Amen, I didn't even realize it until I went to Deadspin this morning and I've been up and watch SC since 9:30.

I agree, it was god damned embarrassing to turn on ESPN news this morning. I woke up to check Taylor's condition and was treated to 10 minutes of NBA highlights with that fucking little box in the corner that said "Sean Taylor Dies."

We can't get in the way of NBA highlights, not by a little something like the death of a major star. Fuck ESPN.

I hope you don't mind me using some excerpts from this (I'll put a direct link), ArmchairGM hates when I bash ESPN.

To be only slightly fair, Kuselias and Golic talked about the death to lead every segment from 6 a.m. to the end of the show. They had on a bunch of people, and even non-NFL segments included questions about the death and the reaction.

I hate the Leader's tendencies, too, but M&M was the one thing on the air this morning on the family of networks that kept it in perspective at least a little bit.

AA, I feel your pain. Sean was my favorite player on my favorite team, too. But football isn't important in a time like this. It's a damn shame that the kid left us so young.

As much as I bash Mike and Mike they are about the only source of actual sporting news left on the Leader. Well if you can get past all the promos.

No problem Mookie and I feel you GMoney.

I agree what a sad day for every football fan. Obviously ESPN has no clue what just happened, Sean Taylor died at the age of 24. All I have heard is an opening segment on NFL Countdown yesterday, that was it! It's a disgrace.

I cannot speak of the Mike and Mike show but I bet Golic brought up the topic a significant amount. I would think the Mike Tirico show would too, but how Sportscenter just keeps on running replays yet when A-Rod signs a new contract we get live coverage 24/7 is just plain sick.

Here it is.

http://www.armchairgm.com/ESPN%27s_Coverage_of_Sean_Taylor%27s_Death_%22Shameful%22_According_to_One_Blogger

A-Rod wins an MVP award that everybody knows he's going to win, and gets a one-hour Sportscenter Special.

A star NFL player is murdered and it gets a 60 second cut-in before Sportscenter.

This is absolutely terrible

To the people that run ESPN, human beings are merely objects.

It has got to be one of the most callous organizations. But that goes for NBC, ABC and the rest. They consume the humanity in everything around them.

Pathetic. Maybe Sean's death would have gotten more coverage if he was found with a young white girl who was crying about being raped. Cynical? Not really. Sex sells according to the asshole producers at ESPN.

The people at ESPN are nothing more than vampires and parasites. Is it just one asshole over there that creates this culture? I wonder...

first time poster, but i do have to say first take has had several segments on sean taylor so far this morning. the first 15 minutes of the show featured him, including 1st and 10, they interviewed several players that they had scheduled days earlier about taylor (Kyle Turley and Fred Taylor), his high school coach, Larry Coker, and ran an obituary piece on him... i normally agree with everything thats posted here, but i'd say first take did something right here.

Condolences to Redskins fans. Now the question is, do people who say they hate ESPN use this as the final straw and just stop watching it?

Anon- I agree wholeheartedly....I've been watching First Take and I have to say they're doing to best job they can on the fly.

You're upset with ESPN -- just like you say they overcover the Yankees and Red Sox. But you STILL watch! WHEN WILL YOU LEARN there's thousands of other places to get scores and highlights without the bias, etc.
TURN OFF ESPN!!!

hypocrites.

where was all this love for for cory lidle. all i got was jokes and jokes today. deadspin is bullshit. when lidle died or anyone dies all they do is crack jokes. where is walsh's post.

Didn't ESPN report on Lidle for an entire Sports Center? Hmm. New York right???

Anon- That's about the time I stopped commenting on Deadspin. People have to understand when to draw the line.

I'm no fan of ESPN, but I don't know what that blogger is talking about when he says they barely broached the subject during the game. During the game, he was in the hospital with no updates forthcoming. Despite that, they had numerous cut-ins and updates. I don't know if he didn't see them because he was switching to local news for updates or what, but I don't know how anyone who watched the game could say they barely broached the subject.

