How ESPN Lost Its Way

Image via Complex Original

The plight of a typical ESPN storyline: SportsCenter opens with an already tired debate of Albert Pujols and where his slow start ranks on the “panic meter.” The ironically named First Take stages an argument between Skip Bayless and Stephen A. Smith, where Bayless takes the knowingly ludicrous position that “Pujols will never hit another home run in his career.” The story is thrown in the microwave until it crusts over by SportsNation, where Pujols is given the dreaded “third jeer.” And finally, just to make sure your brain is good and fried, it goes through the dipshit gauntlet at Around the Horn, ping-ponged about on Pardon the Interruption, and finally commits a silent suicide on Numbers Never Lie where (thank Based God) nobody is watching.

Through the spew-swallow-spew process average events become controversies, especially privileged teams become more played than “Call Me Maybe,” and the reporting process becomes about manufacturing content. ESPN creates and promotes “Tebow-Mania,” “drinking in the Red Sox clubhouse,” and “Favre's return to football,” while, simultaneously, reporting on it. The network becomes more about producing and hyping events than, you know, actually covering them. 

Brett Favre is an egomaniac (like, duh). He feigns retirement like a narcissist faking his own death. He wants to attend his own funeral, revel in the eulogy, and ESPN is more than willing to pay for the memorial and comfort the grieving family. SportsNation once mentioned Brett Favre's name over 200 times in a single broadcast (for those of you doing the math, that's roughly one mention per fifteen seconds of air time). Rachel Nichols has become a permanent fixture on Favre's front lawn and Ed Werder's pathetic life mission has apparently been reduced to rifling clearance racks at the Men's Warehouse and shoving a microphone in front of the 11-time Pro Bowler's face. Favre's legacy has been tarnished by the overexposure (quite literally) when he allegedly sent a couple of awkward weiner pics to a Jets staffer three years ago.

If Favre is a cautionary tale in destroying a legacy, then Tim Tebow is an acid trip in creating one. Last fall the self-proclaimed “Worldwide Leader in Sports” began the baffling, wall-to-wall promotion of a guy who, well, wasn't very good at football. Nobody needed Chris McKendry, Michelle Beadle, or Merril Hoge to defend or attack him because any average fan watching the Broncos quarterback worm-burn slant routes and shot-put fades knew he couldn't throw the ball. The conversation was made especially asinine through simple analysis that, all too often, boiled down to “Tebow-magic.”

Award shows are basically dull, gaudy celebrations of millionaires. So, when we say that the ESPYs are the lamest, most embarrassing of them all—it's almost a compliment. Athletes are some of the most recognized public figures. They are cheered, paid generously and now, thanks to ESPN, validated with a fucking ESPY (in case Golden Gloves, championship rings, and MVP awards weren't accolade enough).

The selection process is pretty simple. “Best Team” goes to whichever squad won the Super Bowl, “Best Player” goes to whoever won MVP, and “Best Action Sports Athlete” goes to Shaun White. The show is pretty redundant, but when you think about it, so is giving awards to athletes.

Teams and individuals already compete against one another to definitively resolve who is best; making similar claims subjectively is just arrogant. And nothing says “asshole” quite like (literally) laying down a red carpet and throwing an award show for yourself.

ESPN's draft coverage (which starts about three hours after the Super Bowl) is where the network hits rock bottom. Mel Kiper Jr. crawls out of his coffin and spends the next hundred days screaming at the camera like a coked-out Count Dracula, pausing only to feign tension with the slightly more assured, but equally vomitus Todd McShay. And just when you think there's nothing more pathetic than two grown men arguing over the broad jumps and shuttle-times of 20-year-old college students, cue the NFL Live crew and their "Inside the War Room" reenactments. 

During an April 2012 edition of SportsCenter, in what was possibly the most absurd four minutes in the history of television, Trey Wingo, Herm Edwards, and Todd McShay made fake phone calls to fake GM’s and proposed fake trades for a fake draft. The goal? To show the audience what it would be like to go behind the scenes of teams' personnel decisions. The result? A table the full of weirdos inexplicably equating trade proposals to "coffee sweetener" and, rather miraculously, trading their fake second-round pick for a handful of fake third-rounders (impressive considering the value of Day Two picks). The segment was ridiculous, incredibly stupid, but pretty much par for the course when it comes to ESPN draft coverage. 

ESPN reporter Tom Rinaldi scored the highly coveted, first interview with Tiger Woods (post Elin busted his chiclets in with a nine-iron). After being stonewalled with a couple quick that's-a-private-matters and it's-all-in-the-police-reports, the soft spoken Rinaldi quickly switched topics to what America was really interested in, "his goals at Augusta." Rinaldi rarely challenged Woods ambiguous answers and never so much as asked about his link to performance enhancing drugs. At the end of the five-minute interview, Woods looked almost sympathetic and Rinaldi looked like his starstruck fanboy which is, of course, exactly how the PGA Tour would have wanted it.

The sheer volume of coverage devoted to the New York Yankees is obnoxious, but numbers don't lie, and 27 rings warrants some attention. But if Manny and Papi weren't 'roiding out of their skulls during the '04 and '07 World Series seasons, the Sox would be about as storied as the Cleveland Indians. So, their being allocated about 30% of ESPN's daily coverage is a bit perplexing. That is, until you breakdown the makeup of their crew.

