Cutting the CBK Cord: ESPN Becomes Worldwide Leader in Sports Layoffs
The NCAA is not the only organization needing sensitivity to doing what it can to help modify a culture contributing to the glamorization of untested athletes and suspect characters in college sports. ESPN frequently exploits teenagers beyond reason before they graduate from high school and the Worldwide Leader hypes hoops with endless hours of analysis, promotion and games. The know-it-all network, playing the blame game by a different set of layoff rules, pays obscene amounts of cash to power conferences for TV rights and gives outrageous forums to questionable individuals. By any measure, ESPN is as much, or perhaps more, at fault as the NCAA for entirely abdicating any obligation to protecting the interests of academic and moral integrity. Extra Sensitive Pious Network is in dire need of new Skipper to save its sinking ship.
ESPN, replete with hard-core leftists at its helm needing a real Skipper to save its sinking ship, should be forced to replay all the gushing comments on its network about model-citizen athletes subsequently running afoul of the law and then offer a retraction for false advertising. Most observers abhor arrogance and ill-conceived loyalty to image including entitled coaches, academic institutions and media outlets with warped values. The network now will have an information deficit in college basketball after "cutting the cord" with respected Eamonn Brennan, Andy Katz and Dana O'Neil in a recent purge. Brennan and Katz were information-providing icons and O'Neil was superior with her analytical feature writing. Compared to them, Jailin' Rose, Screamin' A. Stiff, the 6 PM (Political Misfit) goofballs, Three Si-tooges and other so-called "experts" can't write a complete sentence when it comes to college hoops knowledge.
Undefeated? ESPN hoops will be winless sans Brennan, Katz and O'Neil, a trio forgetting more about college basketball than most network anchors and hosts know. And Brennan/Katz/O'Neil haven't forgotten very much. If not polluting the airwaves with progressive puke, ESPN execs exhibit liberal-like ineptness handling money by overspending (for programming rights' fees) although venerable Linda Cohn can't admit the obvious while leftist lunatics are supposed to #KneelWithJemele. Many of the upper-brass decision makers were the same folks who previously ran major newspaper sports sections into the ground. In other words, when liberals infest an institution, it no longer functions as designed and inevitably will miserably fail.
Beyond pushing a leftist "Rushin' to Judgment" political perspective shaking in their boots about name of long-deceased Gen. Robert E. Lee, ESPN has sullied its reputation by being Jim Valvano's defense coordinator for an extended span molesting academic integrity (735 average SAT score for his ACC players in mid-1980s). Do any of its holier-than-thou employees have second thoughts cashing their checks from an Extra Sensitive Pious Network persisting fawning over a basketball coach in charge when two schools were forced to vacate their NCAA playoff participation (Iona and North Carolina State)?
The academic progress of Valvano's players at N.C. State was dismal. In an affront to numbers that never lie, there are times when ESPN sycophants shamelessly enhance Valvano's credentials as a strategist, perpetuating a myth he was a late-game genius. Intense slobbering aside, you can't cover-up the cold hard facts about Valvano posting a modest .500 record in close contests decided by fewer than five points, a mark failing to rank among the top 250 DI coaches in such an illuminating category.
ESPN will have zero credibility in regard to "success with honor" until it takes down its basketball "statue." But ESPN is an outside-the-lines enabler seemingly accountable to no one. It claims to have a legacy but failed its constituency in regard to providing genuine journalists by jettisoning jewels such as Brennan, Katz and O'Neil. Perhaps upper management is making room to hire contemptible Keith Countdown (to Disaster) again or Trump hater Seth Davis after leftist lunatic was canned by SI. Free from conflict of interest, Davis can join his sycophant father, Lanny, in promoting #ShrillaryRotten or her daughter, Chelsea, as SI swimsuit-model cover material while taking another shot at career as stand-up comedian.
Pardon the interruption, but ESPN's sanctimonious indifference to eroding values was further exhibited when they previously hired disgraced ex-Tennessee coach Bruce Pearl as a full-time analyst and part-time interior decorator. Before returning to the SEC at Auburn, how could a viewer trust anything the former Boston College mascot says while winging it after failing to remember what his home looked like inside? ESPN, rather than finding someone with less baggage, felt compelled to "force" Pearl and his highly questionable wisdom and ethics into the homes of SportsNation. Portraying Seth Greenberg as an expert despite a grand total of one NCAA playoff victory in more than 20 years is "one" thing. Accepting Bruce-On-the-Loose's pearls of wisdom as the next Valvano variation was quite another even before his chief assistant (Chuck Person) was arrested by the FBI for allegedly accepting $91,000 in middlemen bribes after earning $23 million in 14-year NBA career. But Pearl probably doesn't recognize such a prominent Person although he was school's all-time leading scorer. Was this any surprise? What percentage of Tennessee players during Pearl's reign there were on the Volunteers' squad for four years without being thrown in jail or out of school for grades, drugs or some other misdeed?
Rose's masquerading as a journalist, making observers throw up during Get Up, surfaced when he seemed overly protective of Michigan's 20-year-old moniker when saying he's not a fan of the gold-medal winning U.S. women's gymnastics squad being known as the "Fab Five."
"To use the nickname just points and screams of lazy journalism by the national media," Rose said. Is this the vast expertise we can continue to look forward to from him? It seems Rose's amateurish historical knowledge doesn't include him acknowledging "Fabulous Five" basketball squads at Kentucky in the late 1940s and Iowa in the mid-1950s. Best guess is the only individuals previously affiliated with Bristol who did know about UK and Iowa were Brennan, Katz and O'Neil. But according to journalistic jewel Jemelle Hill, they must have been white supremacists because they knew supremely more about college hoops than their former colleague, a "Winless" contributor who probably "feels" her alma mater (Michigan State) has premier #MAGA starting lineup in NCAA history after recent run-ins with the law by Spartan scholars Keith Appling, Mateen Cleaves, Branden Dawson, Draymond Green and Zach Randolph. Rather than ramming race-baiting routine down our throats, she should have exhibited better credentials at her job when covering MSU and unearthed sordid shenanigans long before they exploded on the national scene.