An embodiment of Frontline’s typically trustworthy fare, League of Denial discusses how the NFL reacted to allegations surrounding concussions’ permanent health risks with a combination of silence, renunciation, and meddling. The meddling was principally waged through the NFL’s Mild Brain Traumatic Injury committee, a group of league-appointed doctors that denied any definitive link between football and brain damage. Pushed along by talking-head interviews, the documentary outlines the NFL’s decades-long efforts to soften this controversy, from its initial rumblings to the NFL’s recent settlement with retired players—an agreement that incidentally did not require the league to admit any wrongdoing.

League of Denial was initially a co-production of ESPN and PBS. Frontline and ESPN’s Outside the Lines began a multimedia reporting partnership last November devoted to investigating concussions in the NFL. League of Denial was to serve as the partnership’s capstone. However, ESPN suddenly decided to separate its brand from the project in late August, citing an apparent lack of editorial oversight. Critics understandably surmised that the NFL—a partner ESPN now annually pays approximately $1.9 billion for the rights to carry Monday Night Football­—put the squeeze on the “Worldwide Leader,” a charge ESPN denies. While ESPN removed its brand from the project, the Fainarus are still captioned in the documentary as ESPN employees and the outlet has commented extensively on the project.

We can’t exactly prove the NFL bullied ESPN into kowtowing to its whims. We can, however, contextualize this instance by considering other moments when ESPN 1) has changed its content to satisfy the NFL and 2) advertised its lack of editorial input over comparable programming.

In 2003, ESPN subsidiary ESPN Original Entertainment produced the scripted drama Playmakers. The tawdry “ripped from the headlines” series depicted a fictional football team faced with a potpourri of scandals, from crack addiction to spousal abuse. ESPN marketed the prime-time program during its Sunday evening NFL telecasts, a choice that so irked NFL commissioner Paul Tagliabue that he griped to Walt Disney Company CEO Michael Eisner. Despite its popularity, ESPN decided not to renew the series. If the NFL successfully compelled ESPN to abandon a fictional series that never directly references the National Football League, it stands to reason that it might try to put the kibosh on League of Denial—a documentary that makes many of Playmakers’ lurid plot points seem blasé by comparison.

League of Denial emerged alongside a new season of ESPN Films’ 30 for 30 documentary series. In fact, Free Spirits—a nostalgic reflection on the American Basketball Association’s St. Louis Spirits—premiered at exactly the same time as League of Denial. What’s more, ESPN markets these documentaries as embodiments of their directors’ apparently unhindered creative inspiration. It publicizes participating directors as “filmmaking originals” and its website includes individualized “director’s statements” for each film that explain their personal relationship to their subject matter. Frontline—which has garnered nearly every honor a TV production can receive—is far more respected than most of the directors ESPN Films hires to create these documentaries. Anyone out there ever heard of Fritz Mitchell? How about Rory Karpf? No disrespect to Fritz and Rory, but Frontline they are not. Why, then, does ESPN purport to give these filmmakers creative freedom but refuse to allow Frontline—a series that seems to have the television documentary pretty well figured out at this point—to proceed as it sees fit with a project fueled by its own journalists’ reportage?

To recap, ESPN has changed its content to please the NFL and frequently cedes control—or at least claims to cede control—of its nonfiction programming. However, it suddenly decides not to commingle with Frontline after working alongside the franchise for nearly a year because it feared it did not have sufficient input. At the very least, it seems bizarre that ESPN would have such limited knowledge of how a project this high profile was developing so close to its premiere.

The lesson here is not that ESPN seems to cave to the NFL. The NFL is ESPN’s most powerful client and will inevitably color its content—if not through direct edicts, then certainly in more subtle ways. But this is old news. The real takeaway, I think, is the crucial importance of identifying the forces that guide precisely when ESPN decides it suitable (or unacceptable) to give up editorial control and using this context to critique the rhetorical strategies ESPN employs to explain away these suspicious choices. This is increasingly vital as ESPN continues to bill itself—without so much as a smirk—as a site that responsibly probes sport’s cultural meanings while its programming contracts keep the world’s wealthiest sports organizations in business.

