Where's the intensity in ESPN?

If you are a sports fan and need your sports news fix, you have to watch ESPN's "SportsCenter" and its family of networks.\nCNN/SI is out of business. Fox Sports Net's "National Sports Net" was a total embarrassment before the network dropped it last February.\nSadly, but perhaps as expected, this lack of competition is terrible for the sports fan. Nothing could have been more apparent than what happened Sunday night.\nThe network allotted 90 minutes for "SportsCenter" even though all that happened that day was a couple of All-Star Games, six non-descript NBA games and a few interesting college basketball games. I tuned in wondering if maybe ESPN would examine some issues in sports that have received far too little play. Instead, what I got was about as informative as Britney Spears reciting the periodic table from memory.\nInstead of talking about the current controversy within the U.S. Olympic Committee, where so much bickering has occurred in recent weeks between USOC Chief Executive Officer Lloyd Ward and President Marty Mankamyer over the USOC board's decision not to punish Ward for trying to route a contract to produce power generators for the 2003 Pan American Games to Ward's brother's business, Stuart Boo Yah gave us the top ten plays of the NFL season instead.\nNot only did the USOC board clear Ward of wrongdoing in relation to the claim, but some board members came out and said that Mankamyer started the allegations of ethical misbehavior and had attempted to defame Ward. Stay tuned.\nInstead of talking about the current controversy between Marion Jones, Tim Montgomery and their new coach, Johnny Wise Guy showed the top ten plays of the first half of the NHL season instead. Jones, the world's fastest woman, and Montgomery, the world's fastest man, are both training together and dating. In December they jointly fired coach Trevor Graham just after USA Track and Field named Graham coach of the year. They replaced him with Derek Hansen, a Canadian coach with no sprinting experience but with a master's degree in applied science and biomechanics. Nothing seems fishy until you realize that Hansen is a front for Charlie Francis, Ben Johnson's former coach.\nJohnson, as you may remember, was the disgraced Canadian sprinter stripped of his 100-meter gold medal at the 1988 Olympics due to a positive steroid test, arguably the most heinous sports fraud since the 1919 Black Sox Scandal. Francis admitted to encouraging Johnson and said at the time, "It isn't cheating if everybody else is doing it."\nSports Illustrated's Tim Layden said about Francis, "Nothing has happened in (the) years since Seoul to wash the stink off Charlie Francis … Francis can be found all over the Web, espousing controlled drug use for elite explosive athletes, explaining that success is impossible without drugs."\nInstead of a look at the potential ramifications of the WNBA moving and selling one of its teams to a Connecticut-based casino, we get Linda Cohn's puff-piece interview of Rick Pitino on the "Sunday Evening Conversation."\nInstead of a complete report about the president's Commission on Opportunity in Athletics meeting last Thursday to make recommendations to Secretary of Education Rod Paige regarding what, if any, changes should be made to Title IX, we get a 90-second recap of the 90-minute "SportsCenter." Uh, guys, if we need a 90-second recap of "SportsCenter," maybe "SportsCenter" is too darn long to begin with.\nWhy is ESPN this way? For starters, they are the first U.S. TV network to carry all four major pro sports leagues (NBA, NFL, NHL and MLB) simultaneously. They also cover golf, tennis, bowling, soccer, college basketball and the Summer and Winter X Games, an ESPN creation designed to bring in the 18--34-year-old male. Therefore, their usual hype machine has grown exponentially. This week, we have the top NHL plays of the first half of the season. Soon, we will have the top NHL plays of the first 63.8 percent of the season. "SportsCenter" has to glorify its athletes so you will watch the games. That's why "SportsCenter" uses Michael Jordan scratching his butt as an excuse to run another MJ highlight montage. (For good measure, ESPN will find something historic about the butt scratch.) The same goes for Tampa Bay Bucs defensive lineman Warren Sapp, an overblown bag of hot air -- or is that incense? -- whose six positive marijuana tests got glossed over once ESPN grabbed exclusivity rights for the NFL.\nLook, I'm not asking for ESPN to become National Public Radio, though that wouldn't be bad. What I ask for is a teensy-weensy dedication to news judgment over the bottom line.\nOh, yeah, if they gagged Chris Berman's putrid shtick, I wouldn't mind that either.