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Sports media: Time to leave football behind

All Jacked Up

By Jack Reyering, Sports Columnist

It's Wednesday morning, three days after the Super Bowl. There will not be another football game for six months. Basketball and hockey seasons are in full swing. On Tuesday, five of the nation's top 10 college basketball teams were in action. An NBA coach had been fired that day.

Yet, the two lead stories on ESPN that morning were about the NFL and the fallout of the Super Bowl. One analyzed comments Cam Newton had made in the days following the game. In the other, a panel of "experts" discussed whether Peyton Manning would retire.

Why should I care, you ask.

You shouldn't. It's time to move on.

America and the media's fixation with professional football is both obsessive and excessive. There is no reason for every single sports television media outlet to dedicate the number of hours of coverage per week they do to arguably the most flawed and certainly most highly criticized game in America.

Who cares what Cam Newton is wearing during a press conference? Why do we give any weight to the opinion of "draft experts" who project which player will be drafted by your favorite team in the sixth round?

Obviously, football is the favorite sport of the American people. Media outlets want to offer a product that people will watch so they can make money. But shouldn't sports news television be about the here and now?

Highlights from the games the night before. Breaking news about trades, hirings and firings. Analysis of statistics and trends in major sports.

These are all things that a viewer should not only expect, but also demand from their sports news television networks. These media outlets need to cut the fruity stories about the latest Manziel scandal. Resist the temptation to over-analyze post game press conferences from severely brain-damaged, half-illiterate players.

These types of stories are lazy. They cater to the lowest common denominator. In a digital and social media-driven journalistic era, viewers have power to dictate what they want covered. Yet television stations like ESPN continue to force-feed NFL-related nonsense year-round.

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Yes, when the NFL season is in full swing, there should be more coverage dedicated to the NFL, both on and off the field. Although there are a wide variety of criticisms surrounding the NFL, that also is a huge part of its appeal.

People love controversy. They love to speculate. There is plenty of both to go around during the course of an NFL season.

It's all well and good to try and fill the middle parts of the week with healthy debate about the league while the season is underway.

But once the Lombardi trophy has been raised and the lights are off, it's time to switch gears.

Now it's time to discuss March Madness and playoff races in the NBA and NHL. Spring training is also right around the corner.

Sports news television should be more like your local news station than Fox News or CNN. Focus on what is happening in the world of sports now. Tell it like it is. Stay away from the speculation of what might happen. Don't make a news story out of something that isn't news.

While the NFL may dominate Sundays in fall and winter, it shouldn't leak into spring and summer. There are plenty of other sports to cover once the players have hung up their pads.