ESPN: Entertainment and Soccer Programming Network

The Lords of ESPN have apparently decided they don’t need many viewers this month. After regular showings of games from some British soccer league, they have decided that World Cup soccer is just what American sports fans are pining for this summer. Or maybe they’re not so sure – they’ve been inundating their viewers with World Cup hype for several months now, complete with tie-ins to the movie Invictus. Disney/ABC/ESPN is a very politically correct empire, and, as far as sports are concerned, you can’t get much more PC than soccer – or Invictus, for that matter. I suppose there is something strangely admirable about putting cultural engineering ahead of mere dollars.

The heavy-handed effort to get someone in America to care about soccer in general and the World Cup in particular does seem to be paying off: According to the Onion, America’s soccer fan is getting worked up enough to annoy his family and co-workers. Who would have thought that there would come a day when ESPN’s prime time fare would consist of soccer and the National Spelling Bee? Oh, for the days of Australian rules football and international table tennis.

This entry was posted on Saturday, June 5th, 2010 at 1:51 pm and is filed under Culture, Sports. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.