While we here at Dawgsports have been known to take the occasional jab at the alleged Worldwide Leader in Sports, there comes a time when you have to render unto Caesar that which is his. And, as those of us nurturing young Bulldogs frequently preach, it's always important to keep your promises. Therefore, I'm keeping one of the promises I made this weekend during the 'Dawgs improbable run through the SEC basketball tournament. Ladies and gentlemen, with no further ado, the five things I most like about ESPN talking head Mike Greenberg:
1) He thinks he could do just as well as Bud Selig if called into service as the Commissioner of Major League Baseball. Can anyone who watched the Roger Clemens and Mark McGwire congressional hearing fiascos really doubt this proposition? Didn't think so.
2) He graduated from Northwestern University, which boasts one of the most successful debate teams in the collegiate ranks (along with the University of Georgia, which had the top overall individual team during last year's regular tournament schedule). As a moderately dorky attorney who in his free time helps with a high school debate team, that's a program that I can get behind.
3) He milked a cow last year after losing his March Madness bracket wager with cohost Mike Golic. As a dorky attorney who grew up working on his grandfather's cattle farm, I can appreciate both the comedic certainty and the potential for bloody, gawk-inducing injury wrought by a Prada wearing New Yorker with a Northwestern journalism degree tugging at the wrong bovine appendages in a crowded television studio. This is why they invented pay-per-view.
4) Mike Golic has not, as of yet, devoured him. This alone shows that "Greenie" is possessed of a degree of wily agility previously only witnessed in Cuban defectors travelling to Florida on athletic junkets and Reggie Bush when confronted with a deposition notice. Seriously, if you were Raul Castro, why would you even bother at this point? Raul: if you keep sending your athletes to compete in the U.S. they are going to keep disappearing in the middle of the night. And who do you have guarding their hotel rooms? The Nebraska Cornhuskers' secondary? Rick Neuhiesel? Cuban hotel room guarding is, historically speaking, right up there with French border security.
5) Yiddish. Greenberg throws in a good bit of Yiddish with his sports talk. Just this morning he referred to Skip Bayless as a mentsh. Now I don't know if Skip really is a mentsh, but the prospect of hearing Greenberg tell Nore Dame grad Golic that Charlie Weis has to beat Navy and Air Force in the same year or he'll be out on his tukkus makes me smile.
So there you go, five worthwhile things about the only outed metrosexual in sports broadcasting. Other than Kirk Herbstreit. Tune in later this week when I come up with some good things to say about Steve Spurrier, the alleged evil genius (which, by the way, I'll start capitalizing again when he's once more in the running for an SEC title on Thanksgiving Day). Until later . . .
Go 'Dawgs!