by John Walters

Tweet du Jour

Time and time again, people will ask “why?” The more I respond to this question, the less I think there needs to be an answer.
.#wednesdaywisdom #racehappy #SpartanRace https://t.co/zpiSllmZwT pic.twitter.com/Wtp6pAPC7J

— Amelia Boone (@ameliaboone) April 5, 2018

Starting Five

This is what we imagine Trump thinks the border crossing between Mexico and the USA is

A Border Context

Is illegal immigration from Mexico a massive problem? Your mileage may vary, but it is a massive phenomenon. Last month illegal crossing apprehensions spiked 37% from February’s total, up to 50,000 humans (our guess is there are more than a few who were apprehended more than once).

Why the sudden influx? You can never be too early for Coachella, especially when Beyonce and Eminem are headlining on consecutive nights.

Anyway, even though illegal border crossings are near a 46-year low (or were before March), that’s a lot of humanity crossing over without using the proper channels. So President Trump has decided to deploy the National Guard to “the border,” but does he have any idea where to place them?

This ad campaign has not aged well

The U.S.-Mexico border is 1,945 miles long. By comparison, the distance from San Diego to the Canadian border, roughly the Pacific coast of the U.S.A., is 1,300 miles long. Granted, we imagine the National Guard has sophisticated tracking equipment, infrared vision, etc., but on average, you’d need 4,000 Guardsmen just to position one at every half mile along the border. Now multiply that by three (12,000 Guardsmen) if you put them on eight-hour shifts.

And, oh, you know, it’s already approaching 90 degrees in southern Arizona in early April and it’s only about to get warmer the next five months. We don’t have a conventional answer, but we do have a radical one: Invade Mexico.

Now, you do that one of two ways: 1) Military invasion, and our forces go in 100 miles deep. We inform President Nieto that we do not want this territory permanently, but that this is the new DMZ, a No-Hombres-Land, until further notice. It’s not U.S. territory and it’s not Mexican. It’s simply a buffer zone, and anyone spotted making a run for the border (outside of towns in which they live) will be shot on sight. Harsh, we know, but effective.

2) Economically invade. To hell with NAFTA and the rest, Walmart and McDonald’s and Home Depot and whoever wants can set up shop in all Mexican towns north of Mexico City with all the protections a U.S. business would have stateside. Boom! Jobs happen, the economy flourishes, and no one wants to travel north any more.

2. Shohei Can You See?

Angels rookie Shohei Ohtani, who both pitches and hits, homered off former Cy Young Award winner Corey Kluber yesterday. Ohtani, who is Japanese, becomes the fourth Major Leaguer in history to hit two home runs AND record a win in his first week in the big leagues.

The real story about Ohtani (SOMEONE WAKE UP COLLEGE SPORTSWRITER TWITTER!!!) is the extremely unfair nature of his deal. Due to the agreement between baseball and MLBPA, Ohtani, 23, is only able, as a rookie 25 years old or younger, to earn the MLB minimum of $540,000 this year plus the maximum signing bonus of $2.3 million. Contrast that with the $20 million the Angels paid his former Japanese team, the Nippon Ham-Fighters, for his rights. The Angels are paying Ohtani’s former employers seven times what they are paying him.

After a few seasons of being underpaid, Trout is now making a lot of clams

There is a rising sun to Ohtani’s fortunes, though. His teammate Mike Trout, the best player in the American League the past four years, earned the then-minimum $510,000 as a 21 year-old rookie in 2013. This year he’s baseball’s highest-paid player, earning $34 million.

3. RG3 You Kidding Me?

Griffin is moving up in the AFC Central. That’s so Raven.

All but three of the quarterbacks who started in the last eleven Super Bowls are still in the NFL (and starting). The three who are not are Kurt Warner, 46 (retired, Hall of Famer), Peyton Manning, 42 (retired, future Hall of Famer) and Colin Kaepernick, 30.

While we are not suggesting that Kaepernick has Hall of Fame potential, it was ironic, on the 50th anniversary of Martin Luther King’s assassination, to learn that the Baltimore Ravens had signed Robert Griffin III to play quarterback. RG3 had been brought in to toss passes to wideout hopefuls and apparently the black birds liked what they saw and offered him a deal.

Last month The Undefeated posted a list of “The 50 Quarterbacks Who Have Signed Since Colin Kaepernick Became A Free Agent.” Names such as Joe Webb, Mitch Leidner, Zac Dysert, etc. It’s not just that Kaepernick has not been signed: no one has even invited him to throw to their wideouts, a la RG3. Hell, Johnny Manziel may find NFL redemption before Kaepernick does.

