I’m a student and sports fan here just like many others on this campus. The thing is, unless you are constantly surfing the web in between classes or in your free time, the main sports outlet we have is ESPN.
The sports network that gives all the information a fanatic needs, covers different athletic events and issues, ranging from high school football to pro lacrosse. Many of us willingly turn it on in the middle of the day in down time, when the same
SportsCenter is re-airing hour after hour.
I have beef with ESPN solely because of how they imprint their ideals in our heads. Mainly through the aforementioned SportsCenter, the reporting and analyzing always seems to have a brainwashed effect to it.
If you’re sitting around all afternoon and you keep hearing ‘Derek Anderson is starting over Matt Leinart this week, the coach said this, Anderson’s the guy now, yadda yadda…’ People are going to assume that Matt Leinart has finally lost his job and Arizona has changed who they have starting at the quarterback position.
The twist comes the next week when Leinart outplays Anderson, and the controversy re-starts, when maybe Leinart had never lost his job in the first place.
Derek Anderson is not a good quarterback anyways.
As a news and sports person myself, we are taught to be equal and unbiased in the news we report. There are certain times to have an opinion, and other times to be straightforward, and that’s where ESPN can sometimes be in the wrong.
The analysts and “experts” throw their thoughts around and we eat everything they tell us. What is lost in all of this is that they are just saying what they think and not what is true.
Remember last spring when Mel Kiper Jr. swore that Jimmy Clausen was going in the first ten picks of the NFL Draft? For the longest time, it was assumed that Clausen would be getting the big bucks of a first-round pick, but he ended up falling to the middle of the second round.
The point is not that Kiper was wrong, but the pompous attitude he took toward anyone that opposed him was embarrassing, and probably a humbling experience.
ESPN is a great and enjoyable way to catch up on sports news, but beware of what is being said, and try to keep an opinion of your own.