I have to say, this was by far the best produced MLS anything I've ever seen for television. Absolutely excellent coverage. I'm amazed. Brian Kenny, aside from a few 'the MLS's here and 'Real Salt Lake City' there, did a very, very good job. Rob and Eric did hella good too. Overall it was an A+. If only everything could be produced this well.
Awesome. I was very very pleased. Very profesional. Stone actually sounded like an authority t times..was scary. Waldo was his usaual ecentric self..loved the pumpkin shirt slam by Kenny..who in my opinion is one of the best desk jockeys ESPN has. I really hope to see more of that in the future...a whole hour of MLS coverage, thats cool.
Kenny is fantastic. He looked like he actually cared what was going on. In other words none of the usual side comments, inane jokes that we hear between Stone and Wynalda on a normal broadcast. 100x more professional. Fantastic.
I have it recorded and will watch tonight. But, if it was as good as described, we ought to all be writing to ESPN to let them know we liked it. Lord knows we do enough kvetching about their coverage.
Overall I would give the coverage an "A". I am very happy that ESPN put real effort into getting graphics/interviews/video ready in advance, and I think it was an honest effort on their part to put forth quality coverage of the draft. Having said that: 1. Eric sure looked dumb when he totally didn't listen to Brian Kenny's first question about the names of the teams. Instead of answering, Eric went into a pre-rehearsed talk about the players in the draft, not the names of the teams that were doing the drafting. 2. I know it's hard to find quality footage of some of the players drafted, and I know with ESPN news most "casual" fans won't be watching end-to-end like all of us did/will, but it was still kind of annoying to see the same Arturo Torres goal three different times, or the 2 Andy Williams goals a couple of times each. Again though, those are minor flaws in an otherwise well done effort by ESPN.
I tried to watch it live on-line but co-workers kept bugging me with soccer-irrrelevant questions. The nerve of some people. I also have it recorded on DVR so I look forward to watching it in its entirety with no interruptions tonight. From what I was able to watch, I was very impressed. The whole show was done in a very professional manner, especially when compared to the cringe-worthy Szetela lottery production earlier this year. Well done to ESPNews, Brian Kenny, Rob Stone and Eric Wynalda.
go here http://www.espnviewerzone.com/ register for free then go to the ESPN news forum and thank them for their excellent MLS expansion draft coverage.
I completely agree. This was exceptional and really showed what MLS Wrap should aspire to be. My only quibble was the few times Brian Kenny referred to "mainstream" fans. I kept thinking, does being a soccer fan mean I'm not mainstream? I hope that this is a sign that ESPN is warming up to the sport and may...eventually....pay for the rights to broadcast the games.
The draft was OK entertainment wise. What I liked was how they didn't just do the picks. They talked about the league and the setup for the two teams. They got players live and on the phone. Made it more about 2005 than just stocking these two teams. And they were asking some good questions and stuff, i.e. Wynalda busting Williams' hump for being on his sixth team and point blank saying, "Can LA support two teams?" My criticisms: -Real Salt Lake, not Real Salt Lake City -Vague references to Chivas' Mexican players. Give me details. -Garber is horrible in front of a camera. Not a watershed moment in league history, but a much better production than the Szetela thing.
For those of you who watched it on ESPNews, could you hear us cheering and stuff in the other room in SLC? It seemed like there was a 3-5 second delay on one of the interviews, and I'm not sure if you could hear us at all for the Checketts interview.
First off, it's good to see Espn devote an hour of programming for this. But I wish they could have dug a little deeper, Stoner kept mentioning Chivas's player pool south of the border and that they had their "spine" pretty much set up. Who are these players? I've read and heard rumours about 2 or 3 of them, but he was talking about 9 or 10 in the broadcast, who are they? Am I missing something that has been is previous knowledge to some and I've just not been paying attention?
Yes -- and during the Kreis interview. ESPNews' Hot List has been a friend to MLS lately -- tell them so: http://sports.espn.go.com/sitetools/s/contact/espntv.html
You could hear the fans in SLC when they mention FANS during the Jason Kreis interview asking him about how fans have responded to him.
No, that was the biggest problem I had with the broadcast. They were very good otherwise, but this was a big clkoud hanging that they didn't explain. The SLC fans sounded great!
You guys sounded great. Although the delays did make it sound like your were cheering at odd times on occasion.
They didn't even say that though. They kept talking about nine players who would form the spine. Two have been identified, but the others - from what I read this morning - have not been named yet. If they aren't identified, then they should have said that. But they didn't - they were very vague. Overall things were great, but they could have been more clear, that's all.
I thought it was a very good show by ESPN. Great to see an hour dedicated to this...but keep building off of this.