Why is ESPN So Awful?

by Slate Quicksilver

The title says it all, and there are many answers.  But since we are on our way out for the long weekend, we'll give just one right now.  There will be hundreds more posts like this.

At 11:14(ish) in the PM on May 25th, 2 months before NFL training camps even open up, the random ESPN talking head asked a reporter from the a New York newspaper to predict who was going to be the starting QB for the Jets at the beginning of the NFL season.  Ignoring the fact that the answer is blantantly obvious (Tebow is an expensive insurance policy in case an injury or Sanchez's collapse last season is more permanent than a passing fad), the reporter asked, incredulously, "Wow, really?  We're doing this already?"  He was then pressed for an answer.

ESPN's long, long slide has been well documented.  The choice to show nothing but poker and ESPN "home made" "entertainment" and then the heavy backlash of them going back to a sports-news channel was done as deftly as dropping a piano off a skyscraper.  10 hours of Sportscenter in a row obviously creates a drain on what can be said.  And the best way to dig in to this without going in to a long diatribe about the horrible-ness of the 24 hour news cycle is just brush it off as some producer signaling to the talking head to basically fill time.  But this is ridiculous, even by ESPN standards.

Tim Tebow was signed by the Jets.  Mark Sanchez is not an elite QB.  There is not much to talk in terms of the NFL from approximately May 1st to mid-July.  So why talk about this?  Why create manufactured drama?  Are people honestly stupid enough to think that Tim Tebow taking snaps at an off-season voluntary practice alongside Mark Sanchez spells doom for the Sanchez regime?

Sadly, there is no immediate recourse.  We have to watch ESPN... they have cornered the market.  "Oh, NBC Sports/Versus/OLN/Raycom/Local Public Access for Casper Wyoming: Agricultural Best Management Practices Hour and we also have the Fox Sports networks."  If that's what you are thinking, you are stupid.  There's no way around the mothership because they've cornered every important sport except hockey, which they don't want thanks to a vendetta for the lockout of 2005 (which is really, really making the NHL hurt).  The big money is from collecting up all of the sports at a national level, not a local level.  Sadly, ratings will not be more significantly down for ESPN simply because what they put on the air is shitty.  Daytime ratings are always bad, so when I changed the channel to the Price is Right, ESPN's bottom line wasn't hurt.

But you can't fight city hall and you can't fight the death star.  ESPN, for sports, sadly is both.  It's a perpetual money making machine that has positioned itself right at the intersection of reporting and dictating the sports agenda for the US.
ESPN sending Rachel Nichols to stalk the Heat outside of a Wendy's is a sign.  Ed Werder "reporting" on Chad Johnson's car being jacked is a sign.  The complete ignorance of teams not in the Atlantic-New England corridor or Los Angeles is a sign.  NFL Live being on right now is a sign.  Skip Bayless being paid to be a slimy douchebag and take up the contrary opinion EVERY TIME is a sign.  Showing Colin Cowherd run a 6 minute mile on television is a sign.  Stephen A. Smith is a sign.  There are so many signs as to why ESPN is awful.