O'Donnell: Fox/NFL enters its own twilight zone with weird segment on Ronnie Lott
AS SURE AS PRO QUO follows quid - and amateur quo stays forever hidden - it's guaranteed that if you watch enough football on TV, you're going to experience some bizarre lathering.
Fox/NFL took that postulate to an extreme in the final moments before Jimmy Garoppolo's national coming out party for San Francisco over Arizona Thursday night.
Actor Omari Hardwick hosted a two-minute segment on Hall of Fame safety Ronnie Lott that was one part Rod Serling and many parts "Bad Production in Hollywood."
The spooky vignette centered on Lott's 1986 decision to have a portion of an injured pinkie finger above the knuckle amputated to speed his return to play.
Happy, pass-the-Cheetos stuff for sure.
Fox producers had all the appropriate musical cues in place along with eerie lighting and cuts and script reminiscent of Robert Stack at his most spine-tingling in "Unsolved Mysteries."
There was even a staged shot of silent actors in full operating-room blues along with Hardwick wheeling Lott down a hospital corridor - presumably 33 years after the brief procedure.
Lott had only one line in the sub-banality - "Cut it off" - and instead stared straight ahead with all the intensity of an Ethiopian herdsman who had just scored a fresh stash of Qat.
Hardwick concluded the looney gloom with a fawning coda:
"He even led the league in interceptions the very next season - with 9½ fingers.
"Dang, man.
"Who does that?
"Ronnie Lott, that's who."
At this point, all that was left was for Dave Chappelle's Rick James to bounce out and add:
"Ah, yeah man, but through it all, the suckah could still dance!"
ALSO ON THE NFL KOOKALLAH PATROL, Matt Nagy continues his increasingly urgent days of confusion at Halas Hall.
With his season going south quicker than swing-state golfers comped at Mar-a-Lago, the Bears head coach tried to juice his team by showing highlights of the Washington Nationals remarkable route to a World Series championship.
Friends might want to tell Nags' that the Nationals play baseball, not football.
More appropriate might have been "Knute Rockne, All American," or even scenery-swallowing Brian Bosworth in "Stone Cold."
On even more precarious footing at the Bears citadel is special-teams coordinator Chris Tabor.
He displayed such a fundamental lack of understanding about placekicking this week that if the Bears get thrashed in Philadelphia on Sunday, that ol' Scapegoat Reaper could be a-callin'.
Lost in the fog on Monday was the fact that the Chargers dismissed offensive coordinator Ken Whisenhunt after beating the Bears 17-16 on Eddy Piñeiro's mash-tagged miss.
Predictably, the networks are losing interest in the Bears.
Only 19 percent of the nation will see CHI-PHL (Fox, noon, Dick Stockton, Mark Schlereth).
A TREMENDOUSLY POIGNANT INTERVIEW with Sarah Kustok by Steve Serby appeared in The New York Post.
Kustok is the former DePaul basketball star who was making her mark as a sportscaster in Chicago when mother Jeanie Kustok died as the result of a gunshot wound in her South suburban bedroom nine years ago.
Kustok's father Allan Kustok - once a lineman at the University of Illinois - was later convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to 60 years in prison despite his claim of innocence, a claim his daughter has supported.
Sarah Kustok relocated to New York and is now in her third season as the lead analyst for the Brooklyn Nets on the region's YES Network.
Serby deftly steers the conversation to the tragedy deep in the cathartic exclusive.
Kustok admits that she has a tattoo on her left wrist that reads, "The grace of strength."
"It's part of something my mom had written me, and it's her writing, and her writing is so recognizable to me (that) it makes me smile," the vibrant young talent said.
The full text of the interview can be Googled at "nypost serby kustok."
STREET-BEATIN': Without Games 6 and 7, that WS between Mike Rizzo's Nationals and Judge Roy Hofheinz's Astros would have been the least-watched ever as measured by average viewership. And industry analysts are reporting that the median age of the audience was close to 57 years, a number certainly not in the artificial intelligence power alley of Alexa's America. ... In post-gaming seen by very little of the nation, free agent Gerrit Cole quickly distanced himself from Houston, donning a cap that bore the logo of agent Scott Boras and telling media: "I'm not an employee of the team anymore." As Jerry Seinfeld said, "We root for laundry now."… Hawk Harrelson and Pat Hughes are 2020 finalists for Cooperstown's Ford C. Frick Award. (Mike Shannon is the favorite in the field of eight.) ... Latest Nielsen Audios for Chicago released this week showed flat books through Oct. 9 for both WSCR-AM (670) and microwaving WMVP-AM (1000). Notable bump-up was "The Score" morning ad screed featuring Mike Mulligan and buttoned-downed David Haugh, which was No. 2 in its time slot. ... Can Aaron Rodgers and his tundra escapees cover 3½ at LAC Sunday (CBS, 3:25 p.m., Jim Nantz, Tony Romo)? All numbers say, "Yes," so the logic of illogic says, "No." (Meaning, flip a coin - 87 percent of the country will get the game.) ... DePaul announced a strange 2019-20 men's basketball radio schedule in which Dave Corzine will work most games but low-battery Jeff Blanzy received more assignments than expected. (Corzine is a Chicago sports icon and university legend who should be limo-ed to all games.) ... And 17 years ago this weekend, a robust Arlington Park hosted the Breeders' Cup, the only time Irv Kupcinet ever called the bearded insouciant for a favor. Leading track czar Dick Duchossois to ask, "What the hell is 'Kup' calling you for?"
• Jim O'Donnell's Sports & Media column appears Thursday and Sunday. Reach him at jimodonnelldh@yahoo.com.