Dear ESPN

Dear ESPN,

Ok, I've had it. Your coverage of sports has declined from the ideal to a complete joke. Luckily sports coverage in general has fallen flat on its face, so it appears that nobody has noticed how far you've fallen. Listed in this letter are the various problems that have developed in the time I've been watching your sports monopoly.

Problem Number I: Endless coverage of "important" sports stories that nobody cares about.

Yes, these stories are ones that people may care about in the first 10, maybe 15 hours of their breaking, but after that you're just mindlessly beating a dead horse instead of covering actual sports.

The most severe transgressions that fall into this?
I. Brett Favre- Yes, he's played forever. Yes, he's a hall of famer. But I have bad news for you Vikings fans, he's not a hall of famer anymore, he's an old, washed up quarterback who can't quit the game. You're replacing the combination of Tarvaris Jackson and Gus Frerotte, who together amassed 3213 yards, 21 TD's, and 17 ints. Brett Favre had 3472 yards, 22 TDs, and 22 Ints. 200 more yards, one more touchdown, and 5 more interceptions, and hes 40 YEARS OLD. He's not even a top 10 quarterback in the NFL anymore, just shut up about him, noone cares.

II. Lance Armstrong- "Woo, he came back! He's going to whip those goddamn cheese eating surrender monkeys asses for an 8th time! And he's only got one nut! He's a real american hero!"

Blech, I wish I hadn't done that. That was a summary of the average American's reaction to Lance Armstrong's triumphant return to the Tour de France, and that's where it ends. Anyone who isn't an avid bike enthusiast needs approximately this much information on the Tour de France during the average episode of Sportscenter:

"They're riding bikes, Lance is in third, now on to baseball!"

That's it. No interviews, no "juicy drama" between Lance and the guy that noone has heard of despite winning the tour last year, just tell us where Lance is and move. the. f*$&. on.

III. *Star Baseball Player X* tested positive for Steroids/Fertility meds/HGH/marijuana/ground up rhinocerous horn

We get it, they screwed up. The finger pointing and endless whodunit that follows them getting suspended needs to stop. The most recent violation is Manny Ramirez. He got suspended for 50 games. Thats news. He didn't protest it, proving his guilt. Thats news. Everything following? THATS NOT NEWS. I don't need to see every minor league at bat, I don't need to know when the guy who prescribed him the fertility drug screaming "NO I DIDN'T", I just want to know how he's being punished and when he comes back, nothing else.

Problem number II: Your atrocious anchors.

Jesus Hopscotching Christ are they terrible. From their shitty jokes to their shameless pandering to the "hip crowd" that hasn't existed since 1999, most of the ESPN analysts are an embarrassment to sports coverage.

Examples (With awards!):
Lifetime achievement award: Dick Vitale

Dick Vitale, the lovechild of wrinkles the dog (left) and a megaphone.
Beloved (?) college sports announcer whose been going at it for years.
No, stop. Fire him. Send him to the farm. Have him fight a cage match to the death with Lee Corso. I don't care. He's an idiot, his catchphrases drive most sane people to murder, he hasn't bet against an ACC team since long before he was still capable of maintaining an erection without a costco sized jug of viagra (at least the early 1980's) It's time to hang him up. I don't care if you violate rule number 1. by covering his retirement, as long as he stops hurting my ears I'm down with whatever you choose to do.

Jive Talkinist award: Stuart Scott

Admittedly, Stuart Scott was more than tolerable in his early days at ESPN, he was actually a respectable anchor. In the 2000's, however, he's become a complete waste of time and space. He slings random "ghetto" phrases around like a monkey would fling his own excrement, he rarely contributes ANYTHING to a highlight reel, and his interviews consistently leave the interviewee with the same look that people get after they are sexually harassed by an elderly person. Oh, and his crazy eye freaks me right the f*$& out.

R.I.P. award: Stephen A. Smith

He got fired, it was a happy day in my household, much drink was drunk and the volume on my television was turned past the minimum possible level to remain audible. Stephen A. Smith is the epitome of what was wrong with you ESPN, sloppy journalism, strong opinions backed by absolutely nothing, leaning on sources that lost all reliability in the early 2000's, all of which is based on a foundation of shouting. He should have been fired years ago, but instead he lingered, shouting at the world about any and everything, ruining events people actually wanted to watch with his nonsensical yammering. I pray to god MSNBC picks up Stephen A. to become one of their anchors, if we successfully trivialize television news shows maybe the print media can make a resurgence (haha, no, thats never going to happen)

The 9th Circle of Hell: Skip Bayless

I honestly have no idea what to say about this person. He's the first walking ad lib. Any sports story that comes up, regardless of its scope or importance, his response goes as such: "I'm (outraged/in love) with this (guy/story), this (guy/story) isn't (behaving/important/covered enough)" rinse repeat. He should be flossed with a string of barbed wire by Carmelo Anthony, which would finally fulfill Bayless' constant assertions that Carmelo is a dangerous thug.

