more espn hatred...

It just nauseates me when they take a douchebag like Donovan McNabb and try to make him look like a saint because he took his picture with a kid...

I have a lot more respect for the athletes who do this behind the scenes...

 

Rumor had it Randy Moss did a lot of that behind-the-scenes stuff in Minneapolis. But how many people still think he's a douchebag?

 

I know for a fact that Bonds does a lot of that stuff, but refuses to talk about it...

The guy is a prick, but I respect that a hell of a lot more than the player who shows up at the hospital with the beat writer and cameras right behind him...

 

I liked it too, it was actually the only reason I friggen watched SportsCenter for those two weeks.

 

It sucks that any good-willed segments like the J-Mac one or the My Wish series is automatically construed as "taking advantage of kids' unfortunate situations for ratings" just because of a hatred for ESPN.

Couldn't it be because of an opportunity during the slow sports period to show the good side of athletes and to show great moments of stricken kids' dreams coming true?

I wasn't a huge fan of the My Wish segments, but I loved the J-Mac one, because that story is wonderful and the response from his 20-point outing is wonderful, no matter who reports on it.

I have more respect for those athletes who do charitable stuff away from the cameras, but I respect all athletes that do such acts, with or without cameras. And I'm glad I'm occasionally shown these good acts because I like to get reminded that these athletes are heroes to a lot of kids and not just buttfuck cocksuckers that don't like the media or whatever.

That's my two cents. It sucks that our innocence is lost to the point where any heartwarming stories is twisted around and made to make ESPN look bad.

 

It's not lost on me Shaggy. I just feel that ESPN's coverage of J-Mac should have ended three months ago when they first aired the story. The consist rehashing it tells me that ESPN can't find anything else worthwhile to cover.

 

I liked the My Wish segments, but Chris Connelly sucked. That was the only thing I hated about it, and the shit-ass questions he asked those kids.

CC: Why do you want to be like Todd Helton?
Kid: Because he hits for power.
CC: And what do you want to do?
Kid: I want to hit for power.

 

Agreed. What also bothers me is when athletes are portrayed as thugs or whatever when most of the time we have no idea what they are really like. By the way, I'm taking Bonds out of this equation because it is universally agreed and documented that he is a prick.

 

Since the original J-Mac stories aired -- and everyone made a big deal about it -- these types of stories have become ESPN's bread & butter. Chris Connelly and Tom Renaldi go out every week and find a tearjerker story that they stretch as far as possible to call it a "sports piece" then SportsCenter plays it 800 times. It's a joke. Prior to the World Cup, we were subjected to the heartwrenching story of Landon Donovan's girlfriend's brother's amputated legs. Or maybe it was Landon Donovan's girlfriend's brother's sister's cousin's next door neighbor's former college roommate. And the My Wish thing was simply the latest example of ESPN's ratings mongering.

Every week, less and less of SportsCenter is actually sports and more and more is contrived bullshit. How many Disney movies do I need to see pimped on the Budweiser Hot Seat before I can find out the score of the White Sox-Tigers game?

And to return to the original point of this thread, I couldn't agree more than "J-Mac" is a bit much. ESPN is utterly unprofessional on virtually all levels (i.e. the contrived "fights" between Salsbury and Clayton or Stu's poetry readings) but this is far from a problem specific to the Worldwide Leader. Every time I read a golf gamer in which Phil Mickelson is referred to as "Lefty" or Roger Clemens is called "Rocket" I want to scream. OK, if you're broadcasting the game, maybe it's OK. But don't we have any standards as journalists to sound professional? I call athletes by their nicknames when interviewing or chatting with them, but in print, its a different story.

Anyway, enough ranting for one day.

Oh, and why is Donovan a douche bag? I've never had anything but good (albeit few) experiences with him.

 

The thing is, ESPN is not trying to appeal to the journalists. They are attempting to appeal to the average sports fan in an entertaining way, and I think they succeed for the most part in that aspect.

If you don't like it, change the channel.

 

ESPN SportsCenter is like MTV, VH1, etc. in that showing sports highlights, which was their original mission [much like showing music videos], has been kicked to the curb in favor of everything else.

 

I wouldn't be a sports journalist if I hadn't been a sports fan first, and as a fan, I hate what SportsCenter has become. There are still some solid shows on ESPN -- PTI, Baseball Tonight, ESPN News' Hot List, etc. -- but the majority has turned into crap. And as a sports fan, what I want is to get sports news from informed sources and not be constantly subjected to ads for ESPN Mobile.

And yes, you're right, I could change the channel, but the fact is, there isn't a whole lot of other places to get national sports news on TV. FSN is even more of a joke than SportsCenter.

I'm not trying to bash ESPN because they're the big guy, I'm bashing them because they've stopped caring about the viewers that made them the big guy. The MTV comparison is very appropriate. There's nothing wrong with trying different things -- that's what made ESPN great in the first place -- but don't forget what got you there. It's funny, SportsCenter used to have more valuable information when it was a half-hour broadcast years ago than it does in an hour now.