I wake up every morning to Mike and Mike on espn2 and I will tell you that they talked about Sean Taylor considerably today. Mike Golic began the show with some very somber words and said that they were only recently getting news and didn't want to misreport anything and they were trying to get people on the phone. John Clayton was on the phone with them when I left for work. I couldn't listen in the car because I live in the DC area and espn radio was doing local coverage, but the espn radio sportscenter lead ins mentioned his death. The lead ins with Michael Kim also discussed Sean Taylor. I wasn't watching the other channels so I'm not trying to be an apologist for espn, I just think it's fair to mention that at least one program was discussing Taylor's death.

bs i saw your handle 2 weeks, but no called out leitch. now his punks can call out everybody.

funny I listened to Mike and Mike this morning and the majority of the program was devoted to Sean Taylor.

blogger with rae curreth you have no business talking shitlook at your avatar. He killed his girlfriend and baby. Yet, he is your aatar.

what about all the curreth jokes, I guess his baby and girlfriend can be made of fun of?

Sports Center and ESPN News barely broached the subject this morning. One minute lead-ins do not count as actually reporting, and every Redskins player reaction ESPN has shown has come from Comcast which aired them yesterday in the middle of the day.

was bspn supposed to pull a fox and have him walking and out of a coma. i hope that post is coming up real soon.

AA and Skins fans I'm sorry for your loss it's a true tragedy. The only reason I have for lack of info last night by ESPN was there was nothing new to add as the family wanted no info released by the hospital. Not that that's stopped them in the past.

ESPN must be worried as hell that they're going to lose money on MNF. Not only is SC et al. a constant shil for the game, but the usually decent Hashmarks (an ESPN football blog) kicks it up from its usual 4-6 posts a day about a variety of teams to about 50 on Monday, all of which are about the upcoming game. Embarrasing.

Sportstalk 980 in DC is covering the death of Sean Taylor with dignity and style. As I'm working at home this morning, I've been able to listen to Mike Wilbon, local radio personalities Doc Walker and Andy Pollin and their guests discuss the challenges faced nowadays by professional athletes and young Black men. It's been an educational discussion, fueled by a combination of passion and intelligence. Sadly, as Doc Walker comments, all the words will be forgotten in a few days, and we'll all go on as before.....

You can listen in via internet: http://sportstalk980.com Registration is required but straightforward.

I watched Mike & Mike a bit this morning and it's all they talked about. From the sound of it, First Take is all over it too. At the risk of sounding insensitive, is it so bad that Sportscenter actually went ahead and showed sports highlights? Yes, Taylor died and it's tragic, but how much can you dwell on it? From the sound of it, it seems you think all three ESPN channels should have been solely devoted to the story. Well, their goal is to serve up the sports news that viewers want -- that's how they make their money. Personally, once I've heard the news and the few details available about the circumstances, I don't want to wallow in depressing retrospectives/reaction pieces all morning.

But then again, maybe I'm just insensitive.

Matt- One ESPN entity barely talked about the subject on television and that was Cold Pizza/First Take. As much as M&M may have talked about it, that was still radio. ESPN Radio doesn't really get the same number of listeners it used to.

Coverage here in DC had reports from the hospital all last night, and player interviews that ESPN used in it's coverage. For all of the reporting it did on the Mike Vick incident, including the "Town Hall" meeting they held, it seems odd they wouldn't want to send even one reporter to ESPN.

I mean Ed Werder isn't busy...oh that's right...he's in Dallas sending in reports for a game that's two days away.

ain't this a bitch, they show sports and don't hammer something into the ground. that is what bloggers want. and they still get yelled at

To Miami not ESPN I meant.

Hammering something into the ground like how bad the field was last night during last night's MNFer?

Not reporting something at all is a little different than hammering it into the ground.

all those morning shows should be ashamed. they should be talking about our soldiers who are just as young and dying so he can have a family.

I'm trying to find more info on the shooting but can't find any on ESPN. How come the Worldwide Leader isn't doing a Sportscenter special like they did for Cory Lidle's death, the naming of the AL MVP, Joe Torre resigning, A-Rod re-signing, Barry Bond's indictment, or just to debate the future of the Yankees?

