Has ESPN lost it? Another one bites the dust
- Thread starter RTLH
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They decided that Desmond Howard was the better talent. We were debating this afternoon precisely what that talent was.
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anon_xdc8rmuek44eq
Guest
I know ESPN blows but the Clayton promo was hilarious.
So they got rid of their best NFL guy in Clayton, as well as probably their second best in Werder. Their best or second best baseball guy in Stark, a good basketball guy in Elmore and another in Katz but keep bags of sh!t like desmond, SAS, those two clowns on sprtscenter that I have yet to watch, Lebatard, and Corso. No wonder they are losing money, those in charge have zero intelligence.
I really enjoyed what Doug Glanville brought to a baseball broadcast, a Univ of Penn grad at least he could enunciate clearly. I tried to listen to the broadcast last night of the ball game, -only since i enjoy how Utley plays the game. It just seemed like an espn infomercial on self promotion. What a waste that network has become.
Most of these guys will find jobs elsewhere and land on their feet. It doesn't upset me that ESPN is losing viewers and advertisers, but I don't see where the viewers are going. Is it Fox Sports regionals, the B1G Network and SEC Networks?
They are losing viewers for many reasons. In my case, I turn on the league networks for expertise and actual highlights and information. MLB Network is the best tv station ever created in season and bases is not even my favorite sport. Not to mention NFL Network and NHL Network.
ESPiN turned into TMZ right around the time they jumped on Joe. They continue to try to broaden their demographic to females and minorities while losing many loyal viewers. The problem is women generally aren't fanatical enough to be loyal to any sports network and men are simply turned off by the Hollywood sports. To top it off, white america doesn't relate well to the two clowns on the 6 and many blacks i know even look at them as phonies. So they try to cater to young kids as well and they just watch things on their phone or tablet nowadays.
Disney owns ESPin and every chance they get they try to shove a liberal agenda down your throat. For me, the icing on the cake was the makeout session at the NFL draft with the gay player and his white boyfriend. It was unnecessary and completely forced into our homes. I'm all for gay people, but to cram that into my living room was utterly wrong on many levels.
They tried to be the "cool" station for so long they lost sight that people who tune in want sports talk, highlights and games and thats about it.
Last example, Jessica Mendoza who now does Sunday night baseball is horrible and you just cannot listen to her. She is pretty, smart, and knows a lot about baseball, so you'd think. But the whole telecast she talks about hitting and says "the zone" in relation to hitters finding the ball in the zone and keeping their shoulders square etc it is so repetitive and old after two innings. They just wanted a female to be on their main broadcast again to attract "other" viewers. All it did was turn off their loyal viewers and women aren't watching baseball anyway.
ESPiN turned into TMZ right around the time they jumped on Joe. They continue to try to broaden their demographic to females and minorities while losing many loyal viewers. The problem is women generally aren't fanatical enough to be loyal to any sports network and men are simply turned off by the Hollywood sports. To top it off, white america doesn't relate well to the two clowns on the 6 and many blacks i know even look at them as phonies. So they try to cater to young kids as well and they just watch things on their phone or tablet nowadays.
Disney owns ESPin and every chance they get they try to shove a liberal agenda down your throat. For me, the icing on the cake was the makeout session at the NFL draft with the gay player and his white boyfriend. It was unnecessary and completely forced into our homes. I'm all for gay people, but to cram that into my living room was utterly wrong on many levels.
They tried to be the "cool" station for so long they lost sight that people who tune in want sports talk, highlights and games and thats about it.
Last example, Jessica Mendoza who now does Sunday night baseball is horrible and you just cannot listen to her. She is pretty, smart, and knows a lot about baseball, so you'd think. But the whole telecast she talks about hitting and says "the zone" in relation to hitters finding the ball in the zone and keeping their shoulders square etc it is so repetitive and old after two innings. They just wanted a female to be on their main broadcast again to attract "other" viewers. All it did was turn off their loyal viewers and women aren't watching baseball anyway.
