Sports Journal-ESPN-Soccer Rant

[I wrote this a couple of months ago, thinking I was about to start sports blogging again.  Work on the my next RPG setting took over my writing life.]

Is it over?  Is it?  Is it over?

Somewhere in the middle of this World Cup crap, I flat out stopped listening to sportstalk radio.  That’s okay, I got to hear Tim with the Chihuahuas’ talk about it.  ESPN’s baseball broadcasts have blathering on and on about it.  Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter were talking about it.  My parents were talking about it.  It’s been inescapable in any media format.  The World Cup, the triumph of pervasive, marketing.  Hopefully nobody will use these techniques to get some hopelessly inept, Anti-American politician elected president.

Right before a Chihuahuas’ game, they were playing a Colin Cowherd ESPN promo, where he was all but threatening the audience with more soccer coverage.  “With the ‘browning’ of America, you’re going to get more soccer.  It’s here to stay, and it’s only going to get bigger.”  It’s amazing how outright racist you can be when you’re a liberal.  (“Browning” was a direct quote.) 

He’d say he could back up his racist statements with facts and statistics.  If I used facts and statistics to make some general observations about various races in this country, my blog would suddenly disappear due to inappropriate content, no matter how true they were.  Even threatening to use facts to back up racial statements is considered racist, depending on who you are and how you’re using them. 

Cowherd’s threat outlines ESPN sportstalk (and Fox Sports as well for the most part) agenda.  Let’s examine their content, from my own very personal viewpoint. 

1. The NFL.  I think the sport’s fixed.  Since all of the main networks partake of the Shield, no one except TMZ would ever investigate it.  I also think I’ve heard enough of their Top Ten Mad Libs lists (“Who are the Top Ten . . . Receivers. . . Right now!”)

2. LeBron James.  The entire rest of the Association only matters in their relationship to LeBron.  He can lose in the Finals and that’s the only story.  Whoever actually won didn’t matter.

3. Tiger Woods.  Need I say more? 

4. Soccer.  We’re shoving this down your throats bitches!  Like it or not, our demographics say that this is going to be popular in this country.  It’s still the same boring sport that Americans have snubbed their noses at for decades.  It’s just better promoted now.   

5. Baseball.  Only denigrate it, to make soccer look better.

6. Tim Tebow.  Cowherd: “I just want all of you to understand what a terrible football player he is.  I’m not a homosexual for obsessing over this man, really.  And what if I was, there’s nothing wrong with that.  Now, he works down the hall from me at ESPN.  I hate him!  I hate him!”  (Starts weeping like a Jane Austin heroine.)  You almost have to feel sorry for Cowherd, having to work next to his gay crush.  Professionally and politically despising him, yet having such a strong, embarrassing attraction to him. 

     

LeBron James going back to Cleveland has at least momentarily knocked the World Cup off the top of sports feed.  Well, the day came when I stopped hating the New York Mets, my previous least favorite team (now it’s the Angels).  He certainly didn’t have to go back there, and there were plenty of personal reasons not to.  But LeBron really wanted to go back home and wants to play for Cleveland (unlike every other athlete who has to be assigned there or doesn’t have any better option). 

Just for that act of hometown loyalty (a little late and after he’s won championships in Miami), I’m lifting his “Jerk” tag on a probationary basis.  If he can actually bring a championship to Cleveland (I’m not putting much hope in Manziel, who as a white rookie quarterback with questionable NFL abilities (in other words, he’s not black) is destined to be Colin Cowherd’s next gay crush, Tebow will heartbroken), I may actually give him a hearty round of applause and think highly of him when his career ends.  As far as Albert Pujols and Josh Hamilton, however, the feud is still on. 

[That went explosively out-of-control and off-topic.  Why even bother complaining about the ISIS conglomeration that controls sports broadcasting and metaphorically beheads everyone who listens and watches?]