There is no more frustrating web site in all of sports than ESPN.com. Which is really too bad as they have some really nice content. With great writers like TMQ, Simmons, Gammons, Neyer, Olney, Stark and more, they should really tear down the entire site and start over. If you haven't guessed it, this post is a rant.
It has become popular in recent culture to bash ESPN. They face the same brunt of scrutiny that happens to any great success story. It's the American way to build something up, root for it, and then tear it down once it is successful. The Fan can't jump on that bandwagon. There is too much debt owned to a network that ushered in the golden age of sports reporting. SportsCenter and Baseball Tonight are hallmarks that helped make this the best age ever to be a fan.
Along the way, they leveraged their name and their roster of talent to take that content on-line and that was a good thing. The one problem is that their site simply doesn't work. Navigating the site is painful. Sometimes you can easily get back to where you started and other times there are no links at the top of the page to get back and you have to resort to browser tricks. But that is by far not the most egregious problem.
The problem is if you want to participate on the site. Most of the fun of sports sites is the ability to interact with other fans and with the writers who post. ESPN.com makes both totally a waste of time. Regularly, their writers host chats, which are never long enough and do not automatically refresh. So if you want to follow along, you have to constantly refresh the screen. Isn't that stupid?
Registering on the site isn't free. To be an "Insider," you have to pay. The Fan has no problem with that. But once you do register, the site never remembers you. It has the worst cookie system on the planet. You have to login in each and every day, 365 days a year. This is a typical day trying to comment on a post:
- Read post.
- Type comment
- Click Submit (mind you, your name appears on the top of the screen giving the appearance you are logged in).
- The screen takes you to a sign in page (grumble, curse). So for the umpteenth time, you enter your password.
- Click submit to enter the password. The screen goes blank and just leaves you in limbo land.
- Use browser tools to get back to the original post and comment page.
- Your original comment is now gone, vanished into thin air. The Fan has taken to copying the text to the clipboard before the steps above.
- Paste text back into comment box. Click Submit. It will work about 33% of the time. Today, it told the Fan that there was a problem with the login system, so the Fan never could comment.
It is the most frustrating process ever seen on any website. The latest new wrinkle is that apparently, whatever credit or debit card the Fan used to be an "Insider" is going to expire soon. So each and every post the Fan goes to read pops up with a screen that must be dealt with stating as such. Each and every ESPN.com post must deal with this screen and you can't ignore it. You have to either click the link to update your card (which the Fan is not yet ready to do) or click, "No Thanks." There is no option to not see that screen again. There is only the option to see that stupid, pain-in-the-ass screen on every post read. Amazing.
The Fan has a message for whoever is in charge of the ESPN.com website: You suck. Your site sucks. If the Fan was a general manager in charge of the ESPN.com website, the first thing to be done would be to fire the entire web team and rebuild it with people who actually know what they are doing and understand a user's methodology and perspective.
It's a real shame and a real crime that the best and foremost sports site in the world is a complete dog.
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