The final review on all things Super Bowl 2024
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Super Bowl closeout sale. No offer too low! Everything must go!
With or without Taylor Swift, Travis Kelce has fully revealed himself to be an attention-starved, self-entitled, crude slug. Still, plenty more product endorsements to come!
The funniest line throughout the CBS telecast was spoken by Jim Nantz as the first half ended:
“And stay tuned as Usher takes the stage and lights up Vegas! Can’t wait!”
Yep, Nantz has long been a huge Usher fan, all the way back to last month when Usher’s name first appeared in CBS’s Super Bowl promo copy.
For a league that leads with its public relations messages of social and racial inclusion, watching the all-black performance of the Black National Anthem was unsettling for its divisiveness. Seemed more an exercise in mindless pandering than beneficial messaging. But that’s what Roger Goodell’s NFL does to a transparently phony degree.
I don’t get it. How does such conspicuous racial exclusion aid racial inclusion?
At least, if it’s anyone’s substitute American anthem, why not include — rather than exclude — the American flag?
As for useful social messaging, the coin-flip inclusion of that kids’ high school team from fire-denuded Maui was thoughtful and well-played.
Not sure if Tony Romo decided beforehand to speak English as his second language, but he gave it a shot. “Rush lane integrity,” “rush lane discipline,” “spatial awareness” and the good ol’ “Tampa Two” were his game-long keys to the kingdom.
Reader Andy from N.J. was left heartbroken: “I won’t be able to hear Romo go on and on about outside leverage every other play for the next seven months!”
Well, Andy, there’s this new anti-anxiety pill on the market, “Edge Rusher,” for temporary treatment of Red Zone failure.
Despite the annual hype, the commercials were short on mostly creativity, cleverness and memorable connection to attach to the product, thus most were a colossal waste of money.
The best of the lot, however, may have been T-Mobile’s remake rendition of “Flashdance,” replete with a cameo by Jennifer Beal. That’s the true measure of an effective ad — instant recognition of the product and an eagerness to watch that commercial again.
The repeated shots of the Taylor Swift suite brought the repeated question: Who was that woman who appeared to be driven to look like Harpo Marx?
Not that we’re surprised but Kevin Harlan’s national Westwood Radio call, heard here on WFAN, of the game-ending play was indecipherable as radio listeners’ “eyes” were blinded by his hysterical screaming that begged for a straitjacket.
But give “Hollerin’ Harlan” credit for his usual ability to make nothing out of something. To that end, he’s a sportscasting pioneer as so many have successfully followed.
With a dozen cutaways to Taylor Swift, CBS, predictably, was short on other meaningless crowd and coaches’ shots. Hey, she did what I’ve tried to do throughout my long and extinguished career!
Best question asked was from Nantz who wondered aloud why, early third quarter, the Chiefs didn’t challenge a conspicuously bad spot after a Kelce third-down catch that should have given the Chiefs a first down.
Nantz thought, as did many, that the timeout that followed was to view footage that preceded a challenge. But that wasn’t the case.
The worst pregame feature focused on the 1988 firing of CBS’s “NFL Today” regular Jimmy “The Greek” Snyder for alleged racist comments.
The piece starred Brent Musburger’s self-serving revisionist history of the episode for Snyder’s “regrettable” comments about enslaved blacks “bred” by plantation owners to be large and muscular workers, which extended to NFL rosters.
While Musburger pretended that he was not responsible for Snyder’s sacking, he did, in fact, join those who dropped Snyder like a hot hunk of coal.
For starters, Snyder, no matter how indelicately, spoke a historical truth. Heck, the late awards-winning author David Halberstam chronicled the same.
But lost in the early, knee-jerk political correctness was that CBS hired Snyder because he was a street guy with strong, roughly stated opinions, then he was fired — and abandoned by Musburger & Co. — for being a street guy with strong, roughly stated opinions.
Until Sunday I had no idea that Post Malone’s head was covered with hideous tattoos and that he would sing through diamond-studded, silver-plated teeth. Ugh, what a sight.
The song he sang? “America The Beautiful.”
Wainwright hiring a good call
Fox and the MLB Network have hired just-retired Cards starter Adam Wainwright, among the most pleasant, informative, good-natured and engaging men to ever throw a baseball.
His appearances on last October’s Fox playoff games were a bust as his boothmates tried much too hard to force his presence on audiences, prodding him to be funny to justify his inclusion.
This time, just allow Wainwright to be himself as per the game he’s calling. Radical as it may be, allow his enlightenments and storytelling to come naturally.
Watching the Caribbean World Series, just played in Miami and in part televised by ESPN, it was impossible to miss the omnipresence of modern, analytics-addled big-league baseball:
Regardless of circumstances and two-strike counts, too many swings for the fences. While the strikeout totals were only occasionally high, the nuances of winning baseball were seldom seen.
In Venezuela’s 3-0 championship-winning game, 11 Dominican Republic batters struck out against five pitchers. Looked too familiar.
Gary Sanchez, inept, improvement-resistant catcher despite Aaron Boone’s claims to the contrary, a thoughtless base-jogger and home run-or-swish swinger who hasn’t hit above .218 since 2019 when he batted .232 with 125 strikeouts in just 395 at-bats, has signed a one-year, $7 million deal with the Brewers.
As for us more coachable folks at a small fraction of his salary, isn’t it recycling night?
Reader Alan Hirschberg asks if Wednesday’s Sharks vs. Jets was an NHL game or a remake of “West Side Story.”
Waste Management fans getting wasted inevitable
As Howard Cosell sagely reported on the 1983 death of longtime Bears’ coach George Halas at 88, “It was inevitable.”
For years, as the PGA’s Phoenix Open, now, properly enough, the Waste Management Open, became the TV-invite for “fans” to create the largest outdoor drunk and disorderly stockade to encircle the Par-3 16th hole, this column bashed the on-course CBS and now-NBC golf announcers for claiming that they absolutely loved, loved this raucous, uncivilized, beer cup-littered scene when off the air they hated it.
But such pandering — why not say nothing rather than endorse a gathering that would soon drive spectators from the tournament if they could find their vehicles in their stupor — this past weekend resulted in the inevitable:
A dangerously drunken crowd left a woman hospitalized after falling through the bleachers surrounding the 16th, 54 arrests, 111 ejections, mass chaos and confusion and the worst thing that could happen to the event’s bottom line — cancelation of the further sale of alcohol.
Wasted at the mismanaged Waste Management Open. And all by invite of the PGA Tour and its partner TV networks. Yep, there’s nothing more predictable than the inevitable.
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