The Brady vs. Manning Debate

Unless you live under a rock, or just choose to ignore media outlets altogether, you have heard about the great rivalry between Quarterbacks Tom Brady and Peyton Manning. These are two of the most decorated and revered players in the current NFL and because they are so great, every sporting news outlet decided to hype this game up as much as the Superbowl. Brady and the Patriots ultimately overcame Manning and the Broncos, but it did not come without a full week spent talking about whose legacy is better than whose. The two players were analyzed ad nauseam throughout the week and people like me, even though a huge supporter of Tom Brady and the New England Patriots, had to turn off ESPN, if only for a brief moment. The meeting of the quarterbacks highlights how the PR machine in sports works, focus on the best players on each team and hype their match-ups to no end. Obviously, this can get extremely boring but because so many young men and women who watch sports flock to Sportscenter, ESPN never really loses viewers.

                                                 The infamous Brady/Manning post-game handshake

It is obvious to see that ESPN blatantly has their favorite players they like to focus on much more than others. LeBron James is a player that, no matter what sport is in season, will be talked about on a daily basis. This alienates viewers, you either love LeBron, or you detest him. This all happens for  reason though, ESPN is a business and works closely with the sports leagues (NBA, MLB, NFL, etc.), and for the leagues to profit off of merchandise, they need to have merchandisable players. ESPN shoves these players down our throats in order to create household names whose jerseys will fly off the shelves. ESPN is a business and like any other business they will do whatever they need to make a profit including talking about the same subject hours on end. They disguise this tactic by having multiple shows where people debate on the subject. The shows may be different but the cast of the show continue talking about the same topics as Sportscenter. As you can see, some people get frustrated by ESPN, but ultimately never stop watching the network.

All of ESPN's tactics were on display this past week when they were trying to advertise the rivalry between the two future Hall of Fame quarterbacks. Seemingly every ESPN employee and their mother was debating who was the better player, the one with the most Super Bowl rings(Brady), or the one with all the gaudy stats(Manning). Brady ultimately ended up trouncing Manning's team, which did not end the debate for ESPN. The network was able to generate more hours of programming from this outcome by continuing to talk about the pairs' history with each other and how Manning's legacy will be affected by his head to head match-ups with Brady. In all of this talk about Brady and Manning, it was hard to remember that there were actually 14 other games played this week.