I think now there's a greater perception of ESPN "throwing its weight around" and allowing its event broadcast rights to influence its news programming. The most egregious cases have been the complete cutoff of the NHL after the league left ESPN and the pumping of arena football after ESPN bought a share of the AFL.

I'm no blogger, but I hate ESPN.

ESPN in the early to mid 1990's really hit it's stride and became a tremendous outlet for sports and sports information.

However, in the last 10 years or so, it lost it's way and has become a charactature of itself. They no longer strive to bring me sports, sports information, and sports events, they look to create them.

ESPY's, The X Games, The Winter X-Games, World Series of Poker, Magic the Gathering, Rock-Paper-Scissors, and eating contests. I've seen all of these televised on ESPN. I don't mind if they broadcast "What's now", I do mind if they create "What's now", especially if they heavily promote it and stand to make a ton of cash on it.

Good point Josh, ESPN openly mocked the AFL before it got the rights, now it's a really neat sport that we should pay attention to.

And the NHL lost it's favor with ESPN when they realized that they could get their hands on the NBA. They used SportsCenter to show highlights and they really threw some love at the NBA, while ignoring the NHL.

It's also become just as important to some athletes to be on SportsCenter as it is to win.

For the record, I love ESPN. I used to really love ESPN, but then ESPN realized how awesome ESPN was and fell in love with itself. I can't compete with ESPN's masturbatory self-love.

Full disclosure: I go to espn.com at least once a day, and it is the first channel I check when I get home.

"The Ocho." ESPN 8. I just can't get enough of it.

My take is that since we all want ESPN to be the best it can be all the time, we are then utterly disappointed when it turns out to be contrived and not the best. Too much corporate schilling for sponsors, too much 'creating' storylines that don't really exist, too much glorification of individual non-achievements, all of which takes away from the actual sports coverage of which we want more. This is what drives the hate, and since ESPN seems to be driving even further in that direction, we find any excuse there is to rip it to shreds our of desperation.

*...out of our desperation.

I do love PTI. And ESPN baseball broadcasts are very well done.

SportsCenter has really fallen off though. I think it has to do first with changing the theme music and adding the new crappy logo. The set was also changed from a normal desk to a confusing studio that must require a dance choreographer to get people in the right place and looking at the right camera.

Who's Now, possibly the worst idea ever. I would be ok it was a one time thing to fill a few hours of weekend air time in the summer, when MLB is the only major sport in season. Very sad that Wilbon has anything to do with it.

As a blogger, I also love that people hate ESPN.

ESPN has been on a slippery slope for some time. Eating competitions, poker and irrelevant debates are NOT going to cut it. It is embarrassing how they hype up their own inferior product (AFL, WSOP, X-Games, ESPY's) when there are quality competitions (Tour de France, MLS, NHL, U-20 WC etc.) occuring that deserve coverage.

They should be legally banned from using their slogan, and it should instead read "ESPN, the world wide leader in ESPN." That's what it is and everyone knows it. Now who wants to watch the 2002 pinochle championship? Please stop embarrassing yourself and your "sport's coverage".

I don't hate ESPN, I hate what it has become.

Competitive eating
Crappy movies
World Series of Poker
The rock, paper, scissors thing
the Budweiser hot seat
Mike Greenberg
Chris Berman
The ridiculous home run derby broadcast (Berman, the insane length of the damn thing
Dick Vitale
Stuart Scott
Around the Horn
Skip Bayless
Woody Paige

That whole not carrying actual sports anymore is an issue You aren't the "worldwide leader" if the only thing on tonight is the WSOP and a rerun of yet another Yankees show, The Bronx is Burning. They have baseball and the NBA, but only show the Yankees, Red Sox, and whoever they happen to be playing. They used to have smaller races on Saturday nights, or maybe it was Thursdays. They used to carry the motocross races, F1, freakin' indoor soccer.

Now you watch ESPN and it's the same crap on 3 times a day.

Thanks for sending all of my traffic to Capitol Punishment!

"Littles gets paid an additional 15 cents every time someone mentions Blog Show"

Meanwhile, the intern gets an additional half a cent every time we get an e-mail. So there's that to consider.

Alas, Steinz gets an additional 15 bucks every time we don't get one of his jokes. Now you know where he got his vacation money...

double-ding for p-rad!

