It was ESPN3, I think, Dude, so not their main attraction or whatever. I find it amusing that it's on ESPN.
Iucounu, I did the bee circuit as a child. You can go pretty far on innate ability locally. To do well at the NSB, though, you do have to study your tail off.
I won my school spelling bee and got to the regional spelling bee twice, because I had a good vocabulary. In the list of words to study for the regional bee, the words I did not know how to spell were pretty obscure. If my children take a strong interest in spelling I will support them, but I think other academic competitions develop more transferable skills.