Problem Number III: Covering sports too much/too little

This one is pretty self explanatory, but I'll categorize them for you anyway.

Cover Less: Nascar, Baseball, Football
Cover More:MMA, Soccer

Nascar is... well, Nascar. Ask anyone in a major city about it and about 80% of them will react in the same way: "who the f*$& cares, its for rednecks" Maybe you can alter your programming for the southern states or something, but its something that pretty much everyone else doesn't care about.

Baseball, America's favorite dying sport. I think it should be covered, but when it occupies 70% of my sportscenter, thats where i draw the line. Even in months where baseball is the only remotely interesting thing going on (I'm looking at you, June), it should be condensed into a scoreboard and an expanded top 10 plays reel.

Football is exciting during football season. Football outside of football season is... exciting on draft day and when major offseason moves occur. All the coverage of Terrell Owens and Brett Favre and all the coverage of the annual 30 players going to jail for being retarded from knocking their helmets together a little too enthusiastically, all unnecessary.

We're getting good at soccer. Highlights of soccer are fun to watch. You don't have to sit through the 90 minutes that most haters of soccer can't stand, you just see people scoring or messing themselves up. Euroleague is amazing to watch, it will pique interest and make us even better at soccer.

MMA is looking more and more like the future of sports. People are looking somewhere else to find senseless violence now that the NFL has worked to get safer and smacking someone lightly with a dandelion is a foul in the NBA. MMA has welcomed this newfound sadism with open arms. The sport will grow in popularity if you thoroughly cover it, interview people, establish villains and good guys, favorites and underdogs, show highlights, make people care. It'll give you one more thing that can replace your coverage of Brett Favre coming out of retirement for a 5th time at 58 to play for the Detroit Lions, who have finally given up on producing a quality quarterback and held a tryout between their ball shooting machine and Brett.

Your adoring fan with noone else to turn to,
Braski.


Songs of the Week.
Lupe Fiasco- Daydream ft. Jill Scott
Velvet Revolver- Slither
P.O.S.- Drumroll (we're all thirsty)
Say Anything- Wow, I can get sexual too
Cunninlynguists- The Gates ft. Tonedeff
Silversun Pickups- Lazy Eye

Free Agency

Because at some point in my life I’d like the opportunity to choke the sleepy eye out of Stuart Scott’s jive talking, stereotype perpetuating ass, I’m going to keep writing about sports, primarily basketball. Not a lot is going on in the league right now, so this is just filler drivel about off-season moves until I finish my extensive discussion about why baseball sucks a fatty.


Turkoglu to Raptors- See the only real thought I had out of this was “you know, it doesn’t matter if I spell his name right or not, word will never, ever catch if I spelled it right or not. This isn’t a groundbreaking deal, it’s the raptors desperately trying to make moves to keep Chris Bosh interested in staying in Canada. Admirable, and totally understandable. Bosh may not be a superstar yet, but he’s going to continue to consistently average around 20-10 for the rest of his life, but it doesn’t make the raptors a threat. With the general improvement in the eastern conference I could lean to putting the raptors in the “bend me over and rape me” 8th spot in the playoffs, but I don’t think its possible for them to be dangerous to Orlando or the Cavaliers with two soft big men, no bench, and a small forward who had one good playoff stretch during a contract year.

Marion to Mavericks- This is a deal I actually really like. Despite the fact that Marion’s old and has been mopey ever since the suns destroyed D’Antoni ball by signing Shaq, he makes the Mavericks a lot better. He’s bounced back and forth the past two years cause he doesn’t fit into a system not run by a quality point guard quickly. Dallas has one of those, and although Jason Kidd is old enough to have sired half of the Mavericks roster, he’s still one of the only real point guards remaining in the league and other than CP3 and Steve Nash hes one of the only ones with whom Shawn Marion can play effectively. Marion gives the Mav’s a real small forward, so Josh Howard can move to 2 guard, makes them a really dangerous small-ball team with Nowitzki at the 5 (oh hey a foreign player whose name I can’t spell, truly surprising) Marion at the 4, Howard at 3, etc… And if they move to sign Marcin Gortat from the Magic they would solve the problem of Erick Dampier being ridiculously foul prone by providing a really quality back up big man. Does it make them a legitimate threat in the West? Eh, I think it makes them a stumbling block for the Lakers or the Spurs, but not a favorite to make it to the conference championship.

