It turns out it’s not just the Buffalo Bills who have issues with geography. On ESPN’s The Jump Monday, while host Rachel Nichols was praising the Toronto Raptors for their 121-107 win over the Los Angeles Lakers Sunday and saying “While everyone from Hamilton to Oshawa knows it won’t mean anything until the Raptors succeed in the playoffs,” the graphic behind her provided remarkably inaccurate locations for those cities. A still version can be seen at the top; here’s the clip, with the graphic showing up on-screen around 2:27:
For reference for those not familiar with Canadian geography, here’s the ESPN graphic next to an actual map of Southern Ontario.
So, yeah, they put Hamilton down near Windsor (or “South Detroit”) instead of just south of Toronto, and Oshawa over near Kingston instead of just east of Toronto. The map also illustrates why these cities were bad choices to shout out on air; “Hamilton to Oshawa” isn’t exactly much of a span, as illustrated in this tweet:
Here's the video of the ESPN screenie you're seeing of their Oshawa to Hamilton?!? shout out (including handy real map for reference). https://t.co/YRuMzbSIk6 pic.twitter.com/OztoHefoCE
— James G (@james_in_to) November 5, 2018
And Canadian Twitter was not pleased with all of this:
https://twitter.com/DrunkenCanuck64/status/1059592774423638016
https://twitter.com/KhyphenD/status/1059568737462968321
https://twitter.com/whereisadnan/status/1059563440425979904
Someone needs to explain what's going on here?? @ESPN @Rachel__Nichols #FromHamiltonToOshawa pic.twitter.com/v8iWfYovK4
— Tim and Friends (@timandfriends) November 5, 2018
Funnily enough, it’s not even particularly easy to watch The Jump in Canada, as ESPN isn’t available in the country and TSN (partly owned by ESPN) appears to only carry The Jump on regional feeds TSN3 and TSN4. Those channels do cover a lot of Ontario, though, with TSN4 in particular covering the area in question here. So some of the annoyance may have come from Canadians watching the show, while others may have just found it through social media.
In any case, Raptors’ GM Masai Ujiri may be adding this to his list of grievances with U.S. media outlets. And maybe the ESPN graphics department should be a little more careful with their maps. Let’s bring in Maxwell Smart for some commentary.
But hey, if the ESPN graphics department needs some Canadian geography instruction, they should just watch Three Dead Trolls In A Baggie’s “The Toronto Song“:
[ESPN on YouTube]
