Every August, caught between a baseball season that’s a touch too long and a football season that hasn’t started yet, ESPN (apparently) has learned that news gets slow.
With baseball, the season is starting to wear, with the All-Star Break nearly a month ago, but still a few weeks to go before the divisional races really matter.
With football, it’s hard to get excited while everyone is at training camp. It’s still a bit early to really care.
The Worldwide Leader is truly fantastic at marketing (they almost convinced me that I cared about World Cup Soccer, even though I don’t). Take what I suspect is their solution to boost ratings and fill air time in early August: A deal with a very high-profile QB to leak potential retirement information. It’s perfect. Any guy who gets shafted by and then turns his back on a team that defined him really doesn’t need to worry about his rep. Give him some crazy sum to leak info and skip training camp, his least favorite time of year, and just like that, you have a topic that can keep your talking heads busy for hours. Brilliant.
Yes, I’ve become convinced that the Farve-retirement news cycle is a conspiracy between ESPN and Farve to create “meaningful” sports news. And by now, I have to say, I really don’t care anymore.
