Wednesday, January 30, 2008

And All He Gets Paid To Do Is Talk

Now, I know that ESPN generally only lets Andy Gresh near a live radio mike before noon on weekends, when most sports fans are either unconscious, hungover, or warming up for actual game coverage. Having heard Gresh's too-friendly uncle bit on more than one occasion, I can understand why. But tonight, for whatever reason, they let him sub for Doug Gottlieb on The Pulse, and in the roughly three minutes I listened to him (we have very long red lights in Durham), he managed to uncork two gems.

First, he bemoaned the fact that Media Day at the Super Bowl has become a media circus. Well, yes. That's why it's "Media Day", and complaining that TV Azteca or Nickelodeon or HGTV is showing up and asking questions is to willfully ignore the fact that the NFL has very deliberately positioned the Super Bowl as a cultural event, not a football game. Yes, the woman in the wedding dress asking Tom Brady to plight his troth was goofy, but then again, so was the "Who's Next?" yammer-off, or the Budweiser Hot Seat. (Note to Budweiser: "warm ass" and "interrogation" do not make me think "cold frosty lager"). If you're going to be part of the culture that turns the Super Bowl into a circus where the game is incidental, don't complain when the game turns into a circus where the game is incidental.

Besides, it's Tuesday before the Super Bowl. It's not like you're going to get any straight answers out of Belichick anyway.

The other G-bomb he dropped was that the events of Media Day have now gone, and I quote, "from the ridiculous to the sublime". I don't know about you, but I think we left sublime behind on this one a long time ago.

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