ESPN: Why I Keep Hanging On...

"I was a child, I spoke and thought and reasoned as a child..." or so Corinthians 13:11 tells us--no, no, don't worry, no Bible talk here...I just like that saying and it applies to my view of ESPN.

As a young man and even into college, I LOVED ESPN. I love the quick edits, the highlights, the catchphrases, the advertisements--all of it. As I have grown older, more cynical and more aware that sports goes far beyond its shiny exterior I have grown to detest all the ESPN stands for, with its move to LA cementing the deal that ESPN is now just an outlet for portraying what the moneymakers WANT you to believe about sports...

Other than Outside the Lines (OTL) long form articles that is...

How the employees at ESPN in the OTL division keep their jobs and their sanity within ESPN I'll never know but they put out some of the best writing in sports today. While the TV version of OTL focuses (generally) on current issues (steroids, cheating, NCAA violations, etc.) the long form written OTL that appears perhaps once every other month on the front page of ESPN.com is usually a more personal piece by one of the OTL writers that has taken months if not years of research and one in which the writer is heavily invested in its quality--and it shows.

The OTL piece appearing today on ESPN.com's front page is another excellent piece, one in which the writer was recruited to try and track down the only one of fifty boxers to have faced Ali whose autograph could not be collected by a devoted Ali enthusiast. What was a seemingly straightforward task ends up as your typical "rabbit hole" for the writer, leading him down to Miami and a side of society we all like to forget. In its concluding paragraphs the writer goes into the horrific fates of a great number of Ali's opponents and it is truly eye opening though perhaps not surprising given the circumstances many boxers arise from and the daily violence that fills them...

Read the article now, before ESPN uses the server space for more Kobe dunking lowlights...

Shadow Boxing...