SportsCenter Losing Center

SportsCenter has jumped the shark. I hate to say that; SC has been a part of my life since high school when it looked like this:

SportsCenter was a groundbreaking program then and has continued to be the worldwide leader in sports journalism for more than 30 years. These days, my SC viewing is less frequent than it used to be, but I still tune in regularly to keep up-to-date with Stuart Scott's wardrobe and the latest SC anchor catch phrases (Yahtzee!) But my two most recent virtual visits to Bristol left me disappointed, not at the quality of the prose or presentation (I still love to hear Scott Van Pelt intone "useful"), but with shifting SC journalistic standards. I think SportsCenter is failing in two areas: hard work and fairness.

Work Ethic

I tuned in SC one weekday morning several days ago expecting to see an hour's worth of game recaps, highlights, trend stories and maybe some colorful commentary from irate sports figures. Instead, I watched at least 15 solid minutes of Robert Griffin III stretching at Redskins OTAs. Stretching! While I watched RGIII touch his toes, I listened to a team of "experts" talk about the physical, mental and relational aspects of his return to action which is expected to happen in August. I was watching in May.

I realize the NFL is the biggest of big sports and that RGIII's injury is a big story on a big stage, but I couldn't help but wonder, "Weren't there any baseball games last night? Aren't NBA and NHL playoffs going on? Wasn't there tennis or cycling or curling or cheese-wheel-chasing to discuss? And even if there aren't game stories, wouldn't this be a good time to unveil some stellar reporting from some of the best and highest-paid sports journalists on the planet? Instead of any of those options, SC is giving way to Pundits-On-Parade and I think the reason is simple: it's easier. It's much cheaper and faster to bring an "expert" in studio and let him blather on for five minutes over B-roll of stretching exercises than it is to send a reporter into the field to conduct interviews, research information, gather quotes, look for themes, and dig out real stories. I think we're seeing ESPN's journalism getting soft.

Fair Play

And now SportsCenter is choosing sides. One of the most important and nuanced responsibilities of any news outlet is gatekeeping. Fair and balanced reporting isn't just about how stories are reported, it's about which stories are reported. The second discouraging experience I had with SportsCenter happened yesterday when I watched a six-minute segment in which SC anchor Hannah Storm interviewed Baltimore Ravens linebacker Brandon Ayanbadejo about his political views. The news peg for this interview was that Ayanbadejo and his teammates visited the White House this week to be congratulated by the president on their Super Bowl victory. It's a time-honored tradition and a worthy news story. I broke down the interview topics below:

• Ravens visit to the White House - one question, 30 seconds
• Ravens receiving Super Bowl rings - one question, 15 seconds
• Ayanbadejo's career - one question, 45 seconds 
• Gay rights - six questions, four minutes

In fairness, I will point out that this turn of events may have caught my attention because I happen to disagree with Ayanbadejo. I like to think that I would see the bias in SC's approach even if I agreed with the agenda they were promoting, but I will acknowledge that I'm human and less prone to cry "foul" when the foul supports my position.

But my beef with SC isn't which political agenda they are pushing, it's that they are pushing one at all. By any journalistic standard, this was ideological gatekeeping. Here's why: Google "Ravens visit White House" and eight of the top nine results will be about the team's starting center. Matt Birk declined the White House invitation as an act of protest against the administration's support of state-funded abortion. That's news. When a prominent sports figure (the starting center for the Super Bowl champion team certainly qualifies) declines an invitation to the White House as an act of civil resistance, it's worth covering. Every major news outlet in the country agreed. They all covered Birk's absence: CBS Sports, Huffington Post, Los Angeles Times, Yahoo! Sports, Baltimore Sun, USA Today, MSN, Sporting News, and dozens more. But in an hour-long program whose purpose is to cover the major sports news of the day, ESPN couldn't find the time.

And this wasn't an accident. There was a conversation somewhere in the Bristol newsroom to highlight the gay marriage issue instead of the abortion issue. How do I know? Because those are exactly the conversations that happen in every newsroom. It's what newsrooms are for. To suggest that such a conversation never happened is to suggest that SportsCenter producers are completely inept. There are two scenarios here: In the first, ESPN hadn't heard about the Birk boycott, or didn't grasp its news peg that every other major news outlet acknowledged. In this scenario, SC journalists are just bad at their jobs. The second scenario is that they had the conversation and decided to ignore the Birk story and replace it with manufactured news - a four-minute segment about a political position completely unrelated to any news peg. In this scenario, SC journalists are putting their own politics ahead of the news. As the old saying goes, "never let the facts get in the way of a good story."

Of course, this isn't new. For years now, news organizations across the country have been fleeing the fair-and-balanced center in a race to political extremes. It's nearly impossible to find journalists making an honest effort at balanced coverage whether they work at Fox News, CNN, major networks, or - sadly now - the worldwide leader in sports.

I'll still watch SportsCenter occasionally. I like to watch the Top 10 and roll my eyes at Steven A. Smith. But I'm afraid the Halcyon Days of Bob Ley and balanced reporting are fading like Joe Theismann's memory. If they can just get Jon Anderson on waterskis, SportsCenter might actually jump the shark soon. For now, I guess we'll have to tune in to Wipeout for that.