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 It's never too late for wrestling
Posted: Wednesday April 07, 1999 12:49 PM
I have this morning instructed my attorney to file a class-action suit on behalf of all the sports fans in the Eastern Time Zone. We will be serving papers on all major networks, the NCAA, the National Football League, the National Basketball Association and Major League Baseball. Joining me as a party in the suit will be the Sleep Deprivation League, the American Federation of Teachers and Mothers March on Sports. All of us are outraged that the eastern seaboard continues to be discriminated against by television -- and here I quote from the court filing -- "by the cruel and willful assignment of major sporting events to a time period that is prejudicial to the good health of all sports fans in the Eastern Time Zone, irrespective of standard or daylight." That means: The games start so late in the east that peaceful, hard-working citizens have no choice but to either stay up way too late to watch games, or to try to be responsible, to go to bed at a normal and reasonable hour and then lie awake, tossing and turning, wondering who's winning. I am asking for $632 billion in payment because, like most American litigants, I picked a big number out of the air, and for treble damages because I am angry, angry, angry. Because there is an obvious conspiracy to start all the good games too late for normal people on the east coast to watch them, I am citing RICO -- the racketeering laws. I am also claiming that my civil rights are violated, that I am a victim of cruel and unusual punishment, and -- this will make it a landmark case -- that the Declaration of Independence has been abridged, because the scheduling of these games obstructs my pursuit of happiness. Monday Night Football has just announced that it is actually pushing the start of its games back past 9 p.m. The NCAA tipped off its championship game between UConn and Duke -- two eastern teams -- at 9:17, thereby guaranteeing that the very people who care the most couldn't watch. World Series baseball games start so late and go on so long that it's no wonder teams are signing so many Japanese ballplayers. The World Series now ends with New York asleep, but it's prime time in Tokyo. Besides the injustice, none of this do I understand: Almost three times as many people live in the east as in the west. Why would you go out of your way to penalize your largest -- not also to say: most intelligent -- audience? And who, pray, gets the best time for games? The Mountain Time Zone, which is home to a handful of skiers, mountain goats, retirees in the desert and those nuts in Idaho who don't want to live in America anyway. What constitutional right do they have to watch the whole National Pastime when I, a proud citizen of one of the 13 original states, have to go to bed even before the middle relievers come in from the bullpen? To add to the stupidity of the networks, Monday Night Football and the NCAA, with its Monday night basketball championship, still don't understand that the reason their ratings are down is because more and more sophisticated fans are watching the weekly Monday night wrestling matches -- Raw is War and Monday Nitro. These shows have huge audiences top-heavy with young men and boys, and -- hello, networks! -- they always end by 11 o'clock. This gives the typical, conscientious American student a full quarter of an hour to do all his homework, and still get to bed at a reasonable 11:15. So not only are the late games depriving hard-working, adult Americans of their right to watch sports, but because baseball, basketball and football games run so late, a whole generation of American boys residing east of the Appalachian Mountains is growing up as wrestling fans. Rally round me, eastern sports fans. Our cause is just. Also, I'm getting Johnnie Cochran to argue the case -- because we need a west coast lawyer who gets plenty of sleep. These commentaries, which appear each Wednesday on National Public Radio's Morning Edition, are posted weekly by CNN/SI.
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