ABC and ESPN did what many feared was nearly impossible -- they covered the U.S. Figure Skating Championships from Salt Lake City without becoming obsessed with the ongoing controversy surrounding the 2002 Winter Olympics.
Which is not to say that the ABC/ESPN team ignored the scandal. But in three days of coverage (Thursday on ESPN2, Friday on ESPN and Saturday on ABC), they noted what had gone on and what was continuing to develop while at the same time concentrating on the skating competition.Oh, the announcers talked about it in grave tones. They repeatedly promoted upcoming reports -- mercifully brief reports -- on the scandal.
And, for anyone who has paid the slightest bit of attention to the scandal and its aftermath, those reports by Leslie Visser contained absolutely nothing new. They were simply rehashes of what had been reported elsewhere.
The lack of obsession with scandal wasn't only good for the Salt Lake Organizing Committee and the people of Utah, but it was good for viewers all over the country. Those viewers were tuning in to see Michelle Kwan and the other skaters, not Mike Leavitt, Frank Joklik and Mitt Romney.
And the the two events really didn't have anything to do with each other -- other than the fact that the the championships were the first major winter sports event Salt Lake had hosted since the scandal broke.
(It was also sort of precursor to what NBC will undoubtedly do when it covers the 2002 Games. Of course, the network will take note of the scandal, but given the Peacock's multibillion-dollar investment in the Olympics you can certainly expect NBC to downplay it as much as possible.)
The only really annoying part of the ABC/ESPN coverage of the scandal was something that could be noted about coverage by NBC, CBS, Fox News, CNN or any other outlet -- the solemn talk about how all of this has cast a pall over the city and the state and that Utahns are sort of in a communal deep funk over it.
Most of us seem to be going about our lives just fine, thank you. We may be embarrassed, outraged or annoyed when we have time to give it any thought, but the majority of Utahns seem far less obsessed with the scandal than the various TV news outlets seem to be.
YES! HE'S BAAACK: So, Marv Albert has paid his debt to society and now he's going to be doing basketball play-by-play for TNT's coverage of the NBA.
All of you who are surprised by this . . . could probably hold a meeting in a phone booth.
Still, it's at least a bit troubling. Albert did, after all, plead guilty to charges stemming from a sexual assault upon a woman. And, after pleading guilty, he did a round of televised interviews in which he denied he'd done anything wrong.
It will be impossible to ever watch or listen to him again without that knowledge lurking somewhere at or just below the surface.
THEY NEVER LEARN: Those bozos at the Western Athletic Conference are spewing the same sort of baloney as the league retreats to eight teams that they did when it expanded to 16. The remaining eight -- the league that will be left when Utah, BYU and six others leave this summer -- are "mapping a new course," but it's the same old disinformation.
Like touting their television clout, including the fact that they have teams in the sixth, seventh and 11th largest markets. But as has been clearly demonstated over the past three years, not much of anyone in San Francisco cares about San Jose State; not much of anyone in Dallas/Fort Worth cares about SMU or TCU; and not much of anyone in Houston cares about Rice.
Oh, well. At least that's not as disingenuous as the new/old WAC's statements that their member schools are located in "scenic settings." In addition to genuinely scenic Honolulu, those would be Dallas, Fort Worth, Houston, Fresno, Tulsa, San Jose and El Paso.
Yeah, right.