Week 7 of the NFL season wrapped up last night with the Philadelphia Eagles remaining firmly atop the NFC East after a 34-24 win over division rival Washington. Quarterback Cardon Wentz tossed four touchdowns in the win, which improves the Eagles record to 6 and 1. Kirk Cousins didn’t have a bad game for the 3 and 3 Redskins, throwing three touchdown passes and for more than 300 yards on the night, but Washington’s lack of a run game tacked onto some pretty porous run defense led to their demise.
Tonight, it’s Game 1 of the World Series, with the National League Champion Los Angeles Dodgers hoping to win their first MLB crown since 1988, hosting the Houston Astros, champions of the American League and looking for their first title in team history. Clayton Kershaw takes the mound for Los Angeles while Dallas Keuchel gets the start for the Astros. Gametime is 6 p.m.
Let me say up front I am not familiar with Barstool Sports, other than that I am aware of its existence and the fact they've generated a bit of buzz with original content and (supposedly) their ability to piss off numbers of people.
Such is the media landscape. There are scores of websites, blogs, creators of original content in which their main intent is to create a controversy.
A 20-minute mindmeld of simply scrolling through my Twitter newsfeed will undoubtedly reveal to you how divisive and polarizing our sports culture has become.
At any point in time, through the "wonder" of social media, I can either be uplifted by a really good story or I can be dragged through the proverbial sewer of bottom-feeders choosing to troll on whatever subject happens to be in the news at any given moment.
The fact that ESPN chose to do business with Barstool Sports, only to cancel the entire partnership after just one episode of something called Barstool Van Talk is more a reflection of the network's shaky sense of business acumen.
And I don't want to come across as elitist or smug here. I simply have never watched nor heard an episode of Barstool Van Talk to know what was so offensive about the product. The lone show which aired earlier this week on the 4-letter network came on in the middle of the night, which for me is when age and a need to be up in the wee hours make such programming difficult to digest.
But someone at the network had to know. Someone familiar with the product, the personalities, the business model they represent - these things don't just happen where an agreement is reached on such a large scale without some corporate big wig(s) having done their homework.
Thus, ESPN is left to look like the bad guys here. Perhaps they deserve that title, not just because they messed up this arrangement, but because of the shoddy nature in which they went about it from the beginning.
What I do on the show is try and present equal and opposing viewpoints. I'm not always popular with my listeners, nor with those who read and comment on my social media posts. But I would like to think that those with whom I deal with on a professional level, know something about the way I present topics, something about the way I think and something about the work that goes into my product.
The idea that executives at ESPN simply had no idea of the backlash they'd get from within the walls of their palatial estate in Bristol, Conn., or the idea that the partnership would create some toxicity simply reeks of a level of ignorance that I find unfathomable.
I've attempted to reach out to the folks at Barstool for comment. Stay tuned.