Betting on Mike

The New York Daily News certainly has a lot of faith in Mike Lupica. Because his "take" on the topic du jour is usually advertised on either the front or the back of the paper.

Decades ago, Lupica was an interesting read. His love of sports was infused in his writing. He did an admirable job replacing the legendary Dick Young's omnibus Sunday column when Young bolted to the New York Post. He was even big enough to let his readers have the last laugh when he published some of their more pithier comments.

Yet that all changed somehow.

He's become jaded -- big time. He doesn't cerebrate sports as much as he berates the athletes and executives who make it happen. Who wants to read that over and over?

If you have read any of his anti-Bonds, anti-A-Rod, or anti-Isiah Thomas jeremiads, you have read them all.

His Sunday (ostensibly sports) column is riddled with anti-conservative jabs. Hey, there's a place for that -- but if I wanted to read politics, I'd go to the front pages. Tellingly, he no longer has space for his reader's comments.

Now Lupica passes off conventional liberal thinking on the front pages every Monday in the imaginatively entitled "Monday with Mike" column. You can go through a month of them and you'll be hard pressed to find an original thought. Like his sports columns, he's got his his heroes and rogues. On Mondays, he is reflexively pro-Obama and anti, well, just about anyone who isn't Obama. It may please his liberal readers but it still doesn't make for an interesting read.

So why the big push?

Seems to be that the New York Daily News is becoming a daily tabloid form of Newsweek. Less news -- ESPN has cornered that market -- and more commentary. It may sell. Then again, it may not.

With the departure of Jimmy Breslin years ago, the Daily News lost its best (and Pulitzer Prize winning) journalist. Their other columnists, well, "bland" would be considered a step up.

So the News is betting on its big dog to come through for them. (Hey, there may be an award or two in it for Lupica as well -- that would certainly be a capstone for a long life in sportswriting.)

Unfortunately, though, the big dog lost his bark a long time ago.