Dear ESPN,
I'm probably long overdue in writing this missive, and for that I should apologize. Although I am sure that by now, you must have realized that this letter was coming. I know from my perspective, the writing has been on the wall for some time now, but events over the past few months have forced my hands to the keyboards.
I probably shouldn't beat around the bush anymore, so here it goes:
I think we should start seeing other people.
It's not you. It's me.
No, no. That isn't quite right; I would say that both of us are probably to blame for the change in this relationship. And sometimes that happens; people change. They drift apart. Interests that used to be shared just aren't there anymore. Quite frankly, I don't think that carrying on this long-term relationship is mutually beneficial anymore.
I know I've changed. I've discovered new outlets for accessing information, as SI.com and Yahoo! Sports have become much, much stronger voices in the sports media, with killer investigative reporting and feature writing. From a different perspective those lines, blog networks like Bloguin and SB Nation allow more fan voices to speak through, and the analysis that takes places on some of the fan sites on these networks outstrips a lot of the work that is done by ESPN.
(Disclosure: I am an author for a site on SB Nation's network of college blogs, Rock M Nation.)
My local sports radio station here in Las Vegas is one of the best sports radio stations in the country, and the mid-day shows Gridlock and DC and the Sunshine Man cover national sports with more edge than I could ever expect from Mike and Mike and with an intellectual honesty that is sorely lacking from the likes of Colin Cowherd.
My tastes have changed. The way I want to receive information has changed. The type of people I want to receive that information from has changed. But you have changed as well.
One of the things that made me realize exactly how far apart we had grown was when the book about ESPN by James Miller and Tom Shales came out in May and I had less than zero interst in the book. I mean, less than zero. Years ago I would have rushed right out to a bookstore and snatched up the first copy I could get my grubby little hands on. Now? I don't even want to look for it a the local libraries.
The second thing that made me realize how small a role ESPN plays in my life now is the fact that there are only three shows I watch on ESPN regularly that are not live sports: Pardon the Interruption, College Gameday (for football) and College Football Final. That's it, that's the list. I don't remember the last time I watched a whole SportsCenter from start to finish; it seriously might have been 2003. That was not the case years ago.
The third thing was when I logged onto ESPN.com and didn't realize that you had shifted some of the bloggers around to different beats and had actually added some new staffers. That blew me away.
The last thing that made me realize that we might have reached the end of the road was the situation with Bruce Feldman. I've never met Bruce Feldman, but I have been reading his writing since the nascent days of ESPN.com (back when it was still ESPN Sportszone). I've always found his reporting and writing to be solid; the essence of professional, quality sports journalism. Feldman is one of the few people that work for ESPN that, off the top of my head, I would love to meet and talk with.*
With that being said, the way that your organization treated him last week was unconscionable, and the bullshit spin that you put out after Twitter exploded with the #freebruce hashtag was abominable.
If Feldman was "never suspended" as your p.r. flacks and the terse, three sentence release stated, then a) why didn't you say so when contacted by other journalists Thursday night and, b) why did your statement mention Feldman was "resuming duties?" There is nothing to resume if there is nothing that was interrupted, which is what a suspension would have done.
Additionally, why was Bruce not allowed on his Twitter account and why was his chat skipped without explanation on Wednesday? Why did it take you a day to say he wasn't suspended if, he, in fact, wasn't suspended?
To an outsider, it looked petty. It looked small-minded. It looked wrong. It looked like it was badly mishandled by management.
Sadly, you've become a network that has little relevance in my life at this point, with few broadcast personalities that I care about or even pay attention to, and a management that (allegedly) treated one of their veteran writers harshly only to be rebuked publicly through blogs and social networks into (allegedly) reinstating him from a suspension that never happened. It's a tough pill to swallow, and quite frankly, I don't need that much drama in my life.
I'm moving on, although I hope that we can still be friends in the fall (for college football) and in the late spring/early summer (for the NBA Finals). Maybe you can put your money into reaching someone younger who is willing to overlook the flaws you have, and I'll find comfort in the arms of a wider variety of information sources.
Good luck, ESPN. I wish you the best.
Sincerely,
The Pigskin Pundit
(* The other ESPN folks I want to meet [in no particular order]: Kornheiser, Wilbon, Forde, John Anderson, Scott Van Pelt, Bob Valvano.)
