lennyparis

They never show any cycling coverage.

Know nothing about the sport.

And last night in primetime they has some Professional Eating Contest. If they have time for that how can they not show some more cycling?

Now I hear OLN might try and challenge them and show more sports and less Bass Fishing.

ZappCatt

ESPN and ESPN HD rock. My favorite channel.

mwilding

How can you not call Sonya Jones an athlete. She weighs 100lbs and ate an American record 37 hot dogs!!

jwilson165

ESPN HD changed my life. on a serious note, i think they have great sports coverage, stories and information. the sad part is, it seems the general public enjoys watching stupid tv like profession eating, all reality tv (i think its garbage) and primetime news programs ("tonight on NBC, how you can prevent your self and loved ones from dying from something"). thats just what brings in ratings. cycling, beside the tdf, does not bring in high ratings. sad but true.

mwilding

Did anyone catch the bicycling reference?

"And Kobayashi with his 5 consecutive wins of the Coney Island Nathan's Hot Dog Eating Contest is rapidly becoming the Lance Armstrong of competitive eating..."

Portis

It's not ESPN that sucks. It is the viewers. Obviously they know that far more people are interested in watching people binge on hot dogs than watching the Tour or any other cycling event. IT's the country that you live in.

Drayko

How do people watch poker on tv? That's one thing that irks me. Poker on tv... bleh.

anthropete

and bowling? I can't understand how they play so much PBA action. Bowling and poker could both be replaced by cycling. Didn't ESPN cover the Tour before OLN? If I remember correctly they did highlights only.

Pete
https://www.viovio.com/anthropete

Kitohe

On The Daily Show last night they had on Bob Kostas. Jon asked him what he thought of cycling and Bob replied that he had an amazing amount of respect for LA and thought that what Lance had done was incredable, but that cycling was boring for him to watch and had no interest in it. Jon then echoed the same thoughts and even made a joke about how boring it is to watch the riders go over a mountain.

I'm still amazed at that comment because personally I can't understand what is interesting about 10 guys running up and down a basketball court compared to riders going over a mountain that is beyond catagory.

jhota

i watch poker and bowling (and billiards) on TV.

there isn't much else on at 2 AM when i can't sleep.

again, it's not the channel - it's the viewers. the US public is entranced with the thug culture of pro football and basketball. baseball is the national pastime, though it's being ruined by the drug problem that's ravaging all sports right now. cycling just isn't understood by the majority of the culture yet. look at how soccer has taken off - you can see pro league games every week in season. even multiple times a week. if a few more US athletes become well-known in the sport (and maybe race in something other than the TdF), popularity will grow and bring TV airtime with it.

heck, it's already happened. i remember reading about Lemond's first win in the Tour - now, you could watch (almost) the entire thing on TV. i'd call that progress.

RedFerret

Myself and most of the people in the US would pobably disagree with you on this. I like cycling and while a couple of the stages on this years tour were great and I admit to being glued to them, quite a few were pretty boring. I don't think I ever watched a whole stage, I just would skim through the Tivo until it looked like it got interesting and would watch from there, on 2/3 of the stages I never stopped scanning.

With basketball the games are usually pretty good, there are the occasional games where the defense is a little heavy and those do get boring (30-35 point halves ) but those are thankfully the exception.

Well those defensive games are how the tour seemed to play out this year, Lance got his lead early and was able to just defend any attacks. So most of the stages were basically "Lance didn't win but he didn't loose either" and since Rasmussen pretty much locked up the KOtM early on, unless you were interested in the sprinters or young guys, there wasn't much to watch for.

Now if you had said 5 guys skating around the ice hitting each other into walls and not scoring goals, then maybe I would have agreed IIRC, ESPN's replacement programing of Poker reruns and celebrity bowling actually had better ratings than their NHL coverage

sunninho

ESPN is cool, and I do like the World Series of Poker coverage they're doing now. ESPNHD is awesome. Will be nice to get two NFL games a week in HD, Sunday and Monday

jbonus

They keep showing poker. I could not care less about card games. I wish the whole poker fad would blow over like the cigar fad did years ago.

