Reason 5796 why ESPN stinks

I'm more interested in a 20-year-old baseball game than a reality show about Madden gamers.

 

I am with you on that. Back in 2001, I taped the Rose Bowl because my Huskies were playing in it and while I was at work I avoided all contact with sports fans the whole day. Toward the end of my shift some asshole told me the score of the game, I didn't even watch it cause I knew who won.

I can't imagine sitting through a baseball game from 1990.

 

I really like most of the SportsCentury episodes. I wish they would do more of them, especially ones focusing on specific events (especially older boxing matches).

 

I don't consider a game from the '90s to be a classic. ESPN does only because it doesn't have older footage.

Want to keep viewers' interest? Get your hands on telecasts from the '40s and '50s. There's GOT to be more out there than Larsen's perfect game. If it goes that far back, I don't care if it's a mid-May game between the Milwaukee Braves and the St. Louis Cardinals, I'll watch it.

 

Google "sports DVD trading" and you'll find the demand for vintage game broadcasts to be much bigger than one might think.

 

ESPN Classic made a hard turn into suck around 2004, when the dork twins started the blatant MST3K ripoff. (I know not if the dreck still even airs). It was unapologetic for swiping and unapologetic for being really bad television.

 

Because they enjoy it?

I could give you 100 more reasons, in this case, but as I watch Larsen's perfect game right now I'll give you two:

-- The commercials.
-- A young Vin Scully.

 

I'll just throw out a couple of my reasons why ESPN blows. They've made sports less about sports and more about the flashy bullshit: dunks and homer-gazing and cheap shots and celebrations. I guarantee they first thing on SportsCenter tonight is a shot of USC players doing their punkass version of the Rockettes on the sideline.
Despite that, my TV stays stuck on some ESPN channel on Saturdays during the fall. The rest of the year, fuck it.

 

I published my interview Tony Petitti Thursday, and asked about how the league-based network walks the line between expanding reach, while being able to not piss off MLB's broadcast partners in ESPN, FOX, and TBS, which clearly garner substantial revenues:

Bizball: You have been a key figure at both ABC and CBS Sports. MLB Network is different in that it is a league-based channel, and therefore is competing on some level with MLB’s broadcast partners in ESPN, FOX, and TBS. As President and CEO of MLB Network, how have you approached programming that could influence negotiations when these broadcast agreements come up for renewal?

Petitti: Well, the first thing important in programming is that people are going to want to watch. That's the first thing. So that the network is a viable place, where baseball fans come and it's a destination that they're aware of and a resource that they will use when they're watching baseball. That's the way the goal is initially is to build a programming stable that appeals to baseball fans on all different kinds of levels. Whether it's video programming, gaming programming, historical programming -- it's really a mix of everything. In terms of the future and in terms of negotiations, the bottom line for the network is we want the network to grow and we want it eventually to grow beyond 50 million homes. So whatever content is out there we would be like to be perceived as a viable place for that content to be, whether it's additional games or other packages. But having said that we are building it around studio programming and the kind of great tape programming that we have on but I think the key is that we're prepared to take on anything that could come our way in a few years, in terms of more content...

Bizball: Could that include playoff games?

Petitti: ... Now whether that means that baseball wants to move more content here, that'll be up to you know the Commissioner's Office and we'll sit there like any other bidder hoping we can come up with some more.

 

While I think it is still a few years down the road, I do see a changing dynamic between leagues and college conferences and TV. I think we'll see more companies like Learfield and other companies broker the deals. The networks won't be bidding on how much they'll pay the leagues and conferences, but how little of an advertising cut they will take to carry the games.

 

ESPN didn't do that.
The athletes did it.
Starting with everyone's universal hero Muhammad Ali, the most overrated athletic figure of all time. And he got that way before ESPN planted its first satellite dish.

 

Muhammad Ali isn't nearly as overrated as Michael Jordan, whom ESPN showed almost every dunk for years. No nice passes for open shots or uncontested layups ... but every time Jordan was trying to posterize three or four guys with a kamikaze drive, SportsCenter has it for you.

And, unlike Jordan, Ali actually took a stand on something. Jordan was scared that would slow down people walking by the cash register.