How much wood could a woodchuck ignore if a woodchuck could ignore wood?
Glad you asked.
The question on many fans’ minds — I count for at least two of them, given my psychological state of late — immediately after Rams superstar defensive lineman Aaron Donald was flagged for trying to choke a Cardinals opponent during their playoff game two Monday nights ago, was simple but significant:
Would Donald be suspended from Sunday’s game against the Buccaneers?
After all, he’d been fined $10,300 for trying to strangle Packers offensive lineman Lucas Patrick in Week 12. (Consider the QB who tries to call an audible without a trachea.) And he’d had more than a few prior penalized episodes of not playing nicely with others.
For an added element, Donald wears a Roger Goodell-issued “Stop Hate” message on the back of his helmet. That certainly would have added some show to the tell.
So it was just a matter of when the NFL — even with pandering, gutless, selectively blind Goodell at the wheel — would announce its sanctions against Donald.
But the week passed without a word. Surely, Sunday, in its 1-hour-long, 10-contributors Rams-Bucs pregame, NBC would address this, provide us the latest.
But not a word. We heard, near the top, that Donald will be a major factor due to his greatness. Then, in a pandering, banal “interview” with Mike Tirico, Donald was told that he’s a very special player. Even if he just might be a dirty one. His conspicuous “Post-Play Strangler” instincts never came up.
Yet, there was time to include — surprise! surprise! — a lighthearted chat with TV’s latest in a series of wrongly presumed favorites, Odell Beckham Jr.
Then on with the game. And more, “Gee, that Aaron Donald is great” stuff, this time from Cris Collinsworth.
Only late Saturday afternoon, the day before Donald would play versus the Bucs, did NFL Network’s Ian Rapoport tweet that Donald had been fined a mere $500 more — $10,800 — for his second assault of a live esophagus.
That mostly closeted news arrived five days after Donald’s latest oxygen-obstructing episode, as if the NFL didn’t want anyone to know.
Thus, what would have and should have been near the top of NBC’s pregame show “To Do” list in service to viewers, went totally ignored. Suspension? Goodell’s NFL and TV partner NBC apparently preferred that you forgot the whole thing.
Oh, and Stop Hate.
Fox team on fire in Tundra thriller
Fox’s 49ers-Packers on Saturday was loaded with strong info, overture to final curtain.
Before the first play from scrimmage, Joe Buck and Troy Aikman plainly said that this game would be determined by special teams — and that presaged trouble for Green Bay.
Gin! A blocked field goal and a blocked punt later, the Niners were upset winners.
As for the final play — a winning Robbie Gould field goal — Buck and Aikman were quick to note that in arctic conditions, holder Mitch Wishnowsky pulled down a high snap and touched it down perfectly. Good catch by all three.
Pardon the Interpretation: Still can’t decide if the weekend’s games made for great, exciting, comeback football — as we were told — or bad football made exciting by “prevent defenses” among other strategic coaching failures.
Apparently all NFL players must meet with the approval of NBC’s Cris Collinsworth, as in, “I really like” this guy, and “I’m really impressed” by that guy. Does he ever listen to himself?
You want to vote Barry Bonds into the Hall of Fame? Knock yourself out. Just explain three things:
1) How was he able to hit 317 home runs between ages 35 and 42?
2) Why did his head swell to the size of a beach ball then recede to normal size after he retired?
3) How many clean players were deprived of MLB careers by drug cheats?
Reader Steve Arendash succinctly captures the Bud Selig/Donald Fehr drug era with this: Sammy Sosa is the only player with three 60-home run seasons. Yet, he never led the league in any of those seasons.
Voting for PED cheats, and those logically suspected of being cheats, seems a highly rationalized decision to reduce the Hall of Fame to irrelevance, if not infamy.
And I wouldn’t trust David Ortiz as far as I could throw him.
CBS’ James Lofton is the Jim Spanarkel of football analysts. Or is Spanarkel the …? Anyway, both are underutilized and unappreciated by shot-callers for speaking applicable common sense.
Working Niners-Packers for Westwood One Radio, Lofton said that every time a player performs one of these post-play, self-aggrandizing demonstrations, he eats into the play clock before the next play, placing his team in needless risk.
Was he allowed to say that?
Every time the Buccaneers played on TV here this season, we were told that their defensive coordinator, Todd Bowles, is highly qualified to be a head coach.
Yet we saw him as the head coach of the Jets for four seasons, and he often seemed lost and bewildered, especially at crunch time with clock management.
Dan Fouts, with CBS at the time, said Bowles’ decisions and indecisions left him “flabbergasted.”
Tough to figure if the Knicks have a talent deficiency or a team deficiency. There doesn’t see to be a plan, a strategy. Every game looks like the spin of a wheel, a collection of drifters, alone together, lots of 3-point shots thrown in.
Odell is up-front about ‘Me U.’
Naturally, Odell Beckham Jr. had to exploit his starting lineups face/voice time to try to steal the spotlight by acting like a jerk. He identified his college as “Him University.” Though he might’ve went with “Me U.”
He wasn’t going to say LSU, as his college excommunicated him for conspicuously handing out cash to players after a national championship game — the same game after which he crashed the locker-room celebration, stealing the scene from those who played by acting like an attention-addicted jerk.
NBC, naturally, gave him a look-away pass. Its pregame had already determined for us that we all love him.
Tennis fans are upset with ESPN. Again. The network has virtually ignored the superb and surprising singles and doubles play of American Danielle Collins at the Australian Open.
Reader Peter Wunsch: “Was ESPN even aware that it had an American player they could show to an American audience? Or are they clueless?”
ESPN showed some overnight matches on tape delay, but ignored Collins’.
But that’s standard ESPN. It doesn’t care about good stories, the wants and needs of the specific audiences it beckons, or the sports it purchases. It cares about big names, and only big names — for good or bad reasons. Was Alex Rodriguez hired to be ESPN’s voice and face of MLB for anything better?
Suckers Alert: Add Shaq O’Neal to the cast of celebs and athletes paid to hustle the public to lose their money gambling on sports. O’Neal’s another who otherwise would starve.
Clark Gillies was easy to root for — on and off the ice. The mark of the man. As a player, he visited a disabled young man in a Long Island rehab center, then stayed in touch. A mensch.
*Every time the USOC or IOC issues a warning to competitors on how to keep clear of government “operatives” who will be in their midsts — seen and unseen — I ask why and how China was issued the approval to host these Winter Olympics. Nike and LeBron James have anything to do with it?
Reader Mark Dantonio on the unintended overuse and misuse of replay rules: “For decades, now, ‘Getting it right’ means no longer getting to enjoy it.”