In a move that surprised absolutely nobody — not because we’re all prescient, but because we saw the beta two weeks ago — ESPN.com launched a home page redesign on Monday. ESPN’s site is just barely behind Yahoo! Sports for most-visited sports site on the Web, so when they do a redesign, it’s big news marginally interesting.

I don’t pretend to be an expert on web design. It’s like Justice Brennan’s definition of porn to me. I couldn’t describe good design to you verbally, or explain it in any nuanced way — I just know it when I see it. And, at first glance, despite having borrowed heavily from Yahoo! Sports’ layout and general site backbone, the new ESPN.com looks, well, pretty good.

Of course, leave it to the four-letter to ruin a good thing with obnoxious profit motives. For example, the first time you visit the new site, you get an interstitial page, which is just stupid. Who does interstitials anymore? Al Gore called, and he wants his Salon.com back. What’s more, ESPN has been running a really ad-heavy top fold in its first few days, to the point of distraction. Actually, Venture Beat’s MG Siegler was more than distracted. He was downright pissed.

ESPN launched its new site design today and all I can say is “wow.” And it’s not a good “wow,” it’s a horrified “wow.” I can’t separate those advertisements from the content, and so I’ll never visit this site again. [...] Secondly, the site itself is still just a giant ad disguised as a sports site. I’m looking at the site right now and I can’t tell if I’m at a site about sports or the website about the Ford F-150. I hope I don’t accidentally click anywhere because I must have a 50 percent chance of hitting one of these ads.

MG vows to never visit ESPN.com again. Ha. Hahahaha. HAHAHAHAHA. So silly. So naive. You can’t escape ESPN.com, MG. Oh, you think you can. You think you’re done forever. And then you hear that Bill Simmons wrote something semi-interesting about Mike D’Antoni, or, hey, maybe I should check a quick score, or HAR HAR maybe Kenny Mayne made a funny and next thing you know you’re eyeballs deep in Skip Bayless-induced rage. It’s inescapable. You don’t visit ESPN.com, MG. ESPN.com visits you.

Also, have you heard about the new Ford F-150? BUY OUR F–KING PICKUP TRUCK.