I love sports. I was not gifted with superior speed, size or athleticism, but watching people with those gifts perform is almost as good.
I know that I'm not the only person who shares this feeling.
ESPN is the juggernaut in sports nowadays. You cannot watch television in a bar or in your average frat boy's house without seeing an ESPN analyst give a speech about why he or she has the best opinions about sports.
It has not always been that way.
Ten years ago, I could turn in on the worldwide leader in sports during the day and actually see highlights of games from the day before.
Nowadays, it seems like all ESPN wants to do is talk about the games and how things could have gone differently.
If you want to watch the highlights of your favorite team or the playoff game, you had best turn ESPN on in the early hours of the morning or catch their first show of the late night broadcast. If you like to sleep, as most college students do, forget it. You're not going to catch anything but a talk show.
I'm not trying to say that all ESPN does is talk, but they sure do it a lot more than they used to.
For instance, last weekend Tiger Woods had a spectacular chip shot on hole number 16 at the Memorial Tournament that all but locked up his victory.
I was working on Sunday, so I turned on ESPN that night hoping to get a rundown of the Sunday golf. I waited patiently for Tiger's highlights to come up, but was immensely disappointed with what I saw.
Instead of showing Woods's charge on the back nine, ESPN showed three clips of spectacular shots out of chronological order.
Instead of showing the clips with the crowd's roar and announcer's excitement, ESPN showed it with golf analyst Curtis Strange droning on about essentially nothing.
While watching and listening to Strange, I realized that was all ESPN was going to show of the tournament. Needless to say, I was disappointed.
I know I'm not alone in saying that was not the first time ESPN has angered me. They have their own agenda, and, more often than not,
I don't agree with it. Being a fan of Auburn and Atlanta professional sports, I know that ESPN plays favorites.
Every year my teams get trash talked or, even worse, completely ignored.
I understand that Atlanta teams, minus the Braves, have smaller markets than many other professional teams, but that doesn't mean they should be labeled as a bad team.
In today's world of sports, the teams without ESPN's favorites are the bad teams though. Unfortunately, those of us who are bitter about the system will have to live with it because no one can compete with ESPN.
That means people can either listen to the opinions that ESPN spoon feeds them, or they can come up with a sports opinions on their own.
I suggest the latter.
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