It's all a scam, he continued:
Bernie Madoff, the owner of Guinness Book Ponzi, had rules that raised red flags for subscribers to Too Good to Be True.
Rules: No questions allowed. Give him all the cash you can muster and then sit back and earn incredible interest on your investment with absolutely no strings attached, according to the return reports provided by the Null & Void accounting firm. can.
So last week's story that ESPN, Disney's self-defeating sports network, won a Sports Emmy Award for 13 years based on the submission of fabricated names was shocking. It was just that it took a very long time for the cover to blow. After all, once a secret is shared, and this scam needed to be shared with many, it is no longer a secret.
From submitting false names for fictitious production staff to staff assigned to strip fictitious staff from statuettes and replace them with nearly 40 on-air talents, the path this never-ending scam took Let's think about. Kirk Herbstreit to Desmond Howard.
No one even knew they were nominated? No one asked exactly who was nominated or who beat them to win. NATAS, the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences, believed ESPN at its word for 13 years and had no interest in the identity of the non-existent production staff. Have you ever asked for their background, even if it's fake?
Or were they not allowed to ask questions?
Unsurprisingly, and perhaps transparently, ESPN's neglected hierarchy went completely unnoticed until the day last week when ESPN was embroiled in a problem with little chance of being contained. Heck, 13 years of false praise and plundered honor is a pretty good performance, and therefore a very good attempt.
The Sports Emmy Awards have always reeked of insider trading that serves egos that don't really care whether the flattery is sincere or based on lies.
A few years ago, a young executive at NBC Sports confessed that while serving as a judge on a live Sports Emmy Awards show, his boss told him how to vote.
Vote NBC's entry for first place. Then vote for the work that stands out to you as the best at the end. Then the least worthy candidate is his second, third, and so on. Imagine adult men and women in positions of authority playing such a stupid and shameless game.
Once again, NBC excitedly told us last week how lucky we are that Saturday night's Dolphins vs. Chiefs playoff game will only be available behind NBC's paywall . Banzai! Bernie Madoff is alive!
The deceased soccer star came out of this universe
Franz Beckenbauer – the West German World Cup winner and leader who later took over the world-shaking Cosmos – died last week at the age of 78.
As a sweeper back, not to be confused with the recently discovered MLB “sweeper” pitch. Beckenbauer was a master at creating productive composure from the chaos of a Cosmos team made up mostly of international superstars who demanded one ball in play.
Despite his mature calm and foresight on the field, he was a charming man with an understated candor. It wasn't a grudge, just an honest assessment, like when he called Rochester's stadium a “potato field.”
It's a straight arrow, but it remains irreconcilable that Beckenbauer was suspended by FIFA's Ethics Committee for failing to cooperate with investigations into corruption in the 2018 and 2022 World Cup host votes.
Again, FIFA, which awarded Qatar the last cup, should be banished from the face of the earth, but this makes absolutely no sense beyond what the mullahs of the oil monarchies can do. Perhaps Mr. Beckenbauer knew that FIFA had long been suspected of demanding that business be conducted at the bargaining table, which is understandable.
My favorite memory of Beckenbauer is when he first joined Cosmos. He strolled through a hotel lounge in Minnesota and watched a swarm of traveling media play his impossibly difficult game of tabletop pinball.
“Was it Ist Das?” he asked. We showed him. When he accepted our invitation to “give it a try,” he continued his first try until we tired of the charm, but we also knew from head to toe that he was a talented athlete. I was completely convinced of this.
I asked one of the shotcallers at CBS Sports to sit down with me and watch the Titans vs. Jaguars tape from last Sunday, and confirmed on the record that this is what both viewers wanted and deserved. I gave it.
Not only did Kevin Harlan yell before, after, and during the play, but his parenthetical comments, such as “The Titans' red zone touchdown rate is very good,” were also ridiculous. That must have explained their 6-11 season.
The world has gone crazy, continued: Saints star running back Alvin Kamara settled last year with a man who claimed he was nearly stomped to death by Kamara and his gang in a Las Vegas nightclub elevator at 6 a.m. remains NASCAR's first Growth and Engagement Advisor. I guess they couldn't have found anyone better.
I guarantee you that Jim Nantz of CBS never once said that a QB “uses his legs to run for a first down” throughout the first 30 years of his career. And it never is. He would simply say he “ran” or “scrambled.”
But as we learned last Sunday during the Bears-Packers game, Nantz also suffers from the modern disease of stupid speech, long sentences.
Reader Bob Friant suggests the Giants should replace Wink Martindale with Bob Eubanks.
The season is longer, but the status is the same
Much like comparing Yogi Berra's World Series-only totals to a player who played three rounds of postseason baseball, television abandons important football context.
ESPN recently reported that “Miami is aiming for its first 12-win season since 1990.” The fact that additional games were added was not mentioned, as starting in 2021 the season will be 17 games instead of the previous 16 game schedule.
This omission is even more egregious when discussing what constitutes a good season for an NFL running back, for example. Achieving a 1,000-yard season has been downplayed due to this season's extended season. So averaging 59 yards per game has become as special as trying to reach 1,000 yards in a 12-, 14-, or 16-game season.
But last week's winner was, of course, ESPN, which reported that the University of Michigan became “the sixth team in major college football history to finish a season at least 15-0.”
But that became possible because years ago the season was extended to 12 games and a conference championship, and then playoff games began in 2015.
The only exception was the 1897 Penn team, which went 15-0 while outscoring its opponents by a combined score of 463-20. But ESPN knew it.
What's more disappointing is that Nick Saban didn't trust every recruit he left Alabama with, facing arrests for everything from sexual assault to illegal gun possession. Hey, he couldn't have done it without them!
Last week was a good NBA game with a lot of points, despite (or maybe because of) a lack of 3-pointers.
The visiting Nuggets defeated the Warriors 130-127, but made only 26 3-pointers (very few these days) and missed 17 of them. radical!
Last week, the gold medal-winning U.S. junior ice hockey team sang the national anthem while locking arms during a performance in Sweden. President Biden must have appalled Megan Rapinoe, a classless and vulgar Medal of Honor recipient, and her U.S. women's national soccer teammates.
I gushed here on Friday and wrote that South Carolina lost to Mississippi State. In fact, it won the match.
