Starting Five

1. Johnny Bye Bye?

Visit eBay right now and you will espy (the verb, not the noun) more than 200 items signed by Heisman Trophy-winning quarterback Johnny Manziel (to be fair, there are nearly as many such trinekts signed by defensive end Jadeveon Clowney of South Carolina). The Texas A&M triggerman put his Johnny Hancock to photos, footballs, a jersey and even an Aggie helmet or two ($1,015). The NCAA is investigating Johnny B. Goodtimes to determine whether or not he personally profited from ever having lent his signature to these trinkets. If he did, Manziel could be ruled ineligible for an undetermined period of time.

The sports books in Las Vegas have taken the September contest in which Alabama visits College Station (only the most anticipated game of the season) off the books. Always listen to the sports books –that’s like, Rule No. 2 after “Gravity always wins.”

Items:

1) The Joy Behar Response: “So what who cares?” Manziel is clearly a marketable commodity whose value far exceeds his full scholarship et al. at Texas A&M. Even if Manziel made up to $1,00o selling autographs, he’d put more on black at a roulette table. This is a nontroversy. Let the market determine his value, is one school of thought.

2) On the other hand, there are approximately 10,000 young men on scholarship playing FBS football. The moment you allow Johnny Manziel to be paid for his signature is the moment you open a bidding war on all of their services. Again, many fans and observers will say, “Fine. Let that happen.” Obviously, most players will remain more than happy just to be on a full ride. Some schools will happily play the “bag man” role. Many already do. Have you SEEN Oregon’s new facilities? Others may stop and say, “This is where we are jumping off the train.”

3) In order to have a black market, you need high demand + regulations. See: marijuana. Or college football. There’s high demand for players coupled with NCAA rules that unrealistically put a ceiling on their market value. Johnnny Manziel, hence, is nothing more than a symptom.

2. Less Jason Sudeikis, Please

You’re supposed to be all agog over this new Mumford & Sons video because in place of Marcus Mumford & The Pips we have the Jasons, Bateman and Sudeikis, Dr. Faggot (Ed Helms), and MacGruber (Will Forte).

Me, I am reminded of a scene from the 1998 HBO film “The Rat Pack”. I believe Sammy Davis, Jr. (Don Cheadle), asks Dean Martin (Joe Montegna), in a candid moment in a Vegas hotel lobby, why they’re so popular. At that moment a woman passes by and Martin simply emotes, “Ha!” The woman laughs hysterically. And Martin just looks at Davis as if to say, “It’s past the point where we actually need to be entertaining. Our celebrity, sadly, is what intoxicates the masses.”

As for Sudeikis, he has crossed over into that dark side where few comedians truly want to tread: being ESPN’s funny guy. But he’s also doing EPL spots for NBCSports (thanks, Gene). And promoting “We’re The Millers”, in which he stars with Jennifer Aniston.

When did “engaged to Olivia Wilde” cease being to be enough?

3. “How do you get to Uganda?” “Practice.”

Precious few pop culture references in last night’s episode of “The Newsroom”, which was Maggie Jordan’s moment. Not on Maggie’s playlist: “Africa”, by Toto or “Under African Skies” by Paul Simon.

1) “And some walls”

Grace Gummer (Streep 2.0) makes this request as she, Jim and Stillman Frank check into a Radisson and must share a room. Maybe it’s just a line about needing walls, or maybe it’s a reference to “It Happened One Night”, a seminal and classic road film from the 1934 starring Clark Gable and Claudette Colbert in which the two bantering buddies must share a hotel room each night. The pair would erect a sheet to hang from the ceiling to the floor in between their twin beds and refer to it as “The Walls of Jericho,” which itself is an Old Testament reference, which I’m just not up to explaining at the moment.

Also in this scene, Jim delivers the “and Vassar versa” line, which Sorkin just could not resist using. Gummer, by the way, is herself a Vassar alumna.

2) “I can’t just ignore evidence; it’s not like I’m Congress”

McKenzie McHale is directly referring to the unraveling onion that is the Genoa story, but the cultural reference is to pretty much the last five years of our House of Representatives and Senate.

3) “It was good and then I saw ‘Titanic’ for the first time …the title suggested that it wasn’t gonna end well…”

I’m beginning to dig the Macallan 55 level of dryness that Sloan Sabbith applies to her lines. As my friend Mark Beech once intoned, “Ship crashes into world’s largest metaphor.” I believe it was Beech. Anyway, he’s the world’s most ardent defender of “Titanic”, even if a character from 1912 did use the terms “masters of the universe.”

4) “This is the house on East 88th Street…”

Don’t you love how Aaron Sorkin understands that we all have access to Google –even that dude from Pakistan whose village may or may not have been exposed to Sarin gas — and so he does not feel the obligation to spoon-feed us? Maggie reads a children’s book to an African boy at an orphanage –who will later take a bullet for her (it seems a lot of males do that for Maggie) — multiple times, but we never explicitly learn the name of the book.

The book in question is (drumroll, please) “The House on East 88th Street”, a book by Bernard Waber that was written in 1962. It was the first in the “Lyle the Crocodile” series.

4. Suspension. Of Disbelief.

So, within hours Alex Rodriguez will be suspended for the remainder of the 2013 season and then for all of the 2014 season. And only hours after that, he could very well be taking the field for the Yankees for the first time this season when they visit the Chicago White Sox, who have lost 10 in a row. Because baseball will allow A-Rod to appeal the suspension, and he may play pending the outcome of the appeal.

Somehow we think that this being the 34th anniversary of the death of former Yankee captain and catcher Thurman Munson may get overlooked.

5. During the Flood

Here’s a pretty amazing story of survival out of Montana, where Christi Skelton took on a raging river and lived to tell about it.

 

 

XXX