San Jose, Calif. — No, your televisions aren't shrinking, it's the sports broadcasters who have gotten small.
Are there any TV sportcasters who matter anymore, who produce anything more than highlight yelps and smarmy ad campaigns? Whose words have meaning, who shape the national discourse, who dare to make the established powers feel uncomfortable?
How many major sportcasters in this day would, let us use as an example, rightly or wrongly but definitely riskily stand beside a 26-year-old loudmouth heavyweight who refused induction into the Army because of his religious beliefs?
If Muhammad Ali were young again and the government threatened jail, do we have any Howard Cosells (or, in other instances, Jim McKays or Jack Whitakers) in our time who could elevate the debate by questioning the process and logic of the authorities involved?
Of course, the answer is: The number of significant sportscasters has dwindled to almost nothing in the Age of Booyah.
Only Bob Costas (who has no specific sport to cover at NBC after next month's Olympics) and Keith Olbermann (who has landed at CNN, where he will be well-used but perhaps not so much for sports) have the intellectual heft, standing and gumption to speak as thinking individuals, not corporate shills.
And beyond them?
When ABC turns the "Monday Night Football" spectacle over to a starstruck comedian to rekindle the spirit of the late Cosell, who remains unreplaced ...
When Fox shutters its wheezing "National Sports Report" due to lack of talent and lack of any clue about producing a well-rounded newscast ...
When ESPN finds itself as practically the only game in TV sports journalism, though it is thickly populated by shallow smirk-and-quip artists more interested in being famous than in being worthy of their time on camera ...
I call the disease "Creeping Chris Bermanism," the inability to do anything on-air except hype your own silly image and force the rest of us to wonder if what was lost can ever be regained.
"You can pin it on our educational system, you can pin it on our system of broadcast employers who tend to look for safe bets and good-looking people with plastic smiles, you can blame it on people who go into this business themselves, who do it only to be on TV," said Olbermann, who on Monday starts two national daily radio commentaries syndicated by ABC and last regularly manned by Cosell.
In addition to his permanent role as a contributor to CNN's thoughtful "NewsNight with Aaron Brown" show, Olbermann will guest host "The Point" this week.
The low points: Berman is popular because he has worked harder at sustaining his lowest-common-denominator appeal than anybody this side of Vince McMahon; Fox's "National Sports Report" was ill-conceived, especially when anchored by the nonsensical duo of Kevin Frazier and Van Earl Wright.
"Where did everybody go?" Olbermann said. "They just are not standing up when the authorities say, 'Are there any questions?' They're looking in the mirror polishing catch-phrases or sucking up to jocks."
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