My Thoughts on ESPN

like most people who actually give this topic some semblance of thought, i am endlessly annoyed by espn's entire philosophy.

the latest article by espn's ombuds(woman?) and former nytimes editor le anne schreiber crystallized a lot of my frustrations towards espn:

... [F]actuality has been devalued in 24/7 sports media. If you look at the proportion of airtime and cyberspace devoted to reporting fact versus delivering opinion on ESPN, ESPN.com and ESPN Radio, it is clear that the main function of sports news is to serve as the molehill on which mountains of opinion are built. We don't have news cycles anymore. We have opinion cycles.

espn will show a 15-second highlight reel of an ACTUAL GAME, then engage in a 5-minute debate over whether alex rodriguez will opt out of his contract ... do you remember those weeks where you'd tune into "nfl live" and see 90% of every show devoted to staking out t.o.'s house?

espn comes up with one of these "cycles" just about every week or two, but the worst ones in recent memory were:

mcnabb v. t.o.!
mcnabb's a racist!
joe torre is quitting!
bill belichick's "spygate"!
notre dame and/or michigan hasn't won a game yet!
kobe bryant's "rape"!
duke lacrosse "rape"!

not only does espn focus on these largely meaningless and sensational fixations, but they rarely actually report any, you know, real FACTS about these "stories" ... the most annoying moment of every one of these "debates" is when one of the bloviating talking heads throws his hands up and says "i wish we didn't have to talk about this!"

you know what? you don't have to talk about this crap!! just shut up and play the clips! instead of talking out of your ass for 60 seconds, how about you actually play a clip from an actual game, and then tell us how the play developed or why this stretch of the game was important to its outcome

instead of sticking slavishly to an agenda of pimping certain popular teams or particular "storylines" you developed at the beginning of the season, how about you spend time talking about what's ACTUALLY HAPPENING on the field ... does anyone know that the cleveland browns have one of the best offenses in the nfl this year? of course not! why should they?! it's not like espn would actually take time from discussing why mangenius is 1-35 or how the saints might turn it around real soon

not to get too far afield (shit, this is about 2000 words already, who cares), but many "real sports fans" rip on fantasy sports players because they "don't care who wins the games" ... but people who want to succeed in good fantasy sports leagues are forced to follow actual trends, even if they don't exactly fit into a ready-made storyline

the absolute worst sport for this kind of "stick to the storyline" agenda is baseball, where, outside of a few conscientious journalists on baseball tonight, it's almost impossible to hear about the actual ebbs and flows of a season ... espn creates a storyline, filled with large market teams, and dutifully reports on their wins or losses ... if the pirates get hot for a two-week stretch, or the fourth starter for the twins has a better month than schilling, you'd barely hear a word

you know who i really blame for this mess? the idiot drooling sports dude (yes, i mean men) who only likes hearing about names he already knows and could really care less about what's actually, you know, happening ... it's a comparable demographic to the housewives (yes, i mean women) who watch the morning talk shows and get all worked up into a tizzy about the latest cute white girl to go missing in south dakota while their health care and civil liberties are stripped away

in a perfect market, we might actually have competitors to the beast, but with the monopoly espn holds on the national sports media and sets the sports agenda in this country, it's nearly impossible for other voices to gain real traction ... espn has no viable competitors on television, national radio, or big, comprehensive sports websites, so with this lock-down they can just keep slurping up the lowest-common-denominator viewer with the drivel they put on the air

as you can see, i get a little fired up about this.

one sports tv show that does it right is inside the nfl on hbo ... it features long highlight reels carefully constructed by nfl films and (relatively) thoughtful commentary led by bob costas ... espn's nfl matchup is another informative, sober show (what a surprise, it's also affiliated with nfl films) that largely avoids most of the crap i talked about in this post

i'll end this diatribe with a great quote from schreiber's column:

My concern, though, is less for Gundy or Belichick than for viewers and readers who grow fat on the fast food of opinion while starving for reported fact. "ESPN used to be a place where sports news was reported," wrote one of the many readers who complained about the two Easterbrook articles on Belichick. "Now it's just a factory for controversy. I guess in that way it's just a microcosm of America media in general, but that does not make it any less distasteful."

on that note, back to monday night football on espn!