ESPN IS KILLING AMERICAN SOCCER
By: Alex | September 7th, 2007Please MLS, do yourself a favor and remove games from ESPN.
While I’m sure this is easier said then done, the lack of respect and the issues that result from broadcasting on ESPN 2 far outweighs any benefits of nation wide coverage.
Chivas USA vs. DC United on “Primetime” was once again not prime nor was it on time. Missing the first ten minutes of the game, the first goal and the first set piece was disastrous to supporters of both teams. I would think that it is possible to determine how long an American Football game should take.
While they take half time to talk about every thing besides the game, they were kind enough to post some match facts on the side of the screen. So when you tune in at half time, you learn that Chicago Fire is beating DC United 2 - 1….. What? Not only is the score wrong, but the teams are wrong. I understand CHicago and CHivas start with the same two letters, but will someone who knows something about American Soccer please help these incompetent “sports” casters.
Well at least the rest of the game was broadcasted with no issues….. wait no, no it wasn’t. ESPN lost the feed and we lost another 7 minutes near the 90th minute. But the announcer comes on and says “Don’t worry, you didn’t miss much”. Thanks for that really crappy comment.
This was worse than the Super Classico fiasco. Please ESPN, do us soccer fans a favor and at least allow us to watch a game from start to finish. It’s only 90 minutes with a little stoppage time. That would be great.
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Comments
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Alex, I could not agree with you more. People like you, Bob and other bloggers out there who really know the game should be hired to do these broadcasts. I posted on Kartik’s Major League Soccer talk the other day about the main differences in watching the MLS Broadcasts vs. EPL. Maybe Americans would tune in more if they had real color commentators.
cheers,
jasonPosted from
United States
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I couldn’t agree more, the coverage of this game was abysmal! It was almost like ESPN was trying to sink it.
Posted from
United States -
It was a pretty crappy broadcast but removing the games from ESPN would be NHL level incompetence. Want to follow them to Versus? really?
When it comes down to it for stations that will cover the sport there is ESPN/ABC/Disney which reaches almost everyone, The Univision family that reaches people unevenly geographically, FSC which reaches even less, HDNET who reaches very few and which I hope we are getting a lot of money from because their policy on post game highlights is killer and regional sports networks. Versus might be interested (but has much less reach than ESPN- ask hockey), or we could get some other random station like USA (who does do tennis) to go for it, or one of the even less accessible than FSC soccer stations (gol and sentanta). We probably should have signed the contract for less than 8 years with ESPN, but there really isn’t anywhere much better and you’d get the familiar complaints that nobody can watch the games if they are not on ESPN that happen when a game is on any other channel. If you want to be a major sport in this country you have to deal with ESPN no mater how stupid and incompetent they are.
Posted from
United States -
I wonder if ESPN is so bad to real futbol (sahkur) because the Mouse (parent of ESPN) doesn’t own any futbol clubs in the US. I know little about grid-iron (and don’t friggin’ care either, a waste of time and space IMHO) but I have heard that the Mouse owns gridiron clubs. I know they own hockey sides and run every Ducks match on local LA affiliates. ESPN ran only east coast matches for the first four months of the season, as far as I could tell. Whenever I set the DVR to record matches, I got NASCAR or poker, only once did I get futbol.
Anyway, ITA about ESPN’s “coverage” of futbol. It’s maddening, and I often watch without sound. Half the time though FSN has the local matchups instead of ESPN even thought the onscreen cable guide lists the matches under ESPN and not FSN. When the “commentators” do babble about players or the match, it’s not really useful or interesting, it’s some garbled nonsense about tactics (which makes every futbol coach moan and grab their tuckhus in pain) or something or other about some player’s college days. When you watch EPL, you actually get who’s go tthe ball, whether that was a clean or sloppy tackle or challenge, etc. The only thing worse than the ESPN commentary is Eric Wynalda, who’s a world class chimp if anything. I can’t stand that guy… almost as bad as that Tommy dude with his onion bag drivel. I can’t watch with kids around any more because I’m constantly shouting, STFU to the screen.
