“Announcer belittles Lions accomplishments with the word asterisk” -by Terry Foster

NBC announcer Mike Tirico should know better.

He lives in our area. He defends Detroit and Detroit sports.

We love Mike Tirico on golf, on Goff and anything else he talks about.

However, he should have known that splicing the word asterisk to the Lions season opening and eye-opening 21-20 victory over the Kansas City Chiefs would not go over well. Asterisk is a dirty word in sports.

It really began when Roger Maris broke Babe Ruth’s single-season home run record in 1961 with 61 dingers. Maris did it during a 162 game season.

Fellow New York Yankee Ruth hit 60 home runs in 1927 in 151 games during a 156-game season.

Ruth was beloved in New York. Maris was not. So fans derogated Maris’s accomplishment by tossing an asterisk behind his statistics. The official Major League Baseball historians did the same. It took something away from Maris, just as Tirico did to the Lions.

He explained himself during a Detroit News article on Wednesday.

“If you have a problem with the word ‘asterisk’ that is a very legitimate complaint,” Tirico told Tony Paul of the News. “However, it should be in context. If you want to take out the middle of the comment and make it the whole comment, then you don’t understand properly how to attribute things.”

Here is what Tirico said at the end of the Lions-Chiefs game.

“We saw the Chiefs go into Foxborough in 2016 and win on opening night, and that announced to everyone that the Kansas City Chiefs were going to be a factor. This has an asterisk because of no Chris Jones and no Travis Kelce, but after what you saw at the end of last year and what you saw tonight, the team in blue and silver is for real.”

This is like saying your girlfriend is pretty, but throwing in that she has bad breath. That is not going to go over well even if you praise her. The word asterisk taints everything else Tirico said.

Tirico told the News: “Could I have worded that slightly differently? Sure. If you chose to ignore 3 hours and 15 minutes of other positive coverage, if that’s the way you live your life, so be it.”

Once again say this to your girlfriend: “Baby you look so hot tonight. Just spectacular, but what is up with that bad, stanky breath?”

Let me know how that goes over.

The NFL is a pass-fail league. Injuries play a factor in every game because it so violent. I guarantee this. If the Lions were to lose later in the season to the Chicago Bears without Aidan Hutchinson and Amon-Ra St. Brown nobody is going to use the word asterisk.

The Lions lost. Plain and simple.

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For more from the author Terry Foster, check him out on Twitter here: @terryfosterdet

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