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This is what I’m thinking:
* Before you start complaining about the cold weather here today, consider these words from NBC’s “Today” host Matt Lauer (see right) while he stood outside 30 Rock this morning: “Spring time in New York – 29 degrees.”
It other words, it is cold all over the East.
* Charles Barkley may not know the names of many players, but he has a feel for the NCAA men’s basketball tournament.
At halftime of the Arizona-Duke game Thursday night, Barkley predicted the Wildcats would eliminate the defending national champions.
And then they dismantled Duke, 93-77, on CBS.
That result surprised CBS analyst Len Elmore, who knows the names of most players but admitted he hadn’t seen much of Arizona this year.
Barkley, who lives in Arizona, knew all about the Wildcats’ speed and quickness.
During most of the tournament, Barkley has used his forum to ridicule the Big East, and then the conference made his point repeatedly by losing 9 of its 11 tournament teams in the first weekend.
But in defense of the Big East, Connecticut made it to the Elite Eight with a Thursday win over San Diego State. The Huskies made it to the Elite Eight after finishing in a three-way tie for ninth in their conference during the regular season, then winning the conference tournament. Marquette, which plays tonight, also was tied for ninth in the conference. UConn was seeded ninth in the Big East tournament and Marquette was seeded 11th.
In other words two Big East teams that finished in the second half of the conference have a chance to make it to the Elite Eight of the tournament. So you wonder which Big East teams Barkley would have left out of the tournament.
* My alma mater won’t listen to me. And that’s OK. Occasionally, it provides laughs. A few weeks after I wrote that the paper spends too much space covering women’s basketball games that few people care about it, it had a front-page sports story about Syracuse beating St. Bonaventure Monday in a women’s NIT game. The funniest line in the lengthy story was that the game was played “in front of 240 at the Carrier Dome.” That’s right, 240 people. You get a bigger crowd at Cosmo’s pizza on Marshall Street most nights.
* Back to basketball. CBS’ play-by-play Gus Johnson is getting a lot of props lately but he asked a really stupid question during the Florida-BYU game Thursday night. He wondered if BYU would foul in the final 20 seconds of regulation with the score tied. Elmore and Reggie Miller quickly dismissed that idea. BYU didn’t foul, Florida didn’t score and the Gators won in overtime. Miller, by the way, was a welcome addition to the team because Elmore rarely says anything interesting.
* I woke up one morning this week to hear NBC’s Charlie Sheen expert, Jeff Rossen, report that CBS had offered to allow Sheen to get his job back on “Two and a Half Men.” The report made little sense since filming for the current TV season is just about over. But, hey, you never know. Curiously, I haven’t seen anything about it elsewhere. Maybe I was dreaming. Or the Sheen camp was dreaming.
* Back to my alma mater. The war between it and developer Carl Paladino gets a little silly at times, and Paladino doesn’t always provide the laughs. The News ran a lengthy story a few days ago that reported that Paladino didn’t pay $100 for a state permit to carry a billboard that currently attacks Buffalo News publisher Stan Lipsey and the newspaper. How long was the story? It might have been twice as long as the coverage of the Bona-Syracuse women’s game.
Far be it for me to advise Paladino, but we’d all get a laugh if he paid the 100 bucks and changed the copy on the billboard to read: “I paid $100 to remind you that Spineless Stan Lipsey & The Buffalo News threw WNY under the bus.”
Can’t we all just get along?
Stories like the billboard story illustrate that the News ought to spend a little money on an ombudsman to determine if and when it goes too far – and long.
pergament@msn.com
Alan Pergament was the television critic for The Buffalo News for 28 years. He currently is an adjunct professor at Buffalo State College and Medaille College, teaching courses in communications. He also writes a monthly column on the media for Buffalo Spree magazine.
That’s why the Buffalo News is running itself out of business. If it wasn’t for the coupons in the Sunday edition,we would no longer subscribe. But the coupons defray the cost of a weekly subscription,so why not read the “funnies” everyday.
Hmm, as far as the Pal story goes, it did seem kind of out of place. But I thought the larger narrative when you read between the lines was the fact that the B news had to call out the fact that he did not have the permit, and that that echoed a long standing reality that Carl has a lot of friends on the inside who will over look things for him, such as having the correct permits and making sure his properties are up to code. The B news will not give Carl a free pass like many others who have been paid off.
So the article is actually about corruption.