I love your point about "ESPN covering ESPN," and I think that illustrates a greater problem with the current state of sports media. Outlets like ESPN do a lot of speculating and are manufacturing narratives and false "storylines" just to cover them as though they didn't create them out of thin air. ESPN once likened Kevin Durant and Russell Westbrook's split in OKC to a romantic couple breaking up, then talked about it as such for years afterwards as though they weren't the ones who made up that analogy.
Cool thing about PTI. When they were writing for the post, they would interrupt each other's columns with parentheticals usually starting with (pardon the interruption...) it was their gimmick in the columns and it translated perfectly to the show.
the point on First Take regressing after Max left, I totally agree. It wasn't just Max though, the questions/prompts became so watered down. There used to be great discussion points that felt like water cooler arguments
Kofie THE GOAT. Glad you covered this topic. On your topic about athletes under a microscope I also find it pretty off putting. Every word of theirs gets blown up or dissected it feels like I’m watching a gossip show rather than a sports show. I listen to more genuine analysis with stats on podcasts, if ESPN did that I’d watch rather than talking heads all day
sas wants to be a social media influncer. we not talking bout sports. we are talking about people talking about sports. the sports version of the kardashians.
You talk about First Take clones and I would argue that First Things First is probably the best example of, like, a benign take on the format, because the theatricality is generally centered around the show and the hosts and not the sports. They tend to strike a fine balance between taking sports seriously and taking themselves not seriously at all.
Stephen A Smith just brought sports media to the logical conclusion. You can see the engagement driven platforms absolutely *love* it, where Kendrick Perkins creates more revenue than Michael Wilbon ever did. Skip Bayless became a superstar by hating on LeBron, and him not backing down from Chris Bosh is perfect for the target audience. In a world where sports fans still love WWE, this type of theater is what everyone wants. People trying to split every issue into two and then having people as heroes for one side and a villains for the other is great drama. Kayfabe all the way - if people would have wanted to focus on the actual sports, they'd be watching games, not talk shows. Thinking Basketball gets less views per month than clips of JJ Redick arguing with Kendrick Perkins. As the old meme goes: you may not like it, but this is what peak performance looks like.
Theater is a good word for it, but it's not what "everyone" wants. There might be more people who want to watch a drama than a documentary, but it doesn't mean that it's the only viable way to talk about sports. If it were, our boy wouldn't have 34k subscribers.
Skip bayless was originally an extremely good beat writer for football . I used to read his articles back in the day in Dallas ! He’s obviously just an edge lord now to get more views and had always been a dick but he was a very good journalist in the 90s
@@eoin8156what’s funny is if you watch Skip talk about a topic that he’s not emotionally invested in he’s good. It’s just cowboys, Bron/Mj, Brady shit that he’s horrible at
Max challenged Stephen A. He didn't like it, and a lot of ESPNs audience that likes the talking heads and the barbershop talk didn't like that either. But I'm kind of a television history nerd, and it really comes down to how so many cable networks in the last 20-25 years have gone so far away from their core product to try and appeal to a more general audience. ESPN is no different in that regard. Remember when KD tweeted "A lot of NBA fans don't like the NBA and that's weird." and he was right. For a lot of people, it's not about the sports for people. It's about the world AROUND the sports. It's soap opera. It's celebrity drama. And it sells. Also, Stephen A is gonna make sure he reminds everyone how important influential he wants First Take to be seen, because it's his domain.
The Jim Rome/Chris Everett thing happened in 1994 on his ESPN2 version of Up Close called Talk2, way back when everything on ESPN2 was the “cooler, edgier” version of ESPN, and it was rooted in Rome ripping Everett to shreds on his radio show since at least the 1989 NFC Championship Game, where Everett suffered a “phantom sack” that was the lowest part of a VERY embarrassing Rams loss. It’s been going on in some form for that long, and is rooted in sports talk radio’s rise in the ‘80s.
