“Sport Is Argument”: Polarization, Racial Tension, and the Televised Sport Debate Format

Abstract

This article analyzes what we term the “televised sport debate format” exemplified in shows such as Pardon the Interruption and First Take. This design borrows from established formats in political television such as Firing Line, Crossfire, and Hannity and Colmes, and is characterized by mostly male hosts debating a range of salient events, often with an animated, argumentative tone. This article identifies the convergence of factors influencing the growth of the televised sport debate by focusing on the industrial and political contexts in which these programs emerged. We examine the commercial and cultural realities that created the space for ESPN’s debate programs, and how ESPN (and then its competitors) sought to exploit that space. In the second half of the article, we explain the political context within and beyond sport that opened the cultural and ideological spaces for ESPN and its competitors to subtly reshape the televised sport debate format to appeal more directly to race- and gender-based grievances. We show how these realities, combined with ESPN’s presentational strategies, express deep-seated racial tensions, both within the institutional culture of ESPN and in the wider sphere of U.S. culture. We conclude by asking what these shifts mean for the future of sports television programming strategies, and the politics that both inform them and are informed by them.