With the other main events of the weekend being the Winter X Games, Australian Open, and regular season NBA games, one would expect the All-Star games to be a significant part of the media coverage, especially considering the NBA and MLB all star games draw plenty of attention.
Nope.
With the Super Bowl still a week away, that remained the primary focus of ESPN, along with the story of what will happen to Peyton Manning. There appears to be much speculation lately of Manning with many conflicting reports, and anything rumor of him returning, leaving the Indianapolis Colts, or retiring have all been denied by Manning himself and the Colts.
Yet the media decided to debate over the future of a player who probably won't make any announcement until after the Super Bowl instead of breaking down the NHL All Star game or Pro Bowl.
Even the coverage prior to this weekend's events indicated that there was no interest of either game, as researched by Deadspin.
Now understandably, the Pro Bowl is not the most popular of all-star games, and ESPN does not have a television contract with the NHL, which probably plays a role. But even so, the day after both all-star games the top story on SportsCenter was the recap of the Miami Heat-Chicago Bulls game.
Yes it was a matchup of two of the best teams in the NBA, but could you imagine the day after the NBA All-Star game SportsCenter focuses its attention to the recap of a Boston Bruins-New York Rangers hockey game? That would essentially be the equivalent of what they did this weekend.
Maybe since the two All-Star games are not very popular it played a role in the coverage, but maybe if the media spent a little more time talking about the actual big sporting events of the weekend, those games would indeed be more popular.
