Blanchard River Buzz

Will LeBron's decision start a trend?

By Dave Hanneman
Here’s a different angle on LeBron James’ decision to bolt Cleveland and play for the Miami Heat: maybe, just maybe it signals a promising shift in professional sports.
One of the biggest gripes and complaints about professional athletes is the ungodly amount of money thrown at these superstars.
What is the bottom line when any team (junior high, high school college, even the pros) begins training for an upcoming season? It’s to try to win a championship. No one opens training camp with the goal that they want to have the highest-paid group of athletes in the business (except maybe the Yankees).
More and more, though, multi-year, multi-millon dollar contracts are as common as .250 hitters and 50-percent free throw shooters. The pursuit of the almighty dollar (and the tricked out ride, the gated-community mansion, and the entourage that goes with it) now supersedes the goal of being on a championship team.
Which brings us back to LaBronapalooza. The guy would have made more money if he stayed with the Cavs. Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh stood to make more money if James had not signed with the Heat.
Not that any of these guys needs an extra million or two to play ball. But the idea of pro athletes putting the pursuit of a championship ahead of their bank accounts goes against the grain of what we’ve come to expect of them.
Anybody think this will start a trend?

Vapid LeBron talk turns me off

I can remember as a little kid that watching Sportscenter was an exciting experience.

Before high school, when I was a young kid, my family did not have cable television or a dish, so I was forced to decide between around five or six channels.

Whenever we went away for a night, a weekend or for a vacation, one of the things that I looked forward to the most was getting a chance to watch ESPN in the hotel.

Now, I have to admit I could really care less about ESPN most of the time other than when my favorite team is playing or there is a college football or basketball game on the network.

Maybe it is because I have the opportunity to watch it any time I want to now, or it could be that I am older now and maybe I am a little more intelligent than back then.

But I think the main reason is that most of ESPN’s programming outside of live events has taken a huge nosedive in the wrong direction.

For me, nothing makes this more obvious than NBA free agency.

I’ll admit it, I’m not a very big NBA fan. I’d rather watch a college or high school game where generally all the players are playing hard and don’t argue with the referees after every call.

Over the last few weeks or I guess you could say months, the main topic on ESPN has been Lebron James’ free agency and for the last couple weeks Dwayne Wade and Chris Bosh have also joined the party.

It has really disgusted me. Maybe I am wrong on this, but ESPN is supposed to be a news organization.

The network speculated about Lebron James as much as they covered what is considered by most to be the premier basketball event in the world, the NBA Finals.

Something about that didn’t sit right with me.

All we have heard over the last three weeks is speculation about where James, Wade and Bosh will sign.

This is not news, it is taking your best guess. It may be fun for NBA "expert analysts" such as Chris Broussard or Ric Bucher to tell us where they will go. But honestly they don’t have any more of an idea than the average sports fan.

Now, when the Major League Baseball season is in the heat of its season and most of the division races are close, you have to wait 20 minutes just to hear any baseball news and even then the only teams you hear about are New York, Boston and Los Angeles.

Sportscenter’s baseball highlight packages show maybe three or four plays from baseball games, but those basketball analysts talk for around 10 minutes and change their minds every other day.

I’m sick of it.

Even though I am a Cleveland sports fan (with the Cavs being the last team on my favorites list), at this point I don’t care where LeBron James will sign Thursday.

I will just be glad that it is over.

How do you feel about it?

Are you going to tune into ESPN on Thursday or do you not really care?