Scott D. Pierce: Mavericks analyst says Jazz’s Trey Lyles comes from a land of Sasquatches

Utah Jazz forward Trey Lyles made a Dallas TV sports analyst sound exceedingly stupid just by being Canadian.

OK, sportscaster Jeff "Skin" Wade, who works Mavericks broadcasts for Fox Sports Southwest, made himself sound dumb without any help from Lyles. The Jazzman just happened to be he subject of Wade's conversation with his TV partner, play-by-play guy Mark Followill, with 40 seconds remaining in the first quarter of Utah's game in Dallas on Feb. 9.

Turns out Wade thinks the Canadian province of Saskatchewan was named after Sasquatches. You know — Bigfoots. (Bigfeet?)

This came up when Followill shared the NBA fun fact that Lyles is "the first-ever NBA player from Saskatchewan."

"Wow," Wade replied. "That's an impressive NBA fact right there. Of course, that region's known for being home to a lot of Sasquatches."

And then added that the province "is named after" Sasquatches.

It sounds like he's kidding. Not that it was funny, but we all make lame jokes that fall flat sometimes. And sportscasters have a lot of time to fill during a season, so sometimes their attempts at humor are going to fail.

But, apparently, Wade wasn't kidding. When Followill disputed the accuracy of his statement, Wade told him to "look it up." Really.

By the way, Saskatchewan is actually derived from a Cree word for "swift flowing river."

The addendum to this is that Wade made the news in Canada. Lyles is a favorite son in Saskatoon — what with being the first Saskatchewanite (Saskatchewanian?) to play in the NBA — and Wade's comments caught the attention of Canadian television network CTV.

Wade, who was, predictably, mercilessly mocked on social media, called CTV's story about him "the greatest moment of my life … ever" on Twitter.

CTV asked Saskatchewan Premier Brad Wall about the sportscaster's strange belief.

Wall chuckled … so Wade got at least one laugh out of his non-joke. And, as it turns out, Saskatchewan doesn't actually have many Bigfoot sightings — that's more a Pacific Northwest thing and the province is farther east. (Its southern border runs from the center of Montana to the center of North Dakota.)

"We might have more Elvis sightings" than Bigfoot sigtings, Wall joked.

By the way, Lyles scored 11 points on 4-for-7 shooting in the Jazz's 121-119 overtime win over the Mavs, which was far more interesting that the strange Sasquatch odyssey of the Dallas sportscaster.

Super Bowl's Local Ratings • The Super Bowl was slightly less popular in Utah than the national average — but hugely popular nonetheless.

Super Bowl 50 averaged a 43.4 household rating on KUTV-Ch. 2 in the Salt Lake market (which includes all of Utah and parts of Idaho, Wyoming, Nevada and Arizona). That's about 7 percent below the national average of 46.6.

(A rating point represents 1 percent of homes that have a TV — either in a single market or nationally.)

According to Nielsen, the game averaged 111.9 million viewers, down 2 percent from 114.4 million in 2015.

Clearly, the Super Bowl is about more than just football. The national audience for Super Bowl 50 peaked at 115.5 million between 6:30 and 7 p.m. MT — during the halftime show.

Nielsen doesn't measure out-of-home viewing, so the actual number of people who watched the game was undoubtedly a good deal higher.

Scott D. Pierce covers TV for The Salt Lake Tribune. Email him at spierce@sltrib.com; follow him on Twitter @ScottDPierce.