Slogging through 4 hours of ESPN drivel

SEVERAL readers have asked why ESPN would produce a fourhour show to name the four teams selected to play in the College Football Playoff. Why? The same reason that “SportsCenter is next! SportsCenter is next! SportsCenter is next! …”

The same reason it lays off hundreds while wasting millions in send- in-the-multitudes for hours of unendurable on-site pre-event promotion that could be better done — and heard — from ESPN studios. At ESPN, anything worth doing is worth overdoing.

More foolish — even transparently comical — was ESPN’s afterglow press release, which was headlined, “College Football Selection Show: Most-Viewed Four Hour CFP Selection Show Ever.”

The release’s sub-headline read like a self-indictment: “More than 3 million viewers in the Show’s First Hour.”

Good questions are now running far ahead of good answers. That Giants defensive end Olivier Vernon said he will continue to take a knee during the national anthem and to those who don’t like it, “don’t come to the game,” moved reader Alan Hirsch of Port Washington to note that Vernon is being paid nearly $12 million this season, then ask this:

“Is it only in America that an employee can tell his company’s customers not to buy the company’s product and still collect his full pay?”