More Cuts at ESPN

OK. I was referring more to the original hunger strike, though.

 

205 years later, still putting boots in asses.

 

Lyrics to the Marseillaise are enormously bloodthirsty. Still a cool national anthem though.

 

I mean, were people paying for cable/ESPN because SportsCenter, PTI, OTL or First Take? Probably not. Live games will always be the the bell cow there. The rest is by and large filler. Some of that filler is good, much is not.

(There's the larger fact that the wider availability of non-sports content has made people who don't give a shit about sports are more likely to cut the cord. That's not some reaction to the sports shouting or the damn librul sports channel. It's a change in market structure)

 

Lyrics to Mexican national anthem call for a lot of asskicking too.

Mexican National Anthem - Himno Nacional Mexicano lyrics + English translation

 

Still betting that cord-cutting has more to do with the runaway price of cable than anything else. I would like to still be able to watch Sunday Night Baseball, but not so much that I'm willing to pay $140 a month.

 

Considering there was some real question as to the - what's the phrase - philosophical integrity of the movement those players supported, I have to say: Yeah. It was really, really liberal to single them out for an award. There was something not quite right with what happened at Missouri. It felt like a bit of a manufactured coup, to be frank. It felt like the players were successfully used as a means to an end.

 

Also because the redneck shouting from the pickup truck -- if that happened -- can be found along the fringes of many campuses. It's unfortunate that it happens, but the universities are hardly to blame for that.

 

As for ESPN programming, I am sure there are people in a household who never watch it because they have no interest in sports. I am sure there are people who have decided to drop cable because of the cost. There might be people who decide to watch The Jeffersons 5 hours a day and who don't have time to watch ESPN.

There are probably a zillion other factors, too. Regardless, it takes extreme contortions to whittle down the effect of quality/lesser quality programming to absolute zero.

 

So you are arguing that what the players did demonstrates they are tools and too dumb to make a rational collective decision?

 

Dumb? No...I didn't write that.

I think their intentions were good. And when I first heard about it, I thought "looks like they're standing up for something." Then I started reading about the whole situation. Then I saw a bunch of liberal students and a professor conduct themselves like quasi fascists. And by the time ESPN awarded them, I thought it was pretty clear that the issue was a lot messier than it's been presented.

 

This is why I think we'll - finally - see providers go to a la carte options instead of the bundling system we see nowadays. Yeah, I want all the ESPNs, FS1, NBCSN, my RSNs, etc. I don't want the one that shows the wedding dress show 24/7, but I have to take it under the current system.