Baseball Tonight host Karl Ravech once said of the East Coast bias "I don't think it applies to this program. When we go into meetings, we just look for the best matchups, wherever they are." Who is "we" exactly? The program staples (past and present) Karl Ravech, Steve Berthume, and Peter Gammons are all Boston-area natives and lifelong Red Sox fans. The show's analysts Nomar Garciaparra, Curt Schilling, and Terry Francona, in addition to being utterly unwatchable on television, are also former Bosox. And Bobby Valentine (the stodgiest ESPN analyst of all-time) is now, rather curiously, the Red Sox manager. If the show were any more Boston Marky Mark would host and the opening credits would roll to "More than a Feeling." 

SportsCenter has devolved in to a chaotic tropical storm of bizarre gimmicks and WTF moments. Stuart Scott leads the dunce parade with his spoken word poetry. And Trevor Matich redefined creepy this last BCS Bowl Season with his "Trevor-Claus." A feature where the analyst hands unnerving gifts to eight-year-old college football fans symbolizing their favorite teams' season. For example, giving a gardening hose to a confused young boy in a USC jersey to symbolize their being "hosed" out of a bowl game. The already uncomfortable scenario is made all the more scarring by Madich's being dressed like an ominous, watch-his-hands mall Santa. 

The shows' newfound reliance on Twitter has added a surreal element to an already whacked-out program. Grown adults and accomplished journalists read indiscernible tweets from athletes and fans, stumbling through hashtags and phonetically sounding out messages like, "1day I’m gone jump up and start throwing hay makers" and "think bout a clever diss then that wit ur *** pic. Christopher street boy. Is what us east coast cats call u." Which is, well, riveting. 

SportsCenter will soon join Pink Floyd's The Wall and Planet Earth as things that are only watchable when you're tripping balls on mescaline.

ESPN's biggest shill (so to speak) is sweaty, network buffoon Chris Berman. Boomer has a seemingly single-white-female-like relationship with NFL commissioner Roger Goodell. We half expect the rumblin'-stumblin' loose cannon to dye his comb-over blonde and hit Steelers linebacker James Harrison with a suspension for helmet-to-helmet contact. During the NFL Draft, he barks out picks before they're announced like an excited puppy. His alter ego "The Swami" predicts football games with the precision of a wrecking ball. And he once sided with the NFL on the cancelling of his own network's original program Playmakers.

NFL Live airs an hour a day, year round. That means at the start of baseball season, and in the thick of the NHL and NBA playoffs, Trey Wingo and the rest of the boob squad discuss match-ups for next seasons schedule, and somehow, manage to keep a straight face. Tedy Bruschi is supposed to be an analyst, but spends more time in the VIP box at Gillette Stadium than Patriots owner Robert Kraft. And if Adam Schefter kissed any more player ass, he'd be on this list.

ESPN is proactive when it comes to speculating or hyping on behalf of major sports leagues, but is predictably reactionary when it comes to disparaging them. Tim Kurkjian and Peter Gammons didn't say a word about steroids in baseball until after the saga unfolded. Sammy Sosa was more thoroughbred than man, Barry Bonds’ melon had tripled in size, and all ESPN did was stand by and celebrate the “return of baseball,” while a juiced-out Mark McGwire peppered hanging curve balls off of the St. Louis arch. 

As Barry Bonds came closer to the home run record, ESPN broadcast the disgraceful Bonds on Bonds a PR campaign reality TV series featuring the nuclear slugger. At one point a tearful Bonds says, "If it makes them happy to go out of their way to try to destroy me, go right ahead." Bonds' whimpering self-pity, presented to make the all-time home run leader look like a victim, simplified his being called to task for cheating. But it also proved how low the network was willing to sink in order to defend the glory of a major sports league.

The Decision was a microcosm of all that’s wrong with ESPN, creating a spectacle out of nothing and turning news into cash. The prime-time idolization of LeBron James was at best an exhibition in what happens when thoughtless millionaires take control of their “brand,” and at worst, a precursor to the sporting apocalypse—a moment when news and business became interchangeable. 

James hand-picked former ESPN reporter Jim Gray as his preferred interviewer and his services, which included sitting in a director's chair and flirting with the King, were bankrolled by James' camp. If choreographing and cashing in on something as lame as a free agent signing weren't insane enough, Gray asked 16 ridiculously stupid questions before getting to the only one that mattered: "LeBron, what's your decision?"

It was an instant that that ESPN became a whore and, judging by the ratings, maybe a sad indictment of us all. It didn't matter what LeBron said, "Heat, Bulls, Knicks, or Cavs." The fact that a "news" network relinquished journalistic neutrality to seduce a superstar in front of 10 million viewers is what made the entire event especially disgusting.

Sports provide us with a visceral, and some might argue, depressing need to be part of a tribe. We live vicariously through people with superior lives and to displace our own shortcomings on a dropped pass or throwing error. But now, thanks to ESPN, we have an exact measurement of just how far we've fallen.