{"id":36158,"date":"2013-05-10T23:06:17","date_gmt":"2013-05-11T03:06:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/totfc.net\/?p=36158"},"modified":"2020-07-05T23:06:29","modified_gmt":"2020-07-06T03:06:29","slug":"an-attempt-to-put-into-words-how-much-i-hate-espn","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/?p=36158","title":{"rendered":"An attempt to put into words how much I hate ESPN"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"border-image alignnone wp-image-36159 size-full\" src=\"http:\/\/totfc.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/07\/diesas.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"490\" height=\"275\" srcset=\"https:\/\/totfc.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/07\/diesas.jpg 490w, https:\/\/totfc.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/07\/diesas-300x168.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 490px) 100vw, 490px\" \/><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: Lora; font-size: 12pt;\">It\u2019s not that\u00a0<em>want<\/em>\u00a0anyone to keel over and die, but if Stephen A. Smith\u00a0<em>were<\/em>\u00a0to keel over and die, I\u2019m pretty sure that not only would I not give a shit, there would be a part of me that would be glad.\u00a0 Yes, that\u2019s a horrible thing to put into writing, but I can\u2019t really say that it would be an inaccurate statement.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: Lora; font-size: 12pt;\">Whenever Stephen A. Smith is on television, which is unfortunately way more than he should be, because the retards at my gym have the locker room televisions set to ESPN, and there\u2019s no known way to change the channels without a remote, and\u00a0<em>First Take<\/em>\u00a0seems to be on for eleventy-billion hour blocks at a time, I want to shower and dress out and get out of the locker room as quickly as humanly possible.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: Lora; font-size: 12pt;\">Stephen A. Smith makes me want to get away from a screen faster than a snuff film, or any one of those ASPCA commercials with Sarah McLaughlin music in the background.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: Lora; font-size: 12pt;\">I honestly think that Stephen A. Smith is a bigger pox on this world than like AIDS, Ebola, or any of those super-mutating diseases that the news likes to claim are capable of wiping out human kind.\u00a0 Hell, if Stephen A. Smith continues to get as much screen time as he does, or god-forbid, gets more than he does now, then the extinction of the human race doesn\u2019t sound like such a bad thing after all.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: Lora; font-size: 12pt;\">However, even still, no matter how horrible Stephen A. Smith ultimately is, he\u2019s still a microcosm of the bigger problem, which is just how much\u00a0<strong>ESPN absolutely, completely, irrevocably sucks<\/strong>.\u00a0 Seriously, I honestly do not think that there is a single network out there that is worse than ESPN, and that\u2019s even considering that one network that\u2019s owned by Al-Jazeera (Current?)<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: Lora; font-size: 12pt;\">For years, I\u2019ve been saying tongue-in-cheek, that ESPN sucked.\u00a0 They\u2019re about as biased as the various news outlets, and they\u2019re a completely compromised network entirely.\u00a0 At one point, the unofficial acronym for the company was \u201cEvery Sport Possible Network,\u201d but really stands for \u201cEntertainment and Sport Programming Network.\u201d\u00a0 But in actuality it really should be\u00a0<strong>ESTPOPUN: Every Sport That\u2019s Popular Or Pays Us Network<\/strong>, because that\u2019s pretty much precisely how the entire network operates.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: Lora; font-size: 12pt;\">The boiling point for me actually came kind of recently, while ESPN was trying to run some specials about the NFL Draft, since for some reason, people out there seem to care about an overblown process of picking teams on a grand scale, rather than any actual active sporting events like the NBA Playoffs, NHL Playoffs or y\u2019know\u2026 baseball.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: Lora; font-size: 12pt;\">But they were running some documentary-style information segments talking about the importance of getting picked early in the draft, and the financial repercussions of falling down the draft, one slot at a time.\u00a0 And then the program flashed these statistics about how much money that guys like Eli Manning, Aaron Rodgers and Ben Roethlisberger \u201clost\u201d because they weren\u2019t the first pick, or within the first five picks, or even within the first ten picks, or something like that.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: Lora; font-size: 12pt;\">The screen went black and white, showed Ben Roethlisberger sitting at a banquet table looking all sad and emo, and a graphic showed up on the screen that said \u201cLost $5M by \u2018falling\u2019 to the #11<sup>th<\/sup>\u00a0pick in the draft.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: Lora; font-size: 12pt;\">Ben Roethlisberger is currently playing under a contract worth $108M dollars, and has made somewhere around $70M dollars in his career, not including whatever performance bonuses, Super Bowl bonuses, endorsements or any additional salary he may have had throughout his career.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: Lora; font-size: 12pt;\">And ESPN is trying to make us plebeians, most of who won\u2019t even see $1M in our entire lives let alone five, feel\u00a0<strong>bad<\/strong>\u00a0for Ben Roethlisberger, because he lost out on $5M, because he was picked 11<sup>th<\/sup>\u00a0instead of 1-5?\u00a0 For playing fucking football?\u00a0 A kids game?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: Lora; font-size: 12pt;\">Man, fuck ESPN.\u00a0 I fucking hate ESPN.