Now more than ever the NCAA Women's Sports Community needed the Imus Touch to help promote The NCAA Women's Fast Pitch Softball Championship tournament games. ESPN did their part as they really went all out and interviewed all the young women athletes up close and personal. ESPN then created sound bites from each of their interviews and periodically played them throughout the games. ESPN did such a fine job interviewing these young women it kind of made me wish I was 20 years old again and a women's fast pitch softball groupie.
Now Imagine Don Imus still has his job on the radio and he mentions how much he really likes the Arizona's pitcher's ability to "bring it" to the plate. Perhaps Mr. Imus might have then pontificated about how he'd never look at swinging in quite the same light after seeing these ladies pull that bat handle until the ball exploded for a home run.
Whether it was salacious soliloquy, controversial curtness, or off the cuff inappropriate banter on his gone and perhaps forgotten radio/television show, Don Imus would have drawn the ire of the national association of political correctness groups, along with every feminists group on the planet, real and imagined. More importantly, a Don Imus on air inappropriate Spittle fest would have most probably brought some well deserved publicity for NCAA Women's fast pitch softball. Dare I ask, would that have been so bad?
But once again political correctness has reared it's unisex head and shunted Mr. Imus just when he was needed the most. The way I see it the Rutgers women's basketball team did not learn how to hand off the publicity football after they had already run for a touchdown and kicked the extra point. When it's all said and done, the outcry over Mr. Imus's diatribe about the Rutgers female basketball team allowed the Rutgers team to hog all of the "woe is me" attention for themselves while simultaneously incapacitating any future NCAA women's championship event from receiving the Imus Touch.
Did we see or hear about any of the Rutgers girls basketball team members taking their new found victimhood celebrity status and using it to help publicize other women's sports teams? Perhaps the Rutgers girls basketball team was too busy trying to recover from being scarred for life to try and shine any of their new found celebrityhood onto anyone else.
When it's all said and done, the real victims of Mr. Imus's diatribe from a few months ago may have finally been discovered, and it wasn't Rutgers college or it's female basketball team. The real victims of Mr. Imus's Rutgers on air imbroglio wear NCAA baseball caps, swing with all their might, dive for every ball, and run hard to first base each and everytime, but you probably don't care about any of that because nobody took these girls seriously enough to say anything derogatory about them.
Hopefully by now you realize how much you should miss Don Imus and his ability to draw attention to sporting events that otherwise would just melt into the night, making very little sound and no fury as they just fade away. Do you really believe you will see any more mention of the NCAA Women's Fast Pitch Tournament baseball now that the event is over with? We have the political correctness crowd to thank for that.
I sincerely hope that all the advertisers who pulled out of the Don Imus radio and television talk show put their money where their mouths are and supported the NCAA Women's Fast Pitch Softball Tournament by purchasing commerical advertising time.
Now that Don Imus has been minused did anyone else step up to the plate and properly indoctrinate the world of NCAA fast pitch softball to the public? Did the political correctness crowd ultimately damage the baseball tournament's visibility by vanquishing the one person who would have helped the sport become more noticed? When Don Imus takes the time to care enough to say something ill-conceived and in bad taste, people listen.
Once the political correctness crowd minused Imus, did they do enough to promote the NCAA Women's Fast Pitch Softball Tournament to the public? If the answer is no, then you should be missing Don Imus right about now.
