Pardon the Quite Frankly

[*Intro Side Note -- in a moment of extreme retardation, I manually deleted my entire AIM buddy list. I woke up around 5 am to a message saying, "Oh no! You're sending a virus to everyone!" Assuming that I was kicking out one of those "click here to see my vacation pics!" messages to everyone, I freaked out with the delete button. Turns out, there was no virus and I feel foolish. In any case, I got a lot of people back on [if you see me on your list, I got you] but I'm missing quite a bit of you, so please email me your SN and I'll re-add you, well, if you want.]

So my ESPN boycott continues. Though it took a few days to break the habit of tuning in whenever my mind goes blank (and it hurts my heart to know I'm done with "Jacked Up" on Monday nights), I'm adjusting quite well to only watching when they're actually playing sports. As a substitute for 8 daily airings of Sports Center, I refresh Fox Sports, CBS Sportsline, and TSN about 100 times a day, listen to more radio, and read various columns. But the thing I've noticed in my time away from ESPNing is that sports writing has become no different than the Aroundthepardonfrankly that I'm desperately trying to escape. According to Pardon the Quite Frankly (an article that somehow slipped below the radar), sportswriters have become a horde of "know-nothing, self-aggrandizing, laughing stocks." [Around the Horn, anyone?] While this may seem obvious, I guess I never gave the issue much thought.

I always wondered how chumps like Stephen A. and Jay Mariotti got on the air, but I never imagined being a blowhard that squanders precious inches of newsprint on trash talk and sound bites would actually better one's career. I made the mistake of assuming that most columnists crafted coherent essays and a chosen few were called up to the big time, only for evil producers to turn them into vaudevillian acts that are willing to eat dog food on air to make a buck. But according to a study done by the Missouri School of Journalism, columnists and editors "believe jargon, entertainment-based writing and ESPN's SportsCenter is altering the tone of sports writing," and that "creativity is being substituted for fact-based reporting, and sports reporters' aspirations of being on radio or TV has impacted their sports writing and reporting." So not only has ESPN ruined sports reporting for tv, it's slowly killing the printed word as well. Absolutely brilliant. Though a change at ESPN would help to reverse this trend in journalism, I'm afraid the damage has been done. Enjoy columns while you still can. Schtick is the wave of the future.