\u00a0 I try not to throw around the term \u201chate\u201d too often (yeah, surprisingly), but I truly do hate ESPN.\u00a0 They\u2019re just so awful, and so biased and completely transparent.\u00a0 As a network altogether, they\u2019ve lost touch with the average viewer, and are apparently catering to professional athletes, their egos, and celebrities.\u00a0 The personalities they have on the air have all turned into head-cases, and are getting too big for their own britches with regularity.\u00a0 I would honestly be more content if ESPN were not included in my cable package.\u00a0 I would honestly be even more content if the network completely collapsed and went under altogether.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: Lora; font-size: 12pt;\">SportsCenter is such a biased and compromised program it\u2019s not even funny.\u00a0 No matter what time of the year it is, the NFL gets priority over absolutely everything.\u00a0 If Clayton Kershaw threw a perfect game in game seven of the World Series to win a championship, it would play second fiddle to a tweet by Deion Sanders.\u00a0 If the Iraqi soccer team overcame insurmountable odds to win the World Cup, it would have to wait until the Jets have deliberated with acquiring another quarterback to attempt to push Mark Sanchez with.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: Lora; font-size: 12pt;\">When it\u2019s not the NFL, it\u2019s whatever is mainstream or popular.\u00a0 Throughout this past NBA season, I\u2019ve never heard of a more mediocre team get so much regular coverage than the Lakers did.\u00a0 The Heat\u2019s 30+ game win streak actually took a little bit of the limelight away from whatever tweets that emerged from Darrelle Revis, or Marshawn Lynch.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: Lora; font-size: 12pt;\">The way ESPN handled the coming out of the closet of Jason Collins, with Chris Broussard taking the offensive against homosexuality was completely despicable.\u00a0 I always thought Chris Broussard was a piece of shit before all this happened, and that he always played the race card, and was way more racist than I could ever be, but this just solidified all of my claims, and at this point, I wouldn\u2019t care and probably be a little glad if he keeled over and died too.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: Lora; font-size: 12pt;\">And all their other, non-SportsCenter programming is just horrible.\u00a0 Ironically, whenever I used to turn on ESPN willingly, I\u2019d always be\u00a0<em>wishing\u00a0<\/em>for SportsCenter whenever shit like\u00a0<em>Around the Horn<\/em>\u00a0or PTI or whatever bullshit programming they have on was on.\u00a0 They\u2019re all vehicles to cater to the ever-growing roster of egos and pretenders that the network employs; they\u2019ve completely forgotten that good reporters are always in the foreground, hardly noticed, but missed dearly when they leave.\u00a0 Every single person the network has now is out to make a name for themselves and is way too quick to capitalize on any opportunity they have to advance their careers, and are ultimately bid with good riddance when they make grandiose spectacles of their expiring contracts before jumping over to FOX or whomever will fall for their charade next.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: Lora; font-size: 12pt;\">At this point, there\u2019s not even any sense with ESPN\u2019s apparent grudge against Major League Baseball, probably for daring to break out and create their own network, and their conceited efforts to show as minimum baseball coverage as they can, unless it\u2019s something that\u2019s a big deal, like Bryce Harper or Justin Upton\u2019s crazy start to the season.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: Lora; font-size: 12pt;\">Yes, there are a lot of hyperbolic statements made in this post, but it\u2019s really not that far from the truth.\u00a0 ESPN is just so god damn awful and it\u2019s so sad and pathetic that it\u2019s pretty much the industry standard when it comes to sports reporting.\u00a0 If I can help it at all, I\u2019m going to try to put forth a conscious effort to avoid everything I can when it comes to ESPN, which really shouldn\u2019t be that much of a stretch considering that I kind of already do it today.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: Lora; font-size: 12pt;\">But unfortunately the gym locker room is unavoidable for now until the retards at the gym change the fucking channels.\u00a0 So as long as Stephen A. Smith goes about his various black-power race-motivated agendas, it looks like speed dressing-out is still the norm.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It\u2019s not that\u00a0want\u00a0anyone to keel over and die, but if Stephen A. Smith\u00a0were\u00a0to keel over and die, I\u2019m pretty sure that not only would I not give a shit, there would be a part of me that would be glad.\u00a0 Yes, that\u2019s a horrible thing to put into writing, but I can\u2019t really say that &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/totfc.net\/?p=36158\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">An attempt to put into words how much I hate ESPN<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[62,59,106,90,15,89,105,58,69],"class_list":["post-36158","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-brog","tag-baseball","tag-basketball","tag-football","tag-hypocrisy","tag-og","tag-racism","tag-rage","tag-sports","tag-television"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36158","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=36158"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36158\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":36160,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36158\/revisions\/36160"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=36158"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=36158"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=36158"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}