Chieftain Pete's watercooler post may have made you more pleasantly conscious of the golden days of fall (though where I am, it has gone from summer to winter with no in between). With fall comes high school homecoming, of course. Here's a great photo of Ali C and her little brother at their high school's homecoming last year. As you see, Ali's brother is in the marching band, I assume playing a drum, and Ali revisited her old stomping grounds to cheer him on. I also love the guy behind them, who appears to be an audience member who really came ready to support the band.
You can ask Ali to reveal more details in the comments, but I have to say that this photo really made me laugh at my own high school memories. The marching band also wore green and white, topped with truly heinous foot-high plumed hats.
With absolutely no segue, I offer today’s musings: tennis players on TV. But not playing tennis, commentating, or even hawking products. I didn’t see Johnny Mac on CSI: NY, but my brother told me it was not bad and quite amusing to see McEnroe ‘acting.’ I see he’s also been on 30 Rock. This is good product placement, isn’t it? Get the faces out there in the popular awareness. The ATP website is always very quick to tell us when the players are in People magazine or Vogue.
A few I came up with this weekend while on an airplane, coming back from a wedding in Virginia:
1) CSI: Miami. Oh, come on, it’s a no-brainer, with all the people who trained or train in Florida. James Blake, maybe? (This list is going to be heavily American and leggy blonde-biased; it’s all about ratings, after all.) If only the O.C. were still on for all the Californians.
2) Dancing with the Stars. Why not? They have a couple of athletes per season, usually top-notch ones like Emmitt Smith, and haven’t had a tennis player yet as far as I know. Because of the length of the show (it’s a few months if you go all the way), we clearly can’t place an active player here unless they're willing to skip tournaments, and I think that the high caliber of athletes would demand someone with at least one major to their name. Among retirees, I think Chris Evert or Jim Courier would be perfect. Incidentally, Todd Woodbridge and Alicia Molik already did this show in Australia. (How did Molik—was she out with injury?)
3) Grey’s Anatomy. I don’t watch this show anymore, so I don’t know if they’re specializing in train wrecks or weird Amazonian fishes these days. But how about a nice normal sports injury? Athlete of your choice. If a man, provide his McNickname.
4) Something kiddie-oriented. Hannah Montana seems to be the big thing these days, judging from the Ticketmaster scalping scandal. But I was a bit stumped at thinking of a (blond or American) player with good kiddie appeal; Andy Roddick was certainly It, but he might be a bit old for the tweeny audience now. If this isn’t proof that we need young up-and-coming Americans, I don’t know what is. Maybe Sharapova? Ivanovic is also about right in age and looks, but for this kind of a kiddie show, I think you need to already be a household name or close to it.
5) Desperate Housewives is still pretty highly rated. Any hunky guy can probably go do some repair work at Susan’s house for at least one episode. Maybe even a non-American. Nadal? Tommy Haas? Roddick?
6) A U.S. Open Deal or No Deal, with tennis players planted among the models, holding the cases. Simple.
7) Of course, since we’ve already had the YouTube karaoke, maybe Don’t Forget the Lyrics would be more appropriate.
All right, that’s all I’m going to do this week. (Hey, I write this every week—I need to save other shows for other TV-oriented weeks. Maybe part II next week?) What do you think? This is just silly fun, so no common-sense comments of ‘he’d never do it’ or ‘tennis players should focus on their training.’
I do notice one real-life problem with my list, though, which is that four of the biggest shows I chose are on ABC or Disney. Maybe it’s somewhat to tennis’s TV-marketing detriment that one major network has not picked up all four Slams, because then it would be in their interest to cross-pollinate. (ABC does this with Dancing, for example). That’s not a problem likely to be solved anytime soon, especially not with the growing TTC.
Now don’t forget to send photos, lest I be forced to provide a photo for next week by photoshopping Roger Federer against the set of Ugly Betty.
-Heidi Kim