Why is it, when I turn on the TV or read the newspaper, I get a headache? …
Evidently Tiger Woods will play in the Masters, beginning April 8 at Augusta. It was pretty hard to miss the news even though we first reported it on the Tom & Joe on 92-CITI-FM on March 12 (check out the sports report on March 12 at www.92citifm.ca).
Naturally, the news that Woods would return to the Tour brought out all the holier-than-thou media judgment passers. “Tiger did this. Tiger did that. What a jerk. What a bad guy.” After awhile, it just got tiresome.
It never ceases to amaze me that a group of people — media people — who, more often than not, have been through a couple of marriages, usually as a result of bad behaviour, can rip a professional athlete because he sometimes thinks with his second brain.
Seems to me this is just like the steroid scandal. These people didn’t know what Tiger was doing and when they found out they were embarrassed. So, like a mindless mob, they attacked. Its the same phenomenon that resulted when they were embarrassed for keeping steroid use in baseball quiet for all those years. Now they love to take shots at Mark McGwire even though McGwire used steroids when steroids weren’t on any banned-substance list because baseball didn’t have a banned-substance list.
Oh yeah, I forgot, the media still believes it was McGwire’s fault and that pitchers NEVER used steroids. Mob rule is indeed mindless.
The biggest problem we face in the world is the misinformation and disinformation doled out by the mainstream media.
* * * *
In recent weeks, the Canadian media has had a field day hopping on the “stop-head-shots” bandwagon. Canadian columnists have been screaming for the NHL to penalize players who check other players in the head.
Naturally, the people doing the screaming have never played hockey — or never played the game at a high level — and they have this belief that a 6-foot-3, 220-pound defencemen wearing the finest equipment in the history of the sport, using skates that help him fly like the wind, can make a decision in mid-bodycheck to alter his target. In fact, so many players who have taken head shots have taken them because they had their head down and were off-balance, falling or in an unorthodox position. Sadly, while the media mob screams to find some special penalty for what they call “pre-meditated headshots,” it took Eric Duhatschek in the Globe and Mail to find former NHL referee Bruce Hood.
Hood was clear: “The NHL already has rules that, if called, would almost completely eliminate head shots.” The trouble with the NHL is that the rulebook isn’t really a rulebook, it’s just a suggestion.
If there is a problem with headshots and the resulting concussions, the problem is simple. The players are too big and fast; the light, hard-plastic equipment is dangerous; and the ice surface is too small. On top of that, the league’s referees don’t want to call a penalty on every rush, so the rulebook is never adhered to, at least not literally.
The media can scream all it wants about eliminating headshots, but if the NHL wants to market itself as a fast, collision sport, then accidents will happen even if the league starts kicking out players who inadvertently bodycheck opponents higher than they should. And I really love how people on TV can mind-read and tell me if a player is taking a shot at an opponent’s head on purpose. I love that. I wonder if they know tonight’s 6/49 winner too?
Any rule designed to eliminate headshots will be for show. The rule will be meant to protect the players, but in a sport as fast and violent — with players as big as they are today — as professional hockey, injuries, even serious head injuries, can’t be eliminated. At least, not if the people who run the sport want the sport to be the exciting sport they have today.