The one thing we know for sure is that the USGA, proprietors of the U.S. Open, didn’t dump NBC for FOX because it is♍ impressed by the quality of FOX’s golf coverage. FOX never has had golf.
So we’re left to conclude that what impressed the USGA about FOX were the numbers following the dollar sign. Imagine that, a sports organization leaving a longtime TV part🎃ner to shack up with a new one, on the blind, for no reason other than money.
NBC is reported to have paid $50 million a year for USGA event rights. FOX’s deal 💎is🅺 reported to be $100 million per for 12 years, a long time to be committed to a partner you just met. It’s genuine “Married At First Sight” reality TV. Who says you can’t buy love?
So golf fans this week have a right to be nervous. Will FOX bring “FOX Attitude” to the U.S. Open? Will Cleatus, the FOX robot, smash exploding golf balls onto our screens? Is FOX even re𒅌ady to show live golf?
But how bad can FOX be, given NBC and the USGA shared weekday coverage with ESPN, which added played-out, self-promoting seltzer-spritzer Chris Berman to the host mix? Those who will miss Johnny Miller won’🃏t miss Berman.
FOX’s 𓆏host team will be Joe Buck and Greg Norman. Buck’s good on anything and everything — until he tries to be too cute, too slick, too pithy, which he tries to do too often. Trying, as FOX’s☂ Homer Simpson says, is the first step on the road to failure.
Norman fills TV’s English/Australian/New Zealand-accented golf requisite, although FOX and Norman have a previous relationship on a speculative alternative to the PGA Tour. Norman, it’s worth noting, never has been shy to ex🍷press his opinion.
Regardless, FOX’s most recentꩵ Open news release is unsettling, from its headlines, down:
“Fox Sports Loads Golf Bag With High-Tech Arsenal For Network’s First U.S. Open Championship.” That’s followed by “Virtual Reality🧜, Aerial Drones, Radio-Controlled Cars & More Offer Unique Views 🅘& Sounds from Chamber Bay.”
Yikes! Run for your lives!
The same missive includes all-upper case word that there will be “VIRTUAL IMMERSIVE GRAPHICS,” “118 cameras,” “29 replay servers” “5 production control rooms” “16 transmission paths,” “11 audio mixers,” “156 channels recording si🙈multaneously” and “47 miles of fiber optics,” which, I suspect, is at least one more fiber optic mile than NBC unspooled.
If this were a manned flight to Venus, I suppose, this would be good, reassuring news. But FOX bought the rights to televise, live, a major golf tournament, so how many of those 11🌄8 cameras will be devoted to televising golf? Or was LPGA bombshell and garment-stretcher Natalie Gulbis hired to be heard but not seenඣ?
Will the telecasts begin with lengthy, over-written odes encouraging us to watch wh🅰at we already are in place to watch? Will w🙈e spend time watching commentators discuss the Open while it’s being played right behind them? We soon will find out.
But even granted a few mulligans as a first-timer, FOX has given its tacit promise that if it fails to adequately cover the U.S. Open, it won’t be due to a shortage of virtual immersive graphics, tℱransmission paths, audio mixers and aerial drones.
To borrow from Bill Murray🔜’s character in “Caddyshacꦿk,” at least we’ve got that going for us.
Horse whisperer: Francesa skims Crown talk after bad Belmont pick
If Mike Francesa seriously is considering packing it in, this would be the time. There’s no one left to fool. And I suspe🀅ct he’s sick of himsඣelf, too.
Though he has long portrayed himself a hands-on, mone♔y-down know-it-all on thoroughbred racing, he exposed himself as a horse’s sass before the Preakness when he demanded — screamed, over and over — that American Pharoah’s trainer, Bob Baffert, be fired if Dortmund, also trained by Baffert but for a different owner, was entered.
Well, Dortmund ran, American Pharoah won the Pr🐻eakness, then the Belmont.
Tuesday, Francesa’s phone guest for nearly 25 minutes was Baffert. That “Fire Baffert!” thing? “ꦓLet’s ꦦBe Honest” never even brought it up.
He did, however find time to tell Baffert (a📖nd eavesdropping peons) that he was at the Belmont, “sitting in my seat, where it has always been — right on the finish line.”
What we never could sa𒆙y in public, even if ꦦit were true, as a matter of both minimal modesty and to avoid being recognized as a pompous jerk, just naturally flows from Francesa.
And just because his no-doubt touts of Triple Crown favorites have annually finished out of the money — followed by a WFAN horse named Monday Silence — this past Monday Francesa had the opportunity to marvel at the biggestꦉ horse-racinꦦg story in his radio career, the first Triple Crown winner in 37 years.
But Francesa buried th𒉰e story, spoke of it almost somberly, as a tidbit from a weekend he determined was predominated by anticipation of the NBA Draft and baseball results.
Of course, he did. Francesa, in a rare tout against a heavy favorite, didn’t want to give any꧒one the opportunity to be reminded that he gave American Pharoah no shot, or that his expert pick, Materiality, finished dead last.
And so Francesa, self-acclaimed horse-racing expert who watched the Belmont from his usual seat/throne at the finish line, Monday recapped the weekend, shorting its biggest story. Now, had he picked the winner…
Doug digging a hole
Is it possible Doug Collins, former NBA star and coach and now an ESPN NBA analyst, doesn’t understand♐ bas☂ketball?
Or is it that he figures we don’t, th🅰us he can say anything and sound smart?
In 2000, as aꦕn NBC analyst, he said, with the playoffs ▨beginning, the 56-26 Pacers have to improve their offensive rebounding because they have the fewest, just 842.
Sounded good, but apparently it didn’t matter that Indiana was one of the better shooting teams, they would need to m💛iss more shots in order to have more offensive rebounds.
The 2000 team with the most offensive boards, 1,300 of them? Theꦓ 19-63 Warriors.
Collins either still doesn’t get it or figures we don’t. During the Finals, he has spoken rebound stats in terms of context-less totals, as a good vs. bad yardstick, as if they’re strictly a matter of will and not a by-product of opportunity. ♍Thus, the ridiculous: The team with the most boards should win!
Not that there’s anyone at ESPN t♍o tell him otherwise.
Lookalikes: Brookly𓃲n’s Michael Eisenberg submits FIFA’s 🧸ex-boss Sepp Blatter and Fred Wilpon’s ex-wealth wizard Bernie Madoff.