So Gary Lineker and Alan Hansen lost the BBC the contract to televise the FA Cup, did they? What absolute tosh. Only the terminally gullible, or those in urgent need of a headline, could have swallowed that bit of coarsely spun nonsense.
It was not the buckets of scorn that the BBC's pundits are said to have poured on the efforts of the England team which sent the FA lurching into ITV's embrace. Nor was it the promise made by the successful bidding partnership to present every England age-group group match, from the under-11s upwards, live to an expectant nation. It was, in a word, the loot.
Money doesn't talk, it swears. Bob Dylan said that. But sometimes its eloquence is undeniable. By accepting the offer of £425m jointly offered by ITV and the Setanta satellite channel, the FA trousered an estimated extra £70m over the equivalent BBC-Sky bid. And by securing a deal worth 42% more than the existing arrangement, which happens to be with the losing partners, Brian Barwick made himself look a bit of a hero at the end of a week in which some were finding it difficult to apportion the blame for England's dreadful displays in Tel Aviv and Barcelona between Steve McClaren and the FA's chief executive, who appointed him.
Facing the prospect of a half-empty Wembley for England matches that should be helping to service the vast debt incurred by the stadium's troubled construction, Barwick has given himself a useful financial cushion. And if he was indeed upset by the critical views of Lineker and Hansen, then he must have forgotten most of what he learnt during his time in television journalism with the BBC from 1979-1998 and with ITV from 1998-2004.
Murdoch's millions having already shaped the modern Premiership, once again television is taking a pre-eminent role in determining football's future. And, interestingly, an acknowledgement of its influence on the game came at the weekend from two football men at opposite ends of their careers.
Sir Alex Ferguson may be noted for his oversensitivity to media criticism but he had a very good point when he blamed the outpouring of vitriol in Barcelona on Wednesday on the culture of reality TV, which hands out the licence to criticise without restraint or responsibility.
"It's a mocking culture we've got now," he said. He might also have mentioned those once-serious news programmes that make a point of soliciting emails and text messages from any loony with a laptop or a mobile: "We want your views . . . "
Then David Bentley, the star of England's Under-21 team at Wembley a week earlier, added an unexpected perspective when he thoughtfully described his unease at noticing, even during his short time in the game, a change in "the fundamentals of football".
"The professional game is media-driven, because of the money that is being pumped in," he told an interviewer. "That has given them control, and football at the top level has become a circus."
How refreshing to hear a young player airing a view that might not win him many friends in the senior England dressing room. And he was right, of course. But what he did not say was that the circus is of the Roman variety rather than the type run by the late Billy Smart. Last Wednesday the Estadi Olimpic might as well have been the Circus Maximus, with the crowd baying for blood and the television cameras revelling in the slaughter.