You’ve devoted your career to reversing MLK’s gains. Your lip service to him today is borderline obscene. https://t.co/5LXLF49TMA

— Austin Murphy (@ausmurph88) April 5, 2018

(The author of this tweet, MH friend Austin, covered the NFL for Sports Illustrated for approximately two decades)

All for taking a knee. It’s not that Kaep is Russell Wilson or even a Pro Bowler anymore, but no one on that list of 50 ever led his team to a pair of NFC Championship Games and one Super Bowl (in his first three years in the league). It’s confounding, if you base it strictly on talent, that no NFL team will sign him. It’s difficult to come to any other conclusion than that he’s being blackballed.

4. The Wrath Against Khan

Good news: There are places on Earth that actually stand behind their stated goals of protecting endangered species. In India, Bollywood actor Salman Khan, star of such films as Karan Arjun and Biwi No. 1, has been sentenced to five years in prison for poaching two rare antelopes while on a film set. Let’s hope the notoriously corrupt Indian government sticks to this sentence and is not “persuaded” to let Khan off on appeal.

5. No Nails Necessary

This is Kizhi Pogost, a church built in the 18th century on an island in the middle of a lake in Russia. It’s located 120 or so miles northeast of St. Petersburg. What makes this edifice so spectacular besides the very sight of it is that it was constructed entirely of wood—no nails—and that it has survived more than 200 years without succumbing to fire. It is the world’s tallest building built entirely of wood.

It is now a designate World Heritage Site. Whenever we are in need of wonder, we head to nationalgeographic.com

Reserves

Just an observation/tip here. We’ve started going back through The West Wing on Netflix as a coping mechanism. There’s a scene in Season 1, Episode 2, where Toby approaches the desk of Mrs. Landingham and asks if the president is busy. “It’s 9 a.m.,” she replies. “He’s upstairs in the residence with the First Lady watching Regis and Kathy Lee.”

“Really?” Toby asks.

And she shoots him a “Child, please” glare.

Imagine, a presidency where POTUS was at work by 9 a.m. as opposed to taking advantage of “executive time.”

Music 101

Bad Blood

I’m trying to imagine Neil Sedaka and his manager talking backstage moments earlier. “You really gonna wear that?” “Yeah.” “Um, okay.” This song remained at No. 1 on the Billboard charts for three weeks, aided by Elton John’s backing vocals.

Remote Patrol

The Masters

3 p.m. ESPN

First round coverage from Augusta. Tiger will likely be through by the time they come on air. C’mon, Lefty!

Frozen Four

Minnesota-Duluth vs. Ohio State

6 p.m. ESPN2

Michigan vs. Notre Dame

9 p.m. ESPN2

Three Big Ten schools (including the Irish, who won the conference regular season and tourney in their first season) plus the in-state school meet in Minneapolis.

by John Walters

Tweet du Jour

made a handy flow chart for NFL GMs evalauting incoming talent like josh rosen pic.twitter.com/gSyHaulYDP

— PFTCommenter (@PFTCommenter) April 3, 2018

Starting Five

Dr. King, moments before his assassination

1. MLK

“Like anyone I would like to live a long life. Longevity has its place. But I’m not concerned about that now. I just want to do God’s will. And he’s allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I’ve looked over and I’ve seen the Promised Land. I may not get there with you, but I want you to know tonight that we as a people will get to the Promised Land.”

—The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., April 3, 1968

Fifty years ago today, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., was assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee. What Dr. King doing in Memphis? Two months earlier a pair of black city sanitation workers had been crushed by a truck’s garbage compactor. The city refused to compensate their families, leading 1,300 workers, who were being paid 65 cents an hour, to walk off the job.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=98k-pjN6nl0

In his now famous “Promised Land” speech, MLK seemed to sense that his time was limited (his plane from Atlanta had been delayed for a thorough luggage check for bombs or weapons). King, in his final night on earth, was prescient. “I don’t know what will happen now,” he said on a stormy night at the Mason Temple. “There are some difficult days ahead.”

As King lay mortally wounded, friends and bystanders point to the direction from which they heard the shots

Throughout his public life, King preached against three evils: racism, militarism and poverty. Fifty years later, thank God we got over all that.

Martin Luther King was 39.

