More Compelling Evidence of ESPN's Suckitude: Kenny Mayne is now the Mikey Teutul of ESPN

By: T.R. Slyder, TRSlyder@yahoo.com

I don't know why I still go to ESPN.com.

Last week on the site they were "promoting" how Kenny Mayne wouldn't shut up in some talking heads/argumentative segment with the cartoonish Scoop Jackson as though it were something to be proud of now. Now the big banner headline at ESPN.com is how Kenny Maybe is switching places with Colin Cowherd for a day and Kenny vows some sort of revenge for something.

It seems like ESPN has been relegating Kenny to the wacky side-stage for a few years now. The only thing they seem to let him do is host horse racing which 1) he does pretty well actually, but, 2) they cover horse racing about thrice a year. So the only time Kenny is allowed to do something is when it's wacky and completely unimportant. To break up the serious monotony of 4 hours of pre-game coverage, Kenny will stage an scripted "interview" with a few players and hilarity will ensue it's lame. Such sideshow relegation reminds me of when Lisa Simpson was elected president and Bart, then a down-and-out lowlife was begging for a job in the administration so she created a position for him and appointed him Ambassador of Keeping it Real.

But it also dawned on me that Kenny is just like Mikey, the fat, long-haired brother from the Orange County Choppers guys- pretty much worthless but he's jovial, so they pay him to hang around and do his silly crap that no one in the viewing public actually cares about.

My final ESPN comparison is to MTV. You know how MTV loves promoting itself? They love counting down the Top 20 craziest MTV Video Awards moments, Top 20 Most Expensive Cribs, Top 20 Craziest Reality Show Moments (on MTV), etc.? That seems like what ESPN has been doing lately with Kenny. Does his predictably unpredictable wacky, zany shtick really deserve top billing on ESPN.com, or is that a little bit of unnecessary promotion for their Mikey-in-residence on a slow news day?

ESPN is already a sports TV monopoly, they don't have to rub it in with garbage like that.