Sports: October 2007 Archives

Please excuse the following tangent:

I've just sent a message to the folks at CBS-2, begging them to let their audience see the match-up of the New England Patriots and the Indianapolis Colts this weekend. It seems like a no-brainer to me -- the two best and only undefeated teams in the league, vying for #1status. But CBS-2 tends to coddle the social misfits known as "Raider fans" who heavily populate these parts, and as such will often show a dreadful Raider game no matter how badly the team is doing, or who else is playing.

The network has yet to announce its decision, so I just sent in the following beg:

Please, please, please show the New England-Indianapolis football game this weekend! This is a historic match-up of two undefeated teams!

I beg of you, please do not inflict Houston-Raiders on your viewers. These two teams combined do not have as many wins as either the Patriots OR the Colts.

There is no home team in the Los Angeles market. So please show us the best game -- not a lousy one just because one of the two teams used to play here more than a decade ago.

This week's Pats-Colts match-up may be the most watched game of the regular season. Please let your audience see it.

If you are someone who prefers good football to the atrocious variety, I urge you to send a note of your own. Thanks!

(Now back to our regular Friendly Fire programming.)

** UPDATE 11/1, 9:36 AM -- Just talked to the good folks at KCBS-2, who report that this Sunday they will be showing ... Patriots-Colts. Oh happy day!

Paul Oberjuerge has these insightful words about Marion Jones in the Daily News:

Often, we gloat over the unmasking of drug cheats. So many of them are so transparent. So nakedly ambitious. Such sketchy characters, often pompous and arrogant and defiant in an ugly way.

Marion Jones wasn't like that. In an age when the confessions of a drug cheat should no longer shock us, and certainly shouldn't depress us, Marion Jones was different.

Marion retained the power to wound us, to shake our belief in the decency and honesty of our heroes.

We remember when she was the shining star of American sports.

Gifted and classy, dominant yet humble. A woman we put up on a pedestal long after it was safe to do that with any elite athlete anywhere.

We wanted her to be real. We wanted her to be clean. More than any druggie before her and, we suspect, more than any who will follow on her path to self-destruction.

I think Oberjuerge really catches the sentiment here nicely. There have been plenty of busted, doping athletes by now, in every sport. We should be cynical, and often we are. But we still like to hold out hope that this or that star -- especially the likable ones (no one holds out hope for Barry Bonds), will be different. We keep designating new "good guys" among the superhuman set, convinced that this one won't disappoint us -- only to be disappointed to learn, yet again, that the super-humans are only human after all, in more ways than one.