ESPN Is Pathetic

Pablo's TB Lover

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Spygate and Deflategate drove their programming for months/years at a time. Reiss is a decidedly non-pathetic reporter (is excellent even), but ESPN nationally is the Fox News of NFL reporting, full stop. Without their pushing of the narrative, these parking tickets would have been bitched and moaned about on other team's fan pages but advanced no further than that.

There are a lot of good pockets within ESPN, but for the die-hard Patriots fans you are not going to recover from continually dragging the best franchise in sports through the mud over minor flaws.
 

Mugsy's Jock

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As detailed in a series of posts right before yours, the latest ESPN baseball-related move is to pair Michael Kay and A-Rod as a "Manningcast" team for Sunday Night baseball while moving David Cone into the actual booth. Hard to argue that the thread title isn't accurate.
The MLB Manningcast maneuver has the effect of making A-Rod LESS visible to most viewers, replacing him with the immeasurably better David Cone on the main telecast.

Which is a major step in the right direction. Win.

Edit: I guess I've already been branded for life as an "Eli apologist", so add ESPN to the list. You know, it is possible for there to be nuance...
 

Average Reds

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My issue is less with A-Rod (as you say, moving him off the broadcast is a positive) and more about the atrocity of giving the parasite known as Michael Kay any oxygen. (Massive negative.)
 

DJnVa

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Bruins game is on ESPN+ tonight, so at 7 pm, I log on. First is the Willie O'Ree number retirement, so I select that. That ends and ESPN dumps you out, back into the menu. Why on earth can't they just assume if I'm watching O'Ree's ceremony I'm likely going to watch the game?

Granted it only takes 20 seconds to find the game stream, but it's just stupid.
 

pedro1918

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Bruins game is on ESPN+ tonight, so at 7 pm, I log on. First is the Willie O'Ree number retirement, so I select that. That ends and ESPN dumps you out, back into the menu. Why on earth can't they just assume if I'm watching O'Ree's ceremony I'm likely going to watch the game?

Granted it only takes 20 seconds to find the game stream, but it's just stupid.
This is not exclusive to ESPN. On the NBC Sports app you need to watch the pre-game and then switch to the actual game for the Premier League. It is ridiculous.
 

Pablo's TB Lover

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Yeah most "Smart TVs" are kind of dumb in the programming respect. We have ESPN cable, and I pay for ESPN Plus, yet the app through my Roku TV is setup like a pay-per-view channel. Understood that the Plus content stands individually on their own, but it has to be intentionally wonky to actually watch the main channels live on the app in order to not make it equivalent to the ease of flipping channels from the local cable provider, correct? But my wife and mother-in-law were able to just flip on the Hallmark app and watch the live channel stream through this to take those Christmas movies straight to their veins.
 

DJnVa

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This is not exclusive to ESPN. On the NBC Sports app you need to watch the pre-game and then switch to the actual game for the Premier League. It is ridiculous.
Don't get me started on NBC---on my smart TV, their app NEVER has the Premier League games, I have to stream from phone. If the game is on Peacock, no problems, but when they were the games on the NBC Sports Channel, the TV never had them.
 

johnmd20

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I just have ESPN on in the background and they are doing a whole segment on hockey. Messier is even there. Like, in 8 minutes I saw more hockey talk than I have seen in the last 5 years combined.

Then I looked at the TV schedule, it's a show called The Point, which is a dedicated hockey show. On ESPN. For a full hour. This is awesome news. More hockey news is better, no matter what, even if ESPN is doing it to promote their own games.
 

cheech13

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Anyone know what is up with Zach Lowe? Hasn’t tweeted, uploaded a podcast or written an article since 1/14. Seems odd to go off the radar in the middle of the NBA season.
 

Kliq

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Anyone know what is up with Zach Lowe? Hasn’t tweeted, uploaded a podcast or written an article since 1/14. Seems odd to go off the radar in the middle of the NBA season.
I have not noticed this and I am now concerned. Do we know if he has been on TV at all?
 

Don Buddin's GS

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The Knicks and Heat are on ESPN and the game is in the second quarter. I want to see how my boy Obi Toppin is doing. Check the ESPN.com box score and it has the entire NYK bench as “has not entered the game yet.”

How is that possible—they are carrying the freakin game???
 

johnmd20

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Move to Canada, where a Leaf's players charity golf tournament will lead sportscentre during the summer.

My point more hockey "no matter what" is not always true.
I was speaking about the coverage that is actually on, not what could potentially be on somewhere else.

More hockey is better, no matter what, when you're coming from a place where there is no hockey coverage whatsoever.
 