2. Get A Whiff Of That

Last Thursday, in his New York Yankee debut, reigning National League MVP Giancarlo “Gone Carlo” Stanton hit two home runs. Yesterday, in his Yankee Stadium debut, Stanton struck out FIVE times. If striking out four times is a Golden Sombrero, we here suggest that striking out five times, i.e. a 5K performance, should be known as a “Fun Run.”

Former Yankee Reggie Jackson,  who will always be beloved in the Bronx, struck out more times (2,597) than anyone in Major League history. He never struck out five times in one game.

Former Yankee Alex Rodriguez, the team’s last player to be a league MVP, is fifth all-time in strikeouts (2,287). He never struck out five times in one game.

Current Yankee and reigning A.L. Rookie of the Year Aaron Judge led the big leagues in strikeouts last season (208). He never struck out five times in one game.

We were watching the final three innings. Yankee fans did not boo Stanton en masse until the fifth whiff, when the game was in hand for the Bombers (11-4) and Stanton K’ed with the bases loaded in the eighth inning. They were hoping for a redemption grand slam. And were disappointed.

It’s one game. And one magnificent player. But no one who follows the Yankees will forget Stanton’s debut (related: Judge hit a home run in his first Yankee at-bat, but then again, so did Stanton).

3. I Feel Glorious, Gregorious!

In the same victory against the Tampa Bay Raymonds, Yankee shortstop Didi Gregorious provided an example of ol’ Rule No. 7: Every baseball game provides the potential to see something that has never before happened. Didi, who hit two three-run bombs over the right field fence, became the first player in MLB history to record 8 RBI in his team’s home opener. The first.

By the way, when Didi played his first Yankee home game four years ago, he was taunted by lovelorn Yankee fans with chants of “De-rek Je-ter!” So, chin up, Giancarlo.

Now, Gregorious is the Yankees’ most gregarious player.

By the way,Didi’s feat was AN example of Rule No. 7, but not the latest: last night the Cardinals-Brewers game became the first in MLB history to begin and end with back-to-back home runs. For drama’s sake, both Brewer homers in the 5-4 walk-off win came with none on and two out (and on consecutive pitches). Ryan Braun ended it; chicks dig the long ball.

4. The China Syndrome

This is going to shock many of you, but I’m going to defend President Donald J. Trump here in this space this morning. On two fronts. Let’s begin with China.

Last week Trump imposed tariffs on 1,300 categories of Chinese goods. Because China is the world’s premiere economic power and owns a great deal of American debt (i.e, they are our Shylock), this was not necessarily a move that would help his popularity. Why not? Because today China struck back by imposing tariffs on 106 U.S. goods and the stock market is set to open 500 points in the red.

Trump’s argument: “Now we have a Trade Deficit of $500 Billion a year, with Intellectual Property Theft of another $300 Billion. We cannot let this continue!” While his numbers are off (it’s actually closer to $375 billion, total), the truth is that the partnership is not a fair one at the moment. And if you are ever going to attempt to level the playing field, wouldn’t the best time to do so be when the stock market is near an all-time high and unemployment is low? When the economy is at its healthiest?

In short, Trump does/says at least a handful (a tiny hand-ful) of dumb, deceitful or corrupt things every day, but we are not going to smack him for this. Part of your job as POTUS is to make decisions that short-term may seem awful but long-term are beneficial. In the short term, a trade war with China is going to bring pain. And maybe it’s even a bad gambit. But you’re never going to alter the situation if you don’t try.

Number 2: While we disagree with Trump on a number of things about immigration (No. 1, “THE WALL”) and while he does not seem to understand that you can’t use the military as law enforcement at the border (there’s literally a congressional act against doing so), here’s what we know: the screecher on MSNBC and to a certain extent CNN deride Trump daily for his flouting of the Constitution or of regulations. “We are a country of laws!” we hear over and over again.

And yet, when it comes to illegal immigration (and that’s what it is), we get terms such as “immigration” or “dreamers.” Dig it: I work with illegal aliens. I’m in awe of their work ethic and (yes, I know how this sounds) many of them are my friends. There’s no demonization here on illegal immigrants as people or as contributors to the American economy or even American life (I worship the taco trucks on 96th an Broadway an also 69th and Broadway).

That’s not the point. The point is, you cannot hide behind your “We are a nation of laws!” cloak but then casually ignore that millions of people broke a law to be here. If you want to change immigration policy, fine. That’s another topic. My only point is that there are laws in place, Trump and ICE are enforcing them (ham-handedly, sure), and that’s what the head of the executive branch is there to do.

