I watched Pardon the Interruption and Around the Horn on TSN this past Thursday and Friday.
The natterbugs on the two sports squawk shows were Tony Kornheiser, Michael Wilbon, Woody Paige, Clinton Yates, Frank Isola, Emily Kaplan, Kevin Blackistone, Marcel Louis-Jacques, Pablo Torre and Israel Gutierrez. They covered a vast range of subject matter, speaking with authority, conviction, insight, personal experience and mixing in a dab of humor.
To the best of my knowledge, none among them has ever drawn pay to hit a baseball, fling a football, boot a soccer ball, shoot a puck or launch and land a three-pointer in hoops.
Heck, some of them would be doing well to bend over and touch their toes without requiring prompt medical attention, let alone go mano-a-mano vs. Nikola Jokic.
So here’s the question: Should it matter that they never played the game?
I mean, is there a section in the jock journo manual that stipulates a talking head or scribe must have played the game before he or she is paid to talk or write about the game?
That became a matter for some chatter this past week because ESPN has agreed to compensate Mina Kimes to the tune of $1.7 million per year to flap her gums about the National Football League. Given that she’s no bigger than a bar stool, Mina has not played the game at an elite level, something her critics didn’t hesitate to introduce to the discussion.
Examples:
“Kimes’ role is particularly interesting when you consider that, well, she never played NFL football. Or any football, for that matter,” wrote Bobby Burack in OutKick, the Fearless Sports Media Company that leans far right politically. “In fact, she is the only general NFL analyst at the network who never played. Her counterparts include Marcus Spears, Dan Orlovsky, Bart Scott, Domonique Foxworth, Robert Griffin, and Ryan Clark. And while that group hardly impressed in the NFL, they at least spent time under coaches and film directors. They know more about football than Mina Kimes.”
Nick Adams submitted that Kimes “doesn’t know the difference between defensive holding and pass interference.” He also took aim at ESPN, claiming the re-upping of Kimes serves as a clear signal that the Worldwide Leader in Sports is on a mission “to advance communism and take jobs away from alpha males.”
Oh my. Kimes managed to get up those, and other, noses simply because she’s never had to cover Travis Kelsey on a quick slant? Oh, and she’s part of a plot to spread communism? Oy.
Those boys are permitted their opinions, of course, but it’s rubbish and they know it, especially the cartoonish Adams, a right wing blowhard who’s a parody of himself. He likely doesn’t believe half of what he says and doesn’t expect us to believe the other half. He’s spoofing us. He’s a Saturday Night Live skit and not a very good one. Unless you consider female-bashing clever humor.
Still, there are many among the rabble who genuinely subscribe to the notion that one need play the game at the elite level to talk and/or write the game.
Like I said, rubbish. It never has been and never will be a requirement for journalism school.
Look, if it’s life, I prefer someone who’s been there and done that to tell me about it. I mean, only 12 men have walked on the moon, so only 12 men can speak about the experience with any measure of authority, and eight of them are dead. If I’m going under the knife to fix a wonky heart, I want the doctor with scalpel-in-hand to have a medical degree in a frame on the office wall before she or he commences slicing and dicing.
But we’re talking the yadda, yadda, yadda and scribbling of sports here. No reader, viewer or listener is at risk of dying from a dangling participle, a run-on sentence or tripping over a tangled tongue, although I’ve known countless writers who’ve spilled buckets of blood agonizing over a lede.
Jock journos need to be informative, accurate, detailed, knowledgeable, insightful, truthful, curious, passionate, and have good contacts. It’s a bonus if they’re colorful and entertaining. All those traits can be acquired without spending time in a huddle with Patrick Mahomes.
Dave Naylor is a case in point. His sole flirtation with playing Rouge Football at the highest level was a gimmicky gig at the Saskatchewan Roughriders rookie training sessions in 1995. Yet he sits in with the hall-of-famers and former coaches on the CFL on TSN panel, and he doesn’t defer to them when the gums are flapping. His Canadian Football League knowledge is vast, and Nails is living, breathing evidence that grabbing grass is not a necessity.
That also applies to movie or music critics.
Roger Ebert delivered thousands of film reviews in print, on TV and online that influenced actors, filmmakers and movie-goers, but he was never a leading man on the silver screen. He never played the game.
Simon Cowell is a man of no known music or acting skill, other than playing the heel on TV talent shows. Yet even though he never played the game, one word from him, favorable or scathing in negativity, changes lives every week. Ask Carrie Underwood about that.
Mina Kimes certainly doesn’t hold that degree of sway as a talking head on ESPN, but she’s not there to help Mahomes or Aaron Rodgers win another Super Bowl trophy. It’s her task to critique, inform and entertain. She does a good job…even if she’s never played the game.
If a sports scribe or broadcaster was required to play the game at the elite level in order to cover the game, there would be the grand sum of zero female jock journos writing and talking about the NHL, NFL, NBA, MLB or MLS. Think about it.
I once participated in a Winnipeg Jets rookie camp, playing in the final of four exhibition games at the request of GM John Ferguson. Did that experience (assisted on the first goal) at the National Hockey League level make me a better sports scribe? Many hundreds (nay, thousands) and the Manitoba Hockey Hall of Fame will tell you no, and I won’t disagree with them.
