ESPN: Not Waving but Drowning
On Dan Patrick: The Farewell Tour (x):
Barb: So sad. Is that DP or ESPN sinking into the ocean?
Jenn: Clearly it’s ESPN that’s sinking.
rrgirl: this is my favorite so far, though I can say that every day. and I’m with Jenn.
Scoop: Just as long as we don’t have to hear Celine Dion sing.
I’m with you on Celine Dion, but I really did think the Dan Patrick Show would go on and on and on ….
(If anyone out there watched the Pirates-Mets game last night: Doesn’t Freddy Sanchez look a little like Leonardo DiCaprio?)
I like ESPN. I can’t compare the current version to that of the “old days” — the prehistoric era when KO and DP roamed Bristol doing SportsCenter. I’ve only been paying attention to the Worldwide Leader for the past six years or so, mostly via espn.com. It fulfills my need for a one-stop shopping place for sports news. I like it better than the Sports Illustrated site.
Still, my interest in it has been on the wane, and not just because DP has one foot out the door and I’m not sure when the next Big Show fix will come. Part of this has nothing to do with ESPN. I’ve gotten more and more into baseball, specifically the Mets, over the past three years. After I hit the baseball news on ESPN I’m not all that interested in the rest it has to offer. Page 2 is pretty funny, but I haven’t looked at it in a while. Page 3 was lame — an attempt to create buzz around news that spanned the sports and entertainment worlds. It didn’t last. Now they have this dopey Who’s Now? contest going. I haven’t paid it any attention (comparing athletes across different sports is stupid, plus I don’t really care who’s now in sports, all I want is for the Mets to be Now come October), but I did read Phil Mushnick’s article, Self-Loving ESPN Is No Longer In The Now (full text of article is at the end of this post), in the New York Post a few days ago, and he captured my increasing ambivalence towards ESPN.
I’m not bothered by the self-promotion stuff — I ignore most of it — but the fact that so much non-sports news has infiltrated the sports page. I enjoy a good discussion when the issue of sport and society intersects, but sometimes ESPN seems to be turning into People magazine. Perhaps some of this is because professional athletes are now seen as celebrities than simply as sports figures. The public wants to know more than just how Matt Leinart is playing, they want to know who he’s dating and how much he’s paying in child-support to his ex-girlfriend/mother of his child (one of the Topics du Jour on Colin Cowherd’s show today — $6K a month sounds pretty decent, for $30K a month Mom must want to get the kid gold-plated Huggies). I can deal with some of that fluff; I’m a sucker for those “Up Close and Personal” features during the Olympics. But when sports news veers way off from the X’s and O’s and OPS and WHIP I’m looking more for thoughtful commentary than for gossip.
This is what I miss most about the Dan Patrick Show and the Big Show. DP and KO illuminated a topic. They gave you the story and then added their unique je ne sais quoi to it. They didn’t tell you how to think; they presented their opinion and left it there for you to chew on. They weren’t spot-on 100% of the time and I didn’t always agree with them. But they usually brought good arguments to the table. (Except when Keith played Yankee Apologist.) Plus they didn’t yell, at least not that much. (I guess if I can excuse Keith for being a Yankee Apologist I should be able to forgive Stephen A. Smith for being president of the Michael Vick Fan Club. Or, maybe not ….)
Alas. DP and KO are gone, at least for the present time. I need to let go. I think I’ve progressed to the Depression and Testing stages. I’m thankful that Dan’s doing the Big Aloha during baseball season so that I at least have the Mets to lean on. If he bailed out during the winter I’d really be at sea and Drowning not Waving (.mp3 file, by Madame Blatavsky Overdrive, very cool).
Self-Loving ESPN Is No Longer In The Now
By Phil Mushnick
July 22, 2007 — Theorst thing ESPN could do to itself, it has done to itself. It has made itself a too-easy target.
The secret’s out. Last week, alone, ESPN took a beating for what it has become in both Newsweek and Sports Illustrated.
And on WFAN/YES, Mike Francesa delivered a long, sarcastic and accurate holler about how ESPN’s value to sports fans has been lost to endless self-promotion - “ESPN has learned that it’s Tuesday!” he shouted - and ridiculous concoctions, such as “Who’s Now,” another lame excuse to remove sports from “SportsCenter.”
“Who’s now,” Francesa bellowed, “Shaq O’Neal or a polar bear?”
“SportsCenter,” once a cherished and conditioned stop, has become SelfCenter, unconscionable and unwatchable. And everywhere you look and listen, ESPN talent is being forced to do embarrassing things in service to an ESPN/ABC/Disney sales plan that ensures nothing better than ridicule.
Everything that once held promise at ESPN has been compromised and corrupted. And that’s a shame.
Tuesday morning I tried - several times - to listen to ESPN Radio’s “Mike and Mike” show. But every time I switched back - and this was over 20 minutes - Mike Greenberg and Mike Golic were still discussing “Who’s hot” and “Who’s even hotter” - as in hot babes and hunky guys.
And that isn’t something that either would normally or proudly do in public - unless they were just following orders, both direct and implicit.
Tuesday morning, they chose to focus on Jessica Biel. Well whattya know, she’ll be joining Greenberg on a panel to choose the winners in ESPN’s beyond silly “Who’s Now” competition, the one in which Steve Nash nosed out Serena Williams, Reggie Bush defeated Danica Patrick and Peyton Manning crushed Amanda Beard. Seriously.
Who’s Now? Nelson Riddle or The Who?
And the worst thing ESPN could have done to itself - make itself such a dignity-barren garbage mill that you feel sorry for the good people who work there, especially those now forced to make clowns of themselves in exchange for their paychecks - is exactly what ESPN has become.
Friday, an ESPN news crawl reported that “sources tell ESPN” that David Beckham may not make his U.S. debut as scheduled, the next night, due to an injury.
Given that Beckham had made that clear to all, days earlier, those who knew better could only read such a thing with contempt for ESPN. ESPN could only fool those didn’t know better, and those were people who didn’t care about Beckham to begin with.
So what was ESPN’s net gain? More viewers who are disgusted by what ESPN has become. Brilliant strategy.
