Another college mascot falls prey to PC bird brains

What happens when your exit velocity laps your launch angle on your way to the nut loaf house? A week, thus far, in three acts:

1) This Monday, the University of Notre Dame will announce what was long anticipated. The school’s nickname will finally change from the ethnically objectionable and socially offensive “Fighting Irish,” to become the “The Slow to Anger Indigenous Irish.”

Next to go, that fists-up Notre Dame leprechaun mascot — a visual slur of little people, the perpetuation of an ethnic myth and a threat to the security of students and faculty.

This week, for real, LIU Brooklyn eliminated “Blackbirds” as its 80-year mascot and nickname because the school determined it’s racist. Its magnificent, dignified logo — a blackbird clutching a dangling, interlocking “LIU” — eradicated for a logo and mascot to be named later.

Left for consideration, if not action, is the removal from radio stations of Paul McCartney’s gentle ode to a broken-winged creature, “Blackbird.”

At LIU, unless it’s incorporated and sung by a vulgar, N-wording, Glock-worshipping, women-degrading rapper, “Blackbird” is a racist song that should be “disappeared.”

Blackbirds should suffer fad-driven historical revisionism along with, among others, Christopher Columbus, Kate Smith and Cal State-Long Beach’s Prospector Pete, the school’s recently executed 70-year mascot, a fictitious gold miner nevertheless condemned to death for shoveling dirt on indigenous populations.

There’s not enough real racism to eliminate, thus we must concoct more. As long as demand remains high, supply must be met.

Fascinating, that during an era when colleges and pro teams shamelessly add “menacing” black uniforms to their traditional sports ensembles, “Blackbirds” is now unacceptable as LIU’s mascot and nickname.

That “coincidence” continues as the new entry in the Arena Football League, the not-so curiously named New York Streets, will wear black uniforms.

2) Even this Kentucky Derby, No. 145, was afflicted by modern, misapplied excesses.

It took courage, conviction and 20 minutes to declare that runaway winner Maximum Security, due to late blocking and bumping in the slop, should be placed 17th.

Was there no allowance for a stampede on a pond, the kind that makes the sudden guiding of high-strung, 3-year-old horses an added burden and risk?

The decision seemed in line with NFL and MLB-like “instant” replay rules: challenges made and often approved based on nothing better than, “Hey, it’s worth a shot.”

The Derby, this year with 19 entries due to a late scratch instead of its usual 20, is an annual dangerous-by-design bump-and-run from the moment the gate opens, when the field veers toward the rail.

That similar would happen in a muddy stretch run could not have been surprising. But large fields fuel the greed of $50,000 entry fees as well as the egos of horse owners who can say, “I had a horse run in the Derby.”

Then there’s track politics, in this case the suspicion that if Maximum Security’ trainer Jason Servis had been among the Kentucky “regulars,” such as renowned trainer Bob Baffert, he would have not been taken down.

Servis is a Churchill Downs outsider and, I’m told, not a popular one.

Did the long-delayed decision reach a correct conclusion? I don’t know. But it reached a severe one. It seemed the only horse Maximum Security prevented from winning was Maximum Security.

And the horse’s human team, with 19 going in the saturated goo, perhaps was punished for what could logically been anticipated and avoided.

3) Wednesday’s Diamondbacks-Rays was a The Game Has Changed Special. Ostensibly between contenders, it was played in an AL park, thus a DH; no pitchers batting to pad strikeout totals.

Still, after just seven innings and Arizona up, 2-0, there had been 11 hits, six pitchers and 23 strikeouts! More than half the game’s outs were strikeouts!

From there it grew worse. Arizona won, 3-2, in 13 innings. Totals: in 4:39, 15 pitchers — an average of more than one per inning — and 42 Ks — 54 percent of the game’s outs. Among 78 outs, 42 were by strikeout!

Change is good. Changing the sheets, your underwear and the channel.

Emrick’s lead-in to tense Game 6 handshake is just heavenly

If Doc Emrick called a punchball game at recess, I’d watch it.

During Monday’s Game 6 of Boston-Columbus (the latter’s new city name pending) on NBCSN, the Bruins’ Charlie McAvoy was penalized for a brutal hit to Josh Anderson’s head. McAvoy’s two-minute punishment seemed light. (He was later suspended from Thursday’s Game 1.)

So after the game, the Bruins winning the series, as the handshake line formed, Emrick noted for us, and perhaps the broadcast truck, follow McAvoy and Anderson as they crossed paths.

And as they did, we saw them shake hands, then stop for a chat. Anderson smiled and patted McAvoy on the chest.

In almost a reverential whisper — he’s a Methodist deacon — Emrick said, “I sure love this sport. I hope you do, too.”

Suzyn Waldman’s greatest value to radio listeners comes when she ignores John Sterling’s self-promotional contrivances to report what really just happened.

Sunday in rainy, windy Yankee Stadium, both claimed the only way a home run could be hit into the persistent gale was if it were a line drive.

Yet, when Yankees call-up Mike Tauchman hit a homer, Sterling gave it his one-size-fits-all, self-smitten call: “It is high! It is far …” And then he made with one of his obligatory, freshly concocted, strained, childish, self-serving, name-games: “Tauchman, you’re a sock man!”

When done with his all-about-me act, Waldman explained what we suspected: What Sterling described as high and far, was a line drive.

Longtime Big East ref dies

Queens-born, 35-year college basketball ref and character Mickey Crowley died Sunday at 85.

In his 2017 memoirs, “Throw the Ball High,” written with former Post colleague Ralph Wimbish, Crowley told of when just two refs worked Big East games, each ref rated by the coaches after every game on a 10-point scale.

Crowley said UConn’s Jim Calhoun once told him, “I gave you guys a five. Split it up anyway you want.”

Unless Pete Alonso plans to perform bat-flips after striking out, a tip: Despite the pandering of Commissioner Rob Manfred, who unconvincingly supports acts of overt immodesty among players for perceived commercial “value,” allow New York to equate you with dignity, class and respect for opponents, yourself and The Game.

As seen Tuesday when juxtaposed to Mets-Padres on SNY, not all — if any — of MLB Network’s “Live Look-Ins” are live.

Reader John Turrini, Agawam, Mass., sent a photo of his winning Derby ticket on 65-1 Country House, which paid $132.40. Now the dilemma: Cash it or frame it.

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