While the lockout prohibits NHL players from lacing up for their teams (though many of its biggest stars are spending the stoppage participating in international leagues like Russia’s KHL), it has not prevented video game behemoth EA Sports from promoting its annual National Hockey League game.  NHL 13 is now the only game officially licensed by the NHL and the NHL Players Association—the factions currently warring over how the league’s revenues (including those generated from video game sales) will be divvied up.  Beginning the same week the NHL was scheduled to start is 2012-2013 season, EA Sports developed a weekly series of simulations hosted and promoted by ESPN.com that reflect on how the season might have transpired.  Featuring prominently ESPN’s brand and adopting a style similar to the media outlet’s highlight programs, the simulations combine slow motion replays with upbeat voiceover narrations and driving scores to showcase the imagined weeks’ most important and enthralling moments—power play goals, great saves, and so forth.  The simulations also praise the week’s top performances and include box scores for each game, headlines of league news, and even injury reports.  While the real Pittsburgh Penguins center Evgeni Malkin is currently playing for the KHL’s Metallurg Magnitogorsk, his simulated version will be sitting out for 3-4 months with a sprained MCL.  Penguins fans, it seems, can’t catch an actual or virtual break.

The EA Sports simulations are not new.  EA simulated the 2011 and 2012 Stanley Cups and ESPN.com currently hosts weekly Madden NFL 13 simulations of the National Football League’s games.  These productions grow out of a partnership between EA Sports and ESPN that started in 2005, when EA paid the “Worldwide Leader” $850 million for 15 years of advertising and the exclusive right to use its brand in games.  Since the deal was struck, these two titans of sports media have worked in concert to build each other’s images and increase their already expansive market share, demographic reach, and presence across multiple platforms.  “When you think about brands that should be together and work together,” said current ESPN president John Skipper shortly after the deal was struck, “I think EA represents in video games what ESPN represents in broadcasting and media assets.”  EA and ESPN typically frame the simulations as showcases of EA Sports games’ sophisticated capacity to provide information reliable enough to help fans set their fantasy rosters or place actual bets.  “Before you fill out your pick ’em pool or make that final fantasy lineup adjustment,” notes ESPN.com, “the Madden engine can provide that last bit of insight.”  Along different lines, EA and ESPN have used the NHL labor stoppage as an opportunity to market their simulations as outgrowths of the fan-centered populism on which each brand trades: “EA Sports brings you the NHL games, stats and standings that you were supposed to see.”  The simulations, they suggest, are gifts designed to tide over hockey-hungry fans that deserve better from the sports they cherish.

Corporate altruism notwithstanding, the NHL simulations indicate that while the content of EA Sports’ games rely primarily on the organizations they pay handsomely for the license to depict, they use ESPN to build, celebrate, and circulate those games’ meaning and value.  Beyond hosting the simulations, ESPN.com incessantly plugs their authenticity and only briefly, if at all, mentions games that are competing with EA Sports’ titles.  Moreover, ESPN typically situates its promotion of EA Sports’ products and developments as reportage.  In doing so, it suggests that EA products are the only sports games on the market worth note—an attitude that, given ESPN’s enormous reach, dissuades potential competitors from trying to chip away at EA Sports’ market share.

The simulations also illuminate the conspicuously thin line between ESPN’s coverage and its promotional activities and obligations.  When the NHL simulations first appeared in early October, a few frustrated commentators cynically huffed that ESPN is now providing the NHL with more coverage than it did when the league was actually in operation.  Indeed, ESPN has greater incentive to cover the simulations—which feature its client EA Sports along with its own brand—than it does to provide the actual NHL, an organization it has not possessed the rights to cover since 2004, with anything more than brief and relatively sporadic acknowledgement.  Though the simulations are relatively unimportant novelties within the ever-expanding universe ESPN has constructed, they usefully—though somewhat dismayingly—suggest the media outlet’s business partnerships supersede its publicized commitment to report on the sports world.

While the simulations showcase a virtual NHL season, they are remarkably actual advertisements.  EA Sports and ESPN’s combined efforts to expand sports media’s technological and interactive possibilities simultaneously work to restrict the branded horizons within which this potential can emerge.

The following week, while most sports media outlets were still processing the Penn State scandal’s magnitude, SI featured an extended introduction to Sport in America. The cover displayed an image of Tim Tebow—that beacon of corporatized piety—leading the Denver Broncos down the field along with the title of McDonell’s feature article.

