More Cuts at ESPN

And that's why NBA TV, MLB Network, NHL Network and NFL Network now exist.

 

This covers my ESPN time too, the latter part out of habit. And since I DVR PTI (I'm working when it's on live), I've developed a little game of hitting "Delete" after TK/MW's final comments but before the opening chords of the intro for the new "6 p.m. [ET] SportsCenter" come on. The political agenda of ESPN is right there with the inanity in making it largely unwatchable for me.

 

I give ESPN an hour or two after work these days for Jemele and Mike then gloss over a college or NBA hoops game till drowning out.

But with the tourist season starting here soon and staying open later, my sparse TV time at night will be devoted to MLB Network, and ESPN only for Sunday night games.

 

And thank goodness for that, since under the strategy outlined in Howard's post, ESPN's coverage seems to be limited to the Yankees, Mets, Red Sox, Cubs and Dodgers in MLB. the NFC East in football, Cavaliers, Warriors and Spurs in NBA and who knows in hockey. Now, I'm not saying I need a report on, say, the Rangers' middle relief or the Blackhawks' third line every show, but how about some variety?

 

Can anyone provide examples of an ESPN political agenda (beyond giving Caitlyn Jenner an ESPY)? I'm genuinely curious, as I don't watch the network outside of game coverage and have only ever heard or read references to said agenda in vague platitudes.

 

i'm not an expert on this but I would guess that there is a strong Venn diagram overlay between People Who Hate ESPN Because of Their Political Agenda and People Who Love Curt Schilling

 

Jenner was the feather in the cap, but these are also part of that movement:


• Curt Schilling fired last year after tweeting out support for North Carolina bathroom law

• Network endorsement of BLM at the ESPYs

• Kevin Blackstone, an African-American sportswriter who appears on ESPN talk programs, once referred to the Star Spangled Banner as a “war anthem” … still employed

• Tennis commentator Doug Adler fired after saying the “guerrilla effect” of Venus Williams — referring to her moving closer to the net on second serves

• Screamin A Smith clearly draws the line in racial divide ... Wilbon throwing out his bias almost daily ... Both still employed


These are only a few that immediately come to mind

 

I'm unfamiliar with the others and can't really comment on them, but this is sentence is staggeringly disingenuous. "Support for North Carolina bathroom law" makes it seems as if he was punished for offering innocuous or even substantive approval. What he actually did was spread around a meme implying transgender women were going into public restrooms to rape "your daughter."

Plus, considering he'd been reprimanded and warned previously for comparing an entire religion to the Nazis, it's not as if his dismissal came out of the blue. Curt Schilling's online behavior would get most anyone fired from their job -- assuming they had a job. Not a lot of people under investigation for defrauding a state out of millions of dollars would have high-profile gigs to lose for getting into pitiful Twitter slap-fights.

 

Curt Schilling was a Hall of Fame quality pitcher whose teams were always kind of relieved when they traded him or he moved on. Gotta be a reason for that.

 

A horse every fifth day, a horse's ass for the other four.

 

Ya can probably lay a lot of that at the doorstep of Rob King. Still, isn't the Star Spangled Banner actually a war anthem? That doesn't seem like an incendiary or even inaccurate thing to say. Francis Scott Key wrote it while the British were bombing the shit out of Fort McHenry in the War of 1812.

 

God damn does Jason Whitlock want ESPN's failures to be the leftist agenda.

Makes me even more confident it's not.