The George Carlin sports clip du jour this morning seems to be on Baseball and Football, included below, but I'd argue his "Running is Not a Sport" bit (warning: this clip has several words you still cannot say on TV) is funnier. King Kaufman has a summary of much of Carlin's sports work, including this:

He had a routine in which he said that there really are only three sports: baseball, basketball and football, and he gave reasons for why various other sports are really games or activities. Hockey? That's three separate activities: Ice-skating, chasing a puck around and beating people up.



Swimming? "Swimming is a way to keep from drowning?" Sailing? That's transportation. "Riding a bus isn't a sport, why the [seven dirty word] should sailing be a sport?" Running? "For [dirty] sake, my mother can run. You don't see her on the cover of Sports Illustrated, do you?" Gymnastics? Forget it: "Gymnastics is not a sport because Romanians are good at it. It took me a long time to come up with that rule, but [goshdirtyit], I did it."

You can read the full thing here (warning: lots of bad words); his words for soccer and lacrosse are particularly unkind (the latter crossing into homophobia), and he closes with this on golf:

Let it just be said golf is a game that might possibly be fun, if it could be played alone. But it's the vacuous, striving, superficial, male-bonding joiners one has to associate with that makes it such a repulsive pastime. And it is decidedly not a sport. Period.

Anyhow, for the local audience, here's Carlin's roundabout treatment of the Redskins nickname. It's pulled from the Times-Picayune's review of the short-lived "The George Carlin Show," which came out on Fox in 1994.

Carlin plays George O'Grady, a semi-wacky street philosopher who spends most of his time hanging out with his friends at a corner bar where everybody knows his name. Like "Cheers," barstools serve as comedy stages. When the bartender wonders aloud about the use of the derisive term "Redskins" as a football nickname, Carlin argues that "Fighting Irish" isn't much better: "That's like calling a team 'The Bargaining Jews,' " he cracks.

Not sure exactly where he stood on Redskins, but at least he was talking about them. Also, if I'm reading the summaries correctly, the pilot featured Carlin betting on a Redskins-Giants game, and claiming a dog as his prize when the Redskins lost. It also led to snarky asides, like this, from the USA Today:

When he kneels in a scuzzy bathroom stall to secure God's help to clinch a bet - as if the Redskins could beat the Giants - he vows to give up gambling. Lotto, too, "even though it helps the schools," he adds in an endearing aside.

Not sure how many times a Redskins loss was the crucial plot turn in a major network sit-com pilot, and for that we have Carlin to thank. Anyhow, here's the baseball and the football clip.

By Dan Steinberg  |  June 23, 2008; 11:29 AM ET
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