ESPN college football analyst and resident contrarian Mark May made an usual amount of news in the offseason for a TV talking head.  There was his bizarre Twitter account coming to light and his continuing feud with certain programs and its fans because of a strange personal vendetta or who knows why.  May has fully embraced his bad cop role next to Lou Holtz with a kind of glee not even displayed by Skip Bayless at the network.

Yesterday though, May took his brand of analysis to a different level by making up fond memories of his childhood in talking about the Notre Dame – Michigan rivalry coming to an end for now.  Amazingly, this tweet describing May's fib from Sandlapper Spike has been RT'd on Twitter over 1,000 times:

Deadspin has a more detailed breakdown of May's quote, which features his waxing poetically about growing up in upstate New York watching a game that wasn't being played.

Why needlessly make up something like that when it adds absolutely nothing to the conversation at hand?

Why not?

The act of May and Holtz isn't football analysis, it's performance art.  It's taking a side and debating it, no matter if it's based in reality or not.  Making up childhood stories is a small thing to be quite honest, but it's symbolic of the May-Holtz charade as the least palatable element of ESPN's otherwise excellent coverage of the sport.  It's more important to stir up fanbases and stoke fires and debate talking points than base anything in fact.  The surprise is that this didn't happen sooner.

Comments are closed.