Romo Shrugged

For the past few weeks, I've been really trying to immerse myself into the FIBA World Basketball Championships. Not just as a welcome distraction to the Lohan-esque catastrophe that is the Red Sox, but because I genuinely care that this so called "B-Team" of non-superstar NBA players are going for gold, qualifying for the 2012 Olympics, and doing it all without the megastars that won the big prize in China two summers ago. I have very quietly applauded Jerry Colangelo and Coach K's work over the past five or six years to make playing for the U.S.A. something that NBA caliber players would want to do, and not just be pressured into doing by agents looking to secure a good public image for their clients. Also, after watching nearly all of the FIFA Eurocup last year, and then having explained to me what the hell it means to the sport after the fact, I appreciate global tournies a little more I guess.

I mean, over the past few weeks, I've heard several different analysts on ESPN tell me that the FIBA championship is actually more impressive than the Olympics, because there are no limits to which country's can compete. It actually means that, whoever wins, is the actual "global" champion.

So I found this whole concept pretty cool, coupled with the likeable team led by underrated powerhouse Kevin Durant, and started rooting. They demolished smaller country's by nearly double, even ran into the coolest non-story in history when Coach K tried to rekindle the Cold War after the Russian team president slammed the U.S. in the national press. This led to the USA getting to the gold medal game, wiping the floor with Turkey (not literally. That's not sanitary) and celebrating their first FIBA gold since '94.

Problem is, the game happened overseas and the same day as NFL Opening Sunday.

Obviously, the NFL's Opening Sunday is a big deal for this country as it's our new national passtime, and basically ESPN's Christmas/New Years/Birthday/Barmitzvah all in one, so I didn't really expect it to be bumped out of the news cycle by Kevin Durant dropping 30 on the Turks. What did shock me is that, when I woke up today, there was quite literally no mention of the gold medal game on Sportscenter, CNN, Sportsline...really, anywhere I normally would go to in the morning online. What I did see was the somber, backwards hatted face of Tony Romo, the name "ALEX BARRON" a whole lot, 75 reminders that Arian Foster totally killed my fantasy team this week, Calvin Johnson's "non-catch," and lots of white people complaining about Randy Moss's work ethic.

No gold medal game. No shots of confetti or raised arms. No shots of Durant, Derek Rose, Andre Iguadala and Chauncy Billups triumphantly raising their medals. Nothing at all. Apparently, if LeBron isn't the one doing the winning, then winning isn't worth promoting.

Which is slightly ironic considering the weekend started with every media outlet from here to California debating whether or not we were "patriotic" enough in the nine years since 9-11. On 9-12, the U.S.A. won a major, global sports competition and we didn't care because it lacked starpower. I think that pretty much answers that question.

Maybe I'm blowing it out of proportion, or maybe I'm just pissed because I know for a fact in two years at the 2012 Olympic games in London, we'll all be fawning over Durant and company as they push for another gold. Without going into another full fledged rant about The Worldwide Leader again, I'll just say this: while it's not the media's responsibility to "rank" the importance of their stories in how they present them, it is their responsibility to report on them. In terms of relevance, ESPN covering opening Sunday and not the FIBA championships is like the NBC Nightly News reporting on Kim Kardashian's Playboy feud and not Kim Jong Il's latest nuke.

And I promise...the next post won't be about ESPN. Probably.