Once upon a time it was the "Battle of the Network Stars," before it was "Home Run Derby," "Celebrity Boxing" and the XFL. Now it's , the latest pseudo sport taking various dimly lit clusters of your satellite uplink by storm.
NBC will televise the World Tour Tournament of Champions from Las Vegas this afternoon while CBS is thigh-pad deep into its Super Bowl pregame telethon. The concept_, not interminable pregame blather_isn't exactly original thinking. The Travel Network began airing the World Tour last March, a brainstorm that has since been knocked off by ESPN and Bravo.
It doesn't even figure to pack much punch as a counterprogramming tactic. Think "A History Channel Presentation: The Evolution of Rayon" going up against the Academy Awards.
Then again, it might surprise us. Televised has a powerful, if difficult to explain, appeal, the kind of out-of-left-field hook that had us tuning in to watch Gabe Kaplan run the 200-yard dash, and Tonya Harding throw right uppercuts.
is a gamble. OK, sure, there's some strategy involved. Mostly it's a gamble. Put it this way_Einstein could have lost a government grant in five minutes if he'd been dealt the wrong cards.
Which makes it a natural attraction for anyone who enjoys competitive sports. Because everything connected with competitive sports is a gamble, too. Put it this way_George Seifert can accumulate the best record of any head coach in NFL history with the 49ers, then move on to Carolina and, employing the same principles, burn the Panthers to the ground.
Only with , the results are immediate. With competitive sports, we have to wait. For example, the question of the past week is: Who took the biggest gamble_the Raiders, for hiring Norv Turner as their new head coach, or Turner, for accepting the Raiders' offer?
Raiders top brain Al Davis knows the drill. "Three years from now, two years from now ... one year from now there will be a determination whether we were right or not," he said.
That's not an unworkable time frame. On the other hand, it doesn't compare to watching Phil the Unibomber drawing to a pair of Jacks in the World Classic.
How about the 49ers? We still don't know how this Dennis Erickson thing is going to work out (though we can say with some certainty that it's a bad thing he waited until after his first season with the team to announce he would be getting more involved with the offense).
We'll know more by the end of next season. Which isn't to be confused with watching Gattlin' Gun Gus Hansen break up two pair to shoot for a royal flush.
How about the two-time defending conference champion New Jersey Nets firing head coach Byron Scott while in first place? That's a gamble, the wisdom of which will reveal itself to us as the NBA season unfolds.
But does it compare to the immediacy of Alan Goehring turning over his card after drawing to an inside straight?
When you get right down to it, it all comes down to the luck of the draw, no matter how much thought goes into the front end of the process_the Warriors' trade for Nick Van Exel, the Giants' decision to pinch pennies instead of surrounding Barry Bonds with sufficient muscle, the A's inclination to hitch their wagon to Bobby Crosby's star, Carolina's insistence on running an offense in Sunday's Super Bowl, Mario Lemieux's election to have surgery this season so he can come back again next season, Frank McCourt's decision to buy the Los Angeles Dodgers with money that hasn't been printed yet (and baseball's decision to let him), ESPN's notion to put the first season of "Playmakers" on DVD.
Debatable strategies, all, with a lot at stake in every instance. It's standard sporting fare, the kind of drama that piques our interest. But episodic. And as such, time-consuming.
In , the deal can be revealed in the time it takes a playing card to flutter across the table. And for a guy like Chris Moneymaker to flip it over, read it and weep.
So while on the surface NBC's decision to televise against CBS' pregame show would appear to be the worst kind of gamble_imitative thinking, a long shot at best_you never know.
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