Weeks ago, in the college football stadium within earshot of my house, the third-ranked Crimson Tide hosted the ninth-ranked Tigers from Louisiana State. In an interview posted on ESPN.com, SportsCenter anchor Neil Everett asks Louisiana State head coach Les Miles, “Coach, it may be more perception than reality, but it appears that [Southeastern Conference] coaches seem to talk about each other and each others’ programs a lot … Why do you think that’s the case?” When Miles refuses to take Everett’s bait and make a comment that fits within ESPN’s schema, Everett asks again, “You don’t feel that there’s more smack talk in the SEC than in other conferences?” But again, Miles demurs.
ESPN is not so much a news organization as a narrative generator. Like Penelope beguiling suitors during her husband’s absence, each night on its bevy of networks ESPN unwinds the narratives it has spun that day and, the next morning, goes about weaving new ones. “Refs give Brady ‘his own rules’.” “Ranking the Yanks … Was this squad among the best in franchise history?” “Somebody’s life is about to change.” (To cite a few such narratives posted contemporaneously with the Miles interview.) ESPN exploits that drive which Slavoj Zizek describes as “[getting] caught into a closed, self-propelling loop of repeating the same gesture and finding satisfaction in it” (The Parallax View, 63). The present contest is the most important in the rivalry. Never have the stakes been as high as they are now. This moment is the birthing of legend. Hype, play, argue. Repeat.
The irony is that sports reporting should be fairly easy to keep objective. Competitions are measured by numerical outcomes: points, goals, tenths of seconds. But through its mythmaking, ESPN has commodified a second material: our desire to construct meaning out of brute events.
Authors Note: the ideas presented here were developed through discussions with Ryan Browne, Rob Dixon, Molly Dowd, and John Wingard.
Editors Note: this review is being published today in special recognition of the past weekend’s events which led an entire nation to revel in the tears of one singular monster, thanks to the narrative-generating coverage of one sportscasting organization. John 16:33.
Awesome. Our first Zizek reference. Who’s got Benjamin?
I wonder if these narratives are the result of someone in ESPN saying, How do we attract a larger audience? We give them stories, by God! I have a short attention span when it comes to professional sports, so if I’m watching ESPN I’m watching highlights. But once in a blue moon I’m drawn into a drama, molded by ESPN or not, like Agassi’s recent confessional…
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