Pre-tentious

With the football season nearly over, I decided to decompress a little and take a break from blogging. Too many numbers running through my head and not enough brainpower to try and work through all of them, I guess, so I figured you'd be better off not reading anything from me than my trying to string together coherent thoughts linking a running back's skill to where his name comes in the alphabet (Adrian and Emmitt concur, though Walter disagrees) or about how penalties have little to no effect on how much a team wins.

Wait, that one's actually true. But I'll get into it tomorrow.

What I'd rather talk about right now, with the Super Bowl media frenzy in full force, is how little I care about said media frenzy these days. Apart from an occasional glance at Awful Announcing, I haven't paid any attention to the interviews, quotes, or special interest stories regarding the players and teams in Super Bowl XLIII. Hey, did you know Ken Whisenhunt used to be an assistant coach for the Steelers or that Kurt Warner used to stock grocery shelves? If you didn't, you've only had 8,671 chances to pick up on that information the last week and a half. It reminds me of the Chicago/Indianapolis Super Bowl a few years ago where we heard so many times that two black head coaches were in the Super Bowl that I half-wished Tony Dungy and Lovie Smith would have quit the week before the game and given way to white assistants.

On a broader note, though, it occurs to me that I've watched (and read) very little pre-game media coverage at all this year, and somewhat less post-game, as well. There was a time, back in high school and college, where I'd sit my butt down in front of the TV at 10 or 11 a.m. on Sunday (this was Central time) and not move for at least 10 hours, devouring ESPN's and the other networks' coverage of upcoming matchups, the games themselves, and the post-game shows. I'd plan my schedule around NFL 2Night (I didn't have much of a life; actually, that hasn't really changed) and would watch the full hour of SportsCenter just to catch whatever NFL-related tidbits it was pumping out, even if it meant suffering through NBA highlights in the offseason. I even used to watch upwards of three to four hours of pre-game stuff leading up to the Super Bowl.

This year, I was lucky if I caught 15 minutes of any pre-game show any week. I still like watching post-game highlights, but all the talk about why a team won or why a team lost (especially when it devolves into mindless claptrap about one team just "wanting it more") from the commentators bores me. As for the Super Bowl pre-game, I'll probably be playing video games and stuffing my face -- oh wait, I always did that second part on Super Bowl Sunday. No change there!

ESPN's fall from grace as a "catch-all" for sports information is well documented (as is SportsCenter's fall from grace as anything remotely watchable). But even if the quality was unchanged, I don't think I'd watch it as much any more because, quite simply, pre-game shows rarely tell me anything I don't already know. The Sunday morning shows just rehash news that I've either been reading about on the Internet all week or even have seen on other TV shows. Running Back X has an ankle injury and might not play? I've heard about that from PTI, NFL 2Night, Inside the NFL, ESPN's morning shows, and at least half a dozen web sites all week long. Player Y is unhappy with his contract? So what? Even when a halfway intelligent commentator wants to get up on his soapbox and foster halfway intelligent discussion about a topic, he'll either be drowned out by the other idiots on the show (who think all a team needs to do to win is "run the ball and stop the run") or will echo what the other 46 talking heads have been saying all week.

The Internet, of course, is partially to blame for this information devaulation, but it's not the only culprit. In their haste to duplicate the success of Pardon the Interruption -- which has been only barely watchable since Tony Kornheiser became self-aware a couple years ago -- ESPN launched Rome is Burning and Around the Horn to fill the timeslots immediately preceding PTI on weekdays, giving us three half-hour talk shows, all in a row, that usually cover the exact same topics. How can that be a good programming decision? I don't watch RIB and ATH except in extremely small doses, and I can't imagine anyone could watch all three without wanting to commit hari-kiri. And no, that's not the former Cubs broadcaster. Sports opinion shows are the reality TV of the sporting world, with PTI as its Survivor. They're cheap, get good ratings, and the cast is essentially replaceable. What's not to love, from a network's point of view?

So you can take your Media Day, your 13.5 hours of pre-game coverage (no idea if that's the actual amount, but it seems like it), and your endless stream of uninteresting (and frequently uninformed) opinions and stuff them where the sun don't shine -- a difficult task in Tampa, admittedly. I'll save my emotion and interest for, you know, the actual game. Or at least the commercials.

ESPN = One big blog

Following the ESPN mandate of "Don't report bad things about Brett Favre" and their eventual "caving in" on the subject when Favre himself finally came forth, I made a decision. I wiped ESPN and ESPN2 (the only ones I get) from my channel list on my TV. Tony Kornheiser has become insufferable on PTI (and MNF, but I'll get to that in a second) and OpinionCenter -- I mean, CowboysCenter -- I mean, FavreCenterButOnlyWhenWeWantTo -- I mean, SportsCenter -- has only been vaguely watchable for some time. I can get my NFL coverage from the web or other networks on Sunday morning, so, really, what's left to watch? What am I missing?

The answer: not much. And I'm OK with it, after two weeks and counting.

And really, that's the only thing that will work. I'm not hooked up to a Nielsen box or anything, and I don't expect everyone else to shut out ESPN from their lives, but as long as people keep watching to see how Terrell Owens feels about Brad Johnson as his quarterback or what Woody Paige or Skip Bayless (two of the biggest wastes of air time on the whole network -- and if you don't believe me, read this) think about, well, anything, they'll keep shoving it down our throats.

So I don't watch it any more. I don't need half-educated opinions spouted at me from someone who claims to be an "expert." I can get just as good commentary from the web (especially some of the spectacular blogs I frequent). I have allowed myself, though, to watch actual sporting events, such as Monday Night Football and some college games. But all the noise and clutter and "to win in the NFL all you have to do is run the ball and stop the run" -- yeah, I don't need that.

In effect, ESPN has become a blog. It's full of people offering up their opinions on whatever the heck they feel like, only occasionally supported by facts and research, which is about the same level of quality "journalism" you get on the web. Let's face it: There's a lot of crap out there on the Internet. When you give people an essentially unfiltered platform to say whatever they want, they will, and a lot of it won't be very good. Unfortunately, ESPN has essentially given that same platform to many of its "personalities" (as long as they don't talk bad about Brett Favre) and the quality of their programming has likewise suffered for it.

I like to think that, as ESPN continues, people my age or younger, who actually understand the Internet and that the wide percentage of sports journalism is actually do-able by more people than the professionals would like us to believe, will eventually move into positions of power at the network and present more capable, more rational coverage that actually uses facts instead of opinions to push their stories. Heck, I could even live with feel-good, human interest stuff, like on E60. Because, you know, that actually resembles journalism. I can't go to a pro athlete and ask him about the car accident he was in when he was a kid and how it changed his life. When two guys are arguing about whether Kerry Collins will lead the Titans to the Super Bowl, using whatever flimsy arguments they feel like at the time, that's something you or I or any of those "uneducated masses" on the Internet could do.

And why should I watch on TV something I can get just as easily from the Internet or, even better, do up myself? Since I can't play football myself, I'll watch football on the station. And sometimes the actual anaysis (like what Ron Jaworski used to do in breaking down plays -- does he still do that ever?) is really good. But I don't need four weeks of how the Cowboys will be affected by Tony Romo's thumb injury, especially when every analyst -- every damn one I heard -- said Brad Johnson, who was 40 years old and hadn't been good in three years -- would do just fine. Guess what? He's 40 years old and hasn't been good in three years. He wasn't fine. Can't wait to hear all the talk this weekend about how Daunte Culpepper (who hasn't been good in four years) will be just what the Lions need. (He won't.)

And see? I can tell you that without you paying the cable company. Unless you go through them for your Internet, that is.