March Madness Musings and More

By Leonard Shapiro
Special to washingtonpost.com
Tuesday, March 25, 2008 11:58 AM

As usual, it was another intriguing opening to March Madness on CBS, with not quite as many mega-upsets in the cutdown from 64 to this week's round of 16. Still, it was almost always must-watch television, one of our favorite curl-up-on-the-couch weekends of the year. And so, a few observations from the semi-prone position:

• Don't you just love much of the rich language of hoops -- the bunnies and bottom-of-the-net buckets, the snap of the twine, monster dunks and points in the paint?

And yet, announcers constantly referring to all those tall trees as "bigs" somehow seems dehumanizing of the larger men on campus. Why not just tell us their names? I'm also getting tired of hearing "Numbers!!!!" any time a team in transition looks to have a man or two advantage on the fast break. Hey, it's television. We can see it's three on one or four on two. Keep those "Numbers!!!!" to yourself.

• It's still comfortably re-assuring to hear veteran play-by-play man Dick Enberg do a west coast college basketball game. His "oh my" enthusiasm during Stanford's overtime victory over Marquette -- arguably the best game over the first four tournament days -- was exactly what you look for from a big-time broadcaster, aided nicely by thoughtfully perceptive analyst Jay Bilas.
• Bill Raftery's voice was shot when I heard him in the first round, though he still manages to rasp out "a kiiiissssss off the glass" any chance he gets, even if you can barely hear him say it.
• I still get goose bumps every time I see a replay of Jim Valvano's frantically mad dash on to the court after his 1983 N.C. State team won the Final Four on a last second put-back by Lorenzo Charles. Same for watching an oft-repeated commercial (aren't they all) that includes footage of then mostly obscure North Carolina freshman Michael Jordan draining that clutch 18-footer from the left side for the winning points against Georgetown in the 1982 title game.
• The CBS studio team of Greg Gumbel, Clark Kellogg and Seth Davis always gets precisely to the point. No inane ad nauseum blabbering or "look-at-me" posing like so many of their ESPN colleagues. They pick a key moment, offer a pithy sound bite of often prescient analysis and move on.
• After all these years, you'd think CBS would do a little better job switching far sooner from blowouts to close games. I was in Ft. Lauderdale watching North Carolina's rout of Mount St. Mary's, a game that saw the Tar Heels go up by 30 early in the second half. Several other games on at the same time were much closer, but the network waited far too long to switch away. I know the South Florida area is considered ACC territory now that the Miami Hurricanes are in the conference, but this was ridiculous.
• Billy Packer remains spot-on with his savvy game analysis in what has to be the anniversary of his 100th season doing college basketball on CBS. As long as he stays with the hoops and keeps away from his soapbox on all things off the court, we're all the better for it. Neither he nor Dick Vitale seem to be appearing as product pitchmen in quite as many commercials as in years past, definitely a positive development.
• That endless stream of commercials just keeps coming. In games I watched, I can't recall a single stoppage of play for a timeout or an injury when CBS didn't go right into its full Madison Avenue mode. There are times when they string four or five 30 second spots together, with a few promos for CBS programming. I wasn't doing an official count, but I'd guess there are at least 20 commercials aired between the end of the first half and the start of the second in every game.

If I'm a fan in the stands, I'm not happy with all the dead time until play resumes, and there are far too many official TV timeouts, all designed to get even more advertising inventory, at $1.4 million per 30-second spot, on the air.

Sitting at home can be equally March maddening, particularly after viewing the same spot for what seems like the sixth time in the last 22 minutes. It's particularly annoying at the end of close games, when you'd like to see the cameras stay focused on the teams in the huddle, the lively pep bands and the frenzy/tension in the stands. Staying with the game also would give the broadcasters a little time to talk about each team's strategy when they return to the court.

CBS obviously has to pay the bills for its 11-year, $6 billion rights fee investment made back in 1999, but there's got to be a better way.

Another Bad Move

How sad to see that the Redskins decided not to bring back Chris Helein as director of public relations next season, yet another entry on Dan Snyder's long list of big-time mistakes since he purchased the team in 1999.

Helein did not have an easy job the last two seasons as the man mostly in the middle between the football operation and the local and national media. But he did it as well as anyone possibly could working for a frequently dysfunctional organization that often treats loyal employees (remember Gregg Williams) putting in 80 hour weeks 12 months a year with such utter disdain.

Helein, now the fifth Redskins PR director in nine years by my count, was viewed as Joe Gibbs' guy, but I'm also told Jim Zorn also liked having him around. But when Helein essentially was kept as much in the dark over the team's bizarre coaching search as the media covering the team, surely he had to know his future with the club might just be in jeopardy.

Helein performed admirably this past season in the aftermath of the Sean Taylor tragedy and probably should have been given a raise instead of the boot. Several sources in and out of the organization also say they sensed the meddling hand of Vinny Cerrato in Helein's departure. If so, shame on him and the Redskins for not having the good sense to keep one of their more valuable front office assets on the payroll.

The only good news here is that at least someone in the organization had the good sense to hire equally competent Zack Bolno, the Washington Wizards public relations director the last four years, as Helein's replacement this week. Bolno worked for six years in the Tampa Bay Bucs PR department before joining the Wizards and is generally held in high regard by the local sports media. Perhaps this time, the Redskins will do the right thing and make this a long-term move. Then again¿

More MMA

As expected following last week's column concerning the CBS decision to air four mixed martial arts Saturday night specials, we got lots of responses, including the anticipated vile "you ignorant, fat, bald, out of touch moron" e-mails and Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban weighing in on his personal blog under the headline "This Guy Proves Anyone With a Keyboard Can Be Stupid."