Ant

There's nothing on ESPN that's worse then the Spelling bee. I mean really who gives a **** if some 11 year old can spell "Thermolegosyphocles"?

spingineer

ESPN should change the tagline from "worldwide leader in sports" to "American leader in sports". The only sports they cover is football, basketball, and baseball.

Please, OLN, challenge ESPN. Cover more sports like curling, volleyball, badminton ... I never see ESPN cover badminton ... it's hugely popular in Asia

RedFerret

And poker, don't forget poker!

Bean Counter

And, please cover hot dog eating!

JungleCat

People like Costas are just not thinking! He said he didn't understand how Lance could come in 18th on one stage but still be first. That's like saying team X outscored team Y in the 3rd quarter but how come they're not leading? Duh!

He called it something like "professional exercising". I bet he hasn't watched one complete and decisive stage on the tour.

Anyway, part of the problem with ESPN is they don't explain tactics/strategy in their coverage. Cycling piqued my interest years ago when - believe it or not - Dateline had a segment on Lance "marking" riders and sending teammates on a chase etc. I think this type of analysis better serves viewers than "Lance gained 25 seconds on X rider today"...

ZappCatt

Well explaining tactics is hard if you are not "in the huddle". Just look at the Tour de France forum and look at the different thoughts regarding Team Discovery on Stage 8(did they fold or bluff).
Did George ride a great stage to win or was it a worthless victory since he wheelsucked.

Was Vino helping the TMob by "recklessly" attacking, or was he just out for himself?

Did Kloden and Jan "hurt" Vino by bringing Lance up to him after the attack?

Was Vino's charge for intermediate sprint/stage win in the last stage a gutsy/classy move, or was it a reckless thumb at tradition?

spingineer

oh, and I forgot ... cricket and Australian Rules Football

RedFerret

I think Costas neglects to think quite a bit but, in his defense, in Basketball, Football or some other sport with quarters and only 2 opponents, the winning team would have to score the most points in SOME quarter. Lance won only one stage this year, so I can understand how someone could walk away confused as to why he could come out as the winner or think the green points jersey is the one that should be coveted. It is a pretty simple race format but its also different from most of the races that Americans are used to. Couple that with the lack of coverage on anything but OLN and your sure to get some average joes scratching their head.

It doesn't mean that these guys are stupid, I'm sure a bunch of you could be confused by NASCAR scoring, college football's BCS, or the selection and seeding of teams for the NCAA basketball tournament. But thats ok, we all have different interest. Cycling doesn't have to capture the nations interest for us to have fun with it.

DXchulo

True, but that's the American ESPN. They have different versions of ESPN in other countries, Honduras as an example from firsthand experience. The ESPN in Honduras was mostly built around soccer and auto racing, more popular sports in the area. I don't know if they have ESPN in Asia, but it wouldn't surprise me. If so, the "worldwide" is actually legitimate.

Here in America, like it or not, it's all about the big 3. ESPN is just giving Americans what they want to see. If you follow the big three (and I do), ESPN is great and you can't beat shows like SportsCenter and my favorite, Around the Horn. The problem with ESPN is that they don't actually get the rights to air many games (one NFL game a week, a couple baseball and basketball games a week, etc.) and they can't show SportsCenter all the time, so they have a lot of air time that gets "wasted" on things like the World's Strongest Man, poker, competitive eating, and stuff like that.

Now, if you stop worrying about whether competitive eating is a sport, it's actually kind of interesting to watch once or twice a year. Kobayashi (too lazy to check the spelling) and the Black Widow are simply amazing. How can tiny little people be the best eaters? Make fun of me if you want, but I watched last night and I'd be watching tonight if I didn't have to work.

As far as ESPN not showing cycling, it's just because the general public doesn't care. Show a 30 second highlight of whether or not Lance won and most everyone is satisfied. We cycling fans are a minority- get over it.

I do have one complaint about ESPN Classic, though. I love SportsCentury shows and everything, but they never show any GAMES anymore. Show more games!!!

Machiavelli

It's the Entertainment and Sports Production Network. Apparently that crap qualifies as entertainment. I was mostly disgusted, myself. I agree that they should show cycling, but unfortunately that probably doesn't sell many ads in America.

Drayko

Do they show cycling anywhere in the world?

baj32161

THAT I just don't get.....I can't even PLAY poker!!!