It’s not that want anyone to keel over and die, but if Stephen A. Smith were to keel over and die, I’m pretty sure that not only would I not give a shit, there would be a part of me that would be glad. Yes, that’s a horrible thing to put into writing, but I can’t really say that it would be an inaccurate statement.
Whenever Stephen A. Smith is on television, which is unfortunately way more than he should be, because the retards at my gym have the locker room televisions set to ESPN, and there’s no known way to change the channels without a remote, and First Take seems to be on for eleventy-billion hour blocks at a time, I want to shower and dress out and get out of the locker room as quickly as humanly possible.
Stephen A. Smith makes me want to get away from a screen faster than a snuff film, or any one of those ASPCA commercials with Sarah McLaughlin music in the background.
I honestly think that Stephen A. Smith is a bigger pox on this world than like AIDS, Ebola, or any of those super-mutating diseases that the news likes to claim are capable of wiping out human kind. Hell, if Stephen A. Smith continues to get as much screen time as he does, or god-forbid, gets more than he does now, then the extinction of the human race doesn’t sound like such a bad thing after all.
However, even still, no matter how horrible Stephen A. Smith ultimately is, he’s still a microcosm of the bigger problem, which is just how much ESPN absolutely, completely, irrevocably sucks. Seriously, I honestly do not think that there is a single network out there that is worse than ESPN, and that’s even considering that one network that’s owned by Al-Jazeera (Current?)
For years, I’ve been saying tongue-in-cheek, that ESPN sucked. They’re about as biased as the various news outlets, and they’re a completely compromised network entirely. At one point, the unofficial acronym for the company was “Every Sport Possible Network,” but really stands for “Entertainment and Sport Programming Network.” But in actuality it really should be ESTPOPUN: Every Sport That’s Popular Or Pays Us Network, because that’s pretty much precisely how the entire network operates.
The boiling point for me actually came kind of recently, while ESPN was trying to run some specials about the NFL Draft, since for some reason, people out there seem to care about an overblown process of picking teams on a grand scale, rather than any actual active sporting events like the NBA Playoffs, NHL Playoffs or y’know… baseball.
But they were running some documentary-style information segments talking about the importance of getting picked early in the draft, and the financial repercussions of falling down the draft, one slot at a time. And then the program flashed these statistics about how much money that guys like Eli Manning, Aaron Rodgers and Ben Roethlisberger “lost” because they weren’t the first pick, or within the first five picks, or even within the first ten picks, or something like that.
The screen went black and white, showed Ben Roethlisberger sitting at a banquet table looking all sad and emo, and a graphic showed up on the screen that said “Lost $5M by ‘falling’ to the #11th pick in the draft.”
Ben Roethlisberger is currently playing under a contract worth $108M dollars, and has made somewhere around $70M dollars in his career, not including whatever performance bonuses, Super Bowl bonuses, endorsements or any additional salary he may have had throughout his career.
And ESPN is trying to make us plebeians, most of who won’t even see $1M in our entire lives let alone five, feel bad for Ben Roethlisberger, because he lost out on $5M, because he was picked 11th instead of 1-5? For playing fucking football? A kids game?
Man, fuck ESPN. I fucking hate ESPN. I try not to throw around the term “hate” too often (yeah, surprisingly), but I truly do hate ESPN. They’re just so awful, and so biased and completely transparent. As a network altogether, they’ve lost touch with the average viewer, and are apparently catering to professional athletes, their egos, and celebrities. The personalities they have on the air have all turned into head-cases, and are getting too big for their own britches with regularity. I would honestly be more content if ESPN were not included in my cable package. I would honestly be even more content if the network completely collapsed and went under altogether.
SportsCenter is such a biased and compromised program it’s not even funny. No matter what time of the year it is, the NFL gets priority over absolutely everything. If Clayton Kershaw threw a perfect game in game seven of the World Series to win a championship, it would play second fiddle to a tweet by Deion Sanders. If the Iraqi soccer team overcame insurmountable odds to win the World Cup, it would have to wait until the Jets have deliberated with acquiring another quarterback to attempt to push Mark Sanchez with.
When it’s not the NFL, it’s whatever is mainstream or popular. Throughout this past NBA season, I’ve never heard of a more mediocre team get so much regular coverage than the Lakers did. The Heat’s 30+ game win streak actually took a little bit of the limelight away from whatever tweets that emerged from Darrelle Revis, or Marshawn Lynch.
The way ESPN handled the coming out of the closet of Jason Collins, with Chris Broussard taking the offensive against homosexuality was completely despicable. I always thought Chris Broussard was a piece of shit before all this happened, and that he always played the race card, and was way more racist than I could ever be, but this just solidified all of my claims, and at this point, I wouldn’t care and probably be a little glad if he keeled over and died too.
And all their other, non-SportsCenter programming is just horrible. Ironically, whenever I used to turn on ESPN willingly, I’d always be wishing for SportsCenter whenever shit like Around the Horn or PTI or whatever bullshit programming they have on was on. They’re all vehicles to cater to the ever-growing roster of egos and pretenders that the network employs; they’ve completely forgotten that good reporters are always in the foreground, hardly noticed, but missed dearly when they leave. Every single person the network has now is out to make a name for themselves and is way too quick to capitalize on any opportunity they have to advance their careers, and are ultimately bid with good riddance when they make grandiose spectacles of their expiring contracts before jumping over to FOX or whomever will fall for their charade next.
At this point, there’s not even any sense with ESPN’s apparent grudge against Major League Baseball, probably for daring to break out and create their own network, and their conceited efforts to show as minimum baseball coverage as they can, unless it’s something that’s a big deal, like Bryce Harper or Justin Upton’s crazy start to the season.
Yes, there are a lot of hyperbolic statements made in this post, but it’s really not that far from the truth. ESPN is just so god damn awful and it’s so sad and pathetic that it’s pretty much the industry standard when it comes to sports reporting. If I can help it at all, I’m going to try to put forth a conscious effort to avoid everything I can when it comes to ESPN, which really shouldn’t be that much of a stretch considering that I kind of already do it today.
But unfortunately the gym locker room is unavoidable for now until the retards at the gym change the fucking channels. So as long as Stephen A. Smith goes about his various black-power race-motivated agendas, it looks like speed dressing-out is still the norm.
