The Eagles Were the Most Talked About (Bashed) Team on SportsCenter Last Week
Each week, Deadspin puts together Bristolmetrics, a quantitative analysis of ESPN’s obsessions as part of Deadspin’s obsession with ESPN. Usually, the leading talking points on SportsCenter are the NFL, Tim Tebow, and LeBron James. But last week, after the Eagles got embarrassed by the Saints on Monday Night Football, on ESPN, the network spent the next few days crushing the Eagles on SportsCenter.
The 11 p.m. edition of the show last week included 378.25 commercial-free minutes. 35 of them were spent on the Eagles. That’s good for 9.3% of all coverage, beating out Alabama (8.6%) and the Lakers (3.3%).
Michael Vick was the second most mentioned sports figure (38 times) behind Andrew Luck (57).
Here’s Deadspin’s summation of the Eagles coverage:
The circle of life in Philadelphia: The Eagles were blown out by the Saints on Monday night, so you know what that means: time to chronicle every misstep the franchise has taken over the past few years. Almost all of the 35 minutes allotted to the Eagles assumed Andy Reid would be fired, Michael Vick would never start for the team again, this is the greatest failure in the history of football, etc.
There are lots of teams that fail, but the Eagles' "dream team" narrative is a year out of date. This season's edition might be underperforming, but it's not as if this is a trendy Super Bowl pick crashing and burning. But if a team can't be hyped up, ESPN knows there's just as much juice in tearing it down.
See, this is interesting because, for years, the national media has been on Andy Reid’s side. Where the local media, specifically sports talk radio, crushed Reid, the national folks stroked him. Not anymore. The Dream Team thing is dead, replaced by Fire Andy coverage, both locally and nationally. You listening, Jeff Lurie?
via Deadspin