For the second time in a calendar year, I can say words I never dreamed I would say. "There has been a shooting at a college campus". Last year's horrible events on the campus of Virginia Tech were a stark reminder that the world in which we all live has changed so drastically and we now get another brutal reminder of that same change in society with this week's events at Northern Illinois. After the events at VT's campus, almost hours after, ESPN turned the school shootings into a sports story. You could not go a minute on the Eastern Seaboard Propaganda Network without seeing some report about the story in Blacksburg. What irked me was that those events were not a sports related story. College kids who doing what they did everyday and got confronted with an ugly reality; there are some really derranged people out there. Not a single athlete was involved in the shooting, yet ESPN took the charge and made this story their own. It was disgusting that it had become related to sports but the message was sent loud and clear-ESPN has its own agenda.
Today, while checking the latest scores of last nights action an looking for any updates in the ongoing Terrell Pryor saga, I could not find a single bit of information about Northern Illinois. The EXACT same thing had happened at yet another Division 1 school, but ESPN does not seem to think it is a sports story. I am not proposing that ESPN pick up the torch here, quite frankly their coverage of the VT shooting was wrong to begin with, but it got me thinking. What is it that makes VT a sports story, but NIU not a sports story? Could ESPN be any more biased? VT is a big name school, perenially one of the best football teams in the nation. Hokie players have been flocking to the NFL in droves in the last 15 years and they are almost a shoe in for a BCS bowl every year. Northern Illinois, on the other hand, is not. Perhaps that is why the booyah network has let this one sit. Maybe its because Virginia tech is on the Eastern Seaboard and NIU isnt. Maybe its because you can think of Hall of Famers when you think Virginia Tech (ok, only one) but no names come to mind when you think of Huskies, not Hokies.
I have never been a fan of the booyah network, but today I was reminded more so than ever just how much control they have in today's mass media world. Last year they took a non related sports story and covered it like the Super Bowl. This week they seem to be ignoring it. I am not demanding ESPN coverage of these awful events, they were wrong last year. This week, however, has shown me now more than ever, that the stuffed shirts and blowhards at ESPN really are in need of a program adjustment. As sick as the shootings have made me, selective outrage and compassion sickens me to a degree I seldom have felt. A shooting at a school is a shooting at a school. ESPN, don't make one event a bigger story than another because the school involved can't boast a successfull athletic history.
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