Though the New York Post’s Phil Mushnick has a couple of halfway interesting observations in Monday’s column (ie. Charlles Grodin attended Steve Somers’ wedding reception!), he’s also as fixated as ever on what he considers to be the criminally late starts and finishes of televised supporting events.
Speaking of kids and MNF, reader Mike Millet has a question: When Mike Golic, working Monday’s second ESPN game, said the kids watching should note Niners wide receiver Arnaz Battle‘s downfield hustle, it was 12:28 a.m. “Who,” Millet asks, “would be the kids watching?” Those would be the kids who work the nightshift.
Given the game in question was played between San Francisco and Arizona, it’s altogether possible that children were still watching at 9:28 pm local time. Such is Phil’s obsession with this issue, he writes nary a word about the first game of last Monday’s doubleheader, a Ravens/Bengals tilt that began at 4pm Pacific Standard Time. In Mushnick’s jaundiced worldview, there’s no compassion for the working stiffs who occupy those insignificant hunks of land sometimes referred to as “California” and “Oregon”. Neither does Phil consider the likelihood of traffic fatalities caused by persons leaving work early in those regions, in order to get home in time for an early kickoff.
Which is the greater tragedy, Mushnick? A handful of kids in your neck of the woods having to check Frank Gore’s stats the following day? Or children on the West Coast being rendered orphans by a callous, avaricious television network?