Lose Remerswaal

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The Knicks and Heat are on ESPN and the game is in the second quarter. I want to see how my boy Obi Toppin is doing. Check the ESPN.com box score and it has the entire NYK bench as “has not entered the game yet.”

How is that possible—they are carrying the freakin game???
The announcers aren’t updating the official scorecards. Nor are the statisticians for the broadcaster. The league and the home team keep and disseminate the stats.
 

reggiecleveland

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I was speaking about the coverage that is actually on, not what could potentially be on somewhere else.

More hockey is better, no matter what, when you're coming from a place where there is no hockey coverage whatsoever.
I know, but I live in the 'be careful what you wish for" alternative universe.
 

Kliq

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Anyone know what is up with Zach Lowe? Hasn’t tweeted, uploaded a podcast or written an article since 1/14. Seems odd to go off the radar in the middle of the NBA season.
He posted a podcast today. Opened by saying his Mom suffered a stroke a few weeks ago and is in bad shape in the hospital.
 

Vandalman

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Mina Kimes had some less than nice things to say about Jimmy G:




Which prompted a response from former 49ers QB Jeff Garcia:






Suffice it to say, it has not gone well for Garcia.
 

Mystic Merlin

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That’s hot takey of her in classic Simmons fashion (‘it’s like that guy in XYZ who ABC!!’), but Garcia probably isn’t writing that missive if, say, Skip Bayless said Jimmy G was useless.
 

Red(s)HawksFan

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The best part is Kimes is 100% right about Jimmy G. Garcia being overly sensitive/defensive about a fellow QB as well as a misogynist.
 

Vinho Tinto

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The best part is Kimes is 100% right about Jimmy G.
He’s 33-14 for his career despite his own play?

A quick glance at FO has his him rated in the top 10 of their metrics (#14 with QBR). And their record without him is pretty atrocious. Even if you wipe away the 3-10 from his first season.

They aren’t satisfied with Jimmy, so they drafted Lance; but he’s not a bum who is just along for the ride. She isn’t within a planet of being correct.
 

Red(s)HawksFan

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Where’s the misogyny?
You think he reacts like that if it wasn't a woman who made the comments? Note in the video below, Stephen A is agreeing with Mina, but Garcia didn't aim any of his ire at him.

He’s 33-14 for his career despite his own play?

A quick glance at FO has his him rated in the top 10 of their metrics (#14 with QBR). And their record without him is pretty atrocious. Even if you wipe away the 3-10 from his first season.

They aren’t satisfied with Jimmy, so they drafted Lance; but he’s not a bum who is just along for the ride. She isn’t within a planet of being correct.
Rather than try to make her argument, I'll just post the criticism that set Garcia off. Seems more than fair to me.

View: https://youtu.be/tWNXyXlH8SA?t=63
 

Marciano490

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You think he reacts like that if it wasn't a woman who made the comments? Note in the video below, Stephen A is agreeing with Mina, but Garcia didn't aim any of his ire at him.



Rather than try to make her argument, I'll just post the criticism that set Garcia off. Seems more than fair to me.

View: https://youtu.be/tWNXyXlH8SA?t=63
No idea. I imagine he has a different reaction if it’s Cheryl Miller or someone, but I have no insight into Jeff Garcia’s mind. I personally say that shit about people talking about fight sports though. It’s super valid.
 

Soxy

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It's a dumb criticism and a terrible argument to say: "they never played the game, ergo, they don't understand the game." That conclusion is wholly unearned and does not logically follow.

Jimmy G's head coach Kyle Shanahan never played. Does that mean he doesn't understand football? Bill Belichick never played professionally, with his playing experience coming at such legendary football powerhouses as Phillips Academy Andover and Wesleyan University. Doesn't seem to have stood in his way to becoming the greatest professional football coach of all-time. I think it's safe to say that he understands the game.

Garcia is absolutely targeting Kimes because she is a woman. He doesn't need to say the quiet part out loud for that to be blatantly obvious. A ton of NFL talking heads have been dumping on Jimmy G for years now. To act like Mina Kimes is somehow the torchbearer for those criticisms, and deserves to be singled out as such, is disingenuous horseshit. Garcia doesn't need to have typed out: "what does this skinny little Korean woman know about football anyways?" to get called out for his absolutely shitty, terrible, incorrect argument. I thought we were long past those days, but I guess not.
 

Vinho Tinto

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I’d just point out Jeff Garcia has always been a sensitive little shit. Equating Mina Kimes and NFL coaches having the same football experience sounds like dogs and cats are the same because they are both mammals.

