We need more first graders analyzing major sporting events

If you watch any of the NCAA Tournament, you will probably see this AT&T March Madness commercial roughly 200 times this weekend, and that’s okay. Nobody’s complaining, because pickle roll. It’s adorable. But every time you see this commercial, let’s all stop and have a serious discussion about the media landscape in 2013.

Why don’t we have first graders announcing sports full time?

Okay fine, maybe announcing actual games would be too extreme. If we picked the same four seven year-olds to announce all of our major sporting events, eventually we would have two favorites, one who everyone forgets about, and then one who everyone openly loathes. Then suddenly 100,000 people on Twitter would be saying horrible things about seven year-old Jim Nantz.

We don’t want that.

HOWEVER ... We could easily replace Around The Horn or Pardon the Interruption with a show that visits various elementary schools every day and asks randomly chosen first and second graders to comment on sports.

Example: Look at this tweet from SB Nation’s NBA editor Tom Ziller today:

Think about it.

Would you rather hear what Tom Ziller thinks about the NBA luxury tax and David Stern and LeBron James and the changing landscape of the league, or would you like to hear his awesome daughter and her classmates talk about all that?

Nobody’s saying we should think seriously about firing the entire sports media establishment and replacing everyone with first graders. No, definitely not.

There’s room for everyone.

But if 2013 is going to give us 10,000 sports opinions every day and websites and pregame shows and game previews and talk shows ... there’s just no good reason why we don’t have a show full of first graders breaking down the sports world at least once every day.

Remember that when you see the pickle roll commercial this weekend.

Thank you.