• Empty apologies only add to confusing sports madness

    Empty apologies only add to confusing sports madness

    Two earworms have crept in, one entered L, the other through R. They’re The Temptations singing “Ball of Confusion.” You see, we sports fans have been immersed in confusion, the kind now so
  • Craig Carton offers truth that doesn’t fit WFAN’s gambling narrative

    Craig Carton offers truth that doesn’t fit WFAN’s gambling narrative

    Legend has it that upon the surrender of the British at Yorktown in 1781, Lt. Gen. Cornwallis had his fife and drum corps salute the Americans with a 1640’s English song, “The World Turned Upside
  • YES dumping informative Jim Spanarkel shows sad state of TV sports

    YES dumping informative Jim Spanarkel shows sad state of TV sports

    Simply put, no sports TV exec can claim to know borscht about basketball and dump Jim Spanarkel as his or her primary basketball analyst, not short of his conviction for murder. But Spanarkel, for
  • Breaking down a brutal week in sports broadcasting

    Breaking down a brutal week in sports broadcasting

    Get well wishes to Chris Carlin, whose hysterical shrieking throughout his WOR Radio call of Rutgers’ second TD vs. Indiana, Saturday, indicated that he’d suffered a nervous breakdown or gone into
  • ‘Ridiculous’: Mets fan gives up season tickets as teams get greedier

    ‘Ridiculous’: Mets fan gives up season tickets as teams get greedier

    When would be a good time for a ball club to treat its most devoted customers in a reasonably fair manner? Might it be during a health pandemic without a foreseeable end, a pandemic that has cost
  • NFL, networks keep glorifying and justifying showboating

    NFL, networks keep glorifying and justifying showboating

    How much space is left behind us before we fall off and forever disappear? Can’t be much. Even before the current rush to alienate the fair-minded and logical, let us never lose sight of what TV has always done to remove the sport from our sports. While front-and-center folks such as Cris Collinsworth and Kirk …
  • Stephen A. Smith, ESPN going all in on tales of ‘white privilege’

    Stephen A. Smith, ESPN going all in on tales of ‘white privilege’

    Given that I’m assigned to cover sports as delivered by TV, two recent developments have become dominant, repetitive themes: 1) If you don’t have a bet or bets on the games, you’re out of touch with sports, especially how they plan to sustain viewership and TV billions by suckering the young and vulnerable. How would …
  • Michael Jordan firing announcer for N-word mistake isn’t his only blunder

    Michael Jordan firing announcer for N-word mistake isn’t his only blunder

    Michael Jordan’s Hornets have fired first-season radio play-by-player John Focke for mistakenly tweeting the N-word when he thought he’d typed Nuggets into his cell phone. Focke was typing on the fly, trying to keep Hornets fans on top of an NBA game. Unless Jordan and company believe the preposterous — that out of the blue, …
  • MLB fans’ reaction to Jacob Blake boycotts says it all

    MLB fans’ reaction to Jacob Blake boycotts says it all

    As always, follow the money! Forgive my insensitivity, but what happened Thursday night at Citi Field was easier done than said because it was a matter of money. In this case, not much of it was at stake. And every person at or near the top of sports who publicly declares his or her support …
  • What is with these ESPN hirings?

    What is with these ESPN hirings?

    Perhaps we expect better from ESPN because it’s a 24/7 sports network, the last place we’d think would wreck every sport it touches. Yet, here we are. Again, and still. To tune to ESPN to watch a live sports event is to be conditioned — air-conditioned — to anticipate a production that will challenge the …