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HBO's "Real Sports with Bryant Gumbel" is the best sports magazine show on television, and the most recent program shows why. Each of the four segments is well-reported, insightful and compelling.
Another reason Madden is so popular is, of course, his colorful announcing. Carillo's piece shows how hard Madden prepares for the games, and it provides glimpses of a game production meeting, in which Madden and his crew dissects video of the teams. (How many of us would love to just sit there, watch football video and discuss strategy with Madden?) Carillo also conducts the mandatory tour of his famous bus, which has two bathrooms, three televisions (with satellite) and a fax machine. Madden explains to Carillo that he is not afraid to fly but is claustrophobic. "I am not claustrophobic if I can control it." Madden says. "I am claustrophobic if I can't control it. People say, "How can you be claustrophobic on an airplane and not a bus?" Because when you are up there 30,000 feet and you want to get out, the first step is a big one." The piece is very good; my only minor gripe is that Carillo didn't say how much longer Madden is planning to work.
Lampley explains that baseball certainly has the money in its pension fund to help out the approximately 70 former players still living who are ineligible to collect a pension. As a matter of fact, Lampley said, baseball only would need to use a portion of the interest that it collects on the pension fund to pay for these added players. So why doesn't baseball make the smart public relations move and add the ineligible players, which is something the other three sports already have done? Too much money and too much bureaucracy. Neither the owners nor the players union can make the move unilaterally, and neither side seems inclined to suggest a solution. (Although the owners did recently offer the players a pseudo-pension of $10,000 a year, which doesn't include health coverage and is only a percentage of the money that the eligible ex-players get.) If you hated players' union boss Donald Fehr before this, you will absolutely despise him, his insensitivity and his short socks after it.
Deford's piece begins with Jaeger's tennis career, which invaded her childhood. Jaeger enjoyed some success as a player - she was as high as No. 2 in the world rankings - but also built a reputation for being moody with her on-the-court behavior. One day, she visited a children's hospital and soon her life had a new focus. Deford says Jaeger is like "a secular nun" in the way she has sacrificed her earnings and her life for this cause. Everything she now does, Deford says, is for the camp. After a child's stay is over, Jaeger gives each one a toll-free number to call her at her home whenever the child wants. One of the segment's more emotional scenes is Jaeger's wall of pictures, which includes every child that has passed through camp, some of whom have since passed on. The clincher, though, comes after the piece when Deford talks to Gumbel about being a parent with a sick child, which he has had to be. Deford's daughter, Alexandra, died at 8 of cystic fibrosis (Deford wrote about her struggle in his book "Alex: The Life of a Child"). Deford, with tears in his eyes, tells Gumbel that camps like Jaeger's provide a tremendous benefit to families. Deford's piece provides a tremendous benefit to viewers. If your eyes don’t fill up at least once by the end of the segment, you are colder than an Eskimo’s toilet in the morning.
Moss talks about how racism and his fame as a high school football standout played a role in the first attack. Gumbel acknowledges Moss' marijuana charge in high school and later suggests that the domestic dispute in college was nothing more than a loud argument. Of course, few know how much Moss is really responsible for his past indiscretions, but all football fans know how good the rookie wide receiver is. The question remaining is will Moss stay out of trouble? When asked if he was confident Moss would stay out trouble, Cris Carter - Moss' teammate and mentor - had an interesting response after much thought, "Umm, I’m not ... I don’t know, but from the time I met him, I believed that there was something special about him. “He’s going to have to be clean for a long time,” Carter continued, “and I’m really trusting in him that he is going to do things the right way.” Grade: A+, the first time that I have given that grade since we started the site. Back
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The
first segment, Mary Carillo's feature on Fox football announcer
John Madden, shows that Madden is exactly how most fans picture
him - easy-going, funny and football crazy. Oh yeah, and rich.
Madden makes $8 million a year from Fox, Carillo reports, and about
$7 million from endorsements. One of the reasons Madden makes that
kind of money is because the public perceives him as the common
man. Carillo says that in many ways, Madden does fit that perception,
which hasn't changed with his wealth.
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