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The LeBrultimatum is finally upon us, and with only two hours to spare until the premiere of the Lifetime Original Movie on his decision, I have a brief opinion on all the media controversy about the decision by ESPN to allow this 1-hr special to air.
Tell me you won't flip over from your Seinfeld rerun to watch this.
All across the sports media landscape, from TV to radio to twitter, everyone is referring to King James as “LeEgo,” an extremely arrogant person who only wants the national spotlight on himself. That may be true, but aren’t we as the media viewer enabling that spotlight to be cast upon him? Aren’t we the ones tuning our televisions onto ESPN tonight at 9pm?
Here’s my take: if you don’t like the 1-hour show, then DON’T watch it. I’m tired of hearing everyone in the media say how dumb/arrogant this is, but then proceed to have their eyes glued to the TV tonight. He’s clearly the one of the best players in the league, this is clearly the biggest decision in recent NBA history, and the show will clearly get massive ratings. If everyone’s so angry at him, then fine. Don’t watch ESPN tonight.
Seriously, if you’re going to make such as fuss about it, nobody is making you watch! You don’t see a Justin Beiber hater dish out scathing comment after comment about how much they hate the kid, and then proceed to buy front row tickets to his next concert.
As I wrote months ago on this site, the decision for LeBron to host a reality showesque announcement of his decision is brilliant. The suspense has been building for years now if he’s going to stay or leave, providing countless hours and hours of programming for ESPN. You really think that after all of the build-up that this doesn’t deserve just one hour of coverage to a timeslot that would probably been devoted to a preseason WNBA game instead? Hell, the show is supposed to raise over $3 million for the Boys and Girls Club of America; how can you hate on that?
So if you want to hate, fine. Be that way. But don’t tell me you aren’t fascinated by his announcement. Personally, I’ll be sitting on my couch hoping he makes a last minute decision to join the Mavs.
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The other day, one of my friends (and former editor) Blake Hurtik (better known as the creator, director, CEO, and commander-in-chief of The Hurtik Locker) showed me a Sporcle quiz he had created called “Can you name the MLB 2010 Team Slogans?”
Before you do anything, take the quiz now, and see how many you can answer: http://www.sporcle.com/games/bhurtik/MLBteamslogans
I was pretty proud of my 16/24, but considering that these are slogans representing MLB franchises, shouldn’t any reasonably invested baseball fan be able to identify most of these? That’s when I realized the unintentional comedy behind many of these slogans, and how ridiculous they actually seem upon further review.
So here, I’d now like to propose how these ridiculous slogans would translate in other situations and what I’d make the team’s slogan if I was the club’s PR manager. In no particular order, here are some of my 2010 MLB favorites:
Blue Jays pitcher Adam Lind makes a routine catch in front of another packed crowd at Rogers Centre.
1. The Toronto Blue Jays “You Belong at the Game” Currently dead last in the MLB in overall attendance at home/away games, this slogan feels more like a request, or even desperate plea.
Parallel Slogan: The Suffolk Jr. High School Girls Wrestling Meet “You Belong at the Game”
What it should be: “You Really Really Belong at the Game, Like Seriously, We’re about to Pull a Fucking Expos Here If More People Don’t Start To Show the Hell Up.”
2. The Pittsburgh Pirates: “Pride. Passion. Pirates.” Pride? In having one of the top five draft picks every season? Passion? In helping hundreds of National League hitters boost their slugging percentages when they roll into PNC? How can anyone in Pittsburgh actually say this with a straight face after seventeen consecutive losing seasons?
Parallel Slogan: “Pride. Passion. Cuba Gooding Jr.”
What it should be: “Shame. Ambivalence. Pirates.”
3. The Oakland A’s “Green Collar Baseball” Apparently Oakland doesn’t fit into “blue-collar” or “white-collar” demographics. We’ll see if San Jose has the same feeling in two years. (All 174 Oakland fans just cursed me for bringing that up.)
Parallel Slogan: The Denver Broncos “Putrid Fluorescent-Throw-Up-Orange Collar Football”
What it should be: “Gangrene-Infested Collar Baseball”
4. The Atlanta Braves “The Excitement of Turner Field!” Nothing gets me more excited than enduring the 110-degree heat index during the blistering Atlanta summer at Turner Field! And did you see Yunel Escobar draw those 4 walks yesterday? Absolutely exhilarating! To the Brave’s PR department, I wouldn’t recommend using Turner Field as one of your main selling points.
Parallel Slogan: Isiah Thomas Basketball Camp “The Excitement of Henderson Elementary Gymnasium!”
What it should be: “The Excitement of Being Rushed to the Hospital from Turner Field with Heat Stroke”
5. The New York Mets “We Believe in Comebacks” You certainly do! They let the Phillies come back from a 7-game deficit with 17 games left to take the NL East in 2007 and then followed that up in 2008 by allowing them to come back from a 3.5 game deficit with 10 games to play. It doesn’t matter if it isn’t the Mets who are necessarily making the comebacks!
Parallel Slogan: The Detroit Lions “We Believe in 50-point Fantasy RB Scoring Weeks”
What it should be: “We Believe in Building Up Hope for 150 games and then Utterly Crushing it with a Sledgehammer”
Seriously, he just has magic inside now! Since when is that a banned substance?
6. The Giants “It’s Magic Inside” This probably isn’t the best slogan to throw around for a sport that’s still reeling from the whole steroids debacle. I hope this slogan was in place when Bonds played for the team. The unintentional comedy scale would have been off the charts. It can still apply to current reliever – and former Mitchell Report starter – Guillermo Mota, though.
Parallel Slogan: Jim Jones’s Kool-Aid: “It’s Magic Inside”
What it should (have been) be: “It’s Methyltestosterone HGH and Primobolan Enanthate Inside”
7. The Chicago White Sox “It’s Black and White” In a city that’s infamously segregated with the southside Sox being Chicago’s “black” team and the northside Cubs being the “white” team, way to further divide the city between race!
Parallel Slogan: 1930s Water Fountains “It’s Black and White”
What it should be: “It’s kind of black, but mostly just pasty white guys.”
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