TIDBITS

Tuesday, March 21, 2006

ESPN IS NOW THE STORY AND NOT REPORTERS OF THE STORY

For the past several years TSN has reported on the most powerful people in Sports and ESPN management consistently ranked in the top five.

I always ho-hummed the awards.

Just recently, I noticed I was paying about $2/month on my cable bill for ESPN stations I never watch.

Then, I see where Mike Tirico became the play-by-play for Monday Night Football. Cool, I always like Mike, before . . .

Within a week, I was watching ESPN broadcast an NBA game with Denver. During the game, Jim Gray and the ex-great one Mike made a big deal about two issues with Kenyon Martin. One was a real incident, but the other was a makeup of the ESPN people watching Kenyon sign autographs with colorful, shall we say, language. It didn't seem like much of a story but they ran with it. Next day, it was the talk of the town. So, is ESPN the story now?

Fast forward now to the ESPN professors of "bracketology". Stupid, stupid and more stupid.

It was with real pleasure that all those underdog teams (my words) and teams that shouldn't have been in the tournament (their words) pull upset and upset of the major conference alsorans.

Even as late as last night, a Steven Smith complained that Tennessee shouldn't have been a 2. So what? They could have been a 5, ala Pittsburgh, and lost at 5.

Play the game and let 'em strap them on.