Im not American, so all the exposure i have on SAS is through GIFs and people on Twitter and Reddit dunking on him and the Dallas Cowboys guy, but it feels like they are just the sports media equivalents of those news media idiots who exists purely to react with outrage to news stories or like what Joe Budden is to hip hop. They are just self interested grifters who have found a way to make a lot of money and dont really care for what impact they have on sports culture or what the actual issues are. They just want to keep making appearances so they can keep getting paid. You have to ask yourself, are these the kind of people whose livelihoods you want to continue to support with your money, views, social media engagement?
lol I don't agree, I'm not a Stephen A fan, he and everybody on espn thoroughly annoy the shit out of me now but Stephen A has noticeably been in sports media since I was a child and has always spoke on sports with a real passion, he's had a ton of missteps along the way to his prominence in sports media but I definitely wouldn't call him a "self interested grifter". And your Joe Budden comp sucks shit too because again I'm not a fan of Joe Budden but he most definitely cares for the culture that surrounds hip-hop and will not speak on certain issues and at times and openly speak on issues with great care in an attempt to preserve the integrity of the culture, as a media personality Joe Budden has been no stranger to rightfully speaking up for the culture as well. Maybe if you're not American and the only exposure you've had to the people from the culture is gifs and secondhand opinions from reddit you should probably...
@ZilchFukaina Maybe he had a different approach starting out all those years ago but over time and with the rise of social media he has just evolved into one of those types
Peak sportsnation was awesome, I’d sneak onto the page to vote on everything in my coding class and be so stoked to see the results when it aired later
Interesting observations. I think another influential change at this point in the game is (like a lot of channels on here, yourself including, with your experience working at ESPN) is leveraging some sort of expertise/experience in your coverage of sports; whether as an ex-athlete, in management, or in a field like law, medicine, academia or business and applying that angle to sports. The experience doesn't have to be at the top leagues (even if you were a walk-on at a DII school) but it seems like 1) having a unique angle and 2) having some sort of credibility through experience is now the order of the day (which is interesting because I do feel fan channels, like AFTV, were big at a point).
Awesome vid man. I grew up watching pti in the afternoon after school. I really do miss that golden age of espn. It just feels like espn covers football, basketball, and hot button issues. Then argue and repeat what the last show said. Its like they specialize in arguing instead of actual discussion and knowledge about the game. Ive been watching sports for 20 years u can have disagreements about tactitcs and actual sports topics and not about tweets n bullshit
Just how circular sports coverage is gets so frustrating, like you said it’s ESPN covering ESPN covering ESPN, a tweet gets turned into a segment gets turned into another tweet, it’s frustrating because you can’t just tune in during breakfast and see the recap of last nights games like I did when I was a kid, though that may be related to the nostalgia as a kid sports fan but man it just feels like the fix isn’t there anymore
I also got into that world around the same time as you (but at the newspapers which... lol) so i have a different perspective. I do think that the idea that sports debate brings in more diverse voices is true (rappers, not-necessarily-media-trained athletes etc) but i am a tad weary that "diverse voices" will end up like every Black singer who gets siloed into "R&B" or every Black musician who is typecast as "hip hop" TLDR: Diverse voices are important but i want their legitimacy to stand on their work and their approach and not doing cheap approximations of Stephen A. or Cam'ron etc.
Something that annoys me is SAS comes across as a morally shallow person. What he does professionally is hinged on maximizing profit, which never sits right for me. SAS may be a good person, but his impact on shaping the medium is, in my opinion, negative. To then act as a pillar of everything sports media and act as if you are immune from criticism, leads me to believe that he is a bad representative and a morally objectionable individual.
I preferred “first and 10” with Skip and Woody than what they’ve turned it into with first take. It was a segment on a larger show which was more like PTI. It made the debate the draw instead of making the entire show the debate which makes the personalities the draw.
The most pronounced example in my mind of ESPN covering ESPN is definitely Ron Jaworski saying he thought Kaepernick could be one of the greatest of all-time. ESPN breathlessly covered it like he wasn't their own employee and it was some organic public sentiment.
I agree a lot of what you are saying, but at the end of the day its entertainment. They were able to make Sports talk marketable and thats the goal. It put more exposure and money into journalist pockets, gave more of a public viewing of them than reading the paper. And print is slowly going away to the internet, podcast, and daily talk shows. Theres a happy medium. We all dont have to check in on first take. But we do cause its entertaining.
