pride and getting, on loan from ABC, Jim "Thrill of Victory and Agony of Defeat" McKay onto the broadcast team. If there's one person that can bring class and dignity to NBC Sports, it's McKay, and with his earnest voiceover and self-penned narratives, some of the human interest stories are often more than tolerable this year - they're touching and interesting.

Fortunately, what the major networks can never kill is the Olympian spirit. It's only a few days into the games and already there have been moments that have touched me and countless others, no doubt.

In the moguls competition, US silver medalist Shannon Bahrke had an infectious smile borne of the joy of sport that seemed to lift everyone on the mountain up. Canadian pairs skating contenders Jamie Sale and David Pelletier laughed off a fall at the end of their short program, just enjoying the moment, while Natalia Ponomareva of Uzbekistan completed her half of the short program on a broken foot. (She completed the long program last night on that same foot!)

The US sweep in men's half-pipe snowboarding was brilliant to watch - the international competition was amazing as it was, but the home team went a step above, riled up by the big home audience. These kids achieved amazing airs, pulled acrobatic stunts, and wowed a crowd of over 20,000 fans, thereby truly legitimizing the sport as a solid Olympic event. It also provided the NBC audience a chance to get familiarized with some drum n' bass and punk rock during primetime, a bonus for the propagation of non-teeny-bop music.

A couple of Winter Games back, a number of us maliciously chuckled at speed skater Dan Jansen's misfortunes on the ice, if only becaue the network had homespun him and built him up to the point that it was all a big joke. This year, there was no silly buildup of the American-Canadian axis of best-friends-cum-speed-skaters Casey Fitzrandolph, Jeremy Wotherspoon, and Mike Ireland - just a nice story on three best buds who hang out and train together even though they're from all over the map. When Wotherspoon tripped and fell not 20 feet from the start of his heat, the devastation among all of them could be felt all around. What was more important than just winning was that they all compete to their best, and one of them didn't get the chance.

My favorite moment thus far also came from the speed skating ring. When American skater Derek Parra came out of seemingly nowhere to win the silver medal, he thanked his family, his friends... and his co-workers at Home Depot. This, to me, illustrates what the Olympics (and amateur athletics like college hoops) are all about - competing for personal satisfaction and victory, not for a million-dollar paycheck. Sure, those might come later on in the form of endorsements and appearance fees and the other perks of fame - but to know that the guy who recommended a particular type of tile to you in the local hardware store's flooring department also busts his ass at being one of the fastest skaters in the world is truly remarkable.

To think that the games aren't even a quarter over yet!

In the unlikely event that any of the New England Patriots, Jim McKay, or Olympic athletes ever read this, I hereby ask that you please provide the Shaqass and Bob Costas with some lessons in humility, class, and winning with grace.