I Don't Even Know Who Bobby Boswell Is, But I Like Him
Sunday, August 12, 2007
You might have missed it due to lack of mainstream media coverage (note: tongue planted firmly in cheek), but David Beckham made his regular season MLS debut on Thursday in the Los Angeles Galaxy's 1-0 loss to DC United. "I have no standing to criticize--all I've written about today is the specter of Becks--but I did find it bizarre when the TV's in the press box showed several minutes of the great man's warm-ups while the game was still going on. I mean, I'm all for hype, but don't you at least have to keep the game in a box or something while you drool over the wondrous one's stretching routine? I'm pretty sure BSPN even missed a corner kick to cover the stretching."
"I'll tell you what [makes me mad]," he said. "If you watch SportsCenter today they were showing [highlights]. It was an ESPN-covered game. You would think they would show the highlights of the game, but the highlights were when Beckham warmed up, when he went in, a free kick...and then they just show him kind of after the game.
"And my whole point is, the goal was an exciting shot, there's a red card, there's a dirty foul: that's cool. There's a lot of chances. How do you just show him and they say, 'Oh, they lost 1-0.' What did anyone get out of that, you know what I mean? I don't know if the league has anything to do with it, but it's just going to turn into if Beckham does well, they're going to get some kind of coverage, and if not, it's just going to be a nightmare. It would have been better if he didn't come in and ESPN covered the game, so they had to show highlights. As it is now, what did anyone learn from watching that SportsCenter today? That Beckham played. That's it. They didn't learn anything else...."
6 Comments:
A little balance goes a long way when it comes to announcing.
I'm not attempting to defend ESPN here, but if you just took your information from Sportscenter, the only people in the sporting world that even exist are Tiger Woods, Tom Brady, David Beckham, LeBron James, Barry Bonds, A-Rod, and Mike Vick.
It's just the sad direction that show has taken more than anything. This is coming from someone though that has paid no attention to the Beckham in the U.S. saga and only watches the EPL and World Cup.
Why would ESPN focus on Beckham?
Apparently, he's not "now," right?
fyi...I heard that Joe Morgan invented soccer, played soccer, and won 6 World Cups.
ESPN doesn't know the first thing about covering soccer. It sickens me.
People in the US have no appreciation for the sport of soccer (it's not just limited to ESPN). As such, Beckham's arrival will usher in a very exciting two-week period of media coverage and widespread interest in soccer. Then we will all find something else to be interested in, and US soccer will go back to what it's always been: lame.
I'm a Beckham fan, and even I have to agree. It's too much on him and not enough on the game itself and the players.
He'd probably agree too!