Now you may say, “Oh, he’s only enforcing them to play to his xenophobic base.” Well, of course. But that’s besides the point. If you play the “Constitutional absolutist” card, you are not allowed to just ignore that illegal aliens are here illegally. This morning on CNBC Andrew Ross Sorkin was teasing sidekick Joe Kernen and said, “Cover your ears, [we’re going to talk about] climate change and immigration—”

“You mean ‘illegal immigration’?” Kernen interrupted.

He was right. My God, I’ve stood up for Donald Trump and Joe Kernen in one item. It’s time to take a shower.

5. Safari Sidd Finch

We were following a lioness carrying her cub & she was getting really tired. An elephant showed up wanting to help the lioness. The elephant put its trunk down, the cub jumped up & the elephant carried the lion cub!!⁰S28, 3km from S entrance
Tinged by Sloof Lirpa pic.twitter.com/aebvHwtrv5

— Kruger Sightings (@LatestKruger) April 1, 2018

Maybe you, too, were touched by this African alliance moment. Then you noticed the date and the name of the person who tinged it. Well done, Kruger Sightings.

Reserves

At most golf tournaments, it’s called a press *tent* #Masters pic.twitter.com/8Jjm0KYh0t

— Teddy Greenstein (@TeddyGreenstein) April 4, 2018

Our pal Teddy G. takes a shot of what is either The Masters press room or mission control for SpaceX.

Shut Up And Drivel

Did Mediaite mistype this or did the speaker not understand the distinction between drivel and dribble?

Music 101

What’s Going On

It’s the 50th anniversary of the assassination of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, and no, we’re not going with the song from the Dublin quartet. We’re keeping it here and we’re keeping it real. Marvin Gaye’s classic elegy, inspired by a police brutality incident, was also a closing antiphon of the Sixties (it was released in 1971). Gaye would be shot dead himself 13 years later—by his father—on April 1, on the eve of his 45th birthday.

Remote Patrol

Sicario

7:30 p.m. FX

We’ve never seen it, but we’re curios. Drugs, border, violence, and Josh Brolin.

by John Walters

Tweet du Jour

Why? 🤷🏻‍♂️ #why

— Josh Rosen (@josh3rosen) April 2, 2018

Starting Five

DiVincenzo and the Wildcats rose above the competition all tourney long

Super ‘nova

Massimino. ArciDiacono. And now DiVincenzo. Every time Villanova wins a national championship, a true Paisan is part of the squad (Rollie, who coached the ’85 team that shocked Georgetown, passed last summer). Last night redshirt sophomore Donte DiVincenzo, “The Italian Scallion” (as PFT Commenter dubbed him, “because he’s onions”) and also “the Michael Jordan of Delaware,” scored 31 points and had a White Men CAN Jump block at the rim to lead the Cats to a 79-62 walkover of Michigan.

It’s Villanova’s—and Jay Wright’s—second championship in the past three seasons.  The Cats won all six games by double digits. The best team clearly won.

2. Hare Brained

When Donald Trump was told he’d be meeting a bunny, his first thought was, “It’ll be nice to bang see Karen McDougal again; and now I know I don’t have to pay.” So imagine his disappointment when he learned it was not that kind of bunny.

Then, of course, because Easter is the celebration of the resurrection of Jesus, the prince of peace, President Trump began to wax ineloquent on how we’ll be spending $700 billion on our military.

3. Trump V. Bezos

Until further notice, Gal Gadot’s pic runs on all Amazon stories

Donald Trump’s Twitter tirade against Amazon last week and Monday has played a huge role in trimming more than 10% off its market cap high of about $762 billion. So think about that: Trump tweets that Amazon is getting away with not paying its taxes (let that irony sink in for a moment) and should be paying the U.S. Postal Service $2.5 billion more per year.

So if Trump actually wanted that $2.5 billion, wouldn’t he have quietly negotiated this with  CEO/founder Jeff Bezos? Instead, he tweets his ire and costs Amazon more than 20 times that figure while not collecting a cent? This isn’t about fair taxation; this is about spite because Bezos owns The Washington Post, whose reporting on Trump and the GOP is honest hostile to them. But as Andrew Ross Sorkin of CNBC asked a guest this morning, “You don’t think there’s anything Nixonian about this?”

If you lost money today trading in Amazon stock or any other security, and you know of anyone who knowingly or recklessly made a false public statement about that company or its stock, causing your losses, you should contact a securities lawyer today.

