alex deherrera

As bad enough as the clip is, this is not even the worst thing I have seen, heard or read in relation to sports. Today, thanks mainly to ESPN, sports writers have degraded themselves into clamoring for attention by making obscene points with no statistical grounding. Skip Bayless and Colin Cowherd are by far the worst offenders to this regard. It actually pains me to listen to either of them talk, condescending and smarmy, making comments that are sometimes border-line racist and almost assuredly asinine. When you read about how writer’s such as Bill Simmons grew up reading Peter Gammons and how he was an inspiration for his career, it makes you wonder if some day a child is going to grow and think “you mean if I am loud, obnoxious, rude, and nonsensical, people will pay money just so they will disagree with me and be angry? Sign me up!”

It obviously gets ratings to have such a dumb routine or else they would be put out to pasture. I didn’t watch any of the commentary regarding the recent WNBA fight but I can bet they expressed outrage, called it a barbaric event, said that it was exactly what was wrong with sports and then maybe it turned into a conversation about violent movies and video games corrupting our youth and that sports should remain pure and free of strife. One of the above sports personalities probably made a comment about Mahorn “beating” Lisa Leslie and demand he be fired. I believe I speak for most fans of basketball when I say that

1. The WNBA sucks
2. The fight wasn’t a big deal
3. That hardly qualified as a fight
4. Does the injured player get sent off to the glue factory or do they try to fix her like Barbaro?

The news has become irrelevant and those who cover it are trying to make themselves a part of the story. It is just like how Perez Hilton starts feuds with celebrities so that other sites report about him. He isn’t famous, he isn’t a celebrity, and yet because he is loud and obnoxious he has some how worked his way into main stream culture as someone to be admired. If I had an actual readership that mattered, it could be argued that by writing about Skip Bayless that I am merely contributing to get him the infamy and notoriety that he so desperately craves. I don’t really have a counter-argument to that, but if I can some how let one person avoid listening to him talk about Terrell Owens then this post was worthwhile.

What are some of the sites I go to if I want to get actual sports news? Deadspin, Big Lead, AOL Fanhouse, and PFT. They are able to intermix humor to go along side with actual sports journalism. I know it is a hard concept to grasp, especially for those who continue to try and make money off the internet without actually knowing how to use it. In the future we’re going to look back and figure out why the main stream media was never able to understand the rise in popularity of new media. One of the answers is going to be that while the main stream media was trying to get revenue by treating its audience like fools, the other was producing valuable content. Content is the king maker, with it you’re golden and without it you’re without a paddle. I long for the days when ESPN delivered actual sports content and not trying to tell me “Who’s now“.

For anyone who doesn’t believe that sports journalism is really that bad, I urge you to read Fire Joe Morgan. That site is where I found the video that inspired this post. If you really want an exercise in self-flagellation then read the articles about Woody Paige. I would say more but I don’t want to ruin any of the surprises, but I will leave with a quote by Paige himself, to give you an idea of what you’re in for:

Greek mathematician Archimedes solved the puzzle of the sphere inside the cylinder, but never studied the circle within the diamond. The Rockies must figure out that perplexing riddle on their own after the all-star intermission.