If you’ve watched ESPN’s coverage of this year’s NFL draft you might have noticed how many times Trey Wingo has transitioned from telling us about how good a drafted player is at football to how something so bad happened in the player’s life either recently or, in some cases, many, many years ago.
It’s been jarring, really, watching these awkward transitions from talk of football skills to how a player lost a loved one to a tragic event.
On a human level, it’s terrible and sad that so many players and people in the world have suffered losses in their lives. We’ve all gone through that and it sucks.
But you know what also sucks? The way ESPN has been stretching to tell these stories so quickly after a player was picked to play in the NFL.
Is it nice to learn something about these players as human beings? Of course. Does it feel like ESPN is trying to exploit these stories to make the viewers at home feel emotions and stay tuned into their coverage? Of course.
ESPN, which is doing a great job of producing this draft during a very challenging time, needs to learn from this and not repeat it next year. Because all this “tragedy porn” has been sickening and not necessary at all.
And I’m not the only one feeling that way:
