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MORE FROM PHIL MUSHNICK Gotta step on it. Reader Mark Morley reminds us that the CBS Super Bowl pregame show starts in 10 minutes. Hey, without dawn-to-dusk pregames how would we know the
game is on TV, let alone which channel? Anyway, come Sunday evening we’ll hold these truths to be self-evident: Taylor Swift, if present, will be followed very closely, more so than on
usual Chiefs’ telecasts, as this is the game that attracts women of all ages despite Roger Goodell’s annual approval of misogynistic, N-word spewing, crotch-grabbing “artists” as halftime
family entertainment. Thus Swift will be given the Tiger Woods parking lot-arrival to parking lot-departure treatment even if it diminishes coverage of the game. But by now we understand
that anything worth doing is worth overdoing. Recall the Tommy “Cutlets” DeVito days? Tony Romo’s $180 million voice, by the end of the third quarter, will be raspy, a blend of Mel Torme
and Suzanne Pleshette. Las Vegas will have again proven to be a rotten choice of venue as for some strange reason crime has a nasty habit of visiting “Sin City” and that what happens in
Vegas stays in Vegas police files. By Tuesday, Raiders’ DB Janarius Robinson was arrested for DUI at the Vegas-common crime time of 5:59 a.m. That’s about the same time NFL players Alvin
Kamara and Chris Lammons were arrested and charged with nearly stomping a man to death after they refused to allow him to share their elevator at a Vegas strip joint. They were in Vegas for
the Pro Bowl. A Vegas strip joint is also where limitless NFL miscreant Adam “Pacman” Jones and Co. did their worst, making it rain until a gunshot paralyzed the bouncer. They were in Vegas
for the NBA All-Star Game. Another NFL star, Marshawn Lynch, was arrested for suspicion of DUI when he was found at 7:30 a.m., passed out in his sports car, two of its tires destroyed
after impacting a Las Vegas curb. Then there’s WR Henry Ruggs III, now in prison after pleading guilty to vehicular manslaughter for drunk-driving his Corvette 156 mph on a Vegas street at
3:40 a.m. before injuring his girlfriend and mother of his daughter, and killing a 23-year old woman and her dog in the fiery crash he caused. Ruggs was also accused of a misdemeanor for
carrying a gun, not that on this morning he needed one to kill someone. The Raiders’ statement offered the boilerplate “thoughts and prayers” to the victim’s family. There’s a growing pile
of sports-specific good reasons not to hold big events in Vegas, but who’s counting? Certainly not that first-class, flip-flopping phony Roger Goodell. This week he drew well-earned —
roughly $70 million per — ridicule for declaring that the “integrity” of the game remains his “No. 1 priority.” He did the same prior to legalization when he pleaded with Maryland not to
allow gambling on NFL teams as it will leave families in ruin and afflict the perceived integrity of the game. This week, he claimed that the Supreme Court, in legalizing sports gambling,
is to blame, as if the NFL was forced to partner with sportsbooks to ensure its cut of the losses, as if he’s unaware that NFL-licensed, logoed and promoted gambling didn’t reverse a
downward trend in TV ratings. Under Goodell, money, including of the ill-gotten kind, is the NFL’s No. 1 priority, thus he wouldn’t change a thing. And in spite of his habitual baloney,
We, The People, agree with Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin in holding these truths to be self-evident. TRUMP WAS WARNED THAT MCMAHON IS SLEAZE Now that most everyone knows what this
column years ago investigated and reported — that Vince McMahon is a twisted creep — it brings to mind a phone chat I had with Donald Trump, before he became president. As Trump was
throwing in with McMahon, playing an in-ring clown during McMahon’s pay-per-view and often salacious extravaganzas, I offered Trump four large boxes of documents to show him that McMahon ran
a drug and death mill, and a sexually perverted operation, even indulging the employment of known pedophiles who became the target of inside jokes on McMahon’s telecasts. Trump dismissed
it all, rationalizing that he donates his appearance fees “to charity,” though he didn’t say how much or give the name of the charities as if that excused his service as a McMahon
attraction. And so, as Trump was inducted into McMahon’s pro wrestling Hall of Fame, his wife, Linda, was soon named to President Trump’s cabinet as the Secretary of Small Business. Mrs.
McMahon not only participated in her husband’s most vulgar skits and sales of merchandise to kids — her business acumen included T-shirts that read “Suck It” with an arrow pointing toward
the crotch — she had astonishingly been appointed to Connecticut’s Board of Education. That she claimed to have been an Education major in college when she majored in French. But who can
recall their college major? It’s all a con, all of it. ------------------------- I’m on the thick side, thus I still don’t understand why this past week, again, women’s college teams
dressed head-to-toe — sneakers included — in pink to show their support for curing breast cancer. So I again ask: Why not everyone wear a conspicuous pink ribbon rather than spend tens of
thousands of dollars on pink ensembles? Why not donate that money to cancer research rather than on fleeting public relations? ------------------------- Now Jason Alexander, formerly known
as George Costanza, appears in TV ads pitching real-stakes online poker. Of course, everyone wins in such come-ons, thus Alexander is seen raking in a skyline of stacked chips. ESPN
IGNORES KYRIE’S BIGOTRY Interesting session on ESPN’s “Around the Horn,” Wednesday, focusing on flat-earth Kyrie Irving’s return to Brooklyn to play the Nets. Panelist Ramona Shelburne, an
ESPN “Insider,” marveled at how Irving has “rehabilitated his image,” while the panelists claimed that his problems in Brooklyn were the result of his refusal to be vaccinated. Left
unmentioned was his still-unresolved advocacy of a black lunatic fringe’s illogical, historically bogus claim that Jews caused centuries of black enslavement. But Irving’s anti-Semitism, by
Adam Silver’s standards, was deemed permissible. Of course, had Irving been white and advocated crackpot hatred of blacks, there’d have been no discussion as Irving would have long ago been
canceled. ------------------------- The National Labor Relations Board this week ignored the fact that Dartmouth is a college that provides grants in aid — scholarships — to varsity
athletes, ruling that the college’s basketball players are employees of the school, no different from window washers or librarians, thus entitled to unionize to negotiate salaries and
benefits, including workers’ compensation for time missed due to injuries. All pretense of college sports having anything to do with college — educating basketball players, for example —
has been removed from Div. I schools as irrelevant. It’s a sickness that will soon render college sports destroyed beneath an avalanche of debt. ------------------------- Need a laugh? Tap
into the @BackAftaThis X handle, formerly Twitter, to hear Mike Francesa’s WFAN days Super Bowl Radio Row pledge to not allow any guest to hawk a product. Enjoy!