You can’t face-palm any harder watching ESPN.
The Worldwide Leader In Sports can’t seem come to terms that their network is failing miserably.
And just when you thought ESPN couldn’t stoop any lower, they are about to do the most amazingly stupid thing – and for 90 minutes straight.
Remember the ongoing coverage of Aaron Hernandez’s double-murder allegation before he was arrested?
Then he was arrested, charged, awaited trial, convicted and sentenced.
ESPN covered Hernandez the way a criminal investigative reporter would thinking it was acceptable since the former Patriot was a former athlete.
The Hernandez coverage superseded reporting on sports because it was a bigger story apparently – but that’s like Fox News randomly showing highlights of a Patriots game in the midst of covering a presidential. It doesn’t make sense.
O.J. Simpson is up for parole on Thursday and it will undoubtedly be highly publicized due to the nature of his acquittal in The Trial of the Century.
And ESPN is going to cover it for 90 minutes. Since O.J. was also a former athelete.
Breitbart reports:
“It’s no secret that July is the dead-zone in the world of sports. The NFL hasn’t started yet, the NBA just ended, and MLB isn’t really serious yet. However, I wasn’t aware things had become this bad.
ESPN, among other networks, has decided to air O.J. Simpson’s parole hearing from the Lovelock Correctional Facility on Thursday.
Not only that, ESPN will lead-in to the parole hearing with a 90-minute special presentation of Outside the Lines, hosted by Jeremy Schaap.
Simpson was convicted of armed robbery and kidnapping in 2008 after attempting to forcibly re-acquire some memorabilia he claims belonged to him.
The prosecution offered Simpson a plea deal, which would have limited Simpson’s prison term to less than three years.
However, perhaps feeling invincible after not getting convicted in the murder of his wife and Ron Goldman in 1994, Simpson declined the offer, which resulted in the former NFL great having to serve the last nine years in prison.
ESPN is in the ratings business, and no question the O.J. parole hearing will bring a large audience.
But how is this a sports story? O.J. Simpson hasn’t played in more than a generation.
The most notable and highly-publicized moment of his life, his ride in the white Bronco and the subsequent trial for the murder of his wife and Ron Goldman, had nothing to do with football.
Then again, that time ESPN allowed a college professor to write a fawning story dedicated to a cop killer on their website didn’t have a whole lot to do with sports either.”
The prosecutor in his Las Vegas robbery conviction, David Roger, predicts that O.J. Simpson will be paroled, “The guy did a lot of time on a robbery charge, I expect he’ll probably be paroled.”
Simpson was sentenced to 33 years for this incident and it was evident in the documentary series O.J.: Made In America that this heavy sentence was payback for his double-murder acquittal.
He did, however, have the chance to take a plea deal for the charge but he declined because the “Juice” thought he was invincible.
Roger recalled, “He had plenty of opportunity to enter a plea to do far less time. He thought he was invincible. He wanted to roll the dice.”
If he is paroled on Thursday, Simpson will be a free man on October 1st.
But why does ESPN feel the need to broadcast 90 minutes of Simpson’s parole board coverage when they should be covering baseball?
Who knows, but it’s why they’re failing.