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There are things that emit sounds, then there are those that just make noise.
My microwave oven issues a sharp “beep” when you touch the button to turn on its light, then emits the same noise when you turn off the light.
It’s a light! Who needs to be told that it’s on? Then that it’s off? The hearing impaired can see if it’s on or off and the sightless don’t care! It’s a waste of wiring.
So we have the triumph of indiscriminate, needless noise over useful sound. Clinically, this is known as the Sister-In-Law Syndrome.
Sunday’s Super Bowl too often relied on such noise.
To have begun the game with Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson running around on the field screaming and yelling to juice the Super Bowl in a return to his WWF roots — who watching on TV or in the stands at that point, planned to bolt? — was not just a waste of time but another clear signal that the NFL, before its largest audience, abandons all pretense of dignity.
Annoying noise was produced throughout by NBC’s Cris Collinsworth, who seems inextricably stuck on himself and not shy to let us know.
Put it this way: Few of us would be so eager to expose ourself to national ridicule with the observation that Cincinnati wide receiver “Ja’Marr Chase is one of the great catchers of the football.”
What happened to “good hands”? Only a hostage, to indicate that he or she is not speaking from free will, would say anything like that, to signal loved ones and the government.
Collinsworth, again, Sunday was unable to say a player “is impressive,” choosing to, “I’m so impressed with So-and-So,” as if they play for his approval and we await it. But Collinsworth has conditioned us to expect such condescending noise. He speaks downhill.
Given that most, if any, could discern even one word the halftime rappers rapped — presumably for better rather than worse — those performers created an anticipated noise and visual decadence with their inability to perform without grabbing at their crotches.
Not that anyone — including pandering, shameless sellout Roger Goodell — was surprised by this, but it did feed the stereotype that in order to be a genuine rapper one must grab at his crotch like a 2-year-old who needs to go potty.
The best sounds once annually produced on Super Bowl Sunday have been largely lost to TV-money greed for more than half the U.S. population. Those were the sounds of Super Bowl parties as friends, families and their kids gathered in an emerging tradition not unlike Thanksgiving.
A smart, caring commissioner and team ownerships would have done nothing to mess with that.
But now the Super Bowl must start at about 6:30 p.m., this side of the Mississippi, in order for the NFL and its TV partners to maximize Sunday prime-time ratings and advertising revenues.
With work and school the next day, few are inclined to start a party so late in the day, or expect their guests to return home near 11 p.m. The NFL and TV therefore get what they want: people watching alone, maximum numbers of sets tuned to the game. Same thing MLB did to the World Series.
And now Super Bowl parties around here are seen in commercials for chips, dips and beer and fully occupied couches. We’re no longer invited to house parties that are no longer held.
I wouldn’t have messed with that tradition for any amount of TV money or noise.
Or I said to the microwave, “Beep me? Beep you!”
Super news! Not all Bowl coverage was bad
Good TV stuff from Super Bowl Sunday:
NBC’s Mike Tirico’s overview of Cincinnati QB Joe Burrow: “He has an embraceable cockiness.” Well-played.
NBC introduced the starting lineups just before kickoff. Yes, before! And let us say, Amen.
With sudden death from the Phoenix Open on CBS running into the Supe’s kickoff — the golf ran so long the drunks along the 16th hole passed out — Nick Faldo and Jim Nantz compared it to NFL overtimes: “In this sport, each player gets a possession.”
No virtue-signaling, helmet-messaging worn by either team in the Supe, thus no player could conspicuously betray his chosen social message.
Two Thanksgivings ago, Nantz and lead sideline reporter Tracy Wolfson tried to sell us the preposterous: They portrayed Lions’ running back Adrian Peterson as a nobleman among the noble for his community activism and human sensitivity.
For those aware that Peterson had been suspended for a season for the brutal beating of his 4-year-old-son and with another son, a 2-year-old he’d never even met, murdered by the mother’s boyfriend, CBS’ selection was staggeringly stupid.
This week Peterson was charged with assaulting his wife on an airplane flight during an argument. His wife, Ashley, denied he struck her, thus its unlikely Peterson will be prosecuted for a felony.
His wife asked the public “to respect our privacy.” Fine. But if privacy is an issue, why not refrain from such an argument on a commercial flight?
Meantime, CBS gets to pretend that it’s glowing, heart-grabbing piece on Peterson never appeared — at least not on CBS.
Dungy is selective in social critique
Reader Richard Kelly asks: If NBC studio regular Tony Dungy is such a religious, God-fearing man (and one eager to be heard on NFL social/racial issues), he didn’t provide his take on the Goodell-approved, N-wording halftime performers. Selective God-fearing company man?
NBC’s Maria Taylor, in an excited, delighted come-on: “For the first time ever, hip-hop and rap take center stage at the Pepsi Super Bowl halftime!” She must’ve missed the one two years ago, co-starring Travis Scott and Big Boi, alongside headliner Maroon 5.
And what does Taylor think of the rapper’s vulgar, sexually degradations of women? She good with that? Seriously, read their lyrics aloud then give us her blessings. Wanna keep it real? Then keep it real.
Steve Cohen said he’s happy to this season restore the great tradition of Mets’ Old-Timers’ Day. Except, it’ll be before a Mets’ Saturday night game.
The Mets, as a big TV market team, no longer play Saturday afternoon home games, another of those good-of-The Game impossibilities lost to the modern tradition of allowing greed to diminish our sports.
Reader John Yakaci asks a great question: Would the same folks who vote for drug cheats to enter baseball’s Hall of Fame approve of drug cheats competing — and even winning medals — in the Olympics?
Last week’s Knicks-Warriors included 91 3-point attempts; Jazz-Warriors totaled 94. So it seems that this is what the NBA has become and now it shall remain, no matter how many artificial additives mixed in by Adam Silver.
Given what MLB has become, it’s time to change “batting coach” or “hitting coach” to “swinging coach.”
The Nets are like the Mets. They’re always eager to add the expendable and expensive. From Ben Simmons and James Harden and Kyrie Irving, to Robinson Cano and Yoenis Cespedes.
Reader Kreg Ramone writes that Aaron Donald’s emotional post-Super Bowl celebration left him “choked up.”
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