— Richard W. Painter (@RWPUSA) April 2, 2018

Amazon is NOT a monopoly; it is a monopsony: a company that controls the market in such a way that its consumers pay LESS for goods. That’s not a bad thing. Now people might argue that Amazon will run every one out of business and then control the market (kinda like if you owned a hotel chain and then became president and forced all diplomats to use your hotels in order to curry political favor?).

A few people suggested that Bezos should just find the change under his couch, buy Twitter, and then ban Trump from using it. We have a simpler suggestion: why doesn’t Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey grow a pair and at least impose a Twitter suspension on Trump? Hell, I’ve even been suspended a day from Twitter; something tells me Trump, whose tirades are much uglier and who spread lies about Amazon in the past week that literally cost the company $100 billion, is more deleterious.

4. Happy 50th To A Monolithic Film

If you’ve never seen Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, based on the novel by Arthur C. Clarke, it may be playing this week at your local independent draft house cinema, as the prescient film turns 50 this week. The film begins with a chilling “Dawn of Man” scene in which we presumably witness the first murder (set to the robust and now familiar musical stylings of “Thus Spoke Zarathustra”) and then advances directly to the year 2001, in which a spaceship, Discovery One, is bound for Jupiter on a mission so important that only its onboard computer, HAL, knows it.

Turns out that Clarke was eerily prescient about the potential toxic effects of AI.

5. No Thanks

This is the Angel’s Landing hike in Zion National Park in southern Utah, often called the “scariest hike in America.’ I just love that the lawyers and pols haven’t gotten together to shut this down. It’s obviously not safe, but we humans should be allowed to put ourselves in peril, as long as no one else is endangered by our actions, in our lifelong pursuit of wonder and adventure. That is living, after all.

And here’s what happens when the weather turns

It’s not that I don’t think I could physically do this. It’s just that I think I’d be so inside my head during the hike that I’d potentially freak. The trick is to not give a fu hoot. Maybe wait until you’re terminally ill to do this. As far as I’m concerned, all of these people are rock stars. Literally.

If you’re wondering, a 13 year-old girl died on this hike in February, one of six deaths here since 2004.

Reserves

Martin Luther King, 50 years ago tonight, Memphis–“I’ve been to the mountaintop….Like anybody, I would like to live a long life….But I’m not concerned about that now….I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the promised land” pic.twitter.com/Pme2Z1nXPA

— Michael Beschloss (@BeschlossDC) April 3, 2018

Music 101

Electricity

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4_QCjmZnUmM

Would there be Phish if there hadn’t been Captain Beefheart (a.k.a. Don Glen Vilet, 1941-2010)? A high school pal of Frank Zappa, Vilet is one of the few people whose own Wiki page has a pull-quote:

“He had dropped out of school by that time, and spent most of his time staying at home. His girlfriend lived in the house, and his grandmother lived in the house, and his aunt and his uncle lived across the street. And his father had had a heart attack; his father drove a Helms bread truck, part of the time Don was helping out by taking over the bread truck route [and] driving up to Mojave. The rest of the time he would just sit at home and listen to rhythm and blues records, and scream at his mother to get him a Pepsi.”

Remote Patrol

Roseanne

8 p.m. ABC

Live from the TCM Classic Film Festival: Michael Douglas

8 p.m. TCM

Roseanne Barr and Michael Douglas were both pretty big deals in the late Eighties/early Nineties. She’s now 66 and he’s 73.

by John Walters

There was a moment during ESPN’s premiere of its 3-hour a.m. gabfest, Get Up!, when the cast decided to discuss why only 14,644 fans attended the Major League debut of Los Angeles Angels ace Shohei “Sho-Time” Ohtani on Sunday.

Here are a few obvious answers that were not broached:

1. It was Easter Sunday, 2. The game took place not at the Angels’ ballpark, but at the A’s. Oakland has finished second-to-last in MLB attendance each of the past two seasons, and 3) as one of the cast members, Booger McFarland noted, “He didn’t live up to the hype in spring training.”

(An aside: Booger was right; it may not have been the only reason, but Ohtani was not the second coming of Clint Hurdle this March)

As soon as those words left Booger’s lips, co-host Michelle Beadle screeched, “Are you serious?!?” And the look that appeared on the face of Booger, the most relatable of the four people on set, was like, “I was an All-SEC defensive lineman and I’ve overcome the nickname Booger. Do not take that tone with me.”

It was only the first show, so you must allow the wine to breathe some once uncorking it, but I don’t think Get Up! will work for much the same reason I didn’t think SC6 would work: we are all Booger and the decision-makers at ESPN still don’t realize that.

