The shocking news flashed across the Internet. Think 48-point type:
LAYOFFS AT ESPN INCLUDE ED WERDER, OTHER BIG NAMES.
Before we address the Werder issue, it seems fair to observe that something like this was inevitable. While viewers have been unplugging their cable in recently years, ESPN has been making it rain on our favorite leagues. The worldwide leader in sports spending is dishing out nearly $2 billion a year on the NFL alone — a profligate sum that buys 17 annual Monday night games and a lot of highlights, studio shows and other stuff that falls under the rubric of “content.”
I hate to see ESPN just barely scraping by and I certainly hate to see mass layoffs, so I try to fill my viewing quota and I try to suppress my instinct toward cynicism. Although…
The question has to be asked: If Ed Werder is a big name, who are the other big names?
As it turns out, Ed Werder is a journalist, one who covered NFL news as the network’s Dallas correspondent. I am tempted to ask how many Ed Werders could dance on Dick Vitale’s frontal lobe, but this is no time for existentialism. For that matter, I don’t know how many Ed Werders it would take to compensate for ESPN’s shopping addiction, but I’m guessing it would take many more than the 100 or so who got greased on Tuesday morning.
I’m tempted to ask whether the panic layoffs are even necessary
For that matter, I’m tempted to ask whether the panic layoffs are even necessary. Five years ago, you could buy a share of stock in ESPN’s parent company, Disney, for $45. These days, you’d pay about $116 — a price that went up after the firings were announced. Main Street doesn’t like layoffs, but Wall Street eats them up like golden Skittles.
But even if you are so rich that you can find some empathy for ESPN, you might wonder whether Werder and friends could be hired back for a modest pay cut. As good as Werder must have been, is he going to be the subject of a bidding war? Is the Dallas Morning News going to come back with a huge counter-offer?
The answer ought to be self-evident. It’s been a while since newspapers were hiring, and can anyone name the worldwide Number 2 leader in sports? (No scatological metaphor intended. And, yes, Werder once worked for the Dallas Morning News and probably for a sum that qualified as a fraction of what ESPN paid him.)
Admittedly, as the sun set on Tuesday, other and somewhat bigger names were revealed. There was Trent Dilfer, the former NFL quarterback who was kind of famous as an ESPN studio analyst. Maybe it’s just me, but I never heard anyone ask, “Did you catch what Trent Dilfer said last night?” But Dilfer must have been making some serious cash, because otherwise why would he have been fired?
Not that ESPN’s loose grip on the purse strings was the main reason for diminishing returns on investments. Lots of people, but especially millennials, are spending more time on their phones and less time watching televised sporting events. And it’s not ESPN’s fault that 10 million otherwise patriotic Americans have yanked out the cable in the last five years. Why ESPN didn’t see this coming is a separate issue, but it’s easy to be sardonic when you’ve spend maybe five years of your life listening to highly paid “Experts” spout the same cliches that unpaid amateurs spew absolutely free of charge.
All of which is to say that it’s hard not to view the ESPN layoffs with a certain ambivalence. Or sense of humor.
In fact, within minutes of hearing the news about Werder, I called up a buddy and joked, “It’s so bad that ESPN’s Mike and Mike radio show has been renamed The Mike Show.” Good one, right? Except by the time I fired off that quip, it had actually happened. And I still didn’t know who the two Mikes were, let alone who the remaining Mike was.
But, clearly, many people did, and they couldn’t wait to tweet their outrage to the world — or, at least, the worldwide leader of sports.
To this end, large numbers of otherwise coherent humans were swearing that they would never watch ESPN again. If their concern was the tragic loss of jobs, I would celebrate their selfless decision to sacrifice something so dearly held.
Except that 18 months ago, ESPN laid off about 300 behind-the-scenes employees, and I don’t recall so much as a stray tweet or even an angry letter to the editor (which would have been appropriate, because given millennial viewing trends, the only people watching ESPN in the dystopian future will be the few arthritic codgers who even know what a letter to the editor is).
And now, as I keep seeing updated lists of the jobless savants, I am sad to say that what comes to mind are the many more Experts I’d like to see silenced. It pains me to search for my compassionate image in the mirror and see only a complicit and bleary-eyed pundit, but perhaps I can find my better self if I use this screed to purge such terrible thoughts.
I’m not talking about only current or former ESPN employees. In fact, Number One would be, as Chris Berman (who also come to mind), would say, Skip “Brainless” Bayless. For more than $5 million per annum, Fox Sports is getting a bigoted dumbass who once speculated that Troy Aikman might be gay and declared that Johnny Football would make Cleveland sports fans forget all about LeBron James.
Then there is ESPN college football announcer Kirk Herbstreit, who once started more than 100 sentences during a single game with the words, “If you’re…” (I counted, so — I know — who’s the buffoon now?) As in, “If you’re Clemson, you want to take the air out of the ball.” Admittedly, the Big Ten Network’s Shon Morris has shattered that mark during many basketball games, but I doubt Morris is making the big bucks. Morris, while I’m on the subject for the first and last time, also likes to point out that players “maintained verticality,” which I think means “remained standing,” but maybe not because that would be a really stupid thing to say.
Pardon my attempt at Italian. I just reread The Godfather
I want to be inclusive, so I have to mention ESPN basketball announcer Doris Burke, whose specialty is telling me what I have just seen, as in, “Towns jab stepped to his left, head faked, pivoted, and then kissed it off the glass.”
There there’s ESPN’s Vitale, or, as I like to call him, the idiot di tutti idioti, or, in English, the idiot of all idiots. And I really, truly believe that with all my heart. I really do. I truly believe that. Oooohhh, he’s special. And pardon my attempt at Italian. I just reread The Godfather.
But, to move beyond simple malice, the larger idea is that with these layoffs, we are not exactly losing the bards of American culture. In theory, the less we are exposed to the newly unemployed cliche-meisters, the more intelligent we will become.
But we all know that won’t happen. We have, in fact, reached the tipping point at which millennials are now spending more time on phone apps and the Internet than they do watching television. This isn’t, in itself, a bad thing. But, as with the remainder of the population, millennials haven’t suddenly taken an interest in the classics — although George Orwell’s 1984, originally published 68 years ago, is back on the Best Sellers List.
It’s a good start. Or maybe a bad ending. The ambivalence just keeps on coming.
Mike’s cantankerous insights can be heard each Monday on Bob Sansevere’s podcast.
