Take the Notre Dame dilemma. A host of sports pontificators were horrified by the possibility that the Fighting Irish, after having pretty much all the fight kicked out of them by Southern Cal, would still be blessed with a Bowl Championship Series invite because of their singular brand name. That prospect was so distasteful that more than one sports columnist pleaded with Notre Dame coach Ty Willingham to refuse any such invitation so as to preserve the integrity of the BCS.
Maybe if there was a rimshot or if Jerry Seinfeld delivered the line, you would now be rolling on the floor, howling with laughter. Because it’s pretty hard to preserve something that isn’t there in the first place. To use integrity and the BCS in the same sentence is a colossal jest. Like talking about compromising the integrity of “The Bachelor.” Because this college football contrivance is just another made-for-TV extravaganza, conceived as a commercial juggernaut to rival the Super Bowl. It hasn’t been quite that and, at the same time, has rendered every other bowl game the emotional equivalent of a regular-season NHL contest.
Common sense has long dictated a tournament to settle the national championships, as is done in football at every other level below 1A and in every other college sport. But that will never happen because it might tamper with the integrity of getting 25,000 Sooner, Bulldog or Hawkeye fans to spend a week of their Christmas vacation in unbridled consumption in Miami, New Orleans or Pasadena.
Basketball, too, had a little note of self-righteousness this past week. Longtime CBS analyst Billy Packer took his ESPN counterpart, Dick Vitale, to task for accepting an assignment as colorman for a high-school telecast next week. The game is a showcase for LeBron James, who next year will be the NBA’s latest “Next Michael Jordan.” Packer apparently thinks ESPN is taking one step over the line, though it is hard to imagine exactly where that line might be. James is hardly a hidden treasure who will wilt under the bright lights. He is slated to be the very first pick in the NBA draft and, according to those in the know, for a $25-million shoe deal.
The infantization of the NBA does gives me pause, and I’ll even admit to some squeamishness about ESPN’s high-school game of the week. But I also suspect I’ll sneak a peak, preferring to watch fresh legs and imagine what may be rather than another tired Michael Jordan effort that summons up sadness at what once was. Packer is entitled to his rather arbitrary standards, but if he can find any standards at all in today’s rent-a-player college game, he’s a far better man than me. To me, the epitome of modern college basketball is the Fab Five, hired guns making a basketball pit stop. They proved a gold mine for the University of Michigan, despite its considerable embarrassment at having to give back all those trophies.
Finally, no media outlet has mustered more holier-than-thou than the New York Times with its crusade against Masters Tournament host club Augusta and its ban on women members. The Times’ impassioned attack appears to stem from the sensibilities of its editor, Howell Raines, a Southerner who came of age in the civil-rights era. Its editorial overkill would be appalling if it weren’t so obviously right. Not all that long ago, the country club defended itself against the deluge of Jews and Negroes with the very same privacy arguments, and it was unacceptable. It’s past time the media abandons its reverent tone toward the Masters hosts, just because the azaleas are in bloom in Augusta in April.
That being said, the Times scattershot approach is misguided. Sure it would be nice–and ultimately effective–if Tiger Woods led a one-man boycott. But it’s not going to happen. Tiger learned Sports and Marketing 101 at the feet of Michael Jordan, and he won’t jeopardize his vast enterprise with a controversial stand. To single out one golfer, no matter how conspicuous, when the club is a bastion of corporate America is fatuous. These corporate fat cats are far juicier targets, hobnobbing “males only” on the largesse of their non-male-only shareholders.
Off base, too, is the newspaper’s implicit indictment of CBS, the Masters’ broadcast partner, for its silence on the dispute. The last thing the Times could possibly want is to establish a standard where every media company is accountable for all the policies of everyone with which it does business. So lay off CBS. When we in the media mount our high horse, we mean you out there. Never us.
