The ESPYs, 2011

July 14, 2011July 17, 2011 / Jared / Leave a comment

Prior to blogging about last year’s show I had never bothered to watch the ESPYs. I mean, it’s the ESPYs, right? Come on, ESPN, the ESPYs? What a stupid name!! Plus, why do we need an award show for sports? I’m pretty sure we already have awards for sports. You know, like MVPs and championships.

But then I watched them, and wow, it was a lot of fun! Mostly because of all the great montages. I love a good montage, and ESPN is really good at putting them together. Plus, Seth Meyers is hosting, there is sure to be a bunch of weird, awkward celebrity/athlete pairings, and it’s a slow Wednesday night. What else do I have going on? I’m in.

The ESPYs are also perfect for the award show winner-picking competition between my wife Johanna and I, because she has absolutely no idea what’s going on. She claimed not to have heard of any of the boxers until I pronounced Manny Pacquiao’s name for her, and she’s currently Googling the names in the “Best Jockey” category. As I said last year, if I don’t win this one, it’ll be embarrassing.

As always, in addition to blindly picking a “Best Bowler,” she is also in charge of making us a themed cocktail for the evening. She’s whipping something up with gin, lemonade, and a splash each of cranberry juice and sparkling water and calling it the “Derrick Rosé” in honor of the man who has managed to steal the title of “Jared’s Sports Crush” away from Albert Pujols.

Categories and winners are in bold, and I’ll be keeping score as we go along. Let’s get started. Play ball! Kickoff! Tip off! Puck drop, or whatever!

9:01 – You know you’re watching a seriously classy event when it’s sponsored by a motor oil.

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The unparalleled sports coverage of the New York Times.

January 16, 2011January 23, 2011 / Jared / Leave a comment

The New York Times proves once again that it only pretends to like sports:

Because on game day what we all really want to read is an analysis of the opposing quarterbacks’ personal styles. At least the Jets vs. Patriots preview coverage features players that are currently alive. For the Chicago Bears they’re transporting us all the way back to the Great Depression.

I suspect that they run stories like this because they still regret their adoption of color photography back in 1997.

Someone should tell the editors that when you’re talking football you need to tap into fans’ deep-rooted anger, aggression, and bloodlust. The New York Post gets it.

Columnist Steve Serby considers anything short of the literal decapitation of the opposing team’s coach and quarterback to be a failure, regardless of the score.

At the very least, The New York Times needs to employ more pun headlines. ESPN has at least twelve people on their pun-writing staff at all times. Look at the gem they came up with today:

I think they might also need to hire a pun ombudsman; that headline can’t possibly be considered up to their standards of journalistic integrity. It took me a full minute to even realize that it was a play on “fair-weather friends.”

New York Times, I love you, but you’re doing it wrong.

10 Years of Page 2

November 6, 2010November 6, 2010 / Jared / Leave a comment

Image via Wikipedia

Deadspin points out that tomorrow is the tenth anniversary of ESPN.com’s Page 2, which has me reminiscing about my time spent online over the past decade. Page 2 was, at least for sports, the first source of online, well-written, free-wheeling opinion pieces that I read, I think, and I would suspect it contributed quite a bit to blogging culture as we now know it. I was familiar with David Halberstam, but I’m pretty sure I hadn’t ever heard of Hunter S. Thompson before he started writing for ESPN, which is a really bizarre way to be introduced to him.

And, of course, Page 2 introduced us all to Bill Simmons, who would eventually become a sports media behemoth and perhaps the premier star over at ESPN. I can’t believe I’ve been reading him for ten years. That sort of explains why he seems so old and vaguely out of touch lately.

Anyway, I like to make fun of ESPN, and I’ve certainly had a few laughs at Page 2 over the years, but here is just one more example of the network being ahead of its time. As if introducing the idea of 24-hour sports and fueling adoption of HDTV (and maybe 3D TV) weren’t enough. Kudos, Worldwide Leader.

[Via Deadspin]

The ESPYs, 2010

July 15, 2010February 16, 2011 / Jared / 4 Comments

So, I’ve never watched the ESPYs. I’ve actually never even thought about watching the ESPYs. I doubt I know anyone who has watched the ESPYs. They’re a non-event, kind of like the Daytime Emmys, except they seem even more artificial and tacky. (Note: I spent about five minutes trying to think of a joke about an imaginary Daytime ESPYs and came up empty. This is how I spend my time.)

That said, Johanna and I must soldier on in our 2010 award show winner-picking competition, so we’re going to slog through it. Luckily, Seth Meyers is hosting. Also, there will undoubtedly be ridiculously dressed athletes. And, as Bill Simmons always points out, women in high heels who are not used to wearing high heels. So that’s fun.

Let’s get this started. In the sporting, masculine spirit of the evening, Johanna and I will be sharing a bottle of 2009 D’Autrefois Pinot Noir Rosé. As always, categories and winners in bold.

9:00 – Picking winners in these categories was really hard; this has been a crazy exciting and dramatic sports year. Great Super Bowl, amazing March Madness, Phil Mickelson defeating his wife’s cancer at the Masters, a super-long tennis match, perfect games and no hitters, Celtics vs. Lakers, the World Cup. The Olympics were sort of meh, but hey, it’s still the Olympics.

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Commercials I Like

April 28, 2010April 28, 2010 / Jared / Leave a comment

My recent post about commercials that I find irritating might have led one to believe that I’m annoyed by commercials in general, but that’s really not the case. I find advertising sort of fascinating, and I get real enjoyment out of a well-made television commercial. In an effort to balance negativity with positivity, here are my thoughts on a few I’ve liked lately.

The ESPN campaign for the FIFA World Cup has a simple goal: alert unaware Americans, of which I’m sure there are quite a few, that the World Cup is coming soon and it will be televised on ESPN. They do that quite well, but they also accomplish a couple of secondary things, most notably convince skeptical American non-soccer fans that this is a really big deal and worthy of their attention, and get Americans that are already interested in soccer absolutely, foaming-at-the-mouth, crazy excited about it.

The first ad I saw them air is a nice, concise 30-second spot featuring footage from World Cups past and a simple voiceover. The key here, for me at least, is the use of “City of Blinding Lights” by U2, which is just the perfect song. It was also famously employed during the introduction of Barack Obama as the Democratic nominee for President back in 2008, a totally goosebump-inducing moment for me. I feel like a memo went out to all of the people that score things like this that this should be their go-to song.

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