Rasheed Wallace to Bawston- This is a deal that I saw as completely unnecessary, but it does improve the Celtics. Garnett’s finally getting to the point that his psychotic intensity will limit his ability to play a full season, but now instead of depending on the average to sub-par play of Leon Powe and Big Baby to sub for him, he has Rasheed Wallace, who is still pretty close to playing at all-star caliber. It’s good for the Celtics, but I see it as more of a big move to satisfy the psychopaths who watch sports in Boston, especially since it doesn't address the Celtics main problem, that they're running out an all retirement home team.

Shaq to Cavs- Stupid. Stupid. STUPID. Seriously Cleveland fans, you should be burning effigy’s of Shaq and Danny Ferry in your smog covered streets. Cleveland is banking on the idle hope that a burnt out goofball who hasn’t played hard in 5 years will turn it around and make someone else in the league WANT to trade quality minor players for him. It’s not going to happen. The Cavaliers are going to putter along, winning fewer games than last year because Lebron’s lane is clogged by team ancient immobile big man and he can’t train down and draw fouls on his own players (despite how hard the NBA may try to encourage the referees to call them) Every deal they make is sticking band aids on an axe wound. There aren’t any supporting players they can afford bouncing around free agency who will actually work well enough with Lebron to push them past the Celtics and the Magic. Signing Anderson Varejao was necessary, he’s a fan favorite, but he’s also a shitty basketball player who makes his living off of flopping to piss good players off and get them technicals. He will never ever be worth 50 million dollars. If Lebron doesn’t flee Cleveland like he would from a flaming bag of dog poo, I would be truly surprised.

Richard Jefferson/Antonio McDyess to Spurs- Both very good moves for the Spurs. Duncan’s old, Manu’s soft, and their supporting players didn’t work as well as they have in the past last year. Trading for Richard Jefferson brought much needed scoring to the team, and they no longer have to crapshoot whether or not Manu will stay healthy because Jefferson can just switch to two guard if they need him to. McDyess is just another body to take the wear off of Duncan. Similar to Wallace in Garnett, but lower quality, I have yet to see which top 5 power forward needs it more, but I’d venture a guess that it will end up being Duncan, mostly because I foresee the Spurs having a similar issue to the Celtics later in the 2009-10 season.

Vince Carter to Magic- Swing for the fences, see what happens. I was really happy with this deal when I heard about it, it puts two of the most exciting players to watch in the last 10 years on the same team, and could make the magic much more threatening than when they had Turk at the 2. On the other hand, Vince Carter hasn’t exerted an effort on a basketball court in a long time, and I don’t think having a happy-go-lucky team leader in Dwight Howard and Stan Van Gundy at the helm will light a fire under him. Maybe getting old and wanting a title will do it, and the Magic had better pray it does, because otherwise they have a serious problem.

Villanueva/Gordon to Detroit- Eh, the Pistons get two streaky scorers to solve their problem of having… streaky scorers? They improved their bench a lot by putting either Gordon or Hamilton there, but replacing Rasheed Wallace with Charlie Villanueva is like replacing your dog with a similar looking dog stuffed with sawdust, except the stuffed dog doesn’t have any hair. It’s trying to staunch the bleeding, but it hardly solves detroit’s problems, and I’d be willing to bet that they don’t make the playoffs this year.

The Airport Epic Pt. 2

So anyway, I waited until the airplane was boarding to realize that I had to ask for a the attendants to call ahead and prepare a wheelchair for me at the other end of my flight, and hurried to the front of the boarding line in an attempt to sneak that message in before the plane took off. My plan totally worked, because as soon as I got up there a random woman who appeared to have no affiliation with the airline grabbed the back of my chair and rushed me through the boarding line and towards the plane. Obviously I was a little confused as to why the woman had done this, so I struck up a conversation with her,

Me:Are you kidnapping me? You really don't want to, trust me, way too expensive to maintain.
Her:Oh, no. I work for the airline, I'm going to try and sneak you into first class so you don't have to walk down the rows to get to your seat

Sweet deal eh? Airports have mad love for cripple people apparently, she went on to explain that if someone requests a wheelchair and clearly needs it, (i.e. isn't just old or fat and lazy) they'll always try and get them into the first class seating on a plane. Usually it works on flights that aren't very packed, but when the flight begins to fill up it doesn't work out. It worked in this case because as far as I can tell there aren't enough people living in Burlington Vermont to actually fill a normal sized airplane.

