Friday, March 24, 2006

They can dunk now...

Almost. Big whoop. Listen to Phil Mushnick:

"SportsCenter pointed to the day's big story from the women's tournament - Tennessee's Candace Parker dunked against Army. She did it twice, although both times, barely. Parker stands 6-4, so it stood to reason that she might.

And then ESPN's lead women's studio hoops analyst and former Oklahoma star, Stacey Dales-Schuman, looked into the camera and said something that she couldn't possibly believe. Or was it that she figured that's what her ESPN bosses would have had her say?

Regardless, she soulfully proclaimed: "If you didn't watch women's basketball before, you'll watch it now, since, as you clearly saw today, we do have the dunk."

In other words, adhering to the Disney/ESPN formula, we're all morons. We don't watch basketball for basketball, we watch for dunks, we watch only for the chance to scream, "Woooo!" - never for the game or for the sport.

And now that the women's game includes a dunk, every blue moon, we're going to watch women's basketball just to see if a blue moon rises during the game we're watching.

Truth is, many of women's college basketball's biggest supporters became big fans because the game is mostly free of the premium placed on spectacular individual achievement. They love it for team play, for off-the-ball movement, for attention to fundamentals. For basketball.
But on ESPN, such people can't possibly be basketball fans, not real ones.
In two minutes, this week, ESPN identified the irrelevant as the biggest play in a big game, then declared women's basketball had been legitimized by a dunk. But this is what the nation's sports network has become.

And that doesn't say much for us."
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Oh stop it, Phil, just stop. Doesn't it become tiring when the lunatic ravings of the media or politicians gets waived in our face as saying something about "us".

They have nothing to do with us. They are a species unto themselves. We created them, yes, but there comes a time when the child must take responsibility for his or her own actions. Unless they're democrats.

2 comments:

Lemuel Calhoon said...

Sometimes I am more glad than other times that I am not a sports fan.

Fits said...

You, sir, are better off.