At the ESPN Media Workshop

Currently sitting in between Southeastern New England media mogul Keith Thibeault of Sports Media Journal and Michael David Smith of Fanhouse, and Michael McCarthy of USA Today is sitting two seats to the left of me.

Right now, we're being told about the development of ESPN UK which came into fruition earlier this year thanks to gaining the rights to the English Premier League earlier this year. Russell Wolff of ESPN International spent some time talking to us about the EPL and how quickly ESPN was able to launch in the UK after gaining the EPL rights. I did ask on the request of one Tweep about rugby and was told ESPN is looking into obtaining rights, but could not comment further.

Earlier, I came into the ESPN Event Production workshop in progress. This involved some upcoming events including the NASCAR Chase for the Sprint Cup, the 2010 World Cup and US Open Tennis. Well known ESPN analysts Patrick McEnroe, Alexi Lalas and Rusty Wallace all answered questions. Questions were peppered from the reporters and bloggers in attendance, but the best exchange came between Jason McIntyre of The Big Lead (who by the way, appeared to have been kidnapped in the middle of an ESPN Campus tour) and Lalas. Jason asked if Alexi thought if Landon Donovan was a top 20 player in the world and for some inexplicable reason, Lalas said yes, and it led to a pretty good exchange between the two.

I wondered if Lalas was really serious and it appeared that he was.

Later on, there will be a cookout and expected to be in attendance will be John Skipper, an executive vice president and Michelle Beadle from SportsNation. I hope to have wireless to blog from that.