17 February 2010

Dueling 'dog shows

Networks have no way of telling exactly what will happen when they televise live sporting events.  They're live, after all.  But when two live events air at the same time, a weird juxtaposition can happen every once in a while.

Case in point:  last night's finals at the Westminster Dog Show.  As in years past, I caught bits and pieces of the coverage on USA Network.  But I did miss this year's most fun part, when protesters  crashed the stage.

What I was watching instead was the officiating disaster that was the men's-basketball game between Kentucky and Mississippi State.  To say the least, the home fans didn't take the final result well, tossing full water bottles at the officials and even taking a shot at Kentucky coach John Calipari as he was being interviewed.  In turn, embarrassed MSU officials didn't take that well.  Rightly, they're looking for the morons who threw the bottles, presumably so they can expel them.

The SEC has chosen not to penalize MSU, but that may simply be because the Bulldogs' postseason hopes probably died last night.  It won't be Kentucky or the bad refs that did them in, but their own student body.

2 comments:

dguzman said...

Holy crap!

Makes me wonder about the future. I mean, how long before protesters are crashing the stage and audience members are throwing water (or beer?) bottles at, say, live presidential debates? That will surely be the end.

Abu Scooter said...

I suspect that food and drink aren't allowed at political debates. If they were, we probably would've already seen a debater take a hit from a tomato or a piece of pie.

The PETA protest was even more ineffective than usual. Even the dogs blew it off.

The incident in Mississippi is a lot more worrying, having gone down only a few weeks after West Virginia fans tossed coins at Pitt players.

The best way for the NCAA to address this would be to disqualify Mississippi State and West Virginia. If you can't control your fans, you shouldn't be in the postseason.