Stand o'er and deliver or the devil he may take ya!
Confession time! Those kids at the ESPN Sports Quiz have been freaking me out! Compared to them I was a dweeb when I was their age. They are just too good, most of the kids that is, and if they continue this way, India will have a whole generation of stud sports quizzers to watch out for.But it's so disheartening to see how ESPN has so effectively managed to mainpulate the sporting taste of an entire generation in India. Here are a bunch of kids, who are passionately devoted to a bunch of sports and its probably because they are not getting an opportunity to watch other sports cuz the biggest sports channels in the country are not showing them. And the worst part is that, these kids at ESPN school quiz are endorsing this cause and creating a certain "coolness" factor about knowing the intricacies of EPL. Hell, I have seen it happen in college with people doing it with certain bands that they liked..i.e creating the certain "cool"aura about it. And here we have a whole generation which is mugging up EPL, cuz they see a bunch of super achiever kids doing the same thing.It's quite pathetic if you ask me, when we have a bunch of kids who can identify somebody like Lomana Lualua, but start making faces when they are asked to identify the pic of Hicham El Guerrouj. You can see it so effectively happen on the sports that are being broadcast on ESPN Star itself. How many kids know indepth Basketball fundae, which is broadcast at odd hours( much to the chagrin of yours truly)...probably 5. How many kids known indepth EPL fundae....you could probably fill a football field with those numbers. And the point is that in this ESPN Sports quiz by not asking questions on the other popular but not-so-frequently-broadcasted sporting events, these guys are very effectively undermining the value of these other sports in the eyes of an entire generation and ensuring that they have a whole generation of kids who will grow up and watch only ESPN cuz they have grown up watching a bunch of sports that only ESPN shows. Another instance of Corporate greed manipulating human thought patterns if you ask me.
Call it good or bad, but it was so different when i was growing up. DD did telecast F1 Grand Prix races on Sundays with much better commentary than what we see on Star today. Hell, I can claim to be the very few who saw Michael Schumacher's debut race. But they also telecast TWI's The World of Sport where we got to see the exploits of Carlos Sainz ( the World Rally Car champ), Wayne Rainey( the MotoGP champ) and Alberto Tomba ( the skiing super stud). It was the only thing that told you about AC Milan's title truimphs, Sergei Bubka's nth world record. But sadly, how many kids watch that today. Not too many i presume.
Though to give credit to the guys at ESPN, the quiz is well researched and the questions are darn good! Its doing wonders in popularising quizzing among the schoolkids. But......... you get what i mean right?
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posted by Nitish @ 1:55 AM
Comments: 2
