ESPN.com has elected to move Joe Morgan's unintentionally hilarious weekly baseball chats over to the pay-only "Insider" side, leading Mike of Mike's Baseball Rants to suspend his weekly critiques of the chats. In making the announcement, Mike joins the growing "ESPN is sinking" chorus.
It's well-argued, but I take issue with two of his comments: Mike says the Worldwide Leader "has been headed in the direction of PTI... for some time." I'm not sure if he means this as a dig at "Pardon the Interruption," but my take is that PTI is the best thing to happen to ESPN since its inception; the network has, however, misjudged its appeal and incorporated much less effective "argument segments" into the rest of its programming. And then, when Kornheiser and Wilbon took their annual summer sabbatical, they replaced Tony and Mike with two of their bottom-feeders, Stephen A. Smith and Skip Bayless, with predictably disastrous results.
I also take issue with Mike's denunication of "Peter Gammons’ unedited, William Faulkner-esque prose." Other than PTI, "NFL Primetime," and Bill Simmons, Gammons' column -and his ridiculously long run-on sentences- is the only thing I still enjoy about ESPN.
Aaron Gleeman- who recently pulled off the coup of the year by getting the legendary Bill James to write a guest column for Hardball Times- has more, as does Eric over at Off Wing.
And finally, how long before someone writes a Whitlock-style column arguing that the emerging ESPN Backlash critique is racist, because it invariably mentions both Stuart Scott and Stephen A. by name?
Posted by Stephen Silver at September 15, 2004 02:21 AMI love PTI, however, ESPN has made it's personalities as big, if not bigger than, the sports and players themselves. Most of their reporters think that they are clever, with catchy phrases and such, they put too much thought into it, rather than it being impulsive. I love Chris Berman, but he is not the symbol of the NFL that he thinks he is...Brett Favre or Donovan McNabb are.
ESPN has essentially become a 'sport' themselves...sports reporting. But that is entertainment, and they are in it to make a buck.
Posted by: John B. at September 15, 2004 10:50 AMI would argue that even Simmons has gone downhill recently. Ever since his move to California, he's been a shadow of his former self. He's had a BIT of a rejuvenation after quitting Kimmel's show, but even now he's still only batting about .400, down from his pre-Kimmel high of about .900.
I mean, did you READ that excrable ode to "Entourage" column? Ugh.
Posted by: Krybo Amgine at September 15, 2004 02:33 PMLove when you mention my boy AARON GLEEMAN
A happy and healthy New Year to you......
Posted by: Judi Gallop Gleeman at September 15, 2004 04:11 PMLove when you mention my boy AARON GLEEMAN
A happy and healthy New Year to you......
Posted by: Judi Gallop Gleeman at September 15, 2004 04:11 PMThe sinking started with "ESPN Motion"
Posted by: Jeff S at September 15, 2004 07:12 PM