Short of a well-placed nuclear warhead, there’s no cure for what has relegated WFAN to a can’t-listen station (a few minutes, at most) among smarter-than-dimwitted sports fans.
Blow the place up. Remove the rubble. Start over. Find genuinely knowledgeable and thoughtful hosts, those who consider clever something higher than the sound of gastric flatulence.
But who in such an important role would recognize the difference between better and bad? And given the shape of the sports-radio industry as a whole, who would be allowed to hire based on appealing to an audience that didn’t target young, male reprobates?
Wednesday, that ad again, this time read by a likely unsuspecting, just-following-orders update man, claiming that a sucker-targeting, sports-gambling operation offers, among other things, “better odds.”
That claim was a throw-in within the ad, heard deep in the come-on. If the company in fact offered “better odds,” such a claim would be at the top, in the middle and at the end of the pitch. And examples of “better odds” would have eagerly been provided.
But the ad was bogus, and WFAN, its ownership heavily invested in listeners losing money to such operations, remains loaded with such get-rich-quick enticements to invest with “businesses” fully predicated on clients losing their dough.
Thus it’s highly unlikely that WFAN would do anything — anything honest — to reverse that cash flow and content, let alone surround those ads with genuinely talented weekday hosts. In the interim, we’ll have to wait until these operations run short on suckers, especially those who learned the truth the hard way — taken for a ride by WFAN.
In what stands as the ultimate irony, the only WFAN host who points out that such dishonest salesmanship is dishonest — that the parlay bets so aggressively pitched in WFAN’s ads “are terrible bets” — is Craig Carton, who did hard time as the point man in scams to support his profound gambling addiction. Cause and defect.
Most other times, however, Carton’s on board, as the afternoon drive co-host, to sell his station and himself as a preferred stop for those who enjoy “guy talk,” put-downs, childish, unfunny sexual innuendo and junior high boys room crotch and toilet talk.
The morning drive show continues to be hosted by professional pig Gregg Giannotti and bring-it-on enabler “Weekday Boomer Esiason,” the phony who acts like a gentleman on CBS’s NFL pregame shows.
In other words, this was a waste of my space and your time. Even marginally better is out of the question. WFAN will stay the “coarse.” And young male suckers will remain its primary target audience.
9/11 mourners become targets of LIV defenders
The quality of civilized debate in the U.S. has fallen to the level at which those who oppose the Saudi government’s millions-to-burn incursion into pro golf, because they remain convinced Saudi Arabia was complicit in the 9/11 attacks that slaughtered 3,000 Americans, are rationalized by simpletons as shills for the PGA.
As if protesting the murder of lost ones is evidence of being a PGA front and an anti-Donald Trump political movement among “far left progressives,” all because Trump, who once publicly blamed Saudi Arabia for the 9/11 attacks, saw fit to rent out his golf club and play happy host to the Saudi government golf mullahs this weekend.
So the murdered and the grieving — and those who remain convinced that the 9/11 attacks weren’t planned and financed by Saudi free agents — are now politicized by those desperate to apply extremist politics to everything. Yep, all those who felt Trump betrayed his own convictions and minimal sense of right from wrong must all be Marxists.
But that’s the sad, corrosive state of the disunion.
If not for the double standard, ESPN would have no standards at all.
As several readers have noted, it’s rather incongruous that ESPN named its annual Humanitarian Award for Muhammad Ali, who mercilessly but merrily belittled Joe Frazier as “a gorilla” — among other inhumane sins.
Yet ESPN fired longtime tennis analyst Doug Adler because some NY Times stringer recklessly and falsely claimed that Adler suddenly decided to call Venus Williams “a gorilla.”
If you can’t figure out which TV channel the Yankees are on this season, you can go through 100-plus cable channels, two or three times, or assume they’re the exclusive property of one of MLB’s four “show us the money” streaming operations as bait for future added payments to watch big league baseball.
Thus, for you, the Yankees might not be on at all.
For those left incredulous as to how this could possibly happen, this is how Rob Manfred and his merry band of team owners “grow the game,” a game that once didn’t need their greed-blinded help.
Managers find ways to lose
Thursday’s Royals-Yankees game was yet another case of teams in prefabricated “planning” and “scripting” of games until they are devoured from the inside out.
Over 8 ¹/₂ (plus one out) innings, there were six hits, 24 strikeouts, 23 runners left on base, six pitchers and lots of hitting, for lack of other skills, into shifts.
And it was another game with the managers swapping turns trying to lose. Kansas City reliever Dylan Coleman entered in the eighth. He struck out two. The third out was an infield pop. But that didn’t prevent meager Mike Matheny from trying to improve on perfect with inning-designated pitcher analytics.
So Matheny, skipper of a 39-60 team, removed Coleman for Scott Barlow who, with one out, threw the pitch Aaron Judge hit for the game-ending homer. Apparently the Royals’ computer didn’t include a warning that Judge hits lots of home runs.
It’s not that ESPN’s stat gatherers heavily lean on the silly and useless, it’s that someone, presumably smarter than they, approves them for national inspection and consumption.
Last week: “Diamondbacks first home sweep of the Giants since 2019.” Fascinating! ESPN could have pointed to something useful, such as “Giants fall under. 500,” but instead went with stupid.
Then there was this: Brandon Nimmo “has a .260 BA with runners in scoring position” with an “overall average of .266.” Well, that explains it. Explains what? Absolutely nothing. (Thanks to reader Bill Siegel for that heads-up.)
By the way, the Bargain Basement is conveniently located on the third floor.
Class dismissed: The F-word has become such a standardized form of public speech that Al Gold, owner of Cyberknife, winner of the Haskell Stakes at Monmouth last week, was unable to conduct a postrace TV interview without including two F’s.
Not long ago that would have been condemned as totally uncivil, thoroughly unacceptable. And Gold would have made news and noise as inexcusably vulgar.
Now? No big deal. We just keep sprinting backwards.
If Jets offensive lineman Mekhi Becton doesn’t see his shift from left tackle to right tackle as a demotion (QB Zach Wilson is right-handed, thus his left side is his blind side), then he’s blissfully unaware as to why the Jets made him their first pick in 2020.
By: Ny Post
