Posted on 05/02/2023 5:47:44 PM PDT by fugazi
Like many teenagers in the 1990s, my television was usually tuned to ESPN. SportsCenter highlights while I ate breakfast before school. NFL season highlight videos between two-a-day football practices. Baseball and basketball games on at night during homework. The “S” in ESPN clearly stood for “sports” back then, focusing on the achievements of the athletes and stories that inspire us.
Now, based on the juvenile trash that I occasionally see when eating at a sports bar or when I catch a provocative news headline, the “S” stands for s–t. I stopped watching ages ago, because I have better things to do in life than watch hosts bicker back-and-forth, talk politics, and snipe at athletes. Maybe all the negativity is what resonates with their viewers. Or it could be that ESPN is owned by a very woke Disney, whose mission seems to be undermining everything good in American society. Sports develop the values that made our nation great: competition, teamwork, grit, sacrifice, and the thrill of victory. If we worked as hard as Michael Jordan, we too could “be like Mike,” right? Sports inspired us to be better and brought Americans of all ages, ethnicities, and walks of life together.
What infuriates me is the frequent charges of racism coming from ESPN. The most recent example is a commentator suggesting that since there is a growing number of black quarterbacks in the league, the NFL may be conspiring to change the rules to attract more white quarterbacks and thus more white fans.
Are ESPN hosts and guests actual racists? Or are they just race hustlers, saying provocative things to get an audience? If ESPN suspects or has evidence that there is in fact some kind of conspiracy then they should investigate, not throw out mysterious allegations of systemic racism. At one time it was a real issue, back when UCLA’s “Gold Dust Trio,” Syracuse’s Wilmeth Sidat-Singh, and Iowa’s Duke Slater played. But ESPN is about 80 years late to the party.
I gave up on the NFL when players started kneeling during the National Anthem and stick to watching vintage games when my soul craves football. But back when I lived and breathed the sport, my favorite quarterback was Warren Moon. My second favorite? Randall Cunningham. As a very young kid I was a Jim McMahon fan — and still have my two-bar Bears helmet and McMahon jersey. As it turned out, all three played with my favorite player, Cris Carter.
The Oilers, Eagles, and Bears were very fun to watch. Few could throw a spiral as pretty as Moon. If you don’t get excited watching Cunningham dodge tackle after tackle, only to throw a bomb downfield then you aren’t wired right. He was electrifying. McMahon was, well, McMahon.
Back in high school we’d watch NFL highlight films tapes before football games on Friday afternoons in the film room and you’d see interview clips of Moon, who came across as a very nice guy and his teammates really seemed to look up to him. His opponents did too: I remember seeing an interview of a rookie defensive lineman who tackled Houston’s quarterback. As he helped his opponent up he respectfully said, “I’m real sorry Mr. Moon.”
“That’s ok Albert (or whatever his name was),” and the player was tickled to death that Mr. Moon actually knew his name. Puts a smile on your face doesn’t it?
Decades later I can come across a clip of Houston’s run-and-shoot offense and their pastel jerseys makes me smile and transports me right back to the being a kid again, back when life was good. That’s what sports are supposed to do.
By liking Moon and Cunningham was I virtue signalling decades before that became a big thing, or was it that I just liked watching these quarterbacks do spectacular things with a football? Whether they were white or black was not a factor to me, and I doubt that many other sports fans cared either. It takes an ESPN contributor to look at a football player and see race.
Many of the most popular and highest-paid NFL quarterbacks today are black and since NFL ratings have largely recovered from the dumpster fire Colin Kapernick started a few years ago, the roster’s racial makeup isn’t keeping fans away. No one is upset about the lack of white cornerbacks in the league because fans want the closest thing we can get to Mel Blount and Deion Sanders out there. Americans know the only colors that count on the field are yours and your opponents.
It’s not the melanin that matters, ESPN; its the red, white, and powder blue.
Good letter. Hopefully ESPN will take the hint. If not, oh well.
Cable is dying. I wonder if an alternative platform like Rumble can develop a presence in sports.
And maybe it’s because I’m cantankerous but the network seems to occasionally let the dress code slack pretty hard if there still is one. Seems very unprofessional to me, but perhaps since I no longer watch television, when I do come across ESPN it’s always at a very bad time.
Back in the day I really enjoyed Pardon the Interruption and Around the Horn. Then Kornheiser and Wilbon became obama worshippers, and every talking head on ATH spouts about the evils of racism and sexism and homophobia in American sports and society. Aagh.
And when the Oilers ran the run-n-shoot, they were a lot of fun to watch.
That ship has sailed for ESPN about a decade ago. They are going down with the race-bating, Woke ship and they don’t care. Burn it all down as long as they can say they stuck to their PC principles.
I look back on my experience as a junior officer in Air Defense Artillery in the late 70s. My unit was roughly 1/3 white, 1/3 Hispanic, and I/3 Black. We didn’t have time for games. My soldiers had my back and I had theirs. It was just that simple.
We all wore green and bleed red - and were equally worthless. And everybody’s the same color when the lights are out. :)
“A lot of these guys, when they get on TV and they’re like, ‘well I’m on ESPN, I got to say something provocative.’ And you know the thing about it, you’re always gonna get some fools out there agreeing with him!
Nothing is off limits; Communist front organizations such as Black Lives MatterTM, slave labor in China to make apparel, race hustling, etc.
ESPN Radio is on life support, along with all of national sports talk
https://awfulannouncing.com/radio/espn-layoffs-national-sports-talk-life-support.html
I agree, who cares if the quarterback is black, Pacific islander, Asian or white. Green Bay’s QB is going to be Jordan Love in the 23-24 season. (The Babylon Bee has a funny article about Aaron Rodgers). My college team (UConn) has two black QBs and two white QBs. UMass has a Thai QB, so who cares the skin color...if a space alien with purple skin came to Earth and could win a national championship, I think UFlorida, Bama or Ohio State would recruit him.
Oiler uniforms were Columbia blue.
Powder blue is the Chargers color.
But, as I grew up in Houston, Dan Fouts, Danny White, and Dan Pastorini were my favorite QB’s of the era. I did love watching Earl Campbell run, and when Moon arrived, watching him throw was special - the tightest spiral I ever saw.
Moon’s perfectly manicured fingernails got the spiral just right. I’d hate to be the one to have to catch those bullets though! Wouldn’t it be interesting to simulate switching Joe Montana out for Warren Moon or Dan Fouts to see how many championships they could have won with the 49ers?
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