McTailGator
September 30th, 2006, 09:17 AM
Publication:American Press; Date:Sep 28, 2006; Section:Sports; Page Number:33
:hurray: xcoffeex
This is a good story on why we hate day games in the south.
Morning games like watching kids’ cartoons
Scooter Hobbs Sports Editor
OK, I will agree that the daylight hours the morning offers up should be avoided at all costs. If you want to say college football has no business kicking off a game at 11:30 a.m., you’ll get no argument from these puffy eyes. But don’t blame it on Jefferson Pilot. Excuse me, it would be Lincoln Financial this year. I would guess that the parent company has something to do with handling your money. That’s a start. Nobody ever knew exactly what Jefferson Pilot was. Or cared. But it was ingrained in the Southern football consciousness. You just knew if the term was mentioned in the same breath as your favorite Southeastern Conference football team, it was not good news for the week. And never mind the starting time. JP Sports got the SEC leftovers to televise after the big boys at CBS and ESPN were done cherry-picking the real games. As often as not, it seemed to be Ole Miss-Kentucky. There were those who thought Vanderbilt had its own network long before Notre Dame made it fashionable. If you found the JP game, you knew that any connection to the SEC title race would be strictly coincidental. The real contenders showed up on JP from time to time, but never against each other.
When JP wasn’t hyping a spirited battle for fourth place in the SEC East, it would get something like this week’s Mississippi State at LSU game.
In other words, a projected lopsided rout that no other network would touch.
(This will be the Tigers’ first appearance on the network since — are you detecting a pattern here? — Mississippi State visited Baton Rouge two years ago.)
Yes, it will kick off at 11:30 a.m. in Tiger Stadium, where even 2:30 p.m. kickoffs are frowned upon and 5:30 p.m. starts barely tolerated.
So Jefferson Pilot was an especially ugly word around Tigertown.
The network got a bum rap. It didn’t choose the start time. It was the only thing available.
And if they aren’t a lot of fun to play in or attend, they do serve the common SEC good by providing something for tailgaters throughout the rest of the league to watch.
And they are something to behold.
I have heard from people who actually understand TV production that the JP telecasts were pretty crude at best. Thowback television, if you will.
I’m happy to report that nothing has apparently changed with the name change to Lincoln Financial.
They are committed to the same bare-bones production standards that Jefferson Pilot championed.
I find that mildly reassuring.
OK, they occasionally miss a play or two. Or three. They always seem to come back from commercial break in the tail end of a doublereverse throwback touchdown. And their cameras get faked out more than Vanderbilt’s secondary.
But at least you know you won’t have to deal with corporate cartoon characters running across the screen between plays.
In LSU circles, Jefferson Pilot was best known for flashing up the graphic “FINAL: Kentucky 30, LSU 27” just as Marcus Randall was unloading the Bluegrass Miracle to Devery Henderson.
Most schools have similar tall tales, however.
At least the broadcast crew knew it was Henderson. LSU’s live radio broadcast said it was Jack Hunt.
And what a crew it was — and, thankfully, still is. The triple-D team, Dave Neal, Dave Rowe and (on the sideline) Dave Baker.
Again, the serious TV critics are often appalled.
Me, I find them comfortably mediocre.
Neal always has it in his head that this is the year Kentucky or Vanderbilt is going to beat Florida, and the Gators have to reach triple digits before you can talk him down from it.
Rowe spent 13 years in the NFL, some of them with Saints — where you’d think he’d seen it all, Still, after all these years, despite doing Vanderbilt games just about every other weekend, he manages to live in a constant state of astonishment, where 6-yard runs turn into instant Heisman campaigns.
His bio on the Web site says he has broadcast sumo wrestling, and I for one would ante up on pay-per-view to hear that.
Down on the sidelines, where the big networks put the eye candy, the wind is always playing nasty tricks with Baker’s comb-over, and one of these days he’s going to find a coach who seems to understand what he’s talking about during the obligatory halftime interview.
It is camp comedy at its best.
The game itself, however, is only part of the charm of (this will take some getting used to) Lincoln Financial.
Where else, for instance, are you going to find those delightful commercials for YellaWood? I’ve never seen them anywhere else and it just don’t get more redneck than YellaWood. Golden Flake potato chips wouldn’t exist without JP/LF. And I happen to like an occasional blurb for septic tanks along with the steady diet of slick football beer commercials.
