re: Watching ESPN on Linux

Not sure if you problems is predominately sound related or not. It has been a long going issue with Ubuntu having problems with sound syncing using Pulseaudio, their default sound server.

A lot of bug discussions have been posted about this issue and may be related especially complaints about choppy sound after some time has passed in youtube videos and such.
One workaround has been to remove pulseaudio and install Alsa Mixer. However if this is not your problem, pulseaudio would be better a better choice and you'd still have that nice volume indicator applet at the top right corner.

One major problem with removing pulseaudio and using gnome-alsamixer is if you use Firefox. After firefox 52 support for anything other than Pulseaudio stopped even with many people complaining about it. So, pulseaudio is required in Firefox for anything going forward unless Mozilla developers decide to add support for something else.

Alsamixer (without pulseaudio) will still work in Chrome/Chromium related browsers.