I wanted to vent off here about this because it's way overdue. ESPN was once a great sports media back when guys like Stuart Scott, Dan Patrick, Rich Eisen and Kenny Mayne were doing their nightly casts. Or even before that when Bob Ley had just started Outside the Lines. Their main attraction was the iconic Monday Night Countdown with Chris Berman and Tom Jackson. They also aired the very successful NHL 2Night on ESPN2 with John Buccigross and Barry Melrose.
Today, ESPN is heralded by woke trash like Stephen A Smith. Their only great anchor is Mike Greenberg. They got rid of the only watchable football anchor in Trey Wingo. What really annoys me most though is their sports app. Every single time you click on the box score it shows the entire team lineup as if they designed it only for NBA games.:-) [Reply]
Originally Posted by Chieftain:
I wanted to vent off here about this because it's way overdue. ESPN was once a great sports media back when guys like Stuart Scott, Dan Patrick, Rich Eisen and Kenny Mayne were doing their nightly casts. Or even before that when Bob Ley had just started Outside the Lines. Their main attraction was the iconic Monday Night Countdown with Chris Berman and Tom Jackson. They also aired the very successful NHL 2Night on ESPN2 with John Buccigross and Barry Melrose.
Today, ESPN is heralded by woke trash like Stephen A Smith. Their only great anchor is Mike Greenberg. They got rid of the only watchable football anchor in Trey Wingo. What really annoys me most though is their sports app. Every single time you click on the box score it shows the entire team lineup as if they designed it only for NBA games.:-)
Originally Posted by Mecca:
They were shitty long before any of the woke business.
There's a book out there about the rise and fall of ESPN called Those guys have all the fun. It basically details how ESPN was awesome then horrid management hires killed it.
There's an entire chapter dedicated to how much management hated that Dan Patrick and Keith Olbermans schtick was popular. How they lost their shit at them calling Sports enter the big show, Dan and Keith got reamed for it...the "you're watching sports center" and "this is ESPN" were their ribs at management hence why they did it constantly.
Wokeness isn't why ESPN went down the toilet, management took away what made them special years ago.
Originally Posted by TwistedChief:
Good news. It's been on ESPN uninterrupted for almost 3 decades. They changed the name to NFL Matchup and now you can watch ESPN again.
This is like when cool people turned off MTV in the 1990s because it wasn't playing music videos anymore.
I don't watch ESPN and think people who focus on talking heads like Stephen A Smith are wasting their time and energy. But I think espn.com is a totally reasonable way to get sports news and think Barnwell is an excellent NFL writer.
It's not the depth of The Athletic nor the edge of The Ringer, but it serves some generic purpose.
Well, sonofagun, thanks for the heads up. I’ll make sure I put it in the record queue when the season starts. [Reply]
There were so many great shows back in the early 2000s. Friday Night Fights was just great with Brian Kenny, Teddy Atlas and Max Kellerman. Really loved that show.
Gary Thorne covering hockey playoffs was just the best entertainment. Baseball Tonight with Karl Ravech and Harold Reynolds. Great women anchors like Linda Cohn, Hannah Storm and others.
Twitter changed the game big time as it became the main platform for sports coverage once they partnered with leagues to stream live game scores. Still though, that doesn't change the fact that ESPN has been and remains garbage. [Reply]
People in the espn lay off thread will tell you that its not because of politics, just because of other outlets. I will tell you for me its 100% the woke bullshit. I'm pretty down the middle on a lot of things being a union worker in Oklahoma, im niether hard left nor right but fuck, i dont want to see either on my sportscast. [Reply]
I think with the internet, and the lack of interesting sports, and focus on all East Coast teams only I stopped watching ESPN a loooong time ago. [Reply]
