ESPN Screamer Still
Gets His Weak On
One Great Season
Bless my mother's heart.
I'll always consider Sports Illustrated to be the Bible of sports magazines, but I terminated my subscription to it this year because, like most people, I read everything online nowadays.
But for my big birthday that you -- yes, you -- never sent a card for two weeks ago, she was sweet enough to get me a subscription to ESPN The Magazine. And it only took until the early pages of the second edition to remind me why I stopped picking this one up some years ago: Stuart Scott's Two Way.
Before he even addresses the first question, you're greeted with what ESPN thinks is a cool, hip little challenge: "This is Stu's private chat room. You can holla at him ... If you make the cut."
Ooooooohhhhhhh. Making the cut into Stu's private chat room. Where do I sign up to holla?
But then you get a couple questions in and find a fair inquiry from August, of Tom's River, N.J., asking if Stu thought LeBron James's "The Decision" was "an exercise in narcissism," and even compared it to a production of "The Bachelorette."
In his 234-word reply that was littered with misspellings, Stu never once came close to speaking critically of LeBron James. He did blast Dan Gilbert for the strong comments the Cavaliers' owner made after James announced his decision on that disgusting ESPN LeBrasm special. Sure it drew a huge audience and Stu even pointed out its 7.6 rating in his reply to August, but I wish this dude would one time go out on a limb and blast an athlete.
I realize the role and tone of much of sports media have changed the last 15 years, thanks in no small part to Stu's employer. It's why we have guys who are supposed to be unbiased anchormen sharing, well, their biases in private online chat rooms. Disagree? Well, Stu did call Dan Gilbert "an idiot." So there's very local proof, if you need it, that Scott does have some leash to speak freely. (For more evidence, see: Boo-Ya.)
But for him not to speak one critical word about LeBron just perpetuates one of the many reasons why most people I know turn the set when puckered-lipped Stu comes on, and to a larger degree, why they no longer watch ESPN at all. A few of these cats are so worried about being boys with the guys they cover that the idea of doing an honest job too often is a secondary consideration.
I get that a high-profile ESPN employee like Stu isn't going to wholeheartedly torch the subject of one of the WWL's most successful shows of the year. But his own colleague, Ryan Burr, who hosted the hour-long preview show that led into "The Decision" that night, told this very website last month that "There's no doubt in my mind that LeBron went about it the wrong way and he came off about as bad as he could have come off."
And that wasn't Burr being rebellion; that was merely a man with eyes, ears and a brain reaching the same honest conclusion that just about everyone else in America shared.
Once again, it's not the decision that has turned so many people off. It was "The Decision," the circus, that has cost LeBron countless fans and perhaps will cost ESPN to a degree in the long run. And for Stu not to acknowledge any of that makes him little better than the attention-starved Jenn Browns of the world who are just there to be on TV like a care-free 5-year-old on a swingset.