Two interesting things that I saw last weekend (both sports related)
#1 – Fake Football
Last Friday night, I saw something called the Match of the Millenium on ESPN. Let’s see if I can explain this for those who aren’t familiar with sports.
What they do is take 2 dominant football teams from certain decades and fabricate a game between them. The one they showed on Friday was a game between the 1970s Pittsburgh Steelers and the 1990s Dallas Cowboys. The producers of this thing take footage from the 70s and 90s football games between these two teams and splice them together to make up a scripted football game.
Here’s an example…
Terry Bradshaw (The bald guy who does the 10-10-220 commercials with Alf and Mike Piazza) hands the ball off to Franco Harris (70s Steelers), then the scene changes to Leon Lett (90s Cowboys) making a tackle on some Steelers player (not Franco Harris) from the 90s. Then they show the 70s Pittsburgh crowd and the 90s Dallas crowd cheering for their respective teams.
This is basically a “what if” scenario if these two dominant teams were to meet. I’ve seen something similar to this before but this particular matchup had some (five) eyebrow raising parts to it.
1. They interviewed players “before” the “game” and asked them about their gameplan. Yes, they interviewed 50+ year old Lynn Swann what he was going to do to Deion Sanders in some game that’ll never be played.
2. They had a halftime recap show with Chris Berman and they showed “highlights” of the game.
3. The announcers had bad pre-scripted jokes and gags to provide some entertainment during the game.
4. Speaking of announcers, THEY BROUGHT HOWARD COSELL BACK FROM THE DEAD FOR THIS GAME!!!!!111 They had an impersonator do his voice, and they also took his soundbites from the 70s and integrated it into the dialogue between the modern day (and ALIVE) announcers. It was funny and insulting at the same time.
The Steelers struck early and often and had a big lead at halftime. Then the Cowboys came back to take the lead. Terry Bradshaw and the Steelers offense made one last drive down the field. As time ran out, Bradshaw throws to Lynn Swann in the endzone and he catches the ball. The play is overturned and ruled incomplete because the officials said that Swann was out of bounds when he caught the ball.
Here’s the best part of the whole game.
5. THEY BRING OUT INSTANT REPLAY IN A SCRIPTED GAME INVOLVING 2 TEAMS WHO HAVE NEVER SEEN IT BEFORE!!!!! Instant replay to review questionable calls by the officials was first put into use in 1999 (yeah I know, but the Cowboys dominated in the mid 90s). Howard Cosell (who died in 1995) asked what the fuck is going on and the modern day announcers had to explain the whole process to him. After the play was reviewed, the decision was overturned and it was a touchdown. They even showed footage of 90s Cowboys players being visibly upset and protesting the call. The 70s Steelers won the game on an instant replay judgement, whoda thunk it?
The entire game was pure comedic genius. I really hope it was intentional.
#2 – White people and Slamball
I saw my first full game of Slamball on Saturday night. Slamball is a made-for-TV game where two teams play a variation of basketball. There are four huge trampolines near the basket and players jump on said trampolines and try to score baskets.
There was a white guy on one of the teams and all he would do is stand behind the trampolines and shoot long-ranged jumpers all game long. WHAT THE FUCK!?!?!?!?! I was getting mad at him for shooting jump shots all day, I can’t even begin to imagine how the audience (who presumably paid to get in) felt about this travesty.
People pay money to see players jump 10 feet into the air on the trampolines and run into each other, just like the time when Rod and Todd Flanders jumped on the Simpson’s trampoline.
“Each leap brings us closer to God!”
*Thwack!*
That’s awesome. Long range jump shots from behind the trampoline are not awesome.
=*(