by Zach Bigalke

Created on: March 11, 2008

I have been sitting here on my day off writing to FanNation and watching SportsCenter and First Take on ESPN. Then, when the shows ended, the midday line-up kicked in... World Selries of Poker!

Don't get me wrong, I love poker. I used to sit in for absentees at my dad's weekly poker night back in Wyoming. The guys eventually kicked me out when I was twelve because I kept taking their money while they were drunk. I even enjoy watching the stuff sometimes. But it doesn't belong on ESPN or FOX Sports or any other sports programming channel.

Poker in all its televised glory stands only to glamorize gambling. There is no encouragement or inspiration for children to get out on the sandlot or onto a bicycle or to do anything active. People are not inspired by feats at the poker table; they only learn new tricks to take their buddies' cash at next week's poker game.

Honestly, I am aware that ESPN has gone the way of MTV in that it shows VERY LITTLE of that which actually got each of them to the pinnacle of their respective genres: sports and music. Now you are as likely to see out-of-shape sportswriters arguing to a time clock as you are to see athletes competing on a court to a time clock. But that does not make it RIGHT...

Sports in all their glory have become too commercialized to the point where ESPN would drop a legitimate sport - hockey - to inundate the market with an interloper - poker. It makes the network money in droves, it sensationalizes the flaunting and taunting which pervade professional poker tables, and sets a bad example of what should be considered sport.

Video killed the radio star. Reality shows killed the video star. And now "Madden Nation" and the World Series of Poker and the whole lot are motivating a new generation of sports fans that they too can be "sports" stars simply by learning how to read the river or working your fingers fast enough on a game controller. Kids are becoming driven to become the next poker champ at a rate far faster than those wishing to play hockey... and this is because ESPN has gained in its lifetime a preeminent spot as the voice of all things sports.

If ESPN shows it, it must be a sport. I was a two-time National Spelling Bee participant... but I was certainly not an athlete while I sweated on that stage under the lights and the cameras in the ballroom of the Grand Hyatt Washington. And the beer-bellied stars at Binion's Horseshoe and the other gambling meccas (because, yes, this is GAMBLING) are no more athletes than I was more than a decade ago as an adolescent.

Our culture is becoming more apathetic toward sports participation because they have fewer real sports heroes to look up to and more Doyle Brunsons and Phil Iveys to divert their time...

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