Why ESPN is destroying sports

I apologize for the title of this blog, but I figure a little hyperbole current hurt my numbers.  I watch way too much ESPN, and I “only” watch a little over two hours a day (Around the Horn, Pardon the Interruption, Olbermann, and Sports Reporters on Sundays, plus some baseball).  I used to watch more, but a) I got a job, and b) Michele Beadle left SportsNation (I hear she’s back, but there’s still a).  But if you watch more than a little ESPN, who begin to see how corporate memes get filtered through every show.  A phrase used on Around the Horn will come from the mouth of someone on Pardon the Interruption, and then later magically appear on The Sports Reporters.  During the Ray Rice fiasco ESPN continually talked about national outrage, when the only source of the outrage I ever heard was ESPN.

But there are two things about ESPN that have finally driven me over the edge, even more than the annual spectacle of child exploitation that is the Little League World Series.  The first is the sport-ification of non-sporting events.  We watch ESPN for sporting events, events whose outcome are determined by the skills of the players.  But an increasing share of ESPN’s programming are not sporting events.  They are events such as National Signing Day, the NBA and NFL Drafts, the NFL combine, and other such nonsense.  I believe that one year I failed to DVR Around the Horn because it was relegated to ESPN2 for coverage of the Kentucky Derby lane assignments.  Covering the Kentucky Derby is questionable enough, but the lane assignments allocated by random chance?  This is sport?

The drafts are like the old line about 50% of advertising being wasted, but no one knows what 50%.  Half of the draft picks are going to be busts or marginal players, but all of them are treated as saviors of whatever team drafted them.  Yeah, the Rams are going to the Super Bowl thanks to that left offensive tackle from Ohio State they chose in the 4^th round.  Sports are won by skill, but winning the ping pong ball bounce to determine draft order for the NBA is based on the laws of probability.

Speaking of the NBA draft, clearly the scheme that’s been around for several years to discourage “tanking” by making the number one pick a matter of probability instead of order of finish has failed.  Every year teams are accused of tanking, and The Philadelphia 76ers are now apparently (possibly) tanking for the second year in a row after selecting an injured player who won’t be able to play for a year.  Obviously, tanking for the highest probability of the #1 pick is nearly as lucrative as tanking for #1.  The odd thing is that since players are coming out after only one year in college, the players being drafted have far less impact than when players came out of college after four years of seasoning.  Anthony Davis is everything the Pelicans hoped for, but they still aren't a playoff team.

My second problem is that ESPN has dramatically changed is the death of the concept of a “season.”  NFL Live is on ESPN every day of the year, even when there ARE NO GAMES BEING PLAYED.  This summer has been filled, not by talk of baseball divisional races or MVP battles, but of where Lebron James and Kevin Love are going, and how Johnny Manziel is acclimating to the NFL.  There used to be football season, a baseball season, and a basketball season.  Now it all one big stew.

And it is getting worse.  Two years ago in 2012 ESPN started tracking where Lebron was going to go when he became a free agent in 2014.  Now that THAT’s been resolved, ESPN has started covering the Washington Wizards’ machinations to lure native son Kevin Durant to their team in 2016.  The 2014 baseball season is taking a back seat to the NBA Hot Stove League in two years. 

I suppose ESPN is a business not run by idiots, so they must be doing this because it’s what their customers want. But they started out as a source of televised games that had previously been unavailable, and now they are dominated by talking heads.  ESPN spends more time showing people talking about sports than showing sports.

Baseball, my favorite sport, gets the short straw in all this.  ESPN loves the apocalyptic nature of the NFL, where every single game is absolutely crucial to the two teams’ chances of making the post-season.  For some reason, the 82 game NBA season fits into the narrative of every game being important.  Everyone on ESPN (save long time skeptic Keith Olbermann) jumped on the soccer bandwagon when ESPN was televising the World Cup, because no sport is more cataclysmic in its coverage than soccer, where a single goal can set off national riots.

Soccer may be the Beautiful Game but baseball is the Thinking Man’s sport, where the long season evens out the odd bounce or bad call.  Momentum is the next day’s starting pitcher.  Scoreboard watching before August is absurd.  Because of the lack of gravitas, ESPN finds baseball coverage outside its wheelhouse.  An April game between the Diamondbacks and the Pirates just isn't that important.

This may also explain why ESPN televises so many games involving mediocre (Yankees) or bad (Red Sox) teams, instead of games featuring good (Brewers) or great (Oakland A’s) teams.  How many times have the A’s been on Sunday night baseball, compared to the Yankees?  Which team has a better shot at making the World Series?  Sports is a meritocracy; you’d think ESPN would feature successful teams, not those hovering around .500.

ESPN pays dozens of people lots of money to predict the outcome of games we watch because we don’t know the outcome.  They make crapshoots like the NBA draft appear to be a matter of skill.  They still mention Tiger Woods, who hasn't won in five years, more than they talk about Rory McIlroy who just won two majors in a row.  They may be the Worldwide Leader, but I’m getting bored.