List of the Fortnight: Inside my ESPN ambivalence

One other thing I love to write: Lists. They're so much easier than forming coherent sentences and paragraphs. So I thought I'd make it a regular feature on this blog -- we'll call it List of the Fortnight. Why the fortnight? I'm so glad you asked. It all comes down to three simple factors:

1. Every week is too often.
2. Every month is not often enough.
3. It's a lot of fun to use the word "fortnight."

We'll start with ESPN--a company I'm pretty sure every sports fan in America has a love-hate relationship with. So here's the roots beneath mine.

4 Reasons To Love ESPN
1. Sports--lots and lots of it. I don't get ESPN, so whenever I'm visiting someone who does, I get sucked in--kind of like when we'd play Nintendo for hours at our friends' houses because we didn't have it. As Bill Simmons has written a few times, it's mind-blowing to realize that we're the first generation that has had instant access to footage or highlights of almost any game we want to see. We pretty much have ESPN, in all its ubiquity, to thank for that.

2. Tirico & Van Pelt. I consider them something like the NPR of ESPN Radio. I'm always excited when I get to be on the road for work between noon and 2, because I know I'll get reasonable, sensical commentary and interviews on issues in sports that actually matter. Too bad that's so rare.

3. Serious reporting. ESPN has been showing they're serious about sports journalism over the past few years, hiring top reporters to cover just about everything. Of course, that means they're poaching them from newspapers, but that's not really ESPN's problem--it's my dying medium's.

4. Bill Simmons. Every once in a while, he nails a concept, moment or trend in a way I'd never seen anyone understand it before. He's worth reading about every time, if only because it just might be one of those columns.


5 Reasons To Loathe ESPN
1. Jim Rome. His radio show is everything that's wrong with sports talk: a three-hour barrage of inane smack-talk and poorly reasoned arguments on meaningless topics (today's topic: "Dunn vs. Canada!"). It's the total triumph of style--and poor style at that--over substance. And since he's alone in the booth, with no one there to bounce ideas off of (like another ESPN Radio guy I know), he feels the need to make the same point 14 times in a row throughout a segment, wording it 14 different ways. And I just can't stand his voice, either. Whew ... I feel better now. (I know he's syndicated, but he's on my ESPN Radio station, and his TV show is on ESPN, so I'm lumping him in.)

2. Relentless cross-promotion. I'm never sure whether ESPN Radio's Sportscenter updates fall under "news" or "advertising," since every one, for some strange reason, contains the words "tonight on ESPN and ESPN-HD!" at least three times.

3. Large-market obsession. It's not East Coast bias, just large-market bias. Want to get onto Sunday Night Baseball? If you're not playing the Yankees, Red Sox, Cubs, Dodgers or Mets (or sometimes Phillies), good luck.

4. Contrived debates. My (least) favorite is "who would you rather build a franchise around?" What GM would ever get the decision between signing LeBron or Chris Paul? Are you kidding? And there's always someone who decides, just for the sake of conflict, to say something like "I'd go with Pau Gasol."

5. Bill Simmons. Just Google him, and a torrent of hatred will be unleashed on your computer screen. Some of it might even be justified. He's kind of like that guy who tells the same story over and over again at parties: you still laugh every time--it is a funny story, after all--but honestly, after 27 times, you're more annoyed at him than anything.