A regular reader of these rants lives nearby; yesterday, I happened to run into him at a local shopping strip and he thanked me for not writing about LaVar Ball three times a week like lots of other outlets do. We got to chatting and I explained to him that I think LaVar Ball is a sports media and social media creation; he started out with saying some outrageous stuff about his son being better already than Steph Curry and that he could have taken Michael Jordan back in his prime; when that got him publicity, he escalated the outrageousness and that made him a mainstay for media coverage. I think he is far more toward the “showman” end of the spectrum as opposed to the “sportsman” end; that is why I rarely write about him.
His latest antic – claiming that a female referee at the Las Vegas AAU tournament was fat, out of shape and incompetent and that she should “stay in her lane” – was beyond outrageous; it was offensive. The media created LaVar Ball; the twits on Twitter and the “Faceboobs” made much of his stuff viral – not in the infectious sense but in the widespread sense. Until those regions of modern society tire of his antics, please expect more of them and they will be more outrageous/offensive as time goes on.
But that conversation got me to thinking about the following question:
- Which recurring sports story/sports topic are you most tired about hearing about?
LaVar Ball has to be on that list – – but he is surely not alone. I have a few other candidates to suggest for your consideration.
- OJ Simpson: When he is released on parole in a few weeks, I have no interest in hearing about any retrospective on his murder trial, his Nevada imprisonment, his life adjusting to freedom, his golf game or his continued hunt for the real killers. I don’t know about you, but I have heard everything I ever want to hear from or about OJ Simpson. Period…
- The NFL Draft: Howard Cosell said about 35 years ago that Pete Roselle should get and Emmy and an Oscar for staging the most over-rated/over-propagandized annual event in sports. If Cosell were alive today, he would think the hoot-doodle surrounding the drafts in the 1980s were “the good old days”. Think about it for a moment folks; the NFL Draft for 2018 is still 9 months away; no college football team has played even a single down in the 2017 season. Not to worry; there are already at least a half-dozen Mock Drafts for 2018 out there for your perusal. I would rather gargle with razor blades…
- “Snub Stories”: These are nothing more than a way for writers or sports radio hosts to vent their spleens for a short period of time. “Snub stories” sometimes take the form of a team being “snubbed” by not being invited to participate for a round or two in the NCAA men’s basketball tournament; another form is the outrage expressed about a certain player who was not named to an All-Star team or to the Pro Bowl. The “Snub Stories genre” can also extend to teams who were given a spot in March Madness but were seeded far too low by the author’s yardstick. I guess these stories make the venter(s) feel good for a moment – or else why do they spend the energy on them? For me, they are tales told by idiots full of sound and fury and signifying nothing. [/W. Shakespeare]
- Tim Tebow’s minor league baseball accomplishments: I am not a Tim Tebow basher by any stretch of the imagination; in fact, I think he has gotten a very raw deal from a faction of the sports media who like to take shots at him for his overt religiosity. Personally, I think the proper label for folks who do that is “bigot”; but that is the topic for another rant. My problem is that I do not care at all about his successes and/or his failures in the minor leagues. He is selling tickets for his team – and for their opponents when he and his teammates are on the road. That is a plus for minor league baseball – – and I happen to think minor league baseball is a wonderful entertainment institution that needs all the support it can get. Nevertheless, I don’t care if he hits a walk-off homerun in a game against the Macon Bacons, the Greensboro Grasshoppers or the Mudville Nine. Wake me when he plays for the Mets other than in a game in September when the Mets are 15 games out of first place in the NL East…
- Tiger Woods’ progress toward his return to the PGA Tour: For a period of about 10 years, Tiger Woods was the best golfer on Planet Earth and he played the sports media like a Stradivarius. Then came the “car accident”; the one where his wife – at the time – “rescued him” by beating out the window of the vehicle with a nine iron. Then came the injuries and the surgeries and the pain-killer addiction issues. Tiger Woods is no longer even a competitive professional golfer – let alone someone who is presumably in contention to win any tournament he might deign to enter. His story is on hiatus; it might be a great story of revival and dominance over great odds; it might be a story of tremendous talent wasted and demons that resided within. Who cares anymore? I do not until I know if he will ever be a shadow of his former self as a golfer. As in the case of Tim Tebow above, wake me when he wins a PGA tournament and then is on the leaderboard the next week against top shelf competition…
- Colin Kaepernick … : I do not want to hear from or about Colin Kaepernick until and unless he gets a job in the NFL or until he turns in his retirement papers and dedicates the rest of his life to whatever social justice causes are important to him as time moves forward. The bottom line is simple here. He has the talent to make an NFL team. However, he may not have sufficient talent to offset the baggage he may bring to any locker room because of his actions off the football field. In the world of sports media, we can surely do without any more “analyses” until he is suited up to play professional football. OMG, what will the Twitter Twits do without this topic trending…?
- Pete Rose: I have had enough. I know of his on-field accomplishments; I know of his gambling and his prevarications; I am now being treated to stories of him having sex with a minor child about 40 years ago. Enough already …
Finally, I have confidence that there are other sports stories that readers here will have had enough of and that they will share them with the rest of us. Meanwhile, consider this comment from Brad Rock in the Deseret News about another form of “overdosing”:
“A charity hockey game in Buffalo lasted 11 days.
“Reports say a dozen people were sent to the hospital after overdosing on organ music.”
But don’t get me wrong, I love sports………
2017 NFL Power Rankings, by position, by mother-in-law (unless the Oakland Raiders are there).