1) TebowMania
As bad as DeflateGate is now, and as much as the other stories on this list got so out of control that they made us consider wanting to move to foreign countries to begin life anew as sheepherders, nothing will ever top the insanity of ESPN’s obsession with Tim Tebow.
How crazy was ESPN’s fixation with Tebow, particularly the horror show that is First Take? Let’s review, shall we…
* Viewers watched Skip Bayless live tweet a Tebow press conference
* ESPN dedicated an entire episode of SportsCenter to Tebow
* ESPN brought in an a cappella group to pay tribute to Tebow
* A Tebow-free edition of First Take mentioned Tebow over once per minute
* ESPN dedicated an entire day to celebrating Tim Tebow’s 25th birthday. That might have been the one time in nearly six years at Awful Announcing that I went over the edge.
Consider this: ESPN President John Skipper had to come out and publicly walk back his own network’s TebowMania hysteria. It’s amazing to think that a billion dollar corporate empire could seemingly lose all elements of control over what they were doing like ESPN did with Tebow. Nearly every single day, every single discussion, every single debate, was about Tim Tebow. ESPN personalities even admitted they were specifically told to jam Tebow anywhere and everywhere they could. Simply put, ESPN’s TebowMania was one of the most ridiculous things any media organization has ever done. We’ve never seen anything like it before or since. Thank God.
Naturally, after Tebow left the NFL, ESPN signed him to work as a college football analyst. Tebow was refreshingly good on television and likable once he was able to distance himself from ESPN. (I know that sounds so, so weird.) Alas, it only lasted a year because Tebow is back in the NFL with the Philadelphia Eagles.
TebowMania is dead. Long live TebowMania!
Honorable Mention: Steroids in baseball, Johnny Manziel drama at Texas A&M, Richard Sherman’s interview with Erin Andrews.