Thank goodness for Dr. Phil

When he popped up on one of the cable TV news programs last night and said how awful school bullying was, I felt much better.
I knew that the world was spinning on the appropriate axis. I knew the sun would come up the next day. And I knew how desperate cable TV news programs are to find someone to tell me that bullying is bad.
Not that viewers of that program couldn't figure that out for themselves.

Initials don't help

Hey MJ (that's ESPN announcer Mark Jones),
Stop with the cute initials only announcing, OK?
There are people in the world who don't have a clue who KG is (Kevin Garnett of Boston, right?) or Melo (Carmelo Anthony of Denver?) and would love to hear PBP (play-by-play) efforts using the King's English, not in the form of Tweets or texts.
It fits the demo (demographic) of your network to a T (that means it's a perfect fit). But ESPN also caters to the over-12 sect.
Another evening of KGs by MJ may make me turn the sound off PDQ.

Oh goody. Another college bowl game.

ESPN signed a deal to air the Pinstripe Bowl next holiday season from Yankee Stadium.
No one has agreed to televise a Salad Bowl, to the best of my knowledge. But if we can have a Pinstripe Bowl, then a Salad Bowl can't be far behind.
Someone be sure and tell me when the game starts so I can read a book.

New playoff OT rules in the NFL

Those clamoring for equal opportunity in NFL overtime playoff games, you have your wish.
The league changed its rules this afternoon. Teams that lose the coin toss and that surrender an opening field goal will have a chance to equal the score.
The rule will not apply to touchdowns in those situations, which seems a little strange.
Jump in ...

A sure sign of spring

The NCAA men's basketball brackets are in shambles.
The boss is lamenting his position in the office basketball pool, while others think they are out of the running because Kansas is out of the running.
The Broncos are making noises again. The Rockies will be making noises for several months. Gus Johnson of CBS can't stop making noises.
The first wave of snow-induced postponements hit the local prep sports scene last week.
A true sign of a change in seasons.

Big stretch

The news around the water cooler this morning – OK, it was on my couch at home – was:
• The number of vasectomies performed just before the NCAA basketball tournament started (insert your own comment) and
• Whether the first two days were the best days on the sports calendar each year.
Neither is worth your time.

The return of Tiger

Thanks to the return of a certain golfer, all those who think the coverage of this year's Masters golf tournament will be excessive, signify by throwing in your Woods.

Be careful what you wish for

The NCAA men's basketball tournament may be leaving CBS after almost 30 years.
The rumored suitor is ESPN.
Talk about a contrast in coverage.
Whereas we get middle-of-the-road commentary and decent analysis on the three-letter network (Verne Lundquist and Bill Raftery are great together. So are Dick Enberg and whoever he's paired up with), the four-letter network can't stand the thought of providing nuts and bolts. Such a necessity is almost an afterthought. Dick Vitale cannot stay on topic for more than 10 seconds, unless the topic is who he had dinner with three weeks before the broadcast.
ESPN is full of stars – wannabes like Chris Berman, Stuart Scott and Neal Everett – and real ones.
Television sports coverage is louder than it used to be – make that needs to be. Everything else in society seems louder than it needs to be. So from that standpoint, the NCAAs on ESPN may be a perfect fit. ESPN's audience is hipper, much younger than CBS.
I'd rather see the NCAA remain with CBS. Good nuts and bolts are much easier to swallow.

Who doesn't fit where?

Did Brady Quinn, the new Broncos quarterback and who's spent a lot of time on injured reserve of late, not fit in Cleveland? Probably not. The Browns picked up Jake Delhomme recently, which made BQ somewhat expendable.
Does Kyle Orton not fit in Denver? Can't tell. Even though bringing Orton to Denver was one of Josh McDaniels' first moves, one season doesn't exactly make a trend.
A curious move? Yes. But no more so than other things that go on in Broncos-land.

More NCAA tourney teams? Hope not

The ongoing discussion the week before the NCAA brackets are put together is whether the field should expand to 96 teams.
A 96-team field does nothing more than fatten CBS' pocketbook (not that they couldn't use it). And while it's only 96 out of 300-something Div. I teams that would be invited, a larger field tends to make it much more of a "win a certain amount of games, and you can play some more" arrangement.
That's what the NCAA does with the college bowl system. Six wins makes you bowl eligible -- even if it's an appearance in the San Francisco Walnetto Bowl.
Leave it at 65, counting the play-in game .. the caliber of the tournament is just fine. No need to dilute it.

70 and counting

The University of Connecticut women's college basketball team is definitely on a roll. Seventy straight victories is nothing to sneeze at, that's for sure.
However, a couple of things come to mind – one serious and one not so serious.
• Wouldn't you hate to be on the team that eventually loses? UConn's coach is known for a large ego than for his grace. Something tells me a lot of paint might fly off the walls in the locker room when the streak ends.
• What does a 70-game winning streak say about the level of play in the collegiate women's game? That was the question that the boss, Kevin Denke, posed this morning. And the answer is rather obvious ...
For the most part, the women's game is below the rim. That means a heavy reliance on such facets of the game as passing, setting screens, running plays – all the things we learned a long time ago and that aren't used very often. That's part of what makes the women's game somewhat better than the men's. But a 70-game winning streak doesn't – or shouldn't – do much for anyone involved in the sport.
Should it?

No more movies like this

Yes, we're supposed to talk about sports here. But every so often, we veer off course and talk about something else.
In this case, good movies.
"To Kill a Mockingbird" was on the other night --- it is a wonderful, wonderful movie that has stood the test of almost 50 years of time since it was made.
And it got me to thinking about how actors in those days, such as Gregory Peck (who won an Oscar for his portrayal of attorney Atticus Finch in "Mockingbird") probably wouldn't survive in today's film-making world.
Nor would that type of film.
Why?
It's a different era, for one. Movie-goers today are interested in quick pleasures, and studios are obliging, of course. It takes far less time to blow up a toaster on set than it does to draw out the characters in a movie. Maybe it will come back around. But I'm not going to hold my breath.
Two (relatively) current actors I enjoy watching are Will Smith and Tom Hanks. Neither one of their TV debuts was scintillating. But they have worked on their craft and honed their abilities. Today, they are fine actors and worthy of a price of admission.
But the rule of thumb today is to discard any semblance of a story and rely on explosions to keep people glued to the big screen. That's fine, to a point. But it doesn't require a lot of imagination.
Or attention.
Old fogey? I've been called worse. But good story telling and believable, empathetic characters beat special effects every day of the week.

O Sing, Canada

It was quite the treat to see people singing their country's national anthem without phony cymbals and unnecessary whooping Sunday afternoon.
It was Canada's national song that produced that observation. Those in the hockey arena sang as one with a certain amount of pride in their country and pride in what their hockey team accomplished.
Americans used to sing like that. But since everything in sports became a show within a show, the singing isn't necessarily welcome (unless you want to sing to yourself).