Saturday, July 21st, 2007 by Adam Wagner
Who’s Now? Not ESPN.
This may be popping out a little bit late, but I feel that it is still a necessity. ESPN’s idiotic
competition is simply another media stunt by the network to take sports and turn it into some lame form of entertainment.ESPN was obviously simply trying to draw more attention to aspects of its programming which they feel merit more attention with the competition. For instance, when was the last time Kelly Slater was actually featured on the front page of ESPN? Or any other network for that matter? And is Ronaldinho on ESPN at all outside of 3:00 in the afternoon Champions League matchups?
The fact of the matter is that ESPN is trying to compare apples and oranges in an effort to 
boost their ratings. Prior to the network, there was a mystique around sports that athletes were simply athletes, competing in the most primal manners possible in modern day coliseums. Now, these men all appear to be flawed in some way or another (be it tax issues, a steroid problem, drug use, rape, an inability to chase a fastball away, etc.). The overexposure of characters flaws results in very few athletes achieving the folk hero status of players such as Bill Mazeroski, Mickey Mantle, and Bob Gibson.
Just look at the qualifications for “Who’s Now.” The competition is just as much about what clothing lines athletes have, what products they are endorsing, what stars they are dating, and what carpets they pop up on as it is about their accomplishments on the field. ESPN has officially taken this too far, morphing what was once a sports network into a purely entertainment channel. At this point, ESPN overemphasizes the E.
For instance, Matt Leinart is in the competition simply because of his ability to pop up in tabloids and leave heiress’ houses at opportune times. That is ridiculous. If ESPN were a legitimate sports network, Philip Rivers would have been on the list instead of Leinart.
The Chargers’ QB has certainly accomplished more than the Cardinals.’ Also, there are only two soccer players on the list and one of them (David Beckham) was essentially deadweight until he somehow regained form all of a sudden in the last six months. In a recent conversation with a German (I must be NOW, I apparently have culture. YES!), the German promptly ripped Beckham, saying, “Yes, he makes a lot of money, but he is NOT a very good player. In Europe, people do not like him.” Oh?
And just because Shaun White appeared on the cover of ESPN: The Magazine does not mean that the rest of the country enjoys extreme sports. They are an interesting occasional diversion, but something can only be “XTreme” for so long before it becomes the norm. Shaun White is fantastic at what he does, but that is still not why he’s on the list. He’s there because ESPN felt a need to hype the XGames and because he has his own clothing line (in their blurb, half is about his skill and half is about the clothes).
Even Terrell Owens is on the list. This is the same T.O. that has not been the same football player since leaving Philadelphia, becoming a good but not great receiver in a solid offense. Owens is there just as much because of his agent as for his skill.
[youtube]http://youtube.com/watch?v=41rdU-3fiMA[/youtube]
Owens has been a consistent player, but he has in no way been one of the players that a non-sport fan is aware of.
Even Ronaldinho is there not for his ridiculous soccer ability, but for his $56 million marketing value. And if Ronaldinho is on the list, where is his teammate, the ridiculous Lionel Messi, who recently matched move-for-move the best goal in soccer history.
[youtube]http://youtube.com/watch?v=2uTpJEHc2fg[/youtube]
When ESPN is claiming that someone like Danica Patrick is representative of the sports world, there is an obvious problem. Patrick is a decent racer who receives more attention because of her ability to weave in and out of traffic on the red carpet than on the racetrack.
Perhaps the issues that ESPN has created are best illustrated by the fact that Maria Sharapova defeated Vince Young in the competition. Young has been one of the brightest
stars in football since he led Texas to a stunning win over USC two seasons ago. The young quarterback simply continued that success last year, leading a young Tennessee team to a decent season when it should have been contending for a top five draft pick. Sharapova, on the other hand, has experienced success in the past, but has spent most of 2007 either hurt or losing to lower-seeded opponents. ESPN, however, felt that it was fair to label her “Best Female Tennis Player” at their ESPYs. Okay, whatever you say.
ESPN does not appear to realize that sports are not about mini-series or who a player is dating off of the field of play, but instead about the results on the field of play. The network, therefore, indicates a larger problem with society as a whole. The constant stream of information means that we know more about players now than we ever have before, both their warts and what they are good at. If a day goes by where some new piece of seemingly legitimate information does not pop out, fans feel lost and can’t seem to decide what to do. This leads directly to ESPN’s sensationalist reporting, as they feel a need to take stories that really don’t mean anything at all and make a big deal about them (see Manny Ramirez trade rumors) so that their ratings can stay up. When they feel that this isn’t good enough, they simply make up another series like Who’s Now, or hire a new talking head to appear on Around the Horn or write a new Insider column.
The constant stream of information means that we can not differentiate between what is important (the sports) and what is more than likely just clutter (the business). This, for instance, is important:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vzbmI6-YSnQ[/youtube]
This is not:
[youtube]http://youtube.com/watch?v=byE2CWxCjR8[/youtube]
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