At least you know you’re in the South and not watching an Ivy League game on ESPN2.
:hurray: xcoffeex
This is a good story on why we hate day games in the south.
Morning games like watching kids’ cartoons
Scooter Hobbs Sports Editor
OK, I will agree that the daylight hours the morning offers up should be avoided at all costs. If you want to say college football has no business kicking off a game at 11:30 a.m., you’ll get no argument from these puffy eyes. But don’t blame it on Jefferson Pilot. Excuse me, it would be Lincoln Financial this year. I would guess that the parent company has something to do with handling your money. That’s a start. Nobody ever knew exactly what Jefferson Pilot was. Or cared. But it was ingrained in the Southern football consciousness. You just knew if the term was mentioned in the same breath as your favorite Southeastern Conference football team, it was not good news for the week. And never mind the starting time. JP Sports got the SEC leftovers to televise after the big boys at CBS and ESPN were done cherry-picking the real games. As often as not, it seemed to be Ole Miss-Kentucky. There were those who thought Vanderbilt had its own network long before Notre Dame made it fashionable. If you found the JP game, you knew that any connection to the SEC title race would be strictly coincidental. The real contenders showed up on JP from time to time, but never against each other.
When JP wasn’t hyping a spirited battle for fourth place in the SEC East, it would get something like this week’s Mississippi State at LSU game.
In other words, a projected lopsided rout that no other network would touch.
(This will be the Tigers’ first appearance on the network since — are you detecting a pattern here? — Mississippi State visited Baton Rouge two years ago.)
Yes, it will kick off at 11:30 a.m. in Tiger Stadium, where even 2:30 p.m. kickoffs are frowned upon and 5:30 p.m. starts barely tolerated.
So Jefferson Pilot was an especially ugly word around Tigertown.
The network got a bum rap. It didn’t choose the start time. It was the only thing available.
And if they aren’t a lot of fun to play in or attend, they do serve the common SEC good by providing something for tailgaters throughout the rest of the league to watch.
And they are something to behold.
I have heard from people who actually understand TV production that the JP telecasts were pretty crude at best. Thowback television, if you will.
I’m happy to report that nothing has apparently changed with the name change to Lincoln Financial.
They are committed to the same bare-bones production standards that Jefferson Pilot championed.
I find that mildly reassuring.
OK, they occasionally miss a play or two. Or three. They always seem to come back from commercial break in the tail end of a doublereverse throwback touchdown. And their cameras get faked out more than Vanderbilt’s secondary.
But at least you know you won’t have to deal with corporate cartoon characters running across the screen between plays.
In LSU circles, Jefferson Pilot was best known for flashing up the graphic “FINAL: Kentucky 30, LSU 27” just as Marcus Randall was unloading the Bluegrass Miracle to Devery Henderson.
Most schools have similar tall tales, however.
At least the broadcast crew knew it was Henderson. LSU’s live radio broadcast said it was Jack Hunt.
And what a crew it was — and, thankfully, still is. The triple-D team, Dave Neal, Dave Rowe and (on the sideline) Dave Baker.
Again, the serious TV critics are often appalled.
Me, I find them comfortably mediocre.
Neal always has it in his head that this is the year Kentucky or Vanderbilt is going to beat Florida, and the Gators have to reach triple digits before you can talk him down from it.
Rowe spent 13 years in the NFL, some of them with Saints — where you’d think he’d seen it all, Still, after all these years, despite doing Vanderbilt games just about every other weekend, he manages to live in a constant state of astonishment, where 6-yard runs turn into instant Heisman campaigns.
His bio on the Web site says he has broadcast sumo wrestling, and I for one would ante up on pay-per-view to hear that.
Down on the sidelines, where the big networks put the eye candy, the wind is always playing nasty tricks with Baker’s comb-over, and one of these days he’s going to find a coach who seems to understand what he’s talking about during the obligatory halftime interview.
It is camp comedy at its best.
The game itself, however, is only part of the charm of (this will take some getting used to) Lincoln Financial.
Where else, for instance, are you going to find those delightful commercials for YellaWood? I’ve never seen them anywhere else and it just don’t get more redneck than YellaWood. Golden Flake potato chips wouldn’t exist without JP/LF. And I happen to like an occasional blurb for septic tanks along with the steady diet of slick football beer commercials.
At least you know you’re in the South and not watching an Ivy League game on ESPN2.