As Howard Cosell sagely and solemnly reported upon the death, at 88, of George “Papa Bear” Halas, “It was inevitable.”

Similarly, it was only a matter of inevitability for ESPN, which treats us like idiots, to turn me into one.

Thursday, I stood in front of a large screen TV, a ruler and remote control in my hands. I retrieved the DVR of Sunday night’s Giants-Dodgers telecast, freeze-framing the nine batters in each team’s lineup to measure that strike-zone box ESPN superimposes over live play.

I was out to examine its intended usefulness, whether it’s legitimate or just another ESPN “enhancement” that only enhances well-earned suspicion that ESPN’s boast to be “The Worldwide Leader In Sports” holds no more water than your pants pockets.

Yup, ESPN had invited me to the Idiots’ Picnic, and I had arrived.

According to my measurements, all 18 batters were assigned the same strike zone — 3 inches by 2¼ inches, as per the same TV camera shot of the batter on the same TV screen. Thus, ESPN adjudged for us that the Dodgers’ Howie Kendrick, who is 5-foot-10, has precisely the same strike zone as the Giants’ Hunter Pence, who is 6-4.

Aha! There’s no fooling this fool, Mr. Worldwide Leader! That strike-zone box is a high-tech, look-what-we-can-do, slap-it-over-live-play intrusive con!

Early in that game, analyst Aaron Boone repeatedly noted that the pitchers were throwing from early evening sunlight into stadium shadows, which not only put batters at a disadvantage, it put them in physical peril as the ball, moving from sunlight to shade, becomes difficult to see. Good points.

But Boone left something out. The game was being played at such an odd time and in such conditions because MLB sold ESPN full authority to choose games to be played on Sunday nights, in the Eastern Time Zone starting at 8:10.

Then there was ESPN’s “Bottom Line” scroll.

Now, if we ran a network that continually distracted know-better audiences to scroll stupid statistics and dishonestly phrased self-serving news, we’d have long ago fixed that, right?

Not ESPN. Late in Giants-Dodgers, this breaking news came strolling by:

“Blazers 12, Clippers 12, [Chris] Paul 0 points.” Yeah, pointless.

Then there’s reader John Fortuna, who Thursday asked a good question: Why, in reporting the passing of Dwayne “Pearl” Washington, would ESPN post a picture of Foots Walker from when he played for the New Jersey Nets?

If ESPN somehow confused the two — they looked nothing alike — couldn’t its shot-caller see that Walker was wearing No. 14, a number, as could be quickly researched, which Washington never wore?

You’re right. Stop the nit-picking. At ESPN, one strike zone and one photo fits all. And so what if its omnipresent strike-zone box is bogus? Ya think ESPN will, at last, drop it?

One fool to another, neither do I.

Football puts the ‘rut’ in Rutgers

The last two weeks of Big Ten Network and ESPN’s SEC Network programming have been loaded with spring football games. Most have been well attended, and the Auburn vs. Auburn game even included Auburn cheerleaders who encouraged Auburn fans to cheer for Auburn as it battled Auburn.

So let’s see if we’ve got this straight. From the summer through, in many cases, the winter bowl season, these student-athletes concentrate on football, including games, travel, practices, film sessions, playbook study and weight-room conditioning.

Come the spring, they attend practices and film sessions, tend to weight-room conditioning and even play some football that determines their regular-season status.

Now, given that many of these full-scholarship student-athletes meet the bare minimum academic requirements to be enrolled in their colleges, how can any logical adult conclude these schools don’t primarily serve as fronts for football teams, that the noble concept of student athletics is predicated on fraud?

A piece on HBO’s “Real Sports” this week examined Rutgers’ abandonment of academics to shovel money into the bottomless pit the school eagerly dug to play big-time football, included the testimony of Rutgers professors who noted that while the salary of the new football coach was raised by $200,000 over the previous coach, the university’s library budget was slashed by $500,000.

HBO also noted that on the night before home games, the taxpayer- and students-subsidized football team checks into a top-shelf hotel in New Brunswick, NJ, the town, oddly enough, that’s home to Rutgers.

Money is no object. And it’s that kind of home-game hotel team togetherness that last year led to a 4-8 season, 1-7 in the Big Ten, the arrests of six former Rutgers football players for violent felonies and the $1.4 million buyout of coach Kyle Flood.

Can’t anyone here announce this game?

Far be it from us to try to explain fundamental baseball terms to such an accomplished pro and veteran broadcaster as Keith Hernandez, but let’s risk it. Again.

Sunday in Cleveland, the Mets’ Asdrubal Cabrera, batting left-handed, reached second on a throwing error after pushing a sweet bunt toward third base.

Over an SNY replay, Hernandez classified Cabrera’s surprise deed as a “drag bunt.” Hernandez classifies many bunts, and from either side of the plate, as drag bunts.

One more time: Drag bunts can only be enacted by left-handed batters who bunt toward first base while on the move in that direction.

Speaking of fundamentals, although it’s rather late for John Sterling to improve, Tuesday’s Athletics-Yankees radio broadcast was another during which listeners had to wait until the ends of half innings before he gave the score.

Then, as usual, you would have to know or guess the Yankees’ opponents. “At the end of four, it’s 1-1.”

While we’re at it, reader RC Smith writes, “Listening to the Yankees on the radio, it now may be the Sunoco Broadcast Booth, but I’ll always think of it as the Loews Broadcast Booth.”

It seems we’re supposed to regard this Mike Piazza jersey as the equivalent of the American flag that flew over Fort McHenry and inspired Francis Scott Key during the War of 1812.

That bullet throw by the Yankees’ Aaron Hicks to nail Oakland’s Danny Valencia at the plate on Wednesday was sensational. I’ll bet those who had the best view — those 10 or 12 people in the otherwise empty seats behind the plate — will never forget it!

Reader Alec Arons of Newtown, Pa., was watching a Yankee game on his MLB.tv app when between innings an historic MLB moment was shown: Mark McGwire’s 61st to tie Roger Maris’ HR record. Seems Arons recalls something or other about one or the other having cheated, or something. … Oh, well.