The award for the most ridiculous, self-absorbed, overzealous all sports entertainment network in the world goes to...
ESPN, for the 10th year running.
They have once again proven that outside the 4 major sports, Tiger Woods, and the Williams sisters, you're really not much of an athlete. Unless you count token consideration of Cael Sanderson and -ahem- Sarah Hughes (don't even get me started on figure skating).
No offense to college athlete of the year Sue Bird (UConn BB) but a certain swimmer from Cal who set at least 6 AR and 1 WR over the short course season would have had my vote.
Anyone else? Natalie Coughlin, female college athlete of the year as awarded by the USMS discussion crew?
-RM
Two weeks ago at a meet in AZ I met a masters swimmer who recently moved there from the east coast and is in the media industry. This gentleman has been involved with producing tv "specials" in the past and his recent return to masters swimming had prompted his interest in posibly doing something in that area.
What we discussed was how you would package and market such a feature, he made it clear that he felt there would be no problems getting someone from Fox or ESPN on board if the show focused on some of the incredible things that people such as Laura Val, Rich Abrahams, Jim McConica, etc. etc are doing. The key would be making it more of a general human interest story and not showing endless hours (seconds?) of actually racing.
The challenge for something like this is finacing, something that our sport has very little of. That's why my interest is not in promoting Masters, rather I would like to see more cooperation between USS, FINA, USOC, etc. in builing "the sport". Our challenges are not how many people can masters nationals support, our challenge is whether swimming can survive at the age group, high school, college, Olympic levels.
Two weeks ago at a meet in AZ I met a masters swimmer who recently moved there from the east coast and is in the media industry. This gentleman has been involved with producing tv "specials" in the past and his recent return to masters swimming had prompted his interest in posibly doing something in that area.
What we discussed was how you would package and market such a feature, he made it clear that he felt there would be no problems getting someone from Fox or ESPN on board if the show focused on some of the incredible things that people such as Laura Val, Rich Abrahams, Jim McConica, etc. etc are doing. The key would be making it more of a general human interest story and not showing endless hours (seconds?) of actually racing.
The challenge for something like this is finacing, something that our sport has very little of. That's why my interest is not in promoting Masters, rather I would like to see more cooperation between USS, FINA, USOC, etc. in builing "the sport". Our challenges are not how many people can masters nationals support, our challenge is whether swimming can survive at the age group, high school, college, Olympic levels.
