John Porentas has a nice column in The Ozone today about the selection of Jesse as the #3 Icon. Now we know, and it figures.

John quotes Mark Silverman, CEO of the Big Ten as saying, "When we got down to final group (of 20), we had a group of 12 to 14 people who are our production and programming people, and some key execs at the network who voted on the ranking."

John went on to say, "The voting group consisted not of sports historians, long-time sports journalists, or successful people from the world of sport, but rather television people, and they have their own slant, their own way of seeing things. Further, it was a pretty young group as well."

"We had a nice cross-section in there. There were a couple of guys in their 20s, a bunch in their 30s, and a few us in the 40s," John quotes Silverman as saying.

So there you have it. A group of mostly 20 and 30 year olds - and gasp, a couple as old as 40 - whose frame of reference of history is watching a steady diet of ESPN highlight reels, chose Icons for nearly the last hundred years! Kind of says it all doesn't it, and a lot about our societies fascination with make believe that is the world of television. Not to mention the disdain for wisdom that comes from years of real world journalism in writing and covering actual sports events.

That's one reason I never watch Sports Center. It's 10 percent news and facts and 90 percent hype and glitz. Guess I prefer to read the written word think for myself rather than having someone do it for me and package it into make believe.

So should we have expected the Icon process to be any different? Guess not, but one could have hoped.

Read John's full piece at The Ozone.