Is this a whoosh? You know Favre has retired at the end of every season for the past decade don’t you? In June he’ll give a wistful interview thinking about how great the game’s been and how hard it is to walk away. In July he’ll wonder aloud to the press if he doesn’t still have a little something that could help his team, by August he’ll be right back on board.
The problem with ESPN is that they’re more into their “brand” than content. Games are just a way to get eyeballs on their channel so that they can market ESPN to them or something. There’s a marketing exec getting hard right now thinking about someone reaching to buy the ESPN logo golf balls or sports bra that are coming soon to the ESPN store near you.
There’s no explanation for Dick Vitale.
My favorite sports weekend of the year is the first 2 rounds of the NCAA basketball tournament. There are so many games they have to use B-list broadcasters and by and large they are much much better than the “personalities” the consider their top talent. For example, IMHO Jimmy Dykes is far and away the best basketball announcer on ESPN.
The absolute worst, IMHO, are the color announcers that talk as if all the viewers are junior players trying to learn the game at the feet of the master (i.e. them). A little of that goes a long way.
Yes, and again, that was part of the joke. I loathe Favre. IMO he is now every bit as much a me-first player as TO or Chad Johnson – he just knows how to handle the media better. As I said, I think he is angling to get the Minesota job. He probably will. Peter King will say how awesome it is.
On the OP: has anyone been reading Jason Whitlock on the state of sports media? He’s not perfect, but IMO he’s among the best sportswriters out there. At the very least, he’s the only one I know of consistiently willing to criticize other sportswriters, either in general or by name.
Another thing they do, in many cases, is to do their best to ingratiate themselves to the players, become their buddies, so they can feel like insiders in the whole pro sports thing. This, of course, makes it very difficult for them to do objective reporting.
There was a good article seven or eight years ago in Harper’s magazine about the Chicago Cubs, in which the author followed them around for a while. One of his criticisms was that too many of the reporters, especially those from Chicago, were more concerned with being friends with the players than with reporting properly on the games and on the standard of play. This was a time when the Cubs were doing dismally, and a few of their players were pretty awful, but if you don’t want to be frozen out in the clubhouse, you better not ask too closely why the shortstop has an OBP of .301.
Personally, i’ve always thought that a really good sports reporter should not even need access to the clubhouse in order to do his or her job properly. Sports reporting is about game analysis, and about broader examination of the state of the sport. You can do much, probably most, of that without ever needing to talk to a player or a coach. I literally can’t remember the last time an interview with a player or coach told me something interesting and relevant that i didn’t already know. Interviews are nothing but rehashed sound bites.
For a few years, while i was living in Baltimore, some of the most interesting sports commentary i read was in a column in the city’s free weekly alternative newspaper. The guy would write about the Orioles, or about the Ravens, or about the University of Maryland basketball team, and all his analysis came from sitting on the couch at home and watching the game. It was pretty good stuff.
That’s why I liked Al Leiter when he did some colour work. He wasn’t getting into the stathead stuff - I mean, I know all that stuff and what I don’t I can look up on the internet. He was explaining positioning, pitch selection, tactics. That’s the kind of insight a professional athete can actually deliver. The things an amateur doesn’t see.
This past year the Jays briefly had Darrin Fletcher back doing some colour work and in one game he went over Alex Rios’s batting stance. It was fascinating. He had comparative pictures of Rios in 2007 and in 2008 up on the screen and was explaining how Rios’s body position was compromising his power. I wouldn’t have seen what Fletcher saw. It was terrific. But soon Pat Tabler was back in the booth babbling his usual bullshit with insight like “The Jays really need a hit here” and “They need more clutch hits.” Gosh, Pat, ya think, you goddamned retard? I know they need more hits you fucking knobthruster. I want you to explain as a former professional baseball player WHY they aren’t getting hits. Tell me something I don’t know or shut your eat-hole.
They had show in Canada, on CBC, I think, called “Making the Cut.” It was a reality show where they invited scores of failed amateur hockey players together for a sort of mass tryout and the winners got invitations to training camp. Watching the scouts comment on the players was amazing; I mean, they saw things you NEVER hear the announcers mention. They’d talk about how Smith here was better than Williams because Smith could make a 180 turn in a radius of 13 feet, whereas Williams’s turn was a 15-foot radius and that just was not good enough because it gives the attacker an extra half second. I was like, Jesus, why don’t the announcers tell me stuff like this? I learned more from that show than I’d learned that that drunken fool Harry Neale (Hockey Night in Canada’s colour man and official Leafs cheerleader, who gets drunker as the playoffs go longer) in twenty years.
I am convinced fans are starving for this sort of broadcasting.
One of the things I’ve learned as a sports fan is that when the media reports on a player’s personality, and passes judgment on it, you absolutely can NEVER trust it. Ever. The media’s opinion of a pro athlete is 80% based on how accomodating the athlete is with the media, 10% on the athlete’s race, and only 10% on any objective evidence or honest assessment of how his personality affects his team. If that.
I’ve ranted on ESPN for years, and I’ve even done so on the boards (how embarrassing). ESPN inhales. I would love to see it implode. But how?
ESPN has gone the way of MTV. I don’t think MTV even airs music videos anymore… ESPN is similar in that they are a self-promoting machine with little interest in quality sports coverage.
We all agree they suck. Everyone I speak to agrees they suck. Who is their target demographic? It has to be the 13-18 year old male. Toilet, locker-room humor and intellectually empty reporting.
Everyone shouts. The only show I can sometimes watch is PTI, and that’s only because of Michael Wilbon. Kornheiser sucks. If you have a chance, watch the first episodes of PTI. It was great… they just talked. No shouting, no cutsie jokes… it seemed as if ESPN was going to allow 30 minutes, 5 days a week to be tolerable. Now, even Kornholer (isn’t that funny? I made a locker room joke! let’s giggle like school girls and do the penguin dance) and Wilbon shout at each other (Wilbon less than Kornholer). Have you heard? Kornholer is pregnant. (giggle. isn’t that funny? giggle. what a douchbag.) If he’s not slurping Favre, he’s slurping himself. And now he’s infected the MNF booth. ESPN is a cancer on sports. They ruin everything they touch. Tony Kornheiser on the radio and in the paper was great. On ESPN? He’s Kornholer, a self-absorbed abomination. When Wilbon isn’t on PTI, I won’t watch.
All the crap is the same. Jim Rome? He SUCKS. And he’s in love with himself. Who actually likes him? He talks like a socially inept teenager. Around The Horn? A shoutfest that I can’t watch. Paige and Marriotti actually CARE if they “win”. 1st and 10, with Skip Bayless (what a clown) shout back and forth with whatever no-talent hack they throw in the other chair. Who watches this stuff after a few viewings? It’s beyond terrible.
It is the Billy Mayes, shout louder than everyone in the room network.
Up your ass with a red hot poker, ESPN. May you die a quick death.