Never forget Jim Rome, he’s one of the forgotten personalities of sports media. I’ll never forget my friend’s dad in the early 2000’s calling in when the chargers drafted Ryan Leaf and went on an epic rant saying he’s going to be a bust.
Went to school for Comms right before you did. Radio and TV. O listened to Vin Scully to learn how call BBall games. That’s how I become a dodgers fan. The rules are totally different now.
Just stumbled onto this. As a former sports writer between 1996-2008, the downfall of sports media and media in general occurred in the early 2000. There were no more sources, wrong information got swept under the rug, and worst of all, people who don’t know sports are running the shows. Sure, they may like sports, but it’s all Kardashian like garbage and I doubt any of these losers know anything beyond basketball and football….which they know little about anyway. It’s all feeling and no more facts. It’s all opinions and no more reasonable observations. We dig to the deepest depths of advanced analytics to help with our gambling addictions. Sports media is absolute trash now. Just gonna say it. ESPN is MTV post music video era. It’s a big reason why I really don’t watch sports anymore
I remember the sports reporters being high minded. Felt elevated. PTI and Around the Horn were like friends hanging out. Then it got like CNN and Fox News. Haven't watched but wild for Stephen A to try and take the high ground on this.
PTI and Around The Horn would have hosts and guests making arguments for the sake of being contrarian and they KNEW that. They didn't take it too seriously and that made it kinda fun and silly. Guys like Tony Kornheiser, Woody Paige, and Michael Smith would say ridiculous stuff sometimes but it was funny because you could tell they were just having some fun with things. Guys like Stephen A Smith and Skip Bayless, however, went and made careers out of presenting contrarian opinions but they took those dumb opinions dead serious and would double down and make drama out of their nonsense. Fun and humor used to be the attitude of sports debate shows but it shifted toward being about stirring up drama. I like when sports are fun, not so much when they're used as a venue for manufactured drama.
I hated Jim Rome and Jim Rome is Burning but that was the show that made me start paying attention to ESPN talk shows really. Insane of them to not mention that show
King of the 4th Quarter, or KOT4Q, a channel on here. He’s been a figurehead of the community for years and is just now getting his flowers on a national scale bc like Kofie mentioned, he really is trail blazing
Stephen A is a joke of a journalist at this point, far be it from me to want to be informed by a sports news network than listen to Stephen A's nauseating opinions, thanks for ruining ESPN for me
a Stephen A doc is the kind of thing i want to watch a video about but not the actual doc
LOL 💯
It’s wild that Steven A getting checked in a brief segment becomes national news. These media dives have been great
Stephen A. Smith is too good at his character to ever talk about anything that matters. He should exclusively discuss video game power scaling.
I love your point about "ESPN covering ESPN," and I think that illustrates a greater problem with the current state of sports media. Outlets like ESPN do a lot of speculating and are manufacturing narratives and false "storylines" just to cover them as though they didn't create them out of thin air. ESPN once likened Kevin Durant and Russell Westbrook's split in OKC to a romantic couple breaking up, then talked about it as such for years afterwards as though they weren't the ones who made up that analogy.
Cool thing about PTI. When they were writing for the post, they would interrupt each other's columns with parentheticals usually starting with (pardon the interruption...) it was their gimmick in the columns and it translated perfectly to the show.
PTI praise is warranted
the point on First Take regressing after Max left, I totally agree. It wasn't just Max though, the questions/prompts became so watered down. There used to be great discussion points that felt like water cooler arguments
Kofie THE GOAT. Glad you covered this topic. On your topic about athletes under a microscope I also find it pretty off putting. Every word of theirs gets blown up or dissected it feels like I’m watching a gossip show rather than a sports show. I listen to more genuine analysis with stats on podcasts, if ESPN did that I’d watch rather than talking heads all day
sas wants to be a social media influncer. we not talking bout sports. we are talking about people talking about sports. the sports version of the kardashians.
Excellent way to put it
This is so accurate it hurts.
It's like calling kitchen nightmares a cooking show
You talk about First Take clones and I would argue that First Things First is probably the best example of, like, a benign take on the format, because the theatricality is generally centered around the show and the hosts and not the sports. They tend to strike a fine balance between taking sports seriously and taking themselves not seriously at all.