Really surprised at the lack of coverage on this story.

god rest Sean Taylor... this is very tragic and should recieve precedence over anything. Wilbon can burn in hell that condesending jack-ass...

Woke up this morning to the news that he had passed and was hoping Sportscenter could give me more information. Watched for about 40 minutes without a single word from the top sports show in the world about the number one sports story in the world. I would have turned on Mike and Mike except that I'm not a huge fan.

They don't need to beat it into the ground, just give some information as to what happened. I live in D.C. so eventually I turned on Comcast Sports which had detailed up to date information as they should. And MNF was a joke last night, I felt like they avoided Sean Taylor's incident the way they avoided PacMan's incident which are COMPLETELY different things...

tom your an idoit.

why don't are soliders stop and lower the flag for him. how come their deaths don't come first.

what about all the kids who die from drive bys.

Awful-
I don't think it's fair to compare this to the Vick coverage. Vick was one of the league's marquee names playing the marquee position. Your local Washington stations SHOULD have better coverage. This is a much more local story than Vick or something of that sort. That being said, my guess is that once more details come out on what happened, especially if it turns out it was more than a botched robbery, more attention will be paid.

Secondly, I don't think you can just call M&M radio anymore since they're also on espn2. That's where I saw them.

As for the Lidle comparisons... my guess is that the sensationalism of a plane crashing into a building combined with NY media bias is why that story got so much air time.

P.S. I'm not normally an ESPN defender.

Matt- Points taken. Doesn't matter if you're an ESPN defender or not...thanks for taking the time.

That goes for everyone who's taking an effort to weigh-in.

It was just awful this morning. I was watching Fox News as I normally do, and straight up 6:00, there was an alert mentioning and going into some detail, with updates as more was known. Meanwhile I kept flipping back to ESPN and ESPNEWS, nothing. I understand that it's 6AM, and they're just showing replays, but I thought they always had someone on standby at all times. The least they could have done was gone to a M&M simulcast since they were live and could have provided updates until someone else could've came in.

This whole running repeats of SC shows until 3PM Eastern was eventually going to bite ESPN in the ass, and the poor coverage of Taylor if you watched ESPN proper or ESPN News is what happened -- they got caught flat-footed because he died early in the morning and I bet the calls to adjust the break-ins for coverage are usually made the night before.

It's times like this that I think ESPN should try and modify First Take slightly to get more highlights in, extend the show for a bit longer length to accomodate said highlights and scoreboards, and put it on ESPN rather than running repeats of the late SportsCenter.

Thanks for the thoughtful post and comments abut Sean Taylor. My thoughts and prayers are with Sean Taylor's family and friends and the Redskins organization.

Peace,

James

I bet if it was Tom Brady or Peyton Manning, they would have an hour long Sportscenter dedicated to his life.

ESPN as usual, pushing its own agenda.

Anon 6:05

Why don't you go kill brady and manning, to see if it is true.

I love these commentators who talk about beating up, killing, bombing, raping players, coaches, announcers. Now you are sesentive.

What if this was irvin

You have to understand the time of day that Taylor died and take into account why you didn't see ESPN doing more this morning. The fact is that First Take and Mike & Mike are the only shows on-air at that time. SportsCenter and ESPNEWS are re-running last night's episodes, and majority of ESPN staff isn't in the building that early. Of course the morning news shows devoted more time to it - their staff is in place and equipped to handle live news at that hour, and Bristol's isn't. After all, there's usually no reason to have any staff sitting around Bristol at 7am.

There are plenty of things to be upset at ESPN for. This isn't one of them.

I am an Eagles fan. I didn't care much for Sean Taylor....as a player.

As a human being, I feel awful for his family, especially his young daughter. I was thinking about the game a few weeks ago against the Eagles when he was hurt, and the shot of him walking off the field and down the tunnel. Little did we know that would be it for him as a player.

May God Bless his soul.