Thanks a lot ESPN

He broke the record; we know that.

It's the way ESPN handled it that has people rankled.

 

Gotcha.

 

My feelings about this are probably obvious.

 

I really hope this doesn't cut into Sportscenter's 20+ minutes of NBA lockout coverage

 

ESPN fails to cover the Penn State story, we say "HOW DARE THEY!?!?!?!!?!?!"

ESPN cuts away to the biggest sports story of the day (and a rather big one historically) and we say "HOW DARE THEY?!?!?!?!?!!?"

I understand the consternation. It's not like winning more than 900 games is anthing special, after all.

 

I don't think ESPN is alone in overhyping this. Fox Sports' Bill Reiter:

http://msn.foxsports.com/collegebasketball/story/Mike-Krzyzewski-coaching-milestone-is-one-to-savor-111511

Savor this. Enjoy this. Remember how this felt when it happened. Realize that on Tuesday night, when Michael William Krzyzewski became the winningest basketball coach in NCAA history with his 903rd win, we finally experienced authentic greatness.

This moment did not need to be forced, shined, spun or hyped. Duke’s 74-69 win over Michigan State at Madison Square Garden was the thing America loves to proclaim but rarely sees: an all-time moment, a glimpse of incredible and lasting greatness, an achievement that actually meets our desire to experience events, sporting and otherwise, that we can rank among the most important of all time.

W.T.F.

I could seriously list 50 moments this year alone that are more memorable than this. And I have no idea what "authentic greatness" is, or why Dean Smith didn't achieve authentic greatness, or why this achievement is any authentically greater than Aaron Rodgers winning the Super Bowl MVP or Dirk and the boys stuffing it in LeBron's cakehole or Game 6 of the World Series.

The MSN.com headline of that column says "Coach K's moment one we'll tell our kids about." I'm not even going to tell my kids when they wake up in eight hours.

Seriously was there some laughing gas pumped into the MSG air conditioning or something?

 

Last Saturday I turned on ESPN after breakfast (about 8:40 a.m. PT) to catch the end of ESPN College GameDay, so I could catch the picks for the week. Instead, ESPN was showing pre-game stuff from Penn State. So was ESPN2. I don't get the other ESPN channels, but it wouldn't surprise me if they were all showing it. If I had wanted to watch anything from the Penn State-Nebraska game, I would have purposely tuned into the channel covering it. I don't know how short GameDay was cut, but I turned on ESPN at that time specifically to watch that show, not pre-game crap from (Un)Happy Valley.

 

This is part of why I'll miss the NBA this winter. College hoops has become all about the coaches, not the players. Can we get a network just for Vitale and his ilk to go on and on about coaches 24/7, and leave the rest of the networks to the games?

 

I've noticed ESPN loves to say 2 games from the same site will start 2 hours apart, in this case 7 p.m. and 9 p.m. EDT. Impossible. One game takes at least 2 hours, then you have warmups and intros for the second game. ESPN should have 7 and 9:30 on their promos when it's from the same site.

 

I don't mind ESPN hyping this; it is a Big Fucking Deal, one might say. However, as someone originally brought up, the annoying part is the need to cut into every single network they own to air it. Do they think that people just obsessively watch ESPN2 and never switch over to ESPN?

 

And yet people never stop watching. Huh.

 

I watch Gameday every week and thought my clock was wrong when Corso and crew went into their picks around 10:30 EST.
Seemed like the right call to make since Penn St was news of the day. Usually the 12 O'clock game kicks off right away and would have left announcers little time to address.