OTUSA's capsize: Staged for the Today Show cameras?

QUOTE-UNQUOTE: "You can fool all the people some of the time, and some of the people all the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time." –Abraham Lincoln

As we posted yesterday, NBC's Today Show aired segments that were previously tape in BDA on Thursday and Friday. And having just seen an outtake from this morning's show with an otherwise nice segment on ORACLE TEAM USA, we now know that last week they taped a segment with OTUSA, on shore and on the water. And guess what – just as the attractive and perky reporter and her camera crew were approaching OTUSA's AC50 on a team chase boat, the yacht capsized! Live and in color. Right in front of them. Perfect timing. What did we tell you last week after it happened? In this post we even said, "One has to wonder if it was all planned."

And it turns out that the Fifth Beatle was prescient in his Contenders and Pretenders post with AC35 predictions earlier today when he said, "Recently OTUSA have been capsize-prone. But are they just pushing the boat harder than everyone else? Practicing capsize recovery? Or trying to make the news at 11 and promote 'their' regatta?"

I was going to lead this story with Kathy Lee Gifford's cheeky, rhetorical (ya think?) question to OTUSA crewman Cooper Dressler (USA, San Diego): "What is a grinder? I thought I knew, but apparently not." Ha ha ha.

Then I saw the outtake from today's show with the "capsize."

With each passing day, the 35th America's Cup looks more and more like the World Wrestling Federation.

Screenshot from the OTUSA segment on Friday's Today Show remote from BDA. Turns out the whole thing was "live to tape." When they were taping the on-the-water segment last week, moments before the reporter and her camera crew got to the yacht, oh gosh, it capsized!