So here I am, experiencing my first "First Class" voyage because I royally fucked up my body. Take a note here children, if you're going to hurt yourself, hurt yourself badly enough so the world opens up to you out of pity, don't half ass that kind of stuff. Anyway, my impressions of first class:
1. It's really really loud up there. I have no idea if this is just the quality of the plane that I was on, but as soon as I put in my headphones it became completely deafening up there.
That's actually my only impression of first class, but it's important, because it forced me to throw myself upon the whimsy of the "strange encounter" gods who had blessed me thus far on this day. I turned to the woman sitting across from me because the one sitting next to me was already fast asleep, and lo, did those gods bless me again.

This woman looked like she had undergone enough plastic surgery that if she were melted down she could make a legion of barbie dolls. She never told me her name, but she did tell me her story. She was basically a professional gold digger for most of her life, she had 7 kids by 4 different guys, all of whom were worth more than 6 figures at the time. She retained custody of all the kids, and the child support payments and royalties from the first marriage, in which their wasn't a pre-nup, allowed her to live VERY frivolously for the rest of her life. The bizarre thing is, despite having 7 kids and reallly treading the line of morality, she seemed like an absolutely fantastic mom. All her kids were between the ages of 22 and 25, and they all graduated from Ivy League schools. I was enormously skeptical when she first told me this, but then she whipped out a set of pictures from her wallet, each one had her standing next to one of her kids with the disgruntled father looking irritable on the other side. Every single kid had attended an Ivy League, it was really incredible. We talked for the entire flight, she was drinking alot the entire time, and about 3/4's through the flight it began to show:

Her:My god, those braces looks really hot and itchy, why don't you take them off?
Me:If I take them off I really can't do anything more than sit, and it takes forever to put them back on if I had to use the bathroom or something, it's more for convenience than anything
Her:Oh, well. Why don't we just get all of your clothes off instead*

*she said this while leaning across the row and rubbing my arm. I quietly turned her down and squeezed myself as close as possible to the woman who was sitting next to me, waking her up and leading to a very uncomfortable exchange that went down in hushed whispers with the woman still watching me. It went like so,

Woman:What the hell are you doing?
Bill: Forgive me, but the woman sitting across the row is trying to mile-high me.
Woman: *glances quickly at the woman* Oh shit, really?
Bill: *nods quickly*
Woman: I'll move over

And thats how I spent the rest of the flight, huddled against this woman while glancing over at the plastic woman every 30 seconds in the idle hope that she would pass out and stop staring wistfully at me. When we landed she grabbed my ass as I hobbled out to my wheelchair lady.

Part 3 next week.

Songs of the week:
ABC's- K'naan feat Chubb Rock
Da Rockwilder-Method Man & Red Man
Be Somebody- Kings of Leon
Fix Up Look Sharp- Dizzee Rascal
I'm Housin-Rage Against the Machine

Ron Artest to Lakers... /facepalm

Alright NBA owners, you did it again. Ron Artest to the Lakers? Really? Essentially a trade for Trevor Ariza? What kind of idiot would actually make that trade? And what idiot would actually claim this worked out for the Rockets as well? Oh… ESPN analysts, whatever, we’ve known how much they suck forever, that’s like beating a dead horse. But seriously, let’s discuss what each team gets out of their new 3 guard.

The Lakers:

• One of the biggest issues with the Lakers last year was their lack of toughness, when they played the Rockets they had 3 things that crippled them: the Rockets beat the shit out of them, the Rockets had two players who could effectively guard Kobe, and the Rockets had a fast point guard who made Derek Fisher look like he had just had a couple of hip replacements.
• If you’re thinking about it, the Lakers addressed two of those three issues with this “trade” Given the stigma about Ron Artest being a complete psychopath, noone will ever flagrant foul the Lakers again out of fear of Ron Artest making a crude shank out of a water bottle and murdering them on the court. And guess what? Ron Artest is the best individual defender in the NBA (Now that Bruce Bowen is the dirtiest corpse in the NBA), leaving 3, maybe 4 players who can guard Kobe well in the NBA (Shane Battier, Lebron, Carmelo, and then a bunch of borderline players like D-wade, Caron Butler, etc.)
• So the Lakers resolved two of the major problems that almost wrecked their title run this year, but what else did they get? Well, first lets address this whole Ron Artest crazy thing. Yes, he is crazy. No, he is not “run into the stands and punch a fan, ruining a potential title winning season” crazy. He’s going to work to keep the peace on the Lakers, he’s not going to mess it all up because he’s unhappy with his shot selection.
• So he brings 10+ pts a game to the Lakers over Ariza, he’s a better rebounder, defender, axe-murderer (oops), and he’s the most intimidating player in the NBA, the Lakers now have 3 (yes, 3) all star caliber players willing to take a backseat to Kobe to win a title.
• OH! And I almost forgot, guess who doesn’t have to exhaust himself guarding the best player on the other team for 82 games and the playoffs anymore? That’s right, Kobe, the best scorer in the NBA, the guy whose legs are the only thing that limit him, he gets to rest for the entire season (barring suspensions and such) because Ron Artest can guard everyone from Bron Bron to D-Wade better than Kobe could.

