He didn't know what he was saying. But as a broadcaster, shouldn't he?
The outcry never developed over Terry Bradshaw's racially insensitive comment during Fox's studio show Sunday.
Al Sharpton has not called for a boycott. The rest of us were voting for President and paid little attention.
Bradshaw apologized, quickly and credibly. He escaped not only a firing or suspension, but any punishment at all.
I think I know why. The unspoken defense of Bradshaw might go like this:
"It's Terry Bradshaw. He's an idiot, anyway.''
Not exactly a rousing tribute, but isn't that why everybody is letting him slide?
The bigger question, which should not be ignored, is whether this episode makes it time for TV sportscasters to examine whether their job is as donors of information, or as babbling clowns.
I don't think Bradshaw is an idiot. In fact, I think his good-ole-boy routine has been carefully honed.
I certainly don't think he's a racist. Nothing in his history says so, and his history is long.
Yet people have been ruined for comments like that made by Bradshaw, who said Miami's Reggie Bush was running "like that bucket of chicken he was chasing in the wind.''
Bradshaw had a uniquely credible rebuttal. He has a running gag with Jimmy Johnson over the latter's passion for chicken, and Bradshaw said it was Johnson he meant to chortle about.
OK, maybe, I guess. But Bradshaw's defense that he was just running off at the mouth is really an indictment.
I don't know about the rest of you, but a bunch of grown men cackling at their own inside jokes is not my idea of being informed. And the point of hiring ex-players and former coaches is for their inside knowledge that we don't know.
Jock broadcasters have been around for 60 years. The earliest (if we exclude Dizzy Dean) were men like Tony Kubek, who worked hard at their new craft while blending in the knowledge from their previous life.
Closer to home, Lou Merloni does that. But all too few former athletes, especially nationally, rely on their celebrity status to cover for a lack of anything worthwhile to say – in some cases because that might take work.
It need not be this way. John Madden knew all about entertainment value, but sharp football analysis came first.
Bradshaw built a career as the Academy Award winner of the clown genre, a Tower of Babble On. I hope this episode makes him internalize three words he has ignored – stop and think.
I am uneasy with a "gotcha'' society, where one slip can ruin a man, but Bradshaw should have had at least a modest penalty. What bothers me is how dopey, pointless blather has become the preferred way to fill up supposedly valuable air time.
If that's so, send in the clowns – real clowns with polka dot costumes and red noses. If not, supposed experts like Bradshaw should do some homework and offer us something we don't know, rather than winging it with verbal vaudeville.
His defense of not knowing what the heck he was saying bought him a pass this time, but it's not much of an argument for someone who is supposed to know the NFL from the inside, and is getting paid big bucks to articulate it.