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 hawkchief:
A woke, trash media organization, no different than the KC Star, NY Times, CNBC, CNN etc. They don't have any problems biting the hands that feed them and will do so until they don't exist any longer. Like many here, I rarely patronize their garbage.
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. [Reply]
I think for me it was when dan Patrick said they were being incentivized to say the word Tebow as many times as possible.
But maybe worst of all is their manipulation of sports for ratings. They created the patriot hype we all hate. And the sec bias in this year's ncaa baseball and softball world series rankings is despicable and a disgrace to kids who got screwed so the media could chase after ratings. [Reply]
They also made decisions to basically move away from legit sports coverage. They get rid of shows like Baseball tonight, NFL edge matchup, completely got rid of the NHL, which was bad for both parties, and all they've done is do more "discussion shows"
They have no interest in doing real sports products anymore, it's about yelling and screaming. It's basically talk radio for TV. [Reply]
Originally Posted by Chieftain:
For me it started when Jim Gray interviewed LeBron James back in 2010 where he announced he was joining the Miami Heat. The buildup and anticipation for that interview really annoyed me back then. That was the turning point for me. That was the moment when ESPN was no longer about sports for me. https://youtu.be/Afpgnb_9bA4
Also Lebron choosing to wear THAT shirt after all the hype.
Originally Posted by Mecca:
They also made decisions to basically move away from legit sports coverage. They get rid of shows like Baseball tonight, NFL edge matchup, completely got rid of the NHL, which was bad for both parties, and all they've done is do more "discussion shows"
They have no interest in doing real sports products anymore, it's about yelling and screaming. It's basically talk radio for TV.
Originally Posted by siberian khatru:
Ah, NFL Edge Matchup. I miss that show.
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. [Reply]
