An Open Letter To ESPN

I mean, I knew the ‘Best Team To Ever Play The Game’ slurping would be profound before the game even started, but not even I could have predicted the level of non-stop hyperbolic mess that I heard last night.

How many times did you guys think at least two of the announcers last night were just going to outright faint because of how in love they were?

I get it. The Vikings were a lowly 2-6 team… but a team with a good deal of talent, an exciting rookie quarterback, and the best running back in football… a team that damn near beat The All-Mighty Packers a few weeks ago. Nothing. Not a GD effing thing before the game and hardly during the game. I felt like I was watching a local Wisconsin sports channel- but I wonder if the local channels are even that ridiculously obnoxious (WI Norsemen want to chime in?)

 “Adrian Peterson is a fine runner, but lets be real here for a minute. If you put Aaron Rodgers in a running back position this year he’d amass 325yrds per game, Jaws! If you put Aaron Rodgers at DE, he’d make Jared Allen look like a college level talent. This guy does it all!!!!”

Not even mentioning the Winfield injury is just the tip of the poop-colored iceberg.

…on top of that we get humilated- AGAIN- on prime time TV.
Inexcusable coaching, but I’ve come to expect that recently.

Did Adrian even get over 100yrds last night?

I don’t recall seeing a single Viking stat, except Jared Allen’s sack stat (which is the only good thing that came from that game).

such a shame with no mention of antoine winfield’s injury…sorry guys, I know that’s salt in an already stinging wound.

singed,
Fellow Packer hater

I wasn’t naive enough to think that they would talk about the Vikings a lot during the pregame, but I can’t think of a time where they mentioned the “Vikings” once. I think I heard them say Ponder once, then trail off about Arron Rodgers single-handedly rescuing a thousand blind children from a blazing inferno 17 minutes before kickoff. And, by the way, this is the first time I have heard of Winfield’s injury…. upsetting.

That I couldn’t go to the game, so I chose to go to a sports bar in the NW Metro area here in the TC.

I got there at 6:45 and they had on the local station instead of ESPN. The whole pregame show from that point on was filled with a couple of amateur dipsticks who traveled to Green Bay and did nothing but fawn over the Packers and tell idiotic stories of how great the place was. No actual football talk, and nothing about the Vikings, either.

Never again will I watch Channel 11/NBC for the pregame show.

I don’t care that they were in love with the Packers last night. They are clearly the best team in football right now and people all over the country were not tuning in to see the Vikings.

But they made some asinine comments like the reason Leslie Frazier decided to go with Ponder over McNabb was because he looked around the NFC North and saw other good, young QBs. Like Frazier is making personnel decisions based on how good and the age of other teams’s QBs. Do the Packers start playing a promising rookie RB because they looked around and saw the Bears and Vikings have two of the best RBs in the NFL right now? NO, Ponder is starting because McNabb was terrible and we were going nowhere. Time to groom the QB for next year which he would have and should have done regardless of the talent or age of opposing QBs in your division.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dgorNWFAxI0
Yep our team hates America. Taliban Vikings it seems, ugh.

*This makes me loathe our game with GB, well at least don’t play on MNF, none the less what they did was uncalled for. That’s how they treated us last MNF , it was all about Iggles and Vick, thank God we have the Lions in our division, otherwise you would think GB is all by themselves up in NFC North. You know the Kitties are the up and coming team, etc, etc.

Wow, Never in my watching Monday Night Football have we witnessed the Three Morons that host the game. If “Jaws” isn’t cursing, GurDon’ is trying to stike a pose, the comments are spot on and you know that ESPN is stuffing the script up their ass’s like a Thanksgiving Day Turkey. Please put a cut out of Howard Cosell and play some of his old comentary will be 100% better than the Three Blundering Idiots.

I’ll start by saying even I was getting annoyed with Gruden’s fawning over Rodgers (and even moreso over Cobb…who you’d think had 10 return TDs this year with how they talked about him). That said, this is a little ridiculous guys. The game was a ROUTE. The team that won is undefeated and their QB is playing at a pretty amazing level, it shouldn’t be too shocking to hear announcers fawning over the team in that situation. Either way, its pretty much par for the course for those three. They are little little schoolgirls drooling over whoever is playing well…its what I expect from them. I think you just need to lower your expectations for ESPN! haha :-)

I am pretty sure the opening usually features the home team, but I didn’t see the opening so I don’t even know what happened so I won’t speak about it.