McDonell’s rose-tinted essay argues that sport demonstrates humanity’s most human—and therefore, finest—qualities. “Sportsmanship can be a naïve word, especially in the shadow of the failure and shame of Penn State,” he writes. “But if we are who we say we are, if we believe in courage and integrity and fair play, then we define ourselves in our sports.” McDonell recounts a series of anecdotes culled from his SI colleagues that explain how sport helped them to mature, understand difference, and build relationships. The article reminded readers of sport’s value during a moment when popular attitudes surrounding it were relatively negative. Indeed, the timing of McDonell’s gushing celebration of sport-as-democratic-utopia indicates that SI was also working to salvage fans/subscribers/advertisers frustrated by lockouts, concussions, PEDs, and—sadly—sexual abuse.

McDonell’s piece provided a starting point from which SI and HBO have encouraged fans to participate in Sport in America by uploading videos of their own sports stories to the project’s website, some which will be included in the series.

While Sport in America positions itself as a collective experiment that values all sport stories, its website provides participants with guidance that suggests it is especially interested in generating new perspectives on topics that HBO’s documentaries have examined and that SI has reflected upon. (Sticking to these well-worn subjects will no doubt give the series easy and inexpensive access to archived photographs and film.) The website includes a section entitled “Moments to Consider” for participants unsure of what to discuss. These featured moments include events that range from Babe Ruth’s alleged “called shot” to the United States women’s soccer team’s 1999 World Cup victory. The actual questions the website asks participants to address in their videos are open-ended; however, the moments toward which it steers them indicate that the project may simply employ fans’ perspectives to confirm the narratives SI an HBO have already constructed. Indeed, HBO Sports has produced documentaries on Ruth, the U.S. women’s soccer team, and several of the other moments it encourages users to consider.

Moreover, the Sport in America website requires fans to agree that they will not sue or even allege plagiarism before they are permitted to upload a video. This, of course, is standard legal practice. Regardless, it suggests that while this collaborative documentary project solicits “our” stories, these tales cease to be ours the moment we upload them. Only after participants give Sport in America permission to use stories in whatever manner it chooses will the project consider defining them as Ours and proceed to sell them back to us.

Even though Sport in America has yet to premier, the circumstances surrounding its development suggest that our sports stories are legitimized as Our stories only when they are mediated by SI-HBO. As McDonell writes, “our sports have become more and more about money and marketing. But to most of us they’re still about the stories we tell one another, the transcendent moments that lift us—the very way we define ourselves.” He unsurprisingly does not mention the degree to which the preservation and celebration of these stories is a commercial, marketing-laden enterprise.

As the Olympics near we will be overwhelmed with televised human-interest pieces and lead-ins that reflect and even amplify McDonell’s sentimentality. While these productions—from Bob Costas’ studio commentary to Bud Greenspan’s documentaries—are quick to champion sport’s cultural import, they tend to obscure the conditions that facilitate and restrict sport’s apparent capacity to define us. It’s hard to imagine that Sport in America—despite its participatory promises—will be much different.

Sporting Goods is an ongoing column that explores the place of sports within the discipline of media studies and everyday life.

The NCAA Basketball Tournaments—March Madness, The Big Dance—have now reached the Sweet 16.  Brackets have busted, boss buttons have clicked, “Cinderella” teams have sent heavily favored opponents packing, and thanks to a recent joint contract between CBS and Turner Sports we can now enjoy Charles Barkley’s analysis between games.

Barkley’s ambiguously ironic candor notwithstanding, television coverage of the men’s tournament—from live telecasts of games to commercials that capitalize on the spectacle—constructs an NCAA-approved mythology that situates The Big Dance as a uniquely dramatic and unpredictable event where committed student athletes strive to win their school a national title.  Since 1987 CBS has closed its tournament coverage with “One Shining Moment,” a melodramatic musical highlight package that reflects upon and celebrates the event.  The ballad, which The Wall Street Journal called “the most famous song in sports,” champions March Madness as an embodiment of the determination players and coaches exhibit in striving to capitalize on the opportunity for glory that the tournament provides.  The highlight documents the men’s NCAA Tournament through attaching a set of overwrought feelings to it—players leaping in jubilation after a victory, fans sulking after a loss, exasperated coaches screaming orders.  Furthermore, its repetition every year suggests that March Madness—and NCAA basketball more broadly—always exhibits the same positive qualities.

