SIDELINE
Observations, Opinion & Occasional Silliness by Richard L Gale
Making it to the Big Dance November 26, 2008
After this much of a pause, Sideline could only return with the biggest, most important football news, and it does:
Warren Sapp has failed to win Dancing With The Stars.
The twinkle–toed behemoth and former Buccaneer and Raider came a very creditable second in the USA version of what
the Brits call Strictly Come Dancing. I was, of course, pulling for Sapp to win, if only for having such a camp spectacle
won by a man who used to pull the heads off quarterbacks for a living. (Plus anybody who makes it fashionable to be a
widebody in a waistcoat gets my vote!)
The votes were legitimately earned, though — Warren proved just how agile football players are. This was a whole
different deal from the John Sergeant phenomenon that's been happening over here — something that I suspect owes
more to the cynicism of British reality TV voters, who regularly flock to whoever will make life most difficult for
Craig Revel Horwood, Simon Cowell and their kind.
After those earlier pop contests championed a singer with a stutter, a morbidly obese teenager, and a spikey–haired lesbian,
the British TV–vote anarchists found their patron saint in John Sergeant, a saggy–faced news reporter with genuine
charisma but laughably inadequate moves. Those seeking to undermine the very show that supplies their guilty pleasure rallied
to Sergeant's plodding steps, eager to see just how far they could pervert the format.
Now, if only a few voters of that tendency could be given a BCS vote we might get somewhere.
If, with a mischievous twinkle in our collective eye, we could get voters to place Texas below Oklahoma even though we all watched
them beat Oklahoma last month ... or if we could find a way to maybe guarantee that a conference champ ranked in the 20s goes to a
BCS game, but a top 10 conference champ with an unbeaten record doesn't ... or if we could just give voting rights to people who
still 'don't know how good Boise or Ball State really are' after they just played an entire 12–game schedule ... then surely,
somebody would realize it's all just entertainment and winning doesn't matter.
Yes, folks, that was a touch of the ol' British irony.
Who am I kidding? I don't watch Strictly Come Dancing, and if you have any control over the remote on a Saturday night, neither
do you. I suppose, when it comes right down to it, knowing which college plays better football is no more important to climate
change and world finance than which celebrity boasts the smoothest samba. It's all just recreational nonsense.
But when we reach the final week of the season, we're right to expect the best contestants.
Observations, Opinion & Occasional Silliness by Richard L Gale