Chemistry matters on personality-driven TV shows. When it’s good (Regis & Kelly) the show is phenomenal, and when it’s poor (The Crossover, starring Michelle Beadle and Dave Briggs), it’s painful.

A few reasons why we believe the chemistry here is doomed. First of all, it’s mostly a 2-on-1 sitch. Jalen Rose and Michelle Beadle, both of them Bill Simmons BFFs, emigrate from sunny SoCal where they worked on the same NBA show. Mike Greenberg, older and an established East Coaster, is instantly outside their circle. Greeny gets off on being well-informed and knowledgeable. Rose and Beadle, while both smart and informed, are more about bringing themselves into the picture.

(Honestly, yes Jalen, we know you played at Michigan. We know you love Michigan. We also know you won one less national title there than Rumeal Robinson. How many times did a convo about who was going to win tonight’s national championship game between Villanova and Michigan have to swerve toward your feelings?)

Here are three humans with big egos who already think of themselves as stars. The trick for producer Bill Wolff is to get them to think of themselves as part of a larger entity than themselves. I don’t think that’s possible and for me, at least, I don’t find Beadle or Jalen to be all that enlightening. I don’t need to hear what they have to say.

Greenberg had a long and wonderful, if somewhat too comfortable, marriage on-air back in Bristol with Mike Golic. It wasn’t our cup of coffee, but it fit him. And it had already made him wealthy. But he wanted more so he dumped Golic, his starter wife, for this sexy new model. He’s wealthier, he’s ensconced in Manhattan, but he’s never going to be as tight and candid with Beadle and Jalen as he was with Golic.

And at some point his irritation—and nothing accelerates a person’s irritation more than having to wake up at 4:30 a.m. each day—will show. Meanwhile, Booger’s probably wondering what he’s doing there. He was the jolly fat kid (and smart to boot) on ESPN’s college football studio shows last autumn and as a reward he gets to wake up five days a week before the sun and trudge down to a studio in NYC’s Financial District to play 4th banana? Did ESPN even use him in their promos? (answer: No)

In the promo, Greenberg asserts that they’ll be better in the second week than the first week, better in the second month than the first month, better in the second year than the first year. In general, I agree with that assertion.

But I don’t think Jalen and Michelle are apt to change their personalities that much. And so Greenberg is going to try to up his street rep (notice the bro hug in the promo), which will just be awkward to watch. And Beadle will continue to be snarky and crack wise and  will continue to have no substance to most anything she says unless it’s about pets or feminism. And Jalen will soon wake up and think, “I’m rich, I’m single, I’m relatively young and I had a fun, fun life (and three children) back in southern California. And this ain’t no two-week stint. What the hell did I get myself into? And why am I waking up before sunrise?”

Again, it was only the first day. But I don’t see anyone on this set I can relate to, that is besides Booger, who was also put into the awkward situation of being asked how he thought Tiger Woods would do at the Masters later this week. Answer (or what should have been the answer): “I’m a former football player; how the hell should I know?”

And as often as I disagree with Clay Travis, he’s right about ESPN going too far to appease its SJW agenda: “Hey, America, we have a woman, a black dude (and sort of but not quite a second black guy, but both are ex-jocks) and a white guy (who’s Jewish, natch!) and so we are embracing diversity!” Who cares? Is your show good? Do I want to kibbutz and kvetch with these folks for even 15 minutes each morning?

Nope.

The great part about Golic and Greenberg—and again, I rarely watched—is that they liked each other enough to disagree with one another. But as a viewer, you could tell there was affection behind even that. Golic could pick on Greeny for being a metrosexual while Greenberg could pick on Golic for being fat. And that wouldn’t work if they weren’t really fond of each other. Will we ever reach that point with this crew? I doubt it.

But I’ll tune in a month from now to see if I was wrong.

Also, and again it was the premiere, but this was a chance to ad-lib, what with a rare April snow storm in New York City, and take the show outside (or up on the roof) with some creativity and imagination. Maybe make a snow angel on the roof. Think like a kid for a moment. There was none of that.

Finally, the most appealing moment of Monday’s premier was “Oz the Mentalist,” who wowed the cast by displaying that he’d predicted the Final Four correctly. And while that’s wonderful, we can all wonder aloud why Oz isn’t working at CNBC or Bloomberg, where he might really be doing the world some good. We want to believe Oz’s psychic powers are legit, but there’s no way, in the age we live in, to fully believe anything we see/hear on TV.