Reality Ruins Hollywood Ending

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Talking Points -- Jan. 8

Tony Kornheiser assesses the legacy of Joe Gibbs 2.0, the BCS championship game and Mr. Blackwell's worst-dressed woman.
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During the session, a 17-minute audiotape was played of last Friday's telephone conversation with his former personal trainer, Brian McNamee. The tape left open more questions than it answered, if only because Clemens never did specifically say to McNamee something to the effect of "why did you tell Mitchell I used steroids."

Eight times during the call, McNamee asked Clemens, "what do you want me to do?" and Roger the Dodger never said to him, "well for starters, how about telling people it's just not true, I made it up and you did it to save your rear end from landing in jail."

Perhaps there were legal ramifications in all of this, considering all the lawsuits flying around these days and a Congressional hearing Clemens says he'll attend next week in Washington. But the news conference raised more questions than it answered, and when Clemens stormed away from the podium, his petulance hardly evoked much sympathy for his cause.

I watched the news conference on CNN's Headline News, and the cable network also did viewers no favor by constantly interrupting the taped recorded conversation because of foul language that was being used by both men. Last time we looked, CNN is on cable, where any and all profanity is usually tolerated, and in this instance, the gaps in the tape gave new meaning to the expression "taken out of context." The dirty word policing was absolutely unnecessary, and never should have happened.

The night before, a far calmer Clemens appeared on a much-ballyhooed "60 Minutes" interview, sitting across from Mike Wallace, who had said publicly a few days before the session that he considered Clemens a friend. So shame on CBS for allowing him to do the interview in the first place.

Friends aren't supposed to interview friends on network television news shows that pride themselves on being journalistically sound, and producers should have insisted that someone else sit in that seat across from Clemens. If he'd refused to talk to anyone other than Wallace, CBS should have told him "fine, and don't let the door hit you on the rear end on the way out."

But as usual in the TV business, ratings concerns sadly trumped journalism, and Wallace conducted the interview. Somewhat to his credit, he did ask a number of pertinent questions and looked properly skeptical at times. But this usually fearless and relentless interviewer either has lost some speed on his own fastball, or was just sympathetic enough toward his friend to give him a semi-intentional walk.

Clemens admitting that he ingested the powerful prescription painkiller Vioxx, (now banned by the FDA) "like it was skittles" also spoke volumes about the pitcher's willingness to do whatever it took to keep pitching effectively. That's also called drug abuse, whether he used injected steroids or not, perhaps the most telling bit of information in the entire segment.

Out of Its League

Fox generally does a decent job as a National Football League rights-holder, but the broadcast of Monday night's BCS title game was about as pedestrian an effort as we've seen in a long time for a big-time, prime time sports event.

The low-energy game announcers, play-by-play man Thom Brennaman and analyst Charles Davis, were mostly deadly dull, and Davis's constant use of the term "dialed up" -- as in "he dialed up a safety blitz" -- became more maddening as Ohio State's nightmarish evening wore on. Where were high energy announcers Keith Jackson or Brent Musburger when you really needed them?

Fox doesn't do much college football during the season, but college presidents and the NCAA love to see the billions in rights fees the network is prepared to pay to televise the BCS bowls when the games count the most. Never mind that ABC and ESPN generally do their best work in the college game. Money always talks in these situations, even if the broadcast looked bargain basement at times.

The pre-game show hosted by Chris Rose (who?), with panelists Eddie George (the former Ohio State Heisman Trophy-winning running back), Florida coach Urban Meyer and Jimmy Johnson, one of the great rogue college coaches when he was at Oklahoma State, was mostly an embarrassment.