SportsCenter Features

Since we never miss a chance to take a shot at ESPN around here, I thought I'd bring up the fact that they've been doing some pretty good features this week, and they appear to just be about the story, not part of some My Wish theme or anything like that. They've also been the off the path type of things people say they want to see (woman who skied from the world's seven summits, kid who can do X-game type tricks on wheelchair -- it was a better story than that little description). Yet I haven't seen anyone mention this. It's kind of like readers who complain that the media is negative, but when you write a positive story you get almost no reaction.

Also, Tom Rinaldi is fantastic.

 

When they do stories like this and make a nice package out of them, it's tough to ignore. I give them credit for good presentation. But what bugs me is that it often seems like they do these stories after they've aleady been done elsewhere. If they were going out and actually finding all of these on their own, I'd be more impressed.

 

This is sort of what happens when they hire as many good people as they've hired. They've got some serious journalists aboard now.

 

I definitely liked the wheelchair feature, but I can't remember the last one I liked. I have enjoyed others, but I honestly can't recall when and what most were about. Let's hope this is the beginning of a good streak.

I've always enjoyed E-Ticket features, and they make ESPN's TV features seem lacking in comparison. In a case where they presented one story in both media: The deceased North Carolina mascot story from a few months ago ( http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/eticket/story?page=rayofhope ) was spectacular online but got drowned out by dopey piano music in the "E:60" version.

 

does it make me a bad man that I think Tom Rinaldi's prose reeks of movie of the week pap?

His "essay" after the Super Bowl was almost unlistenable.

And no, I couldn't carry Tom Rinaldi's laptop bag and I'm a sucky nobody. Just my opinion.