OT: ESPN's not covering this one

[Fishy]

I've always imagined that it wouldn't be long before ESPN managed to kill someone with these contrived X-Game 'sports'. (Basically, the Milli Vanilli of sports.) And I always wondered how they'd cover it.

They have apparently managed to come very close - a 25 year old kid landed a snowmobile on his head and was hospitalized with a brain injury and an originally unseen injury to his heart.

His prospects of survival are not good and if you want to read about it, ESPN would rather you don't - after a weekend of force-feeding the X-Games on the crawl and on the front page of ESPN.com, this unfortunate bit of news is not to be found.

Pretending that driving a snowmobile up a ramp is a sport is a minor transgression compared with ignoring the inevitable when it happens. More important front page stories....

Randy Moss proclaiming himself the best ever.
Ashley Judd getting a divorce.
Brian Kelly's thoughts on Manti Te'o.

 

[CAHUSKY]

I don't know about that. I've seen the crash at least 5,000 times on various espn channels over the last 2 days and its the led story on their XGames web page. http://xgames.espn.go.com/ I just think XGames take a backseat to the Super Bowl, nba, etc

 

[NOTaDIME]

ESPN is an entertainment network. Period. They cover sports but they are in the business of entertainment which makes us sports fans cringe when they cover (or don't) the specifics of our interests.

 

[Fishy]

I don't know about that. I've seen the crash at least 5,000 times on various espn channels over the last 2 days and its the led story on their XGames web page. http://xgames.espn.go.com/ I just think XGames take a backseat to the Super Bowl, nba, etc

It takes a back seat to Ashley Judd's divorce, too. And some racist comments at a soccer game, a UK basketball game, Randy Moss popping off to the media, Greg Oden...i.e. not exactly critical news.

The only mention of the X-Games on the ESPN home page is a link to a photo gallery of the games hidden well below the 'fold'. Following your link only results in an article aggregated from the Associated Press on Sunday and Monday.

Buried by design. All weekend, these faux-games were worthy of leads on SportsCenter, placing in the crawl...now, not so much.

 

[Kitaman]

Here is another crash (1:20 mark) at the same event, same exact thing but the rider narrowly escaped. Its like a Russian roulette sport where you watch kids firing mostly empty weapons at themselves knowing that there is a bullet in the chamber. As for ESPN this unusual daredevil sport must be a money maker and no need to make problems for their cash cow. When the lawsuits come rolling in (waiver contract or not) things may change.

 

[61cygni]

Any statistics to compare injuries or deaths in this type of X-sport to boxing, luging, football, horseback riding, rodeos, surfing, etc?

Is this being condemned purely because people don't see it as a real sport?

 

[whaler11]

I finally had a scoop over ESPN.com. I knew Ashley Judd was getting divorced weeks ago.

 

[upstater]

Quite apart from the injury, now the Olympics are taking on some of the more fringe aspects of snowboarding and snow sports that started on X Games. It boggles my mind that they kicked baseball out, which is played by a significant number of Central and South Americans, and also Pacific Asians and Australians. And yet, they kicked baseball out because not enough of the stars play. As if the stars play tennis or soccer. They don't.

 

[Chuck]

The x games were cool at first because they captured what was really happening on the mountain with the best athletes. Like anything else, however, when there was enough money, there came specialization.

Some of the best freestyle jumpers can't ski. They're basically gymnasts. My understanding of the snowmobile guys is that most of them are motocross guys that never even see snow. When I (stupidly) try to do a little trick on a bump, the worst I could typically do is break a bone. The stuff these x games guys are doing are so big it's totally foreseeable that there will be major damage upon inevitable failure.

To Fishy's point. Crashes sell. Comebacks sell. Death and disfigurement turns people off. I'm sure this guy will get mentioned with hushed tones on ESPN, but it will be the little aside update rather than a major story.

 

[B1GEast]

I've always imagined that it wouldn't be long before ESPN managed to kill someone with these contrived X-Game 'sports'. (Basically, the Milli Vanilli of sports.) And I always wondered how they'd cover it.

They have apparently managed to come very close - a 25 year old kid landed a snowmobile on his head and was hospitalized with a brain injury and an originally unseen injury to his heart.

His prospects of survival are not good and if you want to read about it, ESPN would rather you don't - after a weekend of force-feeding the X-Games on the crawl and on the front page of ESPN.com, this unfortunate bit of news is not to be found.

