Honestly, I don’t pay much attention to sports columnists, especially the ones who write for papers in Boston, New York, L.A., Chicago or any other major American city.

I just don’t see any reason to listen to what they have to say.

Most of them are pompous, arrogant and often misinformed ‘writers’ trying their best to use big words, drop famous names and impress you with all the ultra-cool places they¹ve been (when I was at the Super Bowl last year...).

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They often seem more concerned with lining up their next book deal or setting up guest appearances on television and radio programs than they do writing something that might actually be of some importance to anybody besides themselves.

More often than not, they like to start controversy or do anything else they think will help them make a name for themselves in an industry already overcrowded with shameless self-promoters and second-rate hacks. Accurate reporting is not required.

But, every once in a while, some tiny bit of brilliance slips through the relentless barrage of crap that spews from the laptop computers of the big-city newspaper columnist.

I found one such nugget of long-overdue excellence yesterday.

In a column printed in the San Jose Mercury News, columnist Tim Kawakami announced he was boycotting ESPN and was encouraging others to do so as well.

As ridiculous as it might sound, Kawakami’s idea is long overdue. It’s about time someone had the marbles to take on the self-proclaimed ‘Worldwide Leader in Sports.’

Let¹s face it, in the last few years, ESPN has turned into a ridiculous conglomeration of game shows, made-for-TV movies and attention-seeking loud mouth SportsCenter anchors.

The actual sports content of the network’s daily programming (I thought that the ‘S’ stood for ‘sports’) has become secondary to screaming on-air personalities and ex-jocks who are somehow considered experts.

SportsCenter, the show I used to watch with almost religious reverence, is now nothing more than a bad clip show featuring a bunch of half-rate wanna-be stand-up comics.

And it wasn’t that long ago that SportsCenter was the shining example of what television sports journalism could be. Now it seems hard to believe that this was the show I used to get up an extra hour early to watch when I was in high school.

In an attempt to appeal to the younger generation, ESPN has gone the path of MTV, replacing substance with style and flash. It’s not about sports, but marketing and selling video games, sports drinks and DVDs (just out on video, the complete first season of Playmakers!!!).

I don’t have the time, energy or patience to completely detail ESPN’s ridiculous descent into the world of trash television. But perhaps the whole process can best be described in just two words, Stuart Scott.

The undisputed king of the idiotic SportsCenter anchors, Scott is the poster boy for the current mind-numbing state of a once great network. His catch-phrases, which I admit were once entertaining, are now so repetitive it hurts to listen to them.

It should come as no surprise that Scott was recently ranked one of the most annoying characters in television history by a popular men’s magazine. As Kawakami so accurately points out, despite Scott¹s almost relentless presence on the network, there are still plenty of good things about ESPN.

But recently the bad, a.k.a. the 24-hour Kobe watch, the World Series of Poker, around the clock commentary from ‘insiders’ and columnists and moronic shows like Around the Horn, is no match for the few shreds of solid sports entertainment left on the ESPN family of networks.

So maybe it’s time to turn it off.

Sadly, even in this highly advanced technological age, there are very few other options. But something most be done and quickly or else ESPN will only slip more and more into a world that appeals only to the lowest common denominator.