Sports Editor

It happens every year so I don’t know why I should be surprised.

Have you ever noticed how whenever there’s a major sporting event on, be it the World Series, Super Bowl, some Bowl game and yes, the NCAA Tournament, that there is always some brainless jerk at one of the local television stations who gets paid to terrify old ladies by putting flashing red and green and yellow maps with the words TORNADO or SEVERE THUNDERSTORM WARNING all over our screen?

Personally I’m against the entire meteorologist profession from the get-go, but when it comes to interrupting a game I’d rather eat a fuzzy worm than have one of those little maps taking up a quarter of my screen.

These guys need to get a grip. The slightest sign of a storm these days and you can’t turn the channel without a banner flashing down at the bottom or even worse some local idiot out in the rain trying to get browny points by "braving" the fierce storm. We never get a break and have one of those microphones explode in their face during a report though do we?

Yeah, yeah, I know that it’s important to know when bad weather is coming into the area, but heck guys. JUST LOOK OUT THE WINDOW!! I promise, if there is a Tornado coming you’ll hear it!

My beef is how careless these jerks are when you’re talking about a double-overtime game like there was today between Kentucky and St. Bonaventure. Instead of actually interrupting a precious commercial they wait until the game is on ­ with only four seconds to play ­ before cutting away to tell us the storm is LEAVING the area!

Am I crazy or does a storm lose all importance when you can… 1. Look out the window and tell that it is all over and… 2. It’s completely off the map.

Now to give them credit I didn’t actually miss the last four seconds and if I did I’m sure that there would have been a million highlights afterwards, but that’s not the point.

These idiots are always bugging me. It’s like teeth on a chalkboard sometimes. They take any amount of rain and try and scare you into buying bottled water, and stock piling weapons in preparation for armageddon!

I’m sure it will come back and bite me someday when a tornado comes and turns my house into a pile of rubble. Those moments just before it hits, if only I had been watching my friendly neighborhood idiot and his red and green flashing maps then maybe I would have known. That is of course, if that little thing called electricity hadn’t already been knocked out.