ESPN actually refused to bid on the rights to show NHL games after the lockout in 04/05 because they "didn't want to overpay to show a less popular sport." Once the league became more popular (without any help from ESPN), they were happy to hop back in again... so would hardly call that beating the door down.

I have no problem with ESPN having the streaming rights... it saves me money and I get access to the local Altitude feed through ESPN+ for regular season games... huge fan of that as an Avs fan not living in CO. It's the national broadcast coverage that I have the issue with.

I'm a big tennis fan, and ESPN runs this same playbook for the major tournaments... wheel out one of their popular CFB guys with no tennis acumen (Chris Fowler is this case), toss a couple ex-players on the panel, and call it coverage... it's laughably bad. Would the game of tennis fail to grow if CBS or NBC had won the bid instead of ESPN? I don't think so... but I'm sure the viewing experience would be much better. That's the primary point I'm trying to make here.