The Reviews Are In, ESPN's Signing Day "Disgusting"

So yesterday ESPN tore it's way through seven hours of National Signing Day coverage and people are rightfully a bit weirded out by the whole thing. Even ESPN's own employees....

“ESPN and USA Today are just all over this stuff like it’s the NBA Draft. I have always found it repulsive on some level. It's just disgusting the way they get so hyped up over this stuff and it’s just hype”- Michael Wilbon on PTI

They wanted to make it so much like the draft that they even stole the graphics from the process. It wasn't that they did a bad job covering the event, it was just that it was skeevish and downright boring. There were no real surprises and it came across as a bunch of kids not prepared for the media looking awkward and nervous. Via Patrick McManamon at Ohio.com...

ESPN actually promised seven hours of coverage of National Signing Day on ESPNU.

Now . . . ESPN is a master at hiring former players or coaches, dressing them up in a suit, teaching them to gesture with their hands and then having them sit and babble incessantly about the sport they used to play.

Evidence? Sean Salisbury.

But to sit a bunch of talking
heads up at a set for seven hours and talk about the decisions of 17- and 18-year-olds seems to have taken the ESPNization of the nation to new and ridiculous heights.

Look up ESPNization — a new word mind you — and the definition is simple: Taking any event, no matter how small, and treating it with seriousness light years beyond it's due.

Glad to see the rest of the world is catching on. Not every show is like this of course, but we're approaching dangerous territory when ESPN airs the MLS Draft and National Signing Day within a few weeks of each other.

In all seriousness I watched about 45 minutes before becoming completely confused about what was going on. At one point Mike Gottfried said something about Missouri and three other dudes jumped all over him for some reason. Just random and pointless.

(Oh and nice jab at Salisbury, Mr. McManamon...+1)

It's too early to turn teenagers into celebrities (Ohio.com)