Posted from
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You want an awesome Color Commentating Combo?
Ray Hudson, JP Della can do it. THEY would bring excitement to the broadcasts. OBRein is way too boring and calculated.
Ray Hudson would immediately be the personality soccer needs in its broadcasting. He is insane.
Posted from
United States -
sorry, dude…as much as i like soccer, it’s always going to take a back seat to more traditionally watched american sports…especially college and pro football. they could hire clive tyldesley and andy gray to do it…they could hire pele and diego maradona to do it…no one’s gonna watch and everyone would be livid if they cut out from a near upset of a top 10 rated team to an mls game. no one knows the players in this country and honestly i don’t blame anyone for not knowing, the talent isn’t worthy of it…you can pretend like american soccer matters but it doesn’t…it’s a scrub league.
Posted from
United States -
I don’t have a problem with the fact that they didn’t leave the college football game. After the Heidi game in the ’60’s, it’s pretty much understood that you stay with the first game until it concludes. How would you feel if they left stoppage time of a 2-2 game because it ran into the window for a football or baseball game? You can’t have it both ways on that.
My issue is with the fact that they didn’t bump the start of the game over to ESPN News or Classic. They have so many networks now that this shouldn’t be a problem anymore.
The guy in the studio was absolute joke and needed to be smacked upside the head.
I don’t think the satellite transmission drop was intentional, so I’m not going to get too riled up about it unless we find out that Scott Van Pelt pulled the plug or something.
Posted from
United States -
Re the:
But the announcer comes on and says “Don’t worry, you didn’t miss much”.
If my memory serves - and I can’t check since I deleted the game from the DVR - he said, “But don’t worry, you didn’t miss anything at all.”
Posted from
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longshoe- i agree with that…they do it with plenty of other sports and its not like anyone’s gonna miss the 15 minute loop of z-list sportsdesk dudes on espnews for some actual action of an actual sporting event.
Posted from
United States -
I wrote a comment yesterday on the Thursday blog Chivas vs. DC. I was the first comment on there a wrote how muchi hate the fact that ESPN does that crap. They are disrespecting the game. Ive never seen it happen for other sports in little balls making it thru 18 wholes and 3 players standing 40yds from actino waiting for a ball to come by (wow how exciting baseball fans!).
Posted from
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What is the alternative? Versus, HDNet?
I do think ESPN is becoming lame for coverage of many sports and I am also an NFL, NHL, Golf, and college football fan. Sportcenter is starting to wane in my opinion (not sure what the ratings are doing?
It would be nice for another sports station to step up and compete directly with ESPN… I just don’t see an alternative for now. Versus did make a run at a big baseball contract against ESPN.
Posted from
United States -
This is funny to me. When it hit game time last night and the football game was still on, I freaked out! For the fourth time this season, I wrote to ESPN and told them they sucked! Actually my words were a little bit stronger, but I did say what I thought! Here is a league that everyone knows is trying to get bigger and here is a network that couldn’t care less. The least they could have done last night was put a little box in the corner of the screen with the game on. But that was obviously too much effort on there part. I was also wondering about the wrong score and team during half time. How hard is it to get something like that right! ESPN needs to make a decision, they either do it right or don’t do it at all.
Posted from
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You know, the ESPN commentating is pathetic, I agree - but I still don’t think removing the game from national basic-cable coverage will do anything good for soccer. Truth is that ESPN interest will fade now that the Beckham effect is wearing thin, but as bad as it is, I’d rather have bad commentating than have to tune to GolTV or FSC to even see the sport.
Posted from
United Kingdom -
prime time is kinda subjective. a 1030 spot on the east coast is a 730 one on the west.
either way, they need to start it promptly and either move the football game to espn classic or start the mls game there…either way, who cares… its the execution that sucks, not so much the broadcast.
Posted from
United States
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