Not a mention of that either. Obvious pass interference on the 1st 3rd down play, Helmet to helmet on Matthews sack, and another helmet to helmet shortly there after(can’t remember who it was). Next play goes the other way for punt return touchdown. I’m still pissed about the 1st down we didnt get, they’re woo hooing about how great GB is, pom-poms shaking like crazy. Not very professional

No mention of the stadium issue and the urgency of it( I admit I didnt watch the pregame and fell asleep in the 4th qtr)

Winfield is one of my all time favorite Vikings (Im also a Buckeye). Shameful they weren’t paying attention

I’m not from the US and I don’t know if this is also evident in other sports, but I’m really getting tired of commentators/sports writers/“experts” and so on.

It seems that a player is christened as a god when he hits a rich vein of form, only to be cast aside as useless when he has a bad game. I’m a die-hard Vikes fan and this loss has probably ruined the rest of the week for me. GB are good….I get it…..but I don’t need it shoved down my throat every 15 seconds.

The professionalism of the commentators during the game was probably one of the worst I’ve ever witnessed in my 20+ years of watching sports. By all means, call the game…..praise when it is justified and criticize accordingly. BUT, you have to stay neutral. It got a pretty nauseating at times, almost to the point where I was sure they wanted to have Rodgers’ children.

I only watched this game, without audio, at a local sportsbook. I cancelled my “premium” cable subscription about a year ago, due in part to all the claptrap coming from the way too many channels. ESPN included.

Make a small statement, folks. Do the same, send them a message. I haven’t missed it a bit. Neither will you.

 I would write a poem about you if I knew how.

You were my first love. I remember the day my mom told me that when I got home from school that I would be able to watch you. I remember running home, turning on the tv and seeing a dog show. Although I was bummed about the dog show being on an all sports channel, I stuck with you, because i believed in the all sports dream. I was 9 and already a sport’s freak.

The funny thing about this dog show, ESPN, is that dog show is ten times cooler than what you are now. I mean, how many times can you talk about Brett Favre’s pecker or Lebron Jame’s decision? A-Rod’s mistress? How much time can you spend talking about the Yank’s – Sox rivalry and Duke – NC while ignoring all the other great rivalries in sports. How many times ESPN? How can you still keep trying to convince us that somebody really watches the NBA? Hell, I’d rather read the word’s from some stoner on LOng Island who I’ve never even seen their face, than listen to what you have to say, ESPN.

And one more thing, ESPN. Can you tell that jerk Chris Berman to quit saying back, back, back during the home run derby. He single handedly ruined it.

Thanks,

BobbyNystromOwnsYou – Rich

He mentioned Vikings players, and he toned down some of the obscene praise (Gruden: “Look at Rodgers scan the field, reading every receiver before making the perfect throw!” Tirico: “… Where do you expect him to look, the ground?”). The most inexcusable, to me, problem was Gruden talking over the play-by-play when both teams were playing (but especially the Vikings) to talk about Rodgers. Fine, it definitely makes sense to mention that Rodgers has the most points per game of any QB with 50 starts. That’s cool (to national media) – mention it. Could you not have that f*cking banner cover the goddamn field right before the play? Also, when that play starts, can you track it?

Seriously, I think AP rushed for a solid 10 yards that play and Gruden just said “I tell you what Jaws, I have never seen quarterback play like Rodgers…” and completely ignored the field. It got to the point where Gruden had to stop himself and say, “but I’ll let you call this play, Jaws,” which stings because, while he’s admitting someone else should be talking, he is implying that he was calling plays. It also happened at the very end of the drive, so thanks.

Another point of contention: when a player is looking at an official for a penalty call, announcers generally offer an opinion on the penalty. There were three times this crew did not that I can clearly remember. And the defensive holding on Shiancoe? At least Tirico talked about it. Too bad he was ignored and talked over by Gruden. Tirico: “Looks like-” Gruden: “Wow, that is great coverage, right there.” Seriously? You haven’t stopped yourself from criticizing officials on blatant fouls before – why the f*ck would you stop now?

