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Sports

What’s Good About Ultimate Fighting

December 5, 2006

I know a couple of fellows, perfectly reputable sorts, who follow "ultimate fighting," the relatively new spectator sport that combines boxing, kicking, and grappling techniques. The impression one gets from the media is that the sport is an outlaw thing, even less rational than boxing and professional wrestling. The increasing appeal of ultimate fighting, however, is based on the fact that it is actually a good deal more sensible than either of these. USA Today has published today an excellent article analyzing the appeal of ultimate fighting. Here are some excerpts: "Boxing is boring. Brawls are not," says Stephanie Cassidy, 24, a sixth-grade teacher from Fairfield whose husband got the $400-a-pop tickets for her birthday. Which is pretty much all you need to know about how this salute to Rome’s Colosseum has evolved from cultural pariah to mainstream hit. . . . Signs of success include the fact that UFC’s Spike TV reality show, The Ultimate Fighter, often outdraws NBA and baseball games among the coveted 18- to 34-year-old male demographic. Its pay-per-view bouts are estimated to pull in eight figures, and ufc.com has doubled its traffic, to 2 million unique visitors a month, in the past year. .

The NC False Prosecution Scandal—and What It Means

October 16, 2006

By S. T. Karnick

Your intrepid correspondent went on record early criticizing Durham, North Carolina, prosecutor Thomas Nifong for his outrageous rush to prosecute three Duke lacrosse players accused of rape by a stripper. On May 3 I wrote my first words on the subject for the Reform Club site, as follows: The recent case in North Carolina—in which a prosecutor rushed forward with indictments against two Duke University lacrosse players despite a complete lack of plausible evidence against them and openly disregarded undeniable exculpatory evidence regarding one of them, in order to court votes from people of the same skin color as the accuser during primary elections that were then just a couple 0f weeks away—was just one of the more blatant examples of prosecutorial misconduct in recent months. Subsequently, I wrote in great detail about what I characterized as Nifong’s outrageous railroading of the Duke players, in light of two excellent articles on the subject in National Review Online a month later, available here and here. I returned to the story several times, continually pointing out that Nifong had no case and was pursuing it solely as a vote-getting measure, knowing that

Best New Show on Television

October 11, 2006

By S. T. Karnick

Most people aren’t going to like to hear this, but I think that we are truly in a golden age of television right now. Sure, most TV series are pap, but the best are truly comparable to theatrical movies in both story and production values. And they are getting better and better. A good example is Friday Night Lights, which earns my vote for best new show on television. Yes, it’s about high school football, which might seem to limit its appeal, but the subject most decidedly does not do so. The program uses its context to tell stories that are about much more than football. The central theme of the show is what each character sees as his or her purpose in life and how they pursue it. We are invited to judge the characters on their view of what their purpose is: glory, pleasure, honor, service, etc.; and on how they go after it—by hard work, chicanery, manipulation, planning, intuition, etc. And we are given realistic looks at the obstacles they must overcome, the disappointments they endure, as they move through life. The choices they make in response to these disappointments are some of the most revealing about

ABC Rethinks Saturday Nights, Shuns Babysitters

September 24, 2006

By S. T. Karnick

ABC Rethinks Saturday Nights, Shuns Babysitters

Saturday night has long been a desert on television because the networks and cable channels came to the conclusion that nobody worth chasing for advertisers is at home then. Hence they largely programmed cheap shows that had a chance of appealing to babysitters. Much of the Saturday night programming in recent years has been replays of theatrical movies which most people have already had several chances to see in the theater and on other cable channels, magazine programs about murderers, and reruns of shows that had appeared earlier in the week. That’s why the nets run those three-hour marathons of Law and Order: Special Victims Unit on Saturday night. Of course, such a choice becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. If purveyors program only for teenage girls, then teenage girls is the audience they are going to get—if that. That’s why it’s interesting to see ABC trying something different, running college football on Saturday nights. The games they’ve chosen so far this season have been good ones, and last night’s Notre Dame-Michigan State matchup turned into an "instant classic," as the announcers aptly described it. Notre Dame went into the game under intense scrutiny after their loss last week to Michigan,

Football Rules the Box Office

September 18, 2006

By S. T. Karnick

For the second time in the last month, a football film is the weekend’s top box-office attraction. The Gridiron Gang, starring Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson, led the way in weekend receipts with an estimated total of $15 million. The Gridiron Gang is another in a long line of sports movies that show how troubled individuals develop character by participating in sports, where excellence is the pursuit and achieving real, visible results is the only way to succeed. An important aspect of these films is the leadership brought by a coach who has battles of his or her own to fight. Mentorship and the responsibility of each generation to train the next one are central concerns of such films. Movies such as Invincible, The Replacements, Friday Night Lights, The Longest Yard, and The Ice Princess all pursue this approach, and the underlying concern is the same: redemption. As such, they can be quite moving despite their often formulaic story lines. (In fact, a great deal of their power is the direct result of their formulaic nature, about which we will write more in due course.) The Brian DePalma crime story The Black Dahlia brought in a lackluster $10 mil in its

Quirkiness for Sale

September 8, 2006

By S. T. Karnick

The commercialization of eccentricity continues to reach new levels of absurdity. Charismatically nutty Cincinnati Bengals receiver Chad Johnson is marketing his goofy new hairstyle, AP reports: Chad Johnson, the master of the touchdown dance and the locker room list, is branching out into the field of marketing. Marketing what? Himself, of course. The Pro Bowl receiver changed his hairstyle this season — instead of the shaved head, he’s got a blond-dyed Mohawk — and is helping the Cincinnati Bengals sell his new look at their gift shop. For $30, fans can buy a rubber scalp with a blond Mohawk to slip on the tops of their heads, a sign of unity with the most colorful Bengal. The "Chad Mohawk Head" will be available at the team’s gift shop before the home opener against Cleveland on Sept. 17. "You don’t have to cut a Mohawk anymore," Johnson said, in a late-night infomercial tone. "You can just go buy the hat. You can buy the head. It’s me."

