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You’re likely familiar with the scene. A rube sits down at the poker table and asks W.C. Fields, “Is this a game of chance?” He answers, “Not the way I play it, no.”
That brings us to the ongoing Lia Thomas debate. Perhaps the most ludicrous element is that there is any debate.
Would we debate the veracity of a crooked card game, a fixed ballgame, a rigged horse race, the cleanliness of any “sports” event in which the winner is determined as a matter of a conspicuous, undeniable and insurmountably unfair, thus unsporting, advantage?
Yet to offer such a common sense-driven opinion is to risk being condemned as a backward-minded, far right-wing political miscreant — transphobic, homophobic, woefully intolerant and even a hate-monger, as if denying the right of Thomas to her pursuit of happiness.
But name-calling has become the easy response and dismissal as opposed to engaging in thoughtful exchanges.
And if Thomas destroys the fair-play rights of those young women she competes against — their pursuit of happiness through legitimate competitive achievement — so what? That’s not her problem, that’s theirs. As far as Thomas is concerned, they can go to hell.
It’s not just the response of new-wave social engineers or even lunatics with no applicable sense of right from wrong, but even by the Biden White House, which has declared its unconditional support for transexuals to do and be as they wish.
In theory, I’m all in on that. I’d provide my support. But not unconditionally. And that makes me what, a bigot? Do as you wish? Sure. But to anyone you wish? No way.
In practice, at least in the case of Ms. Thomas, the former non-achiever on the University of Pennsylvania men’s swimming team, it’s preposterous — especially as she has “earned” an NCAA championship and set a Ivy League time record.
As a male, Bruce Jenner was among the best athletes in the world. At the 1976 Olympics he won the 10-event decathlon, if that counts for anything.
Yet Wednesday, as Caitlyn Jenner, she tweeted that Thomas’s swimming triumphs against women are bogus:
“It’s not transphobic or anti-trans, it’s COMMON SENSE!”
Still, Thomas swims on and wins on, leaving vanquished young women literally in her wake. Prior to her national attention, at least three girls and women’s high school and college track championships have been won — and easily — by males transitioned to females.
Yet the debate as to whether common sense should be applied or abandoned, whether fair play should be lost to incontrovertibly unfair play, continues. That’s debatable?
Oh, well, now let’s get back to common-sense matters, such as throwing tens of millions of dollars at mostly ordinary NFL TV voices, though not one has the ability to make a single soul watch.
Common sense. Going, going, gone.
Gumbel gets ‘Real’ by getting hypocritical
Oddly enough, the latest edition of HBO’s “Real Sports with Bryant Gumbel” includes a piece on the skiing Cochran family — world class and Olympic skiers that operate a ski school in Vermont, a school that gives special attention to disadvantaged and physically impaired kids.
How did this pass muster with the show’s master, Bryant Gumbel?
Prior to the start of the 2006 Winter Olympics, Gumbel used his “Real Sports” platform to speak one of the most blindly bigoted, ignorant racial screeds, yet walked away untouched, his incendiary, small-minded words fully indulged, then forgotten. Or, in the words of the winter sports season, he skated.
Here goes:
“Finally, tonight, the Winter Games. Count me among those who don’t care about them and won’t watch them. In fact, I figure that when Thomas Paine said that these are the times that try men’s souls, he must’ve been talking about the start of another Winter Olympics.
“Because they’re so trying, maybe over the next three weeks we should all try, too. Like, try not to be incredulous when someone attempts to link these games to those of the ancient Greeks who never heard of skating or skiing.
“So try not to laugh when someone says these are the world’s greatest athletes, despite a paucity of blacks that makes the Winter Games look like a GOP convention. Try not to point out that something’s not really a sport if a pseudo-athlete waits in what’s called a kiss-and-cry area, while some panel of subjective judges decides who won.
“And try to blot out all logic when announcers and sportswriters pretend to care about the luge, the skeleton, the biathlon and all those other events they don’t understand and totally ignore for all but three weeks every four years.”
In other words, the Winter Games were not worthy of his attention because they were predominantly contested by white athletes. Their devotion and training to become the best in their chosen sport meant nothing to Gumbel because they were mostly white and he was unfamiliar with the events.
How much did he know about the Summer Games’ hammer throw or Greco-Roman wrestling? Would he have said the same had he still been employed by NBC, the Olympics network?
Not that Gumbel would have dared stooped so low as to watch those Olympics, but Shani Davis, a speed skater from Chicago — the city in which Gumbel was raised — became the first black to win an individual Winter Games gold medal.
And now “Real Sports with Bryant Gumbel” has further betrayed Gumbel’s dimwitted racism and ignorance to present a piece on a white family from Vermont that has devoted itself to, ugh, skiing.
TV steals TOs from coaches
Reader Michael Parente is the first of several who have written to wonder how Bobby Knight would respond to conducting a live, on-court interview during an NCAA Tournament game instead of coaching his team during a time out. Regardless, this is the latest in feckless “look what we can do!” (what we pay the NCAA for) TV.
“Coach, what would you be telling your team if you weren’t forced to stand here talking to me?”
The NIT semis and finals reportedly are leaving the Garden after this year. The NIT in the Garden is where the Knicks fully discovered a player who led Southern Illinois to the 1967 title with a win over Marquette, a player by the name of Walt Frazier.
World gone nuts, continued: The NFL’s Panthers, after investing $170 million in a new project, want the city of Charlotte to kick in the balance, $630 million. That’s $800 million to build the team a new practice facility. The Panthers were among the first NFL teams to demand PSLs.
Yet again, the NCAA Tournament final will be another fight-sleep, TV money-first challenge to more than half the nation’s population. Tip-off time, Monday, April 4 on CBS, will be sometime after 9 p.m. Only TV money — prime-time ad revenue on both coasts — prevents it from being an all-in, greatest-good watch on, say, a late Sunday afternoon.
There are sports gambling apps that invite “lightning bets” or “action bets” in which those who cover the spread are paid more for every point scored beyond the cover and lose more for every point by which they fail to cover. Such action targets those afflicted by a gambling disease, those who lose more — often far more — than intended, as the odds, by definition, favor the house.
Grant Hill seems like a lovely fellow, but Monday night I’d trade him for Jim Spanarkel, Dan Bonner, Avery Johnson or Steve Lappas. I’d do it for the consistent enlightenment of the audience, as crazy as that seems.
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