I believe Clayton is the guy who reported the off the record, "I won't leave the sport to the Jackie Sherrill's and Barry Switzer's of the world" comment that Paterno made. I may be wrong
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anon_xdc8rmuek44eq
Guest
Not sure they are going anywhere. I largely stopped watching sports news on that fateful day. Haven't really missed it.
They still believe that controversy is the best way to generate ratings. I keep hoping viewers will prove too smart for that model.
Still waiting.....
<sigh>
They are hemorrhaging money so fast they have to get rid of any real talent and keep the guys they can afford....the morons and incoherent babblers!
Maybe. He's from Pittsburgh and a Duquesne grad. He basically got run out of town for reporting off-the-record items from Steelers training camp when he worked for The Pittsburgh Press.
I did like his ESPN show with Sean Salisbury back in the 90's. It was a fore-runner to Mike-and-Mike, pairing a nerdy reporter with an ex-jock. Salisbury would call him "Mr. Peabody" and Clayton would refer to Salisbury as "Career Backup".
SPORTS OF THE TIMES
SPORTS OF THE TIMES; Joe Paterno's Morality Plays
By Dave Anderson
Published: December 5, 1985
The old philosopher of college football, Joe Paterno, had come to talk about Penn State's defense of its No. 1 ranking against Oklahoma in the Orange Bowl game. But his appearance yesterday on the 64th floor of Radio City, high atop the NBC studios, quickly created a series of morality plays concerning Miami's 58-7 rout of Notre Dame, the long proposed college football playoff, his grabbing of a Penn State player's facemask and Joe Yukica's ouster as the Dartmouth coach.
But first Joe Paterno set the record straight about an offhand remark regarding Barry Switzer, the Oklahoma coach, and Jackie Sherrill, the Texas A&M coach.
''Six years ago,'' Joe Paterno was saying now, ''at a Friday night session we have for the writers covering our games, somebody asked me when I was going to retire and I said I wasn't ready to give up the game to the Barry Switzers and Jackie Sherrills of the world. It was just an offhand, flippant remark that I thought was confidential. But it got published. Barry and I are good friends, and I apologized to him after it was published.''
But if Joe Paterno apologized to Jackie Sherrill, he did not mention it yesterday.
''Barry Switzer and I have different life styles, we argue all the time,'' the Penn State coach said. ''But he's an honest guy, not a hypocrite. We're just two guys from different backgrounds. I don't like athletic dormitories, he does. I don't like certain other things, he does.''
Joe Paterno, in fact, did not even mention Jackie Sherrill, once the Pitt coach, until somebody else did.
''Jackie and I have problems that go deeper,'' he said. ''We've had one or two incidents outside of coaching that I'd rather not go into. But when I said 'certain things,' I meant an attitude - an emphasis on winning, an emphasis on how much a coach should make. Some people interpreted what I said as meaning that they were cheating. But that was not the case both for Switzer and for Sherrill.'' Joe Paterno's argument for a college football playoff flared when he was asked about the motives of Miami's Jimmy Johnson, who condoned the final humiliation for Gerry Faust as the Notre Dame coach.
''If you have a playoff,'' Joe Paterno said, ''coaches won't have to run up a big score. But if you can't win the playoff on the field, that gives coaches every chance to convince people they're the best football team. I'm for a playoff because I hate to see anybody be voted out of a national championship like we were three times. We deserved to be ranked the top team in 1968, 1969 and 1973, but we didn't get it.''
Critics of a playoff format cite the loss of classroom time to the players, but Joe Paterno disagreed.
''I'm not in favor of a playoff that would hurt the bowl games,'' he said, glancing at the Orange Bowl officials nearby, ''but I think the four major bowl games would be even more important if they were used as quarterfinal games in a playoff. Those four winners then would play in the semifinals on the next convenient Saturday, with the two finalists playing for the championship on the following Saturday.
