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How Can the Left Make Even Football Depressing?
I’ve been looking forward to this moment for months. I wake up today like a kid on Christmas morning, scarcely able to believe that the glorious day had finally arrived: The beginning of the college football season. This most wonderful of seasons officially begins, as every American knows, when The Ohio State Buckeyes first take the field. And all our troubles melt away, at least for a few hours, on Saturday afternoon.
I knew that this year’s holiday would be somewhat marred by the recent scandal involving Ohio State’s coach, Urban Meyer. One of his assistant coaches was accused of domestic abuse by his wife and Urban did not fire him until the day after the court ordered a restraining order. This is difficult because if he would have fired him before the court finding, based on hearsay, the assistant coach would have sued and probably won. But this scandal is beautiful for the media and other leftists. Meyer, like most high-level coaches, speaks openly of meritocracy on his team, and thus is widely suspected of being a closet conservative, although to my knowledge such vicious rumors have thus far remained unsubstantiated. Also, domestic abuse is still trendy in the #metoo era, especially as it relates to … eww … football. So this is the story that will not die. It’s a leftist’s dream.
Anyway, at noon I go out on the patio to turn on the TV, and tune to the only channel that has any reason to broadcast at this moment. The “football announcers” start the coverage of this exciting event by looking sad and talking about “the scandal.” While no one is specific about what exactly Urban did wrong, or what he might have done differently, they find ten different ways to say that “this matter was handled poorly by Ohio State.” I quietly wonder if this broadcast would have been possible if the network used the same criteria for hiring and firing amongst its own employees that it ostensibly recommends for football coaches. Eh, no matter, I suppose.
I anticipated this broadcast, so I watched this just long enough to confirm my suspicions, and then went to go get a beer and a cigar. Virtue signaling can take a while, so I took my time. I eventually wander back out, and they’re still talking about it. (When I finished typing this, in the middle of the 2nd quarter, they were still talking about it.)
I used to think that sports journalists and broadcasters simply had no idea who their audience was. I’m not sure if that’s true or not, but I’ve come to the understanding that they just don’t care. How many football fans were tuning in today in hoping for the 1,000th update on the assistant coach’s marital problems? Anybody? Heck no. We are tuning into a football game to watch football. To escape this stuff. We just want to watch some football. Please.
But no. The “sports announcer’s” job is to indoctrinate his audience. The football is an afterthought, to the powers that be. It may be partly that all sports journalists started their careers hoping to be the next Walter Cronkite, and jump at the chance to discuss something of true societal importance, rather than merely sports. But I also think that if this announcer doesn’t start with leftist talking points, he will be unemployed by tomorrow afternoon.
Sports used to be an escape from politics. Republicans and Democrats, at the water cooler, at least could talk about sports. The left has infiltrated even this neutral ground as well, probably because they recognize the impact of sports on our society. The loss of common interests and a neutral space to enjoy one another’s company – this is a big loss.
The left poisons everything it touches. Even football.
Note: While I was typing this on my laptop with the game on in the background, the local station had some technical difficulties and the sound went off. I can still see the game, but I can’t hear anything.
The next time an atheist tries to tell me that God doesn’t exist, I intend to use this miraculous event to testify to the all-powerful wisdom of my living God, and the compassion he has for his flock. Hallelujah!
Published in General
Not an Ohio State fan (the thing about The Ohio State U. bugs me), but, as a college aficianado, I’ve seen some headlines on this. But when I saw domestic violence, football assistant, and Urban Meyer (conservative? Christian?), I had a pretty good idea where it was going. I’ve avoided all articles and, as a result, may have missed any that took Meyer’s “side.” Do these exist? I did see a headline indicating that he’d been suspended, so is this interpreted as the U being soft or as not supporting him? I’m guessing the former.
