As a matter of licensing, accountability, common decency and the public’s trust, TV networks used to operate under guidelines called “Standards and Practices.”
Standards and practices established a network’s sense of moral and ethical conduct. They still exist. On paper … somewhere. … Check that file cabinet in the back room.
Not too many years ago, after a player or coach was heard cussing on the sidelines, the TV play-by-play man — though it was no fault of the network beyond the fact that its microphones were too close for comfort — would apologize to viewers for what they just heard or saw.
Accidents happen. And the regret networks expressed seemed sincere.
Today? Standards exist but certainly aren’t practiced. In fact — indisputable fact — the “accidents” are emphasized, flaunted.
On Thanksgiving Day, Dallas receiver Cole Beasley fumbled a catch, the Eagles recovered. We didn’t see him cursing as he left the field, but FOX, off-camera, did. So FOX, its lead NFL crew at work, then made sure that we did. In a slow-motion taped close-up, it presented Beasley clearly mouthing “Mother—-r!”
FOX also loaded up on shots of FOX Sports’ family wishing our families a happy Thanksgiving.
Last Sunday on CBS, Tom Brady, frustrated by the Packers, was seen cursing on the sidelines. There was no question as to the word he was hollering.
The question became why CBS was overjoyed by it, why CBS behaved as if it had beaten TMZ to an exclusive. CBS’ lead NFL crew chose to show Brady, the first time possibly live, three times hollering “F—!” followed by showing that three-timer again, from a different angle, on tape.
Yep, three shots of “F—!” wasn’t enough. CBS gave us six.
Where not too long ago, CBS, the network that had to answer to that 2004 pornographic Super Bowl halftime show, would have apologized for catching Brady’s behavior on camera. Sunday, CBS replayed it for added emphasis.
Gentleman Jim Nantz was left to quietly indulge what CBS did to him, us and ours. I hope he gave the truck hell, afterward.
Both Beasley and Brady were entitled to their professional disgust. Many of us cuss when we’re angry, too. I do. But neither player should have been so intentionally subjected to such avoidable attention and inspection as per a network’s use (misuse, abuse) of access and technology.
What used to be out of the question as matters of common sense and civility has become the new, go-low, march-of-the-wise-guys standard to practice.
That’s why sports telecasts now come attached to commercials showing Rob Lowe and two other men standing at urinals. That’s why network promos that appear during sports telecasts include “highlights” chosen as appropriate only for their inappropriate content.
The saddest part is the advocacy of right over wrong is now rationalized, dismissed and even mocked as a political or religious position.
Those who, as a practical matter of greater-good civics, would complain about sports telecasts that so purposely further “the coarsening of America” risk condemnation and simple-reasoned branding as political or religious zealots.
Though no right-minded adult would do as CBS’ adults did last Sunday with Brady — send a fellow into our homes to repeatedly holler “F—!” — who wants to be dismissed as “old-fashioned,” out of step with the current beat?
Better one let it pass, let it happen, let it worsen, than risk ridicule as an old and cranky right-wing religious zealot. There’s safety in silent capitulation.
Regardless, the fact remains that networks now shamelessly and smugly go out of their way to show — repeatedly and in slow-motion — acts for which they used to apologize. As for standards and practices, that’s becoming a standard practice.
Season’s beatings for Texas Southern
One would think, by now, that Texas Southern University has made enough money to play someone its own size, someone smaller.
Houston’s Texas Southern, a member of the SWAC, has 9,000 enrollees and a basketball team that is in the early season business of volunteering to go anywhere to play anyone, and, as a matter of design and economics, to be crushed.
Thus every November and December the Tigers’ student-athletes hit the road for predetermined, follow-the-money, give-us-our-cut bludgeoning — including 75-49 at Baylor on Monday, and in recent years 82-46 at New Mexico State, 76-41 at Michigan State, 83-35 at Kentucky, 76-40 at LSU, 84-42 at Gonzaga, 76-40 at Marquette, 97-55 at Oklahoma, 73-38 at Milwaukee, 88-52 at Washington, and 105-59 and 113-49 at UConn.
Other than money, there must be some good in this. I just don’t know what it is.
That Nets fan with the prosthetic leg who was tossed from the Garden on Tuesday reminds us of the man who fulfilled his father’s wish to have his ashes strewn on the outfield in Wrigley Field.
When a security guard demanded to know what he was doing, the man told him his father had been a devout Cubs fan, thus he had just leaned over the railing and threw his father’s ashes on the field.
“Well,” the security guard said after some thought, “your father can stay, but you’re outta here!”
Speaking of the Cubs, with Joe Maddon now managing, readers Ray Starman and Rick Kokowski note that in the 1989 movie, “Back To The Future II,” we briefly learn — as a sarcastic gag, no doubt — that the Cubs, in 2015, win the World Series.
Dockett ‘ain’t even’ funny
Seems last week we were supposed to find Cardinals DE Darnell Dockett’s obscene tweets about being summoned to jury duty comical. Sure, I guess.
Same as last year’s tweet, when Dockett, a father and a college man — Florida State — proudly tweeted:
Then there was the sexually suggestive photo and caption Dockett recently tweeted about President Obama’s 16-year-old daughter. That Darnell Dockett, what a howl!
Baseball’s Hall of Fame publishes Memories and Dreams, a quarterly magazine that invariably contains neat stories and photos. This winter’s edition includes a feature about teams from 1920-50 composed entirely of a family’s brothers, with a sister occasionally added as needed.
There was a Texas team in the early 1930s, the Deike Brothers, who, according to author Matt Rothenberg, had to borrow from a different clan:
“Until the youngest Deike was old enough to play full-time, they would sometimes have to recruit players from nearby towns. On several occasions future U.S. President Lyndon Johnson played first base.”