I appreciate what you guys do at ESPN for the Florida Gators — Will Muschamp, 08/08/11.
And with that, we were off: a day of “All-Access,” you-scratch-my-back, I’ll-scratch-yours between Florida football and the Worldwide Leader. Jesse Palmer and his haircut gave us a tour through the underbelly, through breakfasts and lunches and quarterback meetings and drills. It was beautiful.
No, seriously, it was great, the closest thing college football will ever get to “Hard Knocks.” It’s easy to take shots at ESPN, even easier when you’re a budding college journalist who (let’s be honest) is too young and stupid to think he’ll ever sell out. If I’m lucky, maybe I’ll get to be Jesse Palmer. Maybe, just maybe, someone will style my hair and put makeup on me for the cameras.
And, for all my high-and-mighty bitching about the Death Star Propaganda Machine that is Florida football closing their practices this fall (and last spring, and last fall), at least I got to see something. Sure, it was just Palmer asking Charlie Weis about teaching a new offense, and it was just Weis sitting down and sighing loudly (translation: you couldn’t pay me enough to deal with this) … but that’s something.
As genuinely happy as I was to watch a drill for three minutes, though, and as fun as it was to hear Muschamp yell "Kitch! Scrape and C-gap!," you have to wonder at what cost this comes.
The “All-Access” afternoon can be seen as a microcosm of the general criticism thrown in ESPN’s direction; namely, that the company doesn’t really know what it is: a journalistic output, or a form of entertainment. You can’t be both. You just can’t.
On August 9, Steve Spurrier went on the Dan Patrick Show to complain about how ESPN treats Alabama, how the company runs those “Roll Tide” commercials on its station and gave its viewers “All Access” during spring football.
Spurrier was angry when SEC commissioner Mike Slive told him the Crimson Tide didn’t pay a cent for either the commercial or the spring ball coverage. Basically, the school got some ESPN love for free; and make no mistake, free ESPN love is free advertising.
As a college football coach, your No. 1 job is recruiting, which means selling yourself (or a positive image of yourself) as much as possible. There’s no better way to do that than to hop in bed with ESPN, go through the carwash, however you want to put it.
And this is the danger for ESPN, at least from a morality standpoint. The same company that hires reporters to objectively cover college football also pimps out certain teams. The same company that helps Alabama recruit also breaks the story when a five-star running back decides to roll with the Tide.
Throw in reporter Bruce Feldman’s short-lived “whatever” after he co-wrote a book with Mike Leach, who got fired after a beef with ESPN analyst Craig James’ son, and this whole mess becomes too tangled to understand front from back. And ESPN’s decision to start the Longhorn Network for Texas, well let’s not get into that.
But back to Florida. Don’t they kind of sort of owe ESPN something, for broadcasting all those primetime games that help them recruit, for giving blue-chip recruits “All-Access” to training camp for a day?
Who broke the story that Urban Meyer was coming back in 2009? Chris Mortensen. Who said the Gators were pursuing Weis? Chris Mortensen.
As Muschamp said last week: I appreciate what you guys do at ESPN for the Florida Gators.
