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.