SportsCenter Fumbles Again

SportsCenter is generally a fine show, featuring sleek production, skillful anchormen, and up-to-the-minute coverage.  Sometimes, though, they drop the ball, usually when the show strays from its main purpose of showing highlights (this is what has made Baseball Tonight unwatchable for at least the last five years); witness the overlong segments of cliched “analysis” by meathead ex-jocks or last month’s unbelievably retarded “Mount Rushmore of Sports.”

Such fuck-ups are relatively minor, as one can simply stop watching for the duration of the segment.  For the past two days, however, they’ve ruined the entire show.  How?  They’ve dedicated a third of the screen to displaying the first round matchups of the NCAA tournament.  Now, I love March Madness; though I’m mainly a baseball fan, I consider the tournament the most exciting sporting event of the year.  But why the fuck do I need to see the pairings in real time?  They were released several days ago and haven’t changed since.  Anyone who’s interested in the tournament can see them in the newspaper or online;  it’s impossible to keep track of the brackets when they’re displayed two at a time anyway.  Even more maddening, to what is half the show devoted?  THE FUCKING NCAA TOURNAMENT.  And, as if that wasn’t enough redundancy for one hour, they’re even showing the brackets for the women’s tournament, which will only be watched by the players’ mothers.

I hope someone gets fired for this.

Welcome Back, Chuck

Charles Barkley is the man.  Known as “The Round Mound of Rebound” during his playing days, Barkley racked up 12,546 rebounds in his 16-year career despite being a 6’4″ fatass.  Upon retiring, he joined the TNT broadcast team.  As I’ve mentioned in an earlier post, former athletes generally make poor commentators, but Chuck is an exception.  He’s knowledgeable, insightful, articulate, and very funny.  I remember a broadcast a few years ago during which Chuck referred to a team with a size disadvantage as “midgets,” as he had often done.  He quickly caught himself, saying (I’m paraphrasing), “excuse me: ‘little people.’  I got a letter from the little people society, and they don’t want me to use that word anymore.”  As the camera panned out for a commercial break, I heard him quip, “hey, don’t be mad at me, be mad at God.”

Sir Charles was released from prison today after spending three days in the joint for a DUI.   This past New Year’s Eve, Barkley was pulled over in Scottsdale, Arizona after running a stop sign.  After blowing a .15, he explained to the officer that he had run the stop sign because he was in a hurry to pick up the girl in his passenger seat.  Why the rush?  Chuck told the cop that he was going to go around the corner and get a blowjob; the girl had given him one a week earlier and it was the best he’d ever had.  Check out the police report here.

It was worth it.

Oral sex may not seem like justification for driving drunk, but think about it for a moment.  As an NBA star, Chuck must have recieved thousands of blowjobs; if this was the best he’d ever had, it must have been a hummer the likes of which the average man cannot even fathom.  Because of the size of his sample, it’s bound to contain some extreme outliers.  To illustrate this point, suppose that blowjob skill has a standard normal distribution.  Suppose further that you’ve received blowjobs from 10 different women, compared to 1,000 for Chuck (a conservative estimate).  I used a statistics package to simulate the quality of blowjobs each of you has received.  Your best was .74, well within one standard deviation from the mean of zero; Chuck’s best was an astonishing 3.74, nearly four standard deviations from the mean.  If that’s not reason to drive drunk, nothing is.