One would expect from this influx of journalistic expertise over the years a profound impact on the quality of reporting at ESPN.

Instead, to begin with the obvious, ESPN has been the recipient of some figurative wedgies in recent weeks:

Kirk Herbstreet announces that Les Miles is going to Michigan only to be slapped about the ears by Miles for his reportage. I am not saying that Herbstreet was wrong, or even that his sources were, but he became the news rather than the reporter of it. This is a big problem with ESPN, by the way, where the 'reporters' feel compelled to generate stories where there is not yet one to report. This may be symptomatic of journalism in general in these days, but still, ESPN got its undies yanked up into its crack on this one.

ESPN says that Bill Parcells is going to Atlanta. ESPN then backtracks and says that he is going to Miami. Nice job.

ESPN makes a big deal out of the Bellicheck (sp?)/Mangini brouhaha, and then there is no story. Ooops.

Peter Gammons, the highly respected baseball god, finds himself the focal point of listener ridicule as he defends Roger Clemens and others vehemently with no need to do so. Methinks he doth protest too much, and, as such, embarrasses himself and the network.

Skip Bayless is a parody of his former self, which was a jerk. How can someone pretend to be an objective observer, and then clearly have a hate on for particular players, owners, etc?

Chris Berman is an abomination, a loud-mouthed self-serving blowhard who has no right to ever consider himself a journalist. Would any ethical journalist include images of himself playing golf in 25% of his highlight reels? The man has an extreme insecurity problem, and well he should.

Emmitt Smith? Michael Irving? Now, even Tom Jackson is starting to sound like an idiot, when he has been a voice of reason in the past, at least up until the moment when he had to become politically correct in the McNabb controversy. The only two left on that table still talking without stuttering or sounding stupid are Ditka and, I can't believe I'm saying this, Keyshawn Johnson. Everyone else has become a hack for ESPiNing.

Mortenson spouts inanities all day long until he gets the story right, and when he gets it right, forgets all of the ill-advised predictions he made earlier, those he made to create news. Perhaps his sources are no longer as high up the food chain as they once were?

Lou Holtz? Lou Holtz? Lou Holtz? Perhaps the funniest moment of ESPN's year was when Lou had to defend Bobby Petrino because Lou himself had done the same thing. This is the guy that ESPN had doing inspirational 'speeches' at half times of games, and the guy so enamored of Notre Dame that he couldn't make an objective call on that program all year.

That doesn't leave his partner off of the hook, either. Unlike Herbstreet and Corso, who included Va Tech (ranked no. 3 and ACC champion) in their 'what if' scenario, May didn't even include the team. May, one would think, had been there, done that, and would not succumb to presenting the best ESPN scenario in his analyses, but he did so all year long.

That said, let's not forget that Holtz was a known cheat before ESPN took him in, and that Irving had some serious issues in his past. The network is a whore, apparently.

ESPN was a parody of itself from the beginning, but back when it knew what it was, it was funny, its anchors were funny, and its journalism was tighter than it is now. Perhaps back then the thought of a lawsuit carried more weight.

Now, the anchors are trite, even the good ones now grown beyond their entertainment value (I sincerely hope that Stuart Scott gets past his current health issues, but his attempts at street talk now are simply babbling from someone who doesn't want to grow up, I think).

Personally, I think that ESPN has become an abyss for sports journalists (if there is such a thing, a sports journalist, that is).

I coined it, world...read it and weep: ESPiNning...doing whatever they have to do to carry the day, to stretch stories, to make stories...ESPN is the ultimate tabloid, and the athletes know it.

Regrettably, so do the 'journalists', the 21st century version of yellow journalism.

Shame on the lot of you.

I couldn't agree with with Soccerfreak about ESPN's shaky journalism (or about soccer, for that matter: I'm an English Premier League fanatic).

ESPN has become overrun by too many:

1. Camera-addicted journalists who have become pathetic parodies of themselves (Jay Marriotti, Woody Paige, Bayless, Stephen A. Smith, Gammons, Tony Kornheiser, Bob Ryan, etc.)

2. Name-dropping, ego-bloated buffoons in love with their celebrity (Michael "I've Gotten to Know So-and-So Very Well" Wilbon, Berman, Scott, Ron Jaworski, etc).

3. Painfully snarky, smug anchors and personalities who seem to be trying way, way, way too hard to parlay their anchor desk time into an offer to host their own late, late, late-night talk show (John Anderson, Neil Everrett, Scott Van Pelt, Tony Rially, Stan Verrett, etc.)

Just about the only ESPN personalities I can stomach these days as Dan LeBatard (a refreshingly provocative thinker), Bill Walton (who doesn't take himself too seriously) and Greg Anthony (who always makes me feel like I've learned something new about basketball).

You said it even better than I did, roje.

While we are on the subject, let's not forget a couple of other recent nuggets:

In anticipation of the Mitchell Report, ESPN devotes an entire day to pre-delivery coverage. It hauls out its purported legal experts, its baseball experts, its best news collectors and insiders, and devotes all of that expertise and time to pitiful hypotheticals before anything has been announced!

And then there is the Keyshawn v Terrell episode, wherein the ostensible 'journalist', Keyshawn, takes it upon himself to school the bad boy, Terrell. Another top-10 in the laugh-of-the-year department, and another sad commentary on the entire enterprise, made sadder only because it reminds us that the opposite sort of behavior, Michael Irving's seeming lovefest with TO, apparently led to his dismissal.

Thinking back, Irving's weekly plaints on behalf of TO were maybe the most embarrassing display on ESPN, from an individual perspective. At some point, I stopped being angry and disappointed with Irving for his clear subjectivity (and even Man Love) and began to pity him.

As for the people you list as the best of those working for ESPN, I would agree that Greg Anthony seems to nail it. LeBatard and Walton, on the other hand, while both started off great, now seem to behave as if in fear for their ESPN lives. I can almost see the fear in LeBatard's eyes when he deals with Wilbon, and Walton must be making too much money to be the 'it's only a game' guy that he once was.