Rare whiff by ESPN ombud

It's more than just the populations (and ratings), although that's a big enough reason. On the east coast many people live by what their teams do. They eat that information up. The west coast could care less, as evidenced by LA not being able to keep an NFL team and the famous arrive late-leave early LA crowds.

I realize LA isn't the only west coast city and I'm making major generalizations, but there is a reason Fox Sports with its "regional" network hasn't made a bigger dent.

 

If this were a thread about CBS, I'd say my good friend micro has a solid point, but over the years I've seen no shortage of Pac-10 highlights on ESPN -- albeit late at night, of course, when the games are finally over. The time zone is indeed a factor.

 

Your first graf is nonsense, the second is accurate.
Ownership insanity is the reason there is no NFL here. The Rams drew well when they tried to win. But Georgia refused to try to win. The Raiders sold out regularly at the Coliseum.
As for baseball, the Dodgers and Angels will sell more than 7 million tickets this season. Arrive late, leave early, so what. People wouldn't go if they weren't interested.

 

Don't you march in here with all your facts and logic and whatnot. We won't stand for it.

 

Good point. They should change their slogan to "The World Wide Leader" (except for the Mountain and Pacific time zones and all other parts of the world where people who don't care about East Coast and Central professional and college teams play).

On another front, I was watching "SportsCenter" at my poker club. The sound was down, but the story, in honor of Michael Phelps, was "Top 10 athletes in history named Michael." OK, cute, it took 30 seconds. Then, AS GOD IS MY WITNESS, they did a phone interview with Mike Golic for his take on the top 10 Michael story.

Unbelievable.

 

She isn't independent anyway.

The whole concept of the "ombudsman" is nothing more than ritualized hand-wringing.

 

That's sickening. You play pro football, therefore you're qualified to answer questions like that one. Awesome.

 

If you watch the late night version of ESPN on Saturday, they get the Pac-10 highlights in and by by Pac-10 highlights I mean results from whomever USC is playing.
The problem with the Pac-10 is that exactly one team has national relevance.
That isn't to bash them, because the Big (11) 10 is in the same boat. Oregon-Oregon State might be huge because of the rivalry but if both teams are sniffing at .500, outside of the gamblers, not that many are going to care. The same is true in the SEC with, say, Ole Miss-Miss. State, but the difference is that the Ole Miss game will be over and with plenty of time to spare by deadline.
The other thing is that if you buy into the cult of ESPN, and believe they are the only network that matters, well knock yourself out, but you could make a decent argument that a college highlights package showed on CBS or Fox on Sunday during pregame or halftime of the NFL would get as many national viewers as ESPN's college football highlight show.

 

I'd settle for east and central if they would understand that the midpoint is the Mississippi and not the Hudson.

 

Extremely well put. It is exciting the Brewers occasionally crack the top 3 on Baseball Tonight these days, though I wonder if that would be the case if they were leading the division rather than chasing the Cubs. If the Cubs were in the cellar, would anyone care about the division at all? I say no.

 

Never said they weren't interested at all. Maybe those on the west coast have priorities in better order. Didn't say it was better or worse. If there was money to be made on a western-centric sports network, it would have been done. With a country that covers four time zones, it's hard to make everybody happy. Bottom line is there is a bias, but probably for good reason.

 

LA doesn't have the NFL because LA told the NFL, "We'd love to have you back, but you pay for the stadium."

The team would sell plenty of tickets, the suites would be snapped up, and there'd be more than enough money to keep any owner happy. But there's no reason for the city to pay for a stadium for a profit-making enterprise that brings very little revenue to town -- few full-time jobs, and the highest-paid employees (the players) generally live elsewhere.