Stephen A Smith just brought sports media to the logical conclusion. You can see the engagement driven platforms absolutely *love* it, where Kendrick Perkins creates more revenue than Michael Wilbon ever did. Skip Bayless became a superstar by hating on LeBron, and him not backing down from Chris Bosh is perfect for the target audience. In a world where sports fans still love WWE, this type of theater is what everyone wants. People trying to split every issue into two and then having people as heroes for one side and a villains for the other is great drama. Kayfabe all the way - if people would have wanted to focus on the actual sports, they'd be watching games, not talk shows.
Thinking Basketball gets less views per month than clips of JJ Redick arguing with Kendrick Perkins. As the old meme goes: you may not like it, but this is what peak performance looks like.
Theater is a good word for it, but it's not what "everyone" wants. There might be more people who want to watch a drama than a documentary, but it doesn't mean that it's the only viable way to talk about sports. If it were, our boy wouldn't have 34k subscribers.
Skip bayless was originally an extremely good beat writer for football .
I used to read his articles back in the day in Dallas ! He’s obviously just an edge lord now to get more views and had always been a dick but he was a very good journalist in the 90s
@@eoin8156what’s funny is if you watch Skip talk about a topic that he’s not emotionally invested in he’s good. It’s just cowboys, Bron/Mj, Brady shit that he’s horrible at
Same with Max Kellerman. Going from First Take Kellerman to boxing Kellerman will give you whiplash of how different the guy sounds.
Skip got famous because he covered Jordan. And getting clowned on by Jalen Rose
Max challenged Stephen A. He didn't like it, and a lot of ESPNs audience that likes the talking heads and the barbershop talk didn't like that either.
But I'm kind of a television history nerd, and it really comes down to how so many cable networks in the last 20-25 years have gone so far away from their core product to try and appeal to a more general audience. ESPN is no different in that regard.
Remember when KD tweeted "A lot of NBA fans don't like the NBA and that's weird." and he was right. For a lot of people, it's not about the sports for people. It's about the world AROUND the sports. It's soap opera. It's celebrity drama. And it sells.
Also, Stephen A is gonna make sure he reminds everyone how important influential he wants First Take to be seen, because it's his domain.
fire video kofie, shouting out kenny is dope i wish his path in sports media was in the doc
The Jim Rome/Chris Everett thing happened in 1994 on his ESPN2 version of Up Close called Talk2, way back when everything on ESPN2 was the “cooler, edgier” version of ESPN, and it was rooted in Rome ripping Everett to shreds on his radio show since at least the 1989 NFC Championship Game, where Everett suffered a “phantom sack” that was the lowest part of a VERY embarrassing Rams loss. It’s been going on in some form for that long, and is rooted in sports talk radio’s rise in the ‘80s.
Everett/Rome was early 90s. ESPN been eating itself forever.
The algorithm gave me youre Pistons off-season takes. Stayed for 4 more videos. Love your vibe.
Im not American, so all the exposure i have on SAS is through GIFs and people on Twitter and Reddit dunking on him and the Dallas Cowboys guy, but it feels like they are just the sports media equivalents of those news media idiots who exists purely to react with outrage to news stories or like what Joe Budden is to hip hop.
They are just self interested grifters who have found a way to make a lot of money and dont really care for what impact they have on sports culture or what the actual issues are. They just want to keep making appearances so they can keep getting paid.
You have to ask yourself, are these the kind of people whose livelihoods you want to continue to support with your money, views, social media engagement?
Joe Budden is actually the perfect comp, he's also like the sports Keemstar
lol I don't agree, I'm not a Stephen A fan, he and everybody on espn thoroughly annoy the shit out of me now but Stephen A has noticeably been in sports media since I was a child and has always spoke on sports with a real passion, he's had a ton of missteps along the way to his prominence in sports media but I definitely wouldn't call him a "self interested grifter". And your Joe Budden comp sucks shit too because again I'm not a fan of Joe Budden but he most definitely cares for the culture that surrounds hip-hop and will not speak on certain issues and at times and openly speak on issues with great care in an attempt to preserve the integrity of the culture, as a media personality Joe Budden has been no stranger to rightfully speaking up for the culture as well. Maybe if you're not American and the only exposure you've had to the people from the culture is gifs and secondhand opinions from reddit you should probably...
