How ESPN Saved Sports

First you must understand I am not being paid by ESPN to write this article, although that'd be pretty sweet, and while this may just be my biased opinion and I wholeheartedly support and love ESPN, this is my own beliefs and ideas.

Now this thought actually started occurring to me whilst in England. There, they have SkySports (the equivalent reputation wise of ESPN in the states), which covers most of the sporting news both nationally and internationally. They are similar to ESPN with having SkySports 1, SkySports 2, SkySports F1, etc. Yet the difference that I noticed when I was there was they didn't have highlights, they just had interviews, scores, and talk about the teams, but never highlights except for like once a week on Sundays at 10pm. I always thought that was weird and I later realized that this was because the individual teams, who all had their own tv stations, affiliates, etc. had the rights to the film except for at prescribed times in the UK. It sucked no joke. A huge game would be going on at the same time as another huge game and if you missed a goal you had to wait until Sunday night to see it (or jump on YouTube as fast as you can and find the goal before it got removed due to copyright issues...half the time it was some guy playin FIFA thinking he had a cool goal when everyone knows you're playing the computer on super super family easy difficulty). As I started to dwell on this and how lucky we were in the States, I began to realize more and more how much ESPN changed the face of sports in the US, and in many cases saved it.

Remember back in the 70's-80's when
everything had that brown/orange color?

Now when I say saved I don't mean saved as in if they hadn't been created as a company we would have zero sports in the US. That's not true at all. Sports will always be around no matter where you live. But lets go back and look at the 80's for the three major sports, baseball, basketball, and football.
Baseball, I don't know if anyone else can remember this but baseball was THE sport. America's past time and all that jazz. Basketball had just lost a league, an entire league, and football was just about to try and start another one. Not the most stable sporting environment wouldn't you say. But on September 7, 1979 this little thing called ESPN began. We all know the story of how it started, what it did, and the idea behind it. If you don't then you can always read up on it on their History of ESPN wikidpedia. When they started, sports on tv was secondary and often times non existent. Game 6 of the 1981 NBA Finals, Rockets against Celtics, was played on tape delay. TAPE DELAY. Can you imagine  if the Heat and Thunder Game 6 of last years finals was delayed because The Good Wife had its season finale...uproar is an understatement. But in the 80's the NBA truly took off. Now many people say it's because of Magic, Bird, and Jordan. But how did we know about them? Why were they so big? It's because they began to be seen on a national level. Any person in America could now turn on their tv sets late at night in South Carolina and watch the Lakers beat the Suns, that had never happened before, up until this point (minus ABC's Wide World of Sports) almost all the highlights were local on news stations. It would not be uncommon for people to not even know the playoffs were going on in any of the three major sports. But because ESPN exploded and grew and they took the initiative to create that station for the fans, the sport exploded. In the 70;s and early 80's, NBA was struggling. There were drug accusations, violence issues, leagues disbanding, and there was a fear that the sport would become causal to most people.


Let's jump to the NFL MLF, a very similar situation. A popular sport but really a niche market. Then comes coverage, interviews, fantasy baseball and football of all things, and these players become nationally known, the teams become nationally loved, and people become invested in the sport. And I think the greatest stat that can attribute to this is the amount of new teams in each league since ESPN Started. NBA has expanded to 8 more teams: Mavericks, Hornets, Heat, Magic, Timberwolves, Mavericks, Grizzlies, & Bobcats. NFL has expanded to 4 more teams: Panthers, Ravens, Texans, and Jaguars. The MLB has expanded to 4 more teams as well: Rays, Rockies, Diamondbacks, and Marlins. Now these are all teams that started after ESPN started and I don't think its a coincidence that it was right around 10 years after the company started that many of these formed. So in a companies new start, with established leagues, 16 new teams have started. Now think of what it truly takes to start a team. Stadium, personnel  coaching, fans, marketing, and above all backing from the community and the owners. All these towns, many of them in small markets, wanted teams to come to their city because they began to see how great sports were for their city, their tourism, and for their citizens as well. We haven't even mentioned the NHL, MLS, NBA D-League, and the collegiate sporting atmosphere (that is an entirely different conversation in and of itself).

