I'm not sure whether you're aware of this, but Stu Wilson is a sage, a slicked-back guru.
There he was on the final of TV One's sporting moments and memories clipshow, Action Replay, looking for all the world like a beaming Buddha as he explained what is at the very heart of sport in this country.
"Isn't it great," his sage-ness said as he hopped madly about a sports field, "because it doesn't really matter whether it be tiddlywinks or just piss-drinking - if it's an Australian we're beating, who cares?"
As you can imagine, an awed hush fell over my living room. Stu might have been one of the country's best rugby wingers and one half of ebony'n'ivory, but who knew that he had the gift of aphorism? And here, in 25 words or fewer, was a national obsession, our sporting raison d'etre laid bare. Give the man a mountaintop to sit on.
Unfortunately, this sort of comment - a rough blend of wit, wisdom and vulgarity - is about all you can expect to find when sport is on the box these days.
Much of the free-to-air sports coverage - outside of most, but not all, news broadcasts - is increasingly more comedy than sport. A succession of shows have taken their lead from the virtuoso idiocy (on a good night) of Sportscafe, which was the first to really blend sport with a healthy sense of humour and sporting bloke satire.
In Sportscafe's inimitable wake have come the likes of TV One's quiz show A Game Of Two Halves, TV3's Sportzah! and Oscar Kightley, Nathan Rarere and others doing sport-omedy instead of commentary. And then there's Tony "the Shouter" Veitch. All he touches, even his One News sports reports, seems to turn to laddish frivolity.
None of this would matter - indeed a bit of mickey-taking is essential to offset the sport-as-religion bores found at the bar of every pub in the nation - if free-to-air television offered even a little in the way of substance in its non-news sports coverage.
TV One tried it with its broadcasts from Australia during the Rugby World Cup late last year, but failed miserably to provide intelligent analysis or, when it gave it a half-baked go, a bit of humour.
Of course the Olympics are nearly on us.
Personally, I will spend the month hiding under the bed trying to avoid such exhilarating events as the target shooting, rowing and dressage. But it will be interesting indeed to see whether TV One can, well, lift its game after its dull, dumb cover of the World Cup.
Sport shouldn't be taken too seriously. But some of the non-news coverage of it on free-to-air television should be, and it should be done well.
The famous English soccer coach Bill Shankly knew what he was talking about when he said some people thought that football was a matter of life and death and that he didn't like that attitude. "I can assure them," he said, "it is much more serious than that."
I'm quite sure that from his new perch on that mountain, Guru Stu would agree.
<i>Greg Dixon:</i> When sport is no laughing matter
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