You might say the same clearly holds true for Cuban, who couldn't even spell your faithful correspondent's name right. In any case, we'll give the other side their say in some of the more thoughtful e-mail responses printed below.

E-Mails of the Week

I understand your trepidation but rest assured that in the respectable promotions the brawlers never have lasting success. This is because the more technical JuJitsu, Muay Thai and Wrestlers prey on their weaknesses and are able to quickly show that they do not belong in the technical art of MMA.

But CBS made the deal with Pro Elite, which puts on EliteXC which I would not consider respectable. With dancing models everywhere, even right behind the corners in between rounds, and putting Kimbo Slice and David "Tank" Abbott up as a main event in their last event on Showtime. Both fighters would not stand a chance against a technical fighter of any discipline and gained their renown from their brutal natures and illegal street fighting.

I am hoping this alliance will not put MMA back a few steps by putting one of its worst feet forward. I hope CBS and ProElite are very strategic with how they present the event and who they include in order to show that MMA is not street fighting or Roman gladiators.

Samuel McBee

Sammamish, Wash.

Thanks for telling the truth about this abomination of non-sporting activity. Maybe they could cover it on the hunting page, or on the sheriff's report of recently released criminals. This may be the final comment on the decline of American culture.

Jerry Outlaw

Eagle, Idaho

I was never a mixed martial arts (MMA) fan up until it hit its media explosion in 2005. Since then, I've not only become a fan and supporter, I've also written a book that attempts to situate this violent sport in our violent society. Upon first being seduced by the MMA game myself, I did hold an acute skepticism, and much like you, my cynicism with MMA rested in how it might be ingested by youth and young adults. As a scholar who carries out research on juvenile delinquency prevention (much of it violence prevention) and who has been published in fairly prestigious academic journals, I had to ask myself what drew me to the sport and what that meant given my profession and research interests.

As a former athlete at both the high school (football, wrestling, and track) and NCAA Division I college (track) level, I thought exploring the MMA game would be an interesting scholarly project. So I and a colleague interviewed forty MMA athletes and asked them about safety issues, their sense of responsibility in promoting nonviolent messages, the dominant MMA media, traditional martial arts values, and a variety of other issues. We were able to interview some of MMA's biggest stars (Randy Couture, Quinton Jackson, Guy Mezger), but also made a concerted effort to speak with young men who were relatively unknown in the sport. One might think that by speaking only with mixed martial artists, we would only attain ridiculously biased opinions that glorified the sport. And overall, our interviewees did endorse MMA (obviously), but they also gave some serious suggestions for reform.

What I can say about the men I interviewed was that they were not overwhelmingly insensitive, hyper-masculine thugs. Some of them fit that mold (as is common in all male-dominant sports), but not most of them. And many of them expressed a side of the MMA game that is rarely, if ever, disseminated in the MMA media. We know what sells in the contact and collision sports -- violence. Whether it be physical violence, verbal, or both, it is violence that sells, and consequently, that is what is presented in MMA reality shows, commercials, and pre-competition events.

And the competitions themselves are violent, but I would say no more violent or dangerous than football, hockey, rugby, and certainly not boxing. Given the prevalence of concussions and torn ACL's in women's/girls' soccer and basketball, MMA is about as dangerous as those two sports, as MMA has cuts and concussions, but tends not to have major knee injuries. Honestly, I would not want a cut on my forehead, but I would much rather have that cut than a concussion after reading all the recent research on NFL retirees. Furthermore, the various ways to win or lose a match via submission make MMA far safer than the fledgling skeptic would initially assume. Yes, an armbar hurts while in competition, but as soon as it's released, there is no pain. And as for your gender critique, like soccer, basketball, and other sports, women should be allowed to compete in MMA if they are properly prepared (same as the men).

MMA is not a "so-called" sport, as you put it. It is a sport, with problems like all other sports. Like baseball, track and field, football, swimming, cycling, and so on, it has some steroid issues. Like basketball, football, hockey, soccer, etc., fans sometimes get into fights at events. And finally, MMA is not akin to street fighting. I understand that it is marketed in many ways that way. However, a street fight may consist of uneven numbers, weapons, and other variables that make the situation excessively violent and dangerous. MMA has rules that make the sport relatively safe (I would say no sport is totally safe) if both participants are properly conditioned and know how to defend themselves. The problems emerge when contestants are paired who are unevenly matched, which does occur in some smaller MMA organizations, or when aged-out fighters continue to compete when they should have retired long ago, which unfortunately also happens in boxing.

I suggest you spend some times with a responsible MMA gym, where athletes train who were once elite wrestlers, boxers, and traditional martial artists. You'll see that the MMA marketing strategies paint an extremely narrow picture of the men and women engaged in the sport. And I feel confident in saying that you will also come to respect the sport a great deal more than you do now. You may not like it all together, but I doubt if you will hold the scathing views expressed in your recent article.

David T. Mayeda

Honolulu

Leonard Shapiro can be reached at Badgerlen@hotmail.com or badgerlen@aol.com.