ESPN’s new 12-year, nearly $500 million deal to carry Wimbledon (all of Wimbledon, including the semi-finals and finals that were stuck on NBC) was caused by one simple thing — Simona Halep’s breast reduction. NBC Universal President Steve Burke was heard to remark “what is this, this is bullsh**” before throwing down his remote and resting his head in his hands for 40 minutes. “I just wanted to see her play, I don’t even know who this is.”

No, it was because NBC can’t get off their own jock about tape delay, and the All England Club wants their sporting events aired live. That’s all it took. NBC was so dedicated to taping things, then showing them slightly later that they lost one of their biggest and most storied sporting events, at least in terms of sports people don’t really watch. They tried to do it with the Olympics, and now they’ve done it with tennis. In a funny aside, the All England Club felt a live presentation would allow them a “single narrative”.

“We felt it was important to have a single narrative across the two weeks,” Ian Ritchie, the club’s chief executive, said on a conference call Tuesday. He added, “We felt very positively that we wanted to put it into one arena.”

I’m guessing the previous narrative, “these tennis players really want to win at tennis”, wasn’t getting through clearly enough on tape.

“Live is pre-eminent,” Ritchie said. “Live is the nature of the game now on sports around the world, not just for tennis, but for other ones.” He added, “I’m sure there is a place for tape delay and highlights, but the sports viewer wants to see things live.”

Ritchie said that he had had conversations in the past with NBC about changing its tape-delay policy, but gave no details.

“You understand from my comments that live is important,” he said.

An NBC spokesman declined to comment on Ritchie’s remarks.

Either that or he made a comment, and we have to wait five minutes to hear it.

I expected Ritchie to add a “did you see what I did there” or a “do you realize live” before he stopped talking, but here we are with the totality of Wimbledon on ESPN and chances of controversial wind-driven upskirts up 2000%. Sadly chances of Simona Halep nip slips are way, way down.

[via NY Times, with a h/t to Matt Ufford]

Yesterday, 19-year old Simona Halep breezed through her first-round match against Serbia’s Bojana Jovanovski at Wimbledon. Why is this an important thing to share with people on the Internet? For the reason you didn’t start reading this paragraph until you’d stared at the picture for five minutes. Simona got popular a couple of years ago on the reactionary part of the Internet that flips out (in both the good and bad ways, which are open to interpretation) about 17-year olds with humongous boobs, and her success this year is due to losing them; Halep got a massive breast reduction, and it seems to be making her awesome at tennis.

By way of The Daily Mail:

Halep was first noticed on her way to becoming junior champion at the French Open in 2008. In a bid to boost her game, she spent much of the following year recovering from the surgery, which took her cup size down from 34DD to a more modest 34C.

At the time she explained her decision to fans, saying: ‘It’s the weight that troubles me. My ability to react quickly, my breasts make me uncomfortable when I play.

‘I don’t like them in my everyday life, either. I would have gone for surgery even if I hadn’t been a sportswoman.’

I’m going to play the “women are people too” card and say I’m happy for her, even if the loss of such magnificent breasts is sh:tty to the awful, judgmental part of our brain that can only praise women for their beauty or condemn them for looking like steroid monsters. I think those are the only two reactions I’ve ever heard about women’s tennis outside of Ron Swanson: Player X is hot, or Player Y is on drugs and looks like a man and has a penis and could rip off yours. In this example, we’ll say Player X is Martina Hingis, and Player Y is any tennis player with her picture on Fark.

We wish Halep a successful Wimbledon, and now are heads can go back to looking back and forth instead of just straight ahead and slightly down.

Here’s your tennis post for May: Romania’s Simona Haley (pictured) is giving serious consideration about trimming down her two best friends (uh, also pictured) with breast reduction surgery. From Total Pro Sports (thanks, Drew):

Earlier this month in an interview with the Romanian site ProSport, Simona Halep stated her wishes to have breast reduction surgery. Upon explaining her reasoning behind such a decision, she pointed to the added weight and difficulty in carrying her jugs over to every ball that gets hit her way.

It’s worth pointing out here that Halep won’t turn 18 until September 27th, and that discussion of her breasts should be done behind closed doors and out of Chris Hansen’s phone wire-tapping network. But now Deadspin is reminding everyone that the interview could have been a mistranslation and ALL HOPE IS NOT LOST! Whatever. Looks like you clowns have a few months to brush up on your Romanian.