The day that ESPN began to air sports all day every day brought in a new era for citizens of the United States. ESPN brought stats, instant notification of trades, injuries, big wins, and big losses. It brought the who was hired the new head coach of our favorite college team and who made the trade of the season. The fan of the upper deck with binoculars trying to figure out who is at bat was instantly escorted directly behind home plate and Chris Berman became a household name along with the cliché “back, back, back!”
There is no doubt the ESPN made some kind of influence, negative and positive I’m sure, on me. Sports became something glorious to me as I watched the 7th game of the World Series that according to Peter Gammons would change the sport forever and as I watched the Superbowls that billions of other people watched along side me. ESPN does a wonderful job of bringing out what sports can create in its most inspiring form–teamwork, perseverance, hard work, struggle, victory, courage, and a childish love for the game. According to ESPN it isn’t about just a bunch of grown men hitting a ball with a stick but it is the expression of something higher than that.
For me, watching sports through ESPN, the abilities of these athletes became something beautiful to me. To be able to catch a ground ball while in mid air and then slam into the ground, keeping composure, and flipping the ball to the second baseman, who barely has the ball for a split second, slings it 90 feet to another player that catches it before the runner touches the bag simply takes my breath away. These are the instances that ESPN excels at. They point out the things that a passerby would just deem as ordinary and they call it outstanding, amazing, beautiful. This is the appeal of ESPN.
And the best part is, if you miss something it will be playing again one hour later!
Journey to the Heavenly Country 
Interesting — that whole “it’s on again an hour later” is part of what makes ESPN baffling to me. 🙂 Deadspin.com editor Will Leitch has a book out where he blames the decline of sports culture partly on ESPN! I’d love to get your reaction.
Well, it is a little hard for me to say if sports culture has declined because of ESPN because I wasn’t alive pre-ESPN. For this reason I have nothing to compare it to. I can hypothesize though.
I think this is a valid argument. It seems to me that by being able to show great moments in sports over and over again removes the “legend” of the game. Today’s generation of sports fans can see any recent big sports event over and over again if they want. I guess you could say this would make it last through history but I think it actually kills the moment. Without media we pass these awesome sports moments down by stories. Grandparents tell the grandchildren about the time they watched Roger Maris hit the 61st homerun to pass Babe Ruth and they can tell it the way they want from their perspective. With ESPN this is lost. The personal experience becomes impersonal. The moment is reduced to another clip rather than Grandpaws story.
In this respect I hate what ESPN has done.