The whole ordeal was a massive journalistic blunder, and more existentially, it was indicative of the ESPN I have come to know in the 2020s. There was a time in living memory when the network aimed to elevate the levels of discourse in sports broadcasting. The company produced sparkling copy, 60 Minutes\u2013style featurettes, and morning-show salons composed of ex-players and media veterans. It wasn\u2019t stuffy or academic, but the brand clearly believed that sports were worth taking seriously\u2014and crucially, that the things that make a football game interesting are self-evident, without necessitating any extraneous WWE-like overeditorializing from a panel of goons. Alas, over the past decade, and especially in the past five years, that spirit has been lost. Signal boosting a false accusation about a college student\u2019s personal life is uniquely egregious, but sift through an ESPN broadcast today\u2014endure the trollish provocations and meaningless debates\u2014and there is only one conclusion anyone can reach. This channel once hoped to make sports fans smarter. Now it\u2019s doing everything possible to keep us stupid.<\/p>\n
ESPN was never perfect. The network has always been capable of some baffling gaffes\u2014an insatiable appetite for slop that could land its major players in hot water. (I have been watching the channel long enough to remember when Rob Parker questioned the racial bona fides of Robert Griffin III, or when Stephen A. Smith staked out a sweaty, confused, and deeply weird apologia on the complexities of domestic abuse.) But historically, the tackiness was studded with saintly glimmers of prestige\u2014a one-for-us, one-for-them philosophy of content. ESPN employed Zach Lowe, the basketball savant that this very website once heralded as the country\u2019s greatest living sportswriter<\/a>. It operated Grantland, the bold and hugely expensive sanctum of magazine-style feature writing that raged against the already-underway foreclosure of big media dreams. (The site\u2019s alumni include Brian Phillips, Shea Serrano, and Wesley Morris.) Those braindead Skip Bayless First Take soliloquies about Tim Tebow were alloyed with the revelatory investigative work conducted by Bob Ley\u2019s Outside the Lines. ESPN was unwieldy and contradictory, but there was no doubt that the machine worked.<\/p>\n You might know where the story goes from there. As the millennium marched onward and a generation of cord-cutters ate into the network\u2019s once impervious bottom line, ESPN transformed into a distressed asset. (\u201cHow ESPN Went From Disney\u2019s Financial Engine to Its Problem<\/a>,\u201d foretold the New York Times, almost exactly two years ago.) It\u2019s hard to say if that swoon in revenue is directly responsible for the glacial degrading of the ESPN broadcast product, but in an era of desperation\u2014where it seems like all institutions are stripping the copper wire from the walls\u2014the network\u2019s flailing stabs at relevance are pretty telling.<\/p>\n Zach Lowe is gone. He was laid off last year along with many other<\/a> notable commentators, analysts, and on-air personalities. In his place we have Druski\u2014the Instagram comedian and influencer, with no sports commentary precepts to speak of. (He recently guested on First Take.) In the spring, ESPN announced that it would be opting out of its current deal with Major League Baseball following the World Series, but it is airing the Savannah Bananas\u2014baseball\u2019s answer to the Harlem Globetrotters\u2014all summer long. As a University of Texas alumnus, I was especially bummed when Todd McShay, ESPN\u2019s longtime ace college football expert, was let go in 2023, right when the Longhorns were ascending. Thankfully, the network has been experimenting with a new NCAA approach by simulcasting its top college football games with a broadcast booth starring\u2014you guessed it\u2014Pat McAfee.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n \n Alex Kirshner <\/a><\/p>\n To be fair, a lot of good people still work for ESPN. Mina Kimes is an elite NFL analyst. (She is also known for doing her TV hits with a Pavement record hanging in the background, a throwback to the broadcaster\u2019s hipsterish lineage.) The network\u2019s Monday Night Football is called by A-listers Joe Buck and Troy Aikman, and starting next season, the legendary Inside the NBA\u2014with Charles Barkley, Kenny Smith, Ernie Johnson, and Shaquille O\u2019Neal\u2014will be moving to ESPN from TNT. The website is more threadbare than it once was, but it retains the capacity to deliver good, adversarial, big-picture features. (A profile of 76ers center Joel Embiid<\/a> and a wide-ranging survey of the health problems faced by retired football players<\/a> are two recent highlights.) Most importantly, I\u2019m not enough of a prude to say that I don\u2019t relish some of the slop. Stephen A. Smith might be ridiculously oversaturated in the public consciousness\u2014his presidential dalliances feel like a real jump-the-shark moment\u2014but the way he heels it up, Ric Flair\u2013style, about the Dallas Cowboys, or the New York Knicks, will forever be compelling.<\/p>\n The Man Behind the Most Infamous Moment in Any Series Finale in Ages Explains How He Did It One of Rock\u2019s Greatest Bands Started as Satire. Then It Became Everything It Satirized. Netflix\u2019s Most Popular Movie in Years Has Now Birthed a No. 1 Song A24\u2019s Latest Has Already Made More Money Than Any Star Wars Movie. I Bet You\u2019ve Never Heard Of It. Yet, if Grantland\u2019s founding marked one era of ESPN, then McAfee\u2019s signing symbolizes the next. On a network that is now capable of rehashing the Jordan\/LeBron GOAT debate for the trillionth time over the course of an entire afternoon, there is no doubt that the slop has conquered ESPN\u2019s center stage, and won\u2019t be leaving anytime soon. The network no longer has the authority to set the terms of engagement. In a media environment democratized by social media, ESPN\u2019s core rival is the wealth of low-effort, sports-themed flotsam that gets pumped out to every platform. If you follow any league you know what I\u2019m talking about. NPC-ish white guys in fitted ballcaps debating the clutchness of Aaron Judge. Retweet-ready image macros ranking quarterbacks by tier in a deliberately provocative order. Mangled YouTube videos asserting that \u201cCarlos Boozer was a PROBLEM!\u201d ESPN has no choice but to match those cynical ploys. As the Barstool Sports commentariat<\/a> noted, it\u2019s a sign of the times that after purging its most tenured reporters, ESPN signed Katie Feeney, a \u201csports and lifestyle content creator<\/a>,\u201d to fill the void. After all, that is what is winning right now, in this hollowed-out media ecosystem. It\u2019s also precisely how you wind up with Pat McAfee giving his take about a made-up college sex scandal on live TV.<\/p>\n It remains to be seen how ESPN\u2019s direct-to-consumer ploy will work out. The company has already made some substantial transactions. It purchased the rights to the supremely popular NFL Redzone channel, and just today, Yahoo Sports<\/a> reported that the network was close to acquiring MLB.TV. These deals make me imagine a future where all corners of the sports industry\u2014from Monday Night Football to preseason San Jose Sharks games\u2014will be brokered by ESPN. (The company\u2019s first-ever Super Bowl is set for 2027.) But will fans retain a relationship with the company? Adopt its precepts? Appeal to that erstwhile sensibility? At its very best, ESPN had a way of teaching us how to love sports. But the powers that be have determined that such an aspiration is no longer a viable business model. The real tragedy is that in this economy, they\u2019re probably right.<\/p>\n Get the best of movies, TV, books, music, and more.\n <\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/1755776178_972_2fd54eea-bd19-4ca1-ab5d-a21d6acc4c53.jpeg\")
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\n The Crime Scandal Ensnaring a Former NBA Player and Rocking the Sports World
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