Michael Wilbon, a member in good standing of the legacy sports media, has broken ranks to publicly admit what so many outside the media already know: The major sports media networks have ruined college football.
On Monday’s edition of his ESPN show, Pardon the Interruption, Wilbon turned his critical ire towards Fox Sports for “EXAGGERATING THE HELL OUT OF EVERYTHING” in their quest to hype last weekend’s college football action. Specifically, Fox Sports’ attempt to turn Arch Manning into an icon before his first start as official QB1.
“I don’t want mass media, major media, networks, including people that we like to call our friends, to just ruin the watching of college football for me, the consumption of college football, by EXAGGERATING THE HELL OUT OF EVERYTHING,” Wilbon said. “By overstating everything.”
“Arch Manning is not Peyton or Eli or Archie, just yet. Just let him simmer a little bit. Jeremiah Smith, he is not Jerry Rice just yet. I heard somebody, who I probably like a lot, probably somebody I covered, say, ‘He’s the best college football player I’ve ever seen.’ You know what my recommendation would be? Then watch more college football over the last 50 years because he ain’t the best I’ve seen.
“Can we just stop. The greatest weekend of… all of it was just slobbered over.”
Now, while Wilbon is entirely correct in pointing out the hysterics of the Fox Sports broadcasters who had the Texas-Ohio State game on Saturday, his criticism could have been equally spent and correctly given to his own network, which spared no expense and left no platitude behind in their promotion of Bill Belichick’s return to the sidelines in North Carolina’s game against TCU.
For much of the night, ESPN spoke of nothing but Belichick, his aura, his many celebrity friends in attendance, and essentially pretended that TCU didn’t even exist.
This left broadcasters Kirk Herbstreit and Rece Davis scrambling when TCU ruined the ESPN party by blowing out the Heels 48-14, much to the delight of those sickened by the coverage.
But, I digress.
Wilbon’s central point, even if only narrowly applied, is entirely accurate: The media presentation of college football has become a multi-hour yuck and hype fest that resembles a circus more than anything associated with actual sports coverage. No statement is too absurd and no take is too hot, as long as it fuels the ratings and social media buzz for what has become the nation’s second most popular sport.
To be clear, not everyone is part of this vile hype machine: Joel Klatt, Kirk Herbstreit, this is not directed at you.
But those few and far between voices of sanity are frequently drowned out by the hysterical bleatings of hot-take artists bent on creating hysteria. It’s about time someone pointed it out.