So now back to my original point about being in England. Why was it able to flourish? Here we have to tip our hats to ESPN and their consultants and their legal ability to work everything out. ESPN can broadcast highlights from almost any sport instantly. Whether or not its a competing station, affiliate broadcaster, or a random cell phone highlight from Maine, they put in on SportsCenter and we get to see it. I do not even want to see what that contract looks like. It's probably longer than Obama's health plan that got passed (except one of them actually got read before implemented). That's truly amazing. In England and I'm sure all over the world companies aren't that organized and all-encompassing. It was something I took for granted and now truly enjoy. And now thanks to ESPN we have things like the Tennis Channel, Golf Channel, NFL Network, NBA TV, Speed Channel, Fox Soccer, NBC Sports Network, CBS Sports, and the list could go on and on and on and on and on. And all this came for a little company in Bristol, Connecticut that wanted people to watch more sports. Truly remarkable.

I really have no idea where sports would be right now without ESPN. Would we have a basketball team in Memphis Tennessee? Would Michael have been considered the greatest ever if only half the people saw him win 6 rings? Would the NFL be even a 1 billion dollar industry rather than a 9 billion dollars/year industry? We may never know, and in all honestly it could've all gone down the same way, but as it stands ESPN started it and in so many ways saved sports and made it what it is for us today. And even if you're not a sports fan, wasn't ESPN one of the first ones to truly create a specialized network? So those who watch E! Network, the Food Network, Cartoon Network, and all those channels that target specific markets, you can thank ESPN. They truly pioneered the expansion of cable.

Got ESPN radio stations all over the
place...this one covers mostly
those toddlers and tiaras
pageants...

Now I know that ESPN is getting bigger and many of us miss the old ESPN. I remember when I was 10 years old on a Tuesday when I had no school I would watch SportsCenter when it was highlights and that's all it was. Not a whole lot of chatter and evaluation just highlights. And I loved it so much I'd watch the exact same show (this was back when they had it taped and replayed over like 3 hours) back to back just to watch it again, that and it was either watch another SportsCenter or watch bowling or a soap opera (which now that I think about it are eerily similar ..both had two guys, one with a mustache and one who was balding but thought combing his hair over somehow created hair where there was no hair, and both the guys were either really ecstatic or really disappointed based on the performance of some sort of balls...anyway I digress). But even though ESPN may not be all highlights and sometimes too much talk, we still get to experience it every day in so many ways. Its making the game safer, players smarter, and unfortunately everyone in the the world thinks they now know how to beat a tampa 2 defense...you don't. And for that I thank all those that are with, will be, and especially those that were with and started ESPN back in those days. Without you guys I have no idea what I'd do...I think the rest of the nation feels the same way...hey you guys also put me on TV...that helps too.

The Phenomenon of Sports

Some people don't get it, and that's ok. There are those who don't have that distinct desire to go home and spend 3 hours on a couch watching a bunch of people you've never met throw around a ball and engage in an event that in all honesty has no real affect on your life what so ever. So I understand how some people are baffled with the concept of watching sports and dedicating hours to researching, studying, and discussing the stories that surround us. But I'm here to explain that maybe it's not so foreign, here to give some insight to what goes through our heads, here to shed some light on why sports is so great in so so many ways.

Let's start with the obvious. Most of the people who watch sports, played sports. At one point in your life you lived, breathed, and died sports. You can remember laying in your bed an hour before you had to leave for a game picturing in your head all the things you're going to accomplish in that short time. So when many of us watch sports, we watch to relive that feeling just a little bit. Sometimes you feel as if you're there, as if it was you who prepared, and you believe your support can help the team. Sometimes you get the people who really o think they can help and clearly don't understand the concept of sound and distance (they are positive that the louder they yell, and the more frequent, that the TV will most certainly carry their sound to the arena and reach the players and coaches ears...solid logic obviously). So many of us watch to relive that feeling if even in the slightest, it reminds of who we once were, what we did, and knowing that we couldn't play at that level makes us in awe of what the athletes even that much more.

