Yeah, but they have fantasy bass fishing leagues so it’s a tradeoff.
It took me a long time to come to the light, but ESPN has become complete trash. I’ve very bitter about this, and thus could rant about this subject long and hard (though it’s pretty much all covered here), but instead I’ll dish out some links.
For quick scores, I use sports.yahoo.com. Deadspin and SportsFrog will hit on all the major stories of the day. There are good blogs for just about every sport now–just search in Blogger and see who gets linked all the time. EDSBS, the site with the anti-ESPN post I cited above has links to most of the incredibly strong contingent of college football bloggers. ACC Basketblog covers the important stuff as far as NCAA hoops goes (:)) Others have talked about stuff for pro football and if you just follow the links from these main blogs you can leave ESPN and all its crapulousness in the dust. I don’t think I’ve read an ESPN.com page since March, and I intend to keep that streak for as long as possible.
I always have my speakers off exactly because of stupid sites like ESPN. I only turn them on when I’m playing a game.
I care absolutely nothing about sports, and I hate ESPN because they’re the reason that cable prices go up (they demand the most money from cable companies), but that shouting thing seems really annoying. I checked out their site to see if it was as bad as it sounded, but I can’t hear anything. I can only assume that Proxomitron is blocking it for me.
Great link. I’d agree with all of the points, (including the added comments) except for Keith Olbermann. I hate that arrogant bastard.
And Kenny Mayne? You are not a personality. Stop trying to sell me insurance!
Lizard, you make a great point about ESPN becoming like MTV. Maybe that’s just inevitable. We age, and their target demographic doesn’t. When was the last time the original MTV played videos?
ESPN ruins everything they touch. Over the top, loud, obnoxious and in your face. If only Fox was a viable cable alternative.
I shutter to think what it will be like in another 10 years. BOOOO-YA!
Yes, yes, a hundred times yes. The ESPN as MTV analogy is particularly apt. Being on dialup, I never venture to espn.com, cbs.sportsline.com, cnnsi.com, or even giants.com, because they all take several minutes to load each page. The only sports articles I read online are ones that get directly linked either here or on the giants.com boards. Basically, I get 95% of my sports info from the only two messageboards I frequent.
I do read many of the articles linked in the yahoo fantasy home page, though, because yahoo’s page is extremely dialup-friendly.
As for ESPN on tv, I watch PTI and Mike & Mike for pretty much all my opinion piece needs. The best thing they ever did was create the 30 minute “best of” Mike & Mike; that’s a solid half hour of sports programming. But there is one minor point I’d like to quibble with:
To be fair, all radio is half commercials. Listening to Howard Stern back when he was on broadcast air, Mike & the Maddog('s Tennis, Horsie and Yankee roundup,) and now Mike & Mike, it’s painfully obvious that nobody spends the majority of time on-air. Either you get three ten-minute commercial breaks per hour like Mike & Mike or Howard, or you get six five-minute breaks like on Mike & the Maddog.
While I grant you that Mike & Mike’s commercials have an inordinate amount of ESPN-centric advertising, I don’t see that as particularly worse than if they just aired car commercials. Particularly on the television broadcast, where two of those 10 minutes are spent on Sportscenter highlight reels.
Sure, I could go the rest of my life without hearing the words “OnStar hotline” ever again and be perfectly happy, but that’s just the nature of the media.
I have to agree about radio in general, at least talk radio. I have XM and thus can get ESPN Radio where I otherwise couldn’t. I sometimes try to listen to it on long drives on the interstate, but give up because it’s the same freaking set of commericals every five minutes. Or I’ll turn it on, hear that somebody I’d like to listen to is coming on as a guest, and it’s like an hour between that announcement and the three-minute segment or whatever it is.
I’ve since decided that the best thing to do is to download various podcasts. I generally get the ESPN Radio podcast, the PTI podcast, and I might get the Mike & Mike and Dan and Keith podcasts as well. Now if only they had Around the Horn in podcast form, everything ESPN produces that I’ve ever watched or listened to would be available.
Quiet frankly, I like the podcasts, even though there is some delay. I also get Meet the Press as a podcast, though I only listen to it if I missed that week’s show. PTI is great because there are basically no commericals and I can skip through the “Five Good Minutes” segment easily if I’m not interested in who they’re talking to.
Do you even know what you said there? Fantasy FISHING leagues?!
(And they really ought to make it more clear that they own B.A.S.S. and that’s why it gets coverage on SportsCenter.)
For sports scores, schedules, standings, stats and regular commentary, I just go to Yahoo Sports. http://sports.yahoo.com . It is mostly text-based so it’s easy to connect to without all the multimedia hassles.
Is this true? What the hell is a fantasy fishing league?
Nevermind. I don’t want to know.
I think life as I knew it has just jumped the shark.
Hey I just discovered that if you move the volume slider all the way down, ESPN.com seems to remember this. Opened the tabs this morning, and while I could see Trey Wingo rabbiting on about how ESPN Mobile would change my life, I didn’t hear him!
Very nice.
ACC_Expat, good call on Deadspin. Hilarious! But it’s more of a “weird sports news/gossip” sort of haunt for me. I have to admit being used to the navagation on ESPN’s site.