I don't get all of these complaints about MLB coverage on espn. I'm still upset over the NHL not coming back after the lockout in 2004. Fortunately, Crosby and Ovi are playing in the KHL or something.
You have to have a major league team before you get tossed the occasional highlight, not so sure the Astros qualify.
Well, don't they have a highlights show dedicated to baseball? And, yeh, generally speaking SportsCenter sucks. I wish NBCSN would decide to do a highlights show to compete and give us a different perspective. Also, despite the fact that I am from the southeast, I really would prefer a college football highlights show that wasn't obsessed with the SEC. And let's not think that there is no connection between ESPN's purchase of SEC TV rights and the recent dominance of SEC in football. Look, SEC football has always been outstanding, but this recent dominance is as much self-fulfilling prophecy by ESPN's hype machine as it is any authentic reality. It's simply this cycle: high school kids watch ESPN, ESPN tells you how amazing the SEC is, and how great a test it is for athletes, and then high school kids fall in love with SEC and then the SEC becomes an unstoppable juggernaut.
It's not a conspiracy theory. It's a fact. If you watched ESPN's college football coverage you'd know that. ESPN wasn't obsessed with SEC football until it won the rights to SEC football. SEC didn't win the national championship every year until ESPN overhyped the league year in and year out. That's not a conspiracy, that's cause and effect. A conspiracy theory would not be to say ESPN's overhyping of the SEC lead to the SEC's recent dominance in football. A conspiracy theory would be to say that ESPN paid the best college players to play in the SEC -- because, see, that would be a conspiracy, where the former was just citing cause and effect.
Exactly. It's as crazy for an entertainment organization to instruct people to argue and take sides so more people pay attention as it is for them to inflate something they're invested in to make greater returns. That's not how businesses work.
Repped just because there is apparently one SEC fan that can see what the rest of us non-SEC fans see.
I'm only responding to something this stupid once, so read carefully. The contract you're referring to between ESPN and the SEC started in 2008 ( http://sports.espn.go.com/ncaa/news/story?id=3553033 ). By that time the SEC had already won back-to-back national championships, and they won another that same year. So, before any dark magic was allowed to take place, the SEC had 3 straight national titles. That's not cause and effect. That's one league producing better teams year after year. And this disregards the fact that they still talk about Notre Dame like they've done something in the last 30 years when they haven't. Notre Dame also has their own network...all to themselves. And yet they're not doing anything. Once again, no dark magic.
It's crazy that they'd have to do that. You're not getting paid any money to come up with arguments and toss them around on a message board and yet you still do. Why is anyone who works for ESPN so stupid that they don't know how to pick a side until informed of it by their superiors? And when does it stop? Do they have to wait on their bosses bosses to let them know so that they can know what side to pick? Or does it go all the way to the top? Perhaps they're asking Walt himself what side of the argument each specific analyst should take so that no screw ups happen. OR the analysts are people who are paid by the network to understand their sport(s) and in doing so are quite capable of forming their own opinions and backing those opinions up with what they find to be the relevant information. And Jim Rome and Skip Bayless are the outliers not the norm.
ESPN had nothing to do with Alabama hiring Nick Saban which is the DIRECT cause of two of those six NC. ESPN also had nothing to do with Cam Newton getting paid which is the DIRECT cause of one of those six NC. ESPN also has TV deals with other conferences as well. ESPN is a business and it's bad business to be biased to one partner. The SEC isn't good because ESPN is up its A$$, ESPN is up its A$$ because it's good. But seriously there are A LOT more factors in SEC success that a little media love.
This. Except it was Cam Newton's dad that was paid which is why he got away with it (I think). Regardless I'm glad someone else gets it.
Hey stupid. You didn't read your own source carefully because the article is dated in 2008. The contract that is being discussed is a contract that created the so-called "SEC Network" and didn't begin until 2009. The SEC and ESPN affiliation goes back to the 1990s when the SEC dropped its affiliation with the CFA and negotiated its own contract with ESPN. So, no, the link you offered does not refer to the TV deal with ESPN that I referenced.
Which is the formula. You hire a contrarian to drive the program, then you put someone who is ordinarily reasonable opposite him, and BAM! You get your train wreck. You don't have to tell the people you hire that you want them to hype up the SEC. You hire those who tell you they'll hype the SEC. It's not a conspiracy, it's the free association of like-minded people.
And, in case you weren't following along, the conversation had veered off into how ESPN overhypes certain events, teams, and others, and how that impacted the sports world and sports viewership. I am more than glad to drop the whole thing but when someone calls me stupid because they don't believe that the SEC ever had a contract with ESPN until 2008, then I have to call them out on that with this is big soccer or not.
We have to do something until someone post the ratings from this weekend's games, which won't be until at least tomorrow.
If you don't mind me asking, but I don't think the SEC has been ESPN's biggest contract since the start of the channel. Under that logic, wouldn't whoever is the biggest contract have been biased towards as well? Shouldn't ESPN be biased towards Texas as well with their network and major investment?
There are some who believe that ESPN was biased towards Texas during the whole "Big-12 breaking apart" news cycle last year, because of their investment in the Longhorn Network.
Don't you think geography and socio-geographic changes have more to do with college football success thanes is bias? California,Texas and the Sun Belt were huge beneficiaries of population change in the last two decades. Since 1991, every National champion except Nebraska (1994,1995), Michigan(1997),and Ohio State (2002), has come from one of those areas or recruits heavily from those areas (Oklahaoma in 2000 and Washington in '91 split).
"It's an ongoing investigation." In any case, ESPN is the ultimate frontrunner. The SEC is currently on a bit an upswing, so ESPN will hop into bed with them gladly. It's what they do. When some other team, conference, or league goes on an upswing, ESPN will be all over it like the smell of pot smoke on Kyle Beckerman. Edit: That said, I do view with suspicion ESPN's cheerleading for a Bama-LSU rematch in last year's BCS Championship, given ESPN's obvious conflict of interest in the matter. And of course, every single one of their talking heads thought that Bama was so much more deserving that Okie State. But then, all of those talking heads were spending their time in the weeks leading up to the 2006 Rose Bowl debating where the 2005 USC team ranked in the history of college football's all-time greats.
It also helps in recruiting when you can tell a prospect that he doesn't have to actually attend class to be eligible in the SEC (unless they visit Vandy).
So what they hell have recent MLS TV ratings been? Or was I really timewarped over to a college football board?