The Rockets:

• Yeah, they lost everything I listed above, and gained a smaller, weaker, slightly younger, VERY average swingman.
• “But Bill, without Trevor Ariza the Lakers wouldn’t have won the championship this year!” Yes, this is very true, but with Ron Artest this year they would have absolutely steamrolled people. And Trevor Ariza was as much of a liability as players like Derek Fisher and such. He was brought in to defend and shoot threes, and he did one of those well, and the statistics don’t actually so how decidedly un-clutch he was shooting threes in these playoffs, he lost them as many games with his shooting as he won with his defense.

Basically, the Lakers just stole one of the better players in the NBA… again. I’m not going to criticize the Rockets, because they got absolutely screwed over this offseason, Yao potentially being out for the next year? Or maybe forever? Tracy McGrady behaving like a 6 year old who was denied candy? They got screwed over, and there’s no way they make the playoffs next year barring a magical comeback by Yao or a couple really good free agent signings (Gortat, Big Baby, Odom come to mind)

So the damage has been done. Chris Wallace is no longer to blame exclusively for the Lakers dominance, it falls upon all of you, NBA owners. Your penny pinching has created a monster that by all rational means should have no trouble winning the championship next year. I have 3 options for you to cripple their title push, two of them are legitimate moves you can make, one of them is something horribly spiteful that the entire world would hate you for.

OPTION NUMBER 1: Sign Lamar Odom. Do It. Sure he’s an enormous liability, he eats more candy than an entire city block of children on Halloween, he’s moody. But he’ll play second fiddle to your star happily, it takes the pressure off of Odom. The problems are he only wants to be in a sunny place, so golden state, the clippers, and Miami are the only teams he can really go to. Clippers already have a pile-up at the big man position, and Lamar Odom has enough pride that coming off the bench to replace Chris Kaman or Blake Griffin would not be O.K. And Golden State is a mess, so the only real option is Miami. D-Wade is a draw, Miami is the only place with more beaches and less morality than L.A. and Odom has played there before. There are more prudent investments for Miami, but this one would cripple the Lakers. They don’t win the championship without Odom this year, and they will have serious problems if they don’t resign him for 09-10.

OPTION NUMBER 2: This one will be less effective, but it exploits the Lakers other weakness. They don’t have a quality point guard. Don’t let them sign a quality point guard. The only thing they really need is a 3 point threat who isn’t borderline retarded to run their triangle offense (Sorry Stephon Marbury, you don’t fit either of those categories) Withhold as best you can, teams with a superstar PG, keep your back-ups, don’t let any free agents slip through the cracks, if the Lakers get a quality point guard its game over.

OPTION NUMBER 3: (The spiteful one): Pull a Gasol-to-Lakers with the Cavaliers or Magic. Those are the two teams who can step up and stop the Lakers because of their superstars (Dwight Howard is going to figure it out this summer, mark my words. And Lebron is a freak whose only going to get better) The Magic would be a better option because the Cavaliers have already screwed up their offseason with awful, AWFUL trades (seriously, Shaq takes Lebron’s biggest weapon away from this, you’d have to shake the NBA analysts at ESPN like a baby to make them admit it, but its very true. It isn’t 2001 anymore, its not even 2004, Shaq is burnt out and played out, keeping him and Z makes me think you’re going to put on a clinic of Big Men whose age has finally caught up with them, maybe you can sign freaky-deeky Mutombo out of retirement, then you could run an awesome team of Big Men who were a lot better in the early 2000’s)

Finally, if you’re wondering why I’ve resigned myself to believing the Lakers will win the western conference. Look at their competition. Their only competition is the spurs, who will end up meeting them in the conference finals when Tim Duncan is exhausted and pushing 1300 games, and the rest of their stars will be banged up after going through either the mavericks, nuggets, trail blazers, hornets, or the other western teams. I don’t think the Spurs will measure up after having to play through those teams, whereas the Lakers can run through those teams and still be fairly well rested, they're younger, tougher, and better than the spurs are at the moment.

Of course all of this is knee jerk and will probably change as the offseason further develops, but that’s my two cents after a truly abysmal move by the NBA in allowing Ron Artest to go to the Lakers.