By JOHN JAMES MARSHALL/Designated Writers
For years, I’ve been trying to find the perfect example of what modern sports has sadly become. Less than a minute after Sunday’s championship match at Wimbledon, I had found that example.
ESPN’s Chris Fowler, despite seeing an epic match between Novak Djokovic and Roger Federer, did the most ESPN thing there is. Thankfully, my man John McEnroe was there to put the kibosh on it.
Djokovic was toweling off and hadn’t yet caught his breath when the breathless Fowler couldn’t wait to start talking about who had how many titles and where it placed each of them in the “GOAT” (Greatest Of All Time) discussion. Is Djokovic going to catch Federer in major titles? Does this hurt Federer’s legacy?
McEnroe basically said “can we hold off on all of that and just appreciate what we just saw?”
This is the NBA-ing of all sports and nobody does it more (or worse) than ESPN. Rings, legacy, titles … all most be discussed as soon a possible. Forget the actual competition.
That’s why it was nice to hear McEnroe call Fowler on the verbal carpet (which you rarely hear from members of the same broadcast crew). McEnroe, a tennis legend himself, knows what competitors are thinking and feeling in moments such as this. He knows that Djokovic was probably thinking “I just played one of the greatest matches in Wimbledon history against a 37-year-old who wouldn’t quit.”
He wasn’t thinking “I wonder where this puts me in the pantheon of tennis greats?”
You have the NBA to thank for all of this. Now that the money has gotten so crazy that the amounts don’t seem to make much difference anymore, the airwaves are filled with is-this-team-a-dynasty talk or the where-does-he-rank topics to fill air time.
Sunday’s match was neither the time nor the place for any post-match discussion other than what Djokovic and Federer had just done for 4 1/2 hours. This was why we watch sports — to see competitors like these two go at it in the highest level of competition.
It speaks for itself, even if ESPN doesn’t want it to.