Big Brown Letdown

Being out of town this past steamy weekend, and with little else to do before going out to dinner, the wife and I decided to watch the Belmont Stakes on tv. My wife isn't much of a racing fan, what with questions about the treatment of the horses and all. However, it wasn't long before we realized that television had turned at least two hours prior to the race into an infomercial for the favorite, Big Brown. He was, we were told, on the cusp of making history. After all, no horse had won the Triple Crown in 30 years.  

We were then treated to story after story about the horse, his jockey, his jockey's son, his trainer, his trainer's daughter (I'm not making this up), all in the name of building up to this historic mile and a half race. The other horses in the race? Mere fodder for Big Brown's ambition. They were given cursory introductions, and not much more. At one point, I looked at my wife and we both wondered what would happen to this overdriven hype machine if Big Brown lost the race. Then what would they cover?

We got our answer. Big Brown, seemingly positioned in third to overtake the leader Da' Tara, simply ran out of gas in the stretch. The horse finished dead last, the first Derby and Preakness winner to do so. Okay, so what does the media do after a 38-1 shot wins the race from start to finish? Do they focus on the extraordinary upset of Da' Tara? Nope. They spend virtually the entire post race coverage on what went wrong with Big Brown. In fact, it seemed an eternity before they actually had a single shot of Da' Tara in the Winner's Circle.

All this is to say what people saw in the coverage of the Belmont Stakes is all that's wrong with media in the early 21st century. A pre-written script with an unscripted ending turned out to be no script at all.

Worst of all, there will be no lessons learned.