I was watching the opening Monday night game of the season in my dorm room, San Diego at Oakland, in what turned out to be an absolute thumping by the Chargers. My roommate at the time, an East Coast resident who could care less about football or sports in general casually asked who was playing. “San Diego is playing in Oakland,” I responded. “Oakland?” he said. “Where is that?” “You don’t know where Oakland is?” I said masking my amusement. “No,” he said unconcerned with his lack of basic geography. “Is that in Idaho?”
In sports, the West Coast is for the most part ignored. But not just ignored, it is almost labeled irrelevant. Anything west of Chicago is basically a mystery to an east coaster.
It’s like some other world that you know exists but it is so unimportant and unconnected that there is just no point to it. Saying you live in Seattle is like saying you live in Uzbekistan, most people know it’s really far away but have no idea where it is or what goes on there.
On the West Coast, Sunday morning football begins at 10 a.m. Monday night football begins at 5 p.m., prime time for everyone sitting in rush hour traffic. Some Saturday afternoon summer baseball games begin at noon eastern time.
How can a fan watch their team play a baseball game at 9 in the morning?
Furthermore, every nationally televised game is announced in Eastern time. This sounds like a petty thing to complain about but having to calculate what time the game is going to be on in your area can get old quickly.
I fully understand that ESPN, NBC and all the major national network headquarters are in Connecticut and New York but they still need to be what they are, national networks… covering the entire nation.
While I gripe about an East Coast bias, I believe it is more of a big market bias and most big market teams happen to be on the East Coast, so over time it has transformed into simply and East Coast bias. Earlier in the year, the Monday night touchdown-ception in Seattle that put the Green Bay Packers at an unimaginable 1-2 record sent the sports world into absolute chaos.
Every word that was typed onto paper by a sportswriter was about that game, the replacement refs or how Goodell is ruining the sport. Sportscenter ran replay after replay, experts were flown in from around the world to break down the play. Even President Obama weighed in and gave his two cents.Three weeks ago when the Saints travelled to Tampa to face the Bucs, the game came down to a last second heave towards the end zone by Josh Freeman that was caught by Mike Williams as time expired (sound familiar?).
Not so fast, the referee ruled illegal touching on Williams who had been pushed out of bounds by the defensive player. The game was over, the Saints won, and aside from a few Bucs fans booing, nothing was heard.
A small market East Coast team got hosed and no one made a mention of it. Big market bias.
The most frustrating part about the bias is not the time difference or the obvious absence of care for anything happening outside of New York. It’s the lack of respect for any smaller market team. I’m sure by now most of us have forgotten that the Oakland Athletics were actually in the playoffs this year and that the Jacksonville Jaguars are still an NFL team.
Things are bad and with superstar athletes ganging up on big market teams and it’s only getting worse. The Milwaukee Bucks have three nationally televised games this year; two of those are on NBA TV, which nobody has.
The New York Knicks have 28 nationally televised games. I don’t want to hear who cares about the Bucks comments because the Brandon Jennings and Monta Ellis backcourt in Milwaukee is one of the most talented in the league.
At the end of the day, everyone everywhere just wants some respect. If I see the four interception-per-game Tony Romo-led Cowboys in the top 10 of the NFL power rankings again, I’ll lose it. Small market teams want the respect they deserve.
Nathan Krohn is a junior sports management major from Bellevue, Wash. He can be reached at nathan.krohn@spartans.ut.edu.