Dearth of ideas in their wallet

TO HAVE a year to produce the next series of NCAA Tournament Capital One ads, starring Charles Barkley, Samuel L. Jackson and blank-faced Spike Lee, only to come up with a collection of humorless, forced and uncreative comedic messages is truly a skill.

NCAA wrestling matches last seven minutes. Saturday, as seen on ESPN, an NCAA championship match was stopped for six minutes to view a replay. But this was more of what knee-jerkers demanded.

FanDuel has released a new series of ads claiming parlay bets are the secret to suckers’ success. That’s simply untrue. If it were true, FanDuel would post the payout odds: and they stink, far below what illegal books paid. Not that any of the leagues cut in on the action care, but such come-ons are a violation of the public trust.

Fox’s Joe Davis and John Smoltz spent a lot of time telling us Tuesday that the Japan-U.S. WBC final was the best baseball on earth played by the best players on earth, and on and on. They never realized that those to whom they were selling these exaggerations and endless hype were already watching.

ESPN gas pump Stephen A. Smith, who knows zilch about football, Tuesday lectured on whether QB Cam Newton is kaput. But it takes very little to get over on ESPN execs.

This week’s termination of all sports at St. Francis Brooklyn leaves basketball coach Glenn Braica stranded. Never watched a coach do more with less of everything than Braica, even considering a 6-foot-3 recruit as his center.

Slaves to fashion: As seen on ABC, the Penguins’ latest “alternate uniform” included yellow numerals, often making the Pittsburgh players impossible to identify.

Watching golf, reader Pete Covino figures he now knows that NBC stands for “Nothing But Clichés.”