The Ombudsman Listens

Last week, after the abomination that was "ESPN Interactive Tuesday", we had enough and decided to vent our frustrations online. The result was a Letter to ESPN's Ombudsman. The frustration we felt had been echoed elsewhere on the web, and our blogging friends Villanova by the Numbers and I Bleed Blue and White also chipped in. In addition, Dan from the great blog Yet Another Basketball Blog had his own light-hearted commentary.

However, what was far more important than the blog impact was the decision by countless fans (Villanova, Marquette, and whoever) to write their own letters to the Ombudsman.

Evidently we got her attention. After scrolling through paragraphs and paragraphs of ARod coverage, Le Anne Schreiber concludes with,

I have been remiss in not using this column to relay to ESPN the unanimous dislike my correspondents have expressed for a certain Interactive Tuesday feature employed during college football and basketball games. They have called the top screen scrolls of text messages from viewers silly, bothersome, worthless and "the dumbest, most distracting gimmick I've ever been subjected to." After the Feb. 10 Marquette-Villanova game, fed-up fans of both teams mounted a write-the-ombudsman campaign that outweighed, by far, any mail I received about the A-Rod coverage. Thanks for the feedback, but you can stop now. You have been heard, loud and clear.

Well done, everybody. Well done, indeed.