Brand Central Station

ESPN Responds, but Its Leaders Hide

Okay, I’ve got to weigh in here. It’s easy for the media to get full of itself – and this is the perfect example. Let’s try to look objectively at this entire brew-ha-ha:

1) ESPN hires Rush Limbaugh to be a guest commentator on “Sunday NFL Countdown.” He brings no credentials other than he’s a fan of the game and he’s got a big mouth.

2) Limbaugh’s performance is dissed as being uninspired and non-confrontational (read: “not entertaining”).

3) Limbaugh dials it up a notch and goes political on the set.

4) None of the other commentators pick up on Limbaugh’s comments because – believe it or not – they’re football analysts, not political talk-show hosts. Limbaugh’s pass to his fellow commentators went right over their heads.

5) Someone rightly says Limbaugh was out of line, ESPN reacts and Limbaugh leaves the show claiming “he was ‘right’ all along” – no kidding, he’s so far right he makes Barry Goldwater look like a piker (rim-shot).

6) ESPN issues statements and the on-air analysts publicly apologize.

Some people (like Richard Sandomir of the NY Times) want more blood from ESPN. And my guess is that ESPN is, in an odd sort of sado-masochistic way, loving it. Here’s why …

ESPN’s Sunday NFL Countdown show is a cable television show – that means it gets only a fraction of the audience the other NFL pre-game shows gets. That’s why they added Limbaugh in the first place. Mess things up a little bit … cause a little bit of controversy … get people to try the show. The more people try the show, the better the ratings and the more ESPN can charge for advertising.

The only problem is that Rush Limbaugh wasn’t a very good football analyst. Hey, the guy is an entertainer. He has his right-wing radio show on talk radio (which gets way more media attention than it deserves given the general size of talk radio audiences) and admits himself that he has to be controversial in order to get people riled up and listening to him. But if he’s only talking football, he’s just not that good.

So, in order to get more people watching, Rush fell back to what he knew best: slam liberals and (most of all) the liberal media. He blew it by trying to couch his media slam in football terms. What was worse was that his panelist teammates didn’t see what he was doing and took him at face value as a football analyst. As a result, the ESPN regulars looked foolish (at best) and pandering to a racist policy (at worst).

I think the fact is the ESPN analysts are great football analysts and when given adequate preparation, Steve Young, Tom Jackson, Chris Berman and the rest can do a great job with feature stories, game breakdowns, etc. The fault of the ESPN producers was in not managing the Rush factor with the other show panelists. Just think how much more interesting that edition of NFL Countdown would have been if Jackson had called Limbaugh out on his comment. My guess is that Limbaugh would still have his job and everyone would be turning in next week to see how nasty everything gets on the set.

The fact is that ESPN knew why they hired Limbaugh in the first place – cause a stir. They also knew the way he causes a stir is to trumpet his own right-wing point of view and that often means going after what Limbaugh perceives as “the liberal media.” ESPN let Rush Limbaugh be Rush Limbaugh and got caught in the process.

Now the more people talk about it, the more attention (and Rush) get as a result. Sunday NFL Countdown’s numbers will go up, just because people will try to tune in to see what all the fuss is about. And, quite frankly, Rush will probably get a positive bounce out of this as well.

I guess not only Rush was/is right, but so are the producers at ESPN.

Mike Bawden

Brand Central Station

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