ESPN Continues World Domination

On June 1, 2008 ESPN will add another marquee name to their laundry list of employees. Famed Sports Illustrated writer Rick Reilly will join ESPN as a back page writer, television and internet reporter. As a former subscriber to Sports Illustrated, I always looked forward to reading the Life of Reilly. It had a very interesting perspective on the world of sports. My favorite article of his was him detailing his life as a girls basketball coach. The way he described his frustration was priceless. But now it will be hard for me to take his article seriously in a publication like ESPN the magazine. In Sports Illustrated, Reilly's column was a nice change or pace from the often serious and sometimes morose cover stories in SI. I find ESPN the Mag to be more pop culture and hip hop and that his column in that magazine won't fit as well because of how similar it would be to the material covered in ESPN. I view Sports Illustrated to be more civilized and somewhat nostalgic (in a good way).

With this move, ESPN continues to lock in its choke hold on the global sports industry. Last year ESPN started broadcasting Monday Night Football, which had been a staple of its parent company ABC for many decades. ESPN also announced that this coming spring it will broadcast the first 2 rounds of Golf's biggest event, the Masters. Within the past 5 years ESPN has added basketball and stock car racing among other sports to their growing empire of daily sports television. It would not surprise me if one day ESPN took over the entire sports market and had a channel for every sport that would broadcast every regular season game.

On the positive side, the acquisition of Reilly now gives ESPN a 1, 2 CC Sabathia and Fausto Carmona like punch of Rick Reilly and Bill Simmons as columnists for the company. Both are arugably the two top sports humor columnists in the country. Hell, ESPN may even eliminate Kornheiser and Wilbon from PTI and replace them with Reilly and Simmons. Or maybe even just give those tow guys their own show to replace Jim Rome is Burning.

Sports Illustrated, which has been the model sports publication in this country for a long time, is going to take a major hit with this loss. Many people read SI solely for Reilly's column at the end. I know from personal experience that Reilly's column has been the only part of the magazine I have read on certain occasions. Sports Illustrated has their work cut out for them in trying to replace Reilly. Maybe ESPN will just buy out their competitor and combine both magazines into one super sports magazine. Or maybe Reilly will join the MNF booth as an added 4th member that knows nothing strategically, but injects what he wants to see as a fan. Oh wait, isn't that Mr. Kornheiser's job? In the end, ESPN continues to add star power to their burgeoning empire and it may just put them over the top. But as us fans have seen with the Yankees, it is not how much you spend on stars, it's the quality in which you utilize them.