Now to the real fun ones, next we will address the sheer madness and unpredictability. Let's say you watch a show such as The Walking Dead or The Bachelorette (both shows which I have never seen nor have a desire to see...but somehow popular none the less), they both have story lines, main characters, situations set up by writers or producers, and there are things that you are certain will never happen in that show. The main character of Walking Dead won't die, he has a contract that says he's on for a certain amount of shows. The Bachelorette won't not pick a guy at the end, she has to that's the rule of the show. But in sports, there are no rules to what can happen to any person, any team, any situation. The game of sport has no sympathy to its players or viewers, it only answers to the sheer laws of the universe. Let's take 2012 for example, arguably the greatest linebacker of all time, Ray Lewis, gets hurt (ie. the main character being removed) from his team and they have to carry on without him for much of the year. How will the team adjust, cope, and react without its greatest leader on the field (I think we've all realized that the leadership on the field was definitely hurt). That's just one example of why we watch. But it happens so much in sports, Steve Nash, Mariano Rivera, Anthony Davis, the list could go on and on of people that got hurt that had no business getting hurt. Now lets address another crazy issue, who wins the games? Now yes a majority of the time the better team wins, but you really never ever know. This year at one point in college football there were four teams vying for the National Championship, Oregon, Alabama, Kansas State, and Notre Dame. There was a week where we were talking about how crazy it would be if they all went undefeated (which was expected) and who would then play for the title...then in two weeks three of the teams lost to teams they most assuredly should have beat. It was ridiculous, mind blowing, unexpected, and above all just crazy. The reason we love this, and always will, is the unexpected surprise of it. You wake up on a Saturday just expecting it to be another day, and then you find out all these games are goin on and you're just pleasantly surprised. There's not expectation of this happening in a one hour time slot on a Tuesday afternoon. The sheer randomness of it all yields the joy, the fear, the excitement, the hate, and the surprise in a manner that can't be matched by any other thing on earth, and that's what always brings us back (or in my case keeps me there for oh....7 hours at a time).

Yet, now we reach the ultimate reason that sports is the phenomenon that it truly is. It's the truth of it all, it's the stories that surround it, it's the great achievements and overcomes of trials that these athletes that just leaves us in awe. Here I will only leave a few examples, but know that there are an infinite amount more. The main one, that everyone should hear and know about is Notre Dame's linebacker Manti Te'o. Here is a man that was a Heisman Trophy finalist (the best college football player in the country), he's led his team to the national championship, he's a projected first round draft pick, and yet all of that does not remotely compare to what he did in September of this year. Te'o had voiced on many occasions that the only two women that he truly cared about, and were closest to him in his life, were his grandmother and his girlfriend. Well, on September within 24 hours, both passed away. And here Te'o was forced to decide whether to leave the team and fly to Hawai'i or stay and lead his team against 10th ranked Michigan State. He decided to stay, and he lead his team to 20-3 victory. Now I myself have never had an abrupt loss of anyone I care about, and I can't imagine what it is like to have one leave this earth...now its unfathomable to me how you react to losing the TWO most important people. Then go out and play a nationally televised game against a top 10 opponent and play the way he did. This isn't a script for a movie, its better. What we yearn for when we go and watch drama's, comedies, and action shows at the movies and on TV, sports spits out in real time. As I stated before, its so unexpected. You never knew how he was going to perform after all this, and even if he would play. But as the game unfolded, you saw a performance happening that you knew would live in the minds of fans forever...and in all truth would be portrayed on the big screen at some point I'm sure. There are many more stories like that even from this year. The injury of Marcus Lattimore, the story of Serge Ibaka, Kevin Durant's story, Europe's comeback in the Ryder Cup, the murder/suicide in Kansas City and so many more.

There's this odd thing that always tends to happen, sports movies never truly make it to that "great" status. Sure there are a few ones that everyone loves such as Remember the Titans, Rudy, and Hoosiers. But a lot of times you're like eh...it was ok. But everyone, literally everyone, loves the documentaries that ESPN has released in their 30 for 30 series over the past few years. Now why is this? How many 27 year old single men who play video games and go to bars at night say they "oh yea I wathced this documentary last night"? None. Until these came out. The reason they are so popular is they aren't doctored by Hollywood, not written to follow the hero story, not fictional stories created in the mind of some creative writer, they're the real stories of athletes that we all watched on TV everyday. It's true internal struggle, external consequences, mind baffling decisions, and emotionally stimulating events that happened just as they are told...unfolding before our very eyes.

So this is why we watch, this is why we love, this is why we dedicate all the time and money into watching these people we don't know throw around a ball. It's so real, it's so true, and so unexpected and unpredictable. On any given day you can have a story going on in sports that could make for a million dollar movie script, but we enjoy it so much more because it's real and happening right in front of us. I'm not here to say that sports is better than any of the things other people watch on TV...ok yes I am. So if you haven't given it a try, this holiday season (especially on Christmas day) you can watch struggling teams try to regain confidence in themselves, watch some of the greatest players of all time check it up with each other, and watch hundreds of athletes overcome internal struggles and problems. And the best part of it...I can't tell you what will happen...not in the slightest.