The Prophet managed to list 13 things about ESPN that he hates and I don't like a single one. Uncanny!

the reason i am really starting to dislike ESPN is b/c it is doing the same thing that MTV did in the 90's. MTV used to be all about music and now it is all reality shows. They forgot about why they started. ESPN is doing the same thing. They care more about the things outside of the sport then the sport itself. I expect that in a few years that there will be very little actual sport coverage on ESPN.

I copied this part is from Kim and I agree, "ESPY's, The X Games, The Winter X-Games, World Series of Poker, Magic the Gathering, Rock-Paper-Scissors, and eating contests". Thanks Kim, it is late and I didn't want to type all that.

I don't hate ESPN because it is big, I hate it because they, and ABC, share BRENT MUSBERGER who should have been sent to pasture after he was fired from CBS. He is a self appointed expert on everything. His latest "expert" opinion is on NASCAR. When ABC Wide World of Sports did segments on NASCAR, Brent was trying to empire build at CBS. Get Rid of Brent. Make him the local anchor at WABC or KABC, just not national

It's the same reason people hate on Tiger Woods, Jeff Gordon, Wal-Mart, FOXNews, Microsoft, and hundreds of other people and businesses:

It's easier to hate on success than to be successful on your own.

Jealously is such an ugly thing. Sadly, the Deadspinheads out there seem to have a lot of it. If people didn't *watch* ESPN, then ESPN wouldn't stick around. Obviously, though some people apparently don't want to admit it, the very things they're hating on must be successful or they wouldn't stay on the air. It's as simple as that, just like with any other network programming.

I dislike ESPN for the Hockey/AFL thing as well - now we barely cover hockey except to mock it and we luuuuuuuuuuuurve AFL since we're broadcasting it.

ESPN complaint I will be the only one to make, I can almost guarantee: I hate that they continue to let Suzie Wynne announce ice dancing because she's horribly biased, calls it WRONG and seems to hate and despise our US champion ice dancers, who, thank you very much, are winning internationally and don't suck at all.

I stopped watching ESPN about 2 years ago and yeah, it's heard keeping your pulse on the sports world without it. As a blogger, I miss out on all the jokes, but frankly, it doesn't seem like I'm missing much.

I started watching ESPN in the early 1990s and watched it become a powerhouse. In the early 2000s, it started becoming a monster, no longer about sports, but about itself. The fact that ESPN's coverage has huge holes and tremendous bias is the reason for so many sports blogs, because people wanted to tell the story without the corporate, narcissistic, theatrical lens.

Please get rid of Mike&Mike, Wilbon, Kornheiser, "Who's Now."

Please keep Berman and the ESPN SportsCenter/News anchors.

Please show more NHL, Tour de France, English Premier League.

Please cut back on commercials.

ESPN is the best and the worst thing ever to happen to sports. Sometimes it is even both at the same time.

Truth hit the nail on the head. There's really nothing else left to say on the topic. I've talked to ex-SportCenter employees and they admit to leaving because the company openly admitting they are trying for that kind of payday.

While I hate the transformation MTV has gone through I still watch the network. The shows are mindless and terrible, but you can make fun of them. This is exactly what is happening to ESPN now.

Sooner or later a network will finally get back to focusing on actually sports and will overtake ESPN though. We just may not see it in our lifetime.

My dad and I had season tickets for the AFL for 15 years, and I never would have gotten into it were it not for ESPN. It's funny, 15-20 years ago people saw the Arena Football League on ESPN and thought "Whoa, that's kinda goofy but it looks like fun!" Now when they see it on, the universal reaction is "Geez that sucks, stupid fake sport on stupid ESPN!"

Back in the day there was the sense that the network was just trying to put some different things out there and that it had the interests of the sports fan in mind, so stuff like Arena Football, F1 racing, hockey, extreme sports, were something different and cool. Nowadays, everyone knows that ESPN just has the interest of ESPN in mind and that the network doesn't seem to put anything out there that won't benefit itself and its own agenda.

I'm not a blogger, and I don't hate ESPN...but I don't really care very much about it anymore, either. Give me PTI and college football in the fall, check out a few writers on the .com, and other than that they are pretty much irrelavent.

ESPN sucks. I am currently watching PTI as I type. They did a WHOLE SEGMENT on the fact Tom Brady was the best dressed man in the world. Couldn't they have showed something else? Like a great catch or something? Who's Now is pointless. Tiger is the most now? Please.