Big names in college basketball and Major League Baseball were not pleased that news in other sports broke on the day of their marquee events.
Monday featured both the Duke/Butler NCAA title game and MLB Opening Day. However, the day also included Tiger Woods‘ first post-scandal news conference and news of Donovan McNabb‘s trade to Washington.
By any measure, these events are completely unrelated. After all, what happens in golf or the NFL has little to no bearing on college basketball and Major League Baseball. However, ESPN analyst Dick Vitale, MLB Commissioner Bud Selig and one unnamed employee of the Washington Nationals were not shy about voicing their displeasure.
On Sunday, Vitale told USA Today that Woods was “really, really showing a lack of respect for college basketball,” as the press conference would “[dig] away at the status and stature of Monday’s championship game.”
Jim Nantz, who serves as the lead play-by-play voice of college basketball and golf on CBS, disagreed, saying he had “never even thought about the timing of it,” and “[didn’t] see it that way.”
Meanwhile, Selig and the Nationals were both “seething” at the McNabb news, according to the Washington Post.
When asked about the McNabb trade, Selig reportedly said, “This is opening day. This is baseball.” He then added that when he woke up at 5:30 that morning, he was “watching an unnamed channel” and McNabb news was “all that was on. … I turned it off.”
An anonymous Nationals employee was more blunt. “Maybe we should call up [Nationals #1 pick] Stephen Strasburg the same day as” the NFL Draft.
