I have a saying I use often.
“DON’T BLAME THE SUPPLIER, BLAME THE USER”
If I am offering your something for free, don’t get mad at me if it is bad for you. You can say no, you can walk away, no one is forcing you to do anything.
People are mad at Stephen A. Smith for his fluff pieces on Floyd Mayweather, but the media has done fluff pieces on Mayweather for years. What do you think 24-7 and All-Access were about? What do you think CBS, HBO and Showtime have done for all these years? Mayweather has control of several websites (not this one, no one is the boss of me) to write whatever he wants them to. This isn’t NEW, it is just on ESPN now.
People take shots at Dan Rafael, who is the main ESPN boxing guy. Everyone doesn’t like Dan which is fine, but Dan has covered Mayweather for like 10 years and probably has written 500 stories about him, some good and some bad. To say Dan hasn’t covered the negative aspects of Mayweather’s career is dumb, but every story can’t be bad, he is a boxing reporter, he has to cover you know BOXING. It isn’t his fault that ESPN decided to put Stephen A. on a Private JET with Mayweather and people unfairly assume this is the first coverage of Mayweather the network has ever had.
Mayweather, I am pretty sure had those domestic violence charges when he was fighting Maidana. I was there and I didn’t see any outrage from anyone then.
It isn’t Stephen A.’s fault you as the viewer just got hip to Boxing because Mayweather is fighting Manny Pacquiao. ESPN is just a supplier, they feed you what want, it is your job to decide if you want to consume it. You don’t have to watch 1st Take. I haven’t watched any of Stephen A.’s vignettes with Mayweather, because I don’t care. I have followed Mayweather’s career since the Olympics, I don’t need Stephen A. or anyone to tell me what to think about him. I have my own opinions and thoughts.
ESPN just re-signed Stephen A. to a massive contract, so they obviously are CO-SIGNING his brand of journalism. If no one cared about what he and Skip were saying then they wouldn’t have jobs. You want to get them up out of here then stop watching, reading and listening, but that isn’t going to happen is it? There is a reason the Outside the Lines story only came on twice and they have been hyping Stephen A.’s interview with Mayweather for 3 weeks and it will show on ABC. They know which one you are going to watch.
I haven’t watched an episode of 1st Take since they did Jalen Rose dirty for calling out Skip on his Brian Williams style HS basketball stories. So, what they are doing never bothers me because I am not contributing to it by watching. When I see YouTube clips or they say something controversial I write about because it is my job, not that I care. Their job is to get people riled up so they will watch and they are doing a brilliant job at that.
Let me tell you a quick story.
When I broke the Meet me in Temecula story on Christmas and did a few Twitter stories after that I was BOMBARDED with hate mail, tweets, FB messages and etc telling me how horrible I was, how much people hated that stuff and basically DIE ROB DIE.
Today, ANYTHING that happens on Twitter that is remotely controversial I get hit with several tweets begging me to do the story and no I don’t care about Jamaal in DC.
Too much to follow, I'll catch it on BSO
— Joe Budden (@JoeBudden) April 23, 2015
Social media and society as a whole is the land where people say they don’t want the things they actually crave the most. You say you don’t like what ESPN and others are doing, but the numbers don’t lie. As long as those numbers don’t lie, Mayweather, Stephen A., ESPN and hell even I win.
The problem isn’t them, it’s you.
Mirror doesn’t lie chief.