Sports Publications

A couch potato's couch trip

Sporting News, The, August 12, 2002 by Fritz Quindt

Thanks for seeing me; I know your schedule is busy with other patients, Dr. Melfi.

What line of work am I in? No, not waste management. Not literally. I watch sports on TV, although in August it gets refuse-like. All-the-way-to-Labor-Day WNBA playoffs on four channels, for instance. That's part of the reason they've sent me to you. I've developed, um, issues.

Like, I'm looking at the made-for-prime-time Battle at Bighorn. Tiger Woods mowing down Sergio Garcia, Jack Nicklaus and Lee Trevino--the gallery glitterati include Al Michaels and Melissa Stark--and it hits me: I don't give a hoot. I can't tell anyone (especially not my editor) about these feelings, let alone explain 'em. But the next day, Nielsen said ABC's rating fell 16 percent from last year, and I have an epiphany: Mainly, I'm not nuts. The game and the messianic man simply have contracted overexposureitis, like Regis and Who Wants to be a Millionaire? Who wants to watch golf Monday after five tournaments on the tube Sunday? My final answer: Tiger was grandslammed down our throats all summer; I just coughed him up.

And something else ... All the NFL studio shows are getting makeovers--a three-man desk and rotating analysts for Fox NFL Sunday;, new casts at CBS and HBO; Fox Sports Net is moving NFL This Morning to Saturday night and adding a live band. And ESPN is hiring Bill Parcells. That should make me happy; the Tuna tells it straight because he's a made man, and he's got stugots. Instead, I'm angst-ridden. I'll bet he's getting big coin at this late date so NFL Countdown can keep up with the Joneses more than for becoming Chris Berman's consigliere. Besides, Parcells working for TV is tantamount to sleeping with the enemy.

Ink blots, I understand. It's teflon dons controlling sports channels who confuse me. Fox Sports Net's Tracy Dolgin currently is developing nothing but "sports-entertainment" programs; I fear Bud Selig's version of The Osbournes. Also color me skeptical about ESPN's second movie, a Bear Bryant biopic due December 14. They say Tommy Lee Jones would be perfect. Sure. He demanded $40 mil for Men In Black II. That's only 40 times the budget for A Season On the Brink, You getting all this down?

And I heard Kevin Frazier, a newbie on SportsCenter, reporting July 26 was the 50th anniversary of Mickey Mantle's first grand slam, and that Mantle also hit his 200th homer on that date--and also on July 26, "an American icon, Paul Reubens, was arrested for exposing himself." I'm glad Key's fitting in with a crew already under indictment for substituting one-liners for news content, but linking The Mick to Pee Wee Herman? And then I read a New York Times Magazine essay likening Rich Eisen to Orson Welles, calling Eisen "a sports announcer for the new millennium." That's when I had what they called the panic attack.

Oh, my time is up. Here's my HMO card.