|
|
Gregg Easterbrook's "A real mockery of a draft" published by ESPN Page 2 just isn't funny.
|
Tuesday Morning QB Challenged
Gregg Easterbrook's article "A real mockery of a draft" for Sports Entertainment giant ESPN.com's Page 2 is an abysmal and sophomoric attempt at a sports humor column. So bad in fact that it took me five tries to skim enough of his article to thoroughly criticize it. What's even worse is that he may just have the most self promotional and snooty byline of all-time:
Gregg Easterbrook is a senior editor of New Republic, a contributing editor of The Atlantic Monthly and a visiting fellow at the Brookings Institution. He is believed to be the first Brookings scholar ever to write a pro football column. You can buy his football book, the incredibly cleverly titled "Tuesday Morning Quarterback," here.
I'm not going to pretend that I read The Atlantic Monthly or New Republic but looking at the sites and articles on them and seeing "Brookings Scholar" gives me flashbacks to college professors who dedicate their lives to exploring unintelligible crap like "the ontology of post-modernity". I also clicked on the link for his book and it's subtitled "Haiku and Other Whimsical Observations to Help You Understand the Modern Game." Which leads me to ask what football loving fan associates hard hits with haiku and whimsy?
He surmises that he's the first pro football "scholar". So, some definitions: Brookings Scholar someone who has done research at the Brookings Institution on Economics, Foreign Policy or Government. Scholar a person with profound knowledge of a particular subject. Are these the requisite credentials to proffer a weekly sports column? While he may know about economics theory, it's clear that he knows very little about what goes into quality humorous sports commentary.
Easterbrook's Tuesday Morning Quarterback Column admits that it operates from the premise that pro football is an absurd artificial universe. Calling Pro-Football an "absurd artificial universe" intellectualizes something which doesn't require esoteric meaning to enhance our enjoyment of the sport. We already love it!
The column, it goes on mixes hard football commentary with history, science, science fiction, politics and anything else that can be shoehorned in; and has been called "original and irreverent" by NPR. I think they meant entirely irrelevant. He literally stretches and crams every inane topical reference he can think of. Maybe it would help if if Gregg spent more time trying to understand "modern sports" and less time thinking up "whimsical haikus".
Furthermore, his attempt to be Dennis Miller meets the Sports Guy meets every other sports humor writer fails miserably. Mr. New Republic pseudo-intellectual, in the words of one TF reader "is nothing but a big fucking tool that would get beat up by other sports writers. And deservedly so."
Who the Hell are you?
You are right in asking who am I to complain if ESPN.com wants to shovel shit to its loyal and obedient readers. Is it really my place to criticize? As both critic and editor of one of the Internet's Premier Sports Humor sites ("It's like The Onion...but with balls!" sayeth Illuminated Donkey honcho Ken Goldstein), I simply wish to call attention to this appalling misuse of a dedicated reader's trust by the Sports News giant.
A Word About Our Site
TwistedFans.com is an independent (from media conglomerate, like Disney, control), not- for-profit, sports humor and entertainment website. As purveyors of the highest quality sports humor on the free market, TwistedFans.com puts extraordinary time and effort into our work for your enjoyment. We are a dedicated team of unpaid authors and artists, who peddle (at no cost) sports parody and satire to a legion of supporters, and whose only compensation is the smile or laugh that we elicit from our loyal readers.
| Meet ESPN's New Expert columnist! |
Expertise
Environmental policy, global warming, science, quality-of-life issues, space policy, Christian theology, professional sports (American football)
Education
M.S.J., Northwestern University, 1977; B.A., Colorado College, 1976
Background
Current Positions: Senior Editor, The New Republic; Senior Editor, BeliefNet.com; Contributing Editor, The Atlantic Monthly; Contributing Editor, The Washington Monthly; Brookings Scholar
Gregg Easterbrook is now working on a book called "How Aluminum Bats in Baseball Can Save the Rain Forests"
|
K-Cebo Satashi is a senior editor at TwistedFans.com and is believed to be the first Henry Rutgers scholar to publicly expose the hypocrisy of a Brookings scholar.
|
|
