I love Little League Baseball. It is the purest example of all that is good with sports. Breaking in a new mitt with your son, listening to the chatter coming from the dugouts, the hidden coaches microphone and washed up former major leaguers describing how a twelve year old needs to "snap it off" to get his curveball to move properly. Ahh, baseball. ESPN says that I love little league baseball. The Mothership also says that Girls College Basketball is played the way Dr. Applebasket Naismith intended, that steroids will ruin baseball and that a 40-year old Quarterback is the cotterpin to this and every NFL season. What would I do without ESPN.
Look I love PTI as much as the next guy and I watch SportsCenter religiously, but isn't it time for someone to point out that this Emperor has no clothes? I don't get it, ESPN has managed to corner the market on the most important demographic in the world, Men 18-35, and scared off all comers in the process. Every fraternity in the world plays SportsCenter on a continuous loop. According to my recent calculations 75% of all men 18-35 watch ESPN at some point during the day. Think about that for a second. That is RIDICULOUS, completely unscientific, but completely ridiculous none the less. With those kind of numbers ESPN must really have a good idea what their audience wants right? Wrong.
The only thing more amazing than ESPN's ability to pull off the Jedi Mind Trick on it's target audience, is it's seemingly endless desire to insult that same dedicated fanbase. We are, and I mean all of us, lemmings. You, me, the guys at the local barbershop, everyone blowing off class right now, even our fathers, all of us morons. Don't believe me? Let's take a look at some of the things that we put up with in the name of sports. Some moppet from the Hannah Montana show was doing sideline interviews for the Little League World Series, Snoop Dogg broke down NFL Pre-Season games, and the Jonas Brothers were giving their keen insight on all things sports? Why not, they seem like they know what they are talking about. All of that happened in the last week. Couple that insane cross promotion with sports anchors like Stuart Scott and you wonder how any of us are still interested in sports at all. [editor's note- the single most cringe inspiring moment of all time? Three words- Stuart Scott Freestyle] The fact that no other network has figured out how to compete with this Synergizer Bunny is astounding to me.
But it doesn't end there. The other hidden monster at ESPN is the "talent". The talent runs the show over there and ESPN collects these talking heads like Lt. Aldo Raine collects scalps. The "talent" falls into one of two categories, washed up athlete or uber geek. The washed up athletes tend to give the benefit of the doubt to the players without an iota of journalistic integrity, while the uber geeks dwell on insignificant stats, issues and topics that the rest of us find irrelavent. Neither group speaks for their audience, they lecture and preach, but they don't empathize.
Exhibit A, Steroids. Poll after poll tells us that fans don't care about Steroids. They just don't, but Peter Gammons, Karl Ravich and Baseball Tonight do. Because ESPN gives their talent carte blanche we, the viewers, get thirty minutes of hand wringing every time someone new tests positive for performance enhancers. "Well, its a sad day. Big Papi has tarnished the Red Sox run in 2004 with Steroid use." "Nothing will surprise me any more when it comes to Steroids Karl." "Me neither... but when we come back a retrospective on Steroids, needles and how both have effected the Red Sox-Yankees rivalry." What? Who cares? Give us the highlights, tell me why Tim Lincecum can make a ball travel back in time and let's hear a funny story about what it was like to be in the big leagues. I don't condone Steroid useage, but until something changes with how we are going to address this era in the sports, let's move on.
Let's talk sports, shall we? I don't want to hear about how tired ESPN is of covering the Brett Favre story. Here's an idea, if you really don't like the story don't cover it. Talk football, bring in the beat writers, let's hear from them. Do we really care about Michael Vick's jersey sales on NFL.com? No, but it's hard to pass up on the plug isn't it?
Look, I don't mind pithy and light occasionally, but shouldn't there be SOME substance? Eventually someone is going to pull back the curtain and realize that there is a huge market desperate for sports information without all of the smoke machines and laser shows. Who ever figures that out will have a core group of people that will be dedicated to that network.
NaNaNuh NaNaNuh
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