Are You Ready for Some Football?

September 7, 2006

By S. T. Karnick

The college football season started last week with a great set of games, and continues this week with a showdown between no. 1 Ohio State University and no. 2 Texas. And the NFL season starts tonight, with a game between the reigning Super Bowl champion Pittsburgh Steelers and the up-and-coming Miami Dolphins. The Steelers will be without the services of quarterback Ben Roethlisberger, recovering from an emergency appendectomy. The Dolphins, under second-year coach Nick Saban, are attempting to return to respectability after a long drought. With Daunte Culpepper at quarterback, they should be better, even though the former Minnesota gunslinger is still recovering from knee surgery. Tonight’s game aptly represents one of the great strengths of the NFL as a sports entertainment venture: parity. Parity—the relatively small gap in ability between the league’s best and worst teams—in the past decade has made the NFL in some ways an even more exciting proposition than before. Only one team in the NFC, for example, has reached the playoffs the last two years in a row (the Seattle Seahawks). Hence in week 1 nearly everybody starts out with both optimism and great concern: we can almost imagine that anybody might end up anywhere.

Hope in Disney’s “Invincible” Film

September 5, 2006

By S. T. Karnick

The Walt Disney movie Invincible won the box office competition again last weekend, bringing in a gross of $15.2 million. The film merits attention. More than just a sports movie, Invincible tells the true-life story of Vince Papale, a 30 year old bartender who made the Philadelphia Eagles in an open tryout that then-new Eagles coach Dick Vermeil meant as mostly a publicity stunt and a way of motivating players. Set during the economically depressed late 1970s among the working class in Rust Belt South Philadelphia, the film presents the theme of hope in several different ways. First, of course, there is Vince’s hope—vague at first but increasingly real—of making the Eagles as a wide receiver and special teams player. (Mark Wahlberg’s portrayal of Vince is very solid and affecting.) Second, there is Vince’s hope of finding a woman who will love him and stay with him through good times and bad. Third, there is the hope of Vince and his working class brethren that they will find permanent work that pays decently. (The film regularly cuts to brief scenes showing union members on strike, in the bar discussing job cuts, and so on.) Fourth is the hope of Eagles

NFL Defenses Blitzing More

August 24, 2006

By S. T. Karnick

ESPN.com’s John Clayton notes that NFL defenses are blitzing much more often in preseason games this year, which should make for a more interesting and wide-open game this fall if the trend continues. Clayton writes: I’ve never seen this much blitzing in the preseason, and it tells me to expect a year of weird, wacky defenses. Normally, defenses are pretty basic in the first two preseason games. Not this year. Defensive coordinators are testing the timing of their blitzes. It’s not that they are going with a lot of exotic stuff, It’s just that they are sending extra defenders. What’s really noticeable is how much more they are doing it on the running downs. The tendencies have been to see teams blitz more on first and second down and rush only three or four on third down, dropping more defenders into coverage. The ability to blitz is causing more teams to have hybrid defenses. Several 4-3 defenses, such as Baltimore, the New York Giants and Miami, have an end standing up and either rushing or dropping into coverages. That’s a very interesting observation, especially the use of blitzes on running downs. It’s a big risk, big reward situation. Blitzing

Sports Writing—If Only It Were About Sports!

August 17, 2006

By S. T. Karnick

Sports Writing—If Only It Were About Sports!

Way back in the olden days before wall-to-wall coverage on television, highlights programs, and home video recording devices, sports writers wrote about sporting events. That is to say, they described the events for those who had not seen them and as a way of reliving the events for those who had seen them. Writers used a good deal of imagination in describing what happened on the field, indulging their desire to be real writers, not just newspaper schlubs. The best writing in the newspaper was often in the sports section—vivid, powerful, dramatic, and accurate. The latter was so because numerous people actually witnessed the events the writers covered, and hence errors would be quickly exposed. The best sports writers would do a superb job of describing the ebb and flow of a game, its dramatic ups and downs, and its place in the context of the season. The story was the game itself, and the personalities of the players were important only to the degree that they fit in as characters in the bigger story on the court or on the field. Writers such as Red Smith, Damon Runyon, and A. J. Liebling made sports journalism as interesting

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What’s Good About Ultimate Fighting

The NC False Prosecution Scandal—and What It Means

Best New Show on Television

ABC Rethinks Saturday Nights, Shuns Babysitters

Football Rules the Box Office

Quirkiness for Sale

Are You Ready for Some Football?

Hope in Disney’s “Invincible” Film

NFL Defenses Blitzing More

Sports Writing—If Only It Were About Sports!

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