I'm not the only one who dislikes ESPN

Everybody should read this post over at Dawg Sports (hey, I'm a Vandy fan, but I'm open to good reading on a Georgia blog) and you'll better understand this.  I'll forgive them for failing to mention anything about Vandy in their segment on the SEC Media Days.

Now, ESPN draws a lot of animosity from the college football blogger world -- much moreso than from the baseball bloggers, who really don't expect that much from ESPN.  My major gripe with ESPN has long been that they talk way too much football.  March?  Hey, let's talk about the draft.  June?  Hey, training camp is next month.  August?  Hey, it's the preseason.  October?  Hey, it's the regular season.  Baseball?  What's baseball?

I kid, ESPN has the still good Baseball Tonight, which at the very least has not devolved into NFL Live, where Sean Salisbury can barely contain his animosity for John Clayton, the man who constantly shows up Salisbury to the point that Salisbury is left asking him if he ever played football.  Trust me, if your lawyer ever asks you "Did you go to law school?" it means that (a) he has no idea what he's doing, (b) you probably know more about the law than he does despite never having been to law school, and (c) you should find a new lawyer.  There are plenty of them out there.  Also trust me when I say that if Peter Gammons pantsed John Kruk on-air and Kruk sat there and asked him if he ever played baseball, you'd be scrambling to find your remote control to change the channel faster than you can say "Boo-yah!"

All in all, though, football fans' beef with ESPN pales in comparison to those that can be raised by baseball fans.  While I love football, I don't want to hear about it 365 days a year.  Sure, I'm thinking about football season right now, even though aside from my love for Vandy I'm basically a free agent fan.  But I live for baseball.

Now, ESPN's coverage of baseball is pretty awful.  They've essentially ceded baseball to Fox and its various networks.  You can really tell, though, that ESPN is a very Northeast-centric organization.  The Yankees and Red Sox are basically the only teams that the network cares about.  And did you notice how much the network talked about the Celtics when it came to the draft lottery?  Everything was focused on the possibility of Oden going to the Celtics, despite the fact that the Grizzlies had the worst record in the NBA.  College football, I suppose, gets a pass because there aren't really any major powers in that sport from the Northeast, though Rutgers is making a push for it.  ESPN has to be excited about the possibility of a New York-area team being a major power in the traditionally Southern- and Midwestern-dominated world of college football.

Of course, these days baseball's coming out pretty well.  The NFL has to deal with the ugly Michael Vick saga, the NBA has to deal with a referee who was allegedly fixing ballgames.  The worst Bud Selig has to deal with right now is whether or not he'll be present when Barry Bonds breaks the home run record.  While there are all sorts of questions about Bonds right now, from whether or not he used steroids to whether or not he's a big jerk, the one thing nobody can question is that he's a supremely talented baseball player regardless of whether or not he ever used the cream and the clear.

Did he use steroids?  Probably.  Would he have come anywhere near 755 if he hadn't ever touched steroids?  Probably not.  Is 756 career home runs still a great accomplishment?  Yes.  Is Alex Rodriguez going to eventually break whatever career mark Bonds sets?  Probably.

I admit, I was happy when Bonds broke Mark McGwire's single season home run record.  Granted, I'd prefer if Roger Maris still held the record, but since that's not happening any time soon I'd actually prefer Bonds over McGwire.  Bonds at least was a very talented baseball player in the years leading up to 1997 (when he reportedly started using steroids); McGwire, if Jose Canseco is to be believed (and when it comes to McGwire, I believe Canseco), is basically entire the creation of performance-enhancing substances.