@ZilchFukaina Maybe he had a different approach starting out all those years ago but over time and with the rise of social media he has just evolved into one of those types
Preach
13:54 THANK YOU
Thank you so much for this deep dive and for saying this exact line.
We locked in Kofie ! Listening rn during a drive
thanks for the sick content and hard work brother!
DLHQ was most definitely a PTI clone because the guy who produced PTI also produced DLHQ
Peak sportsnation was awesome, I’d sneak onto the page to vote on everything in my coding class and be so stoked to see the results when it aired later
Interesting observations. I think another influential change at this point in the game is (like a lot of channels on here, yourself including, with your experience working at ESPN) is leveraging some sort of expertise/experience in your coverage of sports; whether as an ex-athlete, in management, or in a field like law, medicine, academia or business and applying that angle to sports. The experience doesn't have to be at the top leagues (even if you were a walk-on at a DII school) but it seems like 1) having a unique angle and 2) having some sort of credibility through experience is now the order of the day (which is interesting because I do feel fan channels, like AFTV, were big at a point).
I was done with ESPN outside of live sports once I saw them pose the question:
"Is Jeremy Lin the 'Tim Tebow' of the NBA?"
Awesome vid man. I grew up watching pti in the afternoon after school. I really do miss that golden age of espn. It just feels like espn covers football, basketball, and hot button issues. Then argue and repeat what the last show said. Its like they specialize in arguing instead of actual discussion and knowledge about the game. Ive been watching sports for 20 years u can have disagreements about tactitcs and actual sports topics and not about tweets n bullshit
Just how circular sports coverage is gets so frustrating, like you said it’s ESPN covering ESPN covering ESPN, a tweet gets turned into a segment gets turned into another tweet, it’s frustrating because you can’t just tune in during breakfast and see the recap of last nights games like I did when I was a kid, though that may be related to the nostalgia as a kid sports fan but man it just feels like the fix isn’t there anymore
Go to bed last night watching new Kofie, wake up this morning watching new Kofie 👍
nod off to kofie to kofie with coffee
Also the predominance of Stephen A on a lot of espn programming is why coverage of other sports has essentially ceased. Great video and analysis!
Really great video. Subbed
Always enjoy your long form content Kofie. Great work as always
Love the vid Kofie ❤
Agreed. You can't challenge SAS. So what's the point of a debate?
I also got into that world around the same time as you (but at the newspapers which... lol) so i have a different perspective. I do think that the idea that sports debate brings in more diverse voices is true (rappers, not-necessarily-media-trained athletes etc) but i am a tad weary that "diverse voices" will end up like every Black singer who gets siloed into "R&B" or every Black musician who is typecast as "hip hop"
TLDR: Diverse voices are important but i want their legitimacy to stand on their work and their approach and not doing cheap approximations of Stephen A. or Cam'ron etc.
Crossfire is the predecessor to debate podcasts not first take
Didnt even realize you had your own channel. Looking forward to more vids.
Something that annoys me is SAS comes across as a morally shallow person. What he does professionally is hinged on maximizing profit, which never sits right for me. SAS may be a good person, but his impact on shaping the medium is, in my opinion, negative. To then act as a pillar of everything sports media and act as if you are immune from criticism, leads me to believe that he is a bad representative and a morally objectionable individual.
I preferred “first and 10” with Skip and Woody than what they’ve turned it into with first take. It was a segment on a larger show which was more like PTI. It made the debate the draw instead of making the entire show the debate which makes the personalities the draw.
It was funny when Stephen A went into talking about the UFC and got schooled by everyone
The most pronounced example in my mind of ESPN covering ESPN is definitely Ron Jaworski saying he thought Kaepernick could be one of the greatest of all-time. ESPN breathlessly covered it like he wasn't their own employee and it was some organic public sentiment.
