Guest Blogger, Shira Danan

As JakeRake’s proxy for today—and as the first in a series of guest bloggers—I want to do my best to keep the transition as smooth as possible. To that end, I’ve decided to bring you news from the world of sports, which Jake seems to be into or whatever.

Now I’m not the kind of girl who cowers in fear the moment a game of football comes on television, hiding under the couch and combing her My Little Pony’s mane until we’ve both calmed down.

In fact, I find sports downright exhilarating as long as they are happening very far away. But I don’t spend a lot of time thinking about sports or athletes or sporting events. In fact, if I do spend any time thinking about sports, it’s usually about what snacks I would like to eat while my boyfriend watches them.

So the ESPN homepage is new turf for me. Right away, a few things are clear:

- Smiling, slightly balding white men in suits know a LOT about sports. They have user-friendly names like “Rick” and “Bill.” Their columns feature poorly executed comparisons to Rod Blagojevich and Lindsay Lohan. They use short, punchy sentences like: “Repeat: Unbeatable”; and “You could see it”; and “That’s when we knew.”

– Photographs of Miley Cyrus and other female celebrities are scattered liberally and without cause around the site. The most tenuous connection in the world can be used as an excuse to publish a photograph of a half-naked woman.

– Big events are sponsored by companies you’d never guess took such an interest in professional sports, like FedEx and Southwest Airlines.

– Hmm, the baseball page looks a little lackluster at the moment. But there’s still heavy reporting on a different, even-less-interesting sport: baseball people played a long time ago.

– And based on the flash ads, sports-watchers like candy (M&Ms), trucks (Ford), and not a lot of empty white space.

And they like sports. American sports. And that’s when I knew.

It’s not that sports are boring, it’s that people who like sports are boring. More on this next week.