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Cool as the Other Side of the Pillow

How ESPN’s SportsCenter has Changed Television Sports Talk

Williams College

In this article, the focus is both on sports talk and on the particular variation of that discourse produced by ESPN’s SportsCenter, arguably the most hip and watched show of its kind. SportsCenter blends all the social concerns about race—the raced nature of athletics (and the distribution of talent)—with a uniquely postmodern view of popular culture. Through its hip presenters, SportsCenter refracts hip-hop culture, contemporary politics, and "high art." This show does not distinguish between the "high" and the "low," it refuses to privilege the sacred over the profane, and it makes equal use of the ridiculous and the sublime—all the while knowing its (sport’s) stuff, always with an ironic, parodic, even cynical nod, nudge, and wink. SportsCenter, a resonant repository of contemporary life, values "coolness" above all else. This is sports talk, where those on the air know how to talk that talk because they, apparently (if only vicariously), routinely walk that walk.

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