Via Dave Sez, Ed at the Sports Frog wants a divorce from ESPN:
I have carefully thought this through and I believe a divorce is our only resolution. I have been loyal and faithful to you and you have shit on me, cheated, lied, took 5 months to send me a check and you won’t let me see some of my friends anymore.
You took away David Aldridge and foisted Screaming A on me. From a thoughtful, insightful, coherent reporter to a screaming clown who is nothing less than a thug wannabe.
[…] SportsCenter went from a highlight show to an hour of self-promotion of the preening anchors. Trey Wingo now hawks the ESPN Mobile phone that the WSJ says less than 10,000 have sold. (I can get what I need free from Google via text, thanks anyways.) Suzi is selling Chevys and Mayne is in an empty stadium denouncing the Gecko.
[…] How you have managed to not fuck up PTI is the only thing that amazes me at this point.
(More after the cut.)
It’s hard not to sympathize. I generally use the morning SportsCenter loop as background noise while breakfast is in the toaster, but it’s gotten to the point where I just can’t take more than a few minutes of it. I still watch PTI after work, but for background noise, I just use one of the music channels.
Of course, I’m mostly saying this because we’re currently in the Summer Sports Desert. I really don’t care about baseball, golf, or tennis, and I am actively hostile to stories about off-season NBA and NFL moves, particularly stories involving Terrell Owens. This fantasy-sports horseshit of ranking NFL teams before training camp starts is just ridiculous– the only thing I’m less interested in is stories about college recruiting. How about some actual, you know, sports?
But, come September, I’ll go crawling back. Once there are actual NFL games to talk about, and meaningful standings to report, I’ll be sucked back in to watching the highlight shows. And then college basketball will start up again, and I’ll be sucked back into a co-dependent relationship with Dick Vitale…
In a follow-up post, Dave offers some Internet alternatives that may help break the cycle (feel free to suggest others in the comments). I hope that works, but I’m pretty sure I’ll be back to regularly watching the World-Wide Leader in Disney Promotions by October…
exactly
Of course once the NFL season starts, NFL on ESPN won’t be the same. NFL Prime Time with Chris and Tommy will not be with us. The Sunday highlights will be moving to NBC with their pregame show with Bob Costas. Say what you will about Chris Berman but that show was a real gem to the end. Tommy’s analysis was great as were Chris’s highlights. The chemistry between the two was awesome. It was two friends who loved football talking about the day’s action & got paid to do it and knew how lucky they were. Their good-bye was classy and subdued. Costas is good but when it comes to football he just isn’t Chris Berman. Though if it is baseball, Bob is the guy (Chris is good but Bob is Bob).
NFL GameDay needs to ditch Irvin and have less Mort. Stick to Tommy & Steve with Berman. Sterling was good with them. IF they can get another Sterlingesque analyst that would be great.
It must really suck to care about things sport related. Not something I’ve personally had to deal with.
I gotta admit, I just don’t get PTI. I watch it occasionally, but the logic of it escapes me. SportCenter was my morning background noise for years, but I’ve long since stopped watching at all, for all the good reasons noted. About the only thing I watch on ESPN for any length of time anymore is Baseball Tonight, and even that’s getting harder to do with the advent of the odious and obnoxious Steve Phillips. It’s like they want to be Fox News and Hardball and all the other screaming head shows rolled up into one.
NFL GameDay needs to ditch Irvin and have less Mort. Stick to Tommy & Steve with Berman. Sterling was good with them. IF they can get another Sterlingesque analyst that would be great.
The problem is, the Irvin-for-Sharpe switch was the NFL analogue of the Smith-for-Aldridge switch. They’re not hiring louder and dumber commentators by accident, but as a matter of policy. At least Irvin played the game– Smith is nothing but a pompous gasbag.
I gotta admit, I just don’t get PTI. I watch it occasionally, but the logic of it escapes me.
I like it quite a bit, but it works mostly because Kornheiser and Wilbon are very good at what they do. They’ve got good chemistry, and I find their banter entertaining. I’ll even watch them in the summer, when all they have to talk about is baseball and golf and auto racing.
Re: PTI
One thing that just has to be said, though, is that if you’re going to be Kornheiser-less, pleasepleasepleasepleaseplease PLEASE drop Le Batard and bring in Bob Ryan or someone else semi-competent. Ye gods, I always wondered why Kornheiser called him the Hateable (Hatible?) Dan Le Batard, but after this past week and a half, I know why. I’d almost rather have Tony Gonzo D’brickashaw Ferguson Riali co-host than Le Batard.