 |
| |
|
 |
 |
The Sports Curmudgeon, redux Posted: Wednesday April 10, 2002 9:58 AM
The grass is green again, and the birds are singing, but the Sports Curmudgeon is still musing about the winter because he thinks it's time to reveal the single biggest lie in sports: that the Opening and Closing Ceremonies of any Olympics are entertaining. What dross, says the discriminating Sports Curmudgeon! What pretentious rubbish! Why is everybody afraid to admit the truth that, with the exceptions of sitting through the Super Bowl halftime spectacular and watching somebody else's child play Little League baseball, the Opening and Closing Ceremonies of the Olympics make for the most excruciating spectating in the world? The Sports Curmudgeon counts John Madden as one of his few friends and is delighted that he snookered ABC -- that's America's Bucket of Chumps -- out of millions of dollars to hoot and holler on Monday Night Football, but, the Sports Curmudgeon demands to know: Have you or anyone you've met ever once turned on a sporting event to hear a sports announcer? With a leer, the Sports Curmudgeon says, "Give the announcers' money to the cheerleaders, heh, heh." And speaking of sports announcers of all persuasions, the Sports Curmudgeon is pained by hearing them use the word "huge." That is getting to be a huge irritant. Yes, the Sports Curmudgeon can be very direct. He says, for instance: It's the 21st century, so why don't we just get rid of boxing? For a start, the Sports Curmudgeon suggests that at the upcoming Mike Tyson-Lennox Lewis bloodletting we use Olympic figure skating judges. Nothing gets the Sports Curmudgeon's dander up more than those so-called idiotic bets between the mayors of cities whose teams are playing for some championship. The Sports Curmudgeon says the nadir was reached when the Yankees and Diamondbacks met in the World Series last fall. Not only did the mayors of New York and Phoenix make an idiotic bet, but so did the mayors of the two little rinky-dink towns where the teams hold spring training. They bet . . . sweatshirts. Puh-leeze. The Sports Curmudgeon holds his nose every time he hears some coach -- it is always a coach -- say, "That's what's great about this game." Every game has knucklehead coaches who say that. That's what stupid about this game. Well, it's Masters time again, so the Sports Curmudgeon whispers -- because Augusta is, as you know, a sacred place, and whispers are appropriate -- and what the Sports Curmudgeon whispers is, "Aren't those champions' green blazers such an ugly shade of green?" The Sports Curmudgeon snaps, in a loud voice, "No wonder you aren't allowed to wear them away from Augusta National." And speaking of color, the Sports Curmudgeon has had it up to here with blue-collar teams and blue-collar players . . . especially since the Sports Curmudgeon notices that all the coaches and writers and announcers who are so lavish with their praise for blue-collar wouldn't have anything to do with real blue-collar people. "Why, some of my best friends are blue-collar," says The Sports Curmudgeon . . . with a huge sneer. That's what's great about this game. Sports Illustrated senior contributing writer Frank Deford is a regular
contributor to CNNSI.com and appears each Wednesday on National Public Radio's
Morning Edition. His new novel, The Other Adonis (Sourcebooks Landmark), is
available now at bookstores
everywhere.
|
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||
