They Buried SportsNation And Built A Nine-Leg Parlay On Top of The Grave

Sources tell Shams Charania that we're kinda fucked

I believe that very soon, during a segment called “Ira Newbie Says LeBron CHEATED At Mancala… Does This Confirm MJ’s GOAT Status?” on a morning debate show called Get Fucked, We Hate You But While We Have Your Attention, Here’s What We Think About Last Night’s NBA Games (real show, by the way) a wormhole will open and our reality will immediately split into two separate timelines.

The first timeline will remain pretty much the same as the world we live in now — the only change being that sports debate shows will no longer exist. No Undisputed, no Get Up, no First Take, no Get Fucked, We Hate You. All of them will simply disappear from the airways and nothing more will ever be said about them.

The second timeline, meanwhile, will consist of only debate shows. Everything in that reality will be a debate show. Every interaction you have, every decision you make. When you wake up in the morning, Kendrick Perkins and Max Kellerman will be in your pantry arguing about the merits of Lucky Charms as a breakfast. “It tastes great,” Kellerman will say, '“But it’s just sugar. Lucky Charms does. not. have. the. necessary. nutrients. that. your. body. needs. to. start. the day!”

Half of the population will stay in this reality and the other half will be sent to Debate Show World. Godspeed.

Speaking of debate shows, SportsNation is officially dead. Last week, the SportsNation social media accounts were converted into ESPNBet accounts, which feels illegal in a way I can’t quite articulate.

For those unfamiliar with SportsNation, come along, let us travel back in time. We’re heading back to 2009, when I was 12 years old, innocent, wistful, whimsical* and irreparably horny**. Don’t touch anything, because… just trust me.

*Not true, actually. I was a little dickhead.

**That part is true.

SportsNation premiered in June of 2009. I didn’t start watching SN on its premiere date, and I don’t actually remember exactly when my obsession with it began. But the show, hosted by Colin Cowherd and Michelle Beadle, quickly became must-watch TV for me alongside Pardon The Interruption (STILL ON TV, BY THE WAY) and, a bit later, Highly Questionable.

Though it certainly wasn’t the sports debate show (the aforementioned PTI has been on air since 1934, I think. Pretty sure it started in black and white) I do think SportsNation served as the blueprint for the shows we see today— except it didn’t make me want to drill a hole into the back of my skull and fill my brain with sand.

The “debates” on SportsNation were organic and lighthearted. Beadle and Cowherd had genuine chemistry that made their conversations easy listening. The show had an actual live audience of (I think) other ESPN staffers who yelled aphorisms throughout the show. In full, I never for a second forgot that I was watching a show about sports, one of the silliest forms of entertainment that exists in our world. It never felt contrived or forced, it never felt meanspirited. SportsNation never felt like its existence hinged on the gamble that audiences care to hear two people debate questions that do not—and never will—have tangible answers.

The show also incorporated social media into its broadcast— still a somewhat novel idea in the early 2010s— making the show more interactive for fans than pretty much anything else on TV. Before Twitter turned into a town hall for the most racist people you’ve ever encountered, it was actually a pretty fun platform for sports fans, and SN took advantage of that, really stamping itself as the show for the fans.

For a few years, even the cover of the Madden video game was revealed live on the show, a fan vote deciding which athlete graced the game’s cover.

I loved SportsNation. Would my feelings towards it be different if the show aired in 2023, and my exposure to it came as a decrepit 26 year-old instead of a wide-eyed 12 year-old? Maybe. Probably. Have my memories of the show become rose-tinted as more time passes? Perhaps.

But I’m also confident that if the dumb (yet observant) pre-teen version of myself watched Skip Bayless debate a man named Bubba Dub (really happened) on the type of sports television shows we have today, even he would have said “Oh, this shit sucks.”

SportsNation was marketed specifically for people in my demographic. And maybe the sports debate show should have always been produced for the 13-25 year olds, instead of who it’s marketed for today, which is… Who is that, actually?

Anyway, (officially) Rest In Peace, SportsNation! You had a great run. Mostly. It got kind of weird at the end there. But still pretty great for the most part.

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SportsNation’s social media accounts are now ESPNBet social media accounts. That’s fine, certainly; ESPN is a private company and it can operate however it wants. Plus, the “Worldwide Leader In Sports” becoming (legally) involved with sports gambling was, at this point, a formality. (I’ll also probably use it.)

But it does lead to a larger conversation about the integration of sports gambling into fandom by the actual sports leagues themselves. Because, according to those leagues, sports gambling has always been morally reprehensible. It’s always been a stain on their clean, clean reputations (lol) and something that should be avoided and talked about as little as possible.

Not anymore! The NFL, NBA, and MLB all have official betting partners and it presumably won’t be long before betting kiosks are inside of stadiums.

What changed?

You don’t actually need to answer that question; it’s money, of course. Adam Silver’s eyes turn into big dollar signs and steam starts coming out of his ears like a cartoon character whenever there’s an opportunity for more league revenue— but why now?

That, I really don’t know. And while I indulge in a bet every so often— SUE ME— I still feel a pang of fear that officially sanctioned gambling can only end in flames.

Shams Charania’s Draft day tweet exemplifies what I’m most afraid of. Charania covers the NBA for The Athletic, which was recently acquired by the New York Times. He’s one of the foremost NBA “insiders” in the field, meaning he’ll report on player trades, coaching hires or locker room drama, often before the people involved even know. He has “sources” in every locker room in the NBA.

So on NBA Draft day, when Charania sent out a tweet indicating that the Charlotte Hornets— who held the number two pick in the draft— were leaning towards selecting guard Scoot Henderson, the NBA public was inclined to believe him.

But Charania also works for FanDuel, one of the most popular sportsbooks in the country.

Thus, when Charlotte did not end up selecting Henderson, instead opting for forward Brandon Miller (who, in the end, seemed to be the pick the whole time) the sports world had questions.

The main question was, “Hey did you intentionally spread false information to shift the betting lines on the NBA Draft so that people would bet on Scoot Henderson being taken number two overall, even though all along you knew that wasn’t going to happen, just so your employer could make money off of the failed bet slips?”

Pretty fuckin’ good question, if you ask me.

I don’t know if Shams did anything unethical. Maybe someone told him the Hornets wanted to draft Scoot Henderson and he was simply reporting the information he was given.

That’s not really the point, though. Because whether or not Shams misled the public (I am not claiming he did!) he does wield power in both the sports news world and the sports betting world. And with all US professional sporting leagues—including the NBA—fully leaning into gambling as a legal activity, I think we’ll see more and more folks hold power in both fields.

The sports insider and the gambling insider will morph into one individual; when that happens, what’s real anymore? What value will accurate sports reporting hold? Financially, at least… not very much.