Look, there are numerous reasons why we can dis a sports broadcaster or scribe, but the bottom line is talent. That is, are they good at the job or not? And that, kids, is a matter of personal taste.
I mean, what’s appetizing to me is likely very different from what suits your fancy, especially if your preference is listening to Ron MacLean prattle on about Plato and Aristotle rather than Connor McDavid.
I think MacLean has become an insufferable gasbag whose pun-ish links to ancient philosophers and obscure authors on Hockey Night in Canada is nails-on-a-chalkboard creepy. Also idiotic. It’s as if he’s trying to impress, not inform: “Hey, listen to me…I read a history book this week! I am so smart!”
Others, however, embrace the MacLean shtick when he goes full pun-meister and works two or three Freudian references and at least one quote from a war general into a second-period natter on the complexities of a goaltender interference review.
It’s a trash and treasure thing: You says it’s treasure, I say it’s trash.
Similarly, I like Jennifer Botterill’s sound bites on HNIC, most notably when she engages Kevin Bieksa in a hissing match about cement-head hockey. Jennifer frowns on fisticuffs. She has no appetite for the dark side of shinny. Bieksa, on the other hand, is a strong and loud advocate for ruffian tactics because, hey, he’s a guy’s guy who played when a guard dog sat at the end of every National Hockey League team bench. It was beat ’em in the alley, take no prisoners and do whatever dirty deed necessary to get a mention from Don Cherry on Coach’s Corner or, better yet, featured on one of his rock ’em, sock ’em videos. Well, I think Bieksa is a boor. I think Botterill is a beauty. For many, many others it’s the opposite.
So there I was in the small hours of Saturday, watching a promo for TSN’s Super Saturday of three-down football. Three games, kicking off at 10 a.m. I made a mental note to hunker down for the day. Alas, what TSN didn’t tell me is that there was no Super Saturday out here on the Western Flank. While others in the great sprawl that is Canada watched the Montreal Larks-Toronto Argos and Winnipeg Blue Bombers-Saskatchewan Flatlanders, we were force-fed SportsCentre, mixed doubles tennis, Countdown to UFC, Amazing Race Canada, and the U.S. Open women’s singles final on TSN1. So you can mark me down as PO’d. Royally PO’d. Fact is, only one of the five TSN channels showed the tripleheader. Pathetic.
Saturday on TSN
TSN1: Stamps vs. Elks
TSN3: Als vs. Argos; Riders vs. Bombers; Stamps vs. Elks
TSN4: Stamps vs. Elks
The Toronto Argos are Grey Cup champions. They are the finest collection of grass-grabbers, growlers and creators of snot bubbles in Rouge Football, with a 10-1 record. Does anyone in the Republic of Tranna notice? Just the 14,415 who found their way to BMO Field to watch the Boatmen and Montreal Larks frolic on Saturday afternoon. If the citizenry in The ROT won’t support that outfit, there’s no hope.
I noted that the Winnipeg Jets were trending on Twitter yesterday. Just don’t ask me why.
Oh, dear, official training exercises have yet to commence for the 2023-24 NHL season and the rabble in E-Town, including the media, have already begun The Big Freakout over the potential adios of Connor McDavid and Leon Draisaitl from the Edmonton Oilers. The Edmonton Sun ran this headline the other day: “Will they stay or will they go?” Good grief. Rein it in, people. Draisaitl and McDavid have two and three more springs, respectively, to disappoint Edmonton Oilers fans.
Has the rag trade changed so much since I left in 1999 that sports scribes are now openly cheering for teams that they write about, or might write about? Apparently so. I mean, when I read a tweet rooting on the Toronto Blue Jays to qualify for the Major League Baseball post-season (“please and thanks”), it tells me the ‘no cheering in the press box’ rule has disappeared like a stack of hot dogs in front of Joey Chestnut.
Just wondering: Will people still be talking about the Spanish Soccer Smooch 2,000 years from now, or is Judas’ record for longevity safe?
When you dream of Genie, is she on the cover of a glam mag or a pickleball court? Well, our one-time tennis darling, Genie Bouchard, is joining the Professional Pickleball Association Tour in 2024. Just wondering: Does Pickleball Illustrated have a swimsuit issue?
The U.S. Open tennis tournament has been a strange bit of business: Daniil Medvedev predicted “one player gonna die” from the swelter of a late Gotham summer, a customer was booted from Arthur Ashe Stadium for singing a Hitler-era Nazi anthem, and another glued his feet to the floor in an environment protest. Between the heat, the Hitler groupie and Glue Boy, hardly anyone noticed that John McEnroe put his foot in his mouth again.
Hey, I consider Johnny Mac to be the best commentator in tennis, if not all sports, but he shoves his foot in his yap so often that I don’t know how he has room for food.
I get that most among the rabble at Arthur Ashe Stadium were rooting for their girl Coco Gauff in the women’s singles final vs. Aryna Sabalenka on Saturday, but booing when the Belarusian botched her serves? That’s lame. Also a New York kind of obnoxious.
And, finally, on the subject of boorish behavior, former pitcher David Wells attended a New York Yankees oldtimers gig on Saturday and offered this nugget of pure bile: “We’re in a different world. It sucks. That’s why everyone should carry a gun.” There are no words.
The River City Renegade 
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