I spent most of last week checking cnnsi.com for my sporting updates, and have a few observations to report.
The big story of last week was probably the NBA lockout, and cnnsi.com offered news and opinions on the story, as a news outlet should. What I saw, though, was that the story did not seem that big in the hands of cnnsi.com. I'm not entirely sure why, but perhaps I just did not seem so attached to the site's writers to crave their opinions on what is a difficult story for a casual fan to fully grasp. That may be a problem for any sports news organization, and since the negotiations are not technically sports, they are probably inherently difficult to cover. Why again are owners (and players are not entirely blameless here) jeopardizing a sport that has the fans' attention, good national TV contracts, and appears on the surface to be doing well? Oh, for the same reason the Sonics left Seattle. Maybe my own biases are at work as I think of this story.
Wimbledon was the most significant actual sporting event this past week, and cnnsi.com covered it fairly well, with reasonable access to real time scores available, and analysis from tennis writers on the grounds. The tournament was often the lead story on the site, even as a virtual unknown won the women's title. I may not be a fervent women's tennis fan, but I have seen most of the top players in the women's game, and know something of them, or so I thought. I may spell her name incorrectly, but that is a further indication of how little I know of the champion Petra Klitova. I have never seen her play, as far as I know, but cnnsi.com did give me the chance to learn a bit about her this past week. I will have to check to see if the site taught me enough to spell her name correctly...
Nope, it's Kvitova. At least I was close.
As I looked for Wimbledon coverage elsewhere this past week, I ended up at the television commentary site awfulannouncing.com. One entry there this past week was devoted to the US coverage of the event, and gave high marks to ESPN for its efforts at the All-England Club. Whatever this means to my rules aside, I do agree that ESPN's coverage of tennis is excellent, and the use of many commentators offers multiple viewpoints of the game, which is hard to find elsewhere. I also tried to figure out from the post (and Michael Hiestand's notes on the issue, from his usatoday.com column) NBC's strategy for showing matches on tape delay, but the report that ESPN has acquired complete coverage of Wimbledon starting next year has rendered such analysis moot. Since I abhor forced tape delay coverage, even as I understand why it is employed, good riddance to NBC. If they were any more significant, I could have used NBC as my resource to avoid, but they are not, so there would have been no challenge in doing so.