Folk musician David Barrett claims to have written “One Shining Moment” to explain the allure of basketball—specifically watching the sport on television—to a woman who dismissed his fandom as juvenile.  With the help of a well-connected friend, Barrett sold “One Shining Moment” to CBS for use after its broadcast of the 1987 Super Bowl.  However, when CBS’ post-Super Bowl interviews ran long, the network shelved his song until its coverage of the men’s NCAA basketball tournament a couple of months later.

In 2010 CBS decided to update “One Shining Moment” by hiring Grammy Award winning recording artist Jennifer Hudson to perform the tune.  Hudson succeeded a tradition of male singers that included Barrett (1987-1993, 2000-2002), Teddy Pendergrass (1994-1999), and, most famously, Luther Vandross (2003-2009).  Though her rendition did not deviate considerably from her predecessors’, it was met with an impassioned stream of derision that prompted CBS to return to Vandross the following year.

Before Hudson’s performance even aired a Facebook group entitled “Bring Back Luther’s Version” emerged to protest CBS’ shift.  Viewer responses to her rendition—most of which materialized in the form of Youtube comments—were more explicit in voicing their disapproval.  One viewer charged that Hudson “murdered the song” while another questioned how the singer could sleep at night knowing that she “messed up one of the great traditions of the NCAA Tournament.”  Professional critics were no more sympathetic.  As Yahoo.com’s Ryan Green bluntly claimed, “there are certain things in sports you just don’t mess with.  This [“One Shining Moment”] is one of them.”

Many of the critiques focused on Hudson’s visual presence in the highlight package—which featured five brief cuts to her in a recording studio—and suggested that it transformed “One Shining Moment” into an indulgent music video.  While Hudson’s presence places greater emphasis on the performer than previous installments, this was actually not the first time the singer had been visibly present.  The 2003 version featured two brief cuts to Vandross’ emphatic crooning.  Other iterations used glittery effects that built upon the song’s lyrics by making it appear that players were literally shining.  Contrary to Green’s claim that the 2010 “One Shining Moment” “messed with” a pristine tradition, the highlight has been revised throughout its history.  However, none of these previous versions generated nearly the outrage Hudson’s performance precipitated.  Some fans were so offended that they sought to erase Hudson from this tradition of sport media by creating their own “One Shining Moment” videos that edited her out of the highlight’s visual component and added Vandross’ performance as the soundtrack.

Given the facts that CBS had previously included the singer who performed “One Shining Moment” in the highlight package and had made other changes to the production over the years, the key difference between the 2010 version its predecessors is Hudson’s position as a woman.  Some of the discourses surrounding the 2010 highlight explicitly suggest that the song—which, at the level of music and lyrics, seems perfectly suitable for a female crooner of even the most feminine variety—loses its intended meaning when performed by a woman.  As one viewer noted, Hudson’s version “seems like your little sister telling you how great you are, Vandross’ version is a father or coach telling you that all your hard work will pay off.”

The discourses surrounding Hudson’s performance suggest that her rendition disrupted a sentimentality specific to the relationship between men and sport.  The demands that CBS return to Vandross’ version and CBS’ acquiescent response to them indicate that “One Shining Moment” conveys, or at least ought to convey, nostalgia for the NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament that is designed for a male viewership and that is only authentic when delivered by a man.  More specifically, these demands suggest that “One Shining Moment” communicates nostalgia not simply for the tournament, but for the act of watching it on television.  Like the gendered circumstances David Barrett claims fueled his composition of the song, reception of “One Shining Moment” indicates that the relationship between men and sport, as it is constituted through television, harbors specifically masculine feelings.  In doing so, these discourses, along with CBS’ response to them, disregard women both as authentic producers and consumers of sport media, and sport history more broadly.  Furthermore, “One Shining Moment’s” recent revisions suggest that the mythic meaning the highlight attaches to the men’s tournament is contingent upon the stability of the gendered television viewing experience it constructs.

That said, enjoy the rest of the tournaments.  May your brackets never bust.