On Nov. 9, 2015, ESPN ran the headline “Russell Westbrook claims he has never heard of Lil B, the rapper says Westbrook looks like a sandwich” on its website. The source for all things sports, or even remotely related to sports, ESPN “make[s] it possible to turn on your TV and have sports come out, just like turning on your faucet and have water come out,” Bob Thompson, director of the Bleier Center for Television and Popular Culture at Syracuse University, said in a USA Today article. Within the deluge of programming, the network’s content becomes endlessly repetitive and lacks quality. SportsCenter, the flagship program of ESPN, most days is essentially anything you could ever know about the NFL and LeBron James, with a side of some other sports right before the commercial break. ESPN could care less on delivering quality sports news.

The company used to deliver fantastic sports journalism through Grantland, a website that some of the best writers in sports and pop culture wrote for. Grantland was one of the few places to produce long-form sports and pop-culture news, but it didn’t have enough hits or profit for ESPN to continue it. Today, we are surrounded by click-bait journalism, but Grantland’s defining characteristic came at odds with sustainable finances, and ESPN proved that journalism and business do not mix. The gold standard of sports media is gone with few suitors to replace it.

I sincerely hope that the gold standard will return with VICE Sports and similar websites. VICE is trying to deliver character-driven stories, as opposed to event-driven or game-driven stories that ESPN is endlessly filled with. Shows will examine what players do on their days off, the lives of retired players, super fans, superstars in the making and other off-the-field topics. It is trying to bring back sports features that discuss more than what happens during games.

For instance, I recently watched a clip on P.K. Subban, defenseman for the Montreal Canadiens, who is seen as one of the bullies in the NHL. I should preface this by acknowledging that I am a die-hard Boston Bruins fan and had true distaste for Subban prior to watching this clip. Then I learned that Subban will be donating a total of $10 million from his eight-year, $72-million deal over the next seven years to the Montreal Children’s Hospital foundation, which is the largest philanthropic commitment by a sports figure in Canadian history. I learned more in roughly eight minutes about his life and his goals outside of hockey than from anything I’ve read about him through ESPN. Unsurprisingly, there are tons of interesting feature stories on athletes that we never hear on ESPN while they’re too busy discussing how to set your fantasy football lineup.

At the end of the day, ESPN is a business and panders for profit with its click-bait journalism. What’s surprising is our own media outlet, Student Life, also fails to deliver quality sports journalism. While Student Life doesn’t cover scandals by athletes, as they lack the opportunity to do so, Student Life does little more than report on the outcome of games.

Most students here have little interest in sports, as we’re not a Division I school. This doesn’t diminish the accomplishments or efforts of any of the athletes here, but it does contribute to a culture that cares very little about sports. I follow sports very closely, but do little more than glance at Student Life sport’s coverage. With the exception of a sports feature every now and then, all that is mentioned is statistics and outcomes. In order to interest the casual sports fan, which is the majority of the population at Washington University, coverage on what athletes do off the field should be expanded.

Like professional athletes, there’s so much more to the athletes here than what they do on the field. For example, the recent article on Allison Zastrow mentioned little more than her accomplishments on the court. The casual fan would love to know what motivated her to start playing or what she does beyond volleyball. Connecting with athletes on a personal level is what brings people to games.

Moving away from the regurgitation of statistics that scare away the casual fan will contribute to a culture that actually cares about sports. Far more fans will come out to games because they’ll know athletes beyond just what they did in last week’s game. Like with ESPN, I’ll start following our own sport’s coverage when it expands beyond the bare bones.