ESPN yells "MORE COWHERD!"

SI's Richard Dietsch made an interesting catch in his Media Circus column at SI.com. ESPN has demoted "Outside the Lines" in favor of "Cowherd on Football." Now OTL will be on ESPN2 and at 8:00am.

As Dietsch put it

So, no, Outside The Lines is not being canceled, and yes, I'll expect to get (more) emails from ESPN PR telling me that OTL content will still be all over the brand. Sell that soap all you want, but the show was just significantly devalued by management. Just a shame.

I gotta tell you, if they didn't have the occasional live sports show, I'd never watch ESPN. The only smart TV they do is "College GameDay" and OTL. The rest, including "SportsCenter," is hype, drivel, and dudes yelling at each other. "Highly Questionable" is ok, but I'm not a fan of the format, as it seems a bit hokey (it's gotten better with Bomani Jones). It has gotten to the point that "Baseball Tonight" and their NFL coverage is as bad as "SportsCenter." They too often will latch onto something, whatever is hot, and run it to damn death. If you are not a fan of a team that sexy or doing something provocative, well screw you. You should have the good sense to buy a Jeter jersey.

As a common sports fan, I'm done with it. I love the "30 for 30" series and some of the Title IX stuff, but the brass at ESPN has decided that we are all just to dumb to deserve decent sports journalism. Too bad Buzz Bissinger is too busy buying leather to get worked up over that.

TD

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