So another huge NFL game — the AFC Championship — was in great part determined by a player’s inability to behave as a minimally composed professional in service to the big picture.
Ravens wide receiver Zay Flowers, Boston College man, caught a late third-quarter pass, made a nice run, then stood over his tackler to taunt him rather than preparing, down 17-7, for the next play. He would soon fumble while entering the end zone, adding to his aid and comfort to the enemy.
Of course, anyone can fumble at any time, and the same now goes for being flagged for rotten, self-smitten conduct.
Still, media gambling “experts” are so self-deluded (or so full of it) they believe they can select winners of games that are now often determined by individual, all-about-me incivilities. And it all reverts to NFL Treasurer Roger Goodell’s 2016 solemn plea to Maryland’s government to exclude the NFL from state gambling enterprises as it will create suspicion of diminished integrity of games and players while leading to civil ruin as gambling is, after all, a vice.
Now, under Goodell, if you don’t have at least one bet on a game — and add one or two at halftime — you can’t possibly be an NFL fan.
But Goodell is King Con. He relentlessly has proven himself a highly paid, in my grandmother’s jargon, “phony baloney.” He escapes honest media appraisal, especially by TV news, and TV and radio sports departments within networks that do billions of dollars of business with the NFL.
Yet, as a matter of the hollowest public relations, Goodell chooses to decorate NFL fields and helmets with messages that clearly point to those who watch games on TV as in constant and immediate need of improved socialization skills — even as the NFL’s networks continue to pound home the visual messages that the NFL’s live audiences are invited and encouraged to perform like dressed-for-attention dolts.
Thus, we’re supposed to ignore or enjoy the weekly videos of in-house customers waging punch-drunken combat against one another.
More from this tangled web of the antithetical: Chiefs WR and Giants 2021 first-round pick Kadarius Toney (nice scouting, fellas) was a four-seasons student-athlete at Florida despite repeated evidence that he is a semi-literate reprobate, but didn’t play Sunday as he was listed as injured.
Toney took to social media — the misnamed habitat of profanely and profoundly unhappy pros and former full-scholarship college men — to issue this expletives deleted denial:
“Ya’ll reading this cap-ass s–t? You didn’t believe it. I don’t give a f–k. Ain’t never been a n—-a to do all that but man, that s–t.
“I’m not hurt. None of that s–t. Save that s–t. S–k my d–k too.” Charming.
Now back down to the field to read the large end-zone message, “END RACISM,” as if all NFL fans, but particularly those who cheer uniforms regardless of who’s in them, need to reverse course to travel the path of righteousness.
Not that Goodell is fooling anyone.
As reader Dom LaVarco wrote: “As long as she’s going to be there, why not have Taylor Swift perform during the Super Bowl halftime? Oh, yeah, wait … she doesn’t use the N-word.”
But this year’s chosen headliner, Usher, does. In keeping with Goodell’s shameless pandering tradition of annually exploiting the largest TV audience, he stars black performers who have succeeded in demonstrating that their business is predicated on promoting and sustaining the worst stereotypes of Black America for our “End Racism” enjoyment.
And so, again, I invite — challenge — Goodell and CBS’s Usher drum-bangers, Jim Nantz and James Brown, to recite the lyrics of “iconic performer” Usher, starting with “Nice and Slow,” a standard boastful lascivious “iconic” number.
Ready, fellas? Take it:
“They call me U-S-H-E-R-R-A-Y-M-O-N-D
“Now, baby, tell me what you wanna do with me
“Got a n—-a fiendin’ like Jodeci …”
Jodeci is a group that, of course, relies on vulgar, sexually explicit, female-degrading lyrics.
And no one from the NFL would dare publicly recite any of Goodell’s chosen male or female crotch-grabbing Super Bowl headliners’ lyrics. Yet, since Goodell arrived, the NFL can’t come up with anyone better for its biggest-stage event — even as the arrests and accusations of domestic violence among NFL players escalates.
But it appears that Goodell gives us what he feels we deserve.
Silence on crimes speaks volumes
Beyond financially, educationally and ethically corrupt college athletics, there may be no scam greater in our colleges than offering majors in broadcast journalism. Mass media sports broadcast journalists are not necessarily expected to lie, but they simply aren’t allowed to tell the truth.
Illinois basketball star Terrence Shannon Jr. in late December was suspended after he was charged with felony rape.
But when his trial was set for May, after the basketball season, he was allowed to return to play.
Since then I’ve watched Illinois play three times, once on Fox, twice on the Big Ten Network. And while we were told that Shannon has returned from “suspension,” not once was heard why he was suspended, as if police-accused felony rape is just “a violation of team rules,” like failure to return a library book.
I’d strongly suggest that all three telecasts adhered to a pre-production decision to subjugate the truth.
Sunday, CBS’s open to Chiefs-Ravens included footage of a pregame hassle between teams. Ravens CB Arthur Maulet was seen trying to escalate the episode into a brawl, thus didn’t consider being ejected before the AFC Championship even began.
Next, as if to further preface the Ravens’ home loss abetted by in-game misconduct, the most demonstrably and remorselessly savage anti-personnel player in team — if not NFL — history, Ray Lewis was introduced to the already frenzied crowd as inspiration to create a more frenzied atmosphere.
Lewis, as CBS and the NFL were apparently unaware, was a prime suspect in a double-homicide to which he’d plead to obstruction of justice for lying to police investigators and later reach a settlement with the families of the victims.
And to both of these dyspeptic scenes, Jim Nantz seemed delighted, as if at 64 and with CBS since 1985, he hadn’t the right or self-respect to tell indisputable truths — or remain silent — in order to rise above the status of shill.
With Romo, you win some, you lose some
Good Tony: Early in Chiefs-Ravens, K.C. was going for it, fourth-and-2 from midfield, when Tony Romo said Baltimore “should play for the pass here.” He was right, as Patrick Mahomes completed a pass for a first down.
Bad Tony: Romo went “don’t believe what you see, believe what I say” on us. Ravens DT Travis Jones went down in sudden pain, having apparently been hit in an eye. A replay showed just that.
But during that replay, Romo said Jones had twisted an ankle, “Right there, his right ankle gets twisted.” There was no “right there” there. Not only could we see that his ankle was not twisted, we could see a finger connect with his eye. And when Jones left the field, he was squinting, not limping.
Meanwhile, Jim Nantz’s and CBS’s grasp of football showed that Mahomes’ record as a starter made him a one-man show, thus he should have won several Cy Young Awards.
Rumors persist that ESPN hoops analyst JJ Reddick will replace Doc Rivers to join Mike Breen and Doris Burke on the A-team of its NBA telecasts. Rivers last week left the booth to coach the Bucks. ESPN’s dismantling of the appealing Breen-Mark Jackson-Jeff Van Gundy trio reminds me of the manager who removes the effective starting pitcher after he gives up an infield hit.
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