Come the Super Bowl professional experts say insightful things such as, “It comes down to which team wants it more.” In other words, both teams were motivated to make it to the final, but now it’s a matter of which team is more motivated to win?
To that silly end, the Ryder Cup begins Friday (Golf Channel, 7:30 a.m.), an especially appealing U.S. vs. Europe, every-two-years match-play competition despite the U.S. side’s efforts to make it difficult to do what it regularly did from 1947 through 1983: win.
Increasingly, the media have assigned the winning credit or losing debit at least as much on the mostly non-playing captains, and now their squad of assistant captains. This year, U.S. Captain Davis Love III will have four: Tom Lehman, Jim Furyk, Tiger Woods and Steve Stricker. Five captains for 13 players.
The U.S. hasn’t done as well as it used to, and has even twice been crushed by a loose band of Europeans (many residing in Florida or Arizona) who’ve taken advantage of their uptight, not-right opponents.
The U.S. players reached the top of their professional games without captains or co-captains. So one might think that the U.S. captains would choose to leave them alone.
“Good luck, boys. No different from the Waste Management Open. Play your best. Fairways and greens. I’ll be in the grille room, watching on TV.”
After all, there is no strategy beyond ball-in-hole, ASAP. No sacrifice bunts, play-action fakes, picks-and-rolls or triangle offenses. No defense, no nickel-packages or zones to play. Just golf.
Yet the U.S. team now goes out of its way to drive its players nuts, to smother them with pressure, to ensure their extreme discomfort.
Before the matches, the famous are flown in to deliver motivational speeches — as if the players don’t know what’s up, as if extra weight can make the best play better.
When play begins, the captains and co-captains, walkie-talkies at their ears when not “discussing matters” and “what was said at last night’s meeting” with on-course TV folks, cart around to peer at their players, to further remind them that the fate of the Republic depends on them!
It brings to mind that scene from a Marx Brothers’ movie when a woman faints. Groucho suggests that everyone move in closer to further limit her oxygen.
And now Ryder Cup success and failure is fastened to the captains, as if they missed or made that putt!
I could captain the U.S. Ryder Cup team to victory. I’d do it by phone. And then I’d take full credit — for leaving them alone to do the best at what they normally do best.
Another NFL game, another senseless affront
Man, this is growing tougher on the better senses. The mutilated, uncivilized, senseless state of pro football has become a challenge to even the moderately dignified. Yesterday’s Skins-Giants became the latest.
The limbs-dangling carnage, the pandering TV commentary, the immodest, chest-pounding demonstrations by men — college men — for completing assigned tasks, the brutally mindless game-changing penalties that resemble aggravated assaults — Giant Andrew Adams’ fourth-quarter head-smash of unsuspecting Dashaun Phillips that cost the Giants a possession at the Skins’ 18 — the media’s presumption that New York unconditionally loves Odell Beckham Jr. when he has made himself impossible to root for, adds up to insufferable.
And then NFL players take turns exploiting the national anthem to demonstrate their social activism and sense of civility?
Skins-Giants deteriorated until the inevitable garbage, with Washington DB Josh Norman — selected by FOX as its in-season NFL go-to guy because he’s a lout! — inevitably involved. Another game in which both teams did whatever it took to lose until one succeeded.
And there’s another game, just like it, on its way.
Broadcasters can’t just tell us what’s going on
Everywhere we turned, over the weekend, the removal of clear, plain English and absence of accurate, applied realties was maddening. A few examples:
FOX’s Joe Buck, at the top of Skins-Giants, said quarterback Kirk Cousins is feeling heat for ineffective play. Soon, Buck read a graphic: “Washington’s defense allows 32.5 points per game.” That has nothing to do with its offense.
Two plays later, the Giants recovered a flubbed punt at Washington’s 28. They’d soon score a TD. That was on the defense? To TV, it is! These guys can work 20 games a year for 20 years and still not get it.
Early in NBC’s Duke-Notre Dame coverage, Mike Tirico told us that Duke QB Daniel Jones “is very young, but has some good qualities.”
How young is “very”? Seventeen?
He’s not “very young.” Jones was red-shirted as a freshman; he’s 19½ — a year older than most freshmen — “true freshmen” — enrolled at Duke! Tirico couldn’t have just given his age?
On the Big Ten Network, studio host Rick Pizzo exclaimed, “Minnesota ran all over the Rams!” Blowout, eh? Nope. Colorado State, an 18-point dog, lost, 31-24 despite allowing 243 rushing yards.
Why does Yoenis Cespedes bother to wear spikes? Wednesday, he jogged his triple into a double. Saturday, he jogged the Phils’ Odubel Herrera’s double into a triple. Herrera then did what Cespedes, on Wednesday, couldn’t — he scored on a ground out.
At least the Mets’ TV announcers are catching on — even if they’re the last. Keith Hernandez: “Little bit of laziness out there by Cespedes. More than a little bit — that shouldn’t have been a triple.”
He might’ve added that Cespedes has played this way his entire career, but OK.
On CBS, Saturday, Tennessee wore Nike-issue charcoal uniforms against Florida. Verne Lundquist: “I’m old and cranky so I can get away with this, but I thought Tennessee’s colors were orange and white. I was mistaken.”
And what team was that playing on FOX, Saturday, the one wearing Nike-issue all-black uniforms? Oh, that was Baylor, school colors green and gold. Swoosh, great, 100-year-old traditions, gone!
Congrats to coach Barry Odom and his Missouri Tigers for breaking the school’s scoring record, Saturday, 79-0 against Delaware State. Mizzou threw 39 times, including one for a touchdown that made it 72-0.
Not that there was a shortage of penalties, yesterday, but the Skins’ half-yellow shoes made it appear there was a flag on every play.
Nice, quick catch by FOX’s truck, yesterday, showing that vicious, entirely needless game-changing foul on the Giants’ Andrew Adams.
Saturday was such a beautiful September afternoon for a baseball game, eh, Commissioner Manfred? Just gorgeous. Of course, the Mets this season weren’t scheduled to play even one Saturday afternoon home game.