It would be cliché to suggest that you not believe everything you read. But I'm going to do it anyway, because the banality of that old bromide doesn't make it any less true.
News coverage is one thing; we're not there to see most news take place firsthand and, therefore, have to rely on professionals to report whatever facts they uncover. But everything you need to know about sports, you can witness for yourself.
Related Les Miles and the LSU Tigers against the Mississippi Rebels in Baton Rouge, Louisiana on October 25th, 2014.
Spread This: LSU's Impressive, Regressive Power Football
Sure, if you want to busy yourself with the maudlin melodrama and mad money aspects of athletics – the way ESPN jock coddlers Tom Rinaldi and Darren Rovell do – there's plenty that transpires outside your jurisdiction. But if you concern yourself with that trivial little corner of sports in which people toss balls, slap pucks and sink putts, it's all beamed straight to you, live and direct, allowing each of us to be our own reporter and provide our own analysis.
So it's been painfully perplexing to witness ESPN use its outsize influence to prop up a Southeastern Conference that, for the first time in a decade, is arguably in a state of decline.
I'm sorry, let me back up the truck a bit. It occurs to me that you may not be aware that ESPN is trying to shape the outcome of the college football season to serve its own corporate interests. Yeah, that's happening.
ESPN has invested heavily in the SEC of late – highlighted by its launch of the SEC Network in August – and needs at least one, ideally four, of the conference's teams to make the inaugural College Football Playoff, to which ESPN holds exclusive broadcast rights (the first set of Playoff rankings will be unveiled tonight at 7:30 p.m. ET on the network as well).
It's good business sense to do whatever's in your power to advance and protect such an investment. Unfortunately, ESPN is the most powerful media brand in college football, managing a portfolio of broadcast rights to not only the Playoff, but every major conference and 33 of the 35 bowl games staged last season. This gives ESPN the power to control the narrative in the most subjective sport in America.
That narrative? "SEC! SEC! SEC! SEC!"
The Worldwide (Cheer) Leader
It can be argued that Texas A&M derived its lofty ranking through the first month of the season on the hype generated by the SEC Network's inaugural game broadcast, a 52-28 trouncing of a South Carolina team which, barely halfway through the season, already has four losses. The win immediately propelled the No. 21 Aggies to ninth in the Associated Press poll (South Carolina's previous ranking), and they eventually vaulted all the way to No. 6 on the strength of wins over Lamar, Rice, SMU and Arkansas before dropping their next three games by a combined 91 points.
The rhetoric on ESPN up to that point had been that QB Kenny Hill was making fans ask, "Johnny who?" and A&M had even garnered four first place votes at its peak. But where any reasonable commentary might now suggest A&M was a tad overrated, the conversation on ESPN unfailingly shifted to what impressive opponents could have felled such a mighty juggernaut. Until Saturday, four of the top five teams in the country – three of which have had their reputations burnished by wins over Texas A&M – were in not only the SEC, but the SEC West.
OK, maybe ESPN flirts like that with all the boys. With a stake in the fortunes of each of the major conferences, it behooves the Worldwide Leader to shake its pom-poms for them all, right? That notion is belied by either an alarming instance of bias or ignorance among ESPN's announcers and analysts, perhaps suggesting there's an editorial directive to promote SEC teams at the expense of their conferential competitors.
Read more:
The Worldwide Cheerleader: ESPN and the College Football Playoff | Rolling Stone
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