''That way, two teams would play 14 games and two teams would play 13 games - which is what the playoff teams do in Division I-AA, in Division II, in Division III.''
''Everybody is concerned about the kids losing classroom work. And they should be. But a playoff would affect four teams for one week, and two teams for two weeks. Most colleges have a long break between semesters now anyway. Our kids don't start their next semester until Jan. 13. But even during the season, football players miss less classroom time than the kids in almost any other sport.
''Our football team leaves on a Friday for a game and we're back Saturday night. Five or six times a year. Some players miss a class or two on a Friday, some don't miss any.
''Basketball travel is much more difficult. How the N.C.A.A. condones the classroom work lost in the basketball tournament, I'll never know. Kids go to Utah and stay for two weeks. I'd like to see a survey done on which sports do teams lose the most classroom work. Some of our other teams at Penn State will miss five, six times more classroom work than our football team does.'' Joe Paterno argued that football is the only college sport without a national tournament to determine its champion.
''It's the only sport under N.C.A.A. auspices where the tournament isn't decided by knocking heads,'' he said. ''In swimming, they don't vote on who the best 100-meter freestyler is. In track, they don't vote on who the best 1,500-meter runner is. Wrestling, volleyball, gmnastics, in every other sport, the teams or the players get to knock heads. Which is inherent in our nature.''
As for the money derived from a championship playoff, Joe Paterno suggested that some of it could be put in a pension fund for coaches.
''I'm going up to Dartmouth next week,'' he said, ''to testify for Joe Yukica in his case against the athletic director who fired him. Joe's going to court to prevent them from not letting him coach next year. In the Ivy League, you know what it would take to fire a professor? I can't fire a secretary like that. I just feel we got to take a stand.''
Joe Paterno also addressed a recent television closeup showing him grabbing a player's facemask during Penn State's victory over Pitt.
''We had talked before the game,'' the coach said, ''that if anything happens out there, walk away from it. But this young man didn't walk away and we got a penalty. When he got back to the bench, I told him, 'That's stupid.' Then he told me, 'If that guy pulls that junk again, I'm going after him.' I told him, 'Knock that junk off,' and I told him I wasn't going to play him unless he did.''
Yes, the coach acknowledged having held the facemask attached to the unnamed player's helmet.
''I grabbed him so he would look at me, to calm him down,'' Joe Paterno said, smiling. ''Then he tried to calm me down.''
I never had read that, thanks for posting it. Joe was way ahead when it came to what would help the game out. I had no idea that he was a promoter for playoffs back in the 80's.
Might have come from getting screwed over so many times with teams that easily could have been the best in the country.
Might have come from getting screwed over so many times with teams that easily could have been the best in the country.
"When asked about retirement, Joe Paterno once said that he would not, because it would leave college football in the hands of "the Jackie Sherrills and the Barry Switzers". Paterno apologized to Switzer for the comment, but wrote in his book that he "didn't give a damn about what Sherrill felt. Paterno later said that the comment was made off-the-record and in jest during a party at Paterno's house, but it was printed anyway. Sherrill and Paterno later became friends – and Sherrill and his wife were guests of the Paternos in State College in 2004."
"Media Ass Clown" is redundant, regardless of the city. Just curious, which one from Pittsburgh was it?
Joe was interested in a college playoff for years, note his version of how it should be set up.
Also, IIRC, Joe was a dynamic player in the move to organize a College Fotball Association enabling more tv contracts. In the 70’s the major teams on television were from the SWC, Ok, Texas, Ark, etc.
PSU was rarely promoted. PSU-Pitt was usually scheduled for tv view.
I have heard various theories that included Smizik and others in Pittsburgh. I have also heard Bill Conlin's name mentioned in discussions on this topic.
And isn't it ironic that the playoff didn't start till after JoePa was dead? Hmmm... the guy revolutionized college football on so many levels, never received credit and was mostly portrayed as a villain through it all.
YES lionroar, JoePa was a special kind of person. I wish there were more like Joe in the public spotlight.
