I turned on ESPN around noon today and I saw that they were broadcasting High School football...I don't think that is a good thing. I think it's a bad thing for high school sports to get commercialized. I remember reading about Lebron James and how he let the early attention that he got to get to his head. It's not good for high school athletes to be put on ESPN on a Sunday. I just think it's a bad thing. I don't think we want to have to hear about High School recruiting violations in 20 years. I think we hear about enough problems in college not to drive further down this road.
I also wish we did more in college to promote and market to academic acheivements of athletes. We definetly do it, but I wish we did it more. Something makes me think that a lot of people would come out and support a huge underdog, or team having a bad season, if they knew they all had 3.0's and were making the community a great place.
I also wish ESPN would take off some of the ridiculous programming that I see. Poker isn't a sport. UConn vs Syracuse Field Hockey would be a good game to put on TV. UConn vs Notre Dame Women's Soccer would be a good game to put on, UConn vs St. John's Men's Soccer would be a good game to go on...North Carolina vs UCLA or Notre Dame in women's soccer (BTW UNC won those games....7-2, 6-0...they beat Marquette 1-0) Put Stanford vs UCLA Volleyball on instead...
Poker isn't a sport. Poker is a bunch of people betting chips on cards. Bowling could be cut...I love fishing, but fishing could be cut a little bit too. Putting other sports, especially female sports on ESPN every once in a while would go a long way to boosting attendance and noteriety for those sports.
Amen to that. Heck I'd even watch tape delayed games at like 2am if they were good. There are so many college sporting events that are downright thrilling but no one who wasn't in the venue will ever see. Now of course ESPN will say that poker would get higher ratings, but on the other hand, but maybe if they started giving more publicity to these types of games more people would follow it. Though admittedly soccer is far more exciting in person than on TV.
ReplyDeleteI agree I'd watch tape delayed games at odd hours. I agree that if you need to give other sports a chance before you say that they won't get ratings. If you keep doing things the same way you will get the same results. It's sad that people give so much respect to poker players and not much for many olympic sport college athletes.
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