ESPN Apocalypse is today

What, the “liberal agenda”? personally I think ESPN has tried to be a part of the social culture, with things like the ESPY’s and honoring Caitlyn Jenner for example. I can tell you on sports dominated forums that was a big thing. Does it hurt ESPN’s football/baseball/basketball ratings…no. People watch those regardless. But I think it hurts their Sportscenter and entertainment shows.

However, I would agree that competition and modern internet technology probably has hurt them more.

That’s anecdote and personal sentiment. Not data.

Yea…go straight to the race card. It’s not race, it’s that politics and social situations are discussed at all. Think back to your old sports pages, or the old local sports anchor at a TV station…imagine them discussing the social issues of the day and people not reacting to them.

So you mean think back to the time of segregation and June Cleaver and institutional racism on a scale 10 times worse than today?

Isn’t everything anecdotel and personal until there is time to quantify it? I spend as much time on sports oriented forums as I do here, and anecdotel or not the hate for social issues being mixed with sports is a real thing.

Okay…if that’s all you see then maybe that’s why you are blind to this. I apologize for my racism because I want my sports page separate from the rest of the newspaper. Damn I am one evil cracker.

No. None of this is true, or possesses any value. “Everywhere I hang out, people thought Hillary Clinton had the election sewn up.” “Everywhere I hang out, people thought George W. Bush was going to be a one term president.”

Sorry, but in 2017 of all years, we should be equipped to understand personal sentiment, confirmation bias, and how those things skew perceptions of disbelieving actual data to the point where someone simply refuses to believe or accept that there’s no causation/correlation here.

Sadly, we live in a time where athletes seem to be particularly uppity.

damn man…I guess if being an ass makes you feel good then fine. Good for you.

Did I mention the word athlete? Nice jump there Einstein?

Yea…it’s race. It’s all race. It’s always race and only race. Race is the only answer, the only cause, the reason the sun rises in the morning and sets at night.

You win. Race. Fuck those racist anti-ESPN bassturds.

So if you don’t want your sports pages covering the things athletes say and do, what do you want them covering?

Fuck the NBA Championships, the fight of the century is going down right here and where the fuck is ESPN?

Jeez, you go to lunch and then Bomani Jones’ mentions break out.

Love me some Bomani Jones, and Dan Lebatard as well. No social commentary going on with either of those guys. :)

Stats…How did you hit that shot? Make that pitch? Score that TD?

I don’t want my sports page to have athletes telling me how they feel about the social/cultural/political issues of the day.

I don’t give a shit what the star of that movie thinks about either. That info is not required.

You know, I don’t want the food section having chefs talking about those things either. Or the home and garden section talking about them either. But then I guess that makes me racist.

ESPN’s financial issues are 80% content rights costs and 20% everything else. What they are doing now is scaling down in an effort to weather the storm. The bubble is going to burst on sports rights costs, probably in the next couple of years, and ESPN wants to be around to take advantage and recover fully when it does. The idea that any network anywhere can pay increasingly stupid amounts of money to carry any sport/team/event/league/conference is ridiculous. The inflation rate on sports rights is unsustainable.

Fully endorsed. It’ll be interesting to see if we get any defaults from local cable nets on some of the more ridiculous MLB rights packages.

Call me part of the “problem”. I watch ESPN only when a actual sport event I’m interested in is on. I don’t give a fuck about any of the rest of what they put on.

I’m even worse. The only time I’ve interacted with ESPN over the last 30 years is when I pirated some streams of Golden State Warriors games last year when they were on that crazy streak and I decided I wanted to see what a “Skyfucker” actually looked like (and also maybe learn how the fuck to actually pronounce Steph Curry).

The Ringer has a good look:

But as Ley is fond of saying: Other networks had viewers; ESPN had fans. If that goodwill and emotional capital goes away, does ESPN still have fans?..

…The ESPN layoffs remind me of the gutting of newspaper sports pages that has been going on in fits and starts for two decades. Talk to people who worked for newspapers in the ’90s and they’ll tell you they thought their paper was as “invincible” as the Worldwide Leader. After all, classified-ad dollars were going to keep rolling in like cable subscriber fees. Newspaper writers were going to do good work, make decent money, and cruise into retirement age.

When the first layoffs came, they didn’t take out the loudmouth columnist, just as ESPN didn’t take out Stephen A. Smith. No, the first layoffs surgically removed the organs of the paper — that feature writer graying at the temples; the horseracing writer; the sports TV columnist.

I am one of those who was a “fan” of ESPN in the 80’s & 90’s, and I still like a few shows like PTI and Around the Horn, but I used to be a regular watcher of NFL Primetime, Baseball Tonight, etc.

IMHO, what they’ve truly lost is a connection with the games they cover - they are too much gossip oriented and hyping what’s next to even bother telling the story of what happened in the games. They put together a few star-oriented highlights and then move on to what’s next, rather than going into depth on what happened.

Don’t just give me a highlight reel, tell the story of the game(s) - from both teams’ perspective, not just the winners. Give us more shows like the old Monday Night matchup, and go into that depth on the highlight packages. From a UCLA perspective lately, give me more Lonzo Ball and less LaVar Ball. I could care less what some idiot who’s not even playing said, show me the plays, and the flow of the games.

side note on the political nonsense - they have it correct in the article too:

> if you see someone saying ESPN got comeuppance for its “agenda,” they have, in nearly every case, just revealed their own.

I flip by ESPN frequently, but honestly I only stop flipping when they have dart throwing or bowling on, because I love any sport that’s dominated by overweight half-drunk dudes.

No wait, do they still have those lumberjack games on? Man, I loved those.