What the Hell Was ESPN Thinking?

There’s a lot of brouhaha at the moment about ESPN’s coverage of yesterday’s Sugar Bowl game in New Orleans, or rather of the pre-game.  The game was postponed for a day in the wake of the horrific events of early New Year’s morning only a few blocks from the Superdome, where the game was played.

So why is the photo for this piece of a baseball game?  Allow me to explain.  Curmie has been a fan of the New York Mets since 1962, the year of the team’s inception.  I can tell you that the biggest home run in Mets history had nothing to do with their World Series championship years of 1969 or 1986.  It was Mike Piazza’s two-run, come-from-behind, homer in the bottom of the 8^th inning in Shea Stadium on September 21, 2001. 

It was the game-winning hit and it came against the best team in the division, the arch-rival Atlanta Braves.  Vastly more importantly, it was during the first major league game to be played in New York after the attacks of 9/11.  And, for the first time in a week and a half, the locals had something to be happy about.  That night, anyone who wasn’t a Braves fan per se (and probably a fair number who were) needed that home run.  Not just Mets fans.  Not just New Yorkers.  Americans.

We’d been told the everything was going to be OK, but we needed more.  David Letterman going back on the air helped, but everything was still somber.  The Bush jokes that would cement the resolve—you don’t joke about the President if your country is in crisis—were to come later.  But first, there was Mike Piazza.  Sometimes, sports matter.

In the winter of 1980, Curmie lived in a small town in rural Kentucky.  He remembers watching the “Miracle on Ice” Olympic hockey game on the TV.  After the incredible upset of the powerhouse Soviet team by a bunch of American college kids, after the most famous line of Al Michaels’s career—“Do you believe in miracles?  Yes!”—there was a lot of noise outside, loud enough to be not merely audible but intrusive in Curmie’s second-floor apartment.

Outside, there was a string of cars with horns blaring; their windows were down (even in Kentucky it can get a little nippy in February), with a bunch of mostly teenagers leaning out and chanting “USA!  USA! USA!”  I’m willing to bet that Curmie was one of fewer than a dozen people in the entire town who’d ever seen a hockey game live, but here were these kids who didn’t know a poke check from a blue line getting excited about the Olympic semi-final.

In the midst of the Iranian hostage situation, with the country only showing the slightest signs of emerging from the energy crisis (is it any wonder the incumbent President was routed in the election a few months later?), we—again, all of us—needed something to grab ahold of, something to suggest that we’d weather the storm.

There have, of course, been other moments that transcended sports: Jesse Owens dominating at the Berlin Olympics in 1936, Joe Louis knocking out Max Schmeling in the first round, Billy Miles appearing from nowhere to win the 10,000m in the Tokyo Olympics, we might even add Spiff Sedrick’s improbable sprint to glory in the women’s rugby 7s in this year’s Olympics.

But this year’s Sugar Bowl was most like that baseball game in September of 2001: what made it special wasn’t who won, or what political statement could be wrangled out of the victory, but the mere fact that the game went on was a sign of determination and perhaps a little bit of defiance.  If you’re a Georgia fan, you’re disappointed that your team lost, but you were reminded before kickoff that there are more important things than football games. 

Well, you were reminded of that fact if you were at the game in person.  You’d have less of that perspective if you… you know… watched on TV.  ESPN, which had exclusive broadcasting rights, cut away from the moment of silence, from the Star-Spangled Banner, and by extension from the “USA!  USA!  USA!” chants at the end of the anthem.  Needless to say, a lot of folks on the political right attributed the obviously intentional omission to anti-American “wokeness.”  (Here’s one example.) Whether the decision was in fact a product of political orientation or garden-variety incompetence may be up for discussion, but this has to rank among the biggest blunders the network has ever committed… yes, even worse than hiring Bill Walton, and that’s saying rather a lot.

Please remember, Gentle Reader, that this is Curmie saying this: the guy who decried the “unrelenting jingoism” of NBC’s Olympic coverage in 2012, and the “ultra-nationalistic bleatings of Peyton Manning” at this year’s opening ceremonies.  Curmie is no fan of pretending that “nationalism” and “patriotism” are synonyms.

Except.

The attack in New Orleans was a body blow to the American psyche.  It didn’t knock us out, but it staggered us for a moment.  (Curmie mentioned last time out  that there was a “what if” scenario for him personally on this one.)  There’s a difference between moving forward despite what happened the previous morning and pretending that those events hadn’t occurred.

We, as a nation, need to proceed with as close to a normal routine as is possible.  That’s obviously impossible for those most directly affected, but I was pleased to see that our favorite New Orleans restaurant re-opened last night after closing for New Year’s Day.  And the game went on: with heightened security, but it went on.

Everyone—players, coaches, officials, television crews, concessionaires, fans—who showed up for the game a day after it was scheduled to be played had to have been at least a little apprehensive.  But there they were.  They got a moment to ponder the essential truth that someone who cheers for the other team isn’t the enemy: assholes who intentionally plow into pedestrians are.  Television viewers didn’t get that moment.  And whereas Curmie was unimpressed with the rendering of the national anthem, on this particular occasion he’d have liked to have seen it, especially given the image you see here of New Orleans mayor LaToya Cantrell.

The crowd’s chanting “USA!  USA!  USA!” at the end was unscripted, but that doesn’t mean it shouldn’t have been anticipated.  ESPN sideline reporter Laura Rutledge was widely and appropriately praised for her reporting of events in New Orleans from the initial attack all the way through the game.  She could have told the bosses what to expect, but perhaps she was fooled into thinking there was a decision-maker with more savvy than a dead flounder.

The chant may have been trite, it may have been was certainly eminently predictable, but it was above all else a communal monodigital salute to those who would attack us.  Ultimately, we’re family.  We can disagree, loudly and stridently, about everything from politics to what team to cheer for, but if you come at any of us just for being us, you’ll have to deal with all of us.  We are bloodied but unbowed.  We are legion.  Messing with us is contra-indicated.

(BTW, don't ask why that one paragraph is formatted differently than all the others.  Blogspot is inscrutable.)