Im imagining Wilbon being shown Pokemon GO then being addicted to it like candy crush 😂
No, Kofie! So sorry you went through this
We need a deep dive on that Michael Wilbon Pokemon Go! story
Go kofie...thx for the great videos
I agree a lot of what you are saying, but at the end of the day its entertainment. They were able to make Sports talk marketable and thats the goal. It put more exposure and money into journalist pockets, gave more of a public viewing of them than reading the paper. And print is slowly going away to the internet, podcast, and daily talk shows. Theres a happy medium. We all dont have to check in on first take. But we do cause its entertaining.
Never forget Jim Rome, he’s one of the forgotten personalities of sports media. I’ll never forget my friend’s dad in the early 2000’s calling in when the chargers drafted Ryan Leaf and went on an epic rant saying he’s going to be a bust.
🙄
I don't think Screamin A Smith is great or anything, but he puts on an entertaining show. I don't mind him tbh
He’s a loud guy with a six inch screw in his knee 😂😂 Not really very entertaining at all
Went to school for Comms right before you did. Radio and TV. O listened to Vin Scully to learn how call BBall games. That’s how I become a dodgers fan. The rules are totally different now.
21:30 I actually COMPLETELY forgot ESPN wasn't on RUclips and you could only watch through their shitty video player.
Just stumbled onto this. As a former sports writer between 1996-2008, the downfall of sports media and media in general occurred in the early 2000. There were no more sources, wrong information got swept under the rug, and worst of all, people who don’t know sports are running the shows. Sure, they may like sports, but it’s all Kardashian like garbage and I doubt any of these losers know anything beyond basketball and football….which they know little about anyway.
It’s all feeling and no more facts. It’s all opinions and no more reasonable observations. We dig to the deepest depths of advanced analytics to help with our gambling addictions.
Sports media is absolute trash now. Just gonna say it. ESPN is MTV post music video era. It’s a big reason why I really don’t watch sports anymore
Stephen A. excluding a bunch of sports journo vets who should have been interviewed in favor of Clay Travis is the LEAST surprising thing
Bayless annoyed me to no end with his constant attempts to give players negative nicknames.
I remember the sports reporters being high minded. Felt elevated. PTI and Around the Horn were like friends hanging out. Then it got like CNN and Fox News. Haven't watched but wild for Stephen A to try and take the high ground on this.
PTI and Around The Horn would have hosts and guests making arguments for the sake of being contrarian and they KNEW that. They didn't take it too seriously and that made it kinda fun and silly. Guys like Tony Kornheiser, Woody Paige, and Michael Smith would say ridiculous stuff sometimes but it was funny because you could tell they were just having some fun with things. Guys like Stephen A Smith and Skip Bayless, however, went and made careers out of presenting contrarian opinions but they took those dumb opinions dead serious and would double down and make drama out of their nonsense. Fun and humor used to be the attitude of sports debate shows but it shifted toward being about stirring up drama. I like when sports are fun, not so much when they're used as a venue for manufactured drama.
20:11 Jalen and Jacoby was an inspiration for podcasts tbh
Cold Pizza RIP 🍕
Maxx Kellerman take was so real
I hated Jim Rome and Jim Rome is Burning but that was the show that made me start paying attention to ESPN talk shows really. Insane of them to not mention that show
SAS ego has always been massive but it’s getting to planetary levels at this point.
This was a great video
Arguing "hot takes" really shouldn't be considered journalism. Sad.
The greatest my guy
First Things First is the show you want if you want stuff that took after PTI and ATH more
I am behind. Who's this Kenny he is referring too?
King of the 4th Quarter, or KOT4Q, a channel on here. He’s been a figurehead of the community for years and is just now getting his flowers on a national scale bc like Kofie mentioned, he really is trail blazing
Kenny Beecham
Stephen a type shows are for people who don't want to understand sports at any level beyond surface and just want opinions to regurgitate at work
What’s wrong with Travis? Makes great points nobody wants to hear.
Dude Kellerman was also...terrible
These guys think they are like the most important part of sports
nice video!
Max Kellerman was awful, no way Kofie
stephen a is friends with clay travis
Algorithm comment.
Stephen A is a joke of a journalist at this point, far be it from me to want to be informed by a sports news network than listen to Stephen A's nauseating opinions, thanks for ruining ESPN for me
Awesome video kofie 🫶🏻 who Dey