Ever since my wife and I got rid of cable, I’ve had to do without ESPN and Comedy Central (the only two basic-cable channels I really miss). Thanks to corporate synergy, however, I got a chance to watch the Eagles–Redskins game on ESPN last night–I live in Philly, where ESPN’s “Sunday Night Football” was shown on the local ABC affiliate.

The first thing I noticed as I watched the broadcast is that the announcers seemed to be obsessed with big hits. They talked, over and over, about this big hit or that flattening tackle, and accompanied their rhapsodies over such violent hits with replay after replay of one player smashing another. They broke the hits down in slow motion, dissecting each tackle with voyeuristic excitement –”look at that,” one announcer said, “his body went parallel to the ground!”

Now, I appreciate a big hit as much as anyone, but as the game wore on, it became clear to me that this game was no more violent than any other NFL game out there. The emphasis on big hits was so obvious, and so repetitive–and so out of line with NFL broadcasts on CBS or FOX–that the producers must have told the announcers to emphasize the big hits in order build up the drama and keep people interested–after all, people watching a sunday night game have presumably sat through 6 hours of football earlier in the day. ESPN’s football coverage was the equivalent of its SportsCenter highlights of basketball games, which emphasize slam dunks at the expense of any other kind of scoring play. In the corporate mindset, Big Hits = Good Highlights = Good Ratings.

But the chickens finally came home to roost in the fourth quarter, when Eagles fullback Josh Parry knocked Redskins cornerback Shaun Springs out cold. Springs lay motionless on the ground for several minutes.

As the medical crew rushed out to examine him, the BS began flow.

Faced with the inevitable result of their orgiastic celebration of violence on the field, the announcers were reduced to looking for positive signs where few positive signs could be found. After they came back from their first commercial break, they told us that they had “some good news to report,” which turned out to be that they had seen Springs move his legs a little bit. Great. Maybe he’ll be able to wiggle his toes from his wheelchair in the future.

And then the announcing team–Mike Patrick, Joe Theismann and Paul Maguire–proceeded to tell us that “you never want to see someone get hurt like this” as they showed the replay of the devastating hit from multiple angles.

Look, I love football as much as anyone, and violence is a central part of the sport. But if you celebrate the violence without thinking about the effect that it has on the “performers,” you’re acting in an irresponsible way, especially if you’re doing that celebrating from the control booth.

What really bothers me is that the result of ESPN’s concentration on “big hits” will be that players will try to deliver bigger and bigger hits during the game, in the same way that basketball players have tried to compose ever-more complicated slam dunks as a way to get into a SportsCenter highlight. And when you have players concentrating on big hits instead of on the game, you’re going to start seeing them carted off of the field on stretchers more frequently.

When you consider the fact that the contracts of NFL players are not guaranteed–and thus, teams can cancel player contracts without compensation if a player gets injured–ESPN’s football coverage seems to rise to the height of irresponsibility.

But hey, at least the ratings were good…BOOYAH!

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