I get it, officials make mistakes. Maybe they were gunning for the Packers, who knows? I don’t like to think that and random mistakes can sometimes look like one team is favored, but could you at least call it out? Yes, 8 or so of those 10 penalties on us were deserved, but that doesn’t mean we get the goat on every call.

Screw yourself, Gruden. Any time your broadcast is on, I will refuse to enable money for it. If I have a cable package that allows me to see the game, I will eschew it in favor of an illegal stream and have a 2 second delayed radio broadcast speak over it. I will blank my computer at every commercial break and now I’ve decided I hate ESPNs website, too.

This was unprofessional.

But Gruden really went out of his way to praise many of the Vikings players, Kevin Williams and Jared Allen specifically, along with Ponder and AD. They made many good points about why our secondary is terrible…for starters it IS horrendous and the point about or corners being 5’9 and trying to match up with WR’s across the league who are 6’4 was a great point.

When you face an unbeaten team, coming off a Superbowl victory, and looking like they will make another deep run in the post-season, with a QB who is absolutely unstoppable right now, this is how the broadcasts work. In 2009 when Favre and the Vikings were tearing it up, the broadcast was the opposite – They were all over Favre’s nuts and the Packers were on the back burner for much of the broadcast.

I hate the Packers as much as anybody on here and probably more than most. I grew up on the border along the river, worked with many insufferable Packer fans. But you have to respect what they are doing this season. The broadcasters are just doing their jobs….

I would watch the Lifetime or Oprah channels.

Instead, I get lambasted with commentary which is almost completely devoid of breakdowns, x’s, o’s, football strategy, play commentary, or anything else football and is a complete lovefest unseen even on the romance channels.

Sheesh, if those channels put on a program where someone was so enthralled with another human being to the point of deification, then those channels would get laughed off the air. Get a room, Gruden.

I agree it was ridiculous, but Gruden and Jaws (especially Gruden) slob over somebody every single week. I seriously don’t think I’ve ever heard Gruden say anything negative on a broadcast. All he does is praise, praise, praise — over, and over, and over again. It’s just his MO. Remember what the broadcast was like in 2009, when you guys had Favre? I sure as hell do. It was all about the Vikings and he — and rightfully so.

But let’s not act like there was never any praise or compliments for the Vikings because there was. They mentioned AP, Allen, Winfield, and even Ponder some (mostly Jaws about how athletic he was) quite a bit. Were the Packers talked about more? Yes. But there’s no way you can tell that, that isn’t going to be the case when any team beats another team by 38 points.

it was like this when Brett Favre was with the Packers, and with the Vikings. the slurping over one player is really friggin annoying. Mike Tirico is a solid play by play guy (not the best, but not the worst), but as someone said above, he rarely got a word in because Jon Gruden was graceing us with his words of wisdom. I dont watch too many MNF games because of the announcers and the whole ESPN aspect about the game (its more about them than it is about the game)

One of the pre-game people started talking about Christian Ponder and in what was obviously a stupid predetermined “joke”, Trent I was okay at best in the NFL so I think I’m an expert Dilfer stopped him mid-sentence and said, “uh… we’re talking about the other guy now.” And they immediate started sucking Rodgers wiener. Not a mention of anyone else from the Vikings was to be heard the rest of the broadcast.

In fact, they usually go through who they think will win before the game and each person will make a case for who they picked. No. They just threw it up on the screen and said, “we all picked the Packers.” This was a huge joke to ESPN and even though the game actually was a joke, they could’ve shown at least a tiny bit of respect to the other team playing. I used to like the MNF broadcast. Thought they were at the very least respectable, but I now abhor them for the way they didn’t even give our team a second thought. It would be one thing if it were, say, the Patriots during their dominating run, but treating the Packers as if they were a movie star and the Vikings were their retarded half brother made me want to jump through my TV screen and choke Jon Gruden with a shoelace.

Check out this projection write-up from ESPN on Carson Palmer, just released TODAY (2 days after the game)

“How about that, he can still play! Palmer beat up two respectable defenses in a row, and this one is weaker than either, even with CB Antoine Winfield back in action. Remember, this is still the league’s No. 30 pass defense.”

Are they purposely ignoring the fact that Antoine Winfield broke his collarbone and is out for the year? What the hell???