Pretending that driving a snowmobile up a ramp is a sport is a minor transgression compared with ignoring the inevitable when it happens. More important front page stories....

Randy Moss proclaiming himself the best ever.
Ashley Judd getting a divorce.
Brian Kelly's thoughts on Manti Te'o.

Sport or no sport, the X games are profitable for the empire, they are cheap to produce, there will always be tape delayed x games on one one their many networks. Those dumb europeans love that .

 

[Dove]

The x games were cool at first because they captured what was really happening on the mountain with the best athletes. Like anything else, however, when there was enough money, there came specialization.

Some of the best freestyle jumpers can't ski. They're basically gymnasts. My understanding of the snowmobile guys is that most of them are motocross guys that never even see snow. When I (stupidly) try to do a little trick on a bump, the worst I could typically do is break a bone. The stuff these x games guys are doing are so big it's totally foreseeable that there will be major damage upon inevitable failure.

To Fishy's point. Crashes sell. Comebacks sell. Death and disfigurement turns people off. I'm sure this guy will get mentioned with hushed tones on ESPN, but it will be the little aside update rather than a major story.

ESPN is hedging that the kid will survive and get right back on that sled for the next Winter X Games. What a story that would be!!!

 

[Robertelamin]

Quite apart from the injury, now the Olympics are taking on some of the more fringe aspects of snowboarding and snow sports that started on X Games. It boggles my mind that they kicked baseball out, which is played by a significant number of Central and South Americans, and also Pacific Asians and Australians. And yet, they kicked baseball out because not enough of the stars play. As if the stars play tennis or soccer. They don't.

The stars play in tennis. Andy Murray and Serena won in London.

 

[Northbound]

Sport or no sport, the X games are profitable for the empire, they are cheap to produce, there will always be tape delayed x games on one one their many networks. Those dumb europeans love that .

Actually, they are barely barely profitable. Endemic adversities typically don't have large marketing $ and the dollars they do have are spend on athletes, so they kind of get x for free. Its costs more than you think to put on that event in aspen and la, as well as the new global locatons. They don't rate real well so the draw to major advertisers is limited. One benefit is that there are no rights fees so ESPN has content that can be repurposed across platforms which helps penetrate a somewhat vertical market.

 

[Palatine]

If you want to get real about it. How many kids are killed or paralyzed playing football every year? I'm sure it is many multiples of snowmobile competition injuries.

 

[Husky25]

There's a couple reasons that baseball and Softball were not Olympic sports.

The most logicial is that MLB, (You know the best players in the world?) would have to take a month off during the stretch run. It can be argued that these guys wouldn't be eligible anyway with the amount of PEDs that they down, but they are still the best.

The real reason that baseball and softball are not in the Olympics is that they are dominated by the Americas and the Pacific rim, while the European countries don't mount any tangible challenge. The IOC is dominated by Europeans. The math becomes simple.

Baseball and Softball won't be played in 2016 either, but there is a push for 2020. Apparently the IOC wants 30- man rostered Major Leaguers. Well...see above for two reasons that probably won't happen.
http://nbcsports.msnbc.com/id/8504326/site/21683474/

 

[Husky25]

Actually, they are barely barely profitable. Endemic adversities typically don't have large marketing $ and the dollars they do have are spend on athletes, so they kind of get x for free. Its costs more than you think to put on that event in aspen and la, as well as the new global locatons. They don't rate real well so the draw to major advertisers is limited. One benefit is that there are no rights fees so ESPN has content that can be repurposed across platforms which helps penetrate a somewhat vertical market.

Profitable is profitable. On a more global level, it definitely brings exposure to the activities involved, which makes the sponsoring equipment companies more profitable.

 

[Northbound]

It may make the sponsoring companies more profitable, not espn (x profit is a rounding error within espn and Disney). There are multiple revenue streams associated with x and none of them alone or combined make anything meaningful. It's not a big money maker regardless of how you look at it, but the global expansion may change that.

Nobody is building their brand on x except for the athletes and that's simply because it's still the largest action sports stage in the world and having espn behind action sports across multiple platforms helps legitimize the category and the athletes.

X started with sports like street luge (guys racing slelds on the streets)(street luge) in Newport, RI and crashing into hay bales. It was always fringe and counter culture sports that have now become more mainstream. Good for them for having the vision and commiemt to stick with it.

Regardless of who is or isnt making money those competitors are off the wall nuts.

 

[upstater]

There's a couple reasons that baseball and Softball were not Olympic sports.

