ESPN Needs a Rival

The most important show on ESPN is, and has always been, Sportscenter. And it is now garbage. I mean, it's awful. Just horrendous. There aren't enough synonyms for "suck" to describe it.

Let me provide an example. I used to watch Sportscenter every morning, and they'd just keep replaying it every single hour. I watched it to see the highlights. That's it. I wanted to see the plays and the games and the scores I missed. Isn't that why everyone watches it?

Well, on Wednesday I caught the morning Sportscenter. On Tuesday, there happened to be 4 playoff baseball games. That's a pretty rare occurrence. They couldn't fit them all on TV, and one of them ended late in the night.

The only final score I knew was in the Yankees/Tigers game. Other than the MLB playoffs, there really wasn't much going on. The NFL is Sunday and Monday, college football is Thursday and Saturday. So there were no other results to report on.

Okay, here's what Sportscenter provided me in the hour I watched:

The Yankees/Tigers game was the first highlight. It's well known that ESPN bows down to the east coast and the Yankees (and Red Sox) in particular, so this is what I expected.

The highlights did not show every scoring play, but they did show an above average (but not all that great) catch by Curtis Granderson 4 times. In fact, if Granderson would've played the ball right, it would've been a fundamental catch. But he took one step in at the crack of the bat, and ended up having to jump up and catch it. He turned the mundane into the (semi) spectacular.

After that, they went to their baseball "expert" where they dissecting the game further. This included showing the Granderson catch a couple more times.

Instead of doing the obvious thing and showing us the highlights/results for the other games, they checked in with Tiger Woods LIVE on the golf course. Unfortunately, it was Wednesday, and the tournament didn't start until Thursday. So they proceeded to show us Tiger standing around at a tee box, doing basically nothing.

Up next? They went to their football "expert" to discuss Sunday's Patriots/Jets game. Gee, how shocking that a Boston/New York football game would get this placement on Sportscenter.

This led to some NFL injury news, and then we had our first commercial.

Keep in mind, there were 3 other PLAYOFF baseball games the night before and they haven't told us what happened in any of them. Was it really more important that Teddy Bruschi tell us that Wes Welker is off to a hot start this year?

After the commercial, it's time to talk about baseball...NOPE. Actually, we need ESPN's college football "expert" to tell us about the upcoming games on Saturday. Thank God, we only have 3 more days in the week before those are played.

Okay, finally we get the Cardinals/Phillies highlights. This includes another talk with the baseball "expert" about that game. Two down, still two to go.

Is this driving you crazy yet? Well, I haven't even gotten to the best part. Guess what's next:

Check back in with Tiger!

Yep, he's still there, not swinging a golf club, probably cause the tournament doesn't start until tomorrow.

Did you think that was the best part? Because it wasn't. This is it. We hit the half hour mark, and guess what it's time to show:

The Granderson catch again! They showed the Yankees highlights for the second time before showing the other games a first time! You know, just in case you forgot what happened with the most important team in baseball.

Is this fucking radio programming now? They're just thinking in terms of 15 minute day parts? Insanity.

The funny thing is I don't even have a dog in this hunt. I haven't even been paying attention to baseball this year. Besides, my team is the Padres. I was just mildly curious about those games and it was still driving me nuts. If the Padres were in the playoffs (a miracle, I know) and they had won and they weren't showing it, I would've stuck my fist through the TV.

How are you not gonna show my team in an hour Sportscenter? How is that even possible? Yankee fans have no idea what this feels like. They're also front running assholes.

The thing is, this is business as usual on Sportscenter now. This is how it is all the time. The other night the Cardinals and Braves were in historic elimination games on the final day of the regular season. One of the games went extra innings. About as dramatic as you can get.

When did that get shown on that night's Sportscenter? 30 minutes into the show. Why? Because the Red Sox were in an elimination game that same night.

I know what they're argument is: but fans have the internet now! They know the results! And they can watch the highlights any time they want!

Bullshit. Yes, we can get the results, but guess what crap ass highlights we have to watch? YOURS! Yours, ESPN, and your highlights are shit. Why? Because you need to spend 5 minutes with Tim Kurkjian's Peter Brady voice telling us that Albert Pujols is seeing the ball well right now.

Who cares what actually happened in the NFL game, let's hear some ex ball player with a 3rd grade education who has had 19 concussions talk some more. Yeah, that's good TV.

And you know what? I don't want to go on the internet to seek these highlights out. You've got 10 Sportscenter's on in the morning, you can't find time for the ACTUAL GAMES?!

Meanwhile I'm running around showering, putting clothes on, and cramming a shitty breakfast down my throat while the TV is on. So help a brother out. Show me what happened so I don't have to spend my afternoon doing it when I'm supposed to be writing jokes about a guy getting hit in the nuts.

This shouldn't be hard. But after their success and complete dominance, they started to outsmart themselves. And I've seen this a lot on TV shows. The people running things start thinking they need to do more. You don't! Do less. Show the great plays, that's all we want. That's why your channel has billions of dollars in the first place.

The fact is, Sportscenter has sucked for 10 years, probably because they don't have any competition. ESPN is a monopoly, and as always with monopolies, the customers are losing.

Fox briefly challenged in the ESPN awhile ago, and they failed. They didn't do it right. They tried to do something regionally, and it has to be national.

We need a national sports channel that is willing to do what ESPN won't do: show in depth, comprehensive highlights for all of the teams...and that's it.

Maybe you're saying: but what about ESPN News?

Fuck ESPN News! That's even worse. Kurkjian is over there running his mouth too. And it's the same short shifted highlights from Sportscenter in the same east coast bias order.

No, someone entirely different needs to try their hand at this. The same idiots have been doing this for too long and they have gotten lazy. We need a fresh take. I never thought a sports network would lose sight of the games mattering the most, but here we are.

ESPN, eat a west coast, Yankee and Red Sox and Patriots and Jets hating dick.