Arch Angel wrote:In his world, no team exists outside the Eastern Time Zone or better known as ESPN Sphere of Influence.
Digger's Big East bias is pretty out there, but wholly expected. ESPN as a whole however has been riding the Big Ten pretty hard, obviously in large part due to the BTN.
I don't need everybody to wax praise about the Big Ten, but constantly using terms like awful, terrible, no offense, etc., to describe a 7 bid league is pretty ridiculous. Call it overrated if you want, but terrible? Give me a break.
I think a lot of it too is they just don't want to hype teams to Average Joe Basketball Fan who "play boring." 60-55 games just aren't suitable for highlight reels and roundtable discussions. Better programming does not = designed half court plays with ball movement and shot clock drainage leading to backdoor layups. 40 yard sprints back and forth with monster dunks is where it's at. What many of them fail to mention though is how often Big Ten teams are able to either A) match their out of conference opposition's high scoring outputs or B) force the opposition to play their slowed-down tempo. It seems silly to talk about the Big Ten's "lack of offense" when it's not about some sort of inability, but about preferred style. I'll give Jay Bilas some credit though for still trying to give some objective analysis on shows that are completely ratings-driven.
