Ethan Zuckerman offers a recap of the latest developments in sumo:
The May basho at Ryogoku Kokugikan ended yesterday with a clash between two profoundly talented rikishi. One was Asashoryu, who has been the sole Yokozuna - grand champion - of the sport since Takanohana retired in 2003. The other was Hakuho, who held an Ozeki rank (one rank below Yokozuna) and defeated Asashoryu to win his second Emperor's Cup in a row.
The criteria to be promoted to Yokozuna aren't exact, but it is generally accepted that winning two tournaments in a row as an Ozeki is sufficient for promotion. So unless the Japan Sumo Association does something very expected - shrugging off the recommendation of the Yokozuna Deliberation Council - Hakuho will be named Yokozuna, and sumo will have two Mongolian Yokozuna.
One of the biggest problems I have with the ongoing Disneyfication of ESPN and its family of networks is that they no longer really do anything other than major American sports. These days, they fill their empty hours with reruns of SportsCenter, and endless tedious shows analyzing college football spring practice, next year's NFL draft, and NASCAR, rather than showing any of the many sporting events going on around the world. Back in the day, though, if you flipped ESPN on late at night, or early in the morning, you'd see some weird stuff from other countries.
I don't care enough about sumo to go to the trouble of following it on the Internet, or trying to figure out how to get it on cable or satellite, but it would be nice to flip to the "Worldwide Leader in Sports" and see some actual sports from around the world, rather than yet another talking-heads show with Mel frickin' Kiper on it.
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Yes, amen to that.
I partly believe that ESPN dodges this because of a combination of corporate ties (as in the three-letter corporations of NFL, NBA, MLB, etc.) and mutual employment assurance for the commentators.
The other half-baked theory I have is that it's just a factor of the industrialization of sports/journalism/entertainment. Focusing on a small number of sports produces a greater efficiency; it sells just as much advertising and allows the company to spend fewer resources on sports knowledge.
On the other hand, life is greatly improved for the international sports fan. Proliferation of cable/satellite channels and vast internet resources make it quite easy to get your fix of rugby or rallying or whatever. And that's without getting into the esoteric world of watching an arabic- or chinese-language broadcast of a sport on a P2P internet video browser.
You are showing your age! Pretty soon you will be saying "I'm so old that I remember when they showed music videos on MTV and had news on CNN".
The downside of having other sports is that they would have to learn how to explain (teach) the nuances of those sports to their audience. Since they can't even do that for football, they stick with "commentary" that assumes everyone knows what a trap block or 2-deep zone is. (The sole exception is the game film analysis and walk-through coaching done on the pre-MNF program on ESPN.) I'm not even sure that they know what defense is in basketball; they'd rather watch a dunk contest with a score like a pinball machine.
I really miss Aussie rules football (based strongly on the "free kick after a fair catch" rarely seen in US football), or hurling (used to be on Wide World of Sports once a year), or the odd cricket match.
Side comment: If they spent 10 minutes comparing the 9 (?) ways to be put out in cricket to the ways to get put out in baseball, they could explain it to anyone, but they would first have to know that it is illegal to swing at a pitch in baseball with your foot outside the batter's box (even if it has been scraped away).
Heck, I would be happy if they even went back to covering all of american sports. Sportcenter these days only covers the "BCS conferences" for college. They seems to be much more interested in athletes stories than what they do on the court/field/ice.
Just as a note, Hakuho's promotion was announced on the TV this morning. So this will be the first time there have been 2 yokozuna since Heisei 16 (2003, it's currently Heisei 19 on the Japanese Calendar), when Takanohana retired.
Given Taka's sick record, it's been even longer since 2 yokozuna have actually fought.
I have graded many a paper late into the night with the Worlds Strongest Man, dune buggy races, sumu, or some semi-crazy thing on ESPN. They have a lot of Billiards now which is cool, but on the main channel its all NBA/NCAA/MLB/NFL/NASCAR, with occasional soccer. PTI is great, Mike and Mike are OK, but lots of the talking stuff is just banal. And I even like Woody Paige......Classic occasionally runs old Wide World of Sports with the bobsledding, cliff divers, curling, roller derby, all kids of stuff.
ESPN has pioneered the exploitation of the summer and winter Xgames, so its not ALL old school, but I reckon I'm too old to appreciate those things, I guess I prefer my sports with scores rahter than judges.
The Dan Patrick show with Keith Olbermann guesting for an hour or so occsionally dabbles into the weird sports or stories.
Thanks for the link, Chad, and the wonderful title (planning on stealing that for a future post). I wonder whether some of the blame falls on the Japan Sumo Association, not just on ESPN. Goo Sumo (http://sumo.goo.ne.jp/eng/) used to webcast all juryo and makuuchi rank matches on their site - they stopped doing this a couple of years ago. Nowadays, sumo fans watch Banzuke (http://banzuke.com), which has clips of the matches themselves, but no commentary, and which is of dubious legal status. I'm wondering if JSA cranked up their licensing fees and whether ESPN suddenly found that this was very expensive content instead of very cheap 3am filler.
I think CCPhysicist has an excellent point about expertise - ESPN is at their best when they've got expert commentators who can enlighten viewers about this sport... and those commentators are really hard to find in the US. Last year, ESPN aired "World Sumo Challenge", an amateur sumo tournament held in New York City. They recruited Musashimaru as one of the commentators - the other commentator generally covered soccer, and apparently had never seen a match before. It was roughly as embarrasing as having the Westminster dog show judges cover the NHL playoffs...