Edit: let’s not lose that she compared him to some dopey kid who doesn’t do any work on a school project. That’s easily proven false. He isn’t great and is wildly inconsistent; but he also makes winning plays for the Niners.
 
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Soxy

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When the argument for Jimmy G boils down to "QB winz baby" it's almost pointless to even bother with a rebuttal. Winning plays, like overthrowing a wide-open receiver with a chance to win the Super Bowl. So much winning. Clearly, Jimmy G is the main reason for the 49ers recent success, and not the defense and running game and coaching and Deebo Samuel or Nick Bosa or any other number of people more crucial to the success of the 49ers than Jimmy G. That dude is along for the ride, he ain't driving the bus. That's all she was saying, and she's right.
 

Kliq

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Garcia is dumb. Mina is a victim here of participating on FIRST TAKE where they encourage you to make arguments free of any nuance and then boil it down to one sentence and then blast it out over social media, just so people like Garcia see it and have a big reaction to it.
 

Minneapolis Millers

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Either the 49ers are an incredibly stupid franchise, or there’s a good rationale for drafting Trey Lance. Jimmy G and his not-being-good-QB is part of that rationale. Doesn’t mean he’s horrible, but it does kinda say that his own team thinks he should be replaced. All of which supports Kimes’ point. (Kyle S played at Texas, btw.)
 

Minneapolis Millers

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Garcia is dumb. Mina is a victim here of participating on FIRST TAKE where they encourage you to make arguments free of any nuance and then boil it down to one sentence and then blast it out over social media, just so people like Garcia see it and have a big reaction to it.
This is correct. It’s the whole point. Although I’d say that Kimes also expects it and so is not really a “victim.”
 

Soxy

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She and you are arguing a red herring. It isn’t he does everything or he does nothing. He’s in between that scale.
I'm not seeing how that undermines what Kimes is saying.

The nature of the QB position makes him high-profile and an important person on the team, because the ball is going to be in his hands more than anyone. That's just how it goes with QBs. I get it, and I'm certain Kimes does too. But there is a difference between winning because of someone and winning in spite of someone. We have pretty ample evidence by now that Jimmy G on the Niners is much closer to the latter than the former. If there were any doubts remaining, the organization told us everything we needed to know when they traded a pile of first-round picks for the right to choose his replacement.

Jimmy G actively tried to lose them the game last weekend. They very clearly won that game in spite of his poor performance. When they went to the Super Bowl a few years ago, he famously attempted only 8 passes in the NFC title game. Jimmy and the 49ers have been telling us who he is for some time now. You can win with him, sure, but you should probably aim higher for your QB if you want to be a serious Super Bowl contender year in and year out. If anything, the importance of the position should only magnify that fact. I don't think anyone is saying he's a complete disaster factory all of the time. Quite clearly, you can win with the guy as your QB, which isn't nothing. I just cringe when I hear things like "he makes winning plays."
 

Vinho Tinto

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If he was doing nothing, they would have benched him for Lance by now. That they haven’t showed me his performance isn’t as plug and play as Kimes portrays.

The analytical stats show he’s at worst average. Their winning percentage with him being in or out of the lineup is night and day. Just compare Niners performance without him to Patriots w/o Brady or Steelers w/o Ben. A sign of how cooked Manning was in his final season was the Broncos were relatively fine with Brock. You can cringe about “winning plays”, but there has been nothing analytical about his critiques. The stats show he’s a positive for the Niners.

He’s an inconsistent QB who has big highs and lows. He’s been prone to missing time to injury (I believe this is the primary factor why they’ve looked to move off him). When he plays, the net result is at worst average play and the team plays like a title contender. When he’s out, the Niners are so bad they don’t sniff the playoffs.
 

Soxy

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If he was doing nothing, they would have benched him for Lance by now. That they haven’t showed me his performance isn’t as plug and play as Kimes portrays.

The analytical stats show he’s at worst average. Their winning percentage with him being in or out of the lineup is night and day. Just compare Niners performance without him to Patriots w/o Brady or Steelers w/o Ben. A sign of how cooked Manning was in his final season was the Broncos were relatively fine with Brock. You can cringe about “winning plays”, but there has been nothing analytical about his critiques. The stats show he’s a positive for the Niners.

