One of My Favorite Lies

Mid to late July is typically a pretty slow month for sports in America.  Football is really still a month or so away, basketball has been over for a month and baseball is caught somewhere between the All-Star Game and the playoffs.

It’s also the time of year rampant with one of my favorite lies.

One of my favorite lies is uttered by some of the best liars going…sports commentators.

The lie they all say goes something like this: “Boy, I wish we could stop talking about (Subject X) and get back to talking about the real action on the court, field or ballpark.”

Ha!!!!

Sports commentators love, no need, the off-the-field controversies.  They need them to stay employed and their networks and newspapers need them to stay in business.  A famous commentator and one of the more honest of the bunch often says about his own network: “We don’t broadcast sports, we broadcast competition.”

He’s half right.  They don’t broadcast sports, they broadcast conflict. And controversy and scandal are just synonyms for conflict.

Sports broadcasters and commentators who perpetuate this lie are like politicians who claim they hate government or corporate lobbyists who hate the tax code.  Politicians need government or else they have nothing to lead and lobbyists create odious and burdensome taxes in order to stay employed and rake in huge billables by trying to eradicate the same odious and burdensome taxes.

Think I exaggerate?  Deflategate, Tim Tebow, Johnny Manziel, Caitlin Jenner, domestic violence, Lebron’s hairline, Serena’s size, Tiger’s girlfriends. And networks are in business to make money. Every second they are on the air needs to be paid for.  Do you really think they would spend hundreds of hours broadcasting breathless debates about this if it lost them audience share and advertisers?

And do you really think the breathless broadcasters who keep the story alive really hate doing it?  Of course not.

And so the lie continues.