The ironic thing about sports fans is that, typically, we’re not very big on soap operas.
The scandals, prima donnas and romances of daytime TV don’t usually draw the interest of people who like watching home runs, slam dunks and quarterback sacks.
Yes, we’re not soap opera fans, but every season, every year, we participate in one of the longest-running soap operas to date: sports news. Sporting news can often have the very same ingredients of a daytime soap.
Like scandals. How many would-be MLB Hall of Famers have been caught using steroids in the past six years?
Like prima donnas. How often does some flash-in-the-pan pro athlete publicly gripe about their contracts or playing time?
And romances. Romances are, by far, the most prevalent type of sports gossip in today’s media. Teams romance players, leagues romance sponsors and TV networks romance leagues.
In the mid-’70s, Los Angeles Times media critic David Shaw recognized the soap opera trend, stating that contemporary sports fans wanted to “know how ‘it’ happened, why or why not, what happened before or after ‘it,’ in the locker room, courtroom, the boardroom and the bedroom.”
I like to call this the ESPN effect.
More than any other network, ESPN is notorious for sports soap operas. Non-game stories are constantly perpetuated, exacerbated and sometimes manufactured in the interest of ratings.
But evidently there are some lines that even ESPN refuses to cross.
Last Monday, ESPN suspended “SportsCenter” anchor and ESPN Radio host Scott Van Pelt for criticizing MLB commissioner Bud Selig. Apparently, Van Pelt’s comments on Selig’s “slovenly” appearance and “exorbitant” annual salary of $18.5 million caused Selig to become “seriously offended,” as reported by SportsIllustrated.com.
Granted, I’m no expert, but it seems a mite hypocritical for a network, which profits on promoting gossip and slander, to suspend one of its own for expressing a “controversial” opinion.
The question that stands is why. Why would ESPN shelve one of their senior employees for “fair comment and criticism of a public figure,” something which my fellow journalism students and I have been taught is a right and necessity of the press?
Well, MLB currently has an eight-year, $2.4 billion contract with ESPN for the rights to “Sunday Night Baseball.” Maybe that factored into their decision regarding Van Pelt.
But that can’t be right. ESPN is supposed to be a top-tier specialty news source. The only justification they could offer for the suspension is that Van Pelt’s commentary didn’t fall under the “fair comment and criticism” clause that journalists live by.
Is Van Pelt calling Selig an overpaid slob that different from ESPN colleague Bill Simmons calling Cleveland Cavaliers forward Ben Wallace “wildly, perplexingly overrated,” as he did in a Jan. 29 column? Or is it that different from ESPN.com’s Page 2 staff calling New York Yankees first baseman Richie Sexson (I am not making this up) “the girlfriend who shaves her head, starts smoking three packs a day, quits her job . and starts sleeping with all your co-workers?” It doesn’t seem that way. Maybe if Wallace and Sexson were major stockholders at ESPN, Simmons and the Page 2 staff might feel the same pinch Van Pelt is feeling.
It’s disgraceful that ESPN is censoring its own staff in the interest of maintaining its romance with the MLB. As an aspiring journalist, it’s disturbing to think that my future career could be stymied by business interests, regardless of the quality of my work or the length of my service.

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