Sports On TV…

As I was grazing through the sports channels on my cable box over the weekend, I came across one of the myriad college football studio shows where a bunch of people sit in a semi-circle and “chat with one another”.  One of the participants – speaking about a college football player I was not tuned in early enough to hear his name – said that the player needed to “focus on football” and to “realize that his future is ahead of him”.

I will spot the roundtable participant the point that “focusing on football” is important if a player hopes to make professional football his career pursuit.  In fact, that is so important that it need not be said.  However, I have a question for the speaker here:

• Where else – besides ahead of him – might this college football player look for his future?

Last Saturday as college football games were happening around the country, Brad Dickson tweeted this:

“The first-ever college football game – Princeton vs. Rutgers – was played 150 years ago this week. That was also the same day the Rutgers football program peaked.”

Late last week, there were reports that Cris Carter and FOX Sports have parted company.  Many reports said that Carter was unhappy that he was not assigned to the Thursday Night Football pregame show on FOX and the NY Post reported that there were other issues involved in this parting of the ways.  Obviously, I can shed no light on those sorts of things…

FOX Sports did say that its early morning sports gab-fest on FS1 – – First Things First – – would stay on the air.  Nick Wright and Jenna Wolfe would remain, and Chris Canty had been filling in for Carter on an immediate basis.  I mention this because the latest ratings have First Things First drawing a minimal audience – about 25% of the audience tuned into rival ESPN’s morning sports gab-fest – – Get Up!

I tried watching First Things First for a while but tired of two things:

1. The pseudo-debate topics became repetitive and therefore uninteresting.
2. I never “warmed to” Nick Wright.

I will tune in periodically to see who the new co-host will be and to see if that new co-host can help me over the two “problems” listed above.  Morning sports gab-fests are not compelling TV for me; I watch it about once a week or so for a segment or two unless they tease an interesting guest coming up later in the program.  With that as the preface, my preferred morning sports gab-fest has become Get Up! which is a program I really did not like at all when it first aired.

I think I like Get Up! much more now because ESPN did an addition by subtraction – – they took Michelle Beadle off the program.  Back when Colin Cowherd was with ESPN, he did an afternoon show with Michelle Beadle that I enjoyed but I thought she was a wet blanket on Get Up!  I particularly like when the show does segments with Marcus Spears and/or Ryan Clark both of whom I think are very good.

I got an e-mail from a reader who is an avid fan of SEC sports with a link to an article in the Greater Baton Rouge Business Report.  The reader wanted to know if I had any knowledge of this.  Skipping to the bottom like, the answer is ‘No”, but the information in the article is interesting.

According to this report, the Athletic Department has been providing funds to the university at-large for the past 7 years to the tune of about $70M.  The Athletic Department is going to change the way it does that money transfer starting next year.  In the past, the money generated by athletics went to the university’s “general fund” and it was done because the legislature in Louisiana had cut funding to the university drastically.

Evidently, LSU’s state funding has increased in recent years and now the Athletic Department is going to transfer funds to the university in a more targeted fashion – – say to help with a new building.  Reading this report generated two thoughts:

1. The Athletic Department stepped up and did “the right thing” in helping LSU academics during a funding crisis.  Kudos to Joe Alleva – the AD at LSU 7 years ago who made the decision to do that.
2. The fact that the Athletic Department gave money to the university at large suggests to me that those two entities can be considered as separate ones as well as conjoined ones.  And if one looks at them as separate entities, then explain to me why that Athletic Department – – as well as others – – is considered to be tax exempt.

Finally, Dwight Perry posed this interesting question recently in the Seattle Times:

“The NFL fined Chiefs receiver Tyreek Hill $10,527 for giving a trailing Broncos defender the peace sign en route to a 57-yard touchdown.

“So, it would’ve been $5,263.50 if he’d only used just one finger?”

But don’t get me wrong, I love sports………