PTI and the Dumbing Down of America

Norman Chad has an amusing column on sportswriters on TV. Norm was just half-joking but he's hit on a serious problem. Sportswriters on TV are responsible for the dumbing down of America and they must be stopped.

First there was The Sports Reporters which was lead by the great Dick Schaap. It was a veritable Algonquin round table for serious sports fans. However, after the passing of Schaap it became the Mike Lupica show and the quality of the discourse went down the tube because the other guests were too worried about wearing the same tie as or looking the little dictator directly in the eye to make cogent arguments.

Sports Reporters spawned Pardon the Interruption (PTI), which as Chad points out, took two of the best sportswriters in the business out of the business of writing. PTI spawned Around the Horn which is to intellectual improvement what cockfighting is to sports. (While I'm throwing around analogies - Stephen A Smith is to bleeding ears what Japanese cartoons are to sudden epileptic seizures.)

The trend has been downward in quality of discourse and upward in volume. At the same time, as Chad points out, the sportswriters have stopped writing. It gets confusing because if they are not writing then they can't be sportswriters. Since most of them never played the game they can't be called sports personalities. Yammering white guys would cover 90% of the TV talking heads but I think it wouldn't be politically acceptable.

If you think I'm kidding consider that while at the same time the sportswriters on TV phenomenon was spreading a gender gap in education was also developing. Girls were surging ahead of boys in reading and math skills. Boys who used to read the Kornheisers and Wilbons of the world were now just vacantly staring into a boob tube. Instead of working out the math of a boxscore - boys just assumed the numbers Woody Paige shouted out were correct.

There has been a serious dumbing down of the American male youth and ESPN is to blame. They must be stopped before something worse than Stephen A. Smith is forced upon the youth of America.

If you need any further proof that what I claim is true - just look at the recent Who's Now "competition" on ESPN. Never mind the inanity of the idea behind the competition - just look at the grammar of the title of it.

(Oh and Norm - just an FYI - Nipsey Russell died 2 years ago.)

HT The Big Lead for the Chad column