As Michael Wilbon says to kick off the show, “Pardon the interruption …” When I awoke last Wednesday, I found that my computer had gone to the great byte box in the sky overnight. It took about a day to confirm that it could not be resuscitated and that a replacement was needed. The rest of my “unexcused absence” was spent waiting for a new one to arrive and then to schedule assistance in setting it up. Most of the files came back from wherever they exist on the Internet in a safe and sound condition; only a few are corrupted and about half of those can be “translated” into English without much difficulty.
So, maybe I should invoke the opening line of the song that Gene Autry crooned at the start of his TV program back in the 1950s:
“I’m back in the saddle again …”
About a week ago, I mentioned the passing of Ken Dryden and noted that I had just then learned that he was doing the color commentary for Al Michaels in the famous Olympic hockey game that produced the catch phrase, “Do you believe in miracles?” Well, I now know – since my email is working again – that there is more to the story than that. Thanks to the “reader in Houston” and his treasure trove of sports history, here is a lot more to that event:
“Another piece of trivia that most may not remember is that the game was shown on tape delay, as the Olympic schedule was decided before the tournament and it dictated that that the game between the top team in one division was to play the second-place team in the other division at 5 PM ET. It turned out those two teams were the USSR and US. Sweden and Finland were to follow at 8 PM ET.
“When preliminary play ended and the US advanced to the Medal Round, ABC wanted to obviously switch the order of the games to air the US game in primetime to most of the country, but the Olympic Committee said ‘no dice’ or something to that effect.
“The US-USSR game started at 5 PM with no live coverage. Back then they could probably get away with it because cell phones and cable TV were rare and text messaging, the Internet, Twitter (X), etc., were not around yet.
“As the game was going on in the Olympic Center (now Herb Brooks Arena) with fans waving American flags and chanting ‘U-S-A’ almost non-stop, those in the outside world were mostly unaware of what was going on.
“When ABC went on the air that night, the only hint that something was up was the delirious fans in the background as Jim McKay was doing a live introduction. Unfortunately, Jim did not give TV viewers any explanation why everyone was in such a joyful mood, so as not to mess things up.
“And then ABC went to the tape. Michaels and Dryden stayed in their seats to comment on the Sweden-Finland game just in case there was a problem with the US-USSR tape and ABC had to cut into live action in Sweden-Finland.”
And I just thought I was watching a hockey game …
Moving on … Since I was mentioning a “sports on TV moment” here, let me take another moment to comment on sports broadcasting and sports TV now. FS1 has begun to air a new program in the morning originated by Barstool Sports. I have now tried on three different mornings to settle down and watch it for several segments to “get in the flow”. I simply cannot do that; it is unwatchable. FS1 has a competitive array of programming for most of the day but in the four hours between 8:00 AM and Noon (ET) on weekdays, they might just as well have dead air as far as I am concerned.
Tom Brady seems to have done some serious homework on how to be a color analyst on TV over the football offseason. I have heard him twice now and he is offering insights and critiques this year instead of pabulum. That is good on him and good for fans who will see him do the FOX premier game of the week.
I also like the pairing of JJ Watt with Ian Eagle on CBS a lot. This is a broadcasting team that might become top shelf one of these days.
Rich Eisen and Kurt Warner did the “Brazil Game” on You Tube. I thought they did a fine job with the audio portion of the game; the video portion was not nearly as good as productions here in the States at venues that are familiar to the folks who have to set up and maintain the equipment for the games.
Finally, since today is a “comeback” of sorts for me, I will close with this observation by Peyton Manning about comebacks:
“You hear about how many fourth quarter comebacks that a guy has and I think it means a guy screwed up in the first three quarters.”
But don’t get me wrong, I love sports………