The most logicial is that MLB, (You know the best players in the world?) would have to take a month off during the stretch run. It can be argued that these guys wouldn't be eligible anyway with the amount of PEDs that they down, but they are still the best.

The real reason that baseball and softball are not in the Olympics is that they are dominated by the Americas and the Pacific rim, while the European countries don't mount any tangible challenge. The IOC is dominated by Europeans. The math becomes simple.

Baseball and Softball won't be played in 2016 either, but there is a push for 2020. Apparently the IOC wants 30- man rostered Major Leaguers. Well...see above for two reasons that probably won't happen.
http://nbcsports.msnbc.com/id/8504326/site/21683474/

The top soccer players don't play soccer in the Olympics either.

 

[Husky25]

The top soccer players don't play soccer in the Olympics either.

OIC = Dominated by Europeans
Baseball = Not dominated by Europeans

As I said, the math is pretty simple.

 

[arnie3]

Still, I think that some people here are missing Fishy's point, the story was buried by ESPN because it was not in their best interest to run a story that makes them look bad. Unfortunately for all of us, life does deal us an occasional bummer that we have to deal with. ESPN decided to bury the story because it might call into question their intelligence for airing this in the first place. And they wouldn't want to have to deal with bad pub. So they decided to bury the story. The fact was though, that they helped create it in the first place!
I think that's the point of all of this......

 

[huskyniner]

ESPN isn't forcing these guys to compete in the games. They know the risks.

 

[CL82]

Here is another crash (1:20 mark) at the same event, same exact thing but the rider narrowly escaped. Its like a Russian roulette sport where you watch kids firing mostly empty weapons at themselves knowing that there is a bullet in the chamber. As for ESPN this unusual daredevil sport must be a money maker and no need to make problems for their cash cow. When the lawsuits come rolling in (waiver contract or not) things may change.

Crimeny that thing almost took his freaking head off. It hit his visor so what is that maybe 4" from being killed.

 

[partial]

ESPN isn't forcing these guys to compete in the games. They know the risks.

That's not really a good argument i'm sure you could get people to kill each other on live tv without having to force them; doesn't mean a network should do it, or that they aren't morally culpable for what happens in some way.

 

[Fishy]

Still, I think that some people here are missing Fishy's point, the story was buried by ESPN because it was not in their best interest to run a story that makes them look bad. Unfortunately for all of us, life does deal us an occasional bummer that we have to deal with. ESPN decided to bury the story because it might call into question their intelligence for airing this in the first place. And they wouldn't want to have to deal with bad pub. So they decided to bury the story. The fact was though, that they helped create it in the first place!
I think that's the point of all of this......

Thank you.

That is exactly my point.

This entire X-Game concept is completely driven by ESPN. The level of coverage on ESPN and Sportscenter outweighs actually interest in the events simply because the news coverage is purely promotional by nature - Sportscenter viewers are not tuning in at 11 pm to find out who won the men's snowmobile flipping finals. (Not the first example of this - ESPN never included Euro soccer in the crawl or on the ESPN.com scoretab until ESPN had a contract to show those games.)

Now that one of their contrived sports has managed to put a kid on death's doorstep, ESPN essentially goes radio-silent. There is an excellent article on the front page of the Washington Post that covers some of the same concerns I have with the very nature of some of these 'sporting' events - flipping a snowmobile is not a sport, it's a stunt and stunts go wrong.

By my point, again, is that ESPN looks like they're trying to hide a body here.

 

[Northbound]

Thank you.

That is exactly my point.

This entire X-Game concept is completely driven by ESPN. The level of coverage on ESPN and Sportscenter outweighs actually interest in the events simply because the news coverage is purely promotional by nature - Sportscenter viewers are not tuning in at 11 pm to find out who won the men's snowmobile flipping finals. (Not the first example of this - ESPN never included Euro soccer in the crawl or on the ESPN.com scoretab until ESPN had a contract to show those games.)

Now that one of their contrived sports has managed to put a kid on death's doorstep, ESPN essentially goes radio-silent. There is an excellent article on the front page of the Washington Post that covers some of the same concerns I have with the very nature of some of these 'sporting' events - flipping a snowmobile is not a sport, it's a stunt and stunts go wrong.

By my point, again, is that ESPN looks like they're trying to hide a body here.

Good god, I hope nobody is surprised that a media entity is operating in a manner that is self-serving and protects their own interests. I'd be surprised if they didn't. It for sure sucks, but it's also reality, unfortunately.