Given that necessity is the mother — now “the birthing person” — of invention, I’ve at last found a remedy for the preposterous stuff we hear and see while trying to endure modern sports.
It’s a portable, battery-operated laugh-track gizmo. Rather than suffer the absurd, this device brings instant relief with the push of a button. Heck, how would we have known that “Mama’s Family” was supposed to be funny without a laugh track?
I used it all week. Works great.
Saturday’s Ohio State-Indiana game on CBS began with a kickoff that was not returned by IU. Play-by-player Brad Nessler then dutifully said, “So we’ll immediately look to see who’s jogging out to play quarterback.”
One would think. But CBS next presented and stuck with a high, wide shot of the stadium that showed thousands of people as no larger than specks. Given that IU had not yet declared its starter, was CBS unprepared to provide the answer? Who knows? And who cares? My laugh-track machine was engaged!
Sunday, as Rutgers played Northwestern on the RU Sport Network (heard here on WFAN) a commercial ran for one of those sucker-targeting betting operations.
Moments later, play-by-play man Chris Carlin read a public service announcement advising listeners to avoid being victims of a “fraud or a scam.” Do your stuff, laugh-track machine!
As of Thursday I’d watched about six hours of U.S. Open tennis on ESPN. The E stands for Excess, which ESPN applies to destroy everything, from big-league baseball to Little League baseball.
Not once during my hours of watching was a point completed without immediately being followed by commentary from at least two ESPN experts. Not even the most self-evident of plays — a double-fault or a return hit wide — could be free from intrusive, needless analysis and worthless filler such as “he [or she] has to step up.”
By design, ESPN has adopted Moose Johnston tennis coverage, point-to-next-serve yak one wouldn’t suffer from those seated nearby.
This used to aggravate me, like commercials for medicines that treat depression but “can cause thoughts of suicide.” But with my new laugh-track machine, anger has been swapped for amusement.
By the way, how did past tennis greats compete without shaking a fist after winning points? And when did polite and appreciative tennis attendees begin to include many loud-mouthed, attention-seeking boozers behaving like college freshmen with fake IDs?
On Saturday, ESPN+ presented a sitcom in which Ole Miss was forced to throw 41 times for 523 yards and six TDs in order to beat Mercer, 73-7. Ole Miss season ticket holders forced to pay for this pay-to-slay provided the in-house joke’s-on-us laugh track.
Saturday’s Virginia-Tennessee game on ABC/ESPN was suddenly interrupted by word of “breaking news.”
Good gosh, what now?
From the studio, host Kevin Negahandi, aided by video, broke the “breaking news”: Iowa had taken a 7-0 lead against Utah St. This stretched the limits of my laugh-track gizmo, but it held up.
Friday’s Novak Djokovic-Laslo Djere match began so late it was a fuhgeddaboudit before it began. Thus the five-set “epic” went largely unseen as it ended at 1:30 a.m. as a matter of sustained U.S. Open center-court scheduling. I was long asleep beside my laugh-track device.
Saturday the laugh track was fully engaged as ESPN presented Oklahoma in a hurry-up offense in order to score a TD to make it 52-0 in a 73-0 final over Arkansas St.
Saturday, Syracuse threw 33 times for seven TDs and 406 yards in order to beat Colgate, 65-0 in a pay-to-slay “competition.”
As Fox’s scream machine Gus Johnson led a three-hour Saturday worship service for Colorado’s new coach, Deion Sanders. Johnson, who approved of “Coach Prime’s” forced transfer or downright dumping of 71 players in favor of his recruits — didn’t happen to Johnson, after all — failed to note two things about “Coach Prime.”
- He founded a scandal-scarred Texas charter school he modestly named Prime Academy to “do good in the ‘hood.” After 2 ¹/₂ years, the school closed amidst an avalanche of unpaid administrators, faculty contractors, dilapidated buildings, allegedly misspent public funding and broken promises to black parents and hundreds of their children, mostly with an eye on college athletic scholarships.
- He bolted as the head coach of mostly black Jackson St. for Colorado weeks after telling CBS’s “60 Minutes” that he took the JSU job two years earlier because “I truly believe with all my heart and soul that God called me, collect, and I had to accept the charges.”
WHAT God uses as a laugh track device is not known. I even Googled it.
Back to ESPN. Reader Mach Draught: “Can ESPN televise a baseball game without attaching a microphone to players on the field? First of all, it’s annoying. Secondly, it’s annoying. But most of all, it’s annoying.”
Sunday night, ESPN’s lead MLB play-by-play man Karl Ravetch, with play on in Yanks-Astros, asked second baseman Jose Altuve to name his favorite Taylor Swift song. Swift and ESPN are attached by the Disney corporate wallet.
As for Altuve, Tuesday he homered in his first three at-bats against Texas. This brought to mind Mike Francesa’s authoritative dismissal of Altuve as “just a singles hitter.” Altuve has hit 395 doubles, 31 triples and 207 home runs.
But Francesa was BLT — before laugh track. Gee, if only my laugh track device had been around for Roger Goodell’s impassioned claim that legalized gambling on NFL games would be a detriment to civilized society.
Foge Fazio, who coached Pitt football during the 1980s, complained that it didn’t matter if his teams won, boosters were more concerned with whether they covered the spread.
Saturday, with six seconds left and Penn State beating West Virginia, 31-15, PSU, at the WVU 6-yard line, reasonably was expected to take a knee to end it. Instead, backup QB Beau Pribula ran it in for a TD, thus Happy Valley became Ka-Ching Mountain as PSU covered both the spread and the over.
This was such a suspicious ending, almost too obvious to have been designed to serve coach James Franklin’s approval rating among Nittany Lions gamblers, to be what it smelled like.
But this is 2023. Everyone with a credit card, regardless of credit status, is encouraged to bet on sports as a matter of commerce, like selling tires, even if the odds are that the tires are flat. Ball games, like flat tires, can be fixed.
What had to happen is happening. And there’s plenty more to come.
Who’ll stop the rain? As of this week, with the arrest of 33-year-old staffer Jarvis Jones, at least 14 members of the national football champion Georgia Bulldogs have been ticketed for speeding and/or reckless driving since Jan. 15. Fourteen.
Perhaps we should be grateful there have only been two fatalities.