He’s an inconsistent QB who has big highs and lows. He’s been prone to missing time to injury (I believe this is the primary factor why they’ve looked to move off him). When he plays, the net result is at worst average play and the team plays like a title contender. When he’s out, the Niners are so bad they don’t sniff the playoffs.
I'm not sure that really proves anything. In the two seasons he's gotten injured and missed time (2018 and 2020), the Niners went 4-5 with Jimmy G as their starter. Better than his replacements, sure, but that probably says a lot more about his replacements than it says anything about him. Maybe those Niners teams just weren't very good.

I don't think we should be inferring anything about Jimmy G's performance from the fact that they've played worse when they've had to play their backup QBs. Every team in the NFL should be expected to perform worse with their backup QB. That's why they're the backup and not the starter.
 

Vinho Tinto

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Again, she compared him to a dopey kid who does no work and gets an A.

A team playing worse and going from elite to bad are two different things. The Patriots won 10 games with Matt Cassel and were 3-1 when Brady was suspended. That’s worse, but still ok. The Steelers record without Big Ben is worse, but respectable.

A season following barely losing a Super Bowl, they went 3-7 with his backups. Shanahan’s overall record is 39-42, but he’s 31-14 with Jimmy (5-1 in playoffs).
 

Soxy

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I don't really want to belabor this but being a much better QB than Nick Mullens and C.J. Beathard is an incredibly low bar to clear for a guy being paid as if he's one of the 10 best QBs in the NFL. If that's where people are going to hang their hat in defense of Jimmy G, then go for it, I guess.
 

Vinho Tinto

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By multiple metrics, Jimmy was a top 10 QB. His pay is in line with performance.

I had no problem with drafting Lance. If they hit he’s an elite QB, who is probably more durable, for the next 15 years and they’re the direct rivals for the Chiefs. If he’s a bust, then the low bar that Jimmy G meets is no longer achieved and Niners management will likely see the door. That’s why I liked the aggressive move. They’re going for a long run vs competing for one title; but replacing Jimmy is not a slam dunk.
 

Soxy

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Not sure what metrics you're referring to. I know he rates excellent by NY/A and ANY/A, that's for sure. From everything else I've seen he looks closer to middle of the pack, which seems about right. He also benefits a lot from YAC, fwiw.
 

cheech13

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Kind of poetic that the 49ers season ended with a Jimmy G pick. Wonder if Garcia will offer Mina an apology.
 

Soxy

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Kind of poetic that the 49ers season ended with a Jimmy G pick. Wonder if Garcia will offer Mina an apology.
If by "offer an apology" you mean "delete his twitter, turn his instagram private, and generally run and hide from the internet," then yes, that is exactly what Jeff Garcia did.

I enjoyed former Pats beat writer Shalise Manza Young unloading on him: Jeff Garcia sure hid fast — unlike women in media who endure his brand of toxicity (yahoo.com)

For anyone who didn't hear Garcia lose his mind on a sport radio show, this is also a doozy. He seems like a real peach of a guy.

View: https://twitter.com/gifdsports/status/1487204245212389376
 

Soxy

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He didn't quite "lose his mind" in that interview.That's such a hilarious way to put it.

With that said, fuck him.
The guy is yelling and screaming, "it's old news, it's old news, move on," while the hosts of the program try to politely remind him that he, in fact, agreed to discuss this topic with them. Then he hangs up on them and ends the call. He's pretty clearly having himself a bit of a meltdown.
 

johnmd20

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The guy is yelling and screaming, "it's old news, it's old news, move on," while the hosts of the program try to politely remind him that he, in fact, agreed to discuss this topic with them. Then he hangs up on them and ends the call. He's pretty clearly having himself a bit of a meltdown.
I didn't hear yelling and screaming. Jeff doesn't deserve the benefit of the doubt, of course. But it is a pet peeve of mind when people on Twitter are like, "WATCH THIS GUY GET NUKED INTO ORBIT," and it's just some regular run of the mill thing where nobody was nuked anywhere.

"Loses his mind" is very clear language. Jeff did not lose his mind on that call, he was frustrated and then he hung up. Holy cow, I have never heard anything like that in my life, it was CRAZY and those hosts NUKED GARCIA INTO ORBIT.

Losing his mind would be Garcia threatening the hosts with death and screaming that all women are inferior in every way.
 

Soxy

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Fucking christ, it's just a figure of speech.

If there's anything SoSH needs more of, it is definitely someone pedantically parsing language for absolutely no reason whatsoever. We certainly don't have enough of those.
 

Cesar Crespo

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Fucking christ, it's just a figure of speech.

If there's anything SoSH needs more of, it is definitely someone pedantically parsing language for absolutely no reason whatsoever. We certainly don't have enough of those.
I dunno. You are pedantically parsing language to find misogyny where it isn't.