You can come at this from the other direction, in that because he’s a really, really good college football coach who has won in Utah, Florida and now at Ohio State, Meyer falls into the “Too Big to Fail/Protect the King” category, where his talent makes too much money for the school, compared to how they ousted their previous head coach, Jim Tressel, on a lesser charge, mainly because he had a lesser won-lost record.
I doubt most of the university people running things in Columbus are huge conservative Trump supporters — Mary Jo White who ran the investigation for the school was an Obama appointee as U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York and then SEC chairwoman — so when you have people on TV making comments about what Ohio State didn’t do in the wake of the allegations, it’s liberals attacking other liberals, even if football itself is seen as a ‘conservative’ sport, because the rest of the world doesn’t play it.
In that way, OSU’s actions are more akin to the rallying around you’re seeing in the Catholic Church right now with Pope Francis, after the allegation he promoted people within the Church he knew had been involved in sexual molestations. The main difference is the media sees the current Pope as being on ‘their’ side, so they’ve shied away from giving the new charges blanket coverage, while the overall sports media doesn’t have any investment in protecting Urban Meyer, even if the administration and the trustees at Ohio State do.
I understand your point, but what’s the charge? And is it a proven charge? I could know more about this than I do (see above), but is there some indication that Meyer said to himself “this guy’s an abuser, but I need him as a coach, so I’m not doing anything”?
Where are the moderators, with this obvious COC violation?
I can’t get into Meyer’s head, so I don’t know if his success at OSU and his previous national titles at Florida caused him to think he would have no interference from the university as to who he did or didn’t select for his staff — for the moment I find the more interesting thing that the university was willing to set aide it’s normal progressive beliefs and look the other way until they had to do at least something because they made too much money off OSU football. And while the media not only is willing to go after OSU over this, but attack the sport in general because they disdain much of its fan base, some of the same media outlets who have shown no qualms in the past about going after the Catholic Church on sex abuse are going slow on the new charges, because they like the guy at the top right now, just as the people at the top of OSU strategically like Urban Meyer
(Clay Travis, the current bete noir of the liberal sports media, took Meyer’s actions apart here, though I suppose you can say as a Tennessee fan, Travis has some anger dating from Meyer”s time at Florida.)
I have for years watched sports on TV without the sound. Most of the time I’m listening to the radio broadcast. All football, all the time. Only talk about the game, the other team, etc. Since we don’t have cable, it’s easy.
You forgot Bowling Green…
I appreciate the link. IMO, Travis does sound somewhat over the top here, but that doesn’t extend to anything factual he presents.
My alma mater! Go Falcons! Urban lived next door to my ex-husband while he was there.
Hallelujah!
I have read the investigation report. Without getting into the weeds too much, the report concluded that Coach Meyer did not intentionally do any wrong and that Coach Meyer has a “sincere commitment to the Respect for Women core value….” [Capitals in original.] furthermore, Coach Meyer believed Zach Smith’s denials of spousal abuse (apparently supported by the Powell police’s refusal to make an arrest and perhaps by Courtney’s Smith’s mother’s assessment of Courtney as a liar). Meyer did reprimand Zack Smith for his conduct (described as “promiscuous and embarrassing sexual behavior, a possible NCAA violation, and a lengthy police investigation into allegations of criminal domestic violence and cybercrimes”), but not in writing.
OSU athletic department personal consistently emphasized the importance of an actual arrest regarding alleged law violations, even though the current contracts do not require an actual arrest. [Coach Meyer needs better lawyering on the contract the next time around.]
So, Coach Meyer had an assistant coach whose wife was, according to her mother, a liar. She accused the assistant of domestic violence and called the police who evidently did not believe her, because they made not arrest (which is very unusual here).
Of course , the irresponsible media repeats only the easy meme.
Dr Bastiat, you “went to get a beer and a cigar.”
Do you not realize (and I am sure that you do, you menace to society) that smoking cigars and drinking beer while watching college football is a behavioral pattern associated with White Nationalists? This makes you one of them and thus complicit in their crimes. Ergo you are unfit to practice medicine. The State Board of Registration in Medicine will be calling on Tuesday to suspend your license.
No, that will be Wednesday as Monday is a holiday.
I’d write more but my Partaga went out when I knocked over my Coors Light. Gotta grab my lighter from Mrs Doctor Robert.
Can somebody help a brother out?
Give me funny!
(Have to admit, I enjoyed being the high school football team’s good luck charm senior year – and watching church friends play basketball – and even golf, in high school and college. But, it was all about my guys, not the games. The annual Army-Navy game is changing that, though.) ;-)
In the late 1980s, the Wichita State U. president wanted to be like OSU and added The to the school’s name. The next president dropped it. Therefore, I started college at The Wichita State University and graduated from Wichita State University.
Tying it to the topic, WSU disbanded its football program in 1987. My wife gave me a T-shirt with “WSU football – Undefeated since 1987”.
@doctorrobert: Would it be better if I Vaped while sipping an appletini? And switched the football to soccer? Or maybe a reality TV show about wedding dress shopping?
I think I know where this thread is going…
In defense of Ohio State, the Ohio Revised Code clearly states,
“The” is part of the institution’s legal name. That’s the law!
But does the law specify if you have to use a hard ‘e’ or a soft ‘e’ in ‘The’?
“Thuh Ohio State University” sounds a bit lame, doesn’t it?
Yep. Lame — but apparently perfectly legal.
I would go for a full ABC football season with the sound muted to avoid listening to Howard Cosell.
The assistant coach was also the grandson of Earle Bruce, former OSU Head coach and mentor to Urban Meyer. Some have speculated in the press, Stewart Mandel among them, if that affected the way Meyer handled this.
When you look at Dave’s comment #11 I don’t get why he was suspended.
Why didn’t they just give Earl’s grandson a fat severance and cut him loose earlier? The guy is a trouble magnet.
In law terms, yes, but not in linguistic terms: it violates a basic morpho-phonological rule in Standard American English: <the> is pronounced “thuh” before a word beginning with a consonant sound, and “thee” before a vowel sound. It’s the exact same kind of rule as for “a” vs. “an”, but since the spelling doesn’t change, people are less consciously aware of it. My go-to example of this for some reason is the REM lyric “it’s the (‘thee’) end of the (‘thuh’) world as we know it” (you can clearly hear the difference, and it sounds perfectly normal). So it would be as “wrong” to pronounce it “thuh Ohio State” as it would be to say “a orange” (particularly with the normal “uh” pronunciation of <a>).
The complication is that the “thee” pronunciation is also used for emphasis, as in “He is the (‘thee’) worst teacher!!”. So since having the “the” be officially part of the name of the university already sounds a little pretentious, people tend to assume that the completely natural pronunciation as “thee” there is the emphatic “thee” rather than the rule-based, normal “thee”. And then it doesn’t help when sportscasters put focus stress on “the” when saying it — that’s what’s weird, not the “thee” pronunciation on its own.
I think, based on seeing a lot of Twitter comments on the matter, that most people don’t like Meyer because he was the coach of a team that repeatedly beat their favorite team, and therefore are not willing to grant him any benefit of the doubt. (I really don’t know anything about him, but the fact that he coaches OSU does lead me to be skeptical of his judgement. Because Ohio.) Still, I’m not sure it’s a political thing for most people. I haven’t seen anything about his political beliefs or religious affiliation, just comments on his coaching. Interesting post though. Does explain a bit about why the media has jumped on this so much.
A lot of Republicans think Urban Meyer is shady, and their not Michigan fans.
Dr Bastiat, vaping is also a forbidden activity.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Positions_of_medical_organizations_on_electronic_cigarettes
FWIW, however, I encourage my patients who smoke to vape instead. Better a habit of low potential for harm than one that is known to be carcinogenic.
Question for the doctors: should vaping be over the counter or should you be forced to get a prescription for it?
I think we should have proof of harm before we start regulating it.