ESPN Has Gone Black and Is Going Back

There's a decent read over at SI about John Skipper and EPSN's planned coverage for next summer's World Cup. The good news is that ESPN is pouring a lot of resources into the coverage

"I think our ambition level is going to exceed the ambition of any broadcaster in the world relative to the amount of content we will produce," Skipper said.

The bad news is that ESPN is still saddled with its own ESPN'ness.

If we're reading this correctly, ESPN will be doing SportsCenter from South Africa. This we really don't care about, although we're generally against America sending clowns overseas, even if temporarily. But where SportsCenter originates from is about one of the least interesting things we can conceive of.

Given the option, we'd rather have game announcers on location (cough *Champions League* cough) and Stu Scott fellating Tiger Woods on camera from a broom closet in Bristol. In fact if someone at the 4-letter could go ahead and misplace any key to that closet when Scott is in said closet, there's probably an award waiting for you in Stockholm.

Additionally, reading between the lines, it seems like the Mouse might be making a run at the Olympics in the not-too-distant future. And the next World Cup is sort of a stepping-stone of a Guinea pig's dress rehearsal. There are more than subtle hints of this in the article. An Olympic maneuver is only relevant to current purposes in how it relates to the ancillary programming for the upcoming Cup.

And given that this is ESPN—and American sports journalism in general—expect the worst:

Among the features planned: John Battsek and Michael Davies, two of the producers behind Once In A Lifetime... have been dispatched to interview every living player who has scored a goal in a World Cup final... Skipper also said the network plans to "take a page out of the ABC Sports Olympic playbook [sic] and do "Up Close and Personals" on players from around the world. ESPN will do a long-form feature on at least one player from all 32 World Cup teams.

The goal-scorers interview. Not bad. The 'up close and personal' nonsense? Fuck. And. Me.

God, it was only a matter of time before someone at ESPN thought to burden the coverage with this hackneyed tripe (and just curious, but isn't that NBC's Olympic playbook?). It's the bane of all American sports reporting.

Guess we can infer that Tom Rinaldi will be on the flight to Jo'Burg. Worse, it probably means Rick Reilly will be, too.

It's the least imaginary type of programming available. And soccer viewers generally don't give a shit. Really, I don't know much about the personal lives of anybody on my favorite EPL team—save maybe that Bendtner isn't a particularly big fan of pants—and I like it that way. The game is the thing. Period.

I don't need to know who overcame an illiterate mom with Super AIDS before his brother gave up his only pair of shoes so that his undersized sibling could attend a makeshift talent camp where he was plucked from obscurity and rescued from his war-torn homeland blah bah blah.

I already know that when a country lines up to play a World Cup match, the entire nation (save for ours) and much of the rest of the world comes to a halt. Simply by tuning in I am a part of something bigger than all of us, something global. That is enough to keep me glued to even an Angola v. Paraguay match.

Am I extrapolating recklessly from a data point of one? Yes. Does that make my assessment wrong? Doubt it. This type of support programming is for housewives and little girls. It might be "necessary" (or maybe just lazily appropriate) for things like the Olympics, where many sports only get that level of exposure once every four years and viewers would otherwise have nothing to draw them to not turn off Trampoline or Rhythmic Gymnastics, but soccer is the world's most popular sport. Treat it as such.

I realize to an American audience that soccer might seem like the Olympics as its something we generally only pay attention to once every four years; but If ESPN presents soccer to people in the same way it presents Olympic Handball, then they are almost telling the audience they are trying to build, "Hey, thanks for letting us emotionally blackmail you watching the World Cup. Now go back to ignoring soccer for the next four years." Twenty-plus years of that type of Olympic packaging has conditioned the audience.

By going 'up close and personal' ESPN is not only going to irritate people who are already fans of the game, they are going to undermine their own attempts to build a larger audience as they move into airing more soccer programming (assuming they do indeed plan to start programming more soccer).

So, we'll fight the urge to issue a preemptive scream of 'ESPN GO FUCK YOURSELVES AND STOP RAPING OUR COLLECTIVE PSYCHES WITH THIS EMO PORN!' and instead politely ask anyone from Bristol who might stumble across this to seriously rethink how they want to present the World Cup.

We understand if Skipper doesn't understand how wrong he is in this approach. He is a Tottenham fan after all, so being delusional is in his nature.

You've got a year still, ESPN. Nothing is set it stone. You don't worry about sunk costs going forward. Just the margin. The Mouse can cover it.