Kick Out the Sports!
by Bob Cook

Bob Cook's weekly ruminations on sports appear Mondays in Flak.

To paraphrase Leo Tolstoy, every happy team is alike, but every unhappy team is unhappy in its own way. That's why the best part of the live television coverage after a championship has been decided begins when the announcer says it's time to hear an interview from the loser's locker room.

No doubt, the American League champion Boston Red Sox were jubilant after becoming the first Major League Baseball team to win a seven-game series after spotting its opponent a 3-0 lead. But unless you're a Red Sox fan, watching the team jumping around and hugging on the field, then launching champagne, beer and Nelson de la Rosa at each other in the locker room is pretty boring. But once Fox announcer Kenny (Son of Marv) Albert said it was time to hear from the vanquished Yankees... oh boy, here comes the most stirring three minutes in sports.

Like in a pop song, there's a formula for the loser's locker room interview. And it's about as long as a pop song, too. First, assign a lesser name to do the job. (Fox sent its NFL F-team announcer, Curt Menefee.) Second, have that lesser name start by informing the representative sent by the team — usually the coach or manager — that he just suffered a tough loss, as if he didn't know. Third, have the conversation conducted at a volume somewhere between a golf announcer during a putt and a dinner conversation at a formal restaurant between a couple trying not to look like they're fighting. Finally, wrap it up by thanking the loser's representative for speaking at such a difficult time, as if you just caught him at his mother's funeral.

Mix it up, and there you have it — an incredibly uncomfortable moment you can't help but watch and love! For you kids just getting into the announcing business, here's a template for a post-championship loser's locker room interview:

Announcer: Mumble mumble mumble that was a tough loss mumble mumble mumble.

Coach: Mumble mumble tried our best mumble mumble couldn't get it done mumble.

Announcer: Mumble mumble can you get over mumble?

Coach: Mumble mumble deal with it mumble mumble mumble great group of guys here mumble mumble we're professionals mumble.

Announcer: Mumble mumble thanks mumble mumble at such a difficult time, coach.

Coach: Mumble.

Breaking with form, Menefee and Yankees manager Joe Torre did conduct their chat at an audible volume. But they also brought the interview to a higher level of train wreck, with Menefee constantly stumbling to present questions that were obviously being piped through an earpiece. (Menefee had the clumsy syntax and delayed reactions of someone who called into a radio station but didn't turn down the volume on the stereo.) What's more, Torre canceled out his professional, measured responses by wearing the look of a guy just told that the deposed Nigerian prince's widow who sent him that urgent e-mail about sharing her wealth is never going to give him anything for the advance payment he sent her.

The point is not to have the loser's representative say something meaningful. The point is to watch him stew in his juices, feel his pain and thank whatever god you worship that you're not him. Even if every interview seems the same, each stunned runner-up projects his own pain — and that's all fans need to see.

Any attempt to get substance just seems like an imposition. For example, after the 2003 NCAA men's basketball championship, CBS' Bonnie Bernstein told the losing coach, Kansas' Roy Williams, that "she had to ask" him about rumors he would soon leave to coach at North Carolina (which he did a week later).

Williams was gracious, but when Bernstein pressed on, becoming the equivalent of the person at your mother's funeral demanding to know how much she left you, Williams snapped on live TV: "I could give a shit about North Carolina right now." Many were shocked at Bernstein's insensitivity. (No, not at Williams' expletive. Mind you, this was the pre-Janet Jackson's boob era of sports on TV. If Williams were in NASCAR, his team would have had 25 points docked from the final score.)

So while you may wait with excitement to see whether the Boston Red Sox or St. Louis Cardinals win the World Series, some of us are waiting with excitement to watch one of the losers have to come out and bare his tormented soul on live TV. Mumble mumble mumble.

E-mail Bob Cook at bobc@flakmag.com.