Sports Media, What Happened?

This post is some of my thoughts and analysis on the state of sports and their media today. This based on what I have witnessed in sports and sports media over the last several years, and my thoughts on what has become of it. To keep this from getting too broad we will narrow it down to the last 5-10 years. I have been sorely disappointed with sports media over this stretch, especially over the last 4 or 5 years since I have been working toward my degree in this field. This is mainly in regard to basketball because that is my main interest and the sports field I want to work in. The problem I think sports media, especially broadcasting, has today is the ways, methods, and mindsets a lot of broadcasters have mostly during analyst talk shows, but there are some in play-by-play as well, but there a significantly fewer on that side. A lot of analysts are not trying to actually analyze anything. They take baseline stats that for some are just enough to start an argument, and for others are just enough to make some wild outlandish claim just to get attention and views. On the other side some just read off stats like a robot with a more monotone voice than most robots actually have nowadays, which on a side-note is something I never thought we would see, but I digress.

Some Broadcasters are not out to give thorough information or professional discussions. They are out to do one thing and one thing only, yell so loud you can’t ignore them. They never have a civil discussion and just yell and find any opportunity for an argument simply to get attention. They have no interest in providing quality information or any kind of analysis of any kind. These are not analysts; these are the people who were always stuck at the kids table every Thanksgiving and Christmas and made it everyone’s problem. People like this are the reason I actually want to go into sports broadcasting, I want to provide the analytic side they fail to provide. I want to take deep dives past just the baseline stats. I want to tell viewers why this team is doing so well even if their star player is not scoring as much, I want to take a very thorough delve into why chemistry is the most important aspect of any sport and why if you do not have that stats will not matter.

This is why I want to go into this field and why watching most any analyst show irks me quite a bit now. Thank you for coming to my TED talk, I hope this provided some helpful